Action Comics #900

Action Comics #900:

This issue received a lot of media attention for a short story in it that involved Superman renouncing his US citizenship. I found it funny that the media focus was on that small, somewhat inconsequential part of the story when the rest of the narrative depicted Superman intervening in Iranian protests.

Traditionally, Superman doesn't concern himself with modern geopolitical problems. I think the reason for that is because most problems we face in real life, such as 9-11, the Iraq War, the Japan Tsunami, are completely solvable for Superman. Two planes crashing into buildings are the kind of thing Superman prevents on a monthly if not weekly basis with barely any effort at all. Real life issues are Marvel's field to play and usually not DC's.

So I found it odd that there was little to no focus on the part of the story where Superman stands vigil at the Iranian protests. He wasn't there to fight the army poised to control the protesters, but to simply declare his intent to protect the Iranian's right to protest by his presence. It was a political statement that seemed more powerful to me than renouncing citizenship. Yet, in the articles I read, it wasn't even mentioned.

Instead, we get comments from FOX News like this, "Besides being riddled with a blatant lack of patriotism, and respect for our country, Superman's current creators are belittling the United States as a whole." Seriously? Did you even read the comic? If anything, Superman is represented as the unshakable core of the American Dream in this short story.

Despite the fact that the fictional US Government doesn't want Superman to intervene, he peacefully protests anyway. He does this because even though they aren't Americans, the Iranians have a basic human right to peacefully protest, to voice their concern about their government's actions without fear of being physically attacked by an army. Superman is not "belittling the United States as a whole", he is in fact doing the exact opposite, he is fighting for ideals that are uniquely American but are not always fought for by the United States Government itself.

I enjoyed this short story because Superman is representing the righteousness of the American Dream that is becoming less attached to a government that exists in our physical reality and more associated with an idea, a collective hope, a faint feeling within us all that perhaps a society can exist in which our humanity is celebrated instead of controlled and restricted in order to "protect us".

Now that I've covered the small part of this comic that preoccupied the media, I'll move on to cover the rest of this fantastic issue. The main meat of the comic involves Superman confronting a Lex Luthor who has obtained god-like powers. Luthor, through a long storyline I won't bore you with, has managed to usurp the abilities of an omnipotent being, and has become an all powerful deity.

I have to admit that I didn't want to like this storyline. I have not enjoyed recent Action Comics, and I thought that this issue would be much of the same. Instead, I was surprised to find that it might be one of the best Superman stories I've ever read. Despite having obtained the power of God with a capital G, Lex Luthor still cannot let go of his obsession with destroying Superman.

Luthor, having become omniscient, starts to experience a feeling of universal bliss that he shares with every living being in the cosmos. All emotional negativity is halted, every thinking animal is filled with a feeling of overpowering joy, even death itself seems to stop its inevitable machinations. Yet, despite the fact that Luthor has the chance to turn the universe into a paradise for everyone, he has a choice to make.

He can embrace this never ending positive universe, or he can choose to kill Superman. He can't have both, because by the very act of choosing to do something negative, he negates the omnipresent positivity that he has created. I found this to be one of the most interesting character conflicts in the history of Superman. Lex Luthor has the chance to have it all, to be an all loving God in a paradise of a universe, but he has to choose to give up on his life long mission to kill Superman. He has to voluntarily let go.

And he can't. Luthor chooses to try to kill Superman anyway, and therein lies the tragedy of his character boiled down to the essentials. Luthor had the potential to have it all before he gained the powers of a God. He could have cured cancer, united the globe in world peace, extended the longevity of the human race, but his obsession with Superman distracted him from the great things he could have achieved.

I thought that this was one of the best Superman stories that I've ever read. It's a shame that the media focus was purely on the renunciation of citizenship, because that's a 9 page story that is almost a throw away narrative compared to the main storyline. I recommend that you pick up this issue...it's 6 dollars for 96 pages of the best Superman I've read in years.

Rating: 5 out of 5 pseudo stars.

pseudo wisdom 1

"The characters represent a sort of transcendent feeling that we all have inside us, that we could do better, we want to do better, we have the time to do better, we can be the people that we lionize."

-Jack Kirby, 1982

Reviews: 4/27/11

The Flash #11, written by Geoff Johns and art by Francis Manapul:

The art in this issue is good, although I'm slightly annoyed that nothing like what is depicted on the cover actually happens in the comic.

