Category Archives: Comics

Our Man In Chicago on Superman, Flash, Green Lantern and other comic book characters

25 in 12: Superman/Batman: Supergirl

Comics, ,

Hi, Chicagoist readers. You’ll find the main page of the blog here and more comics content here.

Well, it didn’t take me very long to start totally cheating within the bounds of this project.

At the beginning of the year when I decided to set a goal of reading 25 books over the next 12 months, I remember thinking “I’m probably going to end up including a graphic novel or two.” Not that graphic novels aren’t, or can’t, be literature. They are, and can. But making time for reading comics in any form isn’t a problem for me. It’s sitting down with a novel or non-fiction tome and carving out the time to finish it that presents a challenge. Still, I knew if I was going to hit this goal without cutting down on my other media consumption, a few comics would sneak in here. And as I’ve still been trying to slog through two books that I’m not at that wild about, this one certainly did.

Even worse, Supergirl doesn’t even qualify as a proper graphic novel. It’s merely a collection of the Superman/Batman team-up comics (numbered #8-13) – a novella one might say – which deal with the Supergirl’s re-appearance in the DC Universe.

(This is probably confusing for the non-comic-geeks among you but know this: every so often comic book characters – including and especially the most iconic of them from Superman to Spider-Man to Wonder Woman – have their backstories revised. It keeps the characters fresh, helps bring in new readers and also gives writers new stories to tell. It also brings out the nerd fury like little else in comics. In any case, this is story is a re-introduction of Supergirl into the DCU. If you want to know how it got this way, there’s always Wikipedia.)

Like any volume of Superman/Batman, even a story about Supergirl is always a story about Superman and Batman. And, by extension, a story of identity.

In this story, Kara Zor-El (Supergirl) is a teenager sent to planet Earth soon after her baby cousin Kal-El (Superman) is rocketed away from their dying home planet of Krypton. Her father intends for her to be Kal-El’s protector, but due to some interstellar traffic jam, she ends up arriving on Earth several years after he does. While Supergirl’s arrival feels like home to Superman, Batman is suspicious of her, and remains so throughout the story, never quite sure of who she is.

Wonder Woman harbors similar concerns, and she brings Kara to Paradise Island for training and observation, over the objections of Superman who finds himself in conflict with two of his closest friends, due to his certitude over who Kara is meant to be. But her training is interrupted by a visit from the malevolent Darkseid – ruler of the hell planet of Apokolips and generally bad dude – who brainwashes Kara into becoming his handmaiden, leading Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman to rescue her not once, but twice as Darkseid follows them back to Earth to make an attempt on Kara’s life.

If this volume of the Superman/Batman stories were a TV movie, it would be considered a backdoor pilot, as Supergirl was mainly a way to re-launch the character into her own title within the DCU. As such, there’s a feeling that all the “good stuff” about the Supergirl character was saved for later.

At times, it’s hard to tell if writer Jeph Loeb wants this new Supergirl to be a teenager just coming to terms with her adolescence or a fully-grown woman who realizes the person she was sent to protect is now protecting her. It leads to an odd juxtaposition of moments: Supergirl will be standing up to an accusatory Batman one moment – no mean feat – while in the next she’ll be gaily shopping for clothes, dressed in a baby-tee and low-rise jeans, the straps of her thong hiked up somewhere around her rib cage (granted, this book came out in 2004 but it just goes to show that boys on both sides of the inks and pencils have a hard time coming to terms with young women). But Loeb is smart enough to show us that when Supergirl is at her sharpest and best-defined is in moments of conflict whether with Batman, with an expert swordswoman on Paradise Island or even with Superman himself.

As I said, this is a Superman/Batman story. The through-line in these volumes is that each man finds a little of himself in the other, and vice versa. In this volume, Superman discovers that he shares Batman’s tendency to do “whatever is necessary.” Here, his desire to keep his family – Supergirl – safe, leads him to eventually bury, though not kill, Darkseid at the far end of the universe. It’s a frequent theme in comics: through adversity you find out who you really are. And family is at the core of who Superman is, whether on Krypton or in Kansas. At the end of Supergirl, Superman realizes that though Kara is Kryptonian and capable of super-heroism, it is up to her to discover her own place on Earth, as he did, away from the safe embrace of family.

I have to believe this has a resonance for other people the way it does for me: The moments in my life when I felt the most secure in my identity were the times immediately following periods of great conflict or insecurity.

