Post by Administrator on Nov 4, 2005 19:57:08 GMT -5
By: Joe Killian
Media Credit: DC COMICS
"Identity Crisis": Every now and then they get one right.
This week I'm going to talk a little bit about "Crossovers," "Big Events" and why I hate both. Then I'm going to dig mercilessly into - and praise to the high heavens - DC comics' most recent use of these comic staples.
For the uninitiated: in comics a "Crossover" is a multi-part storyline which crosses-over from one comics title to the next. It can be just two titles - a Spider-Man story that begins or ends in an issue of the Avengers, for example - or can stretch over just about every title that a comic company publishes.
A "Big Event" is a giant storyline - usually but not always a crossover - that promises to "change everything you know" about a comic book character or, more and more often, the entire universe in which they live.
On the surface these gimmicks make a lot of sense both for the companies and the fans. There's nothing hardcore comic nerds love more than seeing their favorite heroes all in one place, united against gigantic, world-shaking threats that become more and more complex and universe-altering. And, of course, there's nothing comic book companies love more than making you buy 15 issues across any number of titles you probably wouldn't otherwise be buying in order to understand a single storyline.
Crossover stories are almost as old as superhero comics themselves. DC Superheroes from the 1940s guest starring in each others' titles eventually lead to superhero team books like The Justice Society, which begat The Justice League, which inspired Marvel's Avengers. But a true crossover involves stories that begin in one book and continue in another - which is what's so galling about them. The prime example from my childhood was the "Death of Superman" debacle - which stretched through just about every comic DC published with uneven art work, narrative inconsistencies and plot holes you could put your arm through. This hardened my heart against the crossover.
The only thing worse is the "Big Event" -an over-hyped storyline (usually a crossover, but increasingly just its own mini-series featuring characters from a number of different books) that changes the histories, futures or basic defining attributes of the characters you love and the comics you read. I'm not talking about the natural evolution of characters over time or the way in which a comic changes over the course of its lifetime under different creators. I'm talking about companies suddenly killing off main characters, revealing their parents were spies or robots or making a super-hero into a crazed killer in order to boost sales and/or rekindle interest in their books.
It's generally agreed that the modern "big event" trend began with Marvel's 'Contest of Champions" and "Secret Wars" - comics in which all of Marvel's most popular heroes and villains were pitted against each other for finite mini-series. Though those series happened outside the regular comics the storylines affected nearly every major Marvel character and proved the selling-power of a universe-shaking event bringing everyone together. I give those storylines points because, while it did profoundly affect a lot of other comics, you didn't have to read it to know what was going on. The characters re-capped the action of the mini-series in their own comics where necessary and, unless you just had to see it for yourself, that was enough to get by.
Then, a year later, DC launched "Crisis on Infinite Earths" - a 12 issue series that wiped a number of DC characters from the map, re-formed their universe and created a world in which many of the fans' favorite heroes and adventures did not - and had never - existed. This series wasn't optional - if you didn't understand what happened in "Crisis" you were utterly lost and confused as to why so many DC books were cancelled or restarted at #1.
The "Crisis" was necessary to boost readership and bring in new readers intimidated by the decades long, interlocking story continuity they didn't understand. By re-creating the DC universe and re-telling all of the heroes' origins and first adventures DC was able to bring a whole new generation on board and make them feel like they were there at the beginning of something new and exciting.
Which would have been fine, if they'd left it at that.
Unfortunately DC has, over the years, become the main offender where complicated crossover/"big event" stories are concerned. It seems every summer they have to have a giant crossover event that they promise will "change everything." More often than not it's just a confusing mess of poorly planned, poorly executed sensational non-sense that later has to be forgotten about or explained away to make their regular books make sense.
For this reason it's always been hard for me to read DC superhero comics. No matter how much I'm enjoying a book I know I'm just a few months away from a giant crossover that will make me buy a bunch of comics I don't read to keep up and will artificially and senselessly alter things I love about a comic character or their world.
It seems to me that if you have interesting characters and the ability to tell interesting stories there's no need to fundamentally alter the universe , kill off main characters or change who they are and what they're about every year. Alan Moore's "America's Best Comics" line - a DC imprint that's now coming to an end - is a good example of how good pop comics don't need giant crossover gimmicks to be both entertaining and important.
