The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 494: Batman #700, August 2010

"No matter when.
No matter where.
No matter how dark."

Though not technically a part of the "Return of Bruce Wayne" storyline, this anniversary issue of Batman offers a tiny little primer on time travel stories to get us ready for the convolutions of the "Return" story.

Well, maybe that's overstating things. It's a nice story for an anniversary, as it intertwines past, present, and future Batmans (Batmen?) in an adventure, though the locked room at the center of the story is not really a hard one to figure out. So much can be done with a time travel device. But, oftentimes, in depth story is not what an anniversary issue is about. It's about celebration, about seeing where a title has been and where it has the potential to go. With younger titles, it's also about relief to have made it this far, but very few hit the milestones that titles like Batman, Detective Comics, Action Comics, and all the old guard do.

For me, the best parts of this issue are the end bits that, while not partaking of the main storyline, offer visions and interpretations of what Batman has, and will, mean. The "And Tomorrow" chapter, illustrated by David Finch (who, I'll admit, is just a bit too Image-y for my tastes), gives tantalizing glimpses into possible future Batmen, heroes who may be part of the lineage, but also may be alternatives to one another. It's lovely to see the Batman and Robin of the 853rd century again, and Terry McGuinness - though isn't the presence of old Bruce there a bit of a giveaway? I'm not sure where the other two versions of the Bat that we see, one in a futuristic mega-city, one in a post apocalypse, come from, if they're canonical future versions or just extrapolations from Morrison's mind, but they demonstrate that Batman, or the idea of Batman at least, can function in the most diverse settings. "No matter when, no matter where." It's telling that the final pages bring us back to the present and picture everyman Commissioner Gordon shining the Bat Signal into the darkness, showing us that, regardless of the darkness of the costume and the character, Batman is hope and light.

But don't tell Bruce that. He'd just growl at us.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 444: Batman #666, July 2007

This issue (sort of) concluded the "Three Ghosts of the Batman" story, though, by my count, we've only met two of them. There's a panel in the previous issue where we see both the gun-wielding Bat-cop from Morrison's first issue and the BatBane of issue 664. Next to them, in silhouette, is the third ghost, and he looks remarkably familiar to those of us who have read a historic Batman story or two. But don't worry. We'll get to him. Or he'll get to us, rather.

This issue, really, is the reason I said that things start to get weird with this storyline. We're dropped, in medias res, into a Batman story for which we have no context. Is this the future? Is it a dream in the morphine-addled brain of Bruce Wayne? Is it Damian's fantasy of his future? The answer is probably yes to all of those questions, and there's compelling arguments for each. And this is what I meant. Morrison, perhaps more than any comics writer, recognizes that the archetypal nature of the characters ties them to motifs, rather than narratives. Batman, be it Bruce or Damian, protects Gotham. If the story doesn't fit into a rigidly defined narrative universe, that's because the characters are too large to be limited in that way. The Batmen of Many Nations that the next storyline draws upon is one exploration of this idea, but so is the notion of a future Batman, playing out the same myth over and over again. The details might change, but the fundamentals are the same.

The other thing Morrison does is not explain himself, and I think that's something that often irks comics readers. The end of this issue really makes it feel like the story is going to continue, but actually, this is all we get. Again, it's a mark of that mythic nature of the character. His stories have been told in a serialized format for 76 years, and so to tell a Batman story one must also embrace that serialized nature, even if the story is not going to be continued. Later, we'll come to the Final Crisis event, during which Superman is faced with a meta-real explanation of his purpose in reality, summed up in the words "To Be Continuned." This phrase applies just as much to Batman. So even though we never see any more of Damian Wayne's adventures in future Gotham, his tales will be continued, as will those of the Batman, next issue.

One of the thrusts of my dissertation was going to be the longevity of superhero characters, their ability to outlive every single person involved in their creation. They are, as I think Morrison has said somewhere, more real than we are.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 443: Batman #665, June 2007

I have to say, my favourite thing about this issue is Bruce's reaction when he's safe and sound in his very large bed at home - he freaks out. Having just been pummeled by someone who closely resembles Bane, having just had his back stomped by said individual, Bruce relives the breaking of his back that was the denouement of the "Knightfall" saga, that bit of 90s Batman that introduced us to the character of Azrael. It's fitting that Bruce should have such reactions, not only in demonstrating the humanity that is so intrinsic to Batman's character, but also to acknowledge even more of the Bat-history that Morrison is playing with. Bear in mind, yesterday's issue was entitled "The Three Ghosts of the Batman," and it's not just the narratological ghosts, but the textual ones, that we're interested in here.

It's nice to see Tim Drake in action in this issue. He's been conspicuously absent from the title, which sets me wondering if Morrison intentionally did this, focussing on the eponymous hero in this series since the rest of the Bat-cast gets fair representation in the rest of the Bat-titles. I suppose the corollary question is how often does Batman show up in Robin's solo title? My feeling is not very often.

Action sequences aside, we get a brief step back to the end of the previous story arc, and see what happened to Talia and Damian after their submarine exploded. It's a delicate balance in serialized story-telling between providing satisfying, stand alone tales that can be enjoyed individually, and creating an immersive universe, where there are always events going on behind the ones that take up the foreground of the narrative. Morrison's very good at this, offering such snippets, though those who dislike his style of story-telling often complain that he doesn't fill in enough of the behind the scenes blanks. It's a tough call. How do you focalize your reader? In the case of these Batman stories, my sense is that we're meant to be following along as Batman solves the case, but not necessarily from right within his head. He's putting things together while we're watching it happen from the outside. We're neither focalized through the main character, nor are we given the omniscient perspective (well, perhaps occasionally we slip into that). More often than not, I think we're placed in the "Watson" role to Batman's "Sherlock," and that's yet another ghost who haunts the Dark Knight Detective.

