New 52: Week 1 Batch 2

The second half of this week's new DCU books contains a fair number of obscure, quirky and non-superhero books, and to me, THIS is where the New 52 experiment will succeed or fail. It's one thing to revamp big franchises that are likely to benefit from name recognition, but if DC really wants to attract new readers, it's got to put out (and ACTUALLY MARKET) books that appeal to readers who don't really care for the superhero genre. Think Sandman in the late 80s and early 90s and how it brought in a large number of new (and female!) readers. I'm still of the opinion that to get new readers, you need to stop it with the low-value, relatively high-priced monthly rags already, but perhaps the e-format will do the job. The question now is, are the "alternative" any good, and can they be embraced by "alternative" audiences?

Animal Man #1
Not surprisingly, Jeff Lemire knows how to do both realistic family drama and creepy fantasy-horror AND do them well. His Animal Man has a weird, indy feel that seems to stand at the nexus of what Morrison, Milligan, Veitch and Delano did with the character previously, drawing on the best elements of each. Travel Foreman's art is expressive and quirky, perfect for that contrast of the every day and surreal horror imagery. He is weakest with the pure superhero pin-up shots, but Buddy Baker's new costume is pretty terrible and generic, so it'd probably be weak even if Foreman was as comfortable with superheroes as he is with everything else. Thankfully, that's not really the main focus of the series, but rather the rise of an ancient power in the Earth's morphogenic field, and Buddy's daughter Maxine's dark, developing powers. To me though, half the attracting to Animal Man is in how his powers are used. Good news! Lemire is awesome at that. When Buddy took cats' super-napping ability to fall asleep quickly, I surrendered my heart to the book immediately.
Don't call it a reboot: Looks like Buddy was never a member of the Justice League. It's possible past Maxine stuff from the Vertigo days has been expunged as well.
Upgrade? This is the best Animal Man stuff since Morrison's.
Will read? Definitely. This is right up my alley.
Recommended? Lemire does the right thing by introducing us to Animal Man in a faux-magazine interview on the first page. Easy to get into. If you like horror, you will like this. If you have a family, you will like this. If you like indy films, music or art, you will like this. If you like good comics, you will like this.

Batwing #1
"Africa's Batman" seems like the sort of idea that wouldn't support more than a mini-series, but the potential demonstrated in the first issue makes me wish it survives a bit longer than that. I found the character of Batwing immediately likable, especially his relationship with police colleague Kia Okuku, a rare honest officer he's trying to keep honest. The efficiently introduced supporting cast also includes Matu Ba, an Alfred figure that used to work for a child rescue organization. There's enough here for me to resent Batman's guest-appearance, even if I respect the idea that a series like this needs a but of midwifery (but if you're not going to announce it on the cover...). Writer Judd Winick also makes good use of the African continent, its politics and the realities of the Third Wold, while also injecting a back history that includes African superheroes. The art by Ben Oliver has a photo-real painterly style that reminds me of Invincible Iron Man's Salvador Larroca, at least as good with action beats, though better at representing facial expressions. The unmotivated angled panels are an unfortunate tic of his (Alpha Flight 0.1 was the same), so he has some work to do as far as composition goes, but this is a fairly good-looking comic with a slick movie feel.
Don't call it a reboot: Set up in Batman Inc., there hasn't really been time for him to develop anything a writer would want to reboot.
Upgrade? Didn't have a series before.
Will read? It's a good start. I like the setting and the characters introduced. I will keep reading for now.
Recommended? It's not perfect, but I think Batman fans (a group that includes a lot of non-comics readers) looking for something a little different, or readers who are interested in African politics, could find their due here. Though if you're the latter, you're better off looking for the latest Unknown Soldier trade collections.