I really like a lot of Geoff Johns work. Green Lantern Rebirth and Infinite Crisis are a couple of my favorites. However, I have been disappointed with his recent stuff. My main problem with this issue is that it's so gloomy. The storyline revolves around Barry Allen investigating a string of murders in which the victims died by being aged very rapidly in a short amount of time. That's fine, a little morbid, but fine. Where it gets really depressing is when Johns has Barry Allen's wife Iris host an "intervention" for him.

Now, I haven't been following this title, but it seems to me from this issue that the intervention has to do with Barry Allen being too obsessive about crime fighting, as if he is addicted to being the Flash. Jay Garrick, Wally West, and Bart Allen all tell Barry how his superspeed addiction has affected them. Could Johns please pick a more depressing storyline to tell?

In my opinion, the Flash shouldn't be such a downer. If anything, the Flash should be an extreme upper, a hyper fast paced, almost goofy series about a superspeed adventurer that can't stop moving, but also can never be on time to take his wife out on a date. The Flash should be stopping an invasion of super-fast Tachyon people or something, not getting ambushed by an intervention because he's solving too much crime. The man's a superhero for Grodd's sake, get off his back!

Rating: 2 out of 5 Pseudo Stars

Avengers #12.1, written by Brian Michael Bendis, art by Bryan Hitch

As usual, the artwork by Hitch is amazing. This goes without saying but Hitch's work is the best in the business, and I would read practically anything drawn by him. I would read the Book of Mormon if it was illustrated with Hitch's magic hand.

Now onto Bendis's writing. I thought that it was good, maybe not as good as Hitch's pencils, but what is? What impresses me the most about his writing this issue is that he knows exactly what an Avengers comic should be about. He gives a double page spread to a supervillian ambush. He has a room full of superheroes banter and determine a plan to find an AWOL Avenger. He presents the classic characters very well; Spider-Man is sarcastic and funny, the Beast is lighthearted and clever, Steve Rogers is honorable and clueless, Wolverine is bad ass but stoic. When Bendis covers these big names, they come off very natural.

He gives Hitch room to run with an action packed Avengers battle in which the team disposes of "The Intelligentsia". Then, we see a surprise (spoiler alert!) appearance by Ultron, one of the Avenger's best villains, and the ensuing destruction is illustrated with so much detail by Hitch that you almost feel like you're looking at an HD picture of a collapsed building.

Overall, I thought this issue was very strong. You can't argue with Hitch art, and Bendis knows how to deliver on an Avengers story. He gave Hitch the right ratio of talking to awesome action, and that's extremely important when you're working with such a master penciller.

Rating: 4 out of 5 pseudo stars.

The Mighty Thor #1, written by Matt Fraction and art by Oliver Coipel

This issue was another strong showing from Marvel. Both Fraction and Coipel are in excellent form, and the combination of words and pictures achieves the sort of mythical energy that a book about Asgardians needs.

The storyline intertwines a sermon from a preacher living in the Oklahoma town where the Asgardian Gods relocated their celestial city with the Silver Surfer's explorations, and adventures on Asgard. This preacher has been forced to acknowledge that Gods walk the Earth in the Marvel Universe, and that is a fact that can really shake your faith in the traditional idea of the Christian, absent God. He starts to address his flock's concerns that the world may be ending when Fraction cuts to a very well written Silver Surfer monologue.

This is a clever transition because Silver Surfer's role is herald of the destroyer of worlds, the Big G, the Fork Head, you know him, you love him: Galactus. I found both the Silver Surfer and the preacher's monologues to be realistic and believable; you feel like you're in Silver Surfer's cosmic head, full of remorse about sacrificing worlds but adhering to his duty, and the preacher's questions about God's existence are honest and moving.

Now, to Asgard, and the star of the show. This is where Fraction really takes it up a notch and makes this issue worth your money. The world tree has been shattered and Thor is attempting to salvage the core of that axis mundi. His captions are fantastic here: "The Lady Sif and I...dove into this roiling space-time", "It was the time-before-time. In the dying days of the long-now that ended with the birth of everything...time began to boil around the edges and from that seed grew a tree of light." Fraction is imbuing exactly the right around of mysticism to these scenes where Thor dives into a sea of light and fights what appear to be giant, day-glo, psychedelic prawns.