We'll proceed to Hell tomorrow. No kidding. Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 442: Batman #664, May 2007

Gotham is a really awful place.

I have on my shelf of role-playing games (honestly, they don't come much geekier than I) a few of the manuals for a strange game called Kult. The setting for Kult is a city populated by demonic creatures that serves as the archetypal template for all cities. One accesses this city by finding the places in the "real" world that intersect with it. I think that Gotham stands as an archetypal representation of everything terrible about our cities, a Frygian demonic parody of the heavenly City of Light. It makes perfect sense to have Batman stride, Hades-like, through this neon-lit netherworld.

Third last page. 5th panel. "And I'm thinking about the files in the black casebook." With that, Grant Morrison takes Batman out of his comfortable netherworld, and into a strange, spiraling (that joke will make sense in a few months) rabbit hole to Wonderland. I wish I'd been able to speak to some long-time Bat-readers as they began this descent beneath the comfortable unpleasantness of Gotham city. And it's not just a narratological descent, but a historical one. After the fact, DC published Batman: The Black Casebook, a collection of the stories from the 50s and 60s that inspired Morrison's work. Those were some very strange decades for Batman, well before the Dark Knight Detective persona was solidified in the 70s. And seeing these little goodies re-visited in the 21st century pushes Batman, and his readers, out of their Millerian comfort zone, and into the realms of the odd.

It's a glorious trip. I had to reign myself in this morning, and not grab the next issue after this one. In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, we're told that Alice's fall down the rabbit hole is slow and gentle. Our journey with Batman is no such thing. Strap in.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 440: Batman #658, December 2006

I know I came down pretty hard on Andy Kubert's artwork yesterday, so I'll start off today making up for that. There's one panel in this issue that captures a lovely emotion on the face of a character who, to this point, has been at best obnoxious, and at worst psychopathic.

The panel in question is that bottom one. Having just discovered that his father has a rocket, in which they're going to travel across the Atlantic Ocean, Damian Wayne realizes exactly what it means that his father is Batman. And that smile means he loves it. I think it's a desire of any father to inspire that kind of happiness in his child, for the child to, even just once, realize how wonderful it is to have the father that they have.

I'd forgotten how this issue ended. And I can't for the life of me remember how things progress from here, which is actually a lovely feeling to have. Publication-wise, Morrison and company take a break for a few issues (which I never bothered getting), and then return, as we will tomorrow, with a very cool text story about the Joker and Harley (the real Harley, not the Arkham Asylum version) (I just did that disparaging alpha-geek thing, didn't I? Sorry.). Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 439: Batman #657, November 2006

Batman returns to Gotham, Damian in tow, and introduces him to Tim Drake, aka Robin. And all of a sudden, there's a new twist on the story arc title "Batman and Son." Parental issues, and specifically those of the son and the father, have been a guiding force in the Bat-titles almost since their inception. What drives Batman to become a father to these young people, and what do we make of a father who turns his children into weapons? Much as I might loathe Frank Miller as a person these days, his seminal The Dark Knight Returns pushes this question to extremes, and one of the important legacies of that series is our notice of the dangerous nature of Batman's father role. Opinions on this role can swing both ways, and charges of child abuse and endangerment have explicitly made their way into the series at certain times in its publishing history. But to counter that, there's also the iconic nature of the character one has to consider. As personification of a particular concept (what that is we'll leave until we've gone through a bit more of the series), we can think through Batman's odd parenting from a similar vantage to that from which we consider lineages in Classical myth. Think Heracles as son of Zeus. Or the heroic nature of someone like Siegfreid in the Ring cycle. Parenting from a mythic standpoint isn't so much about raising a child as it is about passing on iconic signification. At least there's a lot less rape in Batman's passing of his lineage.

A quick note on the actual comic: I remember, first time I read this issue, hating Damian Wayne so, so much. I couldn't see how this character was going to work in the story, especially as I quite like Tim Drake as Robin. I'll admit it's been long enough since I've read Morrison's run that I can't quite remember how it all plays out, but my hatred for Damian came right back to the fore after this issue. Another thing I'll note is that I really don't like Andy Kubert's art. It smacks of that late-90s Image house style (really, the style that's taken over current DC titles). Were it not so ubiquitous, I'd probably be okay with it, but in conjunction with what is already a strange Batman tale, the mundane (which is not necessarily a negative appellation) art just doesn't sit right. For me, Batman has always worked best when stylized into a Vertigo-esque place. Think of Kelley Jones' take on the character. Or J.H. Williams III, who will make an appearance in the coming weeks. Batman is hardly a traditional superhero - which is odd to say, given that he's one of the originals - and so deserves something more than traditional superhero art.

My humble opinion only, of course. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 438: Batman #656, October 2006

I read a really great review of this particular issue many moons ago, commenting on the wonderful metatextual commentary as Batman fights a flock (pack? gaggle?) of Man-Bats in a London art museum. Bedecking the walls are Lichtenstein-esque "Pop Art" pictures, isolated and enlarged panels from old 50s romance and war comics. The panels within panels provide a commentary, almost a chorus, in the background of Batman's battle. These background panels also include some onomatopoeic "POW"s and "WHAM"s, reminiscent of nothing less than the infamous 60s Batman television show.