In any case, the next time I sub a graphic novel in for a “real” book, I promise it’ll be something a little meatier. Like DC: The New Frontier.

Scarlett Johansson is….Wonder Woman?

Comics

I was mildly disappointed when Jessica Biel, who had been in talks to play Wonder Woman in an rumored Justice League of America film, turned down the role (this should not be confused with the Wonder Woman film that Joss Whedon had been helming until this year). I think it’s a bad idea to make a JLA film as it’ll just confuse the non-geeks out there, and superhero flicks work best when there’s a limit on the number of heroes and villains (compare and contrast Time Burton’s first Batman flick with his second). So anything that makes this film harder to make is fine with me (bad superhero flicks that tank make it that much harder for the good ones to make it to the screen and I’m kinda hoping someone figures out a way to get Ryan Reynolds in the ol’ red boots). But, you know, seeing Jessica Biel in the WW gear…wouldn’t have been terrible.

Ahem.

As I’ve said, I would like to see a Wonder Woman flick get made, and I think Gary Frank, one of DC’s artists, has his own ideas about who should play her. Check out this frame from Wonder Woman Annual #1 which hit stores this month.


Remind you of anyone?

Long week

Comics, Media, Music, ,

Work’s been squeezing my mindgrapes dry this week, hence the lack of blogging. But here are a few things I noticed this week. They’re mostly local issues, which will probably disappoint all those who’ve arrived here by Googling “nine west high waist jeans.”

Chicago Tonight, regardless of what happened that day
The flood waters were big news yesterday, and all concerned – from the local MSM to the folks who helped each other hold together in relatively trying times – coped with it in a cool-headed manner, but I was most struck with how the folks at Chicago Tonight managed to broadcast their show, live, from their control room after their studio flooded. An odd sort of intimacy resulted, and I kept expecting Elizabeth Brackett and Eddie Arruza to sip from cups of tea.

Chicago Lack of Transit Authority
I’ve been mostly impressed with Ron Huberman’s conduct as CTA President. I do wonder how they agency continues to “find” money to make slow zone repairs and scale back predicted fare and service cuts when we were told for so long that such a thing would be impossible. I’m sure some capital programs are getting cut – just a hunch, mind you – but I haven’t seen any reports that mention anything like this happening.

I’ll be very interested to see how Huberman weathers the lack of CTA funding in the almost-passed state budget. You can only cry wolf so many times, and since there’s now talk that they’ll suck it up until the end of the year when a capital funding plan can be put in place, people are going to have a hard time believing in a “Doomsday” scenario, going forward, though it appears CTA VP Dorval Carter disagrees. Much like the record industry, the CTA ought to stop threatening its customers and find a way to work with them instead.

And finally tonight…

Next up: TV not a cultural wasteland!
I really like the Tribune’s Julia Keller. I think “low” culture tells us as much about a society as its politics, history and sociological framework, and she doesn’t shy away from the lighter aspects of life. Honestly, I’ve had a thing for her since she tackled the old Superman vs. Batman debate.

But man, I wish she had told her editor that the “Comics: Not just for weirdos” angle was the wrong one to take on this story about Douglas Wolk’s Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. The Beachwood Reporter (with an assist by So-Called Austin Mayor) says it all in the last item here. The Trib – by its very nature – is usually late to the game on cultural trends and tends to be approach these stories as the very reactionary paper it’s often accused of being (“Some even claim to be–gasp–making money. Some crazy folks are even opening new ones.”). To be fair, the Trib’s Mo Ryan, Eric Zorn and Mark Caro know how to put their finger to the zeitgeist.

So maybe they can sit in on more story meetings. For instance, can someone explain to me why the Trib is so geeked on vinyl lately? Monica Kendrick over at the Reader blogged about a recent Trib editorial that extolled the virtue of the black circle, but she didn’t mention that they wrote an article on this very same topic earlier this month that was pegged to the resurgence of independent record shops (which incidentally TOC covered back in March) not to mention last June when they wrote about it.

Anyone who follows music knows this story gets trotted every year or two. And I don’t think vinyl gets “big” – or bigger as the case may be – each time. There isn’t an ebb and flow with a love of vinyl, but there is a steady stream of folks who cultivate this love the way some people cultivate a garden. But just like you can’t grow all plants in the same dirt and light, you only get true richness from vinyl with the proper sound system, which most people don’t have the desire to learn about or cash to purchase. And it’s why vinyl will be as “big” now as it will the next time this chestnut gets trotted out.

