Face Thief

Here's a blast from the past ... Brian Hughes looks back at Marvel Comics' Superstars of Tomorrow event that ran through their 1993 annuals. While a few of the characters went on to bigger roles (like Captain Marvel's son, Genis, who sported the name Legacy back then) others like Bantam, Tracer, Hit-Maker, Face Thief and Devourer never made much of an impact. Individual trading cards spotlighting the new characters were bagged with each annual, meaning you had to buy two copies if you wanted one in mint condition.

Hughes also shares some pages from Marvel:Year in Review '93, which included a humorous look at the stunt written by Tom Brevoort and Mike Kanterovich, as they poke fun at each character and suggest a few that didn't make it in. Ah, the 1990s ...

Eminem

ScreenDaily.com is reporting that New Warriors writer Kevin Grevioux, who also wrote the Underworld movies, is teaming with writer-producer Dallas Jackson to write Shady Talez, a four-issue comic book series due out in 2010 under the Marvel Icons imprint.

According to ScreenDaily.com, the comic is based on a movie of the same name that will star rapper Eminem. He's also co-producing it, along with Jackson, Grevioux and I, Robot producer John Davis. The 3D film is said to be in the vein of The Twilight Zone and Creepshow.

It seems odd that Marvel would use its Icon imprint for something like this, since it seems to be reserved for creator-owned comics by their biggest creators, but I guess it's not out of the realm of possibilities. I checked with Marvel, and they had no comment.

When Bendis puled him out of the Vault for his New Avengers, the stakes had already been changed.  The balance of good an evil was gone, just an implanted a virus from Mastermind and possible delusion villain The General that created psychological problems and the existence of the Void, which was just another extension of Reynolds himself.  We lost our philosophical battle and our more peacable idea of wrong and right to be able to tear Carnage in half in space.

Okay, there's nothing wrong with that.  Bendis even brought in Paul Jenkins as a character in the book to explain everything, kind of having him sign off on the project.  Despite his immense power and complexity, the Sentry was going to be an Avenger.  Hey, they've worked with gods and demi-gods before, what's the difference?

The difference is that Loki only guest-villains.  The Void is the Sentry is the Void and if one's going to live over your roof, the other is sure to follow.  Sentry: Reborn put Jenkins back in the driver's seat and we were driven back to introspection-ville with some absolutely beautiful work from John Romita Jr.  In this mini, the Void sends Bob on this funhouse chase throuh his own creation, turning the tables on him by saying the Void was the real byproduct of his origin and that the Sentry is just his guilty leavings.  Drinking an unknown serum could take one in either direction, from villany to heroism, and it's the person in that moment that makes the difference. Peter Parker, all Spider Totem BS aside, could have been anyone. Anyone can be a mutant. Any soldier could have been super, he just had to be at the test at the right time and really want it. Not to get too off-topic, but there is nothing particularly special about a Marvel character for the most part, they are written with everyone in mind.

At the end of this, there is a beautiful farewell where the Void admits to needing him as the Sentry comes to cope without him and the Void is thrown into the sun.  It's great comics and gets to me every time I read it.

The problem still remains, however: what about Bob?  Well, he comes back to Earth and continues to work as an Avenger as the story needs him to work.  Best used by Bendis as more of a scary cardboard cut-out, if you see the Sentry backlit in a doorway or used in a splash pag, you know you're doomed; but if he tries to act against you, you can probably outsmart him.  Just trigger his psychosis and leave him babbling in the street, bring up the Void and watch him freeze in terror or run away, mention off-panel that he's dealing with his agoraphobia or, in Ronin's case from Dark Reign - The List, wait until something more important in the world is going on and sneak into the Avengers' Tower right past his cape.  He was recruited into the Mighty Avengers by Stark because he wasn't a good hero, but he was powerful and I think it does the character a great disservice to be described in such a way.  Besides, a couple issues later when Yelena Belova absorbs the Sentry's powers and gets her own equal-and-opposite Void, Bob is extremly patient and clever when he tells her he'll set her free of the Void, but only if she answers their questions.  Incredibly calculating of the man, but in another few issues he'll be back to his bumbling self.