His captions describe the origins of the world tree, and it's clear that the "long-now" is the dreamtime, where the actions of the gods and heroes are not happening in the past, but right now and forever in eternity. My only complaint with Fraction's writing this issue is that he has the Asgardians trust Loki. It should be illegal for the words "trust" and "Loki" to be on the same page. Why would you ever take the God of Mischief's word about anything?

Other than that minor quibble, I thought both the writing and art this issue were great. Even if you've never read a Thor comic, this is a great issue to pick up.

Rating: 4 out of 5 pseudo stars.

Batman Incorporated #5, written by Grant Morrison and art by Yanick Paquette

Grant Morrison is probably my favorite comic book writer. His work was very powerful influence on the forming goo of my adolescent brain. That having been said, this issue is very dense and confusing at times.

I'm not saying it's bad, but there are a lot of words on every page and it's very trippy and at times labyrinthian. I like the trippiness of it, that's Morrison's strong suit, but I found myself slightly confused by the way the story abruptly switches time and place. It's a nonlinear narrative where back story and the story itself are jumbled together.

Now that I've got the standard "Morrison is confusing!!11!" complaint out of the way, I'll address the parts I like a lot. Morrison pulls all these new superhero names out of his wizard hat instead of reusing old names...we see "Scorpiana", "Iron Lady", "Dr. Daedalus", "Daddy 8-Legs". He just seems to have a bottomless reservoir of awesome comic book names to dip into.

In addition to his great names, Morrison nails the tone of the issue. It has this super-secret spy vibe and you get the sense that you're in the cutting edge, highly tactical world that an international Batman would dwell in. The villain of the story "Dr. Daedalus" is also very believable as a mastermind, and his diabolical scheme to use a boundless source of energy as a weapon is reminiscent of a good Bond villain's plot.

In the prologue, we get a glimpse of a brainwashing school in a third world country for "Leviathan". Leviathan is Morrison's DCU answer to Marvel's HYDRA, and it looks like a very interesting concept so far. We see one of the new Batmen in Bruce Wayne's expanding Batman franchise tackle Leviathan, and that was my favorite part of this issue. Morrison might be the only writer who can have Batman recruiting new Batmen from around the globe and it doesn't come off as gimmicky. Instead, every part of me shouts, "That's so cool."

Yanick Paquette's art is great, I have no complaints there. Despite my love for all things Morrison, I must admit that I found this issue to be very dense, somewhat confusing, and I struggled to get through it. Still, the worst of Morrison is better than 90% of everything else on the stands, so I would recommend this comic.

Rating: 3 out of 5 pseudo stars.

Comic Book Cold War 1

Tensions are high. Every year, Marvel and DC release new crossover events that are increasingly earth shattering. It all started innocently enough with Civil War and Infinite Crisis in 2004.

These two events from the Big Two promised to change everything, and in many respects they did. Both events were huge crossovers involving nearly every character in their respective universes. Both events changed the status quo and killed off major characters. In Marvel, Peter Parker sided with the Super Hero Registration Act and revealed his identity as Spider-Man to the world, Goliath died at the hands of a psychotic Thor clone, Captain America was assassinated, and Tony Stark assumed control of the new SHIELD regulated superhero business. In DC, a new Crisis rebooted the multiverse and rebooted continuity, Superboy died, and at the end of it all Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were missing in action.

These big events proved successful and it has become clear that these line wide crossovers are the crux of the Big Two's marketing strategies. Since Civil War and Infinite Crisis, there has been a procession of new but similar events. Marvel's World War Hulk followed Civil War, and DC's 52 followed Infinite Crisis. World War Hulk was designed as a blockbuster style event with an exiled Hulk returning to Earth and pissed off at the people who sent him off planet, who just happen to be all the other superheroes. 52 was a weekly series written by five of the industries top talents (a highly unprecedented and interesting format), and it depicted what happened during the one year after Infinite Crisis in real time while the rest of DC's series skipped a year in One Year Later.

Then, in 2008, both sides ramped up the intensity of their events to a new level. Marvel released Secret Invasion, written by Brian Michael Bendis, and DC released Final Crisis, written by Grant Morrison. If Civil War and Infinite Crisis were the most dramatic and universe changing events either universe had ever seen, then Secret Invasion and Final Crisis were both an exponential increase in drama and stakes.

