The Comics Ramble

Secret Avengers #12

Very talky issue, this. That's not a bad thing, though I understand why big exposition dumps are seen as bad in comics: its a very visual medium and there's limited space in an issue so just reading an explanation of what's been going on can be damn annoying. Good thing Ales Kot is such an entertaining writer so as well as getting added context for just about every major event of the series so far we also plenty of jokes, sights gags and a nice little action subplot as Black Widow and Lady Bullseye run from other-dimensional spider-octopus things whilst carping at each other.

The art is really pretty, too. Michael Walsh and Matthew Wilson's worth on this series has been fantastic, specially Wilson's colours, which sell the mood of every scene, especially the big info dump with Hawkeye, MODOK and Coulson around a campfire.

Batman Eternal #43

Another issue about Harper and Spoiler and what's more it gets us past the events of that teaser from Batman #28. Its also another issue in which Batman is a relatively distant figure. All of this I approve of. We get to see Catwoman interrogate and psychoanalyse Steph as well as Harper and Steph getting to know each other at Harper's place. Most interesting of all are the dimensions this all adds to Steph: her daddy issues are rather different this time around and she's less than keen to enter Batman's inner circle.

And Tim Drake likes magical girl anime, nice touch.

Batman #38

I'll say this for Scott Snyder: he's crafted one hell of a season finale for his Batman run that reaches back to groundwork he did right back in 2011. Whether this was all planned from the beginning or not its an impressive web. That said we're getting into what I genuinely view as taboo territory here as Snyder attempts to explain the Joker and give him an origin. I'm not saying I don't like it because its a bad origin (it isn't) or because it contradicts the sainted Killing Joke because I sort of object to that one as well, to any attempt to give the Joker a defined beginning or reason for his actions. This is purely a personal prejudice, not an artistic judgement.

Still, this gets closer to something I could accept as it treats the Joker as an elemental force in Gotham rather than a two-bit gangster or failed stand-up comedian. This makes him bigger rather than reducing him to something mundane, which is what you need for the greatest villain of the greatest rogues gallery of them all.

The Multiversity Guidebook

In all honesty I wasn't even expecting this one to have a story, I was just expecting a whole book of quick descriptions of the different DC Earths. Instead there was a framing device with two versions of Batman (a child version and a sci-fi one who swears a lot), more of the many Sivanas and, best of all, a bit with Kamandi who is a character I always want to see more of.

An odd contradiction has turned up concerning New Genesis and Apokolips. I got the impression from Godhead that the New Gods were unique, they existed outside the Multiverse and so there was only one version of them but here we see a whole pantheon of New Gods on Kamandi's Earth (Earth-51) who even go on to say there are other versions of themselves on other Earths.

To quote Yahtzee Croshaw; “NURSE, I FOUND A PLOT HOLE!”

Plus, as I say, there's a brief description of the 52 worlds, though seven of them are left blank as they concern some secret scheme of the Monitors. Personally, I want to see something of the Western-themed Earth but that's just because I love Westerns. I did like that the Beyond comics got their own universe.

Uncanny X-Men #30

Will this “Last Will And Testament” story never end? I'm seeing it, you know, I'm finally seeing it, the standard template complaint about Brian Michael Bendis' story structure, and it isn't even as though nothing happens in this issue. Stuff does happen but it all seems to more groundwork laid upon groundwork that has been going on for eight issues now which has led to one hell of a cliffhanger that I hope is throwing us straight into the endgame...

… but is it? As much as I'm enjoying the journey, at least now things are happening this is dragging on me. 

The Comics Ramble wouldn't lie to you

Prompt delivery this week and thus some ramblings.

Loki: Agent of Asgard #10

Let's be honest: I like this issue in equals parts for being well-written, dripping with character, filled with poetic turns of phrase and because we might finally be on the verge of seeing the end of those bloody “I am the crime that cannot be forgiven!” bits. Anyway, the whole things picks up from Axis with Loki apologising to Verity for being such a dick under the influence of heroism, Thor: The God Of Not Much These Days comes round for a heart to heart and then the truth spins out of control at a fantastic rate.

Ewing's latest idea is that somehow during Axis, and even Loki isn't sure how, Loki lost the ability to lie. He can't even tell a joke and he can't remain silent when asked a question so when Thor asks him what happened to the young, innocent boy he used to be it all comes out. It all hits the fan there with a nice mid-book use of the recap page which in itself was beautifully written. This has very much of a season finale feel to it and I'm looking forward to seeing how it all turns out.

All-New X-Factor #20

Not sure if commitment or hubris...

Okay, so Peter David says on the recap page this is the final issue but he hopes there'll be more in the future and he even positions this issue as a pitch to make readers demand more and I'm not sure how I feel about that. David makes some links between this series and the rise of Alchemax in Spider-Man 2099 which isn't a series I'm following so I don't much care about tying up that storyline. On the other hand there are some very nice talky bits between various members of the team on their plane which set up new dynamics I want to see play out but probably never will.

It isn't that this is a weak issue just that it might have been better repositioned to foreground Warlock's meditations on the soul rather than the tease for stories that may never come.

