The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 2143: Midnighter #7, February 2016

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Fucking Prometheus. I mean, it's only fitting that he show up, given that his defeat of Batman in Grant Morrison's JLA is one of the great defeats of the dark knight. Also given that Midnighter has very similar abilities to both Prometheus and Batman, this confrontation was perhaps inevitable. But how Prometheus sets our hero up is brutal. Truly, truly brutal. I loved it, and it firmly cemented Midnighter as one of the great characters in the DCU.

I know that the character of Prometheus has undergone a number of changes and shifts of identity in the years since Morrison introduced him (back in the late 90s), but this iteration of the character seemed to be the exact model that was first introduced, an anti-Batman so to speak, and I was glad to see that origin maintained. The New 52 was an interesting experiment, and it gave us some really excellent comics, but I also think it messed around too much with the origins of characters, and those origins, very often, are what define the character more than anything they go through subsequently. For instance, let's imagine that we actually knew the Midnighter's real name and origin. All of a sudden, rather than a forward-facing force for justice, Midnighter would be a backward looking character reacting to their origin. Batman, for example. To me, this would severely detract from the character. I hope we never find out. I was very much against the Wolverine: Origin series back in the day too - why do we need to know where the character came from? Isn't it what they do now, in "present time," that is important? A curious conversation. Do we need to know the origins of our heroes? If we transfer the question to our lived existence, the sad truth is that the more we know about our heroes, the less we tend to like them. People are, simply, people. But superheroes aren't always meant to be people - more often, they're meant to be legends. And the truth behind a legend is always going to be more disappointing that the legend itself. Just ask King Arthur. Or Jesus.

More to follow.