tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-43236902248578578022024-03-14T00:07:00.656-07:00Sakura FilmAvthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.comBlogger186125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-16411748724761516982015-07-08T19:17:00.000-07:002015-07-09T09:23:54.664-07:00History of the DC Universe: 1986-2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RDSwnSrhwSk/VZ3Y4g41YGI/AAAAAAAAAwc/vY_fU5Qpjb4/s1600/aaaJLAs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RDSwnSrhwSk/VZ3Y4g41YGI/AAAAAAAAAwc/vY_fU5Qpjb4/s200/aaaJLAs.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">My earlier post, <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2015/02/history-of-dc-universe-1935-1985.html">History of the DC Universe: 1935-1985</a>, breaks down how DC Comics became committed to a shared and (relatively) consistent continuity very gradually over a period from about 1952-1969. But once a shared universe began, inconsistencies from older stories were left unresolved and new ones were being made all the time. In 1981's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Green Lantern</i> #143, writer Marv Wolfman answered a letter from a fan who asked about why a character from Kamandi's universe had recognized Hal Jordan in a sprawling crossover in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Showcase </i>#100, but claimed not to in a recent issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">GL</i>. Wolfman's answer acknowledged a need for some sort of clean-up wherein editorial powers would make it clear which past events were part of the main (Earth One) continuity and which weren't. At about the same time, some creators at DC began to perceive that the idea of a Multiverse was too confusing for new readers, and some features, such as Superman, seemed to be in need of a major overhaul. And thus, DC's first housecleaning event, <i>Crisis on Infinite Earths</i>, was conceived. It would finally be published in 1985-1986, and created a new, simpler, better DC Universe.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But if a shared, moderately consistent DC Universe was only about 15 years old when Wolfman saw the need to simplify it, it took much less than that for the need to arise for another clean-up, event, which was followed by another, and another. The post-1985 history of DC Comics is most aptly summarized by recording these reboot events, and what effect they had. They are as follows:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">1986: Crisis on Infinite Earths<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">1994: Zero Hour<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">2006: Infinite Crisis<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">2011: Flashpoint<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Each of these events restarted or revised the timeline of the DC Universe, enabling them – in principle – to change everything. In practice, none of them led to a completely new continuity. COIE and Infinite Crisis performed radical surgery on the Multiverse, with the former reducing the number of alternate Earths from "Infinite" down to just one, and the latter event increasing the number from one up to 52. Infinite Crisis made a modest number of changes to the continuity of the main Earth, while Zero Hour performed some extremely limited clean-ups. Below, I break down in more detail the changes that each reboot ushered in:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Crisis on Infinite Earths<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In principle, Crisis rebooted everything. A new timeline began, and the Multiverse never existed in this timeline. In practice, many features were rebooted with new origins while other features were affected only slightly.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">• The Multiverse of many alternate Earths was replaced by just one positive-matter universe with a past history that consisted primarily of a modified version of the Silver Age continuity of the Justice League and other Earth One features in its recent past and distant future, preceded by a modified version of the Golden Age continuity in its World War Two era. A smattering of heroes from other Earths were added to the modern age of post-Crisis Earth.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• Superman and Batman lost their positions of prominence as among the first superheroes on both Earth One and Earth Two. Instead, the JSA era had no versions of Superman and Batman at all, and they became first heroes of the second wave, but reserve members of the JLA instead of founding members.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• Superman's history was completely overhauled, with the Byrne Superman constituting a significantly new version of the character. [LINK]<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• The original lineup of the Justice League became Flash, Green Lantern, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, and Black Canary. Superman and Batman existed at that time, but did not join as full-time members of any version of the Justice League until later.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• Wonder Woman was, in time, retconned to be two people: Diana's mother Hippolyta as a member of the JSA and Diana coming along much later as a member of the third lineup of the Justice League.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• Characters such as Captain Marvel of Earth-S, Blue Beetle and the Question of Earth-Four, and Lady Quark were added to the current era of superheroes.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• The Crisis itself became part of post-Crisis Earth's history, but as an attack by the Anti-Monitor on the one and only positive-matter universe. Barry Allen died in this Crisis, but Supergirl, who had never existed, did not.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• Many characters, including Donna Troy, Power Girl, and Hawkman, were eventually rebooted at least once, in an effort to provide them with histories that were consistent with the new, unified Earth.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• Because the new Superman had never been Superboy, the Legion of Super-Heroes were inspired by the Superboy of a Pocket Universe that was created as part of a nefarious plan by the Time Trapper. A sequence of timeline reboots taking place in – and affecting only – the Thirtieth Century created more than one new, distinct version of the LSH.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• Because certain features, such as Wolfman and Perez's own Teen Titans, were not rebooted, the post-Crisis continuity of these features was added on to pre-Crisis continuity, which eventually became very lengthy and complex.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• Justice League continuity eventually included six considerably distinct lineups: The Year One JLA, the Detroit JLA, Justice League International and Justice League Europe, the new Big Seven with Kyle Rayner and Wally West, and a new JLA led by "the Trinity" of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, which eventually turned into the Robinson JLA with Donna Troy, Starman, and Congorilla. This slate was wiped clean only with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flashpoint</i>.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• The ranks of youths who served as Robin eventually included Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, and Damian Wayne. This sequence of Robins has never been reset at any point from 1940 to the present.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Zero Hour<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In principle, Zero Hour also restarted the timeline, and modest retcons affected some features, such as Batman, but no flagship features were fundamentally altered. A fold-out in the final issue included a timeline of the DC Universe.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Infinite Crisis<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Infinite Crisis became the third event to reconstitute DC continuity. The villains' effort to remix pre-Crisis Earths to their liking was thwarted, resulting in a haphazard reordering of continuity of no one's design. A few major changes resulted:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">• Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman were once again made full founding members of the original Justice League lineup, replacing Black Canary in that capacity.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• DC once again had a Multiverse, rather than only one dimension. The new Multiverse, however, was not revealed for almost a year after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Infinite Crisis</i> ended, and has only 52 Earths rather than the thousand (or "infinite") Earths before <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">COIE</i>. These were initially identical, but tampering by Mister Mind made them all distinct. Many of these Earths were described only in very brief fashion until nine years later, when the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity Guidebook</i> provided an overview of almost all of them.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• In general, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Infinite Crisis</i> left more things the same than it changed, but it gave writers latitude to make modest changes that they could explain as having happened as a result of the event, or of Superboy Prime having altered reality while punching the walls between dimensions. Consequently, many small changes were revealed months and years after the event ended.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Flashpoint<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Only five years after Infinite Crisis, Flashpoint changed DC Comics in more radical fashion. In contrast to COIE, which was published long after the concept was considered, Flashpoint apparently occurred as a matter of some urgency, interrupting many creative projects mid-stride. This was perhaps most evident in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dark Knight</i>title, which ran only 5 issues in a Volume 1 before being rebooted with a new #1. The New 52, as the post-Flashpoint DC Universe was called, made dramatic changes in the publication format as well as fictional, creative changes within the story:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">• DC began distributing new comics digitally on the same day that print versions were released.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• Every title, new or old, was relaunched with a new #1, including the venerable <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Detective</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman</i>, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman</i>, which had not previously been renumbered since their 1937-1940 inceptions.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• Most flagship characters received a new costume, in many cases raising the collar, creating a 3-D armor look in place of skintight fabric, and eliminating the "underwear on the outside" look that had traditionally added an extra splash of color to the uniforms of Superman and Batman.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• The timeline of the main Earth, Earth 0, was rebooted in significant ways, although those have not yet been entirely explained. Most notably, the Justice League was rebooted with a new origin depicting the first meeting of most of the various pairs of heroes, including Superman and Batman, but not Flash and Green Lantern. New origins were told for many characters, including Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, but significant elements of their pre-Flashpoint history appear to be intact. The main heroes are now shown as almost a decade younger than in their pre-Flashpoint versions. Details of how much pre-Flashpoint history is still in continuity continue to emerge as new stories are published.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• Earth 2 was radically reimagined, replacing a version in the image of the Silver Age Earth-Two which had been seen only occasionally after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Infinite Crisis</i> with a new version stricken by bloodshed and catastrophe. A relentless series of attacks by Darkseid first eliminated the new Earth 2's versions of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, then almost the entire population, and finally the physical planet itself. The survivors now live on a new planet along with superheroes loosely based on the members of the Justice Society.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• The rest of the Multiverse is presumably unchanged since Mr. Mind created it at the end of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">52</i>. Most of this was seen rarely or not at all before <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> in 2014, so there was no creative reason to change any of the Earths besides Earth 0 and Earth 2.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Five Versions of History<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In, all, DC has had about five major company-wide versions of continuity in their main storytelling world, and countless parallel worlds, alternate timelines, and lesser retcons. To describe the full history would occupy an encyclopedia, but a quick summary can be provided by listing some of the major superheroes of the era in approximate order of introduction, and the various incarnations of the "J" teams (Justice Society / Justice League). Other features, other reboots, and the tangled history of the future and past are beyond the scope of this summary. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VA_OXbG2eSw/VZ3ZT1SPi7I/AAAAAAAAAwk/xuoTcmgkw4A/s1600/DCU_TimelineWork2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="127" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VA_OXbG2eSw/VZ3ZT1SPi7I/AAAAAAAAAwk/xuoTcmgkw4A/s400/DCU_TimelineWork2.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Golden Age (1938)</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Superman, Crimson Avenger, Batman, Sandman, Flash, Hawkman, Hour-Man, Spectre, Doctor Fate, Green Lantern, Atom, Justice Society, Aquaman, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, Seven Soldiers of Victory.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Silver Age (1952)</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Earth One: Superman (first as Superboy), Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Green Arrow, Martian Manhunter, Flash, Green Lantern, Justice League, Atom, Hawkman. After many years, original JLA replaced by Detroit version.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Earth Two: Retroactively declared to fit the Golden Age stories, with considerable revisions made or implied. The JSA returned from retirement and younger heroes began another team, Infinity Inc.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Post-Crisis (1986)<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal">World War Two era: Flash (Jay Garrick), Sandman, Green Lantern (Alan Scott), Wonder Woman (Hippolyta), Hawkman (Carter Hall), Doctor Fate, Atom (Al Pratt), Black Canary, Justice Society.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Second era: Superman, Batman, Flash (Barry Allen), Green Lantern (Hal Jordan), Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Black Canary (II), Justice League (with Black Canary but without Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman). Detroit Justice League. Flash (Wally West). Justice League International and Justice League Europe. Wonder Woman (Diana), Green Lantern (Kyle Rayner). "New Big Seven" Justice League.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Post-Infinite Crisis (2006)</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">This timeline inherited most of the Post-Crisis timeline, but with the original Justice League reset to the Silver Age lineup with Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman instead of Black Canary. After Infinite Crisis, a new JLA lineup included several Silver Age JLAers along with Red Tornado, Black Lightning, Vixen, and Arsenal (Roy Harper). This later gave way to a JLA lineup including several former Teen Titans, Congorilla, and Starman (Mikaal Tomas). <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">New 52 (2011)</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Earth-0: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern, Cyborg, Justice League.</div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian> 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QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-30996902326648426532015-05-17T23:08:00.000-07:002015-07-09T09:23:54.687-07:00Mad Men 714: Person to Person<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7U0SjSJYQ5k/VVmB42-9EjI/AAAAAAAAAv8/-NFCtnEZ0Yk/s1600/aaaMM.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="141" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7U0SjSJYQ5k/VVmB42-9EjI/AAAAAAAAAv8/-NFCtnEZ0Yk/s200/aaaMM.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Don Draper dresses better, talks better, works better, and plays better than anyone you'll ever know. Paired with that blessing is his curse: He makes more and bigger mistakes than anyone you'll ever know. We knew that in Season One, and it's carried him through to the finish. We've seen him fall down, pick himself up, and fall again. It's a credit to writer-creator Matt Weiner and his team that the cycle could stay fresh enough that Don standing on a cliff in the show's final minutes could tease the possibility of a leap and turn into something completely different.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Everyone got their send-off. For some it was love; for others it was career; for Betty it was the grave. That plot seemed to set up Don's fate: If the Draper kids were going to lose their mother, maybe Don would become a full-time father. As Betty saw it, that's not a role the otherwise omni-talented Don Draper can fill. And so, his high-speed dash across the desert led him not East, to home, but West, to the house of the original Don Draper, whose name Dick Whitman stole. There, he found Stephanie, whom we last saw a year ago, pregnant and broke, sent packing to Oakland by a lie told by Megan. Stephanie was far from a major character on the series, but here she filled a particular role: Her abandonment of her child, and the shame she feels for that put a focus on Don having abandoned, at one time or another, absolutely everything. Faced with this, Don offered to become some sort of partner in her life, a ludicrous misplacement of the energy he'd withdrawn from all of his existing responsibilities. Stephanie runs from the resort (clearly filmed at, and representing, the not-named Esalen Institute) and leaves Don with a temporary transportation inconvenience and a hole in his conscience big enough to swallow him inside. Don's frustration ends with the outburst, "People just come and go and no one says, 'Goodbye.'" He's far too intelligent not to see his own sins in that line.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The title of the episode, "Person to Person," is a manner of billing telephone calls that no longer exists. The episode has six telephone calls, most of them showing modern technology as a way to keep people apart when they really should be together. The fragility of telephone conversations is demonstrated in the first call when Sally ends her call with Don and he can't do or say a thing about it. (Incidentally, a similar but more futuristic kind of "hanging up" victimizes Jon Hamm's character in the Christmas episode of the BBC's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Mirror</i> in which he starred.) Soon, Don – who placed a call to Peggy to try to make up for his own coming and going without saying "Goodbye" – inflicts the same punishment on her, cutting off their call and leaving her worried for his sanity and his safety.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">That was the episode's fifth phone call. The one before that was one that ended a relationship, with Joan choosing to talk to someone distant, about business, and shut out Richard, who is present, about love. And so she loses him, for better or worse, for richer or poorer.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But the episode's final phone call goes the opposite way. Stan and Peggy start by talking about business, but soon, and stunningly (and probably with too little build-up) pledge their love for one another. Stan realizes the absurdity of a phone taking the place of human contact, and runs down the hall to kiss her.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In a show about modern media (print, radio, or television) blasting opinions unilaterally into people's brains, the telephone is an apt metaphor. It's another form of long-distance communication, although it works in both ways instead of just one. In that sense, the old landline more closely resembles its mobile offspring that have more completely taken over our world than anyone could have foreseen in 1970, mediating our interpersonal relationships as well as serving up corporate ads. The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mad Men</i> finale may say more about the devices that keep us apart in 2015 than it does about 1970.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But Stan is twice the voice of reason in the episode. He also realizes that Don's flight and escape are temporary. "He always does this, and he always comes back," Stan tells Peggy. He's exactly right.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Steve Jobs was vocal about alternative forms of consciousness having enhanced his creative powers, and there's some of that in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mad Men's</i> final two scene. Don, having shed the New York coat and tie for a meditation circle on the Pacific coast, hums "Om" the last time we see him. And then, the gut-punch ending is the 1971 Coca Cola television ad that anyone who lived in America in the Seventies saw countless times, and we realize that Don's epiphany along the Pacific was not an escape from work, but ultimately just an inspiration for his greatest success, as he went on to return to New York and write that ad, the single most prominent television ad of all time. Don Draper gets credit for the commercial, "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I'd_Like_to_Teach_the_World_to_Sing_(In_Perfect_Harmony)">Hilltop</a>," that belongs in real life to an ad man named Bill Backer, and in so doing, achieves the fame that he always had the potential to achieve.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> 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gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal">In the first episode of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mad Men</i>, Don sits across a table from Rachel Menken and, en route to winning her as a lover and a client, tells her, "I'm living like there's no tomorrow, because there isn't one." And now, the show is over, and for Don Draper, there isn't one. <o:p></o:p></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-8578191202180353412015-05-01T03:51:00.000-07:002015-07-09T09:23:54.722-07:00Multiversity 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-abGhdtqq2qM/VUNaih5jSLI/AAAAAAAAAvk/4_vgRrpIx7M/s1600/aaaMultiversity2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-abGhdtqq2qM/VUNaih5jSLI/AAAAAAAAAvk/4_vgRrpIx7M/s1600/aaaMultiversity2.jpg" height="153" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> is a long and winding road, a story of stories, with multiple universes facing their doom, and a cast of characters so vast that the cameos and allusions stretch out numerous and almost invisibly into the far distance. The finale, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity </i>#2, has many of the hallmarks of a grand triumphant ending, big and chaotic, with the heroes more than matching in power and goodness what the villains offer in power and evil, until a final ceremonial victory celebration. As with much of the rest of the series, the finale is more than it seems at first glance.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Warring through a chaotic set of interlocking battles, a large number of heroes, some of whom have never been seen before, hurl themselves across the page, winning many small fights which are small only in comparison to the main battle, which is so large, it name-checks Darkseid as a side threat without bothering to show him.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">With fights breaking out all across the Multiverse, it's the most humongous superhero battle of all time, which distracts from the most significant fact, which is that it's all completely real.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The reality of what's happening in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity </i>#2, as real as the stakes in the previous issue, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comics</i>, is driven home at the beginning, when the font and second-person narrative speaks to us, literally to us, in a panel stylized as many pages, one after another, and an eye. The story goes on, with or without you. Whether we read or stop reading, whether it's from boredom or death that we stop, the story goes on. Last issue, this was Ultra's salvation and his curse, that his story goes on with or without us, forever. After we die, someone else will read Ultra comics, and someone else will read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> and the comics that come after it. That's the first truth of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Later, when the overt threat of the bad guys called the Gentry have been defeated (Or have they?), and the Empty Hand makes an ominous debut and disappears, Superman of Earth-23, Cal Ellis, looks right at us as he refers to Earth-33, our Earth, and though he uses third-person, he's speaking to those around us in the real world, fans and creators alike: The source of all the heroes' troubles is really in our world, not theirs, and that's the fight that he and the Justice League of the Multiverse called Operation Justice Incarnate, must fight. Maybe Grant Morrison hopes that this team of alternate Justice Leaguers will appear in more comic books in the future, but that's not the real message. What <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity </i>has been about since the beginning is the threat to comic books, the fact that its spirit and business wax and wane, and the things which sustain the industry could be corrupted or damaged critically in the future. The Gentry, a wave of unpleasant content, is defeated for now, by the idea of the Justice League and superheroes in general, but more threats remains.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And the bottom line threat is right there on the last panel. Cold, hard cash. If there's anything the comic book industry needs to survive, it's ultimately that. Even as movies and video games have made superhero stories more profitable than ever, the comics face a long-term existential threat to their business model. For now, the comic industry goes on, but the looming threat of The Empty Hand is always out there, to return when it chooses.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This is the multipronged message of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>, and it drives the allegorical story from start to finish. A gothic miniadventure with a vampire Sivana invading the dark Earth-13 ends in victory for the heroes as the demon Etrigan patterns himself after Superman and a Zatanna-like curse produces the first of several laughs in the issue by making vampires crave coffee instead of blood. Then, the Marvels defeat Hannibal Lecter Sivana, and the story patterns itself around <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crisis on Infinite Earths</i>, becoming what comics have in many ways become, "an endless event." To the credit of penciller Ivan Reis, it's in this sequence that Earth-26's Lincoln Memorial with a cartoon-looking goat as the central figure becomes the issue's second laugh. Bizarro Adam Strange ("Adam Familiar") follows soon after.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The pivotal battle turns around Nix Uotan solving a Rubik's Cube, seeking, as seen in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Final Crisis</i>, a way to do it better than ever before, demonstrating the power of nerds to perform miracles. Now he's corrupted by the Gentry as he does so, and the greatest perversions of sweet, innocent characters take place. The Lil Leaguers are shown to be robot spies for the Gentry and Nix Uotan beheads Captain Carrot. If there's a place where the corruption of the genre would be more harmful, it would be in the variants intended for the youngest readers. The alternate Batman, Aquaman and Flash lead the charge, with Red Racer, the superhero who – like Barry Allen – is a comics fan, referencing both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crisis on Infinite Earths</i> and stories in Morrison's own <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JLA</i> series. Ultimately, the combined power of the alternate Justice League and the Marvel-Comics-inspired characters overwhelms the Gentry, and Nix is turned good, for now. The ambiguous victory with The Empty Hand fading away with a threat to return on his own terms gives readers the usual, formulaic win for the heroes while reminding us of Morrison's overarching warning: The comics face threats; if you love them, take those threats seriously. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:SnapToGridInCell/> 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table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> is sure to be collected and read by fans far into the future. Its best issues are of the highest level, and they alone would be enough to make it a classic. The guide to the Multiverse is likely to be a significant reference for many years to come. The heavy message yoked to those elements is Morrison's good-bye (for now?) to monthly superhero comics, and it's a message readers and creators will thus be reminded of long into the future. Will they heed it? Morrison is likely talking to himself, and of his own retirement, in the opening panel of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity </i>#2. The story goes on, with or without you.<o:p></o:p></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-37443164761084785742015-04-22T10:01:00.000-07:002015-07-09T09:23:54.742-07:00Doctor Hurt RIP<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--Bj03qOkPLw/VTfTwZSVz3I/AAAAAAAAAvU/I9Mgjl_PMqc/s1600/aaaHurt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--Bj03qOkPLw/VTfTwZSVz3I/AAAAAAAAAvU/I9Mgjl_PMqc/s1600/aaaHurt.jpg" height="200" width="58" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Not with a whimper, but a bang. The dark and convoluted path of Doctor Hurt comes to an end (apparently, for now) in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Convergence</i> #3 as the second Batman of the fourth-or-so Earth Two sets off an explosion that kills himself, Hurt, and some of Hurt's lackies in order to save Dick Grayson. In an unacknowledged quirk, this is Thomas Wayne (the father of the New 52's Bruce Wayne) killing Thomas Wayne (an 18th-century ancestor of New Earth's Bruce Wayne). So, it's a fitting time for an obituary for the villain of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman R.I.P.</i>, and one of Grant Morrison's finest creations.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Hurt was visually designed to match the unnamed doctor who appeared in the "Robin Dies at Dawn" story back in 1963. This benign and largely-undefined character was brought back in cameos starting with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman</i> #673 (though his hands, perhaps, were seen holding binoculars at the end of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman</i>#665 and his handiwork was on-panel as far back as #655) and was gradually, hint by hint, developed into the major villain of Morrison's two-year run on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman</i>, and then played a similar role in Morrison's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman and Robin</i> and concurrent <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Return of Bruce Wayne</i>. Otherwise, he has hardly appeared at all. Presumably, his long life span would let him remain alive and very unhappy where the Joker buried him on the grounds of Wayne Manor. He appeared in a singularly dark role in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman, Inc.</i> vol. 2 #5, as an adviser to the President of the United States who convinces the Commander in Chief to destroy Gotham City with nuclear weapons. This was in a possible future which was averted, but it did assert that Hurt remained a piece on the table who could appear again. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Convergence</i> #3, Jeff King writes his apparent finale.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I think the saga of Doctor Hurt proves the power of the unseen, and conversely, the weakness of the obvious, the flaw in storytelling that lays everything bare. In a few tantalizingly brief appearances strung out over a year and a half, Grant Morrison made Doctor Hurt into a villain of tremendous intrigue and potential, someone who could perhaps out-plan Batman, someone who could perhaps have become a major villain on a par with Luthor or the Joker, but who was instead dismantled into a mere raving thug, first by Morrison, and now finally by King. There was an unrealized potential here, and DC Comics are the poorer for it.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">At the end of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman</i>#680, with Doctor Hurt hosting the Black Glove party in Arkham Asylum, with a maddened Batman falling prey to Joker toxin while Jezebel Jet smiled with evil joy, who was Doctor Hurt? We didn't know. The set-up, as we understood it, was that the mystery "Who is the Black Glove?" was the greatest mystery we'd seen in comics for a very long time. It had gradually become apparent that Doctor Hurt was the Black Glove, not the henchman of a higher-up, but who was Doctor Hurt? It was a mystery, and everybody had a guess.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">What, at that point, did we know about Doctor Hurt? Very little. We knew that he was evil, ran the Black Glove organization that met annually to bet on life and death, and that evil itself, rather than power or riches, was his apparent motive. We knew that he especially hated Batman, and that he had been planning for a very long time to make this one, decisive bid to destroy the caped crusader. And with a promise that Bruce Wayne would be sidelined from DC Comics, it looked like he was going to win. In a sense, he did.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I believed that Doctor Hurt was the Devil. And this was the correct idea, to a point. To the extent that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman</i> #681 was going to reveal anything, that's what it was going to reveal, and I thought this had been made clear a few issues earlier. Eventually, a Grant Morrison interview revealed as much: "This is the story of how Batman cheats The Devil." But it was an ambiguous reveal, to fit the tone of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">R.I.P.</i> to its logical (non)conclusion.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Morrison's run on Batman was intended to homage and exemplify spooky, ambiguous stories. The original Zur En Arrh story seems to be a dream, but Batman ends it with a gadget called the Bat-Radia in his hand, blurring the line between fantasy and reality. A revamped Bat-Mite (called "Might") appeared with no explanation as to whether he was real or a fantasy. It was only later that I realized the artful ambiguity of the word "Might" itself: It can mean power, or it can be the modal verb "might" meaning "may" or "can be." Bat-Might was ambiguously real. He might be a figment of Batman's imagination, or he might be a magical fifth-dimensional imp. Finally, in a laugh line, he tells a frustrated Batman that imagination <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">is</b>the fifth dimension. Was he imaginary or from another dimension? Yes and no. Neither answer is right, and both are. This ambiguity, playing everything right down the middle, was also behind the nature of a minor character named Honor Jackson. A struggling, drugged, mind-zapped Bruce Wayne spends one day wandering the streets of Gotham with Honor Jackson only to find out that Honor Jackson had already died. Did Batman imagine him, or did a magical Bat-Might resusitate Honor Jackson so he could spend a day redeeming his failed life by helping Batman? Yes and no. The story works hard to avoid giving us a clear answer. And we were being given half the answer right then of "Who is the Black Glove?" Meaning that we weren't going to get an answer, or that we were going to get a spooky answer that begs a follow up. "Doctor Hurt was The Devil… <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">or was he</i></b>?"