Batman vs Terminator

  I can't help but think that both Batman: Battle For the Cowl and Terminator: Salvation, aside from sharing annoying colons, are similarly misconceived. Both projects are meant as opening acts to something bigger, which is frustrating. Neither one was designed to tell its own story. With a comic series that was intended as a place-holder until the new creative team could get a few issues under their belt, I can understand Battle for the Cowl to a certain, crass degree. I can even understand how the new Terminator movie wants to cover the potentially rich ground of a character who struggles with his faith and the seeming impossibility of that faith being rewarded. Both were hampered by execution that didn't seem to aspire to much beyond scenes we'd seen before in either franchise and one-note emotional intensity that lacked grounding in the themes the stories teased. Both projects simply restated the conclusion that everybody already knew was coming. Both protagonists are trying to understand their legacies and their roles in narratives that have been written for them. And that's where they both let me down the most.

   (I won't even complain that the teaser [right] promised to deliver a Two-Face Batman, Hush dressed up as Bruce Wayne, and Batwoman.)

   There is a lot of fun to be had with playing with audience expectation, thematic exploration of free will vs destiny, and the legacies that parents leave for their children - the various ways they screw them up and empower them. I don't expect Terminator movies, or most Batman comics, to be deep philosophical explorations of complex themes, but I expect that both stories will not justify their existence by simply restating a foregone conclusion. When your entire project would be better treated as a line of expository dialogue in the follow-up that tells the real story, you should probably reconsider the story you're telling.

Really?

   I'm not in any way qualified to evaluate this decision, but as an armchair comics publisher (like everyone who reads superhero comics, I think I could do it better and am certainly wrong) I can't help but wonder how many issues a Magog series will last.

   I'm willing to bet money (Canadian, but still) that it will not make it to twelve. Who, and I want names, has been clamoring for a series about this guy?

Battle for the Cowl

   I'm going to do the most unfair thing possible to a story: I'm going to criticize Batman: Battle for the Cowl for what it isn't. I'm not going to say much about the actual comic because of the advice my parents gave me regarding the options of saying something nice or saying nothing at all.

   We've seen a gang war before (War Games). We've seen "Gotham In Chaos!" before (War Games, Contagion, No Man's Land, and Knightfall, to name a few). We've seen Dick Grayson become Batman before (Knightfall, again). We've seen the inmates at Arkham Asylum set loose all at once before (Knightfall ... starting to see a trend). Everything about Battle for the Cowl feels insubstantial and reheated. Like leftover french fries.

   What we haven't seen much of lately, outside Morrison's uneven run on Batman, is any questioning about Batman's co-dependent relationship with Gotham. It's probably because I've been re-reading Gotham Central, a series that remains pretty much unmatched in its depiction of Gotham, but Battle for the Cowl felt to me as if it should have begun with a very different premise. What if Gotham was great without Batman? What if it was suddenly free of something and what if crime actually dropped? You can still throw in a ton of actions scenes as the various proteges debate the legacy of Batman and hunt down his rogues gallery. Hell, they probably couldn't be less artificial and disjointed than what we got (oops! sorry, couldn't help it).

   I guess I'm just saying that when a series that has only one tiny goal to accomplish - get Dick Grayson to change costumes - a goal that everyone sees coming, it would be nice to see it handled with less lethargy and rote plotting. It would be nice to see something more than a bad dance remix of the late 1990s/early 2000s.

The Last Blacksmiths

   I was saddened reading about a DC panel at the Bristol Comic-Con. The summary, over at CBR, reported the following: 

DiDio reiterated that DC’s business was publishing periodical comic books. Comic books are associated with an experience of holding and reading the physical issue, which cannot be replicated in a digital form, he said. Also, comic books are tied to the “collector gene.” Citing Marvel’s foray into digital comics, DiDio said, “To just dump 5,000 books online seems ridiculous. If everything is on demand, nothing is in demand, and if you have 5,000 things to choose from, you'll end up going to the same one thing you always did.”

DiDio also expressed concern with the difficulties in monetizing a digital distribution system, explaining that calculating royalties for creators would be a major headache.

   That's the reason to avoid digital distribution? Because it's inconvenient? His biggest competitor has been spending tens of thousands of dollars on this, because they are convinced that it will make them even more money, and DC can't be bothered because it's not easy? I'm, quite frankly, astounded. 

