Heroes in Crisis - DC's Fall debuting 7...EDIT 9 issues by Tom King
luckymustard
Posts: 927
A lot of information in this "promo".
luckymustard
Posts: 927
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If Tom King is in, then so am I.
Given his professional background if anyone can fit such profoundly silly/"fun"characters into a story about a topic so decidedly troubling and un-fun, it would be him, but hearing that Harley and Booster are going to be featured in a story about PTSD is a little like hearing Deadpool and She-hulk are going to be in a story about the effects of domestic violence.
Booster is one of the few DC characters that I really dig. Based on the spotlight ad above, I should be pissed about this series. However, King hasn't let me down yet, so I'm just gonna go with the flow, and keep my fingers crossed Booster is still awesome at the end.
But the bigger part is that it's setting off my IDENTITY CRISIS SENSE.
If it's true, I assume DC feels there's plenty of Lanterns from earth already?
Of course, if it turns out to be a bad idea, they’re pretty good at undoing those sorts of things ;)
With the newer Green Lanterns - Simon Baz and Jessica Cruz - I thought there were now an equal amount of Lanterns of color but if we include Alan Scott, I guess not. Does Alan Scott even exist anymore? I did a Wikipedia check and I'm unclear. Is earth 2 even a thing? I miss earth 2 and all the other earths. Why Scott Snyder and DC felt the need to create a new "dark multiverse" in Dark Nights: Metal when there were already 52 other universes to choose from is beyond me. It's like a kid wanting new toys when he ignores 90% of the toys he already has. And is there anything particularly special about these new toys?)
In any case, of course, there's no way DC is going to get rid of a Lantern of color, but I would think King (and DC) would try to get rid of a less beloved character. I get the impression he's like Wally West (i.e. their first version of the hero) to some of the people who started reading in the 90's. I would think there are plenty of white male heroes with nowhere near the following of Rayner they could off. And again, I have no dog in this fight: Rayner isn't my Lantern, but I get the impression a lot of younger fans would not want him gone.
So, if it turns out this is happening in Heroes In Crisis, and it leads to an outpouring of nostalgia for those fans who grew up with Rayner... well, DC will have some books for them to buy and show their support for the character.
(if you're interested)
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it might also be Red Robin, Arsenal, Booster Gold, Harley Quinn or Cyborg. It obviously won't be Cyborg (god, I miss the way Wolfman & Perez wrote & drew him) since he's a character of color and Harley Quinn's far too popular, so that leaves Robin, Arsenal, Booster or Kyle. I think it's down to Booster and Kyle since they would be the easiest to bring back to life. Especially Booster because of the time traveling, I would assume.
Anytime a story has people trying to figure out who's "expendable" or who can be brought back from the dead easiest, it's a sign of a story that's pushing against the limits of what works in a shared superhero universe where death has been used as a cheap marketing tool and creative crutch for decades.
Looking at the superhero comics I read last week the stakes were:
Sense of Identity (in seven different comics)
Kidnapping (in two different comics)
Democracy under threat
Death
Grief
Creating a future they didn't want.
Some of those are overlapping in the same comic.
I guess due to the nature of the genre, superheroes having to struggle with their sense of identity is always going to be a go to move. And rarely something that's going to be a big move for an event.
Though 3 of those 7 comics have people's identities being physically split which is rarer and weird that Marvel has three comics with that in them in the same week.
As for the current rash of split personalities, I think that’s a natural go-to given that our country is going through a bit of an identity crisis.
In the history of comics only a handful of deaths have really stuck. Captain Mar-Vell is the one that comes to mind for me. So knowing that, why can't the writers just take "death" off the table as something to write about. Just don't even pitch it. Pitch something else. Anything else.
We actually had both Ron Mark & Darryl Banks on the LanternCast to hype the release of the first volume of this! (click on the album art for the link)
Heroes in Crisis seems like the kind of story that could work in a Watchmen-style universe, but if we're really going to explore the psychological effects of violence than why don't all the heroes we know and love have the most profound cases of PTSD (with the according anxiety, depression, social isolation, self-medicating behaviors and flashbacks) ever? There's an argument to be made - and I expect King is going to make it - that Batman as Batman IS constantly experiencing some symptoms of PTSD, but that makes a lot less sense when you bring his daily alter ego Bruce Wayne into the picture.
I also really wonder what he's going to do with Harley Quinn. King can easily just attribute her behavior to being "nuts" to PTSD, but why is it such an unusual and fun and funny brand of PTSD? I honestly am eager to read this just to see if he can actually make this something that really makes sense, but I'm guessing I'm going to frequently be feeling more of the Batman 39 vibe you discussed.
I think in the case of those Batman issues what hurt it, for me, was the enormous time window of experience. That not only did they have this separation from the people in their lives, and fatiguing state of constant war, but that it was also meant to have felt like decades of time, and that is just too over the top of a thing to brush off after those two issues and get back to business as usual.
It may be, and again, at this point we can only guess, that Heroes In Crisis will be about what has already happened, and exploring the humanity of what it might be to be in a state of so-constant struggle and danger. And maybe by focusing not on Batman or Superman, but on a character like Booster who doesn't have the same enormous volume of event and story to manage, may be a way to go.
But, we'll see. I think this is thoughtful speculation, but soon we will have the work itself to judge by. Where there is also every possibility it might actually succeed. As a premise a book like Mister Miracle should sound like it wouldn't work. But for me it has, and has been one of my favorite comics of the last year. So, here's hoping. Time will tell.