<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So, yes, Doctor Hurt was played right down the middle the whole way, as a "man who may or may not have been some manifestation of the Devil" (in Bruce's words) or as something else. But that something else was never defined. The story teased that perhaps Doctor Hurt was Bruce's father, but this possibility was never in keeping with DC's sacrosanct lore, and was eventually refuted. But that something else remained vague. Whatever Doctor Hurt was, where was he five years ago, or twenty, or fifty? Where did his timeline begin? When Doctor Hurt was at his best, we didn't know, and we would never know. Like the long-teased, but never-delivered (well, for a long time, anyway) origins of the Joker or the Phantom Stranger, the ambiguity of Doctor Hurt was what made him interesting. He was evil, a master planner, a perfect foil to Batman, and inspired Damian's remarks in a possible future: "I know The Devil exists, or at least <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">something</b>which might as well <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">be</b> The Devil. I've <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">met</b> him."<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">When Doctor Hurt returned in the second season of Morrison's Batman work, the mystery was maintained for a while. We saw that Hurt had somehow survived (even Batman didn't know how) and stepped into the role of a Mexican drug lord, and had an army of intriguing cronies who had been broken and made into slaves. This was all in keeping with the ambiguous (and oddly psychological) evil of Doctor Hurt as the focus of evil in the world, "the hole in things." A brilliant scene in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman and Robin </i>#13 showed us a fantasy that couldn't be real, of Doctor Hurt killing the Waynes then taking over as an evil Thomas Wayne. This ambiguity remained and remains: Did Doctor Hurt order the murder of the Waynes? Would Bruce have died had not Joe Chill lost his nerve because he'd had a boy of his own? Did Bruce's survival of the hit ruin Doctor Hurt's plan to become the dark lord of Wayne Manor? It's a compelling vision and made more powerful by its ambiguity. We don't know. We may never know.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And then it unraveled. A few scenes, beginning in the "Western" chapter of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Return of Bruce Wayne</i>, then elegantly reprising "Dark Knight, Dark City" and an old <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World's Finest </i>tale, unmasked Doctor Hurt as an older member of the Waynes, coincidentally named Thomas, who had sought a deal with The Devil and inadvertently summoned a force sent by Darkseid and was changed by it. It all fit, it all made sense, it tied things together, but Doctor Hurt the master became Doctor Hurt the servant, and there went the mystery.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Still, ambiguity remained. Still, he arguably embodied the central evil in the universe. But the myth was weakened. I think there was a lost opportunity to build Doctor Hurt into a pivotal force in DC Comics. There was no logical way to salvage his debut as a villain with one really big, years-long plan, but maybe he could have been kept lurking in the shadows, part of something big and dark and mythic. 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mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal">And now he ends here. His final line is a disappointingly cliché, "And I say, first we kill <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">this</b>Batman, then we kill the other one, and his <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">boy</b>!" He's simply an opportunist, looking to stick someone with a knife when the occasion arises. It's like seeing Doctor Fate sit down in his boxers, turn on the television, and eat peanut butter out of the jar. The mystery is gone. And so is Doctor Hurt. But it's the mystery we'll miss more.<o:p></o:p></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-6789119503082300772015-04-14T15:10:00.000-07:002015-07-09T09:23:54.776-07:00Retro Review: The Long Halloween - Who is Holiday?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TBIK7UalsRs/VS2QRE_HJrI/AAAAAAAAAu8/KE7YXEsqRDE/s1600/aaaaHoliday.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-TBIK7UalsRs/VS2QRE_HJrI/AAAAAAAAAu8/KE7YXEsqRDE/s1600/aaaaHoliday.jpg" height="200" width="125" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Mystery<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Long Halloween </i>is one of the classic Batman stories, telling the story of a year early in the caped crimefighter's career, working the existing origin tale of Two Face into a new mystery of their own creation. The story is, in large part, a whodunit, with a mystery serial killer named Holiday who attacks once a month on major holidays over the course of a year. Despite the abundance of information given to us, the identity of the killer remains somewhat in doubt at story's end because of contradictory confessions, evidence of multiple killers, and other ambiguous clues.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">There are 13 dates on which Holiday strikes at one or more victims:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Halloween #1: Johnny Vito (dead)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Thanksgiving: The Irish Gang (5 dead)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Christmas: Milos Grappa (dead)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">New Year's Eve: Alberto Falcone (faked his death)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Valentine's Day: Sal Maroni's men (4 dead)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">St. Patrick's Day: Sal Maroni's men (about 10 dead) <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">April Fools Day: The Riddler (many shots fired, deliberately missing)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Mother's Day: The gunsmith (dead)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Father's Day: Luigi Maroni (dead)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Independence Day: The coroner (dead)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Roman Holiday: Carla Viti (dead)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Labor Day: Sal Maroni (dead, shot by Alberto Falcone)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Halloween #2: Carmine Falcone and Vernon Fields (dead, shot by Harvey Dent)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">We know the killers on the last two dates. We also have two confessions, with Alberto Falcone telling the police that he committed all of the Holiday murders up until his capture, and Gilda Dent, speaking to herself, telling us that she carried out the first three murders and that she believes that her husband Harvey committed the rest. In addition, Harvey Dent says that there were two Holiday Killers; either he’s referring to Gilda and Alberto, or a third killer is implicated.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Years after the story was published, there is no universal consensus: Who was Holiday? Similar arguments have appeared in different corners of the Internet, and new readers keep following similar paths: Three suspects remain. But who really did it? Who is Holiday? Who killed who?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Solutions</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Besides the known killings on the last two dates, there are three common solutions proposed for the first eleven Holiday events:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Solution A:</b>Alberto was the only killer, excepting Harvey Dent committing the final two murders. This is what Alberto's confession asserted, and it's also what Batman concluded. This theory is strongest if it is assumed that Alberto's father, Carmine "The Roman" Falcone was coordinating and assisting the shootings. Solution A would mean that Gilda's confession is false, and because she's speaking only to herself, it would mean that she is delusional.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Solution GA:</b>Gilda committed the first three murders, then Alberto committed all the rest. Nobody in the story actually believes this, but it's perhaps the most common reader theory. It accepts Gilda's confession as true insofar as the facts that she could know of, and Alberto's as partly true but partly exaggerated.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Solution GAH:</b>Gilda, Alberto, and Harvey each committed some of the murders. This theory contradicts every person in the story, to some extent, but some readers still favor it.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I believe that a careful examination of the facts strongly discredits Solution GAH, and goes a long way to disprove Solution GA. Solution A is the best explanation of the story, but there's a small chance that Loeb had Solution GA in mind.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">There are five lines of reasoning that strengthen Solution A. Most or all of these have been discussed before.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Evidence 1 - Opportunity</b>: It is evident that Gilda would have had a tough time committing the three crimes she claims. This is especially true for the second one, on Thanksgiving. Gilda was hospitalized and on an I.V. at the time, but she claims that she snuck out of the hospital. Here's what that would have entailed:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Although she was so impaired that she needed one more month in the hospital, and even in late December, she was still advised to take it easy. But she claims she snuck out of the hospital and returned undetected. While outside she needed to obtain a "Holiday" gun. Her house was blown up, so either she retrieved one from the wreckage, or bought one and had it prepared, or she had stored one somewhere outside her home (even though she was injured very shortly after the first Holiday murder). Then she needed to find the Irish Gang. This wouldn't be easy, because as of hours earlier, they were in jail and there was no evidence they would be freed. The location where they were found was not where Mickey lived (Batman confronted him there). The door had a DO NOT DISTURB sign, which should probably mean the door was locked, but Holiday opens it somehow. Then the shooter outgunned five men. Then Gilda returned to the hospital, without anyone noticing that she was missing.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Few of these difficulties would apply to Alberto. The Irish Gang was picked up from jail in a limousine, certainly paid for by Carmine. Carmine would have arranged their suite, and could have allowed Alberto a way in. His comings and goings would not have been limited in any way that we know of. Outshooting the whole gang is still hard to explain, no matter who the shooter is, but Alberto, at least, was not suffering a head injury at the time.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Similar, but less compelling, constraints apply to Gilda's opportunity to commit the Halloween and Christmas shootings. Moreover, as the Dents were short of money, even the means to buy and dispose of several guns is somewhat strained, whereas the Falcones were literally overflowing with cash.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Batman finds metal filed off of a gun in the Dents' basement, but this does not implicate Gilda. We know that Harvey had a Holiday gun at the end: He could have made it in their basement. Moreover, if Gilda had filed metal off a gun for the first two killings, it probably wouldn't have remained in their vise after their home was blown up. (Although perhaps the vise would have been salvaged in a clean state from the wreckage.)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Evidence 2 - Coincidental Coordination</b>: Solutions GA and GAH posit that multiple killers who were not coordinated somehow managed to strike once and only once on several consecutive holidays without missing a month or striking twice on the same night. It is particularly implausible that the three switched on and off many times while maintaining the pristine pattern. It is somewhat less unlikely if there was only one "switch," with Gilda committing the first three, then Alberto the rest. The New Year event actually took place in the final moments of December (there was no Holiday event in January), and only 6 days after the Christmas one. This might have given "Holiday #2" the best chance to pre-empt "Holiday #1" without an overlap, but it still requires that Holiday #1 stopped after Holiday #2 struck for the first time.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">There is also an implausible coincidence if we imagine that two different killers both chose the same disguise. We know that Alberto wore a hat when he shot Sal Maroni. We saw that Holiday wore a hat from May through September, but didn't see Holiday's head for any of the other shootings. Gilda claimed to have worn a hat (Harvey's) as well. How could they choose the same disguise? Gilda could have read about Alberto wearing a hat in the newspaper after he was arrested (we know that she had such a newspaper). It's much less likely that Gilda would have chosen such a disguise first, and then Alberto accidentally copied it.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Further, Alberto finally provides an explanation for why holidays were chosen for the crimes: He was born on a holiday and chose the dates to assert his significance. It is utterly implausible for Gilda to have chosen the first three dates on the basis of Alberto being born on a holiday. This only makes sense if Gilda chose the holiday motif and it's purely a coincidence that Alberto was born on one. However, if Alberto was being guided by Carmine, it requires that Alberto chose the holiday motif while Carmine set the overall direction.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Evidence 3 - Handedness</b>: Some readers have noticed that the gun hand changes from one Holiday shooting to another. Harvey is seen to shoot Carmine using his left hand, while Albero and Gilda appear to be right-handed. This would support Solution GAH. (It is also indicated by blood on Harvey's right hand and sleeve that he shot Vernon Fields with his right hand, making him an ambidextrous shooter.)<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">However, this unravels upon a closer look. One, the gun hand in the Christmas scene switches from left to right, which suggests that gun hand is simply a detail that artist Tim Sale wasn't concerned with. Two, it is possible that the shooter had a gun in each hand, which would require that both hands be used. Three, in the sequel, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dark Victory</i>, we see Alberto shoot with his left hand, even though he used his right hand in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Long Halloween</i>, making Alberto himself ambidextrous, or the detail simply unimportant.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Moreover, when we see a Holiday gun being made in September, there is one panel showing the hands on a vise in such a way that we should see the gun-maker's body behind the hands, but instead we see a wall of tools. This minor error reinforces the idea that the art is subject to mistakes, and therefore, the handedness does not constitute significant support for Solution GAH.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Evidence 4 - Gilda's Logic:</b> Gilda's confession has multiple logical problems suggesting that she is delusional. Most salient is this: Her stated motive is that by killing gangsters she would be reducing Harvey's workload. This is dubious in the best of circumstances, but we have seen earlier that she herself doesn't believe it: On New Years Eve, she tells Barbara Gordon that the Holiday situation is increasing Harvey's workload. And that shouldn't have been an unexpected outcome: Of course, a serial killer on the loose could only add to Harvey's worries, whereas killing a few marginal gangsters would do nothing to eliminate his larger problem concerning the Roman. Gilda shouldn't, and doesn't, believe her own motive.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Gilda claims that she got the idea for Holiday by reading Harvey's files. But when she confronted him about a gun in their basement, and he said that he brought evidence home, she seemed surprised by that. If she read Harvey's files, they were presumably at home, unless she read his files in his office. Moreover, she was upset by having found the gun, not supportive of it. The 180° turn in tone between the basement scene and her confession indicate that she is idolizing Harvey and whitewashing the crimes that she thinks he committed by adding a role of her own.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Additionally, she believes that Alberto was actually shot, which we know didn't take place. She might have incomplete knowledge of the details, but the fact that Alberto turned up alive should have caused her to question if he was shot at all.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Finally, Gilda's confession is the only reason whatsoever to believe that she committed any of the crimes. But it directly contradicts Alberto's confession. If we have to assume that one confession is false, hers is the more likely false, as it creates so many other contradictions. The only reason to suspect Alberto's as false is because of Gilda's, but Alberto unquestionably committed at least one murder, and almost certainly more, whereas we have no proof of Gilda having committed any of them.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Evidence 5 - The Carmine Falcone connection:</b> Circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that Carmine Falcone was directing the entire sequence of Holiday crimes.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Superficially, the first four Holiday shootings struck at Carmine's interests, while most of them after that targeted his rivals. However, none of the first four actually killed anyone that wasn't in some way suspect from Carmine's perspective. Johnny Viti had earlier been targeted by Carmine. The Irish Gang were outsiders, and Harvey Dent imagined that Carmine might kill them if their allegiance was suspect. Milos had failed to protect Carmine from repeated invasions of his homes. And Alberto seemed to be a killing that was intolerable to Carmine, but it was faked and didn't actually take place. The logic of someone deliberately performing a hit that worked against them to remove suspicion from themselves is offered elsewhere in the story.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The timing of the Holiday crimes, of witnesses and victims coming and going, suggests that Carmine was choreographing the events around many of the Holiday shootings. This is especially true of the later events, but true of the very first ones as well.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Known coordination:<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Thanksgiving: The Irish Gang was picked up in a limousine and taken to a fancy hotel. This presumably put them in a time and place that Carmine Falcone arranged.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">New Years: Carmine told Carla to go find Alberto, and because of his command, she "discovered" the evidence of the (fake) killing.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">St. Patrick's Day: Sofia, under Carmine's orders, arrives shortly after the killing took place, making it appear to be a Holiday killing instead of a hit ordered by Carmine Falcone.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">April Fools: Riddler is confronted by Holiday in a time and place exactly where Carmine had just sent him. Sofia avoids being a witness or interfering because Carmine told her to "come right back."<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Mother's Day: The gunsmith is killed very shortly before Sofia arrives.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Plausible coordination:<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Halloween: Carmine could have known that Johnny Viti was home, or ordered it to be the case. Gilda could not have made this happen.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Christmas: Carmine could have known that Milos was about to go outside. Gilda could not have predicted this.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Roman Holiday: Carla was pursuing the Holiday case with Sofia. The lead that sent her to the coroner's office could have been sent to her by Carmine.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Protecting Alberto:</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Presumably, killing the gunsmith and the coroner were two events that only served to protect Alberto's identity. The gun metal found in the Dent's basement probably came from Harvey making the gun he used for the final killings. The gunsmith made the other guns for Alberto, and he was killed to keep him silent. Consider the timing: He was killed immediately after his identity was discovered by Sofia; this, plausibly, could have been arranged by Carmine. The Dents couldn't have possibly have timed this correctly. The coroner also knew of Alberto's fake death, and was killed to assure his silence.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The first gun:</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">If we take the sequence in the art literally, the first Holiday gun was made many weeks before the first murder, on the same night that Johnny Viti killed Richard Daniel, and before the Dents (or Gordons) learned about that murder. This timing would have been wildly coincidental if Gilda or Harvey were preparing the gun, but is plausible if Johnny Viti's return from Italy set into motion a plan by the Falcones to kill several people, starting with him.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Carmine and Alberto:</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">On the surface, Carmine seems to disrespect Alberto. He makes comments that are dismissive of Alberto in June and August, but only when other people are listening. On Thanksgiving, Carmine seems affectionate with him when they're alone, and on New Years Eve, Carmine thinks (one of the few thought balloons in the entire story), "If it weren't for Alberto, there'd be nobody I could trust." This supports the idea that his disrespect for Alberto is a sham to facilitate using Alberto to commit the killings unsuspected.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Both the Riddler and Batman see this solution from different sides, with the Riddler guessing that Carmine is Holiday, while Batman ends the story convinced that Alberto committed the killings and Carmine knew about them.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Evidence 6 - Two Face's Comment:</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Harvey "Two Face" Dent makes a surprising comment when he remarks to Jim Gordon and Batman, "You both know, don't you? There were two Holiday killers." This would seemingly contradict Solution A and indicate that either Harvey or Gilda performed some of the rest.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">However, Batman provides the logical way out: Harvey killed people with a Holiday gun on Halloween. He was the second Holiday killer, but not responsible for any of the other events. His strange phrasing that seems to indicate a reveal is explained by his obsession with the number two. This is highlighted by his previous utterance, "One second" ("second" has two meanings; the time unit and the second in a sequence).<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Conclusion</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">By any realistic reasoning, Gilda could not have committed the Thanksgiving shooting, and the massive web of circumstantial evidence indicates that there was only one Holiday shooter, who was Alberto Falcone, working for his father, Carmine.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The only argument for Gilda's guilt would be this: It is a comic book story, inhabited by fantastic people such as Batman, the Joker, and Solomon Grundy, and the problems with her carrying out the shooting and the enormous number of coincidences indicating that Carmine Falcone is ordering the hits have to be forgiven as things that happen in comic books.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But this would make the mystery a weak mystery. 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mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal">I can imagine a writer shrugging off such pragmatic concerns and feeling that a last-minute confession is a great ending that trumps realism. But the sheer number of clues that implicate the Falcones weren't likely placed there by coincidence. I think Jeph Loeb intended Alberto Falcone to be recognized as the only Holiday. Ultimately, solving the mystery depends not on the story, which leaves a slim chance of Gilda's guilt, but on reading the author's intentions. And I can't be sure that Loeb meant for a reader to find all of the pieces of evidence that make Gilda's confession seem implausible, but I suspect that he did.<o:p></o:p></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-89205872486058257052015-03-25T11:58:00.000-07:002015-07-09T09:23:54.796-07:00Multiversity: Ultra Comics <style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Monaco; panose-1:2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language:JA;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Helvetica; mso-ascii-font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-language:JA;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --></style> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jxjG0nmmXfU/VRMEkLXpXVI/AAAAAAAAAuo/bH5aH9uyBKE/s1600/aaaUltra.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jxjG0nmmXfU/VRMEkLXpXVI/AAAAAAAAAuo/bH5aH9uyBKE/s1600/aaaUltra.jpg" height="200" width="160" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Ultra Comics is real. (I’m using italics very consciously to distinguish the character and the comic book.) Of all the superheroes, you've ever read about, this one, set on Earth-33, which is our world, is actually real. I was part of him, and when you read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comics</i>, so are you. Everything that happens to him is real, and when you put the comic book down, he dies. When you pick it up again, he lives. Ultra Comics is in a time loop, like the ones Grant Morrison used in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Final Crisis</i> and elsewhere, but unlike those, this one is real, and when you read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comics</i> again, Ultra Comics, the superhero, comes back to life. His death is so tragic every time the issue ends, how do you have the heart not to read it again?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Ultra Comics is in a trap, and it's real. It's an allegory for the comic book industry as a whole, but as far as it – he – is concerned, it's real. Made of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (just like all your favorite comic books), Ultra Comics begins majestic and pristine a few pages into the story, then quickly goes through the history of superhero comics, with four consecutive panels representing, roughly, the Forties, Sixties, Eighties, and 2000's. In this sequence, he goes from fighting crooks to fighting monsters plaguing a sexualized young woman, mourning a death, and then bloodily causing one.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Then, when Ultra Comics is sent on his first adventure, into what looks like the ruins of New York, his corporate creator tells us that Ultra Comics and all of us have been led into a trap, and readers who aren't going too quickly will notice that the man in a suit has the dark bat wings of the Gentry's Intellectron behind him.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">As Ultra Comics examines the unpopulated ruins of New York, he finds a faded billboard showing the 1939 comic book character Ultra-Man, a character like John Carter of Mars who debuted, then appeared in <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/09/retro-review-all-star-comics-3.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All-Star Comics</i> #1</a> before being cut from the series when the Justice Society took it over two issues later. There is a caption, incidentally, in the "Kryptonese" font, but this appears to be nonsense, deciphering as "<span style="color: black; font-family: Monaco; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Monaco;">ABC EDH G G K N</span>." Soon, he battles an amalgamation of an evil Justice League and Ultra-Man’s original cast of villains set in the world of 2240 (three hundred years after they were written). It is because Ultra-Man was set in the future that he was, in essence, the first DC superhero who couldn’t join the Justice Society.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Ultra Comics soon finds, and saves, a version of the Newsboy Legion, but they're all twisted and sinister, and his namesakes Ultra-Man and Ultraa. It turns out that Ultraa, who debuted in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JLA</i> #153, is the dark leader of this band of cannibals. Ultra Comics is condemned by a jury of history’s (and comicdom’s) villains in a court led by the Devil in a scene out of “The Devil and Daniel Webster.” They subject Ultra Comics to an apathy ray, and Ultraa takes a bite out of Ultra Comics' head, eating the crystal that gives him his greatest powers. All the while, captions representing fan opinions (and seeming very true to the spirit of them) complain about the quality of what we're reading.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This is true to <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/11/multiversity-ultra-and-flash.html">the original Ultraa</a>. When the Justice League visited Earth Prime, they happened to encounter Ultraa immediately after his public debut. Almost immediately, Ultraa, Earth Prime’s first superhero, was pursued by a supervillain. At the end of the story, he felt responsible for the existence of the supervillain, that his presence “infected” Earth Prime with superpeople, good and bad alike, and left Earth Prime for Earth One to save his home dimension from further trouble. In a later pre-Crisis appearance, he decides to rid Earth One of superheroes, and uses an apathy gun in an attack on the Justice League. This apathy weapons is used on Ultra Comics in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comics</i>. Post-Crisis, Ultraa (whose home dimension, Earth Prime, no longer exists) is retconned as a resident of Maxima’s homeworld of Almerac, something he refers to as his origin in this story, too.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Ultra Comics apologizes to the reader just as Ultraa did to the people of Earth Prime back in 1978, for exposing us to evil. After he cleverly disposes of Ultraa, he faces the now-unmasked Intellectron, who also admits that he exposed us to evil, but isn’t apologetic about the fact. It is because corrupting influences have been disguised as something benevolent that Little Red Riding Hood is the central figure of the children: The comic book is her grandmother, but beneath its clothing is the wolf, images of destruction and bloody murder, sex and violence, and all of the corrupting influence that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comics</i> was seen to have on characters in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>. And in case we forgot that this story is real, Intellectron downplays the harm that he revels in, saying, “This is only silly comm-ix. Makes no sense. Only pretend! Go on – read on! What harm can come to yu?” And lest we forget who “yu” is, he goes on, “Earth-Prime. There yu are,” with his malevolent eye looking at us. This moment hits home powerfully when he looks at us again and says, “Kneel before yur new master. Turn the page. Do it. Slave.” And I did. You did, too, didn’t you?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Ultra Comics counterattacks in three ways: Readers ask for a happy ending and get a happy ending (or happy middle, in this case.) Noting that “Text is vulnerable to criticism,” Ultra Comics observes as realistic fan responses criticize the worthiness of Intellectron as a character. And, finally, Ultra Comics, though dying on the last page, knows that he’ll be reborn whenever another reader opens <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comics</i>, allowing him to be reborn, though bloodied, on the first page. And lest we feel too badly for Ultra Comics in his ever-recycling purgatory of existing and dying every time a reader opens this issue, remember that he’s going to outlive us. One day, I’ll die. So will you. But Ultra Comics will live on, and sometime after my death, and yours, some reader will open this comic again, and Ultra Comics will live, temporarily, after we’re gone.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This is dark stuff, and it’s powerful. It, like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flex Mentallo</i>, discusses superheroes as fictional constructs, and like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman Beyond</i>, discusses the superhero’s power of having a positive, likeable idea at the core and being able to rejuvenate by coming back to be read about again, responding to death with, “To Be Continued.” Morrison has the voices in this issue articulate some very serious criticism of the darkness in comic books, and he’s not dismissing that perspective. He sees some real harm at stake here, and that’s <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/11/multiversity-message.html">what the Gentry has always represented</a>, the infection of darker subject matter that we allow into our heads when we wanted a good time. And we may wonder if it’s coincidence that Grant Morrison is delivering this message now, as he effectively ends his run on monthly DC superhero comics, just as <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/07/retro-review-watchmen.html">Alan Moore</a> denounced the medium just as he wrote his final works in the genre. There is redemption for the genre, yes, as Morrison has said in interviews, and as he says in this issue, but the criticism sticks. The characters in preceding issues of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> have been disturbed by what they read in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comics</i>, and not without good reason. Maybe good and productive members of society have better things to do with the limited time we have on the planet than to read about zombies sucking the eyeballs out of people’s heads. The favorable response that readers had to <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/12/multiversity-thunderworld.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity:Thunderworld</i></a> is an implicit answer to that what’s worth celebrating in these stories doesn’t require all the blood and gore and rape that has become increasing common as the decades go by.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-38089626719467237792015-03-23T17:33:00.000-07:002015-07-09T09:23:54.830-07:00Retro Review: Batman: Year One<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yytpIUV95FE/VRCwxKZgumI/AAAAAAAAAuY/4H380d8gr1c/s1600/yearone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yytpIUV95FE/VRCwxKZgumI/AAAAAAAAAuY/4H380d8gr1c/s1600/yearone.jpg" height="98" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">If there has ever been a modern Batman story more influential than Frank Miller's 1986 masterpiece, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dark Knight Returns,</i> it was Frank Miller's 1987 masterpiece, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman: Year One</i>. It's remarkable that the same writer scripted two such extraordinary stories a year apart, but truly incredible that the two stories approach the character so differently and accomplish such different things. Yet, there is no contradiction between the two works: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Year One</i> depicts a young man who is about to leap, literally, into his life's work, while <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DKR</i> stars an aging man who accepts that his mission is something he can never leave behind. But these two moments are so far apart that we can barely fathom that the same character's life contains them. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Year One</i> stands separate from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DKR</i>, not as a prequel.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Superman, Wonder Woman, and other DC characters were significantly redefined by post-Crisis reboots, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Year One</i> leaves the facts of Batman's life much the same as before.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Year One</i>, rather, fills in small details during a legendary year; the time frame that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Year One</i> spans is covered by just four panels in an earlier origin story, 1980's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Untold Legend of the Batman</i>. This gives Miller freedom to blend existing stories and new elements into a new work that feels familiar just often enough to make Miller's inventions resound.