Since writing for the character, Bendis has wanted a Superman he can play around with and that is not the Sentry.  It's taken a while (and with decompression coming into play, he can say he's planned this all along), but we might be returning back to something like the original concept for the guy.  If say, he'd been given a few issues to contain all this story in, maybe it would have been easier to follow.  There are some moments, especially now under the Dark Avengers banner that he seems to be getting that second original concept down (I'd say first but it's been a long time since we've seen the dog), a man with powers of both good and evil and it's the human at the center that makes the difference.  Lindy Lee, his sad Rapunzel-eque wife who's haunted the books seems to be taking action in Dark Avengers #9, where action is shooting him in the face.  We're all smart cookies, we all know that's not going to work and we know that the Sentry will be back and fine in issue #10.

And after OVER A YEAR of waiting, this shot to the face might just reveal the Void that's been there all along.

from Fall of the Hulks Alpha

Marvel sent over some pages from their upcoming Fall of the Hulks storyline, which kicks off with an "Alpha" issue in December. You can see additional pages from it here (where you can also see the ad/homage to the original Fall of the Mutants ad that ran in various Marvel comics back in the 1980s).

The book is written by Jeff Parker with pencils by Paul Pelletier. The story revolves around the Leader, Mad Thinker, Egghead, M.O.D.O.K., Red Ghost and Doctor Doom putting their heads together to create some sort of battle plan that leads into the World War Hulks event. More details on that can be found here.

Check out additional pages after the jump ...

*****

from Fall of the Hulks Alpha

from Fall of the Hulks Alpha

from Fall of the Hulks Alpha

Fever promo

Mark Kardwell shares with us an "idea sketch for a 'Coming Soon" type of advert" for Fever, the upcoming Dr. Strange/Spider-Man miniseries written and drawn by Brendan McCarthy. This Marvel Knights series is due in April, McCarthy told Kaldwell.

comiXology

Digital comics | Kiel Phegley talks to Ira Rubenstein, Marvel's executive vice president of digital media, about their partnerships with comiXology, iVerse, ScrollMotion and Panelfly. comiXology, meanwhile, has added another Marvel title to their catalog this week -- Civil War.

Digital comics | Don Reisinger over at CNET reviews several comics applications for the iPhone, including comiXology, Clickwheel, iVerse Comics and Comic Envi.

Tablets | Publishers Weekly's Calvin Reid was at the unveiling of the Barnes & Noble nook. (Via)

Digital comics | Valerie D'Orazio reports on an iPhone application called Strips, a webcomics-reading application that apparently didn't have permission from many of the webcomcis creators to include their strips. The application developer has offered an apology on his site.

Digital books | "In October, one out of every five new apps launching in the iPhone has been a book." They've also surpassed video games as the No. 1 category of new applications released on the iPhone. (Via)

Miracleman #15

While currently this is nothing more than pure conjecture, a quick Google search has led this part-time blogger to believe that the much-hyped, super-secret, forthcoming Mark Millar/Steve McNiven project for Marvel is in fact a Marvelman series.

Millar announced Friday that he and McNiven – his collaborator on Civil War and "Old Man Logan" – are joining forces on Nemesis for the House of Ideas with an expected launch date of March 2010.

"Nemesis" just so happens to be the subtitle of Miracleman #15 , written by Alan Moore and penciled by John T. Totleben.

Considered by many to be the most “shocking,” “disturbing” and “sought-after” appearance of the Mick Anglo creation, the issue features an epic battle between Miracleman and his "nemesis" Kid Miracleman.

Did Millar land the ultimate gig to be the man responsible for folding the classic British hero into the Marvel Universe?

Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada has apparently been listening to pitches since the publisher announced at Comic-Con International that it had purchased the rights to the property. Who better than the Glaswegian scribe to reintroduce Marvelman?

Again, nothing but a late-night musing here, but what do you think?