Green Arrow #1
J.T. Krul was writing it before, and he's writing it again. Any change? Well, this Green Arrow seems to come with a bit less baggage and fewer chin hairs, and in exchange moves to Seattle (more DC books seem to take place in real world cities, trading away something that was unique about the DCU for... what?), where Queen Industries becomes an Apple analog (get your Q-pad now!). Oliver has some computer experts working for him behind the scenes which makes me wonder if a lot of books will spawn their own versions of Oracle now that she's become Batgirl again. I find nothing objectionable about the comic - which isn't a guarantee with Krul - and I've always enjoyed Dan Jurgens clean superhero style, but it's all rather ordinary. I'm intrigued by Green Arrow operating on the international stage (here in Europe), but the bunch of super-powered villains introduced evoke something out of X-Men, where characters are basically just their powers (drug-induced rather than genetic). I certainly don't want the new DCU to get mired in the mud of past continuity, foregoing new adversaries in favor of yet another re-invention(TM), but no one sticks out here, giving the whole thing the feeling of a generic archer superhero book you might have seen from Malibu, Image or Dark Horse in the early 90s.
Don't call it a reboot: I don't know how much of past GA continuity has been wiped, mostly because I wasn't reading the previous series, but the status quo has certainly changed.
Upgrade? Like I said, can't be sure. The art one the previous series wasn't bad either, so Even Steven, I guess.
Will read? I might check out a few more issues, but unless it shows a willingness to be more than standard superhero fare, I'm gonna get off the bus pretty early.
Recommended? The Smallville look might attract new media-conscious readers, but I see nothing spectacular enough to hook them for good. Not one to hand out for free in school yards to get them while they're young.

Hawk & Dove #1
I feel bad for writer Sterling Gates. I liked his Supergirl work, and here his script shows promise, but he's been saddled with Rob Liefeld whose art has little redeeming value. Somehow, the opening action sequence manages to be dynamic, perhaps in part because colorist Matt Yackey has attempted to give the often blank backgrounds some depth. The sequence, while exciting, doesn't bear close (or even mid-distance) scrutiny, and the talking heads in the back half of the book are even weaker. Gates laces in some soap opera threads, like a connection between Dove and her predecessor and Hawk's father, but we don't really get to the villain in the first issue. Is it me or have the New DC 52 to date done a poor job of introducing their respective threats? Darkseid is behind the scenes in Justice League. The JLI and Hawk&Dove fight minions controlled by God knows who. There are a number of last page antagonists (here and in JLI, and the Dollmaker, and Midnighter, and even Superman himself). Can't say there's much of a "done-in-one" approach at the New DC.
Don't call it a reboot: Looks like maybe Dawn has only recently been turned into Dove, nullifying the previous H&D series, but it's hard to say. The action does pick up from Brightest Day, with Dove and Deadman as lovers. Too bad, because Boston Brand's appearance in the book muddles the basic premise and makes it harder for non-comics fans to get into it.
Upgrade? No. I wasn't really reading Birds of Prey where H&D were appearing, but you won't get me to say being drawn by Liefeld is anything but a downgrade.
Will read? Keeping an eye on it because of professional curiosity, but ultimately waiting for Liefeld to get behind on his art and leave the book in better hands.
Recommended? I just can't. I wish nothing but the best for Sterling Gates, but I can't show a Liefeld comic to someone except to laugh at it, and that's not gonna grow the comics fan base.

Men of War #1
The first true "genre book" on tap, Men of War could conceivably attract the attention of soldiers here and abroad, an important segment of the fan base since WWII. The main story, by Ivan Brandon and Tom Derenick follows the exploits of Sgt. Rock's grandson, Joseph Rock, on the cusp of becoming a Sergent himself. He's hard and nails and doesn't want the leadership position he's a natural for. Instead of any specific war, this Rock serves in a special ops unit and could conceivably see action all over the world. To tell you the truth, I was a little ambivalent after the first issue. I found the action a little confusing and didn't care for the few characters Brandon gave a sort of personality to. I'm also quite ambivalent about unknown superhumans crashing this military story. The role of the soldier in a superhero world definitely has potential, but it gets us away from the genre and betrays the promise of true variety in the line. The book loses even more points with its Navy SEALS back-up by Jonathan Vankin and Phil Winslade, the first third of a story riddled with more clichés than bullet holes, with characters that are essentially there only for info-dumps and slinging military jargon around. Waste of a good artist, really.
Don't call it a reboot: It's not.
Upgrade? The only war comics of recent years have been at Vertigo, and they've mostly been good (I'm including DMZ in the mix). Men of War doesn't reach
Will read? I'm curious as to how they plan to integrate the military into superheroics, but I'm afraid I probably won't stick around for long.
Recommended? Superheroes/military comics is NOT chocolate/peanut butter, at least not in this case. Fans of either will find the book wanting.