Secret Invasion was the pod person take over of the Marvel Universe. A shapeshifting alien race inflitrated the superhero community in an attempt to take over Earth, and it is even implied that these sleeper aliens engineered the Civil War to divide the heroes. Final Crisis was the Crisis to end everything, the destruction of the DC Universe from top to bottom, the death of Batman, and a rebirth of the DCU. Both of these crossovers were in direct competition with each other and sometimes seemed to be strange mirror reflections, like the Big Two are shadow twins revolving around each other and acting in parallel ways. One side is red, one side is blue.

Secret Invasion and Final Crisis were incredibly dire and status quo altering, and the Big Two only pushed these tensions further in their next competing events in 2009. Marvel came out with Dark Reign, and DC with Blackest Night, two series with titles that betray a tonal similarity from the get go. Then there was Siege from Marvel in 2010, and Brightest Day from DC, which is still running as of this writing. Now, the Big Two are advertising for their next big events, Fear Itself and Flashpoint, and it is fair to assume that even more crossovers will follow these. Perhaps Secret Crisis, Final War, Darkest Hour, or some similarly ominous names will sit on the stands in 2012.

These events are oddly similar to events in the 90's that led to the temporary downfall of the comic book industry. Not only do crossover comics like House of M and Flashpoint seem like reiterations of Age of Apocalypse, but characters are being killed off and ressurrected in the same spirit as the Death of Superman in 92. Green Lantern and the Flash were reborn, Superboy died and came back, Bucky (once thought to be one of the few permanent casaulties) resurfaced as Winter Soldier, even Jason Todd returned from the grave. Batman died, Captain America died, and both were ressurected in strikingly similar storylines that involved fighting their way through time to the present. The Human Torch recently died in January, and the marketing strategy of this death was eerily similar to the Death of Superman.

The Human Torch died in Fantastic Four 587, published in January 2011, and it was sold in a plastic bag stylized almost exactly the same way as the cover of Death of Superman. Johnny Storm's final moments topped January sale charts with 115 thousand copies sold, not as impressive as The Death of Superman sales, but still a significant spike compared to every other issue on the stands. The next closest was DC's Brightest Day 17 at 72 thousand copies sold, and the last comic to even approach FF 587's numbers was Batman The Return in November 2010 at 99 thousand copies. It is clear from the jump in sales that superhero deaths get people to buy more comic books, and it is for this reason that Marvel is going to be killing a lot more characters.

David Gabriel, Senior Vice President of Sales at Marvel Comics, recently announced that because of the massive success of FF 587, Marvel is going to kill a character every quarter. This came across as some sort of ridiculous hostage threat, but although it was framed in a humorous way, this actually seems to be Marvel's new strategy.

The next character on the chopping block is Ultimate Spider-Man, who is set to meet his maker in June in The Death of Spider-Man. David Gabriel said that this event with be the most media exposed event in Marvel's history, which indicates that Marvel is attempting to recapture the success of the Death of Captain America and the Death of the Human Torch. Both of these deaths garnered attention in the media and brought new readers into comic book stores.

Brian Michael Bendis had this to say about writing the demise of Ultimate Spiderman, "It's one of those things where you see the D word and you think you've seen it all. I'm online. I hear it and I get it. I know it. So I can say, 'Sit back and enjoy this one because you have not seen this story before.' I know that because I work with a lot of people who have been in comics much longer than I have and most of them can't believe we're doing this." Even the comic book writers themselves seem conscious of the fact that comic book deaths have been done an absurd amount of times, yet they are persistent in writing more of them because these spandex snuff stories consistenly move more issues.

Not to be outdone, DC just put out the first issue of Reign of Doomsday. This event crosses over into five separate titles and will culminate in another showdown between 90's superstar Doomsday and Superman in Action Comics 900.

It seems that the Big Two are locked in an escalating war that is showing no signs of slowing down. It only seems to become more extreme with every wave, more intense with each successive event. The strangest thing about all of this is that it seems familiar to me, as if I have seen all of this happen before. Anyone who has read comics a decade or two knows that the storylines come in waves and cycles, that characters may die but they will return, that the tones and atmospheres of comic book universes will fluctuate, but that is merely the illusion of change.

The Big Two have been pushing this illusion of change harder than ever in the past decade, and all signs point to the continued raising of stakes in the comic book cold war. This series of articles will be my attempt to compare and contrast the two superpowers of the comic book industry, to reveal their similarities, but also to understand the ways in which they play off of each other.

Tensions are at an all time high. One side is red, one is blue. Whose side are you on?