The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1104: Day of Vengeance: Infinite Crisis Special #1, March 2006

I think that DC's Infinite Crisis event was one of the worst-managed, worst-conceived line-wide crossovers I've ever seen. The number of comics required to get the whole story, if such a thing were possible, was ridiculous, and even with guides, both print and online, the story made little to no sense, and damaged fundamentally the ending of the previous, and masterful, Crisis on Infinite Earths. I think it was here that I started disliking Geoff Johns' take on the DCU, though I'll admit that his Green Lantern stuff kicked serious ass. But,  though his DCU is not my DCU, he's managed to be the guy basically calling the shots for the DC comics universe for the last decade or so, and that's unfortunate because that's about as long as it's been since I've really followed a DC series. Only the recent "Young Animal" stuff has sucked me back in. Well, and the New 52 Animal Man.

Anyway, this is a neat glimpse into the arcane and occult side of the Infinite Crisis, in which the Spectre is going nuts because he's got no host, and all the magicians have to come together to try to stop him. How many times has the Spectre pulled this kind of thing? I feel like I've read this story before. And, if the Spectre truly is a tool of the Christian God, don't you think that deity would stop its tool from trying to destroy creation every few years?

Anyway, a pretty good comic. Willingham is quite good at the fantasy/occult/superhero stuff. I should probably read a bit more of it.

To be continued.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - The Weekly Graphic Novel: Week 10 - Final Crisis: Revelations, 2009

In laying out my lineage of the link between religious writings and comics, the utilization of words and pictures to communicate sacred stories, I touched briefly on the remarkable creation by Greg Rucka in the late 2000s DCU of the "Crime Bible." I've the inklings of a paper on it in my head, but that's not what I'll get into here.

There were numerous mini-series that comprised the "Final Crisis" event, and at the time it seemed to me that they were actually completely separate stories, all culminations of a sort, that were conveniently grouped under a single event banner. I'm still mostly convinced that that was the case. But FC:Revelations at least meshes this climactic confrontation between The Question and the Religion of Crime quite nicely with the events of the greater crossover. Having not read the Legion of Superheroes tie-in, or the Flash Rogues tie-in, I don't know how much they bring to the larger tale, but Revelations brings a more street-level view of the ascension of Darkseid to the DCU. That might be a strange thing to say about a comic that features both God's spirits of Wrath and Mercy, but our focal character of Renee Montoya keeps things nicely grounded. And the story also shows that while the (New) gods may move in mysterious and abstract ways, their presences are more viscerally demonstrated by the mortals whose lives they touch. We do not talk to our gods, but only to the texts through which they ostensibly communicate with us, and Rucka's tale of the Crime Bible across a number of years explores this notion quite beautifully.

I will note that I'm not a big fan of Philip Tan's art in this series, or at least of one particular aspect: every prominent female character had D-cup breasts. I'm seriously not sure how the Question manages to stay upright. Batwoman, who in most other depictions I've seen is illustrated as lithe and athletic, here falls into the voluptuous (at least chest-wise) cliche of superheroines. Even the brief flashes of Supergirl late in the story show her with some breasts of Power Girl-stature. Now, this is certainly not to say that there are not, in the DCU as in reality, women who have chests this large, nor is this in any way a denigration of those who do possess such breasts. But the proliferation of them in this graphic novel took me right out of the story every time they were there. Like Batwoman, Montoya is usually depicted as being a relatively slight and athletic character. To suddenly see these volleyball-sized protuberances on her was completely off-putting. Aside from this, Tan's art was nicely evocative of the end of the world aesthetic of Gotham in the days of anti-life.

As Final Crisis #3 skipped over, with the Flashes, the initial wave of anti-life, it's nice to see it filled in in this story, and to see that the Crisis isn't simply a battle of gods, New, old, and superheroic, but also a tale of people dealing with a world that is ending.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Reading the Bat in Morrison's Final Crisis

There were those who loved Final Crisis, and those who hated it, much as there always is with crossover events. I loved it, but, as we've seen over the last few weeks, I'm biased. As such, I've decided that, rather than simply read the Batman comics that take place around Final Crisis, I'm going to read through FC as a part of my read of Morrison's Batman.

However, I'm going away for a bit over the weekend, so there'll also be a pause of 4 days in the read. I'll set some pre-read comics (always a necessity in a project like this) to post, but they won't be Morrison or Batman-related. And, maybe, it's good that we take a break where we do.

For anyone interested, this is the read order I'll be following over the next little bit. Only Final Crisis: Revelations is not written by Morrison, but I have to say that one of my favourite products of this era of the DCU is Rucka's "Crime Bible." I actually used it, and Revelations, in my MA Thesis.

So it'll look like this:

Batman #701
Final Crisis #1, 2, 3
[4 Day Break]
Superman Beyond #1, 2
Final Crisis: Revelations (should be the weekly graphic novel next week)
Final Crisis: Secret Files
Final Crisis: Submit
Final Crisis #4, 5
Batman #682, 683
Final Crisis #6, 7
Batman #702

You'll note that two of the Batman comics come well after the number we're up to, and they were published almost 2 years later. They fill in spaces between "R.I.P." and Final Crisis, and I'm not certain why they ended up being published when they were. Either Morrison hadn't figured out how Bruce got to where he gets, or he had, and people wanted to know so they published it. I'm unsure.

Once we hit Batman #702, that'll be the end of Morrison's run on that title (with the exception of the 700th anniversary issue). On to Batman and Robin, probably my favourite take on the team and the characters. But first, it's time for the end of the world...onward? 