O.M.A.C. #1
Keith Giffen is the worthy inheritor of Jack Kirby's artistic tradition, but in OMAC he really goes for the tribute (just look at characters' mouths, for example) without losing his own style. It's not just the art or high-action sensibility, but Giffen and DiDio also draft in Cadmus and its cast of characters, adding build-a-friends to the usual DNAliens, merging the future of the original OMAC series with present-day DCU trappings. OMAC isn't Buddy Blank, but Kevin Koh, a man turned into a nearly-mindless One Man Army Corps by the orbiting Brother Eye (who reads like Skeets gone bad). He'll take your life over, but also take messages from your girlfriend. Yeah, it's got the kind of humor Giffen is known for. Is DiDio mostly scripting? In any case, a fine collaboration, this weird, action-packed SF story. I WILL have to get used to OMAC's tropical fish fin, which I currently HATE. I'm actually hoping OMAC's transformations will vary, as will the amount of control Kevin will have over the "creature".
Don't call it a reboot: Cadmus now has an above-ground presence, and elements from OMAC's world are 'ported in as well.
Upgrade? Considering the last OMAC iteration was the overused, sleeper agents built by Batman (of all people), yes, this is a massive upgrade of the concept.
Will read? I wasn't particularly enthusiastic when it was announced, but call me a convert!
Recommended? I do recommend it, though I fear it may be too strange for the casual reader, both in art and story. Might be a good one to hand over to a fan of Kirby's who's dropped out of comics since the 70s though. An open-minded SF fan would also enjoy the concepts.

Static Shock #1
Cards on table here - I've never read any Static comics or even seen the cartoon show. So I'm coming to this as fresh as the "new readers" DC wants to attract. Static seems to be the New DCU's answer to Spider-Man, a teen hero with electrical powers and cutting edge technology, quick with the humorous banter, and the potential for personal problems. He's got a dad who won't let him get his license, sisters who pick on him, and a job at a hardware store where everyone thinks he's a juvenile delinquent being given a second chance (a neat "secret identity" thing, what with his secret HQ under that very store). Another hero removed from a fictional city, Static has left Dakota behind for New York. His mentor is Milestone Comics' first hero, Hardware, who acts as a combination of Alfred, the movie Lucius Fox, and Oracle, all from a distance. Hardware is the only Milestone comic I read for any length of time, so I'm glad to see him here. Writers Scott McDaniel and John Rozum pack a lot into the issue, including connections to STAR Labs and a number of villains with a hidden agenda, and McDaniel's art is correspondingly more detailed (the work of his inkers?), though his rough cartoonishness still prevails. Overall, a fun and likable effort, the science-based powers coming off as sort of educational in a Flash Fact way.
Don't call it a reboot: Milestone experts may be able to tell.
Upgrade? Static has appeared in the Teen Titans since Milestone was imported, but those comics had nothing but a bad reputation. I'm gonna say getting a solo series trumps that.
Will read? Count me in for the foreseeable future.
Recommended? I can safely recommend this book for readers looking for fairly light-hearted teen adventure, in particular if they liked the animated series or, indeed, if they're Spider-Man fans. The big question for me will be whether the line can support both Static Shock and Blue Beetle, which share many similarities.

Of these seven series, there are two I find very exciting, two I find more than competent, and three I wouldn't recommend. +4 series I like better than Justice League #1, for a total of 10, if you're counting. But what did YOU think? Especially if you're not usually a comic book reader (off-chance?).

Learning to Fly - Position 8: Backwards

Being a series of vignettes aimed at educating the super-powered reader about the various possible permutations of the flight posture.Though the position shown above looks a lot like simple Air Diving (Position 2), it's a matter of perspective. Powdered Toast Man actually flies feet first, i.e. backwards. Unusual to be sure, though heroes with 360 degree vision may see this as a viable - and surprising! - alternative to the standard style. Squashed bugs will be on your feet, not on your face, not to mention that pesky dry skin resulting from friction.



And before you think that only PT Man uses it and that it is thus "silly", be aware that it occurs in nature:

So theoretically, it's part of Animal Man's arsenal. And there's nothing "silly" about him.