Therefore, in no particular order, JK Parkin and I present six pairs who might have done better as spares....

Arella and Trigon. After Angela Roth fled her abusive Gotham City home, she thought she'd found solace in the arms of religion. Unfortunately, her new church turned out to be a cult bent on bringing the Devil to Earth. This didn't quite work out for the cultists (who should've waited fifteen years for Neron and Underworld Unleashed), but they did introduce Angela to Trigon, a stud with curly red hair and gold-flecked bedroom eyes. Following a sequence more soft-focus '70s-turtleneck horror than Rosemary's Baby, it wasn't long before Angela was in Trigon's dimension, pregnant with his child. That, in turn, was his cue to show her his true self: antlers, red skin, and four eyes (and not the nerdy kind, either). Trigon then sent Angela back to Earth, where she was saved from suicide by an emissary from the pacifist land of Azarath.

The Azarites named her Arella and cared for her and her daughter Raven for the next eighteen years or so. Yadda yadda yadda, Raven and her superhero friends wound up fighting Trigon, and more often than not, whatever peace Arella might have found was sacrificed so that he could be dispatched. The first time the Titans fought Trigon, they imprisoned him in another dimension, and Arella volunteered to be his jailer. When Trigon eventually returned (obliterating Azarath in the process), Arella helped destroy him, but she then spent months searching for the vanished Raven. Once the Titans freed mother and daughter from the Church of Brother Blood, Arella established a ranch for wayward girls, but that too was short-lived. The newly-evil Jericho destroyed the ranch, and Arella didn't make it out of that arc, merging at its climax with assorted other souls (including the reviled Titan Danny Chase) to become the entity called Phantasm. (Phantasm's in comic-book limbo at the moment, but I bet its inevitable revival highlights Danny more than Arella.) At least she was spared the sight of an Iggy Pop-like Trigon, once again menacing Raven and friends in the early issues of the current Titans series. (Tom Bondurant)

Trigon's death and Raven's transfiguration (New Teen Titans v.2 #5)

Darkseid and Dark Phoenix. He's the embodiment of ultimate evil, bent on nothing less than total multiversal conquest!  She's a fallen angel, condemned by her own limitless power!  Good thing they're separated by the impregnable walls of publishing houses, right?

Not so fast, my friend; for the safety of all creation pales in comparison to the profit potential from combining the greatest cash cows of early '80s superhero comics!  Seems that Darkseid, bent on turning the Earth into another Apokolips, needed a suitable power source for his machine, and set about recreating Dark Phoenix from the memories and energies she left behind.  Alive again, Dark Phoenix found Darkseid a kindred spirit, eagerly taking his hand and calling him "my love" soon afterwards.  Clearly they had excellent chemistry, especially as drawn by Walt Simonson.  It would've worked, too -- Dark Phoenix fired the bolt which set the doomsday device in motion -- if not for those meddling kids.  See, Raven (her again!) and Professor X … well, I'll let Chris Claremont explain:

Her own abilities heightened by Xavier's psi-powers, Raven drains Phoenix of rage and hatred and lust, filling that emotional void in turn with the love felt by Xavier -- and all the X-Men -- for Jean Grey.  Phoenix's reaction is a shriek torn from the pit of her soul.

This soon causes Phoenix to start "discorporating," so Robin convinces her to gas up on the closest available power source, which of course was her contribution to Darkseid's machine.  This doesn't quite do the trick either, and Darkseid suggests she take a new host body, which turns out to be Cyclops'.  Naturally, Cyke then reminds Phoenix she's a creature of love, and if she accepts Darkseid then she denies her true blah blah blah.  Realizing that Darkseid's the cause of her current predicament, she lashes out at him, imprisoning them both (presumably) in the Source Wall.

Oh you crazy kids!