   Comics, TV shows, movies, and music are being torrented and downloaded at an increasing rate. I am quite certain that Batman: Battle for the Cowl #3 is being downloaded as I type this. Digital comics are already a thing; creators just aren't getting  paid. I can get that a lot of people are paper fetishists (I'm one myself) and prefer to read comics and books as published in a tangible, inky form. But I'm not everybody. Lots of people like to read on Kindles or even to read last week's issue of Superman on their computer screens. Comics aren't intrinsically a paper product any more than books are: until now, that's just been the best way to distribute them. Sure, they're art, but they're also, usually, commercial products intended to be sold for a profit.

   I can't help but think of Art Spiegleman's remark that he wasn't sure if comics artists are "the vanguard of another culture or if we're the last blacksmiths." I take Spiegelman's point as saying that comics are a particular medium: they are very labour-intensive to produce and demand specific reading strategies that are often at odds with conventional entertainment media. He worries that, instead of being a challenging new way to tell stories and create art, comics are just a very difficult way of being nostalgic.

   For a guy trying to sell funny-books, DiDio seems pretty determined to shrink his audience. If comics are actually valued for their content, then the "wait-for-trade" readers that DiDio so loathes are no different than the Wednesday shoppers. The means of distribution - pamphlet, trade paperback, digital iComic - doesn't matter. He seems, to my eyes, to be relishing the role as the last blacksmith. If comics are, as DiDio claims, primarily an outlet for collecting, then they're no different then stamps or coins. They are a product whose value is completely unrelated to its content. Rarity is the only thing that creates demand for collector's items. That's even worse than what Spiegleman was suggesting. In his lamentation, at least the creators are invested in a craft. 

   Really, it boggles my mind. It's pretty rare to see a businessman arguing that he won't sell a product because he can't figure out how. No one, apparently, is less enamoured with the DCU than its Executive Editor.

Wanna Start a Fight?

   On his awesome blog two days ago, Tom Brevoort made note of something he read on the Internet:

Read a piece over the weekend in which, in speaking about a particular project that had recently been completed to some acclaim, an editorial personality complimented the sales, marketing and production teams, as well as himself and his fellow editors, on the success of the series. One group, however, was missing from his litany of back-patting:

 

The creators.

He makes a good point, and doesn't dwell on the disagreement or on the source of the information. He's airing a professional difference of opinion, and trying to make a point without being overly snide. But, come on. I also read Dan DiDio's 20 Answers and 1 Question over at Newsarama, where just three days previously, DiDio made the following statement: 

The concept that I am not proud of 52 is ridiculous. Anybody here who knows me knows that the minute issue #52 of 52 hit my hands was one of my proudest moments at DC Comics. It's something that I was involved in from the very inception of the project, and made sure that everything worked perfectly in order to achieve that. It was a project and process that we all worked for. It was the editors, the sales department, the marketing department, the production department. Every single person who worked on 52 is intensely proud of their work on that production. When we started it, we were not sure if we were going to be able to achieve our goals, and we exceeded them.  So again, any statement being said about me not being proud of 52 is erroneous.

We know who you're writing about Brevoort! You can't fool us by casually obscuring the object of your wrath!

In context, DiDio's comments are referring to Mark Waid's interview over at Ain't It Cool News and Waid's point about how DiDio felt about 52. Waid points out the DiDio was, perhaps, not the biggest fan of the project:

The biggest challenge was actually, wisely, kept from us by Steve. EIC Dan Didio, who first championed the concept, hated what we were doing. H-A-T-E-D 52. Would storm up and down the halls telling everyone how much he hated it. And Steve, God bless him, kept us out of the loop on that particular drama. Siglain, having less seniority, was less able to do so, and there's one issue of 52 near the end that was written almost totally by Dan and Keith Giffen because none of the writers could plot it to Dan's satisfaction. Which was and is his prerogative as EIC, but man, there's little more demoralizing than taking the ball down to the one-yard line and then being benched by the guy who kept referring to COUNTDOWN as "52 done right."

 

   Everyone here is, of course, espousing his own particular point of view and no one is calling anyone else a liar or an idiot. Well, Waid gets pretty close. But what's most interesting is to note the different emphasis each professional editor makes. Brevoort takes the piss out of DiDio a bit, but makes a pretty convincing argument that the editor isn't much of anything without creators. Point well made, and point well taken. Waid, similarly, remarks how Steve [Wacker] kept the already-difficult creative process of 52 from being even more of a hassle by shielding the "brain-trust" from the wrath of the Executive Editor.