Cat of the Geek #97: Grant Morrison's Cat

Name: Jarmara
Stomping Grounds: Animal Man #26 (also, real life)
Side: Good
Breed: European shorthair (?)
Cat Powers: Muse to one of the most interesting writers in the DC Comics stable. In particular, inspired his unfairness towards the character of Animal Man.
Skills: Eat 7, Sleep 5, Mischief 3, Wit 1, Awwww 9
Cat Weaknesses: Died when a bone she ate punctured her lung, leading to infection.

Reign of the Supermen #34: Overman of Earth-17

Source: Animal Man #23-24 (1990)
Type: Alternate Earth villainOne of the guys who REALLY didn't want to be expunged from the universe in Grant Morrison's Crisis II was Overman. Infected by a sex virus, Overman went mad and destroyed his world. He shows up at Psycho-Pirate's reunion of never-will-bes with an atomic bomb, and only Animal Man, harnessing the power of pure comics can stop him.
Beware of fast-closing panels.

The 10 Strangest Superman Team-Ups from DC Comics Presents

Already the end of the week and I feel like my theme's been more about Superman teaming up with animals than anything else. Let me fix that by talking some of the wild and weird combinations featured in DC Comics Presents. Though Superman's team-up book never received the same accolades as Batman's Brave and the Bold (where you had the winning Bob Haney-Neil Adams creative team), I've always been fond of the series. The very first comic I bought with my own money was an issue of DCP, and I still consider the team-ups with OMAC and the Demon among my personal favorite 80s books ever.

And while those were pretty offbeat, I don't consider them strange enough to make the following list (in order of publication)...

Sgt. Rock
DCP 10/The Miracle Man of Easy Company. DCP's first offbeat combo required Superman to travel back in time, and he does this by accident when an award coated with super-adhesive explodes in his hands over Paris (and they say the Silver Age ended in the 60s) and he loses his memory. Posing as a soldier, he joins Easy Company as "Tag-Along", but to the dismay of his unit, he can't bring himself to shoot anyone! When he finally remembers, he whups some Nazi ass, but allows himself to die in front of Easy, super-holding his breath while they bury him. Once they're gone, it's off to the time barrier.

Masters of the Universe
DCP 47/From Eternia -- with Death! It would take more than three years before Superman teamed-up with another bunch of characters he really shouldn't have. He-Man and Battlecat do share the white bread alter ego theme with Superman, but other than that, are we to believe Castle Grayskull is somewhere in the DC Multiverse? Probably not if Mattel has anything to say about it! The story entails Superman being mind-controlled by Skeletor (oddly never mistaken for Dr. Destiny) to fight He-Man, what else.

Clark Kent
DCP 50/When You Wish Upon a Planetoid. Superman makes the mistake of wishing he could lead both his and Clark Kent's lives simultaneously too close to a dream machine and makes this team-up possible. The twist: Superman is too intent on business to care about Lois, and Clark gets to trash him in the papers. Clark discovers his own secret identity when he sees himself in the mirror without his glasses! Further twist: It's Clark that defeats the Atomic Skull. And then the two heroes look like they're about to make-out and merge with each other. That wouldn't happen in a team-up with Green Lantern. Well... maybe it would.

House of Mystery
DCP 53/The Haunting Dooms of Halloween! But speaking of GL, Clark dresses up as Green Lantern on Halloween when Superman comes crashing through the window! He's actually a kid who, dressed as Superman, has BECOME Superman. All around Metropolis, people are becoming who or what they were disguised at! Which of course means monsters. The big bad is Mr. Mxyzptlk, who has turned Cain's House of Mystery into a fun house full of traps and illusions and imprisoned Lois inside. Not that it's anything like the actual House of Mystery comic. A page 13 by Sergio Aragones would have gone a long way making me like this one.

Atomic Knights
DCP 57/Days of Future Past (that's actually the title, folks). It's 1983 and Mishkin & Cohn predict the world will be a post-apocalyptic wasteland in just 3 years. Didn't vote for Reagan then. Superman gets an electric shock while hooked up to the internet and wakes up 9 years in the future, in a world where armored knights ride giant dalmatians and help Hercules himself fight atomic monsters. Fans of Hercules Unbound may be saddened to hear that series all happened in the Matrix! The upside is, the world didn't end on my 15th birthday.