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Year One</i> has a particular quality that is shocking to the reader, a quality that virtually all previous superhero comics had energetically rejected: Realism. Could Batman be real? Of course not. But could the Batman in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Year One</i> be real? Still, the answer is no, but many scenes play so close to real life that we feel like we've jumped right out of the superhero genre and into a different world. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Year One</i>shows Bruce Wayne going into action eight times, and three of them go badly. He is stabbed once, shot four times, beaten over the head once, and trapped by the police twice. True, he escapes both time he's captured, and the most unrealistic thing in the story might be that he heals well enough to continue as Batman, but for a while here and there, we forget that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Year One</i>'s world isn't our world. This draws the reader into thinking about Batman's weapons and tactics on the practical basis that Batman's voice-over narration provides, and so the story works on a level that a Green Lantern or Flash story never could, and earlier Batman stories usually did not. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Year One</i>'s realism has spun off a new "How To" subgenre of Batman story, with narration exploring Batman's training and tactics filling many pages in post-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Year One</i> stories and at least three entire published books. The practical details of being Batman show up in every Batman movie since 1989's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman</i>, and provides much of the basis of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman Begins</i> and was a major focus of a new title, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Legends of the Dark Knight</i>, which focused on key events early in Batman's career when his crime fighting approach was being shaped.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In addition, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Year One</i>introduced the organized crime family of Carmine Falcone, who, unlike many "disposable" mobster characters seen in Batman stories over the years, provided a substantial basis for future stories exploring the same era. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Year One</i>'s take on the Falcones and a younger Harvey Dent recurred in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Long Halloween</i> and other stories, building up a rich <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Godfather-</i>like<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>early history of Batman continuity. This created a timeline in which Batman faced more realistic, organized-crime opponents, rather than masked super villains, early in his career. While <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Year One</i>devotes considerable time to developing Selina Kyle as a third focus, and mentions the Joker in the very last panel, the emphasis on realistic criminals further grounds the series in realism.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">At the heart of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Year One</i> are two men: Bruce Wayne – who has the inspiration, on panel, to become Batman – and Jim Gordon, then a junior officer new to Gotham. The narration alternates between the two men with calendar dates in the captions, showing us a year in their lives as Wayne figures out how to fight a war in the streets and Gordon fights one at work and another one in his marriage. Both men are fiercely principled, physically tough, and in way over their heads. In time, they learn to trust one another, but not until the titular year reaches November. Along the way, they square off against one another, directly and indirectly, with Gordon gradually figuring out how to wrest himself from the clutches of the corrupt Gotham City police force that prefers its criminals to the new caped crime fighter.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Gordon is yet another element who grounds the story, even down to his Chicago (a real city) origin. It is his story that makes the narration work, filling in the blanks between long stretches of time (according to the dateline captions) in which we don't see Bruce Wayne at all. Between January 4 and March 11, we don't see Bruce Wayne do anything at all except return home and kick a tree trunk. What is he doing in the meantime? Certainly not "nothing." The blank spaces invite the reader to contemplate that question and imagine what elaborate preparations of Wayne's body and equipment must be taking place. But they are left unseen, while Gordon begins a long and difficult road to fight temptation in the form of an attractive female partner and a very dirty police department.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But when Bruce Wayne first goes into action, amid scenery right out of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Taxi Driver</i>, and fails badly, we find out that his unseen preparation wasn't nearly enough. Wayne barely escapes with his life and identity intact, and beats a self-imposed deadline – a literal deadline, in which his blood will run out of his body if he doesn't summon Alfred to save him – to devise a better way to fight crime, a way that comes to him in crashing glass and a vow to become a bat.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Nothing goes right for the new Batman on his first try, and not always on his second. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Year One</i> tells us succinctly about his dozens of encounters interdicting street criminals and focuses, instead, on showing us how he uses skill and brilliance to bring down the city's big criminals, some of whom were elected. He fights a many-front war against ordinary crooks, big bosses, and even the Gotham police. His victories ultimately break up the logjam of corruption that made Gotham "no place to raise a family." By story's end, Gordon is free to call Batman to help on a case. 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QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman: Year One</i>stays with you. You don't forget Batman's failures and successes, the new Selina Kyle, the struggling Jim Gordon, or the Falcones. Miller's plot and dialogue and David Mazzucchelli's art create a new world, and although many creators have tried to take us, we've never really gone back to that place since.<o:p></o:p></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-12273788248232170912015-03-11T13:26:00.000-07:002015-07-09T09:23:54.849-07:00Retro Review: John Byrne's Superman <style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Helvetica; mso-ascii-font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --></style> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BsJbFdZJM3I/VQCk63b9X_I/AAAAAAAAAuE/LuVGamaMbjg/s1600/smb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BsJbFdZJM3I/VQCk63b9X_I/AAAAAAAAAuE/LuVGamaMbjg/s1600/smb.jpg" height="200" width="131" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Now, decades after John Byrne’s six-issue <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Man of Steel</i> was published, it reads like one of many alternative Superman origin stories that we’ve seen over the years. The details of Superman’s life have been malleable in the hands of DC’s creators, with various Supermen in alternate timelines and alternate dimensions encompassing multiple variations on a theme.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But in 1986, the decision to allow John Byrne to reboot DC’s flagship character was a radical move, a revolution on the printed page. Striking changes were made in the nature and tone of the series, but even more significant was the fact that the entire accumulated history of the iconic character was being erased, giving Byrne the opportunity to start a new history from scratch. This was welcomed by many fans, while reviled by others who denounced it as “Marvelizing” Superman, and saw it as eliminating and replacing their favorite character rather than as evolving the existing character into something similar but not identical.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Man of Steel</i> is thus a revolutionary work, but unlike some of the other landmark comic book works in the mid-Eighties, it was a revolution in particulars rather than in form. But the particulars that changed were many, and include:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">• Krypton as sterile rather than a high-tech utopia.</div><div class="MsoNormal">• Superman born upon his arrival on Earth rather than arriving as a toddler.</div><div class="MsoNormal">• Powers developing gradually over years instead of at the moment of arrival.</div><div class="MsoNormal">• Debut as a young adult and not as Superboy.</div><div class="MsoNormal">• No memory of or attachment to Krypton; identifies only as an Earthman.</div><div class="MsoNormal">• Adoptive parents remain alive into the present.</div><div class="MsoNormal">• Clark Kent persona tough rather than meek and mild.</div><div class="MsoNormal">• Ventures into outer space rarely instead of being a frequent space traveler.</div><div class="MsoNormal">• Smart, but not an inventor with knowledge far beyond Earth technology.</div><div class="MsoNormal">• Strength, speed, and vulnerability powers at much lower levels than pre-Crisis.</div><div class="MsoNormal">• Tense working relationship with Batman, and they are not friends.</div><div class="MsoNormal">• Not a founding member of the Justice League.</div><div class="MsoNormal">• Only survivor of Krypton.</div><div class="MsoNormal">• Lex Luthor is a Machiavellian businessman rather than a mad scientist.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">These many changes are not haphazard or arbitrary in design: They all support one overarching aim, which is to humanize Superman, making his life and interactions more like an ordinary man’s life, and less a thing of pure science fiction.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Detractors of Byrne’s run saw humanizing Superman as counterproductive, as the concept of Superman was always intended to make him something far better than a real man, and being far better, he was also by definition removed and apart. Nonetheless, Byrne’s choice was to make him less removed. Nowhere is this more evident than in doing away with the Fortress of Solitude. The Bronze Age Superman owned a house in the Arctic (isolated), bigger and more wonderful than any real man’s house, housing a museum and a zoo of interplanetary specimens, for the sole viewing pleasure of Superman himself. Yes, it was wonderful, but it was in equal measure a fortress of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">solitude</b>. The pre-Byrne Superman was a strangely lonely man, self-absorbed, twice orphaned, confiding his secret identity to not one person on Earth who wasn’t also a superhero. He said that he could never marry Lois or Lana, because that would expose his wife to danger, but in what was a major plot hole, he still identified his friends and girlfriends publicly. Byrne changed all that, making Lois a romantic interest without the puerile games around whether or not Superman could marry her. Byrne moved the center of gravity in Superman’s life away from superheroes and towards ordinary people. In this regard, he did more for the characterization of Superman than had been done in all the decades before.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Man of Steel</i>and Byrne’s run as a whole are not a literary masterpiece. It hits some nice notes at times, but the language is stilted and relies far too often on exposition. Superman often says and thinks things that nobody would say or think, in order to deliver an essay from Byrne to readers about how the character had been reinvented. These are often awkward comments about how the Byrne Superman’s world is different than what came before, and rejecting the truth that in storytelling, it’s better to show than to tell.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps the high point of Byrne’s run is in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman</i> #2, when Luthor’s efforts to probe Superman’s life result in beatings to the people he loves, and an explosion that callously kills two of Luthor’s henchmen right in front of Superman. Then, when the enraged hero confronts Luthor, he is exposed to kryptonite and mocked. The Silver Age Lex Luthor had to kill Superman to win. Byrne’s Luthor manages to stalemate Superman simply by remaining in business and hating him. It’s a dramatic shift in their dynamic and makes for far more powerful storytelling than the Silver Age Superman-Luthor war, which always came down to gadgets and pseudoscience.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Byrne began the run with a well-thought-out plan. He plants small clues that grow into major plots, such as the chunk of kryptonite that sticks to Kal-El’s rocket, and the stranger in the brimmed hat watching the site where the rocket came down. Small investments of this kind paid off later, with the serial taking on more complexity than the issue-after-issue formula of previous years. This was a Superman for a more grown-up audience than the Superman that came before, and that was precisely what the era called for.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Byrne’s era relaunched Superman, took him through a couple of major crossover events, and resolved the paradoxes of the post-Crisis Legion of Super-Heroes by introducing a Pocket Universe. John Byrne left the series after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman</i> #22, with Superman having executed three Phantom Zone criminals in the Pocket Universe. This event, and Byrne’s work as a whole, led into other creators producing some good and impactful work, with the fondly-recalled Triangle Era, Superman’s death at the hands of Doomsday, and later his marriage to Lois Lane. With time, the stamp of Byrne’s work faded as more writers put their own touches on the feature, and it became something considerably different than it was when Byrne left in 1988. In some respects, the Byrne continuity is still with us in 2015, as at least some elements of the post-Byrne Superman are still in continuity after <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flashpoint</i>. The Byrne run was a bold effort, and it worked.</div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-16472245049410958112015-02-18T04:44:00.000-08:002015-07-09T09:23:54.883-07:00Multiversity: Mastermen<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K17s8RP0-t4/VOSI0EqdUCI/AAAAAAAAAtY/ssWS3j-D8rI/s1600/aaaaMastermen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-K17s8RP0-t4/VOSI0EqdUCI/AAAAAAAAAtY/ssWS3j-D8rI/s1600/aaaaMastermen.jpg" height="192" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity: Mastermen</i> is set on a world that was created in stages. The Quality Comics characters that appeared as separate features during the Forties were put together on a team for the first time in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JLA</i>#107 in 1973. This story re-imagined the Freedom Fighters as the Resistance to a Nazi regime that had won World War Two on Earth X thanks to a mind-control machine. The next stop on the path to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mastermen</i>is a panel in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">52</i> #52 that shows the Freedom Fighters battling Nazi superheroes on Earth-10 (perhaps a conversion from the Roman numeral <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">X</i>). Since then, Grant Morrison has shown us more of Overman in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman Beyond</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Final Crisis</i>, establishing his origin, the loss of his cousin, Overgirl, and that the man has a moral sense despite his use as the wonder weapon that gave Adolf Hitler control over the world.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mastermen</i> begins, unforgettably, with Adolf Hitler committing a necessary biological function. He is reading a comic book that appears to be akin to "What If Superman Ended the War?” which appeared in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Look</i>magazine in early 1940. A fictional version of World War Two entered Superman stories a couple of months later in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action Comics</i> and soon, well before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Nazi threat became a staple of American comic books, including Captain America (homaged in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mastermen</i>) and in Quality Comics, whose characters are here, as in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JLA</i> #107, the resistance to Nazi rule.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mastermen</i>, Overman's troubled conscience drives him, at last, to action. He is converted to the rebel side and watches from afar as a tiny flash of light that we see on the Moon indicates that the Freedom Fighters are destroying a lunar base, with Overman's aid and approval.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Multiversal aspect of the story that begins with Hitler's comic books continues with a Nazi Sivana (who is therefore good? evil?), in league with the resistance, helps Uncle Sam form the Freedom Fighters, whose members are survivors of groups that the Nazis had almost exterminated. From their base, adorned with symbols of things the Nazis hated, from a 48-star American flag, to jazz music, and Rosie the Riveter, they launched the attack that failed, tactically, but converted Overman to their side. The other Multiversal intrusion is Lord Broken, of the Gentry, infesting Overman's dreams. Here, as with Sivana, the inversion of good and evil makes a double negative into a positive, as Lord Broken's malevolence helps awaken Overman's goodness.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This issue is memorable for its gut-punch ending. The typical superhero comic shows a threat, and once it manifests, the heroes battle back to their inevitable victory. The violation of this pattern in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mastermen</i> calls attention to how much we readers expect it. Here, the future of the story is told with exceeding brevity in narration from the Nazi Jimmy Olsen, with selections from a memoir that he wrote after the fact. In the story's main action, we see Overman permit the Freedom Fighters to launch a massive blow, devastating Earth-10's Metropolis. We know from the spare excerpts of Jürgen's memoir that what happens next is the end of the Nazi regime, with Overman's assistance, and that in time, Jürgen helps destroy Overman. But we see only the first part of this drama, with Overman kneeling, overcome with emotion, in the ruins of a devastated Metropolis. The war obviously follows, Overman and the Freedom Fighters end the Nazi rule, and Overman is somehow, eventually, destroyed.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">For how little is shown, there is a complex and brilliant blend of influences and themes in those few pages. The flash of light seen on the Moon to indicate rebels overthrowing an evil regime was used by Morrison at the end of his Justice League story <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rock of Ages</i>, as Batman then tells Darkseid to look up so as to see the same thing. The one and only act that we see of the rebellion begins and ends with Overman at the opera, where Wagner's <i><span style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Götterdämmerung<b></b></span></i>is being performed. This opera depicts the "Twilight of the Gods," and ends with the hall of the gods on fire. That parallels the way the Nazi Justice League, the New Reichsmen, is destroyed by the Human Bomb's attack, with superheroes standing in for gods, a theme important in Morrison's work. It also hearkens back to Alan Moore's unpublished, "Twilight of the Superheroes," which would have ended the timeline of DC's superheroes while making the same parallel. A possible cinematic inspiration for Uncle Sam's gigantic, looming apparition at the opera is Quentin Tarantino's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Inglourious Basterds</i>, which begins the destruction of the Nazi leaders during the screening of a film in a theatre with all top Nazis in attendance. Then, as Overman brings the exploding Justice League satellite to Metropolis, the scene resembles the September 11 attacks, with a vehicle coming by surprise from clear skies to topple towers in America's preeminent city. After this, we don't need to see more.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The title, "Splendour Falls," describes the revolution that follows, but it also acknowledges that the aftermath of Nazi victory is splendour, a painful moral conundrum that Overman faces: When the victims have long since been killed, what form can justice take? However much Overman publicly regrets the Holocaust, what is to be done after it is utterly complete? Jürgen notes that the postwar Earth-10 is a virtual paradise. Even if the "Hitler era" was full of sin, is there anything just for the Aryan survivors to do but enjoy the results? The Freedom Fighters think so, and Overman, unhappy with his marriage to Earth-10's Lana Lang, unhappy with his victory, and at heart, deep down, always a good man, begins to atone for his sins. 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mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal">This is the last of five "middle" issues of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> that is dedicated to showing one alternate world full of superheroes facing the Gentry's attack. The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guidebook</i> was something more intricate, and the upcoming <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comics</i>promises to be something different, leading into the finale. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> has been a showcase of Morrison's wonderful ability to synthesize original concepts into wonderful new variants, from Earth-40's brain-transplanted version of Blockbuster to the intricate translation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>into a new story to all the many alternate Sivanas and superhero names translated into German-language equivalents like Underwaterman. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> has been a wonderful success in terms of style. Even with two issues remaining, it begins to appear that when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> ends, many readers will be left wishing it could continue.<o:p></o:p></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-12602828054041186402015-02-16T22:36:00.000-08:002015-07-09T09:23:54.903-07:00History of the DC Universe: 1935-1985<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OdmLFaj_Y08/VOLgnvR2pOI/AAAAAAAAAtI/VVZAqZsqq_M/s1600/jla144.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OdmLFaj_Y08/VOLgnvR2pOI/AAAAAAAAAtI/VVZAqZsqq_M/s1600/jla144.jpg" width="88" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Introduction<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Multiversity Guidebook</i> is the most recent of several publications to offer a summary history of the DC Universe. Similar, somewhat longer, histories have been published in the past, and are already somewhat out of date.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s not easy to write a History of the DC Universe (or Multiverse), and it never was. Before anyone cared to piece the logic and the timeline together, it was already complicated and full of contradictions. Sometimes, the creators have published a retcon to try to correct the contradictions, sometimes they offer silence and perhaps a shrug. Reconciling eighty years of stories into a logical whole would fill a book, but here I hope to offer some cogent history of how the DC Universe took shape, something that might best be called “The History of The History of The DC Universe.” One simple observation – perhaps surprising to many – that I'd like to convey is that DC continuity didn't truly begin for decades after the superheroes debuted. Unbeknownst to me at the time, DC had adopted a full-fledged continuity across its titles not all that long before I began reading them in the early Seventies.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Roots: The Golden Age, 1935-1951</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">From 1935 to 1952, there was, with minor exceptions, no DC Universe: Most features stood alone. Features were published in a single title, or sometimes, such as Superman and Batman, were popular enough to be printed in multiple titles, but by and large, there was no thought in anyone’s head that the assorted titles were part of an integrated whole. This may come as a surprise to newer readers, familiar with stories printed in later decades that imagine the Golden Age stories as an early DC Universe. But this was nothing one saw in the majority of those early stories themselves.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Three exceptions, however, are worth noting. The Justice Society feature in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star Comics</i>merged the worlds of over a dozen different features that had started off separate. I've earlier written about the <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/09/retro-review-all-star-comics-3.html">origin of the Justice Society</a>. What’s important to note is that although the Justice Society feature placed all of these characters into the same fictional world, this never carried over to the solo features. Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Starman, etc., in their own features never acknowledged that the Justice Society existed, and there was a distinct sense, often repeated, that each hero was the only hero in the world of his or her own feature. No police chief ever said, “I could call Superman or Starman. How about Starman?” Likewise, there was no indication that the Gotham City that Green Lantern lived in was the same Gotham City that Batman lived in, or that anyone on the Justice Society had ever heard of, say, Aquaman or Green Arrow. Later Justice Society stories placed the whole team in Civic City, with no mention of the heroes' respective home cities from their solo features.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Similar to the Justice Society feature was the Seven Soldiers of Victory feature in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Leading Comics</i>. This team appeared about a year after the Justice Society, also teamed up heroes who had been created as solo features, and also stood apart as its own fictional world.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">One sort of tie-in which did link different features was the reference, in one feature, to another one as a comic book in the world of the other, an idea which was later used in the origin of Barry Allen, who was an avid reader of Jay Garrick comic books, and is a plot element in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>. In the Golden Age, both Red Tornado and Wildcat were inspired by the comic book adventures of Green Lantern, and Batman and Robin interacted with Jerry Siegel, the creator of Superman. The early Justice Society stories, beginning with the very first panel, made Fourth Wall references to their own comic books, and even to the editors.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Many efforts in later years would tie DC’s Golden Age stories, and characters such as Doctor Occult, Slam Bradley, Speed Saunders, Superman, and his super hero successors into a unified continuity, but during the Golden Age itself, there was no unified continuity to be found.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Unification: 1952-1968</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Justice Society went out of publication in early 1951. Just over a year later, as though to replace the team concept that had been extinguished, the first Superman-Batman meeting took place in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman</i> #76. In truth, Superman and Batman had previously appeared together in action and in many cameos in the Justice Society feature, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman</i>#76 retconned that all away, and presented a story of their “first” meeting. In July 1954, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World’s Finest</i> began running a regular team-up of the two heroes, and their fictional worlds have been merged together, between and through reboots, ever since.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In the meantime, DC had several other superhero features, new and old, but for the most part, only Superman and Batman were part of a unified continuity. The mid-Fifties origins of Martian Manhunter and the Flash, Barry Allen, conspicuously avoided any mention of Superman as a part of their universe, something that almost certainly would have entered into the discussion at some point if he had existed in their worlds. The Fifties neared their end with DC Comics having one fictional world for Superman and Batman, with many other features that were presumed to be separate.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">However, a story in early 1959 told the tale of Superboy meeting a young Oliver Queen, before he became Green Arrow. In late 1959, the origin of the new Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, mentioned Superman. These two stories began a process that would turn the Superman-Batman continuity into a unified DC Universe over the course of a decade.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In just a few months, the Green Lantern reboot and the first Justice League story turned DC Comics in a new direction. Now there was a feature that unified the worlds of a whole team of superheroes, and for the first time, their solo features were – at least in some ways – implied to be part of that unified continuity. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But by the end of 1961, the editors hadn't really commited to a unified continuity just yet. At the end of the third JLA story in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brave and Bold</i> #30, an editorial note read, "With this issue, we close the case book of the Justice League of America! We'll be glad to re-open it – and continue the adventures of the JLA in a magazine of its own – if enough of you readers request it! Please write and let us know!" For about two years after the JLA was introduced, the Justice League members’ solo features made little or no mention of the Justice League, just like the Justice Society before it.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And then, that changed. In June, 1962, an appearance by the Flash in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Green Lantern</i> #13 made it the first crossover that put a JLAer besides Superman or Batman into another hero's solo title. Three months later, Green Lantern was a guest in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash</i> #131. Crossovers tying the heroes together remained rare, besides <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JLA</i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World's Finest.</i> A story in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action</i> #309 in early 1964 had "all" of Superman's friends with no mention of the Justice League besides Batman.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The years from 1963 to 1967 were when the idea of a unified DC continuity really took root. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brave and Bold</i> began regular team-ups with an adventure starring Martian Manhunter and Green Arrow in issue #50 in November, 1963. The editorial voice is again instructive: "Here it is, fans – the magazine you've been asking for – two heroes from the DC Hall of Fame teamed together in a full-length spectacular adventure!" The implication is that fans' letter-writing was the impetus for the creative decision. Moreover, the phrase "DC Hall of Fame" is intriguing, being the concept they had in mind before a "DC continuity" or "DC Universe" had begun. Month after month, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brave and Bold</i> tied two more characters' worlds together until it was devoted to team-ups with Batman in October, 1967.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">By 1968, the Teen Titans had joined the JLA as a team that tied several older features together in one title, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brave and Bold</i> had run over a dozen team-ups, <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">and many characters had made guest-appearances in other heroes' solo titles. By this point, it was natural for a reader to assume without question that most of DC's characters shared one continuity across all its titles.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Earth Two</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Overlapping the same time frame that DC created a continuity around Superman, Batman, and the rest of the Justice League, they also developed the Earth Two concept to publish new content utiltizing Golden Age characters who didn't fit into the new Silver Age setup.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">After the landmark meeting of Barry Allen and Jay Garrick in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash</i> #123 in September, 1961, almost two years passed before Barry Allen met the full Justice Society in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash</i> #137, and the first JLA-JSA meeting in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JLA</i> #21. In the same month that the third annual JLA-JSA meeting took place, in August 1965, the purely Earth-Two teamup of Starman and Black Canary was published in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brave and Bold</i> #61 and #62, and later in the year, Alan Scott had a guest appearance with his younger counterpart in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Green Lantern</i> #40. This handful of stories established the Earth Two concept as a sidestage for DC, one that would later be developed into its own monthly series.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So, while DC continuity developed most actively between the Justice League characters who represented Earth One, it was at almost the same time that Earth Two became an integral part of that continuity, one that was separate most of the time, but could be bridged by the Flash or other cosmic events.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Birth of Linear Time</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The fact that DC’s Golden Age could proceed without an overarching continuity points to a more general truth: The stories of that era were simply not bothered with consistency of any kind. Retcons happened often, without apology, as though the creators simply hoped no one would notice. A feature that began in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Detective Comics</i>#1 started in San Francisco and suddenly jumped to New York. Superman went from working for George Taylor at the Daily Star in Cleveland, Ohio to working for Perry White at the Daily Planet in Metropolis. Hour-Man’s boss turned out to a criminal in one story and then was back as Rex Tyler’s boss in the very next issue. Note also that Hour-Man’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">name</b>told his enemies how to defeat him. Details like this were swept under the rug because it suited the creators’ in some way (Superman’s creators decided that they didn’t want to tie the character to Toronto or Cleveland), or because the creators themselves just weren’t concerned with details.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Going into the Fifties, comic book stories took place, primarily, in circular time. If you grab a random Superman story from 1943 and another one from 1949, you can probably read them in opposite order and not notice any inconsistencies. Nothing much was changing in the lives of these characters, and every story ended neatly to allow the next one to start with a fresh beginning. There were exceptions: Villains often returned after their first appearance, beginning in 1939 with the Ultra-Humanite and Doctor Death who returned to pester Superman and Batman, respectively, in the very next issue after their respective debuts. Immediate recurrences were also true for Luthor and the Joker when they arrived on the scene about a year later. Batman’s life changed with the addition of Robin and his butler Alfred in the early Forties. But, by and large, time did not move for DC characters in this era, just as it rarely did for many lighter cartoon features.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Nowadays, readers take for granted that the characters inhabit linear time in which, like the real world, changes take place in stories and then the changes carry over to subsequent stories. This transition from circular to linear time was ushered in by a few important events between 1952 and 1969.