All of which, coupled with the hearkening back to Mike Barr and Jerry Bingham's Son of the Demon, lets us know that Morrison knows his Bat-history, a fact that is reinforced time and again across the course of his run.

I had an interesting experience reading this comic. As I mentioned for yesterday's comic, Batman is trying to relearn how to be Bruce. In the opening pages of this issue, Bruce is flirting, socializing, and it's very awkward. Though, not for Bruce, but more for the reader. This is an aspect of the character that we're not used to seeing for more than a page, perhaps, and here he's got a fair chunk of the opening pages. And then, as the Man-Bats crash through skylights and attack the museum-goers, the caption boxes become Batman caption boxes. Clipped. Sure of themselves. Analytical. And the comic returns to being comfortable for us to read as the Bat and the Man Bats enter combat. It speaks to the notion that not only is Batman relearning how to be Bruce Wayne, but we are relearning how to see Batman as Bruce Wayne.

And, of course, this issue introduces a character who easily out-obnoxiouses Jason Todd as Robin, Damian Wayne, the Son of the Bat. 10 years later, Damian is still a going concern in the DCU, no small feat for a character created within the last 30 years or so. Not many of them have that kind of longevity. Though Damian's road is certainly not an easy one. As we'll see.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 437: Batman #655, September 2006

(I'll blog this properly tomorrow. We're going to start a read through Grant Morrison's Batman opus.)

It's tomorrow now. I'm laid up on the couch with some pretty bad back pain, though the Robaxacet is helping. I think it's somewhat fitting, though, as I imagine that this is the sort of pain Batman deals with on a daily basis. I was recalling a conversation with a friend earlier today. We're the same age, and would occasionally, when we were feeling old, talk about the pains that follow us through life. I'll admit, I did not take care of my body when I was younger, nor do I now, though I'm beginning to see the advantage of doing so, or having done so. 42 is far too young to have these kind of body problems. On the other hand, I've always maintained that, when death comes a'knockin', I'll slide into home plate in a battered and weary vessel.

Many of Morrison's major works get held up as examples of how one can craft an intelligent, moving, exciting, and rewarding superhero tale. His run on JLA reinvigorated a flagging DCU after the 90s. All-Star Superman is hailed as one of the great mythic pieces on that character (more often than not by yours truly). His Seven Soldiers and Multiversity are shining examples of magical thought, interrogating our relationships with our fictions. But I don't often hear too much about his Batman series. I think there's a couple of reasons for this. First, Morrison takes on Batman at a time when DC Comics was floundering again - the completion of his run in Batman Incorporated straddles the introduction of the New 52, which unfortunately undermined much of what he'd set up in the previous six years. Second, Batman is almost too popular a character to be a Morrison story. In JLA, he's one of many, so the weirdness of a Morrison story is spread out over a number of characters. But as a solo hero, Batman is revered to broadly for there to be the same kind of wide-spread acceptance of Morrison's treatment of the character. And it's very important, right here at the beginning of what's likely going to be a months-long project, to note that Morrison's Batman is a strange, strange comic. What we're seeing is the application of the kind of aesthetic that drove his brilliant runs on Animal Man and The Doom Patrol to a character who is very likely the most popular superhero on the planet. I can imagine how jarring such a thing must have been for a lot of readers.

But on to this initial issue. If we were going to do a full, proper read-through of Morrison's work on the Bat, we'd have to start with JLA, I think, but rather than draw this read-through out any longer than it has to be, we'll start with his taking over Batman's eponymous title. The main thing to note about this issue is that it is about Batman, rather than about Bruce, but it's about Batman learning to be Bruce again. We like to talk about how the hero and the secret identity, in a perfect situation, are one and the same, but at this point in the character's history, it seems that Batman has become the primary personality, supplanting the aspects that are Bruce Wayne. Alfred's commentary is a lovely little metatext about the evolution of the character over the years preceding Morrison's story. How does the Bat re-incorporate the man again? If we consider that Morrison's story starts in Batman, and ends in Batman Incorporated (think of the numerous meanings of that second word), the thrust of the story is obvious. But, before we get to that re-incorporation, there are numerous twists and turns to navigate.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 193: The Amazing X-Men #3, May 1995

First things first: to anyone living in Calgary this weekend, Happy Pride! The weather might suck, but I can't imagine it'll damp the spirits too much of the celebrants.

I'll start on today's comic at the end. The final sentence of this issue gave me goosebumps. This issue, from the Nicieza/Kubert team was everything that an X-Men comic should be. Soap opera meets action movie meets light philosophical journey. Sort of like The Matrix. So let me back up and start from the start.

Magneto, on the opening page, asks the most important question, but it's sadly one that can never have an answer. While standing over the grave of Charles Xavier, he asks if Professor X would make the same decision he is wrestling with. But for Xavier, the question is not whether or not he would sacrifice everything to save the world, but whether or not everything should be sacrificed for him to save the world. How does one, even a dead one like Professor X, even begin to deal with that question? And it's also a question that invites X-readers into this conundrum on a very profound level. Long-time readers are invested in Xavier's dream, of his world of freedom and equality. It's virtually impossible to be a fan of the X-Men without having some investment in this ideal, and as such those fans are also well-versed in the fundamental beliefs of Professor X. So Magneto's question at the beginning, and it's slight reversal from the professor's perspective begs an answer not from the man whose grave he stands over, but from the readers sharing the moment: would Professor X sacrifice literally everything to return to life and save the world? It's the question of a delicate balance between a selfless and a selfish act.