Santa Claus
DCP 67/'Twas the Fright Before Christmas! Toy-Man's been hypnotizing kids to rob street corner Santas, and one of his weapons accidentally downs Superman near the Fortress of Solitude... at Santa's workshop! You'll be glad to know that in addition to being a DC character, Santa monitors every child in the world via computer monitor and has a simple, but effective bag of tricks. All such stories of course end the same way, with Superman helping to deliver presents and then waking up from a "dream... or WAS IT?!"

Forgotten Heroes/Villains
DCP 77-78/Triad of Terror. A bunch of obscure villains from DC's past are trotted out just as forgotten heroes make their comeback. Since then, all the good guys have been players - Animal Man, Rick Flagg, Dolphin, Rip Hunter, Congorilla, Dane Dorrance of the Sea Devils, even Immortal Man - but the villains... not so much. By the end of the second issue, this thing has featured Space Cabbie, Chris KL-99, and introducing Creepy Gills in her Neck Girl! This thing has everything AND an appearance by the Monitor.

Swamp Thing
DCP 65/The Jungle Line. While Superman's first team-up with Swampy in DCP 8 was predictably a battle between the heroes and Solomon Grundy, the second was written by Alan Moore and pencilled by Rick Veitch. In this eerie story, Superman is exposed to Kryptonian fungus that makes his health and powers deteriorate. Heading south to die, he is found by the Swamp Thing who helps him come out of his fever dreams.

Elastic Four
DCP 93/That's the Way the Heroes Bounce! The comic creates a new elastic villain called the Malleable Man just so it could say Elastic Four on the cover. The other three are, of course, Plastic Man, Elongated Man and Jimmy Olsen AKA Elastic Lad. It's all tentacle fingers until the Malleable Man slinks into the Fortress of Solitude's massive keyhole (yeah, that's a security risk) and uhm, his powers get past their time limit. Cuz he was damn near undefeatable with them before that, right?

The Phantom Zone Villains
DCP 97/Phantom Zone the Final Chapter. Steve Gerber hands in this "untold tale of the pre-Crisis universe", Jor-El discovers the Phantom Zone and finding unsuitable for escape from doomed Krypton, it's put to use sending the planet's worst criminals in exile. You'll never read a more disturbing description of their crimes as the Superman universe brushes against the early Vertigo style. As the Villains think of escape, Bizarro stages a huge opposite destruction of Krypton on Bizarro World. Throw in a weird crystal heart floating about space absorbing people, Mxyzptlk freeing the Villains, New York burning under a giant kryptonite asteroid, and Superman not knowing what the hell just happened, and you have a not quite team-up in the style of Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow... that completely contradicts that story!

So there you have them, my picks for strangest team-ups in the pages of DC Comics Presents. Maybe you have your own favorites. Don't be stingy, share!

Usurped Crossover #2: Morrison's First Strike

ANIMAL MAN #6, DC Comics, Holiday 1988
Today, he's crafting event books that throw other writers into a tailspin (cue Chuck Dixon: "But Batman can't diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiie!!!"), but there used to a be a time when Grant Morrison was on the fringe and had to incoporate crossover events into his own storylines. Storylines that really weren't made for it. Take Animal Man, for example. Here's a quiet, slightly (for now) postmodern series about a family man who's thinking about becoming an animal rights activist because he's not very good at the superhero thing.

How is he going to make Buddy Baker cope with (wait for it...) INVASION FIRST STRIKE! Oooh. It's the story where all the alien races in the DC Universe band together to invade Earth. Not a bad one, by these things' standards.

So does Morrison just throw Animal Man into a crowd scene, maybe have him do battle with a cadre of Khunds? Nope. Buddy doesn't even KNOW there's an Invasion on.

Really, it's the story of Thanagarian artist Rokara Soh who, on the first page, commits ritual suicide by downing a beaker of poison. Ah the "Hawks", such a martial race. Even their art is part of the war effort. Soh is paired up with his own Hawkgirl for a mission to America's West Coast.
You can really cut the sexual tension with a knife, can't you? Her role is important only in the comic book sense. While art-boy sets up his thing, she gets to fight Animal Man a bit, fulfilling the comic's quota of superhero action. After losing the first round, he takes it to the water, where the hunter becomes the prey.
Losing control of the belt, she goes way up into the atmosphere, then falls to her death. Soh is forced to call on birds and Buddy nearly gets pecked to death, spending the rest of the comic either hung up in a tree or on all fours on the ground. He's a real Grant Morrison hero: Clueless and ineffectual.