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">First, the Superman-Batman meeting in 1952 “counted”, unlike their previous meetings in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All-Star Comics</i>. When they next met in 1954, their 1952 meeting was considered to have happened, and so both of their worlds had changed, in a shared continuity which accumulated new history from then onwards.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Second, the landmark <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action</i>#242 in 1958 introduced Brainiac, but more significantly, the bottled city of Kandor. Suddenly, a huge number of surviving Kryptonians joined Superman who had met only a few Kryptonians before this.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">A third, important shift took place with the second introduction of Supergirl in 1959. A story one year earlier introduced a magical “Super-Girl” who died at the story’s end. The character was popular, so a permanent Supergirl, Superman’s cousin from Krypton, was created the next year. Like the case of the Superman-Batman association, the early story didn’t “count,” and was never mentioned again, but the newer one did.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Then several important events marking the transition to linear time happened in rapid succession in early 1961. Just as Supergirl was introduced twice – once not counting, the second time counting – Mon-El was introduced twice, once as “Halk Kar” in 1953, then as Mon-El in a very similar story in 1961. Halk Kar never appeared again, but Mon-El became an integral character in continuity. Also in early 1961, DC’s two superhero teams, the Justice League and Legion of Super-Heroes, both got new members for the first time in issues printed the same month, with Green Arrow joining the JLA, whereas the LSH was shown to have multiple members, beyond the three LSH founders who had been introduced earlier. Almost simultaneously, the Phantom Zone was introduced, which was a permanent version of the criminals-from-Krypton idea first explored with Mala, Kizo, and U-Ban in 1950 and 1954. As with Supergirl and Mon-El, an earlier idea that was subsequently ignored was given a permanent replacement. These four revolutionary events, published within only three months, switched the Superman and Justice League features from circular to linear time, and with this change, the continuity became much more fertile for accumulated history for fans to explore.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The revival of the Justice Society in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash</i> later in 1961 also indicated that time moved for the characters, as Jay Garrick and other JSAers were revealed to have retired and grown older in the years since their earlier stories had been published.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">For Batman, the change to linear time occurred later than it did for the Superman continuity. The “New Look” Batman of 1964, besides putting a yellow oval around his chest emblem, eliminated more fanciful aspects of Batman’s stories, erasing the characters Batwoman, Bat-Girl, Bat-Mite, and Ace the Bat-Hound; for many years afterward, those characters were simply gone and assumed never to have existed at all. Then, in 1969, perhaps the most pivotal “linear time” change in DC history took place, with Robin – Dick Grayson – growing up and going to college. That same year, a JLA story bid J'onn J'onzz farewell, as the Martian Manhunter went on an indefinite leave of absence in space, and did not return to DC stories for several years. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Linear time brought life and death to the characters. The first stories with significant characters dying (temporarily) involved Lightning Lad in 1963 and Alfred Pennyworth in 1964-1966. Both of these plots unfolded over many issues, told as mysteries with subtle clues and misdirection intensifying the drama before Lightning Lad and Alfred were both resurrected. In 1966, the Flash married Iris West. In 1967, the Legionnaire Ferro Lad died and – in a first for DC superheroes – remained dead. Now, the DC characters were going through all the major changes in life. The reader could perceive the characters of the DC Universe growing older, acquiring new associations, making life changes, and moving on. The lives of the characters moved at a much slower rate than real world time, but the implication was that time did march forwards for the characters.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The shift to linear time went hand-in-hand with DC features crossing over and joining together in one shared continuity. Characters could meet, team-up, grow up, age, and die. There was a significant backstory accumulating all the time, and the casual reader might be a bit adrift picking up an issue of DC Comics, but devoted readers now had an ever-more complex continuity to learn and explore.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Bronze Age</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Thus, the Seventies were the first full decade where a shared DC continuity ruled by linear time was in effect. Things changed slowly, but they did change, opening up more complex narrative possibilities. DC's creators and fans could conceive of a full-Multiversal history. The past included the Big Bang, the Guardians of the Universe, the New Gods, and eventually the World War Two era when superheroes began on Earth Two. The present included the Justice League on Earth One, an older Justice Society on Earth Two, and many adjunct characters on those and other parallel universes. And there was a future including the Legion of Superheroes, the Reverse Flash, Abra Kadabra, Rip Hunter, and other characters. DC's titles followed dozens of characters on many teams, acquiring a stable of hundreds of villains on various planets, dimensions, in various eras. About twenty years after DC continuity had finally gotten up to speed, it would be perceived as cluttered and overly complex, and DC's editors made plans to sweep much of it away.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p>Further reading: <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2015/07/history-of-dc-universe-1986-2015.html">History of the DC Universe 1986-2015</a>.</o:p></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-24676868414514833792015-01-28T13:08:00.000-08:002015-07-09T09:23:54.940-07:00Multiversity Guidebook <style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Helvetica; mso-ascii-font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --></style> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ohgjZtZyEOM/VMlOUx-RfFI/AAAAAAAAAss/pbmH-NBw9GI/s1600/aaaaaGuidebook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ohgjZtZyEOM/VMlOUx-RfFI/AAAAAAAAAss/pbmH-NBw9GI/s1600/aaaaaGuidebook.jpg" height="200" width="130" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Multiversity Guidebook</i> plays two distinct, major roles. An inner section provides a map, mini-encyclopedia, and timeline of the Multiverse, and serves as a reference, clip-and-save style, for fans to consult on matters of Multiversal navigation for the indefinite future. Around this section, and referring to it, is a chapter in the continuing story of the Gentry’s effort to crush and conquer the Multiverse. It returns us to the narration from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> #1, and in this sense serves as a sort of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> #1½ that will lead into the series-ending <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> #2 a few months from now. The narrative is not linear, however, but nested and branching – not as complex as <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/11/multiversity-pax-americana-mysteries.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pax Americana</i></a>, but complex enough to merit close attention.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The story opens as a logical continuation from <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/12/multiversity-thunderworld.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thunderworld</i></a>, with the “Serial Killer Sivana” leading his robots and fellow Sivanas in an attack on Earth-42, home of the Little League. This opens with the little Martian Manhunter being killed in a panel that copies the death of the regular Martian Manhunter in Morrison’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Final Crisis</i> #1 down to the similar posture and the death cry “My'ria'h!” The Marvels of Earth-5 are in hot pursuit, but the Sivanas have ample time to kill several little heroes, and fulfill their real goal, access to a better transmatter device that allows them to travel anywhere in the Multiverse. That transmatter machine was built by Sivana-42, another instance of an idea that is key to this story’s plot having been placed in someone’s mind by a dream. I’ve earlier discussed the importance of dreams to the Multiverse, as originally described in Gardner Fox’s stories about the Flash, and affirmed now by Morrison.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">As the Legion of Sivanas depart, the Batman of Earth-17 appears and rescues the Batman of Earth-42 from Sivana robots. (Incidentally, these robots resemble the robot that Superman of Earth-23 was fighting in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> #1, but are not identical in size or design. It remains possible that Serial Killer Sivana built that robot.) Although the two Batmen are allied, Batman-17 is willing to use deadly force, in stark contrast to the nice Batman-42, exactly the sort of <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/09/multiversity-society-of-super-heroes.html">corruption that appeared to bring Earth-20 down</a> (notice that a Mayan temple is seen on Earth-51 in the <i>Guidebook</i> and at the end of <i>Society of Super-Heroes</i>), which implies that heroes who kill are possible in the metaphysics that Morrison is laying out.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">As Batman-42 picks up a copy of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guidebook</i> itself and reads a history of the Multiverse, which begins by paraphrasing a similar telling of the history in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman Beyond</i> #1. Then the history goes forward to describe travel between the Universes and the Crises which followed, all of which, as I noted earlier, <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/11/multiversity-ultra-and-flash.html">depends crucially on the Flash, Barry Allen</a>. Then the action switches to Earth-51, where Kamandi, Tuftan, and Ben Boxer arrive in pursuit of their lost colleague, Flower, the original of which appeared in only two issues of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kamandi</i> back in 1973.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">What Kamandi and his colleagues find opens up new perspectives on the plot of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>. As the characters on Earth-51 confer, they are being watched by the New Gods on New Genesis. Highfather and the New Gods discuss the situation, giving us some helpful exposition along the way. Darkseid was released from a tomb on Earth-51, allowing him to go forth in the form of multiple instantiations across many worlds. His tomb was opened by Nix Uotan, the son of Dax Novu. Nix Uotan, as we’d already seen, was corrupted by demons, the Gentry. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Here, the story opens the mystery wider. We knew that the Gentry corrupted Nix Uotan, but the New Gods tell us that the Gentry themselves are the agents of a higher, more evil power, The Empty Hand. Morrison has a preference for structuring his stories around a hierarchy of villains, with minor villains reporting to mid-level villains, and finally an ultimate top villain. In this story, the Big Bad is The Empty Hand, a name that calls to mind The Black Glove from Morrison’s Batman run. The identify of this villain is being presented as a mystery, “whose name none dare voice,” Highfather says. Lightray calls the villains, “The sons of midnight.” Who is The Empty Hand?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/11/multiversity-message.html">In an earlier post</a>, I noted that the Justice League of the Multiverse had no Batman. Here, he arrives: Batman of Earth-17 appears in the House of Heroes and is immediately enlisted as the Gentry are attacking. We see a three-eyed, many-tentacled, be-fanged demon with a city as its head trying to eat the House of Heroes. Earlier, we saw another member of the Gentry, “Lord Broken,” appear as a house with an evil red eye inside. The name “the Gentry” and these buildings suggest that the Gentry are people, and as I’ve offered earlier, <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/11/multiversity-message.html">the villains of the story may be us (or among us)</a>, the people of the real world, Earth-33, which, as the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Guidebook</i>tells us, “exerts a powerful and unknown influence on the progress and development of the entire Multiverse.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pcmKpKnbmEs/VMlOvWhDZFI/AAAAAAAAAs0/zR8jqKrCYMw/s1600/2.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pcmKpKnbmEs/VMlOvWhDZFI/AAAAAAAAAs0/zR8jqKrCYMw/s1600/2.jpeg" height="193" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Who is The Empty Hand? We have a few clues. Most directly, when Kamandi reads the history of the Multiverse, we see an empty hand at the dawn of creation, with the text, “What great hand casts the lightning… and remakes the world?” This hand was famously seen in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crisis on Infinite Earths</i>, but we can pinpoint its origin even earlier, to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Green Lantern</i> #40, when Krona and his effort to view the creation of the Universe were introduced. So that’s The Empty Hand, but it was earlier portrayed as a mere force of nature, not a character with the potential to be good or bad. Clearly, there are more reveals to come, attaching that hand, so to speak to some very powerful character we’ve otherwise known, or giving it a new identity. Near the end of the issue, it makes the dead Little Leaguers revive as its servants and says, “Get up. Reset. You have died before, and you will die many times more before I am done with you. See how my hand is empty.” Red-eyed, the zombie heroes respond, “Empty is thy hand.” The red eyes suggest Darkseid. The word “thy” suggests the Early Modern English of the King James Bible. Together, these reinforce that The Empty Hand is something primal, powerful, and evil.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">What does The Empty Hand do? Reset. The history of the Multiverse, which we already knew, consists of many cycles of death, followed by regeneration. And the people who are really performing this regeneration are the writers, editors, and readers on Earth-33. Everything in the Guidebook continues to bear out that the threat in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>comes from our world, a meta-story about the threats to superhero comic books that begin in those who shape the medium itself.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Erratum: The description of Earth-7 says that Thunderer is a survivor of Earth-4. This probably meant to say Earth-7. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-46991387771071072322014-12-17T11:47:00.000-08:002015-07-09T09:23:54.954-07:00Multiversity: Thunderworld <style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} @font-face {font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:1 134676480 16 0 131072 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Helvetica; mso-ascii-font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} --></style> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1t-chp6YPps/VJHdJPIUkYI/AAAAAAAAAsY/AC6yFMo8InM/s1600/aaaThunderworld.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1t-chp6YPps/VJHdJPIUkYI/AAAAAAAAAsY/AC6yFMo8InM/s1600/aaaThunderworld.jpg" height="196" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">The tide has turned. The sprawling, cross-universal threat has apparently met its match for the first time with the squeaky-clean Marvel family of Earth-5 flying off in victory at the end of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thunderworld,</i> the fourth of five one-shots issues devoted to a single Earth. Between the first three issues ending on a distinctly dark note, and the upcoming finale known to be a happy ending, we see Captain Marvel and his allies turn back the Multiversal threat issued by his old nemesis, Thaddeus Bodog Sivana.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Far less complex than <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/11/multiversity-pax-americana.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pax Americana</i></a>, the previous issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thunderworld</i> nevertheless shows off Morrison’s tremendous gift of adopting someone else’s style, and putting his own twists on it. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thunderworld</i> is, most of the time, admirably faithful to the old-style Fawcett Comics tales of Captain Marvel, which were themselves imitated in new stories published by DC in the Seventies. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The history of the Marvel feature is relevant to Morrison’s work here: Captain Marvel was the top-selling character for most of his history from 1940 until 1953, when a lawsuit by DC forced Fawcett to cease publishing the character, deemed by the court to be a violation of the copyrights on Superman. In 1973, DC licensed the characters from Fawcett and began publishing both old and new stories in a series that spitefully put Superman on the cover of the first issue (which happened to be one of the first comic books that I ever bought). To explain the long hiatus of the Marvel family, the first new story explained that Sivana had used an invention, Suspendium, to freeze time for the Marvels so that they were out of action for 20 years, awaking in 1973 to begin their adventures anew. Suspendium is quite similar to the plot device used to explain why Captain America was similarly out of publication for a decade, but rendered in terms of science fiction. Morrison has used Suspendium in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">52</i>, and his use of it here is one of only several nods in this issue to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">52</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Morrison begins the story with Fourth Wall narration, the wizard Shazam comedically realizing that the reader is listening to him. As <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> began and will end with Fourth Wall narration, this is one way of weaving the issue into his larger structure.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">An important motif in the old-time Captain Marvel stories that Morrison has used in his other works as well as here is the endless invention of variant characters. Captain Marvel’s universe was always populated with an entire roster of alternative versions of himself: a girl version of him, a younger version of him, fat, tall, and “hillbilly” versions of him, and more than one evil version of him. Morrison keeps the ball rolling by turning the Sivana children into evil Marvels before turning himself into a Sivana version of Black Adam who was himself an alternate version of Captain Marvel. The overall effect is like a department store mirror that allows one to see reflections of reflections iterating off into infinity.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The pivotal alternate-version in this issue is the alternate Rock of Eternity, which was shown in the Map of the Multiverse issues before the series began. Sivana’s plot is as follows: having discovered the Multiverse by tracking the source of Captain Marvel’s lightning, he learns through comic books about how it works. He gathers Suspendium from other universe to give himself an extra day of the week, Sivanaday, one in which he can win. After besieging the Rock of Eternity and imprisoning the wizard Shazam, he uses his alternate Rock of Eternity, one favoring science (it is covered with blinking lights and circuit diagrams) rather than magic, to make him and his family (the latter, as guinea pigs) as powerful as the Marvels, so that he can vanquish Captain Marvel at last.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Sivana will then rule the Multiverse along with all of the alternate Sivanas, who are initially portrayed as a delightful array of amusing variants on the original, one of many great displays by artist Cameron Stewart, whose talents are perfectly matched to the Marvel world. But by the issue’s end, the alternate Sivanas become dark, disturbing even the original Sivana. This is emphasized by two Sivanas who bookend the continuity of darkness: One is merely a scientist with “personal problems” who is aghast that most of the Sivanas are criminals. The other, at the far extreme of evil, is a serial killer, masked like Hannibal Lecter and dripping with blood, who has killed his own universe’s version of Captain Marvel, and wants to torture and kill more Marvels.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This is one of several cracks that appear in the otherwise squeaky-clean facade of the tale. The first is when someone notes that Billy Batson’s job as a reporter apparently violates child labor laws. Another is when Georgia Sivana flaunts her sexy curves in a low-cut top, a la Power Girl, beckoning Captain Marvel Junior to ogle her, to the dismay of Mary Marvel. This has overtones of the corrupting influence we’ve seen in earlier issues of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> – the heroes who kill in <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/09/multiversity-society-of-super-heroes.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Society of Super-Heroes</i></a>, and the trauma felt by Kyle Rayner in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Just</i>. But Freddy Freeman has read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SOS</i>, and it’s all a ruse. He uses the ogling to trick her into saying her name, a la Mr. Mxyzptlk, to take away her powers.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Another suggestion of Multiversal corruption bringing darkness to Earth-5 is in the appearance of the Monster Society of Evil, who appear vastly more evil than their original forms. Instead of the adorable, bug-eyed Mr. Mind, we see the legitimately hideous insect that is the central, secret villain of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">52</i>. Alongside more-evil-looking versions of Ibac, the robot Mister Atom, and others, we see a huge, Godzilla-like crocodile who appears to be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thunderworld</i>’s version of Herkimer. The original Herkimer was a silly-looking man with a crocodile head, but this one resembles Sobek, the crocodile-man who suddenly revealed his murderous side in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">52</i>, setting Black Adam on a path of vengeance and genocide.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">What saves the day is a time loop, a device that Morrison has used in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seven Soldiers</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Final Crisis</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pax Americana</i>, and now here. Billy Batson raids Sivana’s cache of Suspendium to go back to the beginning of Sivanaday and give himself a warning. Telling himself to watch the Sun (the artwork shows that a whole day-night cycle takes place in what should be only a few minutes) and watch clocks to see that Sivanaday is unusually short, because the alternate Sivanas cheated the original, giving him less time than he thought. As soon as he wins, Sivanaday ends, and Captain Marvel wins when the world goes back to normal time.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And so, this is the first issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> with a happy ending. But perhaps that’s just a matter of tone. The issue ends with pending threats from Parallax and Niczhuotan from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SOS</i> as well as the serial killer Sivana, who now has his eye on Mary Marvel. These are perhaps no less real than the threats that conclude the series’ earlier issues, but the Marvels are simply unconcerned. They know that they’ll face them, and they know that they’ll win.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">If this sets <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/11/multiversity-message.html">the tone for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> as a whole</a>, then we don’t need to wait for a sudden 180° turn that gives the heroes a victory in the final issue. The dark endings of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> #1, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SOS</i>, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Just</i> gave way to an ambiguous ending for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pax Americana</i> (depending on whether or not Captain Atom will return to resurrect President Harley), and now a light turn here. Instead of a good world turned bad, corrupted by the sex and violence of post-1986 comics, we have a world that witnesses some of those themes but remains intact. The next issue that is devoted to one Earth will be <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mastermen</i>, in which a Nazi world is eventually set right. And we can see now that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> has an ornate structure: It is not simply one long arc with initial tragedy turning to a happy ending in the finale, but a hierarchical structure with the changes in fortune turning dark in the first issues, but becoming less so with successive issues. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thunderworld</i> ends with a new dawn. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mastermen</i> will end with the defeat of Fascism. Whatever darkness the Gentry represent, Morrison sees the light beyond them.</div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-28590494718672673822014-12-11T12:05:00.000-08:002015-07-09T09:23:54.988-07:00Retro Review: Neil Gaiman's Sandman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cu8AM_PCjmc/VIn4zQwd4mI/AAAAAAAAAsI/eIR4EGnaMRs/s1600/aaaaMorpheus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cu8AM_PCjmc/VIn4zQwd4mI/AAAAAAAAAsI/eIR4EGnaMRs/s1600/aaaaMorpheus.jpg" height="200" width="145" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dark Knight Returns</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>, and a few other works of their time showed that the superhero genre and the comic book medium could be raised to a higher level of artistic expression. Neil Gaiman's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sandman</i> realized that potential perhaps further than any work before or since. Although conceived, named, and published like a superhero comic, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sandman</i> was something else, something more. It attracted readers who were never interested in superheroes, and arguably stands still as the high-water mark of the medium.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The central character is referred to as Sandman only rarely, is sometimes called Dream – in Gaiman’s formulation of seven siblings known as the Endless – and in a nod to Classical mythology, is most often called Morpheus. In this threefold naming alone, Gaiman shows his power to blend DC superhero continuity, established cultural and literary tradition, and his own inventions. As the series goes on, Gaiman also weaves literature, history, current events, pop culture, science, and science fiction into his story, and it is his ability to draw on such a vast number of subjects that makes Neil Gaiman himself perhaps the most fascinating character of the series. Gaiman has an expansive world in his mind and his ability to draw upon such a vast array of sources makes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sandman </i>a richer work than all but the rarest literature. The reader is invited to research what his sources and inspirations were, and in the process could inevitably learn a great deal about such wildly different topics as the French Revolution, the history of Baghdad, and demonology and the occult. One of the series’ most remarkable issues is devoted to an exploration of mortuary science, with Gaiman inventing an entire society devoted to funerary preparation. There is simply more effort evident in most issues of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sandman</i>than almost any issue of almost any other series; time and time again, Gaiman pulls off the challenge masterfully, delivering one fascinating story after another.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Structurally, the series' 75 issues tell one long story, with many coherent tales of several issues each woven together with many one-issue tales. The larger arc is that of Morpheus' downfall, beginning with a decades-long imprisonment at the hand of some English occultists, and a complex story, after he regains his freedom, in which he provokes several of his old enemies and gains a few new ones. Many characters on Earth and other realms are sent reeling into tragedies and triumphs of their own as byproducts of Morpheus' own struggles. The plot is ornate and interconnected, with minor cameos early sometimes spinning off into maxi-arcs of eight issues.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sandman</i> diverges from the superhero genre so early and often that listing the ways in which it breaks from tradition is dizzying, but elucidates both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sandman</i> and the works that came before it. Morpheus is not a hero. He feels a duty to the unique office that he holds, but he is motivated to maintain order, not to utilize his considerable power to eliminate suffering. And there is much suffering in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sandman</i>. There is an astonishing number of murders, rapes, and other acts of cruelty in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sandman</i>, many of which go unavenged. But one of the best characteristics of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sandman</i>is that Gaiman is driven neither to uphold nor mindlessly reject tradition: He does protect the innocent and avenge injustice when the situation and his well-developed character demand that he behave that way. Morpheus is mindful of justice, and at times delivers it, but follows his own motives in each situation, whether this means that he behaves as a hero or watches a crime with total indifference.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">While not a cruel being, Morpheus is selfish, and his own shortcomings accumulate throughout the story until they help bring about his undoing. This larger pattern of Greek tragedy is one of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sandman</i>’s finest homages to literary tradition. Misstep by misstep, Morpheus allows his enemies to move against him, and the series’ largest act of justice is that the title character himself ultimately pays for his many sins with his own destruction. And yet, the reader feels compassion for him, even as some of the smallest and most trivial acts of carelessness on his part become the most fatal. After eons in which Morpheus selfishly allowed others to be destroyed, he is ultimately doomed by at least three acts of kindness and obligation, and blamed for at least one crime that he did not commit. A reader cannot read this and not feel; those feelings are frequently beautiful, and frequently painful.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In one of many ways it broke from established tradition, it ran for a finite length and despite commercial and critical success, ended when the writer reached, from a creative standpoint, an ending. Possessing a definite ending is one of several characteristics that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sandman</i> holds in common with other groundbreaking works of its decade. However, while works such as Waid and Ross’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kingdom Come,</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchman</i>, and other works by Alan Moore show a dark hollowness to superheroes, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sandman</i> neither affirms nor rejects the genre. He follows a course that draws upon worlds of science fiction, myth, literature, history, folklore, dark magic, and – at times – superheroes. He is steadfast neither in embracing the superhero genre nor rejecting it.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Gaiman uses the Garrett Sanford and Hector Hall Sandmen as symbols of the superhero genre gone wrong, too trite to stand up to the grim realities of his larger story. But he also uses the Bizarro concept from Superman comics as a genuinely meaningful inspiration for a transsexual character, and it says much that an observer as gifted in his breadth as Gaiman find a superhero story to be worthy of such a mention. Late in the series, Superman, Batman, the Martian Manhunter, and Wesley Dodds return in minor appearances, affirming that Gaiman never forgot where the creative inspiration for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sandman</i> began. Another comic book inspiration is from House of Mystery / House of Secrets: Gaiman gives more than their due to the storytelling characters Cain and Abel and their associates, brilliantly capturing the dark comedy of the original series, which was itself a world under the DC title that, like Gaiman's work, sometimes crossed over with that of the superheroes, but never matched it in tone.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian> 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QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal">For me, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sandman</i> is a story of the fall, both a fall in the sense of the ruin of its central character, and the autumn, when night comes early. For its expansive scope, its take on familiar characters, and its tone appropriate to the autumn season, I feel its call every year, and will surely return to read it in its entirety many, many times.<o:p></o:p></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-45601842800633407162014-12-06T00:12:00.000-08:002015-07-09T09:23:55.003-07:00Neil Gaiman's Sandman: Superhero Annotations <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> 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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-16oiAO4qwj8/VIK4PXSxCOI/AAAAAAAAAr4/w9pwDqH-g2c/s1600/aaaaSandman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-16oiAO4qwj8/VIK4PXSxCOI/AAAAAAAAAr4/w9pwDqH-g2c/s1600/aaaaSandman.jpg" height="128" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Neil Gaiman's <i>Sandman</i>begins in the DC Universe of its time, the post-Crisis DC Universe with a huge roster of characters and history going back decades. Although the tone of Gaiman's work is very distinct from mainstream superhero comics, he makes many references to DC continuity, from the Golden Age, up through the mystery-themed comics of the Seventies, and up to his present, including the idiosyncratic Justice League of that time.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Because <i>Sandman</i>attracted many readers who did not otherwise read comic books, an annotation explaining references to DC superheroes is probably useful for many of Gaiman's fans. Here, I give an issue-by-issue breakdown of references to DC continuity throughout the Sandman series and hope that they are useful to Gaiman fans who might otherwise be disoriented by the obscure references to DC lore.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">One sees that after many references to DC superheroes in the first third or so of the series, there are far fewer after that, until a few superhero cameos in the last few issues.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Sandman Superhero Annotations</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Background: In 1939, Sandman, one of the first comic book superheroes, debuted. Like Batman, he was a rich man who dressed up in a costume to fight crime, primarily at night. This Sandman, real name Wesley Dodds, was never as popular as Batman, and the character went out of publication after a few years, although he was revived many years later.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">A new Sandman, Garrett Sanford, appeared for just a few issues in the 1970s, with the look of a superhero, but living and acting in a dimension of dreams rather than the physical world. Hector Hall, the son of the original Hawkman superhero, took Sanford's place in 1983.