We finally have the confrontation that seems to have been a long time coming in this issue as well: Magneto versus Apocalypse. I have to remind myself that, from a publication perspective, the stories I've been looking at over the last few weeks only took 3 months to come out, but, as I've noted before, one of the great things about this crossover is that it is so well-wrought as to feel like this reality had been around for ages. The confrontation is a nice parallel, taking place as it does at Xavier's grave, of the climactic confrontations we've often seen between Xavier and Magneto over the course of the X-universe's history. A little more physically-inflected, perhaps, but similar in tone. And, given that Magneto has been depowered, there's also an interesting parallel to Xavier's confinement to a wheelchair. This loss, on the part of both men, stokes a fire in their souls to use everything in their power to do what they believe is right.

I had a conversation with a very good friend and comics scholar recently about my reading of the Age of Apocalypse, and he noted how much he liked some of the revisions of the characters in this reality, even to the point of preferring them to the originals. I have to concur with this assessment, especially in the case of Magneto's son, Quicksilver. In the original universe, Quicksilver is, if you'll forgive the colloquialism, a dick. I've never liked him, never understood the character, never appreciated any of his qualities. But in this iteration of the X-universe, he's noble almost to the point of Cyclops-ian sacrifice. Which, with that goosebump-inducing final sentence, of what it means to be X-Men, returns us to the question Magneto asks at the issue's beginning. How much sacrifice is too much? How many of these individuals are better people as a result of the circumstances of their existence. We, as readers, are torn with regard to Magneto, whom we know will become an apocalyptic villain in his own right if his plan is carried through, and this feeling of being torn carries over to some of the characters who revolve around Magneto and his team. This, I think, is perhaps the most brilliant aspect of this crossover. We know, of course, that things will return to normal, and if they do, there will be very little change in the regular continuity. This is often the case with major crossovers, and actually is a great criticism of them. They offer the illusion of drama. But the Age of Apocalypse offers something that none of the others, that I can think of, do: loss. We lose these characters, these better selves of some of the less-likable people in the X-stable. So while the fictional universe itself will, by and large, be unchanged, the readers are. We continue on through the ongoing drama of the X-Men knowing how things could have been, and, dare I say it, should have been, for some of these fictional individuals.

And that, I think, is as good a place as any to stop for a bit. With the beginning of school this week, and my first proper, full-on lecturing starting, I've prepared some pre-read and written posts for the next week, a break for a bit from the Age of Apocalypse. We leave at the cliffhanger, major characters in the hands of the villains, heroes desperately trying to salvage a plan that seems to be unraveling. And when we return, we'll get a glimpse of the other heroes in the Marvel U, and how this turn of events has effected them. Will they be better selves?

In the interests of fair warning to those who are faint of heart or sensibility, the next week will be looking at the Eros Comix "mangerotica" line from Fantagraphics. It's explicit, lewd, and occasionally off-putting porn and erotica. If it's not to your taste, please give the week a miss. I'll be back to the Age of Apocalypse next Sunday. See you, if only virtually, tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 179: The Amazing X-Men #2, April 1995

Continuing the saga of the human evacuation from Maine, we are given a rare opportunity to see the X-Men, specifically Quicksilver and Storm, in a story that is typical, in the most positive sense of the word, of the line that the X-stories often tread. While the lives of every human waiting to be airlifted to safety are being threatened, the two make a choice to rescue a single, small, human child, regardless of the fact that their presence at the evacuation site would provide greater safety to the majority. The X-Men function very often as a civil rights metaphor, for all kinds of civil rights, but the sense of the individual is never lost in the sense of the community. One person has no more or less inherent value than any other, a fact that is at the heart of all civil rights movements, and so it is proven whenever we see the merry mutants turning from the larger actions of the cause to the smaller actions of the person. It's a nice touch, and proof once more of Fabian Nicieza's facility as a writer of the X-Men.

I'm interested in tomorrow's comic, as we'll be looking at Factor X, and seeing Apocalypse's operation somewhat from the inside. Scott Summers is often cited as one of the most noble and heroic figures in the Marvel U - it'll be interesting to see if he maintains this nobility even in the face of having been indoctrinated into Apocalypse's upper echelons his whole life. See you tomorrow, then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 178: The Amazing X-Men #1, March 1995

We step back slightly in time with this issue from the previous couple of days' Weapon X issues and see the Sentinel evacuation from the North American perspective. There's also a nicely succinct panel in which Magneto and the team lay out what each ancillary team is doing, thus giving us a brief breakdown of the action of most of the main crossover titles. It's a deftly handled little summary of the crossover. Fabian Nicieza, who writes this series, fell into a bit of a trap, I think, due to his involvement with Marvel during this period. The comics, and their creators, tried too hard to mimic the successes of the Image crew, a course of action that, rather than enhancing the Marvel U somehow, simply took everything down to the levels of the Liefeld/McFarlane-led Image nonsense. That may seem harsh. I've said before that I was out of the comics scene for most of that era, but the amount of early-90s comics I've read since then seem to support the claim that it was a terrible time for sequential superhero stories.

But Nicieza is a pretty good writer. His work here is well-wrought, and when he starts to write Thunderbolts after Kurt Busiek's tenure, he really tells some excellent superhero narratives. He's not one of the superstar writers, but that's fine. He's a writer who obviously loves the genre within which he works (which is not to say lesser writers love it any less) and who's got a good handle on how a superhero story can, and should, be told.