Now, there is some thought that the Dark Phoenix in this story wasn't the "real" one, but a copy created by Darkseid out of (for lack of a better term) scraps.  This would explain her instant attraction and allegiance to him.  However, as Storm notes at the end, "Phoenix" appeared to both the Titans and Jean's parents prior to Darkseid's "summoning."  Besides, Phoenix's emotions were a little too on-the-nose merely to be products of Darkseid's devices.  Therefore, although neither would spend too terribly long in the Source Wall*, I have to think it was an awkward kind of togetherness…. (Tom Bondurant)

Thanos and Death

Thanos and Death. It's one thing to become obsessed with death -- we've all seen villains who just love killing people for one reason or another -- but Thanos takes that obsession to a whole other level. Because in the Marvel Universe, Death is, literally, a harsh mistress. Typically seen in her purple robe and showing either the face of a beautiful woman or a creepy skeleton, Death walks among us ... and pretends not to see the roses and candy that Thanos has laid out at her feet, again. Or maybe she does see them, but she simply isn't impressed, so she just silently walks away without acknowledging them. Damn, that's cold.

And what do you do to step up your game? Jewelry. Anyone else would have gone for diamonds, but not Thanos ... instead he collects the rarer-than-diamonds Infinity Gems, puts them all together in a glove and wipes out half of all life in the universe. Does that impress her? Who knows ... again, she stays silent, aloof, simply observing without ever acknowledging what Thanos has done for her. Again, I say ... damn, that's cold.

But eventually maybe Death did warm up to Thanos. They did have a kid of sorts, The Rot, at one point. And the last time we saw the two together was after Thanos' death at the end of the first Annihilation mini-series, where a near-death Nova sees the pair standing together. Maybe Thanos finally melted the ultimate ice queen's heart, or maybe she's just setting him up for more spurning. Because as all comic fans know, nobody gets to hang out with death for very long in the Marvel U. (JK Parkin)

Madame Xanadu and the Phantom Stranger. These are two DC figures of long standing, but although we've seen them interact previously, the current Madame Xanadu series has really put their relationship in perspective.  As related by Matt Wagner and Amy Reeder Hadley in MX #s 1-10, this pair has a history stretching back to the fall of Camelot, and it may be summarized thusly:  the Phantom Stranger is a jerk.  He spends ten issues manipulating Madame X. and, by extension, the course of human (and superhuman) history, while exploiting her feelings for him (both positive and negative).  Issue #2 reveals his version of "it's not you, it's me:"

Already the winds of fate summon me elsewhere … to a situation that begs for guidance and promises only untold dangers. […] I am but a stranger to all, and that is my destiny.  I would not condemn you to such a lonely life.

He even puts her squarely in the Friend Zone, calling her "dear friend" at that.  Accordingly, their meetings in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries go less well, as she blames him for failing to stop such tragedies as the Reign of Terror and the Ripper murders.  By the 20^th Century she's ready to have her revenge … but he knows she's foreseen a particular murder herself, one which will create a mystical being of incalculable power; and she's ready to let it happen.  Therefore, despite her revulsion at his inaction (not to mention his turning her down back in issue #2), she comes to appreciate the Stranger's perspective.  That's obviously not as bad an outcome as some of the other couples we've mentioned, and the story itself is a nice riff on the "why does God let bad things happen?" conundrum.  It doesn't change the fact that over the centuries the Stranger's still pretty much a jerk. (Tom Bondurant)

"I am but a stranger to all"

Hellcat and Daimon Hellstrom. I think just their names alone more than make them qualified for this list. And when you look at their history, it only makes you wonder if you even need five other candidates ...

Rule #1: Hot chicks dig bad boys. At least that's what I witnessed first hand in elementary school when my straight "A" self was dumped for the kid who spent all his time in detention. So when model-turn-superhero Patsy Walker laid eyes on Daimon Hellstrom, it was probably inevitable ... the poor red-headed Defender was in trouble. And it isn't like she could play coy and pretend that maybe this bad boy had a softer side that no one else could see, or that he duped her into loving him with his charms before she found out his history. I mean, when a guy goes by the name "Son of Satan," at best he's a liar with a fetish for the unholy, and at worst he's the dude that's supposed to bring about the apocalypse.

