Swamp Thing #2

Here be minor spoilers.

HOTT

Damn right Swamp Thing. I feel pretty positive about this book. The #1 had a distressing lack of Swamp Thing in the actual comic, but #2 starts strong and keeps Swamp Thing around for the bulk of the comic. So my first criteria was met.

You might remember that my first discussion of Swamp Thing #1 said that I thought this was to be a campy book, that Swamp Thing was a campy series. Well, I guess my assumptions were wrong because this seems like a pretty damn serious comic.

The comic uses the bulk of its pages for Swamp exposition. Swamp Thing prime talks to man Swamp Thing, Holland, and explains at length how Holland has to come back and become THE Swamp Thing again so that he might fight some age old evil. It is the expositional equivalent of that scene in The Great Outdoors with John Candy when he eats the giant steak. Like John Candy, I got it down, for the children

Since I don't know much about the Swamp Thing world, these pages of "you are the one true hero, Link!" actually help me get a grasp on what's going on in the comic. The exposition pairs well with the artwork, providing some good imagery to represent the rambling back story we're reading. The giant murderous flesh monster walking down main street is the image that sticks in my brain most.

Admittedly, I may get more out of this comic because I read Animal Man, and I can see and imagine how their stories are connected. I'm not sure how ol' Swampy #2 would stand on his own.

The back story that does come out through Holland and Swamp Thing prime's conversation hints at the brutal history of Holland as Swamp Thing. This is something that I know nothing about. I am confident I have read an origin Swamp Thing comic, written by Morrison, in which the Swamp Thing man is actually reborn as a plant. This seems to me the past that is referenced. I might have to do a little research, gosh darnit. Let me know if my assumptions are right about Morrison's Swamp thing. I'd be willing to pick up a trade.

MORE SPOILERS

Now that we're all here in spoiler land I can discuss how much I enjoyed the ending where the locals zombie him in his hotel room. Those twisted heads are disturbing, especially in mob form. Both Animal Man and Swamp Thing are doing a good job at making Sethe threatening in both a global and localized way.

The white haired woman thing was super lame though. Are writers not aware of how obvious these hooks are sometimes?

"Beware the woman with white hair!"
"Two-four good Swamp Buddy." Oh hell, I'm being attacked by a woman with a twisted around head and an axe, but yay a helmeted woman helps me escape but--"Oh god she has white hair"
*cue dramatic music*

Sigh.

Looking forward to #3.

DCnew52 Month 1 Roundup, Part 1

Been busy at work and at home, and that stack of comics wasn't going to read itself. So, while I'm two weeks behind, I just want to get all of this ugly #1 business out of the way. With awards. Some spoilers.

Aquaman


What was this character like before this book? Did he have his own book or did he just sort of stand around in the JL? Did people make fun of him back then or is this a new development for Aquaman's world?

However Aquaman used to be written, I gotta say, this is a great way to do him. The comic is really self deprecating and has a lot of fun with the character's ethos. Aquaman himself has a touch of emo to him, but I guess we need somewhere to start with the story. "My daddy boo hoo hoo." Shut up and fight some scary fish men.

Favourite part: when the police officer asks if he wants a glass of water and Aquaman just stares at him for a panel.

Best Sense of Humour about Aquaman Award

Firestorm

I felt good about this comic in the beginning. The fake terrorists were fairly brutal and a nice change from super villains. I didn't even mind the racial conflict established between the comic's two protagonists. The dialogue was okay and the bad guys were plausible and threatening.

Then the super powers came out and the characters erupted into melodramatic monologues before they even knew they were fucking super heroes. The end is a real big let down.

Best Sudden Turn to Shit Award

Wonder Woman

This comic has received a lot of praise. And justifiably. It sets up a pretty odd scenario with the villains/mystery, and it pulls Wonder Woman into the story with what seems to be the stretchiest stretches ever used in narrative. "Hey look, take this thing-a-ma-jim. Yay, now Wonder Woman is here."

The introduction of the centaurs is also one of the most disturbing things I've seen out of the New 52. At first I thought the figure in the feathers was WW, until she sliced off the head of that horse and then a mutherfucking torso started climbing out. Jesus mighty.

Most Intriguing Use of Greek Mythology Award
Poor Horsies Award

Animal Man

I was pretty excited for this comic. Maybe a little too excited. In my excitement I actually read a great deal of material that was released promoting this book and the new 52. Unfortunately this left me with not much new material to read when I sat down with the book. I had seen a lot of the pages before, so I really just read how they connected together.

