Well, Infinite Crisis #7 came out this week.
It wasn’t very good.
I’m hoping that PrettyFavorite Jim Roeg will bust out some postmodern jujitsu to reveal that in fact this is the greatest thing ever instead of the worst, but I fear that such an achievement may be beyond even his formidable po-martial arts skillz. Evil Robby Reed has explained the problems with the series and expressed his (and my) frustration with DC’s bait-and-switch strategy—it’s a return to the hyper-spectacle of the multiverse! No, it’s a rehash of all the worst parts of the 80s and 90s!—in a most entertaining manner, and I’d encourage you to read his review. His most important point is that DC has apparently settled on a publishing ethic characterizable only as pomo-funhouse capitalism, in which every book is merely an advertisement for a bunch of other books that are themselves advertisements for other books.
Obviously, a certain degree of self-promotion has always been a feature of comics, given that it’s a serial medium, but if Infinite Crisis is an indication, DC has taken that feature and raised it to the level of content. You might as well read a few months’ worth of Previews and Wizard as Infinite Crisis. Hype has become detached from the object of its promotion—ostensibly, a story—and now has its own independent, self-sustaining existence. As Jim has noted, it’s true that no comic book story is ever complete—that’s one of the things that I love. But I’d add that good ones usually achieve at least a temporary and contingent coherence.
This is the logical extension of one of Geoff Johns’s storytelling deficiencies that I’ve noted in the past: he writes as though he’s playing with action figures, not with the characters those figures are based on. And so it’s no wonder that IC devolved into a kind of action-figure catalog. Buy the Planet Mogo playset! Get the variant Superboy-Prime action figure clad in the Anti-Monitor’s armor! In fact, it’s interesting to recall that this very action figure was released well before the character was so attired in the series. You couldn’t really call it a spoiler, though, because it ended up being a purely cosmetic change. It looked cool and made for a neato action figure, but that’s about it. And that’s kind of my point.
As I’ve mentioned before, one of the things that keeps me reading mainstream superhero comics after all these years is the shared-universe concept, the tremendously complex network of connections between characters and their world on scales large and small: betrayals, resurrections, romances, legacies. I loved Grant Morrison’s treatment of Cylcops in his New X-Men run so much because he didn’t assume that various strange events in Cyke’s history (let’s say, for instance, marrying a demonic clone of his ex) were perversions or distortions of some “pure” version of the character—they were the character. This is one of the reasons I thought Byrne’s Doom Patrol reboot was such a bad idea. As Gorjus’ recent ‘toon suggests, the defining feature of the DP was that it was made up of a group of maladjusted freaks who shared a very strange history. Without that context, they’re just another generic superteam. Without the resonance those years of history can provide, a monthly superhero smackdown runs the risk of becoming, well, a monthly superhero smackdown.
Take this month’s issue of The Thing (#6). It’s a relatively simple story: a crime syndicate has hired the Trapster and the Sandman to sow some havoc in the mean streets of the Thing’s old New York neighborhood, the Thing shows up to hit them in the face, and Spider-Man swings by to join in. (And it should be noted that the Thing, lunchpail joe that he is, also thinks, along with all sensible comics fandom, that Spider-Man’s new costume is stupid. Kudos to Marvel for letting writer Dan Slott poke fun at their latest pointless marketing gimmick. Not that it’s going to hurt their bottom line at all, and it gets me to spend money on The Thing instead of Spider-Man under the illusion that I’m asserting some kind of resistance to their cynical cash-grab, when in fact all the money is going to the same place, and they don’t much care where it comes from.)
Anyway, what I was going to say about The Thing was, this story could have simply been a generic, cliched superhero fight. But because of his skillful use of the opportunities afforded to any writer who farms so fertile a field as the Marvel Universe, Slott is able to add layers of depth and pathos to what might otherwise seem wafer-thin, to connect this very local—hell, downright municipal—struggle to a vast cosmic context. In this issue, we get brief flashes of the Sandman’s period as a hero and an Avenger and his subsequent lapse back into the underworld, of the undersea and other-dimensional adventures that are keeping the rest of the Fantastic Four indisposed, of that odd period when Spider-Man, the Ghost Rider, Wolverine, and the Hulk formed an ersatz FF (another story poking fun at writing comics with an eye towards selling action figures and landing on Wizard’s Hot 100), and so on. There’s also a funny gag about Lost and the relative geekiness of the Trapster and Spider-Man. And a giant teleporting alien dog. And Damage Control shows up. With Hercules. Who lost all his money after being sued in a recent issue of She-Hulk.