This issue, as far as its place in the crossover, is a bit of a set-up comic. There's a training sequence, a pep talk from Magneto, and a revelation of villains on the last page. Not much else, narratively or character-wise, happens. But we're continuing with this series tomorrow, at which point I expect things to kick into high gear, as only a 90s superhero comic can. See you then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 164: X-Men #41, February 1995

And the "Legion Quest" concludes. I wish I'd been following comics when this was published, as I'm curious as to how much Professor X's death was a foregone conclusion. They certainly advertise the fact of his death a lot in the comics I've read over the last couple of days, so I get the suspicion that it was no secret. This initial story was really just a way of moving things into the "Age of Apocalypse," so it doesn't really stand by itself. If we want to look at it novelistically, which I think is a good way of considering the AoA, for all that it's played with action and pathos, these first 6 issues are prologue. X-Men: Alpha, the comic I'll be reading tomorrow, is the beginning of Chapter 1 proper. This raises something that I touch on in my initial thoughts on Mark Waid's Flash that will be up later today, the problem of how we can read, from an academic point of view, ongoing serialized comics. One can pick up and read a Shakespearean play, or a Cormac McCarthy novel, and have a finite work to critique, but how does one do that with something like the X-Men. A crossover like AoA offers a way of separating out a finite story. This prologue we've just finished links the story back to its serialized roots, a factor in these kinds of works of fiction that we can never, and should never, discount completely, but also offers a very succinct and simply told sequitur that moves us into a self-contained portion of the ongoing serial.

Not that I'm going to attempt an academic reading of the "Age of Apocalypse," but I recognize the potential this sort of crossover offers for just such a reading.

That rambled a bit. Tired morning. We'll broach chapter 1 tomorrow, and see what the Age has to offer us. See you then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 161: X-Men #40, January 1995

How does Legion get his hair to do that? I feel like he and Wolverine must go to the same barber shop.

I had made a deal with myself after yesterday's drubbing of the first part of this story to try to find the good in this second part. And I really did try. But then there was this utterly, ridiculously racist moment in the series, made all the more deplorable when considered from the perspective of a racist comment happening in a freaking X-Men comic!

Having been time-displaced by Legion, Iceman, Storm, Bishop, and Psylocke are suffering a very specific form of amnesia, in that they remember who they are, but not what they are or where they come from. While trying to suss this out, at one point Iceman, a.k.a. Bobby Drake, brings up the fact that they all woke up in "funky aerobic outfits," but then extends the strangeness of their outfits to the fact that their group includes "a British accent in an Asian body...a black woman with white hair," to which he adds the commentary "guys, that's not normal."

Um.

Fabian Nicieza, who wrote this issue, often gets coupled with Scott Lobdell (who, I think, masterminded the whole AoA crossover) as amongst the worst X-writers in the title's history. As I noted yesterday, the nineties were not a kind era to superhero comics. There's a couple of moments in this issue where the Liefeld-ness of it all comes through. Archangel (or Angel, or whatever he goes by at this point) has the constant grimace on his face, as do most other characters in the issue. Only old school Professor X and pre-evil Magneto have anything resembling human expressions. But Nicieza's dialogue is generally not bad. His run on Thunderbolts in the mid-2000s was very enjoyable. And, unless my memory deceives me, far less problematically normative. Now, I get that I come from a background that is predisposed to notice things like this, and I'd like to clearly state that I'm not accusing Fabian Nicieza of being racist. What I think this demonstrates rather nicely is, hopefully, the advances we've made in our use and understanding of language over the past 20 years. Iceman's use of the word "normal" just doesn't hold water (frozen or liquid) anymore. It didn't then either, let's be honest, but I think the word "normal" has undergone a significant shift in meaning, from denoting things that are all the same because of their homogeneity to things that are all the same because of their heterogeneity. I'll just leave that there as a talking point.

As for the story itself, it seems to be moving quite slowly. Chances are there was a need to pad things a bit in order that the AoA get coordinated properly, so I can forgive that. There's one really effective moment at the very end of the comic, in which Lilandra, the Shi'ar ruler, appears as a giant hologram in the sky above the present day X-Men, and warns them that Legion's actions in the past are affecting the fabric of reality.

(As an aside, I wonder how many times the term "fabric of reality" has been used in superhero comics to point out the seriousness of a storyline.)

This moment rather nicely offers a sense of scale and perspective, and is a testament to Andy Kubert's pencilling. I'll go on record as saying that his is not a style of art that I'm overly fond of, but he's really very good at what he does.

There was a bit of positivity in there, right? *Sigh* Okay, I'll try again tomorrow. See you then.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 54: 1602 #8, June 2004

And so we come to the conclusion of Gaiman's early modern superhero epic. I think I have to say that it was a little underwhelming. The best bits involved Reed Richards, and those only took place in the last two issues. In this issue, Richards outlines a taxonomy of the sciences based around the metaphor the the Knights of the Round Table, each equal and each a part of a whole. A cool (actually, very cool) metaphor, and one that scholars and academics could benefit from, I think.

The climax of this tale is a letdown, frankly. There's so much that could have been done with an early modern approach to the superhero, and Gaiman teases out some of the implications with the Inquisition, with Clea's return to her realm, with Doom as a power in Europe. But the ending comes down to a fairly standard superhero trope: heroes and villains join forces to fix a problem with the spacetime continuum. How many times have we seen this? On the one hand, I suppose, that's the whole point, that we have seen these things before, and that they are all a part of the fundamental stories that Richards muses upon in the previous issue. And, in many ways, this is how we can forgive 1602 it's flaws, by considering that it is simply a superhero story (are they ever simple?) wrapped in an early modern setting. I think that the problem with this explanation is that the world Gaiman and Kubert create is so intriguing that to wrap it up in a superhero story seems somehow to quash its potential as a vehicle for stories. I've not read any of the subsequent series that spun out of 1602, but the fact that there is no ongoing series based on these concepts currently extant means that the potential of the setting was not realized.

