Superman: Secret Origin #1-4

One of the things I liked the most about Geoff Johns' run on Action Comics was the commonsensical, kitchen-sink approach to what I call "the Mythos". Johns' stories all grew out of earlier Superman stories, but there was something agreeably laid back about the way that, say, "Last Son" (co-written by Richard Donner) riffed on the Superman movies and "Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes" picked up from old (i.e., three or four retcons ago) Legion comics without any unnecessary time spent performing any kind of stage management duties. Johns seemed interested in using the strongest (or at least most personally relevant) elements in the Superman mythos, regardless of whether or not this use was coherent according to the nuts-and-bolts of continuity. Johns' approach was similar to the one Grant Morrison had been taking in his Batman stories: the idea that anything from any Batman comic ever was fair game and that no number of fictional, multiversal crises could ever get rid of earlier, weirder, or off-model takes on the character.

So, even though these Superman: Secret Origin are well-written and really, really good-looking (Gary Frank ranks just below John Romita Jr. and Frank Quitely in my contempo super-hero artist pantheon), they're more than merely unnecessary (no one needed another retelling of Superman's origin): by trying to retroactively connect the continuity dots from Johns' earlier stories, they seem to actively undermine one of the best features of those stories (and one of the best features of the recent work on the regular,monthly Superman comics).

Charitably, I might phrase this as "this just isn't the series for me," but I'd like to make a stronger case. The DC Mythos is a unique pop cultural phenomenon. It not only has the potential to be very powerful inspiration to creators like Johns and Morrison, but it's an interesting, fascinating thing in its own right. That said, from my perspective, it always seems like DC editorial is confusing the importance/power of the Mythos with the importance of micro-managing all the continuity details.

Some thoughts on 52...

Before getting into my thoughts on 52 (which I just finished reading last night), I want to follow-up a bit on yesterday's post. In her review of Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #2, Nina Stone writes:

After reading this, I feel the fraternity vibe that I got out of that Baltimore panel more than ever. I'm sure their fans are very happy, and they probably should be. This has to be writing that's specifically for them. This is a comic book for DC fans, god, it felt like a love letter to DC fans. If I were to try and judge DC by this one comic book, this Mardi Gras of characters and confusion, they don't want new readers. They just want their current readers to stay, to have babies with them, to buy land. They aren't interested in pledges. Initiation is over. The club is closed.

I want to step back and do a bit of a "thought experiment" here.

Let's say I read chapter 5 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and wrote a review of it that made the same kind of point that Nina is making. I might say: "Based on this chapter, I get that sense that this must be written specifically for Harry Potter fans. I'm sure people who have been following Harry Potter for years are very happy with this chapter, but I don't get the sense that Rowling is looking for new readers. It's like if you haven't already read the other six books and the first 4 chapters of this one, chapter 5 is not meant for you."

Now, this isn't meant as a direct analogy. There are lots of differences between this random Final Crisis spin-off issue and this random Harry Potter chapter. But I think we can say that reading a random chapter from one of the last books in a long-running fantasy series is not the best way of engaging with that material. I'd go further and say that you'd be acting in bad faith if you were basing your generalizations about Harry Potter on that one random chapter, because - obviously - you know you're supposed to start a book series with the first book and a book with the first chapter.* And - equally obviously - the fifth chapter of the seventh book probably shouldn't be welcoming to new readers.** I mean, it might be, but I'd think that would start to get a little annoying if each and every chapter Rowling gave us enough info so that it would function as a stand alone reading experience.

Here's where we get to the differences, though:

If I want to get up to speed with Harry Potter so I can fully understand what's going on in chapter 5 of Deathly Hallows it is easy for me to do so. All I have to do is read the first six Harry Potter books (whose titles are conveniently listed at the beginning of the seventh) and the first four chapters of Deathly Hallows. I can probably pick them all up during a single trip to the bookstore.*** In Nina's terms, this would be an easy club to join.

With Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds, things are a lot trickier. There is no "first book, first chapter", no easy reading list. In fact, even being able to figure out what books you'd have to read to understand what's going on it would take a fair amount of knowledge of DC super-hero comics to begin with. Aside from the completely impractical (not to mention insane) plan of reading all of National/DC's super-hero publications from Action Comics #1 on (and all of the publications from companies that National/DC would go onto to buy up and incorporate into their Mythos), there's no "official" set path to get from knowing nothing about DC super-heroes to being able to understand Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds. Not only is this different from Harry Potter, where there's only seven books and no doubt about what order to read them in, it's different from Star Wars and Star Trek, which despite all of the "expanded universe" fiction have a core canon that you're expected to start with and can safely stay within. (The same goes for Tolkien).

Nina puts this in terms of DC not being interested in anyone else joinging the club, but, as I suggested in my last post, I don't think that's quite it. While it's true that there's a higher barrier to entry here than with Harry Potter (or House), that barrier is a necessary part of these comics working in a different way than Harry Potter (or House) works.

What's important to me, though, is not that these comics take more work to appreciate - that they're more exclusive - but that everyone's initiation process is different and everyone's iniation process is "self-directed". I don't like to give out a "reading list" to my friends who are, say, interested in reading 52 or catching up with Final Crisis, because part of the fun of the DC Mythos is that you get to find your own way into it. For me that process included collecting a lot of titles featuring second-or-third string heroes (the '80s Blue Beetle and Blue Devil series, the Wally West Flash), following certain writers who resonated with me (Keith Giffen on Ambush Bug and on Justice League), reading my friends' copies of the big cross-over events, filling in the gaps in my knowledge with Who's Who, etc. I'm not sure at what point I was "in the club", but after a while, just by following a mostly random process, I had enough knowledge of the DC Mythos (and enough investment in it) that the more intricate, convoluted stuff really worked for me.

Which brings me to 52...

I had originally thought of posting commentary every six issues or so, but decided not to because (a) I ended up reading a bunch at a time and the details of the individual issues kept slipping from my mind and (b) I was also reading along with Douglas Wolk's 52 Pickup blog, which seemed to cover most of the ground commentary-wise. So what follows is my "big picture" take.

I liked this series a lot, up through somewhere in the mid 30s when I started to have serious doubts that they'd be able to resolve everything in anything like a satisfactory manner. And I think my doubts were justified: to build on James' comments on my last post, 52 starts out promising a broad - if not deep - exploration of the DC Universe, but ends up, Pokemon-style, doing little more than setting up a bunch of spin-offs. Now, these big even series are always concerned with creating successful spin-offs. I don't mind that kind of commercial motive - all popular art works under some kind of commercial restriction - but in the case of the last quarter of 52 the story starts working less in terms of character, action, and theme and more in terms of getting everything in place for the sequels. I got the sense of the creators running out the clock until the final issue, which tries to fit in about 6 issues worth of exposition/explanation.

Still, the early part of the series is really good and there are great moments throughout. Wolk's commentary seems pretty definitive to me, but I'd point out that reading it all in one chunk, rather than having an entire week to devote to 20-or-so pages probably made me a lot more forgiving of some of the storytelling fumbles. The unforgivable one deals with the reveal in the Elongated Man storyline, which (as Doug points out) is a total cheat.

Ultimately, I think I liked what 52 promised more than what it delivered, which is why I was more gung ho about it back in this post, when it was still making promises. Doug Wolk's Week 52 post really gets at the heart of why I was let down by the ending: most of the characters end up in the same place they started in. You can't say that about Infinite Crisis, which doesn't have as good a critical reputation as 52, but, IMO, is the better series. IC was all over the place (in a lot of ways), but it did, at least, provide a real ending and it never felt like the creators were just treading water.

*Unless you're doing some kind of surrealist take on reviewing fiction.

**Granted: there are lots of different kinds of serial fiction. Not all of it works like Harry Potter. But a lot does.

***It might be harder to track down books in an out-of-print series (I might have to go to exlibris or something), but it would still be pretty easy to know which books I'd have to look for.

