And now, a small tribute to the 1990s

GL: Why the Comic works (is also why the movie didn't)

It's actually not that hard; it's the difference between episodic fiction (TV and comics) and non-serialized (movies). You can only have a certain percentage of screentime devoted to introducing the characters, the situation, and the backstory. In serialized comics, you can spread this out over a very long period, as was done with the Rainbow Lantern concepts over about 3 years of storytelling.

The movie had to do it in less than two hours. See the problem? So because of that, the Green Lantern movie, even more so than most comic book origin story movies (and let's face it, most origin movies SUFFER for having so much time devoted to the origin stories) had to throw a lot of crap at the audience and hoped that they A) would keep and B) Give a damn. This is compounded by the fact that much of the Rainbow Lantern backstory derives in large part from the work of Alan Moore in his short stories - something a casual movie goer could not possibly care about (much to everyone's loss on that score).

Geoff Johns deserves some credit for Wold Newtoning up a unifed theory of Green Lanternhood and creating something that will make DC comics money in the years to come (though probably not so much money for him, but I don't have a lot of sympathy for this generation of copyright management, as opposed to previous ones), but it's not the most accessible story for a wider audience.

The GL movie just proved why that's important.

On Killing...Again

So, here's the state of the ethics of superheroes, as depicted by Marvel and DC comics, in the year 2011;

At DC, the heroes are continually depicted as ineffectual idealists because they don't kill, struggling in a sea of mass-murdering psychopaths. I can think of no better example here than Hal Jordan, so-called "Greatest Green Lantern". First, he forms his "proactive Justice League" in the abominable Cry for Justice. This would be the League where Ray Palmer, a man of 'great compassion' (so Blackest Knight tells us), went kicking around other people's brains like his ex-wife did when she killed Sue Dibny to torture them. And what did he end up showing for it? I mean, other than Prometheus completely infiltrating the team and completely botch the whole thing? Then, not learning from his mistakes, he corals together the "New Guardians", which has at least three members (Atrocitus, Larfleeze, and Sinestro) who are known mass murderers with body counts equal to or exceeding that of the Joker.

Over at Marvel, it looks like there isn't a hero left standing who isn't A-OK with killing opponents, which is why Wolverine and Moon Knight are accepted on the Avengers, and I'm sure the Punisher will be getting a call any day now. The only one who isn't OK with this is...well, I want to say Spider-Man isn't OK with this, but given the frequency with which he teams up with Wolverine and the Punisher, I guess he's OK with killing so long as he's not the one doing it. For me, the most telling case of this occured in the last issue of the Fantastic Four (SPOILERS AHEAD), where we see Valeria Richards, clearly anguished over the death of her uncle, gathering the rest of the young kids, and plotting to kill the one responsible. A tight moment of plotting, but the implications are disturbing. Let us consider the following;

1) SHE'S THREE YEARS OLD, TOPS - yes, she's hyper-intelligent, but intelligence rarely translates itself to any kind of emotional maturity. Yes it clearly is the act of a child, but there's no scene to draw attention to that little fact, so either it is meant to implied that she's making a rash, immature and dangerous decision, or we're meant to take this at face value. I'd feel better about the former being the correct option if this wasn't the same company that gave us Hit-Girl.

2) THE REST OF HER GROUP ARE CHILDREN - Oh, and the group she gathers together for her little plan are (with the exception of Alex Power) untrained combatants. So, if her plan is to advance, she will be making a group of minors accomplices to a premeditated act, and that trips well into that whole 'Child Soldier' thing I talked about a year ago.

3) WHERE'S THE ADULT SUPERVISION? - No one's around during class time? No HERBIE robots? or video cameras? Or any kind of supervision? No? OK.

So there you have it; Ineffectual morons on one side, and murderous children on the other. And people wonder why comic readership is sinking.

Pick the Best Caption

Sorry about this, will try to get some content up on the weekend. Cheers

Choices

Easily the best response to my last post was a friend of mine asking that if it came right down to it, who made worse decisions - The Guardians of the Universe or the U.S. Military.

This was a no-brainer - the Guardians are incompetent on a massive scale. The Green Lantern Corps was wiped out a grand total of what? 3 times in the last decade? Plus that whole Manhunter thing, the fact that they've made the wrong move in every single "Crisis" event, the Blackest Night, etc.