With that long and venomous explanation out of the way you can imagine how I felt when DC recently sent me the hardback edition of "Identity Crisis" - a seven issue Justice League story that was supposed to (yet again) "change everything." Reading yet another of these stories didn't really appeal to me - especially because I knew this story was just a warm up for a really gigantic "big event" that's only now unfolding across most of DC's comics.
The story got a lot of mainstream media attention and praise - largely because its author, Brad Meltzer, was a New York Times bestselling author of crime-fiction who promised to bring a dazzling narrative sense and powerful, adult themes to superhero comics. He was one of a small wave of TV, movie and literary fiction writers to try their hand at comics over the last few years - and word was that he did it masterfully. I didn't read the issues when they came out - partially because I wasn't all that interested but more because I like to read a storyline all at once, in a collection. Still - I wasn't expecting much from the book and only cracked it open that night because I couldn't go to sleep.
Jesus, was I wrong. "Identity Crisis" got it right - and I'll tell you how.
It didn't fundamentally change the universe - it just asked you to take a different, more adult look at it and ask some questions about why heroes do what they do and what the human costs might be. It also didn't kill off characters senselessly. Though two pretty major supporting characters die to feed the murder mystery their deaths are handled well and serve a purpose. And, most importantly, it deals with very serious issues without losing its sense of humor and forgetting that it is, essentially, a story about grown men and women dressing up in costumes and punching one another.
Without ruining the story for you:
When a member of the Justice League returns home to find his wife brutally murdered it stirs up old grudges and closely guarded secrets. While the entire super-hero community rallies to find the killer it is revealed that certain members of the Justice League have, for years, been altering the minds of super-villains to protect their own identities and make them less dangerous.
But do superheroes have the right to perform what are essentially partial labotomies on criminals without so much as a trial? Can they call themselves heroes when they keep such dark secrets even from each other? Can anyone shoulder the awful burden of being a hero without becoming the monsters they're supposed to be fighting? And can even superpowers protect you from the awesome grief of losing those you love? Those are the qustions at the core of this story - and the answers are far more complicated than you'd expect from a mainstream comic.
With "Identity Crisis" DC sucked me back in and made good on the promise that a crossover or big event story really can "change everything" - not by actually changing the characters or books but by changing the way you see them and how they make you feel. It's rare any single story can do that in a medium as ridiculous as superhero comics - and when it happens it's worth embracing and learning from.
Media Credit: DC COMICS
"Identity Crisis": Every now and then they get one right.
This week I'm going to talk a little bit about "Crossovers," "Big Events" and why I hate both. Then I'm going to dig mercilessly into - and praise to the high heavens - DC comics' most recent use of these comic staples.
For the uninitiated: in comics a "Crossover" is a multi-part storyline which crosses-over from one comics title to the next. It can be just two titles - a Spider-Man story that begins or ends in an issue of the Avengers, for example - or can stretch over just about every title that a comic company publishes.
A "Big Event" is a giant storyline - usually but not always a crossover - that promises to "change everything you know" about a comic book character or, more and more often, the entire universe in which they live.
On the surface these gimmicks make a lot of sense both for the companies and the fans. There's nothing hardcore comic nerds love more than seeing their favorite heroes all in one place, united against gigantic, world-shaking threats that become more and more complex and universe-altering. And, of course, there's nothing comic book companies love more than making you buy 15 issues across any number of titles you probably wouldn't otherwise be buying in order to understand a single storyline.
Crossover stories are almost as old as superhero comics themselves. DC Superheroes from the 1940s guest starring in each others' titles eventually lead to superhero team books like The Justice Society, which begat The Justice League, which inspired Marvel's Avengers. But a true crossover involves stories that begin in one book and continue in another - which is what's so galling about them. The prime example from my childhood was the "Death of Superman" debacle - which stretched through just about every comic DC published with uneven art work, narrative inconsistencies and plot holes you could put your arm through. This hardened my heart against the crossover.
The only thing worse is the "Big Event" -an over-hyped storyline (usually a crossover, but increasingly just its own mini-series featuring characters from a number of different books) that changes the histories, futures or basic defining attributes of the characters you love and the comics you read. I'm not talking about the natural evolution of characters over time or the way in which a comic changes over the course of its lifetime under different creators. I'm talking about companies suddenly killing off main characters, revealing their parents were spies or robots or making a super-hero into a crazed killer in order to boost sales and/or rekindle interest in their books.