Hardcore

Nina Stone has a thoughtful, outsider's p.o.v.-style review of two recent super-hero comics - Punisher #63 and Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds #2. Her take on Legion is that it is busy, messy, and impenetrable. It got me thinking: even though I think Geoff Johns is one of the best contemporary super-hero writers, I can't think of anything he's done that I could recommend to someone who wasn't already really invested in super-hero comics. He doesn't do "entry level" super-hero comics.

Johns gives his super hero stories their narrative and thematic oomph by positioning and re-positioning various elements of the DC Mythos. But if you haven't already invested a fairly substantial amount of time reading DC super hero comics, most of what he's doing is going to look meaningless (at best).

And, as much as I like his work, I'm not sure that it would be worth doing the "grunt work" necessary to grok it for anyone who isn't still a teenager. For example, Green Lantern: Rebirth sounds like it should be a good jumping-on point for a newcomer to Green Lantern - especially since Johns intended it to be a lead-in to a continuing Green Lantern series which would focus more on the core elements of the Green Lantern Mythos*. However, Rebirth starts very far away from those core elements and Johns' attempt to straighten out Hal Jordan's extremely convoluted storyline won't resonate with people who don't know and/or care** about that storyline.

For me, that's not really a negative. I'm glad that he's writing these super-hero comics for hardcore super-hero fans. As I've said before, I think there's something unique about DC's mythos-centric stories that you don't find anywhere else, and while "unique" doesn't necessarily equal "good", when these stories are done well by someone like Johns, "unique" is definitely an added value.

And because I do place value on their uniqueness, attacking these kinds of comics because they don't work like other kinds of arts and culture stuff rings hollow to me.*** Part of what I enjoy about Final Crisis and other Mythos-centric super-hero comics is that it is a lot harder to get into by picking up a random mid-series issue than it would be to get into, say, House by watching a random episode from the middle of season 4. I don't think that every super-hero comic should work like Final Crisis, but I don't see it as a strike against them when they do.

*This is an excellent series, by the way. If you twisted my arm, it would be the one Johns comic that I'd recommend to non-hardcore super-hero fans.

**I'd note that a lot of the caring would come from people who think the whole Parallax/Spectre story was a completely awful idea and needs to be undone.

***This isn't what Nina is doing in her post, but I'm directing that last paragraph towards people who are making those kinds of arguments.

Infinite

The evolution of an idea:

1. Sean Collins reviews The Great Darkness Saga collection, praises elements of the book, then writes:

Now, is this a great comic book? No. It's too rooted in house-style artistic aesthetics, expository dialogue, self-referential continuity, corny jokes, and everything else you'd expect from a basic superhero comic of the early '80s.

2. Partly inspired by reading the Silver Age criticism at Mike Grost's site (which, by the way, is an amazing resource), asked whether there are any comics that are rooted in house-style etc. but that are also great.

3. This question is in the back of my mind during my walks to-and-from work: keep thinking about Geoff Johns' run on The Flash and the Wolfman/Perez Teen Titans comics, which are among favorite "conventional" super-hero comics.

4. Thoughts turn more generally to conventional super hero comics that deal with "real world" issues. Wonder why some I like (Geoff Johns on The Flash), some I really, really don't (Identity Crisis).

5. Out of fairness, re-read Identity Crisis. Maybe I was too harsh the first time around. Maybe I missed something.

6. Decide I didn't miss anything, but start trying to clarify my thoughts on the series.

7. Begin a blog post about Identity Crisis:

In the past, I've often fallen into the trap of trying to frame my dislike of a work of art as a principled objection to something inherent in the work's very conception, rather than as a [ed. note: sentence never finished]. Earlier this year, that's essentially what I was doing when I described my dislike of Identity Crisis to a film critic friend who doesn't follow comic books, but enjoys the occasional super-hero movie. My argument was that you can't deal with rape in a Justice League story: the presence of Silver Age characters like Elongated Man undermines the seriousness of the rape, the rape undermines the integrity of the Silver Age characters. The principled objection: this kind of realistic take on super-heroes is inherently flawed.