Writers and artists cannot, of course, always be historians and scholars. But had Gaiman sat down with such people, co-wrote with them even, then this could have been an amazing alternate history piece coupled with the myths of the Marvel superheroes. We would also have needed an ongoing, or at least longer than 8 issue, run on the title. What's happening on the African continent of this reality? And South America? The title is problematically Eurocentric, even as the contemporary comics are problematically North America-centric.

Ah well. A pleasant, if flawed, deviation from the usual superhero fare, an experiment with, I would argue, inconclusive results. The characters are going to show up in "Secret Wars," so perhaps we'll see something spin out of that eventually.

The promised song will have a link here some time today, but probably not until later this evening. Recording a song is a lengthy process.

I'm not sure what to move on to tomorrow. I actually have a cool idea, but I'm also getting my exam questions this week, so my cool idea may have to wait until I have sufficient time to devote to it. Either way, see you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 53: 1602 #7, April 2004

There's an interesting moment in this series when the newly rescued Reed Richards is conjecturing about the nature of the universe within which he and his comrades exist. He posits that the fundamental principles of his universe are stories, that they exist in "a universe which favours stories. A universe in which no story can ever truly end; in which there can only be continuances." There's a couple of ways we can read this. First, it could be a purely metatextual moment, in which we, as readers, have the ironic stance of understanding that Richards is absolutely right, that their fictional milieu is a universe that deals in continuances. If that's the case, though, it flies in the face of what Gaiman has previously stated about the nature of stores, that they have beginnings, middles, and ends. Perhaps, in Richards' case, and coming as no surprise from me, it's not stories that his universe favours, it's myths.
The second way we can read this moment is of a character realizing the nature of his universe. It's slightly different from the metatextual moment, because rather than us having a realization about his reality, he himself is having a realization about his own reality, a realization that is separate from our understanding of reality as readers. When the Human Torch says "Ah yes...atomies and suchlike" in response to Reed's wonderings about fundamental principles, he is reflecting our understanding of our reality. We understand that it rests upon the fluctuations of the quantum foam. So Reed is realizing that his reality does not rest on that sub-atomic level of reality, but on the level of stories.
The third way of interpreting this is the most interesting, however. Perhaps here Reed is not making a claim about his own reality, nor is the comic pointing out a metatextual moment for us, but perhaps it is suggesting that our reality, the one in which we read the comic, is actually based on stories. I know, for the rationalists amongst us, it makes no sense. But if you consider that we place ourselves in narratives all the time, and that these narratives have a far more fundamental impact on our lived experience than the "atomies and suchlike," then we really could say that the fundamental principles of our existence, and thus our universe, is stories.

That's all I've got for today. Conclusion of 1602 tomorrow, and some music.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 52: 1602 #6, March 2004

This issue opens with a conversation on the Moon between Doctor Strange and The Watcher. In which all the things that the Gaiman avatar in the previous issue's opening tells us are, in a far more organic way, revealed. I am still mystified as to the need for that opening in yesterday's issue. Ah well, I'll let it go, I suppose.
I need to also add a caveat to my promise to have music to link to on Sunday. Only 4 verses of the Ballad of the Fantastick have been released so far in the series, so it might be a very short bit of music. I'd considered trying to write a couple more verses myself, but, to be honest, I'm writing and studying an awful lot these days, so adding more to my plate seems like a great way to have a nervous breakdown. (Which might make for some interesting posts, but at what cost...AT WHAT COST!!???)

Anyway, on to today's comic.

I'm noticing a trend of sorts when I'm writing about runs or series of comics in this project. By about this point in a run, I'm running out of things to say. I mean, 1602 is still really good, but I think I've addressed the problems I have with it, and pointed to the things about it that I like, yet, including today's issue, I've got 3 more days of trying to find something to say about it. Perhaps now is as good a time as any to address whether or not this series was really the big deal it was made out to be at the time. A quick look at the GCD shows that this was Gaiman's first major comics work, really, since the end of The Sandman. I remember when it was solicited and then released that it marked Gaiman's "triumphant" return to the medium, but I wonder if the story was overshadowed by the man at this point. Not that I'm saying that it's a bad story. It's actually very good, and a very creative way of using these characters, aside from the heavy-handed exposition I've already complained about. But is it of Sandman calibre? No. It really isn't. I think I actually prefer Gaiman's next Marvel project, The Eternals, to this one, but again I wonder if it's because there was so much hype around this series and I'm not entirely sure it lived up to it.

Ah, is this another trend? The further I get into a series, the more critical I get? I shudder to think what's going to happen when I hit up Milligan's Shade. By the time I hit issue 70, I'll just hate it through and through. (That will never happen with Shade, by the way.)

Okay, that's enough of that. Tomorrow and Sunday we continue on with the rise of the Marvels in the seventeenth century. What I'm starting to think on is whether or not this series, aside from the sequels it spawned, has any real ramifications for the Marvel Universe, or, if not, whether or not it could have. See you tomorrow.

(Oh, actually, can I mention one other thing? I'm sooooo glad that there is no frickin' Wolverine in this series. Finally a Marvel comic that doesn't feel the need to use the most over-used [next to Batman] character in superhero stories to bump up its sales. Okay, rant over.)