While I give King the benefit of the doubt and assume he's not doing that (although the ending to Batman 49 didn't make any sense to me either and I've yet to hear anyone's explanation of what it all meant), the story still felt that way to me on an emotional level. Whatever easter eggs there were also went over my head, so I couldn't enjoy musing over that either. I've also heard at least 2 different fans of MM say that they simply "have faith" that it will all make sense in the end. But different strokes...
I'm assuming I will be able to, at minimum, stick with Heroes in Crisis until the end since from everything I've read about it any profundity the story has is going to come from a deeper (or different) understanding of character rather than the chronic ambiguity that I associate with MM. I still get the feeling that even if I enjoy it though, I'm going to think it would work better with characters who don't have so much history tied to them (like Watchmen or Rick Veitch's Brat Pack).
Coincidentally, I've been reading an old Comics Journal interview with Frank Miller (issue 101) where he's discussing putting heroes into a too "real world" context. You may find part of it interesting. The interview was done WHILE Miller was still in the midst of creating Dark Knight Returns and, however one feels about Miller in his latter days, he sounds positively prescient back then. He discusses the idea of taking heroes "seriously" and notes that "If you take the idea of a host of heroes out there seriously, you're pretty soon going to end up with a story where the entire world is entirely transformed". (Warren Ellis and Mark Millar would run with this idea years later with the Authority I think.) He then says that the comics companies (which he was complaining about not experimenting more and not doing more to attract older readers) "can only continue publishing comics so long as they don't take the ideas that they've got the distance". Then he notes, "I think Alan Moore's working on something that does take the idea the distance" (this is almost certainly Watchmen given the time frame). He also says that he prefers to stay away from the "host of heroes" idea and that he is not striving for realism (for lack of a better word) with DKR. He says that "in order for the character [Batman in the DKR] to work, he has to be a force that in certain ways is beyond good and evil" and that "we can't think of him as a man".
I guess this is my long-winded way of saying that I get the impression that King is trying to have it both ways (which is what I got from your assessment of him and WW being trapped in a decades-long war and then brushing it off): IMO his run on Batman seems very much focused on having the reader think of Batman as a man, but then with that post decades-long war shrug, he's a comic book character once more.
In any case I will be reading Heroes in Crisis and expect some surprises. I was thinking that in order to do the unexpected (which he usually does quite well) he will suggest or imply that Harley Quinn isn't actually "crazy" at all. That it's more of a choice on her part.
BTW, speaking of PTSD in the comic book world, I actually thought Netflix's underrated Punisher series did a pretty good job of incorporating that into its story in a very organic way. I also thought it was one of the 2 best series on there along with the first season of Jessica Jones (hey! it also touches on PTSD!) (And I say all this as someone who never in a million years expected to enjoy a tv show with a character as one dimensional as the Punisher.)
I get that. And that is interesting, what Miller said back then, especially in light of what his and Moore/Gibbons' work ended up inspiring, as far as the many attempts to take heroes seriously that followed their work. (And, unfortunately, for many who sought to imitate, by "serious" they mostly just ran with increased levels of violence and cruelty, essentially what got those books their equivalent of an R rating, as opposed to latching on to what actually made them mature works).
For what it is worth, and this is not at all to try to get you to enjoy something you were not enjoying, but I actually don't find Mister Miracle inscrutable. I know that first issue was a little jarring, and I can see why it led to some speculation as to whether everything we were seeing in the issue may or may not be real/ did he or didn't he?/ etc. (as this is not a thread about that, I won't get into spoilers, but you know what I mean).
I know that there are those moments of static that happen, but overall I have found that story has been told in a pretty linear, and straightforward, fashion so far. It may not be the kind of story everyone wants, or enjoys, and I respect that. But I actually have not found the later issues to be muddy, for what it is worth. There is a lot of juxtaposition between giant cosmic war between planets things and very grounded, mundane, normal Earth life things. And sometimes characters will be in the one place talking about the other thing, and vice versa. And that style has not been everyones cuppa. But I think I have always been pretty clear on what is happening in both places and what the story is.
As for the style and tone that Heroes In Crisis will take, well, we'll see soon. I think it speaks well of what that story may be setting out to do, ambition-wise, that there is this much speculation and discussion about it before it even hits. I think that might be a good sign.
Agreed on Heroes in Crisis. I'm thinking it will be an interesting experiment even if I find it unsatisfying in certain ways.
I will definitely be trying the collected edition of MM when it comes to my library. I actually read about 4 issues before I tapped out. While I could follow what I'd read, what I didn't like was that the story IMO up to that point at least, was continually suggesting "Some-or-all-of-this may-only-be-occurring-in-Scott's-mind". I just hate stories like that even though they can be quite popular. I discovered my distaste for these kinds of stories when I saw the original Total Recall. It's the kind of concept Phillip K. Dick has done with some frequency I think. For me, the possibility that some or all of this may not actually be "occurring" (as a story) keeps me from fully investing in it. If I try to figure out why I react this way, I think it's because it makes me feel that the story may end to reveal nothing was ever really at stake, our protagonist was never really in danger. But I know those kinds of stories can be quite popular with sci-fi fans.
That it was inscrutable is what I'd heard from 2 others. In any case I will definitely try reading it again simply because it's MM (always loved the escape artist idea and the costume - esp those flying disks), King and I like the art.