Using that objection as the basis for my case that Identity Crisis was a bad comic was a bit of posturing, because I had certainly read and enjoyed a lot of serious super-hero comics. But I had always been a bit, well, dishonest - with myself and with others - by playing that down. I liked the Marv Wolfman/George Perez Teen Titans comics and Geoff Johns's run on The Flash, but I wasn't going to talk about them as anything but a kind of guilty pleasure.

Part of the problem is that I had gotten into the habit of looking at super-hero comics from the point of view of someone who hadn't read them for much of his life: focusing on how they would come across to an "outsider". This would have been a reasonable enough thing to do if I had been talking about expanding the audience for super-hero comic books, but I am more and more convinced that it was almost completely useless for any kind of criticism.

This is all an elaborate way to get to this: I still dislike Identity Crisis. I still think it's bad super-hero comics. Not because it tries to mix Silver Age heroes with serious subject matter, but for much more nuts and bolts reasons.

The first issue opens with Elongated Man and Firehawk on a stakeout. This sequence really sets out Brad Meltzer's M.O.:

(1) A focus on second or third rate heroes who constantly make reference to their second or third rate status. Self-consciousness about status issues among heroes and villains is one of the recurring motifs of the series.

(2) Attempts to reframe whimsical/fanciful Silver Age remnants in the mythos into something not whimsical or fanciful, presented as someone giving the inside dope.

(3) [ed. note: never got to number 3]

What Meltzer is doing is familiar enough from comics continuing in the Neal Adams/Denny O'Neil tradition of placing elements from DC's Silver Age into opposition with elements from the real world. How Meltzer is doing it deserves more scrutiny.

8. Get tired of detailed analysis of a comic I don't like (major flaw as a blogger), but like idea of Adams/O'Neil opposing Mythos with "reality". Idea goes back to my criticism of Watchmen, which unlike most criticism of that book, tries to deal with what Dave Gibbons is doing.

9. More thought on walks to-and-from work leads to following theory about DC Mythos:

Golden Age: Mythos creation is ad hoc. Relationship of Mythos to "reality" not an issue. Power comes from seeming anarchy of the proceedings (see The Great Comic Book Heroes).

Silver Age: Mythos creation is part of the purpose of individual stories. How things fit into Mythos is a genuine concern and subject of stories ("Flash of Two Worlds"). Mythos has its own rules that are not those of "reality": per Mike Grost, the "logic" of the Superman Mythos. Mythos has internal integrity: relationship to "reality" is allegorical. Power comes from the intricacy/beauty of this internal consistency.

Bronze Age: Mythos placed in opposition to "reality". Explicitly so in Adams/O'Neil Green Lantern/Green Arrow (that's even the meaning of the "/") and late Bronze Age works like "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" Power comes from unresolved tension between Mythos and "reality".

10. Posit that what comes next is a "Modern Age" that attempts to resolve the contradiction, but that this resolution leads to more problems. Crisis on Infinite Earths leads to an anti-Silver Age. Focus is on instability of the Mythos with regard to Bronze Age "infection" of reality.

11. Get idea that Grant Morrison somehow sidesteps all this. Compose previous post.

12. Start poll on Nerd NYC board based on ideas spun out of Morrison post.

13. Go back to thinking about Geoff Johns. Wonder if Infinite Crisis is different in kind from original Crisis or just different in magnitude.

14. Decide it is a little of both. Infinite Crisis makes revising/reinterpreting the Mythos the central point of the Mythos. Marks some kind of change from what Wolfman et al. were up to.

15. End up feeling deep down really should keep up with Final Crisis. Realize DC's fanboy-centric marketing did its trick. Damn American corporate consumerist culture. Where's Seaguy when you need him?