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 51: 1602 #5, February 2004

I broke one of my most sacred rules with regards to comics yesterday. I looked at the solicitation and preview information for "Secret Wars." I only mention this because it's in some ways pertinent to something I want to address from today's comic.

But before we get to that, I'll say that the story is really gripping me now. I finished reading this issue today and was unhappy that I'd have to wait until tomorrow to read the next one. (I know, I don't have to, but this is that discipline thing I mentioned a few weeks back, right?) 1602, perhaps a bit surprisingly, is actually a Nick Fury story. I hadn't really put that one together on previous readings of the series, but he's the fulcrum about which the whole story is turning. Not to say that he's necessarily the most important person to the events that are taking place in early modern London, but he's the focal character through which we're witnessing the unfurling of events. I've never been a huge fan of Fury, though in many respects I think that's because I've read only a  few comics that really did a good job with him. Most of the time, for me at least, he's been a background player in a world filled with far more colourful costumes. Which is, of course, exactly how Fury would like it. But then you read something like this, or more ideally, the Secret Warriors series, which demonstrates just how well Fury actually fits into this world. (And, as an aside, I'm pretty sure that the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. television series is gearing up to adapt Secret Warriors, and if they do, it'll be amazing.)

I mentioned something I wanted to address about this comic. It's the first page. As a reader of superhero comics, one has to become inured to the recaps that are a fundamental part of superhero storytelling. So to find one done in the creative way that the one in this issue is done is kind of cool:

It doesn't take up story space within the story, it just lays out the characters and situations about which we need to be aware. I can't remember off the top of my head whether or not this was done because the issues were shipping late. The publication dates in the indicia don't indicate that, but that doesn't mean that the series wasn't late in a few places.
I think, however, that this page was added for a different reason. The first sentence from Gaiman's mouth (so to speak) is "We are in the Marvel Universe." He continues with "It's 400 yeas ago. For reasons we do not yet understand, people and events are coming into existence at the wrong time." Further down, Kubert's avatar asks "Hey, Neil, if this is the Marvel Universe, what are all the tiny dinosaurs doing?" My concern with the story, then, is that up to this point there's no indication that the tale is meant to be set in the regular continuity of the Marvel U. It reads far more like one of DC's "Elseworlds" stories, or an extended "What If" tale. Placing it in the main Marvel U makes the story far more interesting, of course, but surely there must have been some way for a writer with as much facility as Gaiman to tell us this without having to step in and basically blurt it out. In fact, had we been able to understand this from the get go, the four issues that precede this one would have had an added depth. The problem is that, as I've noted in the last four posts, there are historical events, aside from the appearance of the Marvel characters, that simply do not jibe with the events of "actual" history, and this pulls us from the notion that all this is happening in the main Marvel U.

So why is this page here, then?

Part of me wonders if maybe there was an editorial intervention that asked Gaiman to place his story in the mainstream continuity in order that Marvel could wring a bit more prestige out of having him write for them. Rather than a one-off "What If" tale, all of a sudden superstar writer Neil Gaiman is telling a cataclysmic story of the main Marvel Universe. I like to think this is not the case, that it was Gaiman's intent all along, but knowing what I do about the way that the editorial oversight of the comics industry functions, I would not be surprised if this was exactly that kind of intervention.

For myself, I choose to ignore this page. I don't need this story to be set in the main Marvel U for it to be a good story. In fact, separating it from that continuity makes it a story. By this, I mean that it has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that kind of containment of narrative is something that Gaiman himself once argued for in ending The Sandman. I've also noted Frye's complaint about comic strip characters, that they live on in a deathless state, another way of saying that the process of narrative must have that kind of containment. That said, the ones that don't, which really are only serialized superhero comics and religious narratives, move off into the direction of typological reading. But that's a topic for a dissertation (and will be soon.)

The last question I'll pose, and perhaps those who read this blog might know, is to ask whether or not this page shows up in the collected edition of the series? It would serve no purpose other than to shift the setting in a collection, which would be extremely jarring. I'll have to flip through a copy next time I'm at the comic store.

See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 50: 1602 #4, January 2004

Do you ever think about Doom?

I sometimes think that Doctor Doom is easily the most versatile and well-realized character in the Marvel Universe. Yes, he's a totalitarian dictator who believes only he is fit to rule, well, the universe. But that's not all he is, and it seems to me that the various investigations of his personality have fleshed out a character with far more depth than most of the heroes who oppose him. I'm thinking here of his turn at the end of the original Secret Wars series, his inclusion in the Future Foundation in Hickman's F.F., and now here, in 1602. Yes, he's a totalitarian dictator, but he, honestly, seems to wrestle with his hubris often enough to demonstrate that he's considered all the options and still come out with himself as the best one. I've not read any of the series that have focussed on the man himself, but as a major supporting cast member for so much of the MU, he's fascinating.

The intrigues continue in this issue, and we finally are given some clue as to the fate of the four from the Fantastick. This issue also really begins to highlight the differences between the world of 1602 and our own, aside, of course, from the existence of metahumans. North America is said to be home to some particularly large "leather wings," pterodactyls that seem to have escaped from the Savage Land. And there's a strange panel at the bottom of the fourth page depicting a torch-bearing mob (because there's always a torch-bearing mob) that is being scrutinized by a black cat with extremely large fangs. Gaiman and Kubert do a rather remarkable job of making this realization of difference a very subtle process. There's little to no metahuman activity in the first issue, and even when it does happen, it's fairly mundane because we're expecting it, so the trick is to make the world strange in other ways. The surrounding fauna and weather is a nice way of doing it, as well as the subtle historical changes (i.e., the survival of the Roanoake colony, Elizabeth's death a year early, Raleigh's death long before the actual date of his death).