Van Halen, The Flash and more for my 14-year-old readership

Comics, Music, ,

I’m still in a bit of a follow-up mode this week so bear with the retreads.

First, whatever. I can’t take all this back and forth. In fact, this line from the Reuters report says it all about the Van Halen reunion:

“The band’s luck ran out a decade later when Hagar and Van Halen acrimoniously parted ways, and a new album with a third singer tanked.”

Man, if REUTERS gets that, why doesn’t Eddie?

Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, Wizard World hits Chicago this weekend, which was a reminder to me to pick up this month’s comics, including All-Flash #1, a stop-gap between the end of the previous Flash series and the resumption of the Wally West-led series, which also resumes its previous numbering at #231. I mentioned last month the reasons why I felt DC bollixed up this most recent series, but after reading All-Flash, I realized something else that felt off to me several issues ago.

When Wally’s Aunt Iris arrived on the scene, she pulled a gun on Bart. While this made for a nice, tidy cliffhanger at the end of one issue, it felt wrong, even though it turned out to be a stun gun or some such nonsense. Instead of allowing Iris Allen to remain the heart of the Flash comics – as she’s been since she met Barry Allen, the Golden Age Flash – she was turned into an amoral Jack Bauer-type, willing to do Whatever It Takes. Sure, she was doing it for Bart’s own good, etc. etc. but it was yet another example of how the cores of the individual characters were missing, and this moment from the current issue made me think that maybe they were right to bring a full stop to the proceedings (click the image for a larger view):

If DC had Wally’s return as an end game all along, they’d have had more moments like this in the previous issues of the book to demonstrate that they weren’t making things up as they went along. Sometimes when you’re really lost, the best thing to do is to pick a new destination.

Nice to have you back, Mark Waid.

Death and ennui

Comics, ,

Hey wait, where you going? Come back, I promise this isn’t going to be depressing.

I think for anyone who follows media cycles, there comes a point when you sigh and say “That’s quite enough.” For me, it happens when all the stuff that’s being pushed on you is of middling to no value. It’s perhaps exacerbated by my failing to renew my subscription to The Economist.

In any case, I present this list of Things Whose Ubiquity Is Indirectly Proportional To My Level Of Excitement About Them:

* The Simpsons Movie
* Local stage productions of “High School Musical”
* Silverchair’s new album (I swear I get 1-2 press releases a week about this thing)
* The Redwalls’ new album (ditto)
* Michael’s return to Lost
* Meltdowns by Lindsay and Britney
* A really blurry video of Beyonce falling
* Flash Gordon returning to TV

OK, that last one’s a lie. The buzz on that is proportional to my level of interest (“mild”). Mainly, it’s been stoked by TOC‘s TV editor Margaret Lyons who keeps inquiring if I’m looking forward to it, followed by me correcting her that it is this Flash and not that one, that I follow.

Speaking of, the most recent Flash, Bart Allen, died in last month’s issue, just as his mentor and uncle Wally West (the prior Flash) returned from a sort of self-imposed exile in the speed force. It’s a shame that the character was killed just as Marc Guggenheim was starting to shake off the awful Bilson/DeMeo re-launch. But worse than that is the possibility that DC has thrown out the baby with the bath water in an attempt to get the series back on its feet. It’s bad enough that DC bungled the character’s life, but worse than that they’ve bollixed up his death.

Up until this 13-issue run, DC did a pretty good job of developing Bart Allen as he grew from Impulse to The Flash. But in the first few several issues of the relaunch, Bilson/DeMeo took a storied title and ran it into the ground by writing it as if they were crafting a discarded script for Smallville. Guggenheim came aboard and grounded the character, thanks to a job with the LAPD and a romantic interplay that resembled the hard choices and failings typical of your first adult relationship.

But it’s possible the damage was done. Plus, most readers still felt as if they were in a limbo over Wally West’s departure, unsure whether they should mourn his passing and embrace his successor or bide the time, and have patience with his placeholder. Per tradition, Bart Allen as The Flash died saving the world (not during a Crisis like his forebearers, but still) and received a similarly literary send-off (a quote from Sir Walter Scott that read “And come he slow, or come he fast, it is but death who comes at last”). But even with these ties to the past, his was a quick and senseless death, and quickly followed by the return of his much-loved uncle (and the much-loved Mark Waid who has a better ear for The Flash than anyone in the last 25 years). In giving so little weight to his death, DC tarnishes the spirit of the character.