But just what was he trying to stop? Soh's "lifebomb" is part artwork, part weapon of mass destruction.
To sum up: Dude downloads his entire life into the bomb, it plays like a Proust novel (each memory keys off another memory ad infinitum), and when it detonates when it hits that life's most emotionally charged moment, making the artist's life flash before your eyes as you die, die, die. Only in a Grant Morrison comic, right?

What follows is a sort of biographical poetry of words and images, moments both high and low of the artist's life, building to an obvious crescendo as Buddy basically freaks out:
And since it IS a Morrison comic, it ends with a deus ex machina. Our Hawkman (I miss that version of that guy) just strolls over and turns it off with just a touch. It's the usual Morrison anti-climax, though still new at the time, and certainly a leitmotif in this particular series. In fact, far from being a one-off aberration, this issue resonates later in the run when the same exact deus ex machina is used.

In some trade collections, the crossover issue might as well be excised for all the relevance it has to the actual story arcs. But having Animal Man always on the margins of everything Big that's happening means you never even have to explain the event. It just works, and it's integral to the entire series. Animal Man is the Rozencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead of the DC Universe.

The First Comic That Ever Blew a Hole in My Head

ANIMAL MAN #26, DC Comics, August 1990
Since I'm talking about firsts this week, let me tell you about the first comic that truly BLEW MY FRICKIN' MIND! And that would be Animal Man #26. Oh, I'd read Watchmen and all, but it didn't really open that door. See, when I moved away from my hometown to go to college, I finally had access to comic book stores. One such, 1,000,000 Comics it was called, was having a going out-of-business sale and I stormed the place and got entire runs of comics I'd missed out on (entire up to that point, obviously). LEGION, Dr. Fate, Milligan's Shade the Changing Man, Doom Patrol, and Animal Man (by Grant Morrison, Chas Truog and Mark Farmer). And they let me have them for half the cover price.

So I chow down on Animal Man #7 through 26 and... wait for it... IT BLEW MY FRICKIN' BRAINS OUT! Well, it pulled the trigger some time before 26, but by 26, my brains were splattered all over my living room.

"Deus ex Machina", in a nutshell, is the story of Animal Man meeting his maker. And that maker is Grant Morrison. Yes, Grant Morrison is God. Actually, he's only Animal Man's writer (and Doom Patrol's too, "but they don't know it"). Though there have been hints as far back as Animal Man #5, here it is finally revealed that the DC Universe is really just a pile of comics, "a world created by committee".

Let me interrupt myself here just to say this: GRANT MORRISON HAS GOT SOME BALLS! He stars in his own comic (BALLS THE SIZE OF JULIUS SCHWARTZ'S HEAD!), he blows the cover off the DCU's biggest secret - shhh, it's not real - blowing my mind in the process (did I mention that already?) and in this panel, he even tells off Gerard Jones, writer of Justice League Europe (BALLS!!!!):
A world run by committee indeed. Is there any doubt in your minds that Animal Man was only added to JLE's roster to give him broader appeal? Well, they really screwed that one up.

Another ballsy move is making the comic unashamedly anticlimactic, basically just a big long conversation between two characters. It gives Morrison the chance to meditate on superhero comic book structure, throwing out such nuggets as:
This is Morrison's last issue on the title - after all, what do you do for an encore? - but where another writer might've made his thank yous in the letters page, he does it inside the comic itself, while he forces Animal Man to fight animal-themed villains in the background, "to make it more interesting to draw". It all seems very cathartic for Morrison and we're just along for the ride. Another moment, when Morrison suggests that the next writer might make Animal Man a meat-eater:
BAM! That's the sound of my brains being blown out! (Still get chills from this one.) This series showed me what you could do with the medium like no other had at that time. Morrison is a real maverick, an Evil Knieval stunt-writer with no limits. Then I read all those Doom Patrols I'd bought, and I knew. Grant Morrison isn't just Animal Man's god, he's mine as well.