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Gaiman's Sandman, also known as Morpheus or simply Dream, borrows the name and the approximate appearance of the Wesley Dodds version of the superhero, but is an immortal supernatural being who predates human existence and is the ruler of the Dreaming, the realm of dreams. Loosely inspired by the earlier Sandmen, Morpheus is, in Gaiman's telling, the <i>real</i> Sandman, and the others are explained as temporary human spinoffs inspired by him. They all appear in Gaiman's epic, to varying degrees.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">These notes are organized by issue (labeled with a "#") and, where applicable, page number.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#1<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 7 Dream's appearance is like that of the superhero Sandman.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">18 The superhero Sandman is shown on the same month as his actual debut.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#2<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> Cain, Abel, the House of Mystery, and the three witches are all DC characters who narrated mystery stories, alternately grim and comic in tone, which only rarely intersected with the DC superheroes.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 8 Arkham Asylum is where Batman's mentally ill villains are held.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 8 Doctor Destiny is a Justice League villain who specialized in the ability to control dreams.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 9 The Justice League took away Doctor Destiny's ability to dream in order to neutralize the threat he presented to them. This drove him insane and gave him a ghastly appearance.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 21 John Constantine has magical powers.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 21 We see two Justice League members, Green Lantern and Batman.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#3<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 7 Superman<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 9 The big, green bloke is Swamp Thing, a plant-man hybrid of great power.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#4<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Etrigan is a demon who is bound to the body of a man, Jason Blood.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">19 Anti-life is the goal of the evil god-like character, Darkseid of Apokolips.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#5<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 3 Doctor Jonathan Crane is Batman's villain the Scarecrow.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 5 Granny Goodness is one of the evil gods under Darkseid.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 7 Scott Free is Mister Miracle of the New Gods, the good counterparts to Darkseid. He was at this time a member of the Justice League.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 13 Doctor Destiny altered gravity and posed as Green Lantern.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 14 J'onn J'onzz, the Manhunter from Mars, is a Justice League member.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#7<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 23 Mister Dent is the Batman villain Two Face.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#11<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> Matthew Cable was a character in Swamp Thing who died. Here, he has been resurrected as a raven.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#12<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> Hector Hall is the son of the Golden Age Hawkman, later a new Sandman<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> Lyta Trevor is the daughter of the Golden Age Wonder Woman<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> Sanford was yet another, short-lived, DC Sandman.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#13<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> Johanna Constantine, appearing here for the first time, is the ancestor of John Constantine.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#16<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 23 Destiny has appeared as an immortal force of nature in DC comics since 1972. Gaiman uses this existing character as one of the seven Endless, the other six being original Gaiman inventions.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#20<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Urania Blackwell, Element Girl, is the female counterpart of Metamorpho. Like him, she can transform her body into any element at will.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#22<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 12 Steve Trevor is the traditional boyfriend of Wonder Woman.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#24<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 19 Eve, like Cain and Abel, narrated DC mystery titles.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#26<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 15 The Wesley Dodds Sandman is seen fighting in an eternal battle between his team, the Justice Society, and Norse gods. This was the premise of a story that wrote the Justice Society out of DC continuity for several years.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#32<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 17 Hyperman, Lila Lake, and Weirdzo are named here for the first time as variants on Superman, Lois Lane, and Bizarro, implying that DC superheroes are no longer part of the Sandman reality.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 18 Now Bizarro is mentioned. An error?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#33<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 12 This is the Bizarro Lois Lane, again.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#36<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 4 Variants on Superman (DC) and Spider-Man (Marvel).<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#54<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> Prez was a DC series in the Seventies.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 13 Wildcat (Ted Grant) is a boxer who became a superhero, debuting in 1942.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#56<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 19 The Golden Age Sandman is in the procession.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#57<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 19 A retcon made the Fury, not Wonder Woman, Lyta's mother.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#71<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 22 Superman, Batman, and the Martian Manhunter speak about different<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> versions of themselves as dreams. Superman and Batman have been the<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> subject of TV shows. The Martian Manhunter has not.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">#72<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"> 11 Wesley Dodds is the Golden Age Sandman.<o:p></o:p></div><!--EndFragment-->Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-19770696546461050642014-11-26T11:34:00.000-08:002015-07-09T09:23:55.038-07:00Multiversity: Ultra and the Flash<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9qygItbDZxM/VHYivu0hstI/AAAAAAAAAq4/VxC8Kxm-6OQ/s1600/Flash_Vol_1_163.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9qygItbDZxM/VHYivu0hstI/AAAAAAAAAq4/VxC8Kxm-6OQ/s1600/Flash_Vol_1_163.jpg" height="200" width="133" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">We are still months away from the publication of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comic</i>s<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">,</i> the finale of Grant Morrison's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> mini-series, but we've already seen some five pages' worth of the material, including the cover. That's a preview of some considerable length. It takes the form of homages to other stories, so it’s a lot deeper than a few pages of art, nearly without text, might ordinarily be. What we see in the previews of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comics</i>, in overview, is:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">1) A direct and obvious homage to the cover of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash</i> #163 (seen at right), a cover that Morrison also referenced in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Final Crisis</i>#2.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">2) The title character is from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JLA</i> #153. However, his appearance has been altered significantly, to make him more directly resemble the Flash, Barry Allen.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">3) An event which very closely resembles the attempted murder of Captain Atom in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pax Americana.</i><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Flash is obviously important to this story, and Morrison has said so in interviews: Barry Allen read about an alternate Earth in comic books, then traveled to it, and he’s being homaged in two ways on the cover of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comics</i>. When we follow the trail through old Flash comics, we see themes in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>that reference the old Flash stories that created the DC Multiverse. This in particular includes:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">4) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Showcase</i> #4, the first two panels in the origin of Barry Allen.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">5) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash</i> #123, the meeting of the two Flashes, “discovering” the Multiverse.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Let’s break these down:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Flash #163</b>: In this story, the Flash begins to disappear, gradually, from his own world. He is confronted by a villain who explains that a person’s existence depends upon other people thinking about them. He has arranged to make everyone in Central City forget about the Flash, a process that will end in the Flash ceasing to exist, permanently. Before he is gone, Flash writes a pamphlet about himself and distributes it around the city at super-speed. With people thinking about him, he becomes completely real again.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />The cover twists this around: The Flash tells the reader that if they don’t think about him, he will die. But this is actually true: If enough readers stopped caring about (and buying) the magazine, he <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">would</b> cease to exist, just like Jay Garrick did when his title went out of print in 1949 (a fact which is referenced in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash</i> #123).<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">To highlight Morrison’s awareness of this cover, it was also referenced in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Final Crisis</i> #2, whose first panel said, "Stop! You must be supercool to proceed! Your life depends on it!" This is the exact issue whose last panel brought Barry Allen back from his 22-year death.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">JLA #153</b>: Two <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity-</i>related things happen in this story. First, five members of the JLA vanish from Earth-One and appear on Earth-Prime. This happens because of a (real) poll that asked readers to name their favorite JLA characters. (Incidentally, Green Lantern, Hal Jordan, was the runaway winner.) The power of readers' thoughts on Earth-Prime pulled the top five vote-getters across dimensions into Earth-One. Later, the Flash takes them back.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Second, the character Ultraa is introduced. His backstory is quite a bit like Superman’s, and he becomes the first superhero on Earth-Prime. Immediately, a super-villain appears who tries to kill him. He defeats the villain with the help of the JLA members, but he decides that his presence does more harm than good, so he decides to remove himself from his Earth. He does this not by committing suicide, but by following the JLA to Earth-One. So, there is a form of symbolic, but not literal, suicide.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dn0fwXtL1mI/VHYjH4LhdvI/AAAAAAAAArA/u1Xd6_YnjVc/s1600/UltraRevamp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dn0fwXtL1mI/VHYjH4LhdvI/AAAAAAAAArA/u1Xd6_YnjVc/s1600/UltraRevamp.jpg" height="148" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal">Ultra is different from Ultraa. The name is slightly changed, but the appearance (see above) greatly so. His costume considerably resembles Barry Allen’s costume, and is nothing like Ultraa’s original costume. He also ends up with Barry Allen’s blonde hair instead of Ultraa’s long, flowing red hair and, like Barry, blue eyes.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1jeU_aKXTuc/VHYjWE7h_HI/AAAAAAAAArI/rd-V8kKLnLk/s1600/UltraCompose.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1jeU_aKXTuc/VHYjWE7h_HI/AAAAAAAAArI/rd-V8kKLnLk/s1600/UltraCompose.jpg" height="132" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal">The costume design and the way it is originally presented is very cleverly managed. A frontal view of Ultra's costume only superficially resembles Barry Allen's. But compare the cover of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash</i>#163 with the first panel of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>#1 that shows <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comics </i>(the two are juxtaposed above). This cropping of Ultra's costume emphasizes the yellow point on a red field, with the point aimed at the hero's outstretched left hand. The cropping of that panel and the costume design are intimately related, to create the visual homage in that panel without giving Ultra Barry Allen's costume exactly. The original Earth-Prime superhero, Ultraa, has been deliberately transformed into an Barry Allen look-alike because of Barry Allen's pivotal role in navigating the Multiverse. We will also see later that Barry Allen, Captain Atom, and Ultra all seem to commit some sort of suicide / self-sacrifice as the target of a single particle in a physics-based apparatus for the good of their respective worlds.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gT8uqdlihDY/VHYp1BbHjyI/AAAAAAAAAro/XCdo1tO7dI4/s1600/ultraTubes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gT8uqdlihDY/VHYp1BbHjyI/AAAAAAAAAro/XCdo1tO7dI4/s1600/ultraTubes.jpg" height="200" width="110" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">One panel of <i>Ultra Comics</i> (at left) shows Ultra surrounded by tubes of red, yellow, and blue. Is this a transformation giving Ultra Barry Allen's costume, hair, and eyes? Or the primary colors of Superman? This is likely all deliberate. Ultra is changed from his original conception into something else. Something that resembles Superman, and something that resembles the Flash, who speaks to us in the real world before sacrificing himself to save his world. This transformation that Ultra will undergo will be influenced by the comic books in his world. The comic books in his world, Earth-Prime, are the same comic books we know: Superman, the Flash, and the rest of the Justice League.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><o:p> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dpBL85MSEXY/VHYo3KKNwWI/AAAAAAAAArg/sHyz3UWmfuI/s1600/UltraSpreads.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dpBL85MSEXY/VHYo3KKNwWI/AAAAAAAAArg/sHyz3UWmfuI/s1600/UltraSpreads.jpg" height="320" width="182" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Something Bad Happens to Ultra</td></tr></tbody></table></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Multiversity</b>: The artwork in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comics</i> shows an event (at right, click to enlarge) which is very similar to the attempted murder of Captain Atom in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>. Ultra stands in front of a device which is aimed at his forehead. Some high-energy shot hits him, creating a flash of light, then darkness, centered on his head. Then we see an injured Ultra in another location, apparently teleported there by the shot. He now has a white hole in his forehead, and, like the Flash on that famous cover, he looks at the camera, noticing the audience and apparently speaking to them. This ends with a close-up of his eye, an image which has come up repeatedly in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>. Somehow, the shot has teleported him, injured him, and this causes him anguish. The cover of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra</i> happens after this. We see him with a tiny bandage over the point of the injury, and his words tell us something similar to the Flash’s message in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash</i> #163. He may not have realized what that shot would do to him, but he stood and took it voluntarily, so perhaps he was symbolically murdered, perhaps he committed suicide.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Just</i>, Megamorpho commits suicide after reading comics, and we eventually see that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comics</i> is one of those. Her suicide is presumably triggered by reading about Ultra’s maybe-suicide.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And Captain Atom was reading <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comics</i> right when a black hole was fired into his brain. This may be exactly what happened to Ultra. Captain Atom was aware this would happen. Depending upon the outcome, this may amount to a suicide on his part, although it may also be a failed attempted murder. Ultra's trauma seems to resemble Barry Allen's sacrifice. Later, Megamorpho commits suicide after reading about it, and Captain Atom experiences a murder or suicide or escape also patterned upon it. The symbolic suicide spreading across stories, from Ultraa to Barry Allen in <i>COIE</i>, to Megamorpho and Captain Atom is one of the key examples of a scene being "carried" from one comic book to another.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">I predict that we will see this happen in more detail when finally we read <i>Ultra Comics</i>. We will see exactly how a pattern in one story is read about and repeated by someone who reads it. Barry Allen may make an explicit appearance. We may also see scenes in <i>Ultra Comics</i> that predict why Al Pratt kills a man after reading the issue, Kyle Rayner feels the anguish of tragedy, and Alexis Luthor commits a betrayal, probably because these themes occur in other scenes in <i>Ultra Comics.</i> And the happy or at least hopeful ending that we're promised will also spread from one comic book to another. That's where <i>Multiversity</i> is headed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Barry Allen and the Multiverse</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">These references to Barry Allen merit a closer look. The opening scene of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Showcase</i> #4 shows Barry reading an old story about the Flash, Jay Garrick. In the very first panel, he refers to Garrick’s “undreamed-of speed.” In the second panel, he says, “The Flash was just a character some writer dreamed up!” These metaphoric references to dreams come back six years later as an assertion about literal dreams. When Barry Allen meets Jay Garrick, he says, apparently referring back to those two panels:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“A writer named Gardner Fox wrote about your adventures, which he claimed came to him in dreams. Obviously when Fox was asleep, his mind was ‘tuned in’ on your vibratory Earth! That explains how he ‘dreamed up’ The Flash!”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L4u_SP_xefk/VHYmRrCGbAI/AAAAAAAAArU/wo2LBZjqFTo/s1600/Flash179.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L4u_SP_xefk/VHYmRrCGbAI/AAAAAAAAArU/wo2LBZjqFTo/s1600/Flash179.jpg" height="200" width="137" /></a></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal">In 1968, Cary Bates gave this an extra twist in the story that created Earth-Prime, making the readers and the characters equally real and equally fictional. When Barry Allen first travels to Earth-Prime, Ultraa’s future world, in <i>Flash</i> #179, a splash image asserts in a true/false quiz, “Flash is strictly a fictional character dreamed up for this magazine.” Later, he meets DC editor Julie Schwartz, who, disbelieving Barry’s story, tells him, “You didn’t have to dream up that wild story!”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The repeated use of the word and concept "dream" is curious, something that Gardner Fox and later Cary Bates seemed to recall and emphasize deliberately even with many years separating these stories. Morrison gives this concept a key role in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Incidentally, the first time one DC character was presented as a fictional comic book character in the world of another one was in November 1940, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All-America Comics</i> #20. In that story, an urban housewife named Ma Hunkel was told by her kids about the comic book hero Green Lantern. This inspired her to adopt the identity Red Tornado, which eventually became a part of DC continuity. This began in the feature <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scribbly</i>, which was the semi-autobiography of writer/artist/editor Sheldon Mayer. So the interplay of real comic book creators and fictional characters becoming real began back then.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Dreams</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">These multiple references to dreams and comic books carrying messages between different Earths in the Multiverse is obviously a crucial device in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>, and Morrison also adds drugs to the mix, with both the Luthor of Earth-23 and Captain Atom being under the influence of some unnamed drugs.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Dreams, however, are invoked by Doc Fate, who says that the idea of the Transmatter Symphonic Array came to him in a dream (it comes to Captain Carrot’s world via comic book). Chris Kent is apparently called upon to realize his potential greatness in a dream: “I fell asleep and it was this whole ultimate dreams of Superman thing. I dreamed of all the things I'd do if – well, if there was anything left to do. It was like ' A Chrismas Carol' -– but with Sandman.” And Kon-El paints a member of the Gentry, the Gray Lady, whom Intellectron calls Dame Merciless: “She am come in – KOFF – dream! Ugly art am good!”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Becoming a Bizarro, Kon-El prefers the ugly art of the Gentry to beautiful art. But is this corruption of his world, to advance their agenda, or is it a warning from someone doing good, someone who is also trying to help Doc Fate and assemble the Justice League of the Multiverse?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Dreaming up Reality<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In one of DC Comics’ high concepts, Gardner Fox took the metaphorical sense of dream, imagining something, and turned it back into the literal sense, asserting that writers are like radio receivers picking up signals from other dimensions, taking real events from alternate realities and recording them as stories in their own worlds. Morrison has played with the same idea, including in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action</i> #9, which is essentially the first chapter of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>. The Clark Kent of an unstated world learns of the idea of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tulpa</i> in Tibetan Buddhism: a being or object brought into actual existence through continued and applied mental concentration. This is exactly the dynamic from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash</i> #163. In that story, a villain tries to make Barry Allen cease to exist by taking him away from others’ minds. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action</i> #9, Clark, Lois, and Jimmy try to make a superhero start to exist by thinking about him. Creating and uncreating: Two sides of the same coin. Perceiving a being from another dimension and making an unreal thing become real: Two sides of the same coin.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Inasmuch as a black hole could destroy a physical object (an idea Morrison used in his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seven Soldiers</i>story about Mister Miracle), Morrison uses it for its capacity to destroy information. Captain Atom and Ultra may be killed in their own worlds by the removal of their information. But this makes them appear in some other world.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So, without greatly disguising the fact, Morrison has worlds communicate with one another through comic books, and borrowing ideas from decades of Flash comics, so can dreams. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comics</i> will bend the ideas of creation, reality, and dimensions. It is set on Earth-33, the equivalent of Earth-Prime, because it is our world. Morrison will use the captions of the comic and communication between the reader and the comic book, with Ultra looking right at us and talking right to us, to make Ultra real – sort of.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And how does this tie into the larger idea?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Buyer Beware</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The cover of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultra Comics</i>, and the captions early in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>#1, warn the reader <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">not</b> to read them. They assert exactly what the cover of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash</i>#163 asserted, but in reverse: They call upon us not to read, and say that “the world” and “your lives” are at stake rather than the life of the hero.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">What happens to those who read it? Nix Uotan is turned vindictive and evil. Al Pratt abandons his principles, which makes his world vulnerable to invasion from an evil dimension. Megamorpho commits suicide. Kyle Rayner is traumatized by his past. Alexis Luthor invites a demonic invasion of her world. Bad stuff!<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">But this is all comic book plot. What actually happens? Earth-20 is ruined by menaces much bigger and sadder and sicker than it can handle. The comfortable existence of Earth-16 is led to turmoil, decay, betrayal, and suicide. The peace of Earth-4 is turned to tragedy. The Gentry are something outside these fictional worlds that wants to make them into something like itself. Something that ruins fictional worlds. The ultimate trigger of doom for Earth-20 is when someone spills the blood of an immortal. Vandal Savage isn’t used because he’s such an important character: He’s used because comic book characters were originally and inherently <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">all</b> immortal. They never died. The heroes came back issue after issue. Batman should be about a hundred years old by now, but he’s as young and spry in Scott Snyder’s stories as he was in Bill Finger’s. And after a long, long time, around the time that Alan Moore wrote <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>, they started to die. One of the first to die was the one so important to this story and its origins: Barry Allen. It should be noted that, just as Captain Atom seemed to in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pax Americana</i>, Barry Allen died in a particle accelerator in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crisis on Infinite Earths</i>, and Barry Allen sacrificed himself to save his world, which may turn out to be the same with Captain Atom and Ultra. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i> killed off a whole world of superheroes, and in the intent of its author, tried to kill them all off.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action</i> #9 begins to develop Morrison’s use of the idea of ideas affecting reality:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Clark: The whole Superman thing was way too macho and aggressive anyway – we should think up a cartoon character kids can actually play with.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Lois: On the other hand, everyone will know our names after this.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Jimmy: They'll steal the idea if we don't sell it.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And so, Clark, Lois, and Jimmy sell the idea, and it turns into something too macho and aggressive that kills the cartoon characters that kids can actually play with. 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mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal">The Gentry's attack moves between fictional worlds. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Just</i>, we see that it can move between comics, action movies, and art. Perhaps video games and horror movies, too. It certainly moves from one comic book to another. Clark Kent told us what the problem was. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> is going to show us how the Justice League of the Multiverse can perhaps solve it and save the day.<o:p></o:p></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-32039980843839689722014-11-21T12:56:00.000-08:002015-07-09T09:23:55.054-07:00Multiversity: Pax Americana Mysteries<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Helvetica; mso-ascii-font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-font-family:"MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Helvetica; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> <br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GkINvNZE8pU/VG-mhu0eXWI/AAAAAAAAApw/BbFr9-i0UfY/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-11-21%2Bat%2B12.54.08%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GkINvNZE8pU/VG-mhu0eXWI/AAAAAAAAApw/BbFr9-i0UfY/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-11-21%2Bat%2B12.54.08%2BPM.png" height="200" width="186" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/11/multiversity-pax-americana.html">The central snarl of Pax Americana</a> is that Harley has a plan. We see that he has confided – in some way or another – in Captain Atom, Vice President Eden, and Peacemaker. But are they all in on the same plan? Was Harley deceiving any of them, or all of them? The Gentry is behind this plan. Who is working for the Gentry and knows it? Who is working for the Gentry and doesn’t know it? Who, if anyone, is working against the Gentry?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Question: What is Harley’s motivation and plan?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Known: Harley accidentally kills his father, a superhero. He covers that up. He develops a plan to become President, be assassinated, and have Captain Atom return him to life. He tells people his motivation, but is he lying?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Known: Chris Smith, the Peacemaker, believes that his assassination of Harley will be undone by Captain Atom.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Known: Peacemaker was let in on a plan by Harley. But what he was told is incomplete. We know this because Nora O’Rourke, when she works out Algorithm 8, tries to reach him by phone, fails to, and is killed. So Peacemaker was given incorrect information. The information he was given was not an accurate account of what Algorithm 8 predicts.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Known: Algorithm 8 predicts that Captain Atom will not return. Captain Atom predicts that he will return. So two predictions regarding the future disagree: One is right and one is wrong. A metaphor for this is the Schrödinger’s Cat analogy involving Captain Atom’s dog.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Known: Because Algorithm 8 predicts that Captain Atom will not return and Harley told Peacemaker that Captain Atom would return, Harley is lying. Harley is not trustworthy.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Known: Harley introduces Captain Atom to comic books and Captain Atom is later seen reading Ultra Comics. Ultra Comics led to the corruption of Al Pratt, Alexis Luthor, and Kyle Rayner. So seemingly, Harley is corrupting Captain Atom, although we don’t have perfect confidence that Harley introduced Captain Atom to Ultra Comics, per se.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Known: Although it happens in only a single panel, we see in the car after Harley’s meeting with Captain Atom that Harley has confided in Eden, “In comic books, we trust.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Known: The black hole research that tries to kill Captain Atom is led by Vice President Eden. He intends to kill Captain Atom in order to prevent the resurrection of President Harley. This is what Peacemaker and Nora do not know.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Known: Eden expects the assassination to succeed, not be reversed, and lead to the eradication of all superheroes and make him President.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Known: Peacemaker and Eden therefore represent two opposing beliefs. They both expect the first part of the plan, the assassination. They have opposite intentions and expectations regarding what happens after that. So:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Question: If Harley gets his information from Algorithm 8, then he knows what Nora knew, so why is he willing to die? Does he believe that eliminating superheroes is worth his own death?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Question: Why is (Vice) President Eden interrogating Peacemaker? Is it a real interrogation, in which he wants answers, or is it a sham because public perception demands that an investigation take place? Is it simply for sadistic reasons that Peacemaker is beaten up behind closed doors?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Question: Of the two opposing prophecies, which is correct: Will Captain Atom return or not?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Answer: We don’t know, and it may be resolved in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity </i>finale, but Captain Atom tells us, and is probably correct, that he will survive their attempt to kill him. On the other hand, he is reading Ultra Comics, which has had some corrupting effect on everyone else who read it (Nix Uotan, Al Pratt, Alexis Luthor, and Kyle Rayner). This doesn’t turn Al Pratt or Kyle Rayner absolutely evil, however, so it doesn’t necessarily make Captain Atom absolutely evil. Also, we have already seen, in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman Beyond</i>, that he is a being of higher consciousness. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So, the story ends on a cliffhanger, which is symbolized by the Schrödinger’s Cat moment with Captain Atom’s dog. In quantum mechanics, two contradictory predictions can both be true until they are tested.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Answer: Morrison has said in interviews that the struggling victims in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>eventually figure out how to beat the Gentry. So, probably Captain Atom is right, and will come back, and defeat the plan of the Gentry and their underlings, including (Vice) President Eden.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Question: What does this mean?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Answer: <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/11/multiversity-message.html">Morrison’s larger story here is about the future of comics</a>, whether they will be ruined by the violence that corrupts Earth-20, or the irrelevance that afflicts Earth-16, or the deconstruction (i.e., Alan Moore’s efforts) of Earth-4. And if he’s got a happy ending in mind, it involves the Justice League of the Multiverse, who is coming to save the day. And that amounts to an affirmation of the good and noble heroes, as Morrison sees them, as exemplified by the Silver Age Justice League.</div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-86731978039693710672014-11-19T13:26:00.000-08:002015-07-09T09:23:55.089-07:00Multiversity: Pax Americana<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QQzK37e6Scs/VG0J6wBP1OI/AAAAAAAAApg/IJDZGxMtV7E/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-11-19%2Bat%2B1.18.43%2BPM.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-QQzK37e6Scs/VG0J6wBP1OI/AAAAAAAAApg/IJDZGxMtV7E/s1600/Screen%2BShot%2B2014-11-19%2Bat%2B1.18.43%2BPM.png" height="200" width="55" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Wow.