The Flash is a harbinger of change in the DC Universe. And the death of a Flash has always been heavy with meaning. With so many changes yet to come for DC characters, and so little meaning attached to the loss of Bart Allen, I’m wondering if I’ll get that same “That’s quite enough” with comics, too.

Jessica Alba, Sue Storm and the wisdom of experience

Comics

I was all set to write a post about how stupid both the thesis and supporting arguments of this USA Today story are, when I checked the comments section of the story, and noticed the folks there did my work for me. Using Catwoman and Elektra to say that comic fans don’t like women in hero mode is like saying the poor sales of Crystal Pepsi and Van Halen III mean that soda and rock and roll are on the wane. But there’s little use in me throwing another log on that fire, so thanks for stealing my thunder, Internet. And way to figure out the new media, USA Today. Jerks.

Frankly, I’d be the first one to trumpet Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer as the herald (ahem) of a new age of women-centered hero films if it weren’t for the fact that Jessica Alba’s Sue Storm isn’t the heart of this team and there’s little the actress can do about it. For now.

This isn’t to say that the fault lies with who Alba is. She’s a decent actress in the right role; her Nancy Callahan in Sin City is the kind of woman that men would kill for, and Dark Angel gave Alba a role that allowed her to deliver a mix of poutiness and sass, backed with a sharp boot heel. It’s fair to say she was born to play Max.

But Sue Storm is a mother figure in a family of super heroes. And while Alba has many charms, projecting a maternal instinct isn’t one of them. She gives off the air of a woman who’s still taking in the world – no crime there for a woman in her mid 20s – but the role requires someone who’s able to suggest with her eyes that she’s seen enought to know what’s right for her boys. If anyone, it’s Michael Chiklis’ Ben Grimm who carries the right amount of world-weariness on his shoulders to be the team’s moral compass.

Despite Scott Knowles’s protestations to the contrary, the only thing that’s woman-centered about Surfer is that there’s a woman in it, surrounded by men. Can Alba’s Sue Storm hold her own in the ass-kicking department? Sure. But she isn’t gifted with the Athenian wisdom necessary to carry the role. Not yet.

Speaking of which, I’m on record with saying that a certain female super hero should be given her due. If Scott Bowles’s article can make it easier to get Wonder Woman a green light, I’ll forgive him his blindness. I’m just hoping he’s not in charge of casting the thing.

The revolution may not be televised, but it will surely be available on special edition DVD

Comics, Media,

I’ve been in a fair amount of comic book stores in my life, and I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve seen a woman browsing around, and count on two fingers the number of times I’ve seen a woman actually working there. So kudos to my local comic shop for busting stereotypes.

But as much as I support the tearing down of cultural barriers (and as much as it behooves some of my comic-loving brethren to actually have a conversation with a girl), is it really necessary for her to play the Grey’s Anatomy DVDs while she’s working? I’m all for moving forward, but dear God woman, take us in baby steps, please! It would be so much easier to handle with the de riguer murmur of obscure sci-fi flicks and/or British television comedies on a seemingly endless repeat in the background.

I’m joking, of course. Geekery – in all its forms – is about enjoying what you like, consequences be damned. The enjoyment proves its value, whether it’s comics or a show where doctors act like they’re in high school. It proves that the thing does not exist in a vacuum, but says something else about who you are, and how you relate to the world. Not all forms of culture get people geeked about them, as evidenced by the intense lack of Internet fanpages devoted to According to Jim.

So a love of Grey’s is no more or no less a form of geekery than a love of Green Lantern. Still, I’m hoping she compromises by rotating in some old episodes of Wonder Woman. Or hell, even Cagney and Lacey.

Welcome geeks and nerds! I am your people.

Comics,

Hi, Chicagoist readers. You’ll find the main page of the blog here and more comics content here.

Looking through some referral logs today, I discovered that a decent handful of people are finding this site when searching Technorati for “oblivion.” Rather than individuals who’ve got an obsession with the end of the world, I surmise these are instead people who are searching for information on The Elder Scrolls IV video game.

Sorry, dudes.* Not here. Just posts about songs of the 80s.

But it’s not as if there isn’t reason enough for you to stick around. Between posts on Tarantino, Captain America and uh…Van Halen, there’s plenty here to keep you entertained. Sometimes I even bury a Halo joke in a hyperlink within the post. Like an easter egg.

Speaking of comics, I’m starting to wonder if Joss Whedon leaving the Wonder Woman movie project is the worst thing to happen to the character since Frederic Wertham.