That said, I enjoyed the family dynamic that Lamire sets up, especially with the daughter. Then when the dream sequence came, it really amped up the story. The last panel in particular shocked the socks off me. It's a fantastic reveal, grounded in a relatively conspicuous element from before. M said it would give her nightmares. Rightly so.

Hands Down Most Amazing and Disturbing Last Panel, like Ever, Award

Frankenstein

Not much to say about this one. The universe seems fine enough, but there isn't much immediately that pops out as all that fun. Frankenstein and team seem like DC's attempt at Hellboy. Problem is Frankie and the rest of the cast just don't seem as engaging as Hellboy and crew. Better shape up!

Biggest Dissapointment Award
Most Blatant Hellboy Ripoff Award

Batwoman

This book just looks incredible. It is worth a read if only to look at the page layouts. I'm pretty happy to see a lesbian as a main Bat-character as well.

Can't say I am immediately won over by the supernatural stuff that Batwoman seems to be up against. Fighting ghosts and skeleton-headed secret government agency middle management are not typically what I expect of a Batman comic, but I am willing to give it a chance.

My worries are a) that it might actually be ghosts or some shit which doesn't fit in with the Batman universe as I've come to know it. Batman and friends have enough trouble fighting the villains in Gotham, they don't need to fight ghosts on top of that. That's what Ghostbusters are for.

Or b) that it isn't a ghost and we're going to get pulled into an inappropriately adult shifted Scooby Doo caper. "I would have done it too, murdered all those people, if it weren't fer that pesky Batwoman."

Best Page Layouts Award
Holy Shit Batwoman is Fighting a Fucking Ghost Award

Batgirl

This is another comic that is just really charming. Batgirl is a lot of fun to read as a character. Her inner monologue as she handles the perps is quite funny and endearing.

Of course, there is an elephant in the room, a big elephant that got out of it's even bigger wheelchair. I understand why people are upset that Barbra Gordon has been undone as an example of a strong disabled female character. I don't have a but there, it's a real shame.

Barbara is dealing with posttraumatic stress though, so there is that. One disability was switched for another. This might not seem like a fair trade for those people that used to look to her as an strong example of a character with a disability, but maybe people with anxiety disorders feel differently.

Most Unfortunate Controversy

Batman

Batman is a fairly unremarkable comic. I mean I like Batman, and the beginning where he's fighting all the famous villains is pretty enjoyable, and their designs are pretty decent.

But the whole mystery that we are introduced to isn't all that intriguing. I have to say it should seem obvious to everyone that the revealed suspect obviously isn't the killer. Maybe in some weird comic-booky way, but not in any honest character driven way. Maybe I'm wrong, but it is most likely that I'm not. So the mystery seems a little hollow.


Highest Robins per Panel Ratio Award

Red Hood

Since I'm doing the run down on Batman titles, why not discuss Red Hood now and get this all done with.

So yes, Starfire is horribly objectified and portrayed as a body that desires casual sex with whomever. This is likely not the way that DC should responsibly portray their characters. If that's what her character is like, than there is nothing wrong with her choosing to have casual sex with every man in the DC universe. The sticking point is whether this is pandering to the base male audience that comic readers are often thought of as. So there. Starfire's depiction pretty much ruins what starts out as a pretty decent comic.

Yeah! I really liked the first few pages of Red Hood. The art is crisp, and the first few pages frame the setting and action really well. When Red Hood bursts from the fat priest suit I was conflicted. While this was pretty damn cool, I knew Starfire was about to show up.

And she does show up, and then I started feeling uncomfortable with the writing. While the shots of Starfire Baywatching are pretty reprehensible, one of the things that offends me the most is when Roy asks Red Hood about his relationship with Starfire he makes a comment about how he has had her. I didn't realize escaping in a jeep from a military group was also the time for locker room talk about penis conquests. Silly me.

To be fair, I've never been in a jeep fleeing a military force or a locker room. What would I know.

Biggest Boob Award
Best Opening Award

Is DCnU a Real Reboot?

Today we discuss the "n" of DCnU fame.