Really, at this point, the Guardians should maybe scale back their ambitions -start with seeing if they can successfully protect, say, an abandoned strip mall. That's about their speed.

Hal Jordan: Criminal?

Question for those of you with some knowledge of military law and justice - Exactly how many charges would get leveled against Hal Jordan because (thanks to Geoff Johns) he's back in the US Air Force?

Before we get too far into this, I just want to point out a couple of things. The reason I ask is that there have been stories told about the whole military/superhero conflict that is central to other military-inspired superheroes (i.e. Captain America, Captain Atom), but not so with Hal Jordan since his new status quo as an Air Force officer has been re-instated (and I'm still not even clear on how that works). I also want to draw particular attention to another major distinction between the common examples and Jordan: the fact that the Green Lantern Corps is an alien foreign power, of which Hal Jordan is an officer.

Now, this is the metaphor as I see it, and I may be wrong. Captain America and Captain Atom (depending on the status of continuity) are ex-military officers who act as independent vigilante operators with ties to organizations that co-operate with governmental bodies (most of the time). While there's definitely a certain level of bending/breaking the Posse Comitatus Act there (and I leave this to more studied experts in this field here), you could compare this to ex-military officers who join community actions groups, or even criminal cartels and gangs - not a good thing, but not quite the same as what Jordan does. In effect, when Jordan goes from U.S. Air Force captain to Green Lantern, he's putting on the uniform and assuming the office of a foreign power - there is a clear conflict of interest with regards to oaths of allegiance, priorities and standing. And, if I recall the current status quo correctly, his superior officer and several co-workers are co-operating in this endeavor - which definitely meets the definition of conspiracy.

So I leave this to you to discuss.

I'll have more in the days to come - sorry for taking so long with this.

2010 Year in Review

BLOGGING: Well, I manged to get in an average of one post per day, even if it was just a single poster. That's not too bad - but at the same time, it's probably not something I'm going to continue to do because I expect things to pick up for me in real life in the coming year, so I won't have as much time to devote to making and posting posters.

REAL LIFE: It's going pretty well and I'm happy, but I'm also going to be very busy in the coming year, and I'm looking forward to that.

COMICS AND FANDOM: Bleh. I'm sorry, but I can't be the only to have found this year to be pretty boring as far as that's concerned. Yes, there have been islands of good stuff in the "Big Two", but I think more than anything else, it's convinced me to start really weening myself off of that and devote more time to the action/adventure and superhero comics OUTSIDE Marvel and DC - because Marvel and DC don't OWN the concepts (much as they would like us all to think otherwise). Not that I won't continue to use the material for posters or to talk about it, but I think maybe it's time to start really looking at getting myself off this train in the next year. What do you think, would you like to see me refocus this blog to all the good super and action stuff outside the Marvel/DC ranches?

So, what were your thoughts on the year?

Your Moment of Funny

And again with the slash

Your Moment of Funny

Hope you had a Happy Halloween

Pick the Best Caption

Plot Devices that Need to Go Away #11

Plot Devices that Need to Go Away #11

THE DYNASTY


Also known as: The ______ Family, the ____ Corps, League, etc.

What is it?

It's a group of of a characters based around a primary "Classic" character, with multiple versions of the same powerset/personality/narrative arcs with only moderate tweaks.

Why Do Comic Companies Do It?

Multiple reasons:

1) Nothing succeeds like success and excess.
2) It's easier to come up with a variation of an old character than to create a new character or to modify/retcon the old one to fit the new variation.

3) Because creators increasingly keep their most original ideas for their own projects.

Recent Offenders Include but are not limited to:

Superman - Superman, Superboy, Supergirl, Powergirl (yes she counts), Steel, The Eradicator.

Flash - Barry, Wally, Jay, NuImpulse, Jesse Quick, Max Mercury, Bart/Kid Flash

Green Lantern - Hal, Kyle, Guy, John, Alan (I don't count the non-Earth ones here).

Batman - Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Azrael, Red Robin, Robin, Batwoman, Batgirl, Spoiler, and I'm sure there's a couple more I'm missing.

Green Arrow: Oliver Queen, Connor Hawke, Arsenal, Speedy, Arrowette (sorta counts?)

Oh, and if you think this is just a DC thing...you're wrong, because Marvel is jumping on this bandwagon like it's going on out of style.