   DiDio, on the other hand, is trying to play spin doctor. We see DiDio and Joe Quesada do this every week, and it's pretty great of them to make the time. Well, Quesada just quit his weekly column on MySpace, but he has been doing it on and off for years now and will probably be back sooner or later. I'm not trying to attack DiDio here, or at least not trying to, but Brevoort makes a pretty good point. DiDio is so concerned with ass-covering that he misses the point that I infer Waid was making: as a company, DC is a bit heavy-handed. 

   Yes, Marvel has plastered a Dark Reign banner on everything and everyone there seems constantly a-twitter about the editorial retreats that they go on all the time. But the one impression I was left with after reading DiDio's interview was this particular statement of his: 

So when you say "editorial mandate," please understand that whatever book you hold in your hand, at the end of the day, is there because of an editorial mandate to create that book. End of story.

   Again, I get his point. Editors do more than shuttle paper around the office. But, it's NOT the end of the story. The editor, in fact, is NOT TELLING THE STORY. I think that I'm more persuaded by Brevoort's point that, yes, editors do more than shuttle paper around but the most important part is to be finding the balance between dramaturge, babysitter, advocate, and taskmaster. You can tell this because of my impartial use of capital letters for emphasis. Maybe this is because DiDio fancies himself a bit of a writer (remember how, earlier, I said I didn't want to attack him? Well, here I do: his piece in the DC Holiday Special was the worst thing I 

have read in a long time, and I collected X-Force when Jeph Loeb tried to explain Shatterstar's origin). Or maybe it's because he feels constantly maligned. Regardless, I think my biggest problem with DC these days can be encapsulated in DiDio's interview. I don't care if everything DC has published in the last 7 years has all been one glorious mosaic, all planned from the very beginning and all directed toward geeky bliss. I don't care if everything fits together, if it's all one grand universe in which reading each comic they publish will enrich the experience of every other.

   I just want DC to publish better comics. If Countdown and Trinity, or even the DiDio-edited Teen Titans, are comics where the editors are more important than the creators, maybe I'd rather DiDio did just organize his pencil drawer.

So I Accidentally Watched Smallville Again...

   I have a weakness for Smallville. I know that the show isn't particularly "good" (by that I mean that it is all over the place thematically and performance-wise; that the dialogue usually seems simultaneously overly precious and trite; and that the plot twists and character motivations don't often make much sense). But I still watch it. I find Tom Welling's performance fun, even though his line readings sometimes sound like he's phonetically repeating words in a language that he doesn't understand. Allison Mack is quite affecting, especially when she doesn't have to heroically power through embarrassing Whedon-esque verbal tics. I also really liked how, this past season, they made the Clark/Lex homoeroticism blatant by making Lex a woman and having her flirt with Clark mercilessly (yeah, I know, she wasn't literally Lex Luther...but come on). I thought that Crashdown from Battlstar Galactica was good as Doomsday, and Erica Durance is probably the most appealing Lois I've seen in live action (though that is damning with faint praise). I know that the show is a mess, but I like Superman and I like the cast, and I like what the show is trying to do.

   And what I think the show is trying to do isn't the Portrait of the Superhero as a Young Man. I think that Smallville is a really long reflection on how to tell a Superman story. 

   The whole show seems to be building to a particular, and iconic, final shot: Welling tearing open his dress shirt in a phone booth revealing the red and yellow 'S' on blue tights. And they've made it pretty clear that he's not going to be Superman until the very end. Everything before the end, as Jacob said on Lost a couple nights ago, is progress. 

   Smallville is one of those shows that really tries to push the whole "it's not the destination, it's the journey" thing. As much as we all want to see that final shot, is it alone really worth nine or ten seasons of TV, maybe 200 episodes? If you're just watching Smallville for the money shot, you're wasting your time. And the writers seem are almost sarcastic about it: all the characters speak about destiny with such single-mindedness that it's hard to ignore. Everything was destiny this season. Clark is supposed to kill Chloe/Brainiac, or else. Why? It's destiny. Whoops, Clark was actually supposed to save Chloe from Brainiac. Except by doing that he saved Doomsday, which means that he has to kill Doomsday...unless saving Doomsday is his destiny...unless it isn't and humanity is a bunch of overly-emotional weaklings just waiting for their turn on Oprah. The season ends all this muddled prognostication with Clark deciding that he needs to let go of his human emotions and be the Red/Blue Blur all the time (couldn't he at least be "the Blur"? I don't think any superhero has had a worse alias. Even the Badger, or the Spectacular Spider-Ham. It's either karma because, eventually, he gets the best superhero name ever or it's the secret ID equivalent of working in the mailroom).