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Since <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity: Pax Americana</i> is a story about characters seeing the future, I’ll open with a prophecy. For decades to come, any discussion of the literary power of the comic book genre must include <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pax Americana</i>. It is already, on the day of its publication, required reading for serious comic book fans. It parallels, subsumes, and exceeds its obvious predecessor, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>, as an exploration of science, science fiction, and literary devices used to allow a story in the genre to discuss the genre itself. It is the most intricate thing Grant Morrison has ever written, and for fans who enjoy his intricate works, it is possibly the best. Frank Quitely’s impeccable art matches the brilliance of the narration. Fans will enjoy it on many levels, but no one will explore its levels deeply without having their mind blown. And someone’s mind being blown is how it begins, and ends. Because its ending is its beginning.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This story operates on so many interrelated levels, it is difficult to write about it in a linear fashion. I’ll begin by making general observations on a few of its different levels, then move deeper into the details.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Overviews:<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Narrative structure: While the story seems to be written backwards, with the scenes coming in reverse chronological order from 2015 back to 1974, it is really written as a time loop, like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Final Crisis</i> and the Sheeda of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seven Soldiers</i>. Like the <a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2013/08/ouroboros.html">Ouroboros symbol in Batman,Inc.</a>, the story’s logic turns back on itself. When the plot is followed carefully, one sees that it ends on a cliffhanger, or rather “middles” on a cliffhanger, because there is no chronological beginning or end to the time-looped story, and the details entailing the cliffhanger are revealed over many pages, not in particular at the end.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Relationship to other works:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pax Americana</i> uses the same Charlton Comics characters that inspired Alan Moore’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>. Its plot shares many elements of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>’s plot, including a hero who performs a villainous deed in order to achieve – he believes – a greater good. It shares many common themes with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>, including the ironic doubling of words and images to link pairs of scenes, the relationship between American politics and superheroes, a dystopic future, physics as a metaphor, visual imagery as a metaphor for the plot, and has many scenes and images that echo scenes and images in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It is, of course, a chapter in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>, and while its connections to the larger story are sparing, the source of the larger problem here on Earth-4 is an attack from the outside, delivered by comic books, in particular the haunted Ultra Comics, and what will happen after the assassination of President Harley is left pending, and on that hinges whether the ultimate threat succeeds or is defeated. Because of that, it adopts a tone entirely different from that of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>, which is entirely dark (<a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/07/retro-review-watchmen.html">see my review here</a>). <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pax Americana</i> gives hope that the villainy will be defeated, perhaps in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>finale.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Math and Physics:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">A Möbius strip is a strip (easily made of paper) with the ends twisted before being rejoined, so that it loops back on itself and has only one side. [IMAGE] This visible symbol parallels the time loop in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pax Americana</i> and this loop is also seen in the shape of the symbols “8” and “∞” (infinity), which are repeated multiple times, both <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">as</b> symbols and as visual features which occur coincidentally. They are produced at times by an “S” or question mark (the symbol of The Question) being overlaid, or by sheer coincidence, such as a blood spatter in the air. 8s and infinity symbols are visually similar and confused/converted from the one to the other by simple rotation. Thus, the 8 in “Algorithm 8” and the eight-panel design of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pax Americana</i>’s pages are references to loops, neverending, unto infinity.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Uranium-235 is the isotope of uranium that can be used to create self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions, as in a nuclear reactor or an atomic bomb.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Time, which we observe to have a direction in the scale of everyday experience, has no direction on the scale of subatomic particles. Almost every event that takes place on subatomic scales can happen just as easily in reverse as forwards: For example, a photon can hit an atom, disappearing as its energy moves one of the atom’s electron into a higher energy level, or an electron in a high energy level can drop down into a lower level and emit a photon. The processes are exactly opposite of one another. However, in everyday life, there is no reversibility: Spilled coffee does not jump out of a carpet, move upwards, and jump into a cup. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Dr. Manhattan in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>and Captain Atom in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pax Americana</i>both possess the superpower of bridging the gap between the everyday, time-directed world, and the subatomic, time-reversible world. Therefore, they see the past and future equally clearly, and become players in a game where past and future affect each other, whereas in the physics of the real world, the future cannot affect the past.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Roman god Janus had one face looking backwards into time and one face looking forwards into the future, and symbolizes this ability of the physics-based characters and whoever possesses Algorithm 8.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Physics and philosophy have long grappled with the question of whether the future is determined predictably by the past. Newton’s laws of motion inspired the notion of a Clockwork Universe, one in which the state of the present, plus the inviolable rules of physics, make the future uniquely determined as those rules crank away on the state of the world. However, modern physics undermined that worldview, indicating that time is relative to the observer and that some processes are truly random and unpredictable. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i> makes much of this revolutionary discovery, and how it affects the worldview of Dr. Manhattan’s watchmaker father, among others. It shatters his world both literally and figuratively.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">A profoundly important contrast with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i> is this: In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pax Americana</i>, the people who discover Algorithm 8 see that physics discovery <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">reversed</b>. They find out, in contrast to earlier understanding, that the future <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">is</b>predictable, and once they see that, several of the characters begin playing a deeper game, trying to control the future and committing horrible crimes in the belief that they know exactly how this will play out in the long run.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Plot</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pax Americana</i>story goes like this:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In 1974, the superhero Yellowjacket, who is a comic book writer in his real identity of Vince Harley, goes out for patrol, and it accidentally shot fatally by his son when he returns.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The antagonists in the story are represented by the Vice President, Nightshade’s father, and Sergeant Lane, who is seen carrying out their dirty work at several points in time. He is undoubtedly under the influence of the Gentry, who also influence Captain Atom through haunted comic books. Captain Atom is given an incorrect belief in a plan that seems to be for the greater good, but will actually perpetuate the Gentry’s evil plan to eliminate superheroes from this world.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">When a young future President Harley is mourning for his father, he is visited by Captain Atom, who has been infected in the future by Ultra Comics. Captain Atom tells him of a way to control the future using a Möbius Strip (the door has one side and opens both ways). Thus, the future President Harley is the dupe of Captain Atom, who via Ultra Comics is the dupe of the Gentry. From this point on, the young Harley carries out a plan to make himself the President of a profoundly secure and powerful America, with unparalled popular support. His plan runs decades into the future and includes his rise to the Presidency, his eventual assassination, to win absolute public support, and his resurrection from the dead via the physics-based powers of Captain Atom.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">His plan involves the use of superheroes as government agents, but they are set up as patsies to take a fall. President Harley has asked the Peacemaker to assassinate him in order to allow his own resurrection and unprecedented popularity. This mirrors Ozymandius’ plan in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i> to use a tragic, public event to control public opinion for the greater good. When the Peacemaker’s lover/confidante Nora O’Rourke, who has a super mind, discovers Algorithm 8 and can see into the future, Sergeant Lane murders her to prevent her from interfering with the Gentry’s plan. He knew all along that he would have to do this, and that he would do it right after her discovery. The Question and Blue Beetle are also investigating these events. Blue Beetle is unable to see the big picture. The Question is starting to solve the mystery, but may be one step behind.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The plot also involves the destruction of Captain Atom by injecting a black hole into him, so that his ability to see the future will not derail the plan. However, Captain Atom has already seen into the future and knows that the plan to kill him will fail. He knows that he can reconstitute himself. The conspirators, however, kill the scientists who carried out Captain Atom’s murder, to prevent them from revealing the plan.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Peacemaker believes that killing President Harley is the right thing to do because it will galvanize the public into accepting a better future. President Harley is confident that he will be able to survive the assassination, despite its graphically depicted completion, because Captain Atom is able to reassemble a dead dog.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">However, these events were set into place by the Gentry, who intend it to bring down the world of Earth-4 and its superheroes. Morrison’s larger point is that darker comics have that effect, ruining the worlds they portray, which was precisely Alan Moore’s intention in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>. But Morrison holds out hope that events after Harley’s assassination will reconstitute a world of heroes worth reading about.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Details</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">November 2015:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Watchmen</i>, the cover is actually the first panel of the story. The peace flag is set on fire by the shot that kills the President. This is the first of several times that symbols of peace (the dove being another) are destroyed violently. The fact that the Peacemaker shoots the peace symbol is ironic. However, he intends for this event to create a greater peace.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Watchmen</i>, a blood trail runs over a circular symbol. There, the smiley face; here, the Presidential Seal. In both, it symbolizes the way violence destroys the more benevolent world that came before.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The President being shot in the head while riding in an open car obviously refers to the actual assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The anticipated public support that this will generate parallels the record-setting margin of victory of Lyndon Johnson, Kennedy’s successor, in the 1964 election.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Reversal and reflection are mentioned several times, in words and in images, beginning with the investigators saying that they watched the film of the assassination backwards and forward. This itself mirrors the way the Zapruder film of Kennedy’s assassination was scrutinized, including frontward and backward viewing in the film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JFK</i>.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The title of the story, “In Which We Burn,” refers to a patriotic British film, “In Which We Serve,” about World War Two. Peacemaker believes that he’s serving a greater good, but he is being duped. The Gentry’s plan is to destroy superheroes by duping Peacemaker into committing this act.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">One of the dead superheroes from the past is Merryman, whom Morrison showed in Limbo in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman Beyond</i>. Captain Atom is still missing due to his attempted murder, which will fail. Captain Atom will return soon, but we don’t see this happen.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Nightshade is the daughter of the Vice President, who has become President. Eight and reflection are both mentioned. The Vice President says that there is a need to return to the values of the past.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“A leap of faith” is mentioned and we see The Question leap instead of riding in Blue Beetle’s vehicle. He is trying to sideline Blue Beetle and carry out his investigation alone because he doesn’t think Blue Beetle will cooperate with him. This is reminiscent of Owlman and Rorschach in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>. “Get a grip” is said right before the Question’s machine grips Blue Beetle’s flying craft.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Question has nearly figured out the entire plan, from the murdered scientists and the death of the Yellowjacket onwards, and is telling us most of the plot before we see it happen.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Question asks who controls the board, the soldier or the hunchback? This is an apparent reference to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Hunchback of Notre Dame</i>, in which two different characters are framed for carrying out the crimes of others. In this case, the Peacemaker seems to have killed the President, but the Question has already worked out that someone else was behind it. This echoes conspiracy theories concerning the Kennedy assassination, although here we see that the conspiracy is real.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The two-page spread intertwines three scenes together. The Peacemaker and Nora O’Rourke discuss Algorithm 8. He knows that when she works it out, she would know his plan and want to stop him, so he knows all along that he’ll have to kill her. She is murdered with the bust of Janus, the two-faced man, who symbolizes the past/future theme. We see the conversations that precede her discovery, his murder of her, and the Question’s investigations. Thus, this scene looks forwards and backwards in time, just as Janus symbolizes. The conspirator has super strength thanks to an exoskeleton. This mirrors Rorschach’s realization that whoever killed the Comedian had to have had unnatural levels of strength.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">January 2015:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Captain Atom is assassinated by the use of a black hole when he is participating in a physics experiment. A massless time-symmetrical boson must be a photon or graviton, but in any case indicates the physics-based ability to see forwards in time. He has already seen “the door” that entails vision of the future and past at once, and he will go back in time to the Seventies to tell a young Harley to put this plan into place. But Captain Atom, reading Ultra Comics, is tainted by the Gentry, and is unwittingly carrying out evil.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">As in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>, the scientists who help carry out the villain’s plan are themselves killed, so they can’t reveal the plan. Their killer is Sergeant Lane, recognizable by his suit and metal left hand, who represents the greater evil of the Gentry, and even proclaims himself to have crawled out of the gates of Hell. The reversible nature of time is referred to by him in denunciations of both science and religion, as he alludes to the beginning of time in the theological conception with “Let there be light,” the looped – as opposed to linear – time of the story with “can’t get it straight,” and the beginning of the Universe and ends of their lives in a gunshot as “the Big Bang.”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">2014:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">A scene in a nursing home mirrors one early in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>, with the younger female superhero visiting her mother. Their conversation drops some plot details. The daughter is teleported away, at her request, by Captain Atom. An accidental coffee spill turns an S into an infinity symbol, and the reversibility of time is alluded to with, “The view is the same in both directions.” A black circle is a visual metaphor for the black hole discussed in this scene which is used, later, to try to kill Captain Atom.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">We find out that Peacemaker is carrying out a plan that President Harley has let him in on, but his lover, Nora O’Rourke, is independently working on the discovery of Algorithm 8, which will make her a threat and require her later murder.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Their home is symbolic of the future replacing the past, a Bauhaus building in the ruins of a castle. Their conversation includes a flash-forward to Sergeant Lane beating up Peacemaker after his assassination of the President. An “8” appears as a blood splatter in the sky as a dove, a symbol of peace, is killed.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Question is investigating the case, killing a dirty cop and finding out about Sergeant Lane and the Vice President’s roles. As Rorschach allowed a criminal to amputate his own hand in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>, the Question gives this man the means to commit suicide with a gun. The Question outlines a color-coded theory of society with eight stages. He calls the dirty cop yellow, a play on the color theory and on cowardice.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">2008:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Sergeant Lane has the trust of superheroes who are brought on as government agents under President Harley. Peacemaker suggests that their group be called the Justice League of America, indicating that those characters exist in comic books in Earth-4.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">President Harley unveils the superheroes publicly as the guarantors of an American peace, Pax Americana, as Captain Atom telekinetically builds three towers where the World Trade Center fell.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">2007?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Captain Atom is visited by then-Governor Harley. Captain Atom is recovering from something called the U-235 Incident, which is a sly reference to the explosive isotope of uranium as well as the actual Cold War U2 incident.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">His attention, diluted by drugs, moves into the past and future, so he accidentally calls the Governor President, already knowing that he will one day hold that office. Lacking sympathy on a human level, he kills his own dog out of curiosity. He resurrects the dog, leaving one dead version and one live one, a reference to the thought experiment in quantum mechanics known as Schrödinger’s Cat. Governor Harley uses comic books to tell Captain Atom about Algorithm 8, in a time loop, because Captain Atom will carry this information back into the past to give it to a 23-year-old Harley. Captain Atom tells Harley that they’ll try to kill him and fail, so the Gentry will not actually neutralize him as they plan to. President Harley appears to have a plan that will actually counter the Gentry’s plan, and it’s hinted throughout the issue that he and Captain Atom will prevail over them. The conversation has many references to reflection, moving forward, and backwards, and the bridge is reflected in water, making a half circle into a full circle, symbolic of the past-future duality of Algorithm 8.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">2005:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">An assassination attempt on President Bush is thwarted by Peacemaker. The drink Manhattan is mentioned as a reference to Dr. Manhattan. The use of an actual real-world President symbolizes the interplay between real and fictional worlds and how superheroes replace the real world in their own fictional worlds. This transition from one world to another is encapsulated by the scene’s final line, “Your world has come to an end today.”<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Flashforward:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">A scene back in 2015 what would be the opposite end of that process, with Sergeant Lane celebrating the end of superheroes as he interrogates Peacemaker. But Peacemaker believes that he will prevail and save the world from him, suggesting that Captain Atom will reconstitute himself, retroactively save the President, and reaffirm superheroes in the eyes of the world. A quick flashback shows Peacemaker telling Nora about the President’s plan.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Earlier:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Question and Blue Beetle are investigating crimes. The Question is already working on the big mystery and Blue Beetle does not follow the Question’s reasoning nor approve of his draconian punishment of evildoers. This foreshadows the Question eventually sidelining Blue Beetle and working on the case alone.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Question’s black-and-white morality is seen via his two lines about black and white that he considers writing on his calling card.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">1980s:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">We see future-President Harley receiving from Captain Atom the message that Governor Harley gave him decades later.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">1974:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">We see Harley accidentally kill his father, the Yellowjacket. Blood spatters onto the feather of their pet doves, bloodying the symbol of peace. A news broadcast mentions the corruption of the Nixon era and a speech by President Kennedy, outlining the good/evil at stake in this story. In the final panel, Harley holds up his father’s domino mask, which twists into an “8”, which is the name of the algorithm at the center of the plot.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Summary:</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This issue is a masterpiece. For better and worse, it does not easily yield to a single quick reading. A few hours’ scrutiny is rewarded amply, and future effort is sure to produce even deeper insights. Is Harley a good man in a battle between good and evil, or is he corrupt? Will Captain Atom arrive to team up with the Question and save the day? Does Morrison successfully override the cynicism of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>and write a new classic in the genre? We’ll find out in the finale of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> and as readers and other writers react to these issues in the months and years to come.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-232404484744124922014-11-02T22:20:00.000-08:002015-07-09T09:23:55.106-07:00Multiversity: The Message<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mU5JwFnIFWY/VFceqtkM2HI/AAAAAAAAApU/idB0Ue19VYQ/s1600/aaaGentry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mU5JwFnIFWY/VFceqtkM2HI/AAAAAAAAApU/idB0Ue19VYQ/s1600/aaaGentry.jpg" height="59" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">What's the Message?<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>, according to his plans as announced, will be Grant Morrison's last work that could reorder the foundations of DC superhero comics. The ultimate chance to have his say regarding what superhero comics should be. This offer comes once only, in all eternity. So what kind of story is he writing? What is he trying to say?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Morrison, to say the least, has a predilection for the big concept, the big statement. He offers up that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> is the best thing he's ever done, and the threat is the most terrifying thing that anyone's ever created in a comic. More terrifying than the commonplace threats we've seen that big stories where the destruction of all life and reality is what's at stake? How is that possible?<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The answer may be contained in the first three issues of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity. </i>Look at the various Earths and characters from across the Multiverse that Morrison is using in the story, and how he is using them, and a pattern falls out.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Pattern<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Earths in the Multiverse mainly fall into two broad categories: (1) When an existing body of work is separate from mainstream continuity, DC dubs that side continuity an "Earth" to separate it from their other titles. This includes their own past work (eg, Earth-2 in the original 1960s conception of Golden Age continuity; the Anthro and Kamandi worlds, etc.) as well as the comics worlds of other publishing companies (notably those of Charlton, Fawcett, Quality, and even Marvel). The other category, (2) consists of side realities which are created to drive a single story and are DC Earths from the original conception. For example, the Crime Syndicate's Earth-3, and the various Earths that play host to the worlds of Kingdom Come, Red Son, Red Rain, and other Elseworlds.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Broadly speaking, Earths of type (1) have been around for quite a while and have been the basis of hundreds or even several thousand stories. They also were created independently of DC's main line, and as such, lack character-by-character equivalents to DC's star lineup of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, etc. On the other hand, Earths of type (2) essentially always take one or more DC stars and perform some twist: Making them evil, switching their gender, assigning them new backgrounds, etc. They are usually around for a story or two, as opposed to the serials lasting years or decades as in type (1).<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Now let's look at the plot of Multiversity: A hideously sinister threat, called the Gentry, are attacking Earths one by one, and have already destroyed one of them. A team to stop them has been formed and has set out to save the Multiverse.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>, we have seen or will see the following worlds being subjected to attack:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Earths-7 and 8, based on the Marvel and Ultimate Marvel universes.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Earth-20, whose existing characters are based on older DC comics: three mashups of Justice Society characters, alternate Blackhawks, and an obscure character from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Strange Adventures</i>.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Earth-16, based on DC characters from the Nineties and later who were successors to the Silver Age characters. In their own world, they are also the successors to Silver Age dopplegangers, but none of the Silver Age dopplegangers, save Ray Palmer, are themselves on-panel.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Earths 4, 5, and 10 corresponding to the comics universes of Charlton, Fawcett, and Quality comics companies, respectively.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Finally, Earth-33, which is based on Earth Prime, which is based on our actual world.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Here is the pattern that sticks out: The victim Earths, besides perhaps Earth-33, are all of type (1). The heroes coming to save them are all from Earths of type (2). This is no coincidence, nor is it abstract as it may seem. It is core to Morrison's intentions.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The victims are, fundamentally, sets of characters who do not include DC's key stars or extradimensional dopplegangers of them. Earth-16 may seem to be an exception, but note that these characters are not dopplegangers of DC's stars but are, rather, their children and successors. Damian Wayne even points out that he's not the world's greatest detective, but rather his son. Note also that Earth-20 has equivalents of three members of the Justice Society, but not of the star lineup of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, or the Flash; nor is there a Hal Jordan or Alan Scott.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Meanwhile, the rescue squad that Harbinger gathers is, in Morrison's own words, a Justice League of the Multiverse. There are analogues of Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, and Aquaman. In addition, there are a few others such as Hawkman, Gypsy and Steel. Batman is notably absent, and Dino-Cop is a wildcard, but this is, in essence, a Justice League. The Justice League saves everybody else: That is the action underlying Morrison's big message in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">What The Pattern Means<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So, Morrison is a huge fan of the DC Silver Age, so they're the real heroes and other comics can't compare – is that the whole message? It's deeper and more specific than that, and Morrison's overarching message is why Earths based on the Marvel universes had to be the first ones to fall.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Morrison has increasingly used his comics to outline a real world threat to the genre. The Superdoom threat in Morrison's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action</i> #9, a comic book shown in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>, is described by one world's Lois Lane: "We sold out! They had 500 experts lined up, thinking in harmony to streamline the Superman brand for maximum cross-spectrum, wide platform appeal. They built a violent, troubled, faceless anti-hero, concealing a tragic secret life, a global marketing icon." In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action</i> #17, Superdoom describes itself to Superman as, "An unstoppable killer franchise from a parallel reality. A thought that gets bigger the more you think of it. The thought of a Superman better than you! The thought of a bigger Superman. A stronger, more ruthless Superman. … powered by a simple corporate directive: Annihilate the competition! … Your replacement." The idea is also articulated by Mandraak in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman Beyond</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Final Crisis</i> but not as clearly as in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action</i>. And in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman Beyond</i>, it is explained that this threat can be beaten by a better idea, the story of a child rocketed to Earth from a doomed planet.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">These <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action</i>issues are a direct prequel to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>. We see Calvin Ellis, the Superman of Earth-23 in both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>, and we see four different Earths (including two or three Luthors and Earth 20's Doc Fate) build the Transmatter Symphonic Array, a multicolored device that acts as an interdimensional portal through which this threat attacks. In three cases, we're told that the Transmatter Symphonic Array is built by someone using instructions that came to them in a dream. Another one suddenly appears in front of Chris Kent in Alexis Luthor's apartment and was perhaps built by her. That is the science fiction explanation of the interdimensional threat, but Morrison's metatextual message is laid out in the nature of Superdoom: Replacing the pure, noble heroes with violent, troubled anti-heroes, stronger and more ruthless, designed to appeal to a broader audience.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Apocalypse as a Metaphor<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">"Violent, troubled, anti-hero" describes almost perfectly the qualities that brought on the downfall of Earth-20, Earth-16, and Earths 7 and 8, in that order.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Violent: The Society of Super-Heroes represents the pre-Silver Age, pre-Justice League DC, with two Justice Society heroes and the Blackhawks. The issue begins with very specific articulation of vows not to kill by the Atom and the Immortal Man. Soon, their universe is beset by threats which throw the far future of comics at it: The Green Lantern storyline accelerates into the future with the Alan Scott role and uniform (1940) on Abin Sur (1959) fighting Sinestro (1960s) and Parallax (2000s). Vandal Savage from Earth-40 arrives and knows that to attack this world, he must make them kill. This is a fate that already befell Earth-40 itself, as the meteorite that gave Vandal Savage his immortality was used as a murder weapon, whereas on Earth-20 this did not occur and the rock became a holy relic. As threats from later eras of fiction arrive (Lady Shiva, zombies), the pulp heroes from the past abandon their principles. First the Atom kills Blockbuster with the Deadly Atom Punch, which fells his enemy but makes him stagger at how he abandoned his principles. The Blackhawks kill Lady Shiva, and then the Immortal Man kills Vandal Savage. This directly attracts the threat of the infected Nix Uotan, the sign that their universe has become tainted by the things that Superdoom proclaimed itself to be. The Society of Super-Heroes (and by extension, the Golden Age Justice Society that it was based upon) has no place in a world where heroes are killers. And which Golden Age / Justice Society characters are absent from this Earth? There is no Superman, no Batman, no Wonder Woman, and no Flash. Those are the characters that might have saved them, but are absent until the Multiversal Justice League arrives.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Troubled: The Just, the supeheroes of Earth-16, represent the post-Justice League DC characters, as they arose from about 1983 onward. The goodness of these superheroes dies not with a bang but a whimper. There are analogues of the Silver Age Justice League, but they are all replacements who are incapable of action. Their Superman, Chris Kent, is an ineffectual successor to Superman, not his equivalent like Calvin Ellis, the Superman of Earth-23. The best of them, Damian Wayne, is trying to rise to the occasion, but he admits that he's not the world's greatest detective, but the son of the world's greatest detective. Their Justice League only play-acts battles. Like the Lois Lane who spawned Superdoom, they sold out. They come under a form of psychic attack via comic books and movies. Their Megamorpho commits suicide. Kyle Rayner is suddenly paralyzed by memories of the murder of his girlfriend. They lack a real Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, or Flash to save them. Like Earth-20, they have a version of Green Lantern, but not the real thing, whether that be Alan Scott or Hal Jordan.