I've read a month worth of the DC"n"U comics. Not all of them, but enough. I probably hovered around half. <UPDATE: I counted, it is precisely 26> Some of the comics seem like reboots (Action Comics, Frankenstein), a lot seem like relaunches (Swamp Thing, Animal Man), and the rest just seem like new arcs for existing stories (Green Lantern, Batman).

So where does that leave us with this reboot? It's bullshit, but a brand of bullshit that makes a lot of sense.

Batman #1 provided my tipping point last week:

Can a ginge get some diversity?

Really? Thanks for the labels to indicate which Robin is which, but how the hell am I supposed to know what these characters mean? Wouldn't a reboot mean I'd meet each Robin in turn? This single panel hints at quite a lot of back story. Certainly more than five years, the time period DC claims this new U has existed.

I know a little bit about these Robins, but this panel screams bloated canon, the very thing I thought this reboot was supposed to deliver me from.

So while I do think that DC has in some sense lied or BSed us about where these new 52 books fall as reboots, maybe I'm not really angry about it.

As I read through these books, I did become frustrated at times when they presented characters with  backgrounds obviously not rebooted. After all, I started reading comics this month because I thought I could get into these stories with the slight-more-than-cursory knowledge I possessed. This was to be a starting point for me.

Green Lantern and Legion Lost are great examples of characters that seem to have just had a #1 slapped on their new adventure. These stories mean nothing on their own without each story's continuity.

Green Lantern succeeds as an introduction because it provides enough reference to fill in back story for a new reader. I don't know a lot about Green Lantern, but I know the basics. This story is a new arc, not a reboot, but it was written as a point of introduction.

Legion Lost, however, fails at introducing me to the Legion Lost's universe. Admittedly, I bring zero knowledge of these characters to my first read, so perhaps the book isn't as opaque as it seems to me, but the book also doesn't even try to help me catch up with the world. From Legion Lost #1:

Red Robot Guy: Tyroc, I told you the longer we waited following Alastor's wake, the harder it would be to pierce the Flashpoint Breakwall!

Dude with Goggles and White Vest, probably Tyroc: People needed our help in the 31st Century First, Wildfire. We came after him as soon as we could.

That is some excellent exposition. Just exquisite. I appreciate it trying but Legion Lost fails as a new arc / relaunch because without prerequisite knowledge this makes no goddamn sense at all.

The conclusion that I have come to about all of this DC reboot hand-waving, is that it is not so much a relaunch as a collective effort to make the continuities across the board more accessible.There are quibbles about what is still continuity, and what isn't. There are people that just want DC to lay out what has happened in the universe and what hasn't, what they are keeping as canon.

But, this is the wrong approach. DCnU is DC's attempt to let people in. We aren't starting each character over from scratch, but asking us as readers to let them recreate canon.

So, the reason DC can't give a straight answer about what has happened and what hasn't happened in this new DCU is that they plainly don't know. Canon is gone. Some characters are in similar places as they were before, some characters are now different, and there are some new additions to the DCU, but what has happened before the #1s is something that DC will create. Canon will be what the writers of the new 52 comics and the other comics to follow construct. And ultimately, what the eventual audience of this DCnU decide is canon.

Asking DC what is canon is like asking DC from 10 years ago what canon would be now. DC may have some preliminary plans and courses for this new launch, but from their comments online, their plans seem more than a little bit hazy. Whether DC has everything planned out already, or whether they have no idea, as an audience, I'm curious why some believe DC owes us an explanation of this nU's canon at all. How I see it now, DC's story and characters haven't been rebooted per say, rather the history of these characters.

Batman does have a bajillion different Robins still, just like he had before the reboot, but now maybe he has them for different reasons. Their back stories might be similar, but we can't necessarily assume that. They all might be his clones for all we know. God sakes, they look the same after all.

After a month I now think that the DCU isn't new, it just having it's history reworked. This reworking might be for narrative reasons, but more likely, is is a way to expand DC's readership. DC may seem to be running around like a crazed chicken, but maybe that's because they are trying to figure this thing out just like everyone else.

As a creative process, I respect that DC might not have a master plan, that they are trying to refocus the collaborative Universe of stories and character to make their product more accessible. As a purely financial decision, I respect that decision. At the present moment it might seem like DC has taken a step out onto the tightrope without ever thinking about training, but I am willing to let them try and figure it out. That's storytelling.

If they actually do fall and go splats, I stand to save a nice wad of money on comics every month. Win, win.