But in Marvel Universe, he was actually a superhero, fighting alongside Patsy and her friends in the Defenders. So we'll cut her some slack. And at one point his satanic darkside was even taken out of his body and absorbed into a villain, freeing him of all the baggage that goes along with being the son of the devil. But it was short-lived; eventually Hellstrom had to reabsorb his darker side, something Patsy got to witness and subsequently drove her mad and eventually to suicide.

Hellstrom and Hellcat

She's back now, of course, and in the pages of Marvel Divas Ol' Scratch Jr. has been sniffing around her back door again. Oh Patsy, haven't you learned your lesson by now? I'm sure there's a nice superhero somewhere in Manhattan who is not only single, but isn't related to the devil. (JK Parkin)

Dracula and Domini. There are few words to describe how tired I am of seeing all those erectile-dysfunction-drug commercials, but they look like "Sesame Street" next to the thought of Dracula, Lord of the Undead, getting his groove back. That's just one of the twists in the Machiavellian tale of Domini, Dracula's second wife. Introduced in Tomb Of Dracula #45 (June 1976) by writer Marv Wolfman and artists Gene Colan and Tom Palmer, Domini was a reluctant member of Anton Lupeski's Satanist cult. In fact, Domini was about to be sacrificed by the cult when Dracula interrupted the ceremony. Seeing the opportunity for instant minions, Dracula took charge; and seeing the opportunity to bend Dracula to his will, Lupeski let him, offering Domini to Dracula along the way. Dracula and Domini were married three days later, but Domini had her own agenda; because she knew the child she'd bear that Christmas (actually, in issue #54) would not be a child of evil. (When all your unholy rituals are performed under a painting of Christ which not even Dracula seems to be able to remove, you have to think there's a little more to the story.)

Anyway, Dracula, Domini, and Lupeski each plotted and schemed, both during her pregnancy and after baby Janus was born. Lupeski allied himself secretly with TOD's group of vampire hunters, and Domini found out; but when the vampire hunters attacked the church, Lupeski and Janus were both killed. Domini was able to bring Janus back to life and merge him with a rather superhero-looking spirit called the Golden Angel. Janus/GA then tried repeatedly to kill Dracula, and when Dracula was defeated (in TOD #70, the last issue of the series), Janus returned to infancy and was reunited with Domini. Mother and son then appeared in an arc in the '90s series Nightstalkers, alongside Dr. Strange and TOD alums Blade, Frank Drake, and Hannibal King. (Tom Bondurant)

[Many thanks to The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe, which, along with my Essential Tomb Of Dracula volumes, was a great resource in putting together this synopsis.]

* [Darkseid next appeared in "The Great Darkness Saga," which clearly wasn't a bad way to go.]

Grumpy Old Fan

Over the weekend, Comics Reporter Tom Spurgeon shared his five "stickiest comics biases":

1. I don't covet the comics of my youth, I covet the comics from just before my youth.
2. Whether or not there are comics for kids, I still want comics to function as a pastime for a child.
3. I over-trust the serial.
4. I distrust a social component for comics.
5. I expect everything in comics to last forever.

It got me thinking about my own comics biases -- but because I haven't yet distilled those into postable prose, this week I'll share my reactions to his.

* * *

1. "I don't covet the comics of my youth, I covet the comics from just before my youth."

If I understand correctly, Tom compares his experience with self-referential 1970s Marvel and DC superhero comics with being unable (for various reasons not entirely within his control) to participate fully in a perpetual conversation. I've been there too, but I think because my formative years were spent largely with the less-self-referential DC, I had fewer questions. Thus, while Tom wondered about the Kree-Skrull War and Neal Adams' work on X-Men, I didn't know the story behind that critter on Hal Jordan's shoulder, who Dexter Myles was, or what happened to the Sand Superman.