It's generally agreed that the modern "big event" trend began with Marvel's 'Contest of Champions" and "Secret Wars" - comics in which all of Marvel's most popular heroes and villains were pitted against each other for finite mini-series. Though those series happened outside the regular comics the storylines affected nearly every major Marvel character and proved the selling-power of a universe-shaking event bringing everyone together. I give those storylines points because, while it did profoundly affect a lot of other comics, you didn't have to read it to know what was going on. The characters re-capped the action of the mini-series in their own comics where necessary and, unless you just had to see it for yourself, that was enough to get by.
Then, a year later, DC launched "Crisis on Infinite Earths" - a 12 issue series that wiped a number of DC characters from the map, re-formed their universe and created a world in which many of the fans' favorite heroes and adventures did not - and had never - existed. This series wasn't optional - if you didn't understand what happened in "Crisis" you were utterly lost and confused as to why so many DC books were cancelled or restarted at #1.
The "Crisis" was necessary to boost readership and bring in new readers intimidated by the decades long, interlocking story continuity they didn't understand. By re-creating the DC universe and re-telling all of the heroes' origins and first adventures DC was able to bring a whole new generation on board and make them feel like they were there at the beginning of something new and exciting.
Which would have been fine, if they'd left it at that.
Unfortunately DC has, over the years, become the main offender where complicated crossover/"big event" stories are concerned. It seems every summer they have to have a giant crossover event that they promise will "change everything." More often than not it's just a confusing mess of poorly planned, poorly executed sensational non-sense that later has to be forgotten about or explained away to make their regular books make sense.
For this reason it's always been hard for me to read DC superhero comics. No matter how much I'm enjoying a book I know I'm just a few months away from a giant crossover that will make me buy a bunch of comics I don't read to keep up and will artificially and senselessly alter things I love about a comic character or their world.
It seems to me that if you have interesting characters and the ability to tell interesting stories there's no need to fundamentally alter the universe , kill off main characters or change who they are and what they're about every year. Alan Moore's "America's Best Comics" line - a DC imprint that's now coming to an end - is a good example of how good pop comics don't need giant crossover gimmicks to be both entertaining and important.
With that long and venomous explanation out of the way you can imagine how I felt when DC recently sent me the hardback edition of "Identity Crisis" - a seven issue Justice League story that was supposed to (yet again) "change everything." Reading yet another of these stories didn't really appeal to me - especially because I knew this story was just a warm up for a really gigantic "big event" that's only now unfolding across most of DC's comics.
The story got a lot of mainstream media attention and praise - largely because its author, Brad Meltzer, was a New York Times bestselling author of crime-fiction who promised to bring a dazzling narrative sense and powerful, adult themes to superhero comics. He was one of a small wave of TV, movie and literary fiction writers to try their hand at comics over the last few years - and word was that he did it masterfully. I didn't read the issues when they came out - partially because I wasn't all that interested but more because I like to read a storyline all at once, in a collection. Still - I wasn't expecting much from the book and only cracked it open that night because I couldn't go to sleep.
Jesus, was I wrong. "Identity Crisis" got it right - and I'll tell you how.
It didn't fundamentally change the universe - it just asked you to take a different, more adult look at it and ask some questions about why heroes do what they do and what the human costs might be. It also didn't kill off characters senselessly. Though two pretty major supporting characters die to feed the murder mystery their deaths are handled well and serve a purpose. And, most importantly, it deals with very serious issues without losing its sense of humor and forgetting that it is, essentially, a story about grown men and women dressing up in costumes and punching one another.
Without ruining the story for you:
When a member of the Justice League returns home to find his wife brutally murdered it stirs up old grudges and closely guarded secrets. While the entire super-hero community rallies to find the killer it is revealed that certain members of the Justice League have, for years, been altering the minds of super-villains to protect their own identities and make them less dangerous.
But do superheroes have the right to perform what are essentially partial labotomies on criminals without so much as a trial? Can they call themselves heroes when they keep such dark secrets even from each other? Can anyone shoulder the awful burden of being a hero without becoming the monsters they're supposed to be fighting? And can even superpowers protect you from the awesome grief of losing those you love? Those are the qustions at the core of this story - and the answers are far more complicated than you'd expect from a mainstream comic.
With "Identity Crisis" DC sucked me back in and made good on the promise that a crossover or big event story really can "change everything" - not by actually changing the characters or books but by changing the way you see them and how they make you feel. It's rare any single story can do that in a medium as ridiculous as superhero comics - and when it happens it's worth embracing and learning from.