Batman Eternal #42

Now we're finally getting to it and by “it” I mean the plot points from the teaser issue of Batman last February. This is a big issue for Harper and Steph, the two characters I'm frankly reading this series for, which is a definite plus. Harper in particular gets a great speech owning her decision to enter the life of a costumed vigilante when it could very well have been positioned as an act of grim necessity. She also tells Tim he's being a prick which, much as I love the boy, he needs telling sometimes.

Powers #1

I've never read an issue of Powers and all I knew were the basics: a procedural crime series about police who deal with superpowers, written by Brian Michael Bendis and that was all I had to go on. From this issue I'm getting that there's a lot of backstory I don't know but Bendis is being good enough to fill the reader in as he goes with just enough to be comprehensible but not so much as to be indigestible.

Anyway, a bunch of the city's wealthiest and most influential citizens are murdered on a yacht and Detective Deena Pilgrim is sent in complete with snarky partner and crazy pants medical examiner who views the wholesale slaughter with almost mad scientist levels of glee. I like her, I want to see more of her. Talking of seeing more of women this is one of those “mature content” comics so there's lots of swearing and a two-page spread of a strip club complete with breasts flopping about everywhere which I suppose is at least better than how breasts are usually portrayed in comics. These ones actually seem to be influenced by gravity.

Wolverines #3

This one took a hard right at the corner of Fifth and Bananas as only two issues in we have an issue not featuring any of the Weapon X survivors or the “Wolverines”. Instead we have Fantomelle (who I think is the female Fantomex clone Psylocke was sleeping with a while back but I'm not sure, I don't think she was black) running a business where she steals bits of superhero memorabilia for an underground auctioneer. In this case she's trying to pinch the Punisher's skull shirt and that turns out about how you'd expect: there's a massive number of bullets.

Still not too sure about this series as a weekly proposition but this issue certainly shows more promise than the first two did. 

The Comics Ramble: Hope Springs (Batman) Eternal

You want to know my dirty little secret? The thing that I keep at the back of my mind in a world of constant disappointment, dashed hopes and thwarted expectations? I want everything to succeed. I don't expect everything to succeed but I want it to. I want Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice to break the pattern of DC film offerings and be a fantastic movie. I want to like whatever old or obscure junk my friends point me to on the internet. And do you know what? Bitch and moan as I do I want The New 52 to be the game-changing, artistically inspiring revival DC was hoping for.

The New 52 has outlasted my expectations, no two ways about it. When it was announced I thought it would last a year, two at pinch and here we are three years down the line and it is still DC's main publishing continuity. Three years is a long time, long enough that I'm a different person now than when Justice League #1 came out and this experiment has had a good while to validate itself. So has it? Just in my own highly subjective personal view?

Eh... very nearly almost.

Now, one of the problems I had with this idea out of the gate was that DC was mixing soft and hard reboots within the same initiative. Batman and Green Lantern (Green Lantern especially) were basically continuing where they left off with a slightly adjusted past timeline, soft as it comes. Wonder Woman was getting a new cast and status quo but that's just what happens to Wonder Woman and she's never needed a reboot for it, that's what she calls “getting a new writer”. Meanwhile the Teen Titans suddenly have a whole new history: Tim Drake is their founding father now, the Dick Grayson era Titans were never a team, in fact only three of them seem to exist in the New 52. That's an astonishingly hard reboot compared to what Hal Jordan and Bruce Wayne went through.

Reboots happen, though, and what mattered to me then and matters to me now are the stories being told in this new framework. Does what has been done creatively validate the business decision that started it all?

As I said: very nearly almost, in a few cases, a bit.

The simple fact is that after three years DC is finally getting its collective head around what it wants and how it wants to achieve it. This should probably have been a realisation that came a bit sooner (preferably three or four years sooner) but here we are and at least it does feel like the moment has arrived and that moment is called Batman Eternal.

I already mentioned in my Tim Drake/Harper Row post (and the series really needs to return to them at some point) that I liked the series but I want to get into the real nuts and bolts of how Eternal works and why it works. You see, the whole series is devoted, on multiple layers, to asking and answering one question:

How in the hell does Gotham City work?

The answer is presented mechanically by removing one of the city's most essential moving parts as Jim Gordon is indicted for multiple counts of manslaughter and watching the whole thing fall apart. And here we have the crux of the matter: with this move DC is finally taking advantage of the door they opened when they made everyone younger and less experienced. The pre-Flashpoint Jim Gordon was practically as sainted a figure in the fiction as he was within fandom. He'd been Commissioner forever, he'd pretty much succeeded in stamping out police corruption in the GCPD or at last at Gotham Central itself and he was damn near untouchable on a moral and ethical level.

New 52 Jim is younger and has been Commissioner for about six years. He's not as popular as he was pre-Flashpoint and his crusade against corruption isn't as advanced (look at his immediate successor for evidence of that). From a storyline perspective there's more weight to the public siding against him than there would have been before. Yes, we know he's innocent because he's Commissioner Gordon but the backlash is at least believable.