Regardless, these days I also covet the comics of just before my youth, not quite for the stories they told but for the transitions they represented. When I started reading DC's superhero comics in the mid-1970s, the style changes of the late '60s and early '70s had already happened: an Adams/Giordano-esque "Darknight Detective," the redesigned Legion of Super-Heroes costumes, Curt Swan drawing the definitive Superman. So too had a certain generation of writers become firmly entrenched: Denny O'Neil, Gerry Conway, Elliott Maggin, Cary Bates, Len Wein, et al. Therefore, today I am much more interested in how DC and Marvel made those transitions from the Silver Age into the '70s -- or, put another way, how that new generation of writers and artists treated characters who had been defined largely by a single creative team.

Naturally, between the exponential growth of the reprint market, and the Internet facilitating the back-issue market, it's far easier today to catch up on the comics of one's youth (or before). Gerry Conway's Return of the New Gods follow-up has apparently been relegated to a distant corner of Hypertime, but if I ever get the itch to read it, I know where to start looking.

This is not to say that I am particularly nostalgic for the comics of the 1970s as much as I am curious about them. Certainly curiosity was the main factor in reading those Essential Spider-Woman and Essential Nova books. Indeed, with those characters I'm still a little curious; because based just on the original comics, I can't quite figure out why they got the revivals they now enjoy.

2. "Whether or not there are comics for kids, I still want comics to function as a pastime for a child."

In his own response to Tom's essay, Charles Yoakum notes that "[t]he medium should make no distinction between ages [because the] material presented in the medium is the distinction." My own reaction is probably a little different from either Tom's or Charles', because the DC superhero books of the mid-1970s didn't seem written for grade-school kids like me. For one thing, DC had moved past using pre-teen sidekicks as reader-identification characters. By the mid-'70s, the Teen Titans were either finishing, or through with, high school (as were Spider-Man and the Human Torch), and the JLA's generation did grownup things when not in costume. The adventures themselves weren't particularly kid-oriented, either. For example, I didn't know what a "nervous breakdown" was, but Jean Loring was suffering from one as she bopped uncontrollably through space in an extended Super-Team Family arc.

None of this necessarily qualifies those comics as better-suited for a particular age group, although I imagine that both Marvel and DC were even then hoping to hold onto the older kids, teenagers, and adults who had been reading O'Neil/Adams and Lee/Kirby. I will say that, by and large, I enjoyed both companies' superhero books regardless of whether they were meant for me, or featured characters with whom I could easily identify. Accordingly, while I appreciate Marvel and DC producing all-ages comics, part of me thinks that is a self-limiting strategy which allows the other titles to focus on older readers to an unhealthy extent.

Before leaving this topic, I do want to mention that superhero comics' easy availability also played a role -- although I'm not sure how big of one -- in my reading experiences. The fact that I could get them at the grocery, or the drugstore, made them part of that adult world. When I got to high school, and started buying comics at the LCS, they became something else -- part of "my" world, if you will, separate from the general public's; and therefore something which I chose to do.

3. "I over-trust the serial."

This one will be easy: I don't have any particular affection for serial storytelling. I can see why it's popular with, if not encouraged by, the Big Two and their readers; but at the same time I think it perpetuates some bad habits, also by both readers and publishers. It's fine that Tom "still see[s] the comic books as the real unit, no matter how many of [his] peers' bookshelves are filled with collected versions," but I think that glosses over the capacity for a single issue to tell one or more standalone stories. I've said before that the Big Two especially need to redefine "unit" to more closely equal "story." (In fact, that's probably one of my biases.) I don't think that will happen anytime soon, because the development of the Direct Market has centered around supporting those ubiquitous 22-page periodical episodes. Indeed, I'm sure there are ways to get the most out of those 22 pages. However, it seems to me that all parties would benefit from experiments with different formats.

4. "I distrust a social component for comics."

This one was a little harder for me to understand, but it seems like Tom distrusts socializing (on the Internet specifically) because it distracts readers from exploring outside their comfort zones. On balance I think I agree with this, but it's a very delicate balance. I tend to agree because I buy certain books so that I can talk about them in this column. However, the other side of all that socializing is that it creates a different kind of peer pressure. Certainly if I were not so involved online (and let's be clear, I'm not as involved online as a lot of people are), I wouldn't be exposed to as wide a variety of tastes and opinions, and my reading habits would probably be rather different.