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Anti-heroes: We don't see this on-panel in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>, but Marvel has regularly blurred the lines between heroes and villains, and Morrison uses this device with excruciating repetition in the few pages where we see Earth-8 under siege. In the first panel we see of Earth-8, Lord Havok (Doctor Doom) holds Wundajin's lightning axe (Thor's hammer Mjolnir) and other artifacts that may have direct Marvel equivalents: A villain holding a hero's weapon. Then we immediately see a hero (from Earth-7) start a fight with another hero (from Earth-8). After the Justice League of the Multiverse tries to stop the hostilities, we are reminded that Doctor Doom began as Mister Fantastic's friend and creation. Finally, the hero based on Hawkeye fires an arrow through Lord Havok's head. The blurring of heroes and villains in this scene is repeatedly asserted in just a few pages to characterize Marvel storytelling.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Who are The Gentry?<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">So we see that the Gentry are tied to the very same things that Superdoom represented in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action</i>. When we translate this into Morrison's message about the superhero genre, we see why Marvel had to be the first universe that the Gentry toppled. Morrison is decrying the success of certain themes and tarnished ideals in the genre. As movies and video games supplant comic books as the dominant media conveying the superhero genre, they take the superhero genre into places that Morrison is warning us about. He is voicing in this story the reservations he has made explicitly in interviews.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Of the movie <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Man of Steel</i>, Morrison said:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: #3b3b3b; mso-bidi-font-family: Verdana;">I’m not sure about the killing thing. I don’t want to sound like some fuddy-duddy Silver Age apologist but I’ve noticed a lot recently of people saying Batman should kill the Joker and, yeah, Superman should kill… unless you’re in one of the Armed Forces, killing is illegal and immoral. Why would we want our superheroes to do that?</span></i><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Of his experience in designing video games, Morrison said:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">There wasn’t a big interest in novelty. They seemed more interested in working on formulas that had worked in the past.<o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This is what he is saying in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>, with The Gentry representing the opposite of his position. When The Gentry speak to Nix Uotan, it is the metaphorical voice of video games, movies, and perhaps (given the spelling rich in contraction) social media speaking to DC comic books, telling them that they will bring ruin upon them like this:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">"We want yu. We want yu 2 give up yr dreams. We want yu 2 abandon all hope. We want to make yu like us." And what is it they do to comic books? They have apparently done it to Marvel as they tell Nix Uotan, representing DC, "We crushed his courage and his heart. His dignity will die and his flesh follow. Unless yu take his place. Exchange yr life for his."<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Once Nix Uotan is infected, he has become, in essence, video games, telling the superheroes he confronts, "Play a new game."<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The process of ruination, Morrison is saying, starts with Marvel, then spreads to DC's pre-Silver Age and post-Silver Age. In successive one-shots, Morrison will likely show how the much smaller universes of Charlton (already pretty well wrecked by Alan Moore's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>), Fawcett (recall the ruined and depraved Mary Marvel from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Final Crisis</i> and Tawky Tawny in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Final Crisis</i> suddenly and savagely killing Kalibak), and Quality (the Freedom Fighters as crushed by a Nazi Superman) had no hope of surviving in the face of such an onslaught.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Morrison's overall message seems to be: Comics are on a downward slide. Superheroes have gained great new popularity in other media (when five members of the JLA visited Earth Prime to meet Ultraa in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JLA</i> #153, almost nobody recognized them; in 2014, those JLA characters are <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">all</b>the subjects of current or recent TV shows and movies; everybody would recognize them). And this larger world of new readers, players, and viewers is The Gentry (note that its signature character is essentially a big eyeball). They will spend big money on movies and video games and this money will bring the whole genre down. Echoing the Gentry's comment that Nix Uotan can give himself up instead of Thunderer, Marvel will be destroyed by pandering to these forces unless DC wins the competition by pandering to it more.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Is Morrison saying that this has already happened? No, he "kinda liked" <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Man of Steel</i>. He's saying that the process has begun, and that it could lead to that ruination if it continues.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">What can save all of these fictional worlds is what his Justice League of the Multiverse represents: The pure, Silver Age Justice League style of heroes. Or perhaps not "style of"… perhaps <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">only</b> those characters exactly. As Morrison said in an interview, "With DC, the big archetypal characters are kind of like this human pantheon -- it's what we dream of when we go to bed at night." In the penultimate issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>, the tide will turn as a once-evil Superman will be redeemed.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Making it Real</b><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:View>Normal</w:View> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves/> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:DoNotPromoteQF/> <w:LidThemeOther>EN-US</w:LidThemeOther> <w:LidThemeAsian>JA</w:LidThemeAsian> <w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> 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gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal">The remaining world in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>that isn't really a type (1) or type (2) world according to my formulation is Earth-33, which is based on Earth Prime as seen in Silver Age stories. Morrison has stated that the events in the Earth-33 story, starring Ultraa (who debuted in the aforementioned <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">JLA</i> #153) will be the most terrifying thing anyone has ever created in a comic. Is this because the threat is actually real, about the real world and not about works of fiction? Maybe Morrison is talking about the possibility of the real world losing the comic books that its readers have come to enjoy. Maybe, he means, as Captain Carrot said in #1, that via the Multiple Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics, the things that happen in comics are actually happening to someone in a real universe and so the Joker, Reverse Flash, etc. are actually killing real people out there somewhere. Given the glimmerings we've seen so far, it may only be possible to guess at where <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> is leading, but it's clear where it has so far led: Morrison is writing a story that's about the whole genre, and the potential future he sees is not good. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-35301151453912387222014-10-22T10:58:00.000-07:002015-07-09T09:23:55.141-07:00Multiversity: The Just<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_KSi2UEbdEA/VEfwKwDE0rI/AAAAAAAAApE/p4BO3tFJY0k/s1600/aaaaJust.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_KSi2UEbdEA/VEfwKwDE0rI/AAAAAAAAApE/p4BO3tFJY0k/s1600/aaaaJust.jpg" height="200" width="97" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity: The Just</i>depicts a world of superheroes that’s all style and no substance. At least, they haven’t had to have substance for quite a while, but that is due to change. Based, in Grant Morrison’s words, on the reality TV show, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Hills</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Just</i> has TV-style captions that introduce a large number of characters of Earth-16, some very familiar from mainstream continuity, and some variations on characters we’ve seen before.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">In tone, this ends up resembling <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kingdom Come</i> and its sequel in many ways. The characters are mainly second-and-third generation superheroes and supervillains, but unlike the setup in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kingdom </i>Come, where the super-powered godchildren wreak havoc, these no longer do much of anything besides capture the public attention and play-act past battles as a kind of stage-acting while robots built by the first, and late, Superman solve every imaginable problem. The two main characters are the sons of Superman and Batman, calling to mind the ongoing “Super Sons” feature set in an indeterminate future, published in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World’s Finest</i> during the Silver Age.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Befitting the concept, the story arc is very simple but the surface details many. A list of annotations covers the details:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Sister Miracle, Sasha Norman is the daughter of Mister Miracle, Shilo Norman.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Megamorpho, Saffi Mason, is the daughter of Metamorpho, Rex Mason.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Megamorpho commits suicide, much as a similar character, Element Girl, did in Neil Gaiman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sandman</i>.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">As soon as that reference is made, “Neil Gaiman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sandman</i>” is mentioned explicitly, reinforcing the theme in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>that comic books describing one Earth exist as publications in other Earths.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">The Atom, Ray Palmer, is the only “adult” from the Silver Age seen in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Just</i>.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Damian Wayne is now Batman, wearing the same outfit seen in three Grant Morrison stories set in an apocalyptic future. Alexis asks him if he believes in curses, which possibly reinforces his association with Doctor Hurt, who, as the Devil, gave Damian enhanced life span and invulnerability in those stories.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Alexis Luthor is Lex Luthor’s daughter. She is dating Damian, but <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Superman is Chris Kent, using the same name as the adopted son of Superman and Lois Lane who existed between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Infinite Crisis</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flashpoint</i>.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Offspring, Ernie O’Brian, is the son of Plastic Man, Eel O’Brian, and was part of the aforementioned <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kingdom Come</i> continuity.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Kyle Rayner is the only Green Lantern in this reality.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Wally West is the Flash.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Connor Hawke is the Green Arrow. Cissie King-Hawke is Arrowette.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Kon-El is Superboy. He is beginning to turn into a Bizarro.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Jakeem Thunder is the owner of the Magic Thunderbolt.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Natasha Irons is Steel.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Garth is Aquaman.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Artemis is Wonder Woman.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Pieter Cross is Doctor Mid-Nite.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Bloodwynd, no secret identity.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Cynthia Reynolds is Gypsy.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Holly Dayton is Menta.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">As in the previous issues of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>, comic books, in particular the Ultraa story that will end the series, are haunted, bringing a threat from across the Multiverse. It is this infection that causes Saffi to commit suicide. Alexis Luthor takes control of Jakeem Thunder to attack Earth-16. This is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">another</b> thematic connection to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kingdom Come</i>, in which Luthor plans treachery by controlling that story’s lightning-bearing superhero, Captain Marvel. 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QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pYIYPw044i4/VC147v1ykhI/AAAAAAAAAo0/RjaUpe13S9Y/s1600/aaaJL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pYIYPw044i4/VC147v1ykhI/AAAAAAAAAo0/RjaUpe13S9Y/s1600/aaaJL.jpg" height="75" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">The best team stories are the ones where different characters all have a different role to play in some way that's more sophisticated than whether their superpower is to communicate with sea life or run very fast. <i>Justice League</i> #34, "Unlikely Allies," is a fascinating phase deep into a very deep strategic game with several players representing several different sides. We can't actually see who has what planned, but in this issue, Geoff Johns gives us a glance at a few players' cards.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Aside from the classic heroes whose interests are presumably aligned, we have front and center Lex Luthor, who has been teased as a good guy in stories going back to the Sixties. This always ends with him turning out to be a very dark agent practicing duplicity or a self-interested party capable of serving the greater good when it serves his interests. We've seen the former in 1961's <i>Death of Superman</i> and <i>Kingdom Come</i> and the latter in <i>Final Crisis</i>, <i>Injustice: Gods Above</i> and many other stories. Since <i>Forever Evil</i>, it's been hard to decipher Luthor's game plan, but we know by the end of <i>JL</i> #34 that he is masking his true intentions and is allied with Owlman. This makes it more tantalizing to re-read the scene where he asks Wonder Woman to use her lasso on him but she does not, because he has apparently engineered that interaction very carefully to seem like a conflicted figure in order to keep her from actually using her lasso and discovering his deception.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">That revelation, however, isn't the "bwah hah hah" revelation of evil that it might be in a simpler story. Owlman was possibly being forthright in <i>Forever Evil</i> when he proposed an alliance with Dick Grayson against the stronger members of the Crime Syndicate. While we can't expect the best of Owlman's desire to take possession of the super-powerful offspring of Ultraman and Superwoman, he may have some endgame in mind that is not entirely at cross-purposes with the Justice League.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">What makes it credible that the moderately-evil characters in this ongoing story might be allied with the heroes is the looming threat of a purely-evil menace as discussed by Cyborg and seen in <i>Justice League</i> #34. The sentient ring from Power Ring, now fighting for control of Jessica Cruz, has indicated that its intention is to lure the being who destroyed Earth 3 to Earth 0 so it can take possession of Superwoman's child, the very same objective that Owlman has. It is unclear, though, how these three sides square off, except that it is unlikely that they are all aligned. Owlman probably does not crave destruction for its own sake, and would prefer to be as powerful as possible on some Earth or another. Luthor, no doubt, would like that same outcome for himself, a vision that could place them into alliance or eventual conflict.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The spare information we have about the really evil characters is that some unknown character is helping the Anti-Monitor find worlds to consume, which is feeding him energy for an anticipated battle with Darkseid. Darkseid, the conqueror of Earth 2 and would-be conqueror from the DCNU's earliest stories, <i>Final Crisis</i> and countless previous works, has nonetheless been allied with our heroes against the Anti-Monitor in <i>COIE</i>. The win our heroes need to engineer may involve playing the two evil forces against one another. This story is likely to play out on a grand scale over the coming months, with tie-ins galore, certainly including <i>Earth 2,</i> likely the <i>Green Lantern/New Gods Godhead</i> miniseries, and possibly <i>Multiversity</i>, although in the past Grant Morrison stories have maintained separation from other plans other than a few minor points of tie-in.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The heroes see a deeper game, with Batman and Superman planning to snare Luthor, but perhaps not nearly as deep as the game really is. Johns is setting up one of his epic crossovers such as we've seen done – usually quite well – over the past 7 years. Among other mysteries that he's keeping secret is the identity of the character who is allied with the Anti-Monitor. Johns has a flare for going "big" with his villains, which makes me wonder if he'll bring Superboy Prime, one of his regulars from pre-<i>Flashpoint</i>, into this story, or perhaps Volthoom from Green Lantern lore, although he has also used characters as obscure as Nekron and Qull of the Five Inversions, and could possibly draw from just about any story in DC's past, but it is more Johns' style to use an existing character here, whether prominent or obscure, than present us with someone totally new.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The main upshot is that we are approaching a story on a grand scale and this issue is an important one on that path. The action scenes in <i>JL </i>#34 and even the revelation of Captain Cold's duplicity seem like minor sideplots while the grand design moves forward. We know, in the main, that good will prevail, but there could be some wonderful sound and fury along the way.</div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-78479177630687552122014-09-28T00:34:00.000-07:002015-07-09T09:23:55.193-07:00Retro Review: All Star Comics #3<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cglUTF6Z3fo/VCe56y-TyCI/AAAAAAAAAok/wFzjHSzQbMI/s1600/aaAS3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cglUTF6Z3fo/VCe56y-TyCI/AAAAAAAAAok/wFzjHSzQbMI/s1600/aaAS3.jpg" height="200" width="163" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The DC Universe Begins</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal">One of the most pivotal early events in superhero comics was the debut of the Justice Society in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star Comics</i> #3. This not only introduced an important staple of comics, the superhero team, but it also helped define the medium in revolutionary ways that current readers may not appreciate because the changes it ushered in have become so pervasive. It is informative to note how the title <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i> transformed from issue #1 through #4 and onward, and how creative and influential <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i> #3 was.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Background<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">From the debut of the comic book medium through early 1939, comic books contained many short features, unrelated to one another in plot and theme, ranging from one panel to a few pages. It was taken for granted that each feature in an issue inhabited its own fictional world, the same way that we may take for granted that two novels written by two different authors inhabit two different fictional worlds unless it is specifically brought to our attention that the novels share a single fictional world. Comic book features might continue in subsequent issues of the same title, but there was no single fictional world shared by any two features until 1940 when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Marvel Mystery Comics</i> #8 brought the Human Torch and the Sub-Mariner together in a crossover story. But before and besides that story, we might presume that a stack of ten comic books told us of not one, nor two, nor merely ten fictional worlds, but potentially dozens. All of these title characters – clowns, cowboys, tough guys, warlords, and mystics – lived in their own world with their own cast of subordinate characters, and they all shared a title with numerous other features.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Until <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman</i>. About a year after the runaway success of the Superman feature in the title <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action Comics</i>, the title <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman</i> (I use italics carefully to distinguish the title from the character) was launched to exploit the character’s popularity by giving readers a single title full of Superman stories. What is important to note here is not the creative significance – there was none; Superman stories in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman</i>read just like those in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action</i> – but the marketing significance. This was a move to play up the commercial aspects of a popular character in order to drive more sales. And it worked. Superman now had a second title, so his dedicated fans could follow him in two titles.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">A commercial strategy<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This idea was too good (that is, too profitable) to apply only in the case of Superman. All American and National publication companies looked for other features popular enough to merit a second venue. The idea of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman</i> was copied to the most popular character from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Detective Comics</i>, and so in early 1940 the title <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Batman</i> was launched, less than a year after the Caped Crusader had debuted in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Detective</i> #27. But even before this, the idea of giving popular features a second venue sprang out of 1939’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World’s Fair Comics</i>, a one-shot issue that rapidly evolved into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">World’s Finest Comics</i>. This title, which many years later hosted a monthly team-up feature starring Superman and Batman, began as an anthology of features which had, for the most part, proven their popularity in another title first. It was a sort of dream team of features, giving Superman his third title and many other characters, including Batman, their second. (And note that the title’s wording is not a reference to Superman and Batman being the world’s greatest heroes, but is telling the readers that its features were the world’s best features… while retaining the wording of the now-long-since-complete World’s Fair.) Like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman</i>, it was a strong commercial strategy, and DC soon sought to exploit it further by creating another best-of title.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">All Star Comics<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Enter <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star Comics</i>. DC now examined its lineup for another set of features popular enough to merit a second title, searching among the features that already appeared in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Adventure </i>Comics, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash Comics</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All American Comics</i>, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">More Fun Comics</i>. The first two issues included appearances of a tough guy named Biff Bronson, a U.S. military team named Red, White, and Blue, and a costumed hero named Ultra-Man, whose adventures were set in the year 2240 AD. The balance of those first two issues’ stories, however, featured characters who would go on to be known as the Justice Society, but as of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i>#2, they still inhabited their own fictional worlds. It wasn’t that the Flash operated on “Earth Two” in a different city than Green Lantern, Batman, etc. It was that they all operated in their own separate worlds. Aside from the Human Torch–Submariner crossover in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Marvel Mystery Comics</i>, every feature was set in its own fictional world.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The editors of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i> had, at this point, a challenge. They wanted to select the features popular enough to merit being in the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i> lineup, but they had no specific information as to which features were popular. Editorial ads in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i>asked readers to send in letters telling them which features they liked best, and these letter campaigns were used to help determine the lineup. Based on these letters and/or their intuitions, the editors tuned the lineup from issue to issue, and a few common characteristics began to emerge. The features in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i> #3, for the most part, had a lot of characteristics in common with Superman and Batman. Most of them wore flashy costumes. Most of them had catchy action names that was distinct from their secret identity. Most of them fought evildoers.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">What had happened, quite subtly, by the time of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i> #3, was that the superhero genre had been defined without anybody really planning it with an order from on-high. Instead, the readers, by explicitly and implicitly voting for their favorite characters, had selected a lineup for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i> that looked a bit like a team. This wasn’t Stan Lee and Jack Kirby staring at their storyboards and drafting a team by concept. This was a disconnected process involving many creators, many editors, two initially-separate publishing companies, and untold readers shaping the lineup of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star Comics</i>, and then editor Sheldon Mayer and writer Gardner Fox had an inspiration.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">All Star Comics #3<o:p></o:p></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Whereas <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i>#2 and all comic books before it, besides <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman</i>, contained many separate features given a few pages each, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i> #3 had a framing story, placing the starring characters into a rather pedestrian dinner banquet, during which, each character told the others of a previous action story. The solo stories, besides Johnny Thunder’s, are illustrated and several pages each, almost exactly like the solo features seen in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i> #1 and #2, and in all of the other comic magazines before them. The difference is the framing story that occupies 3 pages at the beginning of the issue, 1 page in the middle, 2 pages at the end, and 1 to 4 panels at each transition when one hero’s story has ended and the next is about to begin. Therefore, there is a framing story of about 7 pages which is, arguably, the beginning of shared continuity in DC comics. The events in that story are as follows:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">• Johnny Thunder sees comic books for sale and wishes that he could attend the meeting of the Justice Society that is about to begin.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• That wish and several others are granted, giving him a disruptive presence at the Justice Society meeting.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• It is explained that Superman, Batman, and Robin cannot attend because they are particularly busy while the Justice Society meets.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• Johnny Thunder proposes that each of the heroes in attendence tells a story about one of his past adventures.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• In the middle of the nine stories, the Red Tornado crashes the meeting, then leaves because her pants are torn.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">• A message from the FBI arrives. Flash runs to Washington to learn more. He returns with a request for the whole Justice Society to go to Washington to receive an assignment. This becomes the basis of a shared story in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i> #4.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The nine stories that make up 90% of the issue are themselves unremarkable. It’s the 10% of the issue that makes up the framing story that changed comics by creating a shared universe for what had previously been twelve separate features. However, continuity established in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i> #3 is different in many ways from DC continuity as it has come to be known:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">1) Action scenes are solo, just as in previous comics. Shared scenes are conversation-only. This remained true for most issues of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i>.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">2) Shared scenes have a distinctly humorous and childlike tone, aimed at child readers, like Johnny Thunder's solo features and completely unlike Spectre or Hawkman stories.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">3) Continuity did not extend to solo features. Justice Society stories were ignored by, and contradicted by, other features until the Sixties.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">4) Fourth wall narration, especially in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i> #3.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Indeed, the characters thrown together in the Justice Society just barely make sense as a unit. How do the Spectre, a grim avenging angel with almost limitless powers, and the Atom, a college sophomore with a weightlifter's body and a knack for running into crime fit into the same team? They don't. Johnny Thunder, despite the awesome powers at his disposal, was purely a joke character, stumbling in and out of misadventures because he was unaware how his thunderbolt worked. These continuities don't fit together, so it made sense that nobody took them very seriously as a shared fictional universe. Later in the series' run, when the characters were placed into action stories together, the tone became simplistic and campy, and not long afterwards, the entire line of characters went out of publication. It wasn't until the Seventies, with considerable reimagining of the original material, that the JSA became a lineup of characters that fit into a shared universe in the modern sense. The Golden Age Justice Society was entertainment with very little consistency in plot, continuity, or characterization. It was written for kids and provided a decade of entertainment for kids.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Because Justice Society membership was a commercial consideration to give popular characters more exposure, the Justice Society – after only 3 issues – had a "rule" that whenever a character gained their own solo title, they would become only an honorary member of the Society. This removed the Flash and Green Lantern from the lineup, just as Superman and Batman made only rare and cameo appearances, because characters with other titles didn't need the extra exposure of a place in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i>. 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That appeared a couple of months before <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i> #3, but because the kids were aware of Green Lantern's secret identity, they were referring to Green Lantern as a comic book character they read about, not a superhero in their own world. Over a year later, Wildcat was also inspired to become a costumed hero because kids told him about Green Lantern, but in that case, also, the kids were referring to a comic book. An early Batman story referred to Superman as a fictional character in their world. A single DC continuity that was shared across all of the major solo titles would not appear until the Sixties. Not until 1977 would the Justice Society get its first origin story, a classic by Paul Levitz in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DC Special</i> #29. It is perhaps less apt to say that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star</i>#3 brought a shared universe into being than that it planted the seed of a shared DC Universe. Many years and many changes later, that seed had grown into something greater. When we consider the billions of dollars of revenues that the genre has generated and the deep societal role that the superhero genre has grown into, we can look back at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">All Star Comics</i> #3 as a place where this tremendous thing started to grow.<o:p></o:p></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-72979407623638070912014-09-18T00:47:00.000-07:002015-07-09T09:23:55.211-07:00Multiversity: Society of Super-Heroes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DNnin2YuKxo/VBqN5HwmpgI/AAAAAAAAAoU/Vde_lZelUPo/s1600/aaaSos.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DNnin2YuKxo/VBqN5HwmpgI/AAAAAAAAAoU/Vde_lZelUPo/s1600/aaaSos.jpg" height="179" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">Grant Morrison has a love of and knack for the mashup: Combining fictional worlds, styles and forms into something full of familiar images to an original result. His second installment of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> is a blend of previous DC creations similar in many ways to his previous miniseries <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Seven Soldiers</i>. As in that work, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Society of Super-Heroes</i> draws on characters from different eras, ranging in obscurity from the bottom almost all the way to the top. More than anything else, it feels like a twist on the Golden Age <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Justice Society</i>, but JSA counterparts make up a minority of Earth-20's SOS.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">"Doc" Fate (a name and biography a bit like Doc Savage) and the Atom (Al Pratt) appear much as they were in 1940's JSA. In addition, there is a Green Lantern wearing a costume much like Alan Scott's, but indicative of the mashup, this Green Lantern is Abin Sur, of Earth-20's Green Lantern Corps. It should be noted that this is one of the first times that any Earth in the Multiverse besides the "main" DCU dimension has been implied to have a GL Corps led by their own copy of the Guardians. Notably absent are any of the other big guns of the DC lineup; no Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, or Flash are to be seen.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This proto-JSA teams with an all-female team of Blackhawks, a creation who appeared in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Quality Comics</i>at the same time as the original Justice Society, and were bought out by DC years later. They are also teamed with the Immortal Man, a character who debuted in the Fifties as a sci-fi character outside of DC continuity. His original rival, Vandal Savage, appears here as a main villian, but it's the Earth-40 Vandal Savage who leads zombies into a war against the SOS.