Wonder Woman’s history – both in and out of comics – is flat-out remarkable if for no other reason but the inspiration for William Moulton Marston’s character came from both his wife and the woman with whom they were in a polyamorous relationship (a detail which I’m sure has made it into someone’s fanfic story). Though a founding member of the Justice League of America and a part of the Golden Age of comics, she didn’t become truly iconic until the 1970s when she regained her original origin story, and rose as a torchbearer for feminists. Not coincidentally, she was given the small-screen treatment around this time as well.

I grew up in a house of almost all women, women have been some of my closest friends, and – from time to time – I find myself in romantic situations with women. And I know all of them thought Wonder Woman was pretty awesome at one time or another. So great was the impact of Lynda Carter‘s portrayal, I’m willing to say that 90% of the women I knew in my age cohort had Wonder Woman Underoos (nevermind the impact she had on men in my age cohort).

Recently, DC has re-positioned the character as one of the Big Three, along with Superman and Batman. She’s on equal footing with both, and is in the middle of (and still reeling from) storylines fraught with questions of identity, responsibility and the consequences of a life of duty. It’s heady stuff, and with author Jodi Picoult taking a turn at writing duties, the character is due for a renaissance.

And that’s why the worst thing in the world is for Joss Whedon to leave the project.

Whedon’s probably the best person alive to bring Wonder Woman to the screen. He’s shown a deft hand in navigating the comic world whether handling characters of his own creation (Fray and his Buffy “Season 8” series on Dark Horse, which is so fantastic that I want to light myself on fire) or those entrusted to him (Amazing X-Men). His dialogue mixes equal parts of humor and pathos, while staying true to the characters despite the creative freedom he’s given.

Whedon’s also a master at writing for women. Most impressive is his ability to write strong, smart, independent women who are sexual, but not pandering. They’re not flawless women, but they’re human beings, driven by equal parts mind and heart, which is a rare find in mass entertainment.

Of course, all this makes Whedon a rusty gear in the machine of movie-making.

His original Buffy film is…an interesting failure, for reasons that aren’t Whedon’s own. Serenity was a solid film – though hindered by trying to serve both die-hards and newbies – that didn’t do as well as many expected. His scripts for other films have often been chewed-up and spit back out at him. Like Kevin Smith, he works best not in mass-market films but in boutique pictures that serve a particular audience.

So it’s little surprise that Whedon left the Wonder Woman project, which is destined to be a big-budget film with a star heavy on recognition but light on salary and time commitments (if Katharine McPhee or Anne Hathaway doesn’t end up in the title role, I’ll really be surprised), that will undoubtedly suck so hard, it will make The Fantastic Four seem like The Seventh Seal. It’s film-making by committee as opposed to filmmaker as auteur, and not an environment suited to the man’s talents (or fussiness).

Too bad, really. It’s been 30 years since Wonder Woman’s last bout of iconography. Give the lady her due.

* This is not sexist. It’s just fact. If people were finding this site as a result of a search for “Legend of Zelda” or “The Sims” then you’d have a point. But “The Elder Scrolls?” Come on.

Steve Rogers is Dead, Long Live Captain America

Comics

Though you might not know it from the dearth of posts here, I’ve been busy.

For instance, I had a few thoughts about Jon Brion’s recent show at Hideout.

And a few things popped into my head when Richard Jeni died this week.

Finally, with all due respect to Michael L. Romansky, the death of Captain America isn’t anything to get upset about. Or rather, it would be if Captain America were dead.

Steve Rogers, the man who for the last sixty odd years has embodied the ideals symbolized by Captain America, is. Leaving aside the notion that a death in comics is rarely permanent someone else could (and likely will) pick up the mantle of Captain America and settle into it just fine. He or she will find a way to uphold the ideals that Cap stands for, while still being relatable.

In the wake of the Civil War series, Rogers found he was no longer in touch with what America had become, which is – in part – why he surrendered to the police at the end of the mini-series (though it’s worth noting he said “They’re not arresting Captain America…they’re arresting Steve Rogers, that’s a very different thing.”) The reasons why he started the fight were still worth fighting for, but he found that his methods were no longer winning hearts and minds. America was still a good country, but its new reality could not be seen in Manichean terms. If only it hadn’t taken a destructive war, and the loss of good people, to make that clear to him (gosh, this sounds so familiar for some reason…).

In any case, the ideals of a country do not live and die by the actions of one person, but rather by those that find the way to live them in a way that best serves all.