My point is, for all its apparent simplicity, this is a rich story, one in which every thrown punch or throwaway one-liner or, um, thrown-up mass of sand-vomit connects in myriad and intricate ways to a bigger backstory. It takes place in a world. Infinite Crisis, ultimately, takes place in a catalog.
However, proving that I never learn, I also bought Marvel’s Civil War #1. And it was actually pretty good. I can’t imagine that the series won’t end up annoying the heck out of me (Just to start with, I don’t buy that those superheroes who don’t have secret identities would so completely lack empathy with those who do). But in general, there was none of the arbitrary parceling out of opinions and positions that plagued the Illuminati lead-in. And the main thing is, this comic gave me the one thing I love more than anything else in comics: Captain America taking on his own government. And when that on-taking is rendered by Steve McNiven? Perfect. You can clearly see the sadness and resignation in Cap’s eyes when he launches into a squad of heavily armored SHIELD troopers, and the terror in the eyes of one of those troopers as Cap plows through them with what can only be described as casual intensity.
Of course, I thought Infinite Crisis was pretty good after the first issue, too.
Thanks to Gorjus’ “Bona to Vada,” now I’m going to waste a lot of time prowling eBay for Doom Patrol back issues since I can no longer wait for them to be collected in trade form. Thanks a lot, Gorj.
No, really. Thanks.
Update: For those of you who didn’t follow the whole series, the ISB has a recap. In crayon.
Douglas Wolk in Salon on the state of the superhero.
Ok, i’m gonna say this before i go any further in my reading. all big crossovers stink. they concept can seem nice, but generally the full universe of characters from DC or Marvel are idiotic to weave into a big story without a good chunk being simple add-ins. the ONE intra-company crossover i can say was OK, and i mean OK (do you think it holds up today?) is Secret Wars. that’s it. go read Crisis on Infinate Earths now. jesus, novelists would tell you its text heavy and its sole job was to clean up a mess created by the fact that DC, unlike Marvel, ties a substantial group of heroes in its mythos to a certain era (JSA/WW2) and then 20, 30, 40, 50 years later they had to explain just how that works. the kill off and mix things up and 20 years later someone gets nostalgic for ‘what was’ and we have the IC type books. hey, some can be better than others, but when it ties in other books along with the mini series, its just an attempt to get you to buy more. that’s it. otherwise, its a bad idea.
i won’t buy civil war. the title just lets me know what to avoid until its gone. if i’m wrong i’ll go to the dollar bin or get a trade paperback. and i’m pretty safe in thinking i’m not missing out on the next hypervaluable comic…which i DO still concern myself with in a way, but usually not in that sense.
[Howerver, if you have a VF or better copy of All Star Comics #58 from 1976, i may be able to take that off your hands]
…all that being said, i’ve been reading Infinity Crisis (but i’m WAY behind) and i’m trying to decide if i want to read that 52 series that DC is putting out. anyone have any thought on 52?
I’m hoping that PrettyFavorite Jim Roeg will bust out some postmodern jujitsu to reveal that in fact this is the greatest thing ever instead of the worst, but I fear that such an achievement may be beyond even his formidable po-martial arts skillz.
Me too, Prof! Me too! (Still waiting for inspiration to strike…) I loved Infinite Crisis, all of it and its tributaries, but in a pathetic and slavish way that (it’s becoming increasingly clear to me) I can’t really defend except in mainly formalist, increasingly abstract, and possibly psychoanalytical terms. I completely take your point that even in the endless serial format good stories “usually achieve at least a temporary and contingent coherence,” but for some reason, even “temporary and contingent coherence” feels like too much coherence for me these days. The comparison of Johns’s writing to a Previews catalogue is pointed to say the least, but even though I don’t completely agree (his stories bring tears to my eyes for Pete’s sake!), I secretly find the idea of “pomo-funhouse capitalism, in which every book is merely an advertisement for a bunch of other books that are themselves advertisements for other books” deeply, deeply thrilling—when done well. I’m not certain if this is a reading preference, a sign of ideological blindness, an actual pathology, or all three… No doubt, I’ll pursue this all further at some point. By the way: The Thing #6—awesome!