   But, come on. This is just a dodge so that the show can keep going. The viewers know that. Even I know it, and I only accidentally tune in every week. We don't have to worry about destiny, because we already know what the outcome is but the show can't give us the mild-mannered reporter/tights-wearing superhero yet, so they need to provide him with a motivation delay that transformation. I see these delay tactics not simply as an exercise to prolong the CW's cash cow (though that is, certainly, a big reason), but to experiment with alternate permutations of the Clark/Superman character. Part of me, the mean part, likens it to all the bad ideas that get thrown out while writing of something good...or all three Star Wars prequels. You know, the crap that wasn't good enough to make it into the real story but that the writer(s) needed to know in order to tell the good stuff. The more reflective part thinks otherwise.

   The writers in Smallville are muddling through, in their own particular way, the process of figuring out who Superman is and what makes him great. All the detours and twists and random encounters and plot contrivances are trying to explore a different facet of what makes Superman. Every writer has to do that in order to tell a story. They're trying to find what works, find what motivations make sense. For all its clumsiness, with Clark abandoning his civilian identity to be the Blur (I can't call him that other thing...I just can't), the writers are trying to lead into a story about why he needs to be Clark. Sure, it will probably make little emotional or logical sense, but, seriously, most Superman stories don't either. Superman is so difficult to keep writing stories about because he's done so much, he's fought Lex Luther so many times, he's tricked Lois and Lana and Jimmy and all the rest so many times that it's hard

 to come up with something new. It is really hard to tell a Superman story. On a basic level, the fun is the moral rectitude, the cool costume, the great powers, the ridiculous contortions needed to re-establish the status-quo, the triangle between Clark Kent and Kal-El and Superman. These things, the things Morrison highlights so efficiently in the first page of All-Star Superman #1 [left], are the necessary ingredients in a good Superman story, but the combination is the tricky part. Smallville isn't "good," and it only rarely shows even a hint of ambition, but that's OK with me. Watching Smallville is like listening to friends trying to explain the appeal of Timothy Dalton as James Bond, or the merits of Dollhouse (and good luck with that one): it's a rambling, usually incoherent expression of fandom and love for a make-believe character or universe. And that's fine with me.

   Of course, I would love to see Tom Welling play a scene where he gets drunk, splits into two different people, who fight, and then saves Richard Pryor from ski-jumping off a sky-scraper. What do I know? 

   

Bizzaro World

   What kind of world am I living in? Star Trek is the new trendy franchise and Star Wars has had three (and a half) questionable movies in a row and the diminishing returns of increasingly less popular television series.   

   If the above scenario makes you cringe, don't worry. Maybe someday, some young hotshot TV and movie director will take a look at Star Wars and decide that, even though he's not a fan, there's something in this franchise worth rebooting.

Get Off My Lawn!

   I just realized that I'm a grumpy old man: I miss a DC that could encompass both G'Nort and Grant Morrison's Doom Patrol, Arkham Asylum and Justice League Antarctica. Everything's just a little too resolutely serious right now. One of the consequences of having your comics universe all paying the same piper, I guess . . . especially when that piper is an imminent cosmic cross-over about super-powered zombies. Since the self-identified "lighter" books, like the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle series, get cancelled, I'm probably in the minority here. But I do miss Batman going on adventures with the Giffen/DeMatteis League and then having his "darker" stories over in his own series. Given the creative direction of both Marvel and DC, it seems as if unified versions of the characters are of the utmost importance to each company, so my preferred kind of contextual malleability is off-limits. As a company's default status, it's a little too serious for me, limited, and lacking self-awareness and acknowledgment of the ridiculousness of super-heroes. The fact that G'Nort's status in the last Green Lantern Secret Files, from all that Sinestro War stuff, was "presumed dead" it seems as if the poor guy's a casualty of all this seriousness. It's too bad we need Grant Morrison doing multiverse stories in order to get something different out of DC.