It's not just Jim, either. Eternal finally integrates the new Tim Drake into the Bat-family. Death of the Family and a few stray guest appearances where he was a visitor notwithstanding this is genuinely the first time we've seen this Red Robin operate in Gotham. He has his own base in the city, possibly even several, and this causes tension between him and Bruce but obviously the tension is manageable or even a joke since Tim still has his Gotham privileges. Y'know, not that I think even Bruce could revoke those from Tim even if he tried. The fact is, though, that this relationship is subtly different from their pre-Flashpoint one: Bruce is a former mentor Tim isn't too worried about pissing off instead of the stand-in father he wants to surpass, which is probably down to this Tim not being an orphan.

And that's not even mentioning the two characters Eternal has introduced to the New 52: the Spectre and Spoiler. Corrigan we've seen the least of but this version seems actively afraid of the Spectre which, whilst not out of line with past interpretations, is at least an interesting choice of several potential angles.

Spoiler meanwhile... well, they really thought that one through. We're finally at a point where she has a costume and has chosen her hero name but they've actually thought about how the word she chose to describe herself has changed in the years since her original introduction:

Spoiler is now a vigilante with a blog!

This isn't me being a sad bastard and identifying with a character because of my hobby, by the way, which was obviously what DC was courting when they did a similar thing to Superman. This is me laughing with DC at a cool idea that ties in with not only modernising the character to include an angle modern, baggage-free readers would actually expect and a funny little acknowledgement of the role internet fandom has played in her enduring popularity and multiple resurrections.

And dear God they have finally worked out what they want to do with Jason Bard. This guy again. This guy just turns up and I don't know what he was originally but I've seen him used as a street level PI free of Bat-connections, a uniform cop witless foil for Barbara Gordon, a dirty tricks man for Tim Drake and now as “l'il Jim Gordon” with a twist. So, yes, this angle is interesting, this angle is good, let's run with this, see it through and maybe then we can finally say we have the definitive Jason Bard interpretation and move on. Still, though, this is a case of using an existing character name and the broads strokes of their past incarnations to wrongfoot the audience because what nearly every version of Bard has agreed with is that he's a bit shady but ultimately on the side of law and order. This creates expectations of the new version and that you can play with and DC has, gleefully.

Now, I'm specifically singling out Eternal because there's enough meat for a whole Comics Ramble in it. It isn't the only example. Wonder Woman has been taking advantage of the new start from day one; the latest Teen Titans run under Will Pfeifer is examining how superheroes and social media would interact; Justice League United shows huge promise; and I am absolutely fascinated by Grayson. Like I said, the New 52 is on its way to being validated as an experiment...

… if its lucky. 

Jumping Ship (Tim Drake, Steph Brown and Harper Row)

First, let me say this so there's no ambiguity: I'm grateful that Steph is back. I like the way she's being brought back: origin polished up a bit, still in keeping with the character we remember and with earnest promises that there are plans for her after Batman Eternal wraps. This is good, I'm glad to see it and very enthused for where its all going next, but...

My God, am I seeing great chemistry between Tim Drake and Harper Row!

It certainly helps that Eternal has taken the New 52 Tim and reverted him to type just a little. Tim is one of those characters to me, we all have them, who is so bound up in how I got into comics that I'm a bit precious about him. Chuck Dixon's Robin wasn't the first series I read but it was the first series I went looking for back issues and collections of, the first time I learned to look for a creator's name. I watched this character grow through Dixon's run, through Young Justice, through Bill Willingham's run (look, we all make mistakes) and then to become a truly spectacular solo act in the Red Robin ongoing.

Then it all got swept away. I'll say this straight: I am not a fan of the new origin Scott Lobdell set down in Teen Titans #0 or the whole attitude of trying to place Tim totally outside the Bat-family. What I like about Eternal's Tim is that he's back in Gotham yet retains the lone wolf vibe he developed coming out of Batman Reborn plus the one aspect of the New 52 version I liked: his focus on looking out for the young people who suffer when the adults fight.

Add to this mix young Harper Row, future Robin-esque Bat-sidekick (according to that Eternal teaser that interrupted Zero Year) who has enforced her help on Tim the way Tim did to Batman back in the day. Okay, that's not such a good description of Tim's new origin but the New 52 is more about cultural memory than a literal chain of events laid down by continuity. That's my theory and it helps to make the New 52 a bit more palatable and comprehensible. She's also as dedicated to her own area of social justice as he is, except her focus is the poor of Gotham rather than the young of the world.

Of course, their mutual arrogance has placed the two of them in conflict almost since the moment they met but Tim has something of a history with stubborn women. Almost exclusively with stubborn women, now I think about it, between Steph, Lynx, Wonder Girl and Tam Fox.

You know, listing it out like that it occurs to me just how celibate Tim's been since Flashpoint. I think the only time he's managed to get any in the last three years was when he got possessed by Trigon and fooled around with Solstice which... ugh, no.

What I'm basically saying is this: we have two alpha-type personalities who are techy, stubborn and arrogant and I really want to see the sparks fly.