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Earth-20 was first seen over six years ago in just one panel of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman Beyond</i> #1, with Doc Fate and Lady Blackhawk looking up as the various Supermen carry a huge interdimensional ship over them. That event is referred to in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">SOS</i>. Now, worlds are colliding and Earth-40's villians are using a dimensional collision that is not of their doing to raid Earth-20 like pirates boarding another ship.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Along the way, Morrison mixes in wildly different elements of DC lore such as Blockbuster, Parallax, "52"'s Lady Shiva, and Al Pratt suffering severe facial damage that will require him to wear his mask permanently, just as the original Al Pratt's son Damage did in Infinite Crisis.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Most central to the plot are the elements that tie into the rest of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>. Doc Fate is aware of the Monitors' history and the haunted issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> makes an ominous appearance. 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mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal">The story ends noncommitally, with the action to continue in other issues of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>. The grim nature of the threat to Earth-20 is offset by the inherent fun of the mashup, which left me appreciating the issue more for its tone than its plot. The plot is sure to continue, but it's hard to predict now if Earth-20 will get more in-depth coverage or if its struggle to survive will be handled summarily.<o:p></o:p></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-56595953997159741332014-08-20T11:30:00.000-07:002015-07-09T09:23:55.246-07:00The Multiversity #1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YxyEMyKdjd0/U_TpRkTVq1I/AAAAAAAAAoE/2Ed6LpKoQQA/s1600/aaMult.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YxyEMyKdjd0/U_TpRkTVq1I/AAAAAAAAAoE/2Ed6LpKoQQA/s1600/aaMult.jpg" height="153" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">In 2006, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Infinite Crisis</i> #6 reintroduced the Multiverse. At least, the event that produced 52 separate vibrationary dimensions, each with its own Earth, took place in that issue. DC revealed the existence of the new Multiverse only gradually, with teases and hints before a final reveal near the end of the weekly series <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">52</i>. The new Multiverse was a realm to explore, for creative talents to stake out territories and develop them, making the DC Universe a rich tableau of great variety.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Curtain falls. Seven years pass. Curtain rises.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">As 2014 passes the midway point, the Multiverse still has been discussed only very sparingly. With the exception of a few “Earths,” the creative playground that DC introduced eight years ago has barely been touched. Until now.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Grant Morrison’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Multiversity</i> is perhaps the most ambitious event that DC Comics has undertaken, a mapping of dozens of fictional worlds. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crisis on Infinite Earths</i> destroyed a thousand fictional worlds, almost all of them eliminated off-camera, with glimpses of ten or so along the way, and that was still vast in scope. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>will put dozens of worlds on-camera, giving us teases of their individual richness while building a larger structure around them with its own logic and chaos. It takes within its scope previous works of Gardner Fox, Jack Kirby, Neil Gaiman, Morrison himself, and many others, including – through obvious Marvel surrogates – Stan Lee. We’re obviously going to see an enormous amount of detail in the nine issues of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i>, and the first issue gets that well underway.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The story begins by showing a smaller creature on a flea, which is a reference to a poem by Jonathan Swift that states that microcosms thereby extend into boundless new microcosms, ad infinitum. The narration speaking of the ubiquity of life unites this into a message about stories and fictional worlds, which continue into infinite variety, and this is the lead-in to the infinite (well, at least 45) worlds Morrison will address.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Nix Uotan, the Monitor seen in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Final Crisis</i>, is once again living as a young man in shabby surroundings, hounded by the mundane facts of existence. He reads a comic book and communicates with some apparently extradimensional Mister Stubbs, an anthropomorphic chimpanzee in pirate clothing who shared a detention cell with Uotan in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Final Crisis</i> #5. The plot of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> is kicked off by their examination of a sinister comic book which is haunted and directly addresses the reader (both Uotan and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">YOU</b>, the reader of the actual comic). This fourth-wall addressing of the reader is a familiar Morrison trope whose most prominent antecedent was the cover of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash</i> #163, where the Flash tells the reader, “Stop! Don’t pass up this issue! My life depends on it!” (Fourth wall narration was, incidentally, used by Gardner Fox as far back as 1940.) Morrison has also referenced that cover’s wording in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Final Crisis</i> #2, the issue in which he brought Barry Allen back to life.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The “haunted” comic book that begins this story is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ultraa Comics</i>, the final one-shot issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity </i>which will be published in 2015. It concerns Ultraa, the lone superhero of Earth-33, which is the real world which we live in, also known as Earth Prime. Ultraa was introduced in a 1978 issue of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Justice League of America</i>, and Morrison obviously intends to use Ultraa to bridge the gap between superhero comics and our real world, something previously developed by the 1978 story of Ultraa and Kurt Busiek’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman: Secret Identity</i>.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">At this point, Nix Uotan changes to his Monitor identity and begins a voyage through the Multiverse on the Ultima Thule, an interdimensional craft introduced in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman Beyond</i>, and in short order, he finds a demonic infestation that seems right out of the works of Neil Gaiman destroying a Marvel-esque world of superheroes on Earth-7. This destruction, however, was merely bait to attract Uotan and fill him with despair, killing his interest in comics. Interestingly, the demons call themselves The Gentry, perhaps suggesting that “good people” too upright to read comic books are the metaphorical problem in this story.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And so, the Thunderer, an Aboriginal Australian version of Marvel’s Thor, is sent off to collect a team of superheroes from all the worlds of the Multiverse to defeat this threat. The rest of the issue is spent gathering a virtual Justice League from the Multiverse, something we’ve seen before in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Superman Beyond</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Final Crisis</i>, and, befitting the appearance of Harbinger, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Crisis on Infinite Earths</i>. This interdimensional team will, we can be sure, lead the attack against the demonic threat, and introduce us to their worlds along the way.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Given the most screentime is the black (African-American; in truth, Vathlo-Kryptonian) Superman, Cal Ellis, previously used by Morrison in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Final Crisis</i> #7 and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action</i> #9. Ellis leads the all-black superheroes of Earth-23 (perhaps not incidentally, Michael Jordan’s number). But only Ellis, pursuing the origin of a mysterious robot attacker, is selected for the interdimensional team, which also has Captain Carrot. Captain Carrot remembers meeting Ellis (in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">FC</i> #7), but Ellis doesn’t remember meeting him, a conflict which will seemingly be resolved later. Other members of the team are Dino-Cop of Earth-42, an Aqua-Woman from Earth-11, and a speedster named Red Racer from Earth-36, whose Superman was vanquished in a battle with Superdoom, the Superman-Doomsday pastiche from Morrison’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action Comics</i>. Notable in their absence are the characters of Earth-0, the main DC Universe. We learn that the characters of various Earths often appear in the comic books of other Earths, a concept that goes back to the introduction of Barry Allen, a fan of Jay Garrick’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flash Comics,</i> in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Showcase</i> #4. We also learn of Valla-Hal, a Monitor Watchstation number <o:p></o:p><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 19px;">∞, </span>with the implication that these characters are the equivalent of gods.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This task force, however, ends up on Earth-8, not Earth-7, where they find a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">different</i> set of Marvel-like characters unknown to the Thunderer. Here, a Doctor Doom stand-in named Lord Havok is consumed during contact with the demonic forces. 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QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal">Moving forward, Morrison has many challenges to face. His knack for wide-scale invention of new characters and new worlds is well established, and he’s surely up to that challenge. He will also need to do justice to the magnificent works of his predecessors as he places them, in rather summary fashion, into a larger narrative structure. Perhaps the greatest challenge that he is taking on is the goal of showing that comics are essential, that they are embattled, and using his story to help lead them to become something better. Morrison portrayed his Superdoom character in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Action</i> as “a brand” with “maximum cross-spectrum, wide-platform appeal, a violent, troubled, faceless anti-hero... a global marketing icon.” Is DC launching a major event that criticizes their own products and cross-licensing? Will <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Multiversity</i> be a voice of protest against other works? It’s curious to see what statement Morrison is trying to make and what result it might have.<o:p></o:p></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-53131561635579505662014-08-03T12:18:00.000-07:002015-07-09T09:23:55.264-07:00Twin Peaks: The Missing Pieces<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TwNtVYaoB2A/U96KywNnCUI/AAAAAAAAAn0/kCJ9DYfQm9o/s1600/10883837-1400599003-899644.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TwNtVYaoB2A/U96KywNnCUI/AAAAAAAAAn0/kCJ9DYfQm9o/s1600/10883837-1400599003-899644.jpg" height="200" width="183" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">The 23-year interval between 1991's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Twin Peaks </i>series finale and the 2014 release of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fire Walk With Me: The Missing Pieces</i>set, probably, several records for requiring an audience to wait for the plot of a TV show to advance. But then the timing of the series was always subject to uncertainty. After the ABC network forced the show's creators to solve its central mystery ("Who killed Laura Palmer?") in the second season, ratings plummeted and the show began a death spiral that nearly killed it off before the artful, cliffhanger finale that ended its run on broadcast TV. That was followed the next year by a cinematic relase, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fire Walk With Me</i>, primarily a prequel with significant time-jumping in the narration, which padded the backstory of the series but left its mysterious plots relatively untouched. The show itself made reference to a distant future, labeled "25 years later" and certain occurrences timed to conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn (which take place every 20 years), so there's something timely about a return to the series after 23 years with the release of archival material.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The show's success stemmed from one compelling general observation: That American life has a dark side that lurks in the woods, that lurks at night, where vices become secrets and secrets can become deadly. The central figure of this passion play was Laura Palmer. Outwardly, she was a small town's beautiful prom queen who volunteered to help the needy. Unknown to most, she was also a drug-addicted prostitute juggling eight or more sexual relationships and scars from a lifetime of abuse.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Twin Peaks</i> gave this darkness a terrible reality beyond that of mere human urges. The show and its prequel portrayed a spirit world whose nature was gradually revealed to contain a demon, BOB, who committed rapes and murders on Earth, then fed on the emotions of fear and pain that his crimes caused. Possessing Laura's father, BOB was the real killer of Teresa Banks, Laura Palmer, and Maddy Ferguson, and in the show's final moments was shown to have possessed the show's hero, Agent Cooper, while Cooper's girlfriend Annie lay injured, perhaps dead.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And so the show was laid to rest until now. Lynch filmed about five hours of footage for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fire Walk With Me</i>, but less than half of it made the 1992 release, leaving fans wondering what was left out and whether they would learn more about the mysteries that were left hanging. The 2014 release, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Missing Pieces</i>, is 91 minutes long, revealing much of the unused footage with a small amount of footage identical to the theatrical release, which allows certain scenes to play out in more complete fashion. It's not clear that that was necessary. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Missing Pieces</i> is not in any way a standalone film. It consists of shots and scenes that might have been inserted into a long, four-hour, cut of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fire Walk With Me</i>, but on their own do not convey the central events of the story.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Missing Pieces</i> is generally structured as follows: 84 minutes of moments from the week before Laura Palmer was killed, then less than 6 minutes of events that take place right after the end of the TV show, therefore extending the narrative just a bit into new territory.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Almost all of the first 84 minutes shows major characters and minor ones going about their lives in fairly ordinary ways. These scenes are entertaining and well-filmed, but just a few of those scenes pertain to the interaction between the spirit world and Laura Palmer or Agent Cooper, and that is limited to three short scenes which are re-cuts of scenes that were already in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fire Walk With Me</i>.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It should be noted here that the release of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Missing Pieces</i> includes essentially nothing that was not leaked to the Internet in the Nineties in the form of the <a href="http://www.lynchnet.com/fwwm/fwwmscript.html"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">FWWM</i> shooting script</a>, which can still be found online. About 90% of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Missing Pieces</i>, including all of the 6 minutes that follow the television finale, were in the shooting script. There is, therefore, exceedingly little in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MP</i> which was not already known to the most devoted researchers of the series. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MP</i>adds just a few short lines by spirit world characters that were not in the shooting script. Meanwhile, the shooting script adds several lines that were not heard in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">FWWM</i> or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MP</i>, so the shooting script is the most complete of the three.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">What is added? <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">FWWM</i>has a scene in which Agent Jeffries, who disappeared in 1987, mysteriously appears in the Philadelphia FBI office in 1989, narrates something he witnessed while visiting the spirit world (it is referred to as being over a convenience store), and then disappears. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MP</i> adds to this that Jeffries disappears from a hotel in Buenos Aires, teleports to Philadelphia, and after giving his story, teleports back to Buenos Aires, terrifying two people who witness his reappearance. It is possible that time travel was also involved, because Jeffries is surprised by the calendar he sees in Philadelphia. It is unclear why Jeffries does not try to report to FBI Headquarters from Buenos Aires in a more conventional way. Everything that was added to this scene by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MP </i>was already contained in the shooting script.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The shooting script and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MP</i>also add a substantial amount of dialogue spoken by the spirit-like characters in the "convenience store." This scene is narrated by Agent Jeffries to the other FBI personnel, but we see it on camera. This scene probably a significant number of cryptic clues about the spirit world, but all three versions of the material have different dialogue, somewhat overlapping with the other versions. Below, I offer a guide to all of the dialogue in the three versions of the convenience store scene. The codes S, F, and M indicate which of the three versions – the shooting script, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">FWWM</i>, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MP </i>– contain each line. Several characters are involved, but who says which line changes in some cases from version to version.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Monaco;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>M: The chrome reflects our image.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Monaco;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>M: Electricity.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;">S M</span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;">: We have descended from pure air.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;">S M</span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;">: Going up and down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Intercourse between the two worlds.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>M</span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;">: Animal life.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>FM</span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;">: Garmonbozia.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;">S<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;">: Light of new discoveries.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;">S<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;">: Why not be composed of materials and combinations of atoms?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;">S<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;">: This is no accident.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;">SFM</span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;">: This is a formica table.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Green is its color.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;">S<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;">: Our world.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;">S<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;">: With chrome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Any everything will proceed cyclically. Boneless.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;">S<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;">: Yes, find the middle place.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;">S M</span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;">: I HAVE THE FURY OF MY OWN MOMENTUM.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;">SFM</span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;">: Fell a victim.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>FM</span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;">: With this ring, I thee wed.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>F</span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;"> : Electricity.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;">S M</span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;">: Fire Walk With Me...<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Monaco;">S<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></b><span style="font-family: Monaco;">: Fire Walk With Me.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This cryptic dialogue seems to focus on one central message: That the characters from this spirit world (BOB, Mike, the Man From Another Place, Mrs. Tremond and her grandson, and the woodsmen) can visit the material world and interact with it, and BOB's crimes serve a purpose for them, obtaining an abstract kind of food (shown as creamed corn) they call garmonbozia. This idea was already clear to fans simply from watching <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Twin Peaks</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">FWWM</i>.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The other moment that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MP</i>adds consists of a conversation between The Man From Another Place and Agent Cooper that takes place in the red room seen in Laura's dream. The one line in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MP</i> and the shooting script that was not in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">FWWM</i> is:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Monaco;">Man From Another Place: Is it future? Or is it past?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This reinforces the idea, abundantly demonstrated elsewhere in the show and movie, that time in the spirit world is not linear like time in the real world.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">All told, the dialogue added to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">FFWM</i> by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MP</i>'s first 84 minutes is pretty thin stuff, and there is almost nothing in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MP</i> that was not in the shooting script. Then, in the final six minutes, we see scenes that were already recorded, rather faithfully, in the shooting script. In these two scenes, we learn that Annie survived her experience in the Black Lodge, and gives a warning that the good Dale is still in the lodge. Then a nurse steals from Annie's finger the cursed ring that previously led to the deaths of Teresa Banks and Laura Palmer and disappearance of Agent Desmond. (It should be noted that the theft of a ring by a nurse brings a curse down upon her in the classic 1963 horror film, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Black Sabbath</i>, so this crime by Annie's nurse may prove to be extremely unwise.) Finally, in a bathroom in the Great Northern Lodge, Agent Cooper, under the control of BOB, follows the smashing of his head into a mirror (as seen in the TV finale) by lying on the floor and acting very oddly when Harry and Doc Hayward break in to assist him, saying that he found his head injury funny and expressing undue concern that he didn't get to brush his teeth.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Fans who had not read the shooting script learn this: That Annie is still alive, and BOB's control of Cooper may be full of bizarre giveaways that could eventually lead to others detecting the problem, but we already knew that Major Briggs had been told explicitly that Dale is in the Black Lodge. Fans who had read the shooting script learned essentially nothing with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Missing Pieces</i>, although the cinematography is excellent, and there is an amusing and educational scene between Josie, Pete Martell, and an unsatisfied customer at the sawmill.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">All told, we know at the end of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MP</i> just what we already knew: There is a spirit world that sends dark forces into the area of Twin Peaks. Annie is alive. A subsequent effort, led by Major Briggs, to liberate Agent Cooper from the Black Lodge may or may not succeed. And there it ends, with no further elaboration. Correspondence recorded online between <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Twin Peaks</i>writer Harley Peyton and a fan indicate that the writing process on the show was to create cliffhangers, then figure out later how to handle them, and so there was no overarching plan beyond this point. So, it must be concluded, there simply is no future for Agent Cooper or BOB or the world of Twin Peaks. Agent Cooper will never escape from limbo and neither will the rest of the show. The spirit of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Twin Peaks</i>, however, has lived long past its swift demise. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It may be argued that David Lynch's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Twin Peaks</i> gave birth to Internet discussion of cult TV shows; in the early Nineties, before the World Wide Web, a forum on Usenet kept the fans talking in the months and years after the last episode had aired. The show was profound and bizarre in a way few shows before it had ever approached, and its influence on everything that came after is inestimable. No <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Twin Peaks</i>, no <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">X-Files</i>. No <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">X-Files</i>, no <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Breaking Bad</i>. The face of modern dramatic television was shaped in large portion by Lynch's brief foray from the cinema to the small screen. The show itself is gone, but its spirit lives on, which is much what the show told us about temptation and many of its characters, both evil and good. </div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4323690224857857802.post-19352379143417816882014-07-27T11:24:00.000-07:002015-07-09T09:23:55.299-07:00Retro Review: Watchmen<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zA7e7kavRV4/U9VD2fEjwLI/AAAAAAAAAnk/Q-uwA0VIppk/s1600/aaa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zA7e7kavRV4/U9VD2fEjwLI/AAAAAAAAAnk/Q-uwA0VIppk/s1600/aaa.jpg" height="103" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">If a single work were to be selected to illustrate the merits of illustrated superhero fiction as a medium that has yielded great art, Alan Moore's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i> is arguably the best choice. Published by DC, the story features original characters adapted from the Charlton Comics roster purchased by DC in 1983, although the themes and style completely overwhelm the particulars or history of the characters.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Moore was, by his own account, impressed by the direction of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2014/07/retro-review-dark-knight-returns.html">The Dark Knight Returns</a></i> in providing a finale for a world of superheroes. Other stories Moore wrote for DC in this era ended other heroes and worlds: The death of Abin Sur portrayed as a brilliantly conceived murder, Krypton portrayed as a society in decay rather than a futuristic paradise, Mr. Mxyzptlk as a homicidal sorceror, Superman's career ending with the hero voicing Moore's criticism of the character as a concept. His planned, but never unpublished, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Twilight of the Superheroes</i> would have shown an end to DC's heroes as a battle between ruling houses, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Game of Thrones</i> style, some decades hence. In all of these stories, Moore did not merely end the lives or careers of the heroes, but he first demolishes the qualities that made then children's favorites. Superman called himself "over-rated and too wrapped up in himself" on the final page of Moore's <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow?</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i> adopts this approach with a set of superheroes in some other world, breaking down their heroic qualities before leading to a finale in which each of them is dead or permanently taken off the stage. This treatment was, if not fully original, still quite unlike what readers were accustomed to in 1986, and many scenes come to the reader as a revelation – surprising, shocking, and often suggesting a higher truth, more realistic than the nice and neat comics of old.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>, like many Moore works, and unlike almost all superhero comics that came before it, adopts the stylistic devices of good literature to the extent that many highly-regarded novels do. He refers to political, cultural, and scientific realities of the real world. He finds fine moments for one part of his story to refer to another. While intersplicing two narratives, he often creates correspondences that work in two ways at once, often one of them grim. For example, as someone pushing an elevator button says "Ground floor comin' up," we see Edward Blake begin a deadly fall to the ground. A page later, as Blake's fall continues in slow motion, an unrelated line of dialogue contains the phrase "drop out of sight." The juxtaposition of darkly ironic double meanings with mundane exposition is illustrative of Moore's entire approach: Everything light has a darker side.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The central and most wonderful example of this is an extended metaphor that is so deep and compelling that any novelist could envy it: The notion of a broken watch, which functions on several levels at once:<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">• There is a literal broken watch, which the father of Jon Osterman was about to repair when he decided that his occupation had been made obsolete by nuclear science.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">• There is a world that is philosophically deterministic, Newton's clockwork universe, which was destroyed by Einstein's work.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">• There is the conventional perception of sequential time, which is broken by Dr. Manhattan's unusual perception of time out of sequence.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">• There is a standard linear narration in comic books which is broken by Moore's highly nonlinear narration.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">• A second watch, in Jon Osterman's hand when he is accidentally caught in an atomic test chamber, is broken and left to record the same instant forever after.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">• There is the world of the Watchmen superheroes, brought to a definitive end by the events Moore depicts.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">• There is the world of conventional superhero comics, exemplary people living in cyclical patterns, facing new villains each month without real consequence, broken by Moore's work which shows them rise, prove to be corrupted, and fall over five decades.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">On each of these levels, there is a symbol of time, a "watch," which is broken, literally or figuratively. In word and in image, Moore repeatedly relates these different "broken watches" to one another. It's just the type of sophistication that students are asked to notice and record in graded essays, and in part, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i> serves to elevate the medium from light entertainment to an art form.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Central to all of these broken watches are the Watchmen themselves. Some of their behavior, particularly in having complicated sex lives, is simply more adult than comics previously portrayed. But we also see the superheroes fail, morally and otherwise. One hero goofs up and is shot. Others grow old and fat. Another is a delusional sadist who avidly kills in the line of duty. Worse still, another rapes and kills for his own selfish purposes. The only one with true superpowers is rendered almost completely inhuman and devoid of compassion. The remaining hero adopts, from the perspective of traditional superhero comics, the vanity and Machiavellian means of a villain, and may have succeeded in killing millions as a means to an end only to fail in his purpose anyway.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dark Knight Returns</i>, Watchmen uses the real threat of nuclear war as a compelling backdrop for a superhero story. Like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">DKR</i>, the awesome superhero on the American side tips the balance of power in NATO's favor, but not enough to neutralize the Soviet threat. Both stories show Republican presidents remaining in power decades beyond what current term limits allow. And both stories describe a Cold War threat which subsided in the real world a few years after the stories were published, making the plot a bit less compelling for later readers than for those who read them in the Eighties.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">It's art, and it's powerful. It's compelling, eminently re-readable, and was eventually adapted into a successful and critically-acclaimed film. Compare it to any other work in comics, and in at least one way if not many (Dave Gibbons' art, extremely good if not revolutionary, among them) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i>is a superior work.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">And yet: As in all of those Eighties stories in which Moore destroys a superhero, their values, or their world, we see no indication that Moore actually likes superheroes. He may, in fact, hate them. And while that's a respectable opinion as a matter of taste (Perhaps Andrew Lloyd Webber hates superheroes? Perhaps William Shakespeare would have?) it makes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i> into a bitter paradox, a work that is perhaps the best of its genre, whose primary message is that its genre is inherently flawed and not worth reading. Moore himself quit the genre, before he was able to publish his intriguing plans to kill off the DC Universe, in certainly fine and artistic fashion, as he did the world of the Watchmen. I have read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i> many times, and I will read it many more, but the experience is somewhat spoiled by the bitterness Moore brings to the topic. One wonders why he would bother creating a work in a genre he so dislikes, and that's obviously a conclusion he soon thereafter reached.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">To similar effect, one wonders whom he is trying to persuade, and of what. We see that superheroes would probably not interact well with the society of the real world, but whoever thought that they would? We see that superheroes bestowed with real adult complexity make poor characters for childrens' stories, but whoever thought otherwise? Seen as a polemic, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i> is an argument against several viewpoints that nobody ever held. 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<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/> <w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Helvetica; mso-fareast-language:JA;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Watchmen</i> changed comics, and is certainly a true work of art. In my view, its greatest legacy is to have paved the way to other works of considerable complexity (more so than the comics of the Seventies, if not matching that of Moore) by writers who are actually fond of superheroes and let that love show in their work.<o:p></o:p></div>Avthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05802632373289828408noreply@blogger.com0