Naturally, before the Internet came along, I experienced other opinions and tastes via traditional dead-tree venues: letters of comment and glossy fanzines. I went to my first comics convention in 1993 (Chicago), at the height of the cover-enhancement craze, so I never did experience fan culture in that halcyon Roy Thomas/Jerry Bails kind of way. In fact, on a whim I went to the Milestone panel at that 1993 Chicago convention, got a free copy of Static #1 (which by then was about a month old), and liked it so much I bought the series for all of its four-year run. Again, I suppose it has more to do with your comfort zone than your degree of socialization.

5. "I expect everything in comics to last forever."

For me, this luxury enjoyed by corporately-owned properties goes back to issues raised by point #1, above. I enjoy a lot of creative endeavors which were here before I was born and which will probably outlive me by a wide margin. As Tom says, though, corporately-conferred immortality shouldn't be the yardstick by which the worth of another creator, creation, work, or company is measured. When I was getting back into comics in the mid-1980s, First Comics was still going strong, publishing American Flagg!, Nexus, and Jon Sable, among other things. First is long gone now, but those series are still finding new readers today, as are other series whose original publishers have gone kaput.

And yet, everyone knows Superman. Everyone knows Peanuts -- heck, the local Kroger's big boxes-o'-pumpkins are decorated with Linus in the pumpkin patch; and "Snoopy One" flies over countless sporting events. You don't have to explain these characters to people like you would, say, the heroes of Bottomless Belly Button or the residents of Palomar. Their ubiquity is comforting. Would you want to live in a world where that was not so?

It all comes back to the ability of my generation to shape the marketplace for comic books, especially by choosing to support superhero comics in the same ways we did ten, twenty, thirty years ago. We superhero readers expect things to last forever -- or, more particularly, not to change in strange or unwelcome ways -- because we are not doing anything to force that change. Furthermore, now that DC's and Marvel's libraries are being mined for the collected-editions market, readers of all generations are able to explore decades' worth of comics, and pick and choose the versions of characters and concepts which they like best. Thus, in theory, DC and Marvel can tailor future releases to suit the reprint market's preferences, until finally the whole process becomes a closed loop of familiarity and illusory change, where no new idea lasts very long.

Actually, I don't think it will get that bad, especially considering (you'll love the irony here) the structural changes awaiting both companies. It's an odd circumstance indeed where a corporate restructuring could be seen as an opportunity for more creativity and diversity, but perhaps that's another of my own biases: the notion that wider audiences are reached through a variety of approaches to the material.

Now, that bias has probably been nurtured by DC's recent reliance on overwhelming superhero mega-stories. After several years' worth of interrelated Big Events, the company looks rather single-minded, especially when those events have distracted from more esoteric projects. It's easy as well to blame unjust failures on the perils of the Direct Market and/or the uncultured tastes of its participants. However, it's frustrating to realize that DC has such an embarrassment of riches, both in terms of intellectual property and professional resources, and can publish pretty much whatever it wants because neither it nor those characters are going anywhere -- and it has apparently chosen a narrow set of storytelling tools and subjects.

* * *

Overall, I can appreciate Tom's wrestling with the foundational elements of his comics experiences. I don't like to think of myself as especially nostalgic for the superhero comics of the '70s (or for the '70s comics marketplace), but DC's books were more self-contained, the DC line was more diverse, and the circulation figures dwarfed those of today. It was a different time, of course, and those sales figures definitely aren't coming back. Besides, today I see the '70s as the transitory period I talked about above, and not the culmination of anything started in the Silver Age. Today, with DC's superhero line in a state of perpetual transition, it's even harder to see it working towards some ultimate Platonic expression.

By and large, my own biases center around reconciling my affection for DC's superhero characters with the realities of their corporately-owned existence. It's hard for me to get into those biases without going off on rants about "this is how DC should act" (as I seem to have done in this post), but I'll try to pull something together. As for this week, you know what the music means ... our time is up.