There is a brief telling of the origin of Virginia Dare in this issue, involving (spoiler) her touching what looks like a floating infinity symbol that sparks her powers. Two things spring to mind: first, the Infinity Gauntlet and gems, and I can't for the life of me remember if that has anything to do with this story. Second, the repetition of the infinity symbol in The Multiversity: Pax Americana, which I was discussing with a friend yesterday, and which has absolutely no bearing on 1602 whatsoever.

Okay, we're past the halfway point, and things are getting exciting. More tomorrow!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 49: 1602 #3, December 2003

There's a couple of parts of this comic in which we get an inkling that the 1602 world isn't just an experiment in displacing the characters of the Marvel Universe, but actually a part of that very same universe. "...I merely watch," the text of the final caption box on the first page, is the blatant clue as to the narrator's voice, and the back of his head shows up in a later panel. That Uatu makes his presence known makes 1602, at the very least, a possible What If world, which, by this point, have been acknowledged as part of the Marvel multiverse.

These questions of multiversality (or, to quote Morrison, multiversity) offer some interesting ways of coming at superhero comics. Leaving aside for a moment that a newly-published theory is actually positing interaction between parallel universes, in many ways, especially for the last decade or so, we've seen rampant tacit interaction between parallel comics universes. There is a long history of multiverses and alternate realities in superhero comics, stemming from the "imaginary stories" of the fifties and sixties all the way to Morrison's current meditation on the concept in Multiversity. Interesting shorthands have been created that allow writers to deal with multiverses, the notion of "the Bleed" being perhaps the most useful, and most used. These veins of the multiverse not only separate the various dimensions, but also parse the universe in terms of the biological, a metaphor with which we are fundamentally in tune. And while this notion, and its genesis in the differing vibrational rates of alternate Earths (see Flash v.1 #123) primarily finds its origins in DC Comics and their eventual offshoot Wildstorm, Marvel writers, Jonathan Hickman notable amongst them, have taken up the concept in the Marvel Universe(s). The Bleed, or the veins of the multiverse, become a concept in numerous multiverses from different publishers, and thus become a metaphoric link between economically disparate fictions. Thus we see a version of the Sentry show up in Final Crisis, gathered together with other versions of Superman (along with a version of Supreme), or we see the Avengers take on a barely concealed version of the Justice League in a recent issue of that series. These veins allow us to think superhero comics not as disparate fictions attempting to grapple with the mythic resonances of these kinds of characters, but as parts of an organic whole, combinations and permutations moving toward some kind of solution. Whether or not the solution even exists is beside the point. It is the movement that matters.

Not that this says anything about the comic in question, really. This issue, at least, combats the problem I was thinking about yesterday, that of the novelty of revelation carrying the story more than the narrative itself. Things happen in this issue. Major events propel the plot forward and characters are developed in such a way that they are made distinct from the archetypes from which they are drawn. Not too distinct, mind you, but enough that we can see the way in which the different time period manages to change the surfaces of the characters at the very least. But I still can't get away from the idea that this story would not be nearly as well-regarded if it didn't feature the Marvel superheroes. Only three issues in and I'm already getting ready to set it aside and read something else before finishing the series. But I did say there'd be music by next weekend, which means the series needs to be finished, in which case, I'll see you again tomorrow, direct from the 17th century.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 48: 1602 #2, November 2003

I realized today that I haven't talked much about covers yet. I love this one. I think it's one of the nicest covers I've seen. (That's why it's a little bigger today.) It, and all of the covers for 1602, were created by Stratford, Ontario artist Scott McKowen. The ostensible use of a cover on a comic, and on anything, really, is to draw the eye to that object over all the other objects that might be vying for your attention.

Look at that cover. Even surrounded by hundreds of other comic, that's going to draw your eye.

I don't know how others look at it, but I begin to look for esoteric symbols in the hedge designs. That's only one of the ways that this cover also achieves the feat of really expertly symbolizing the atmosphere and action of the story beneath it. Did you ever see a cover of a comic and get really excited by it and then find that, really, nothing even remotely like what's happening on the cover happens inside? This cover, without explicitly citing some of the interior artwork, tells you precisely what's going to happen in the story within, but spoils nothing. The figures on the cover are doing precisely what they do in the comic, but in a highly symbolic environment. Some move toward the center, some are left at the periphery, some look ahead and some look back.

And that's what happens in this issue. I feel like this one's going to be a bit weird to talk about, because it really is a matter of each chapter basically breaking down to intrigue upon intrigue. Plans were made, predictions divined, powers revealed. In a lot of ways, this book is really a love-letter to the Marvel characters, proof from a gifted pen that they really could exist in any milieu, that there really is something timeless about them. The trouble with this is whether or not the story is really that good. Let me explain: I'm trying to ascertain how much of the appeal of the story is the revelation of the characters in a new setting, the novelty of seeing Daredevil as a blind Irish minstrel, or Peter Parker...ahem....Parquaugh as Nicholas Fury's assistant, and how much is the actual story. Or would this story, one of the end of the world and a lost Templar treasure still be as good if it were not the Marvel characters filling the leading roles. Does the story depend too much on the affection we have for the characters prior to their appearance here? And what does that say about the way comics work, let alone why these characters have succeeded where others have dwindled away into history? We no longer read Timely's original Vision, but his contemporary Captain America is still about. Many superheroes simply disappear, so what makes these ones so loved, and so adaptable?

These are the kinds of questions that drive me in my research. I think they're important ones to ask.