Also, here's a much more comprehensive reading order, going back years before Final Crisis was ever published. One day...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 347: The Spectre v.3 #1, December 1992

As with yesterday. Read, but blogged tomorrow.

I've been collecting this particular run of The Spectre for years now, but I'm nowhere close to having the series. On my list of comics I'm looking for (which I might, one day, post here), I have series that are high priority and those that are low priority. The Spectre, though interesting, has always been low priority.

I'm not sure why. I began tracking it down when I read somewhere a review that compared it favourably to Gaiman's The Sandman. The thought of a series of that quality situated firmly in the DCU was alluring, especially to someone who had recently discovered Robinson's Starman. But all things Morrisonian or Gerberian took precedence, and The Spectre was relegated to the back burner. Having re-read this opening issue, however, all that might change. The creative team of Ostrander and Mandrake are not entirely unfamiliar to me, but they're not entirely familiar either. The art definitely has that early Vertigo feel to it, and the deployment of the surreal aspects of the character are really fantastic. I wrote on the character a while back, an older iteration of the hero by Jim Aparo, and while the Mandrake and Ostrander version seems to be keeping with the spirit of vengeance origins of the character, Mandrake's art is far less superhero than Aparo's, which, I find, it appropriate.

I don't have issue #2, so we probably won't see any more of the series until I've got a bit of a run to get through. But it might also be moving to the medium urgency priority list.

(I don't know who I'm kidding. All comics are high priority for me. Isn't that evident by now?)

The 40 Years fo Comics Project - Day 263: Adventure Comics #492, October 1982

Not quite a random selection. Last night I was continuing to make my way through DC One Million, and I came across the Legionnaires tie-in, and realized that I haven't spent much time at all in my 30 years of comics fandom on the Legion of Super-Heroes. So I pulled out one of the old Adventure digests and got some Legion action. Oh, and Black Canary, Shazam, Aquaman, Spectre, Superboy, Sandman, and Supergirl.

It turns out that the project of this digest-sized version of Adventure was to reprint all of the Legion stories in the order they appeared, so this issue has their third and fourth appearances, one featuring Supergirl and one featuring Superboy. They were so-so superhero stories, very much indicative of the gentle, somewhat neutered story-telling of the early sixties. The Legion are still back-up characters in these tales, but later issues feature them on their own. I must admit that part of the draw of the One Million issue was the fact that Tom Peyer wrote it. He's one of those comics writers that I find mysterious. I've read other comics writers singing his praises, but I know next to nothing about the man himself. Though his run on Hourman was absolutely wonderful.

I may perhaps read a bit more Adventure tomorrow. They're 100 pages each, so it's a bit of a time commitment, but you get a lot of stories for such a little package. The ones in this collection featured such luminaries as Alex Toth, Jim Aparo, Jim Mooney, Gardner Fox, amongst others, which is also kind of a nice draw. I will say, however, that the Spectre story in this issue was completely flat. Did not enjoy it at all. But that's the nice thing about an anthology. There's always something else to read. See you tomorrow.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 99: Adventure Comics #435, September-October 1974

Coincidentally, this issue's Spectre story is also written by Michael Fleisher. I hadn't realized this until I took the comic out to read it and opened to the first page. I like it when coincidence like that occurs.

The artwork in the first story ("The Man Who Stalked the Spectre") is by Jim Aparo, and is, unsurprisingly, really amazing. The off-kilter angles, the supremely-expressive faces, the dynamism of both characters and backgrounds. I'm slightly reminded of Ditko's frenetically-moving panel constructions, but this is more refined, less jumbled, perhaps. The motion of Aparo's panels is less roller coaster and more ghost train.

The story, set in New York (which is a bit of a rarity in the DCU) is pretty run of the mill, and honestly seems like it is taking place in a non-Gotham/Metropolis/Central City version of the DCU. There's a single reference to Superman, but this is only to accuse a reporter of looking like Clark Kent (which he really does). In fact, it's hard to say what might distinguish the story as being a "Spectre" story instead of simply a story about a vengeance-seeking ghost. We see the action from the focal viewpoint of the Kent-esque reporter, and in doing so get none of Jim Corrigan's internal thoughts on being the Spectre, which might have elevated the story from ghost story to Spectre story. It's an interesting choice to make, for sure, but in some ways moves us into the sort of frame of reference that has worked really well for Kurt Busiek in Astro City, but is less-successful in this particular tale.

The second feature, an Aquaman story, is really bad. Black Manta is poaching from farms surrounding Atlantis. Aquaman beats him up and then turns him back over to his flunkies, warning them never to come back. Aside from the Mike Grell art, which was really actually lackluster, there's little to recommend this story.

Sometimes comics that are old are just that - old. Not all of them can be nostalgic celebrations of the earlier eras of the superhero. Some of them are simply mediocre comics that happened between some really good ones. I get the inkling that more were mediocre than not, and that we see the older stuff through rose-coloured glasses sometimes. I've had a similar conversation about Barry Allen and Hal Jordan as Flash and Green Lantern, and how so many people revere them, but that they really only achieve any kind of iconicity after they've died and been replaced. We get swept up in the reverence that their replacements have for them and are tricked into thinking that we had that reverence too. Wally West will always be a better Flash than Barry Allen. Anyone watching the current series knows they're actually telling Wally's story, not Barry's. Barry functions to inspire the character of Wally, but it is Wally that makes the Flash into a top-level hero. Much of Barry's career was relatively mediocre.

Inflammatory words if ever there were any. See you tomorrow for day 100. Now I have to figure out what special comic is going to get the treatment.