Captain America - Steve Rogers, Bucky, Patriot, Nomad, USAgent (sorta counts if you ask me) and I could make a case for Jack Flag

Iron Man - Iron Man, Rescue, War Machine

Hulk - Red Hulk, Green Hulk, the three She-Hulks, A-bomb, the other two Hulk kids...

Wolverine - Logan, Daken, X-23

Spider-Man - Peter Parker, Venom, Anti-Venom, Spider-Girl/Arana, Spider-Woman, Arachne/Julia Carpenter

Patient Zero

While the SHAZAM Marvel Family are certainly the first "family" of supercharacters, I don't count them as part of this particular phase.

No, I think Patient Zero is the 90s "Batfamily" and "Superfamily" of comics where most of these guys (Superboy, Azrael, Nightwing) really started spawning their own separate titles.

Why does it have to go away?

Redundancy, pure and simple - guys like Superman and Batman aren't unique if there are 9 other people in the same universe who can do almost the same thing.

Angles for Redemption of the Device:


OK, I admit that the Kon-El/Conner Kent clone Superboy is a guilty pleasure of mine, but that said? The best thing to do is to phase out a lot of these unnecessary variants or at least start making larger distinctions and differences - and keeping them apart from each other wouldn't hurt either.

Hal No!

As you can see above, I'm not exactly a Hal Jordan fan. Not that I hate him - I sort of get the character and the appeal, and he works fine...

But....

When you think about Guy Gardner, first thing that springs to mind?

Batman decking him. Him being a jerk in the JLI era. The University of Michigan logo sticker on his power battery. If you read Blackest Night, he gets a really cool moment where his own willpower actually fights the Green Lantern Ring itself. That's badass.

John Stewart?

Well, just about any story-arc with him on the "Justice League" cartoon. A planet dying on his watch due to his overconfidence.

Kyle Rayner?

Facing down an insane Parallax. Proving himself time and time again during Morrison's JLA run, which reaches its climax when Kyle contains a sun. During Blackest Night, he made a self-sacrifice play to save Oa that killed him (temporarily).

Where's Hal's moment? Is it punching Batman, as seen here? Is it something else? Both in "The Sinestro Corps War" and "The Blackest Night" he's been more spectator than active force.

I'm asking this honestly. If you're a Hal fan, shed some light on this for me.

Posters of Pure Superhero Awesome

Life and Death (in comics)

It's interesting to compare and contrast the current "Thanos Imperative" at Marvel with the recent "Blackest Night", DC's best crossover in years. Both are big cosmic sagas focusing on either new characters or lesser stars of their respective universes. Both deal with the concepts of Life and Death played out on a grand scale, with symbolic avatars existing and playing big chess games with one another. Most importantly, both are the result of years of planning and detailed world and character building under a few trusted hands.

The differences however, are very interesting

First, "Thanos Imperative" is an isolated single miniseries (they actually "cancelled" the tie-in series in order to concentrate the effects!) whereas "Blackest Night" was a huge sprawling crossover that intruded on every character and corner of the DC Universe. Partly this is because "Blackest Night" concentrated the events on Earth and made Earth effectively (and literally, despite all known science and logic) the Center of the Universe. Marvel, on the other hand, tends to treat Earth as a dangerous backwater - an interstellar No-Man's Land where the natives are territorial, hostile, but isolated and self-involved and unaware of the greater dangers of the universe. DC holds humanity as a scared and precious thing; Marvel holds it as a minor danger beset in a cosmos full of greater ones.

The larger difference in cosmology is that of the value of life and death - in DC, Death (at least Nekron) was viewed as an absolute evil - something to be vanquished, whereas in Marvel, Death is viewed as part of the balance - a necessary evil that has to be respected lest the results create horrors beyond imagination. Eternal life for all is not seen as great triumph but a danger all it's own - as dangerous as Death. Two more diametrically opposed worldviews I'd find difficult to imagine.

And finally, there's scope, at least in the context of marketplace - the Thanos Imperative is a small crossover that takes place off earth and doesn't involve any real "big name" characters, whereas "Blackest Night" was DC's big summer event that DC promoted for over two years. I'm not going to make value judgements here (I leave that to you in the comments) but it's startling to see two different events that focus on the same subject matter take such divergent routes. I wonder what that says about the comics marketplace, and the distinct differences between the two corporate supercomics companies.