Mooch: I likely will get 52, especially since Morrison is a major architect of the new DCU that the series is supposed to explore. It’s the sort of thing that’s hard for me to resist—an exploration of the brightest fields and darkest corners of the DCU. I know this makes me something of a hypocrite, or at least weak-willed, given my feelings about IC, but there you have it.
Jim: I’m very much looking forward to what you have to say on the series. In your first essay on IC, you wrote, “Wolfman and Perez’s Crisis ended up projecting a fairly conservative ethical vision in its reduction of the multiverse to a single universe, represented synecdochally by the singularity of earth itself. Johns and Jiminez’s Crisis promises a restored multiverse, or perhaps something even better: a single universe that is more internally riven, contradictory, and multiple than ever before.” My fear is that both of these options have turned out to be mere carrots to keep us reading, and that what we’ve been left with is a new DCU that is, at least for the moment, less contradictory and multiple than even what we had before. (Although it’ll be interesting to see how Seven Soldiers plays into this: my favorite moments about IC#7 were seeing various of the SS in battle with the rest of the DCU’s heroes. In SS, Morrison seems to be creating that single-but-internally-riven world that you spoke of—the Shining Knight and Zatanna inhabit the same world and are part of the same grand narrative, but their worlds look nothing alike, etc.)
It’s that “when done well” that you mention that might be where you and I differ a bit; for me, that temporary, contingent coherence is a sign of doing it well. There’s never a question that something radical is going to happen next issue or the next, or may be happening right “now” in an issue of another series, that will totally destroy whatever status quo happens to be in place at the end of a given comic. But in a good-to-my-tastes comic, there’s a balance between resolution and dissolution that IC simply lacked.
I have nothing of intelligence to add here (especially not beyond the take espoused at Dial B for Blog) other than to say that I hate all modern comics. I am now swearing to only buy 1940’s era gems like Police Comics and Whiz Comics and . . .
Seriously.
“when done well”—as I typed these words, I knew they’d be a sticking point! (And ye gods, did I really say all that in the original post? Let’s just be gentlemen about it and pretend I didn’t. Yikes!) Like you, though, I was tickled by the Seven Soldiers cameos—it’ll be very interesting to see what (if anything) comes of those in the next year…
Thanks for the compliments … ass wipe.
OOH!! That Evil Robby Reed!
I bet he’s home making out with his handmade Silver Age font catalog.
I agree with you and all of the criticism I’m reading around. COIE was planned for years and, though it failed in its main mission (to establish a coherent continuity) it was almost as great as mainstream superhero comics may be. IC was planned, supposedily even more carefully, and neither helps continuity nor is a great story. Well drawn yes, entertaining at points and with some things to draw fans in (the return of Kal-L), but things like the pathetic end of Kal-L or the aftermath (How millonaire Bruce Wayne deals with the responsability of thousands of deaths
thas a real issue, not the “you murdered Max Lord” thanks to his B1 sat? He goes on a all around the world holliday!) and the poor story and editing throws it all away. I liked Infinite Crisis when it was called COIE. Even more, when it was called Zero Hour. It’s the same, just worse. They had the time and the means, and they just did it worse, surrended to the allmighty dollar. Besides, how it is that every DC comic seems written by hacks like Johns, Winick and Rucka? And I can’t stand the pics of Didio (kind of an evil Peter David) on every comic!Luckily for me, I downloaded the scans (I live in Argentina, I just bought the local editions of P.Girl “origin” and G.L rebirth, which I expect to sell soon) because IC turned out to be what I thought the first time I saw the promotional posters on a comic store- a way to cash on the original Crisis.
ps: the best, easily, was the Secret Files story written by Wolfman. He did the best he could with such scenario
ps2: The “moral dilemmas” of Wonder Woman and the other two are ludicrous. Get really real. Superheros are not going to be more human and reallistic just calling themselves by their first names.
ps3: DC have which lacked for most of the 90s: first-rate artwork. Sadly, now the writings it’s more apt for Image