Chronic Rant: Continuity Crisis!

So here it is - New Avengers is actually a pretty fun read, and it's got some good ideas, and a lot of energy, and all that good stuff. Not enough good stuff to justify prying $4 from your wallet, but I got my copy of issue # 1 from DCBS for less than a dollar. Fine.

It's the blatant pissing in the salty face of continuity that really bugs the shit out of me, though.

I know what you're going to say, and I almost agree with you. "Is he really going to get upset that Wolverine appears in too many books after all these years? It's comic books, stupid! You don't like it, go read Jane Austen novels, douche bag!"

Sure, sure. I'm really not "that guy" who's going to lose sleep over comic book chronology bending the laws of time/space. But the thing of it is, there's bending it, and there's fashioning it into a full scale replica of Bronson Pinchot and ramming it into my asshole.

Look at the cover to New Avengers # 1. The Thing does not have time to be in the Fantastic Four and the New Avengers. Power Man is supposedly spearheading the newer new Thunderbolts and the new New Avengers? One of those teams is in Colorado, and one's on the east coast....are you shitting me? Spider-Man is in fewer books than his peak, but c'mon, man. Ms. Marvel, whatever. And then there's Wolverine, the king emperor of "fuck common sense, he's everywhere at every moment." That cover just sits there and laughs at you with 600 megatons of "we know you're stupid enough to buy this shit no matter HOW little sense it makes!" And that just doesn't feel good to me.

So yeah, I can exhibit a little suspension of disbelief. But this requires you to be a goddamn idiot, and then laughs at you for buying it! Tell me that isn't the point of this quip by Wolverine on the right. Brian Bendis is actively engaging you the reader and saying "Yeah, there's no fucking way this character could possibly do all of these things in a sensible universe - aren't we hilarious!" Well, no, actually you're not.

A big reason why I'm out of patience with this nonsense is the fact that so many of these books do not sell themselves on the artistic value of the stories or characters within. The selling point is always "Everything you've ever known and trusted about X is about to blow into a gajillion smithereens and change forever!!! BOOOOOOMMMM!!!!"

It may ninja up on you a little bit, but none of that matters without continuity. Changing a thing doesn't matter without a sense of attachment to what was. You need a history to engage with it intellectually and emotionally. You need the parts of the universe to be cohesive so you can believe in it, to trust it, to care about it.

This was part of the groundbreaking success of Marvel in the 1960s. Stories used to all be one-and-dones. What happened last month had no bearing on what you reading this month. Marvel came along and Stan Lee began to intermingle characters and events a bit. If Gwen Stacy fell off a building and died, that shit was going to matter next month. And Reed Richards might pop up and help out the X-Men for an issue. That continuity bred verisimilitude - sure, the action was over-the-top, but the universe was a place with shared experiences that felt like life.

And now Marvel is become a bit of a one trick pony that does nothing but trade on the illusion that it is "shaking up" that life-like shared universe. Nothing ever really matters. It's gone in a heartbeat. Where is any vestige of the "BBBOOOOOOOMMMM!" Civil War stuff? How 'bout Secret Invasion? Spider-Man: The Other? Or his stupid costume from Tony Stark? Will we even know Franken-Castle existed three weeks after his inevitable return to "normalcy?"

It doesn't matter, but the solicitations sure make it seem like it should. The entire marketing scheme is driven around a cohesive system that doesn't exist.

And you know what? I know that Brian Bendis has earned the keys to the car and all that. But why not make it make sense? Ben Grimm's reason for caving in and joining the Avengers is that his family is making him crazy??? No way. No goddamn way.

Read Hickman's Fantastic Four and tell me that makes any sense at all. The FF are dealing with galactic level threats, and when that's done with, he's got those moloid kids to take care of, and none of them are driving him crazy in the text. If you're going to break the social contract and press my disbelief on being in two places at once, can't the motivation seem plausible?

I feel no respect regarding the social contract between reader and publisher from New Avengers. The key to the "event" is to make the reader care about the house of cards. Not only is it difficult to give a shit about the house of cards after it's been threatened or supposedly knocked down 33 times in the past five years, but they don't even build the house correctly any more.

Where is the editorial mandate to protect the ship? Where is the voice of reason letting the field lie fallow for a bit so that the crops can grow again? Where is the captain with the discipline to say "Lucas Cage running two teams thousands of miles apart just doesn't make sense!" Because right now Marvel appears to be a thousand kids running around throwing dynamite to listen to it pop. Good luck with that.

Marvel needs a steward, and fast. They're pumping out 150 books of "canon" a month that nobody appears willing or able to keep track of, and their empire is currently built on the foundation of threatened continuity.

You can't have it both ways. If you're going to run your business on events....keep your shit straight. And if it just doesn't matter, then how are we supposed to care about the next big thing that will "never be the same"?

- Ryan

Chronic Breakdown: Siege # 4

Siege # 4
Marvel Comics
Script: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Olivier Coipel
30 pages for $3.99

So I finished Siege, and I ended up where I started...underwhelmed. I'm not so far gone that I can't render props where they are due. Kudos for keeping the damn thing to four issues instead of eight, as an example. Sure this thing is way overloaded with meaningless splash pages, but at least they gave us 30 pages of that for $3.99 instead of the usual 22. It says something I suppose that in this era, we victims are thankful for our rape when the bindings aren't too tight or overly chafing.

There were certainly plenty of monumentally explodey moments. I'm sure there's someone out there brain damaged enough to lament the "loss" of Ares for the four minutes he'll be gone. Asgard is basically rubble, Osborn is ousted and fully outed as a nutbag, the registration act is rescinded, and the heroes are back in charge. Yay?

Rationally, I can recognize that things happened in Siege. I have a difficult time caring about any of it, though, because it all felt less like a story and more like a corporate conveyor belt. By now we all know how these things are supposed to work. You paint a way too large picture of heroes in preposterous poses looking all menacing. They spout cliched dreck to show how tough they are. You'll need a dozen or so splash pages of powerful people hitting each other with stuff in place of any actual drama. A couple people "die", and then you erase everything that came before you so you can move on to the next Big Thing, which by the way won't remember you.

It's all been done, and that might actually work if it was done well, but this wasn't. Let me show you what I'm talking about:

The Dialogue Sucks

Everybody has their own laundry list of things they need out of their comic reading experience. I need dialogue. I need it to sell me on the characters, people's speech tells us who they are. Speech patterns should be distinct and appropriate to the character's history and environment. Occasionally, it should make us laugh, make us cringe, or surprise us.

So here's Nick Fury, the overconfident cigar-chomping military guy who's forgotten more trauma than most heroes will ever see. He should have a better rejoinder than "You bet you will." It's boring, and it's beneath the character. I don't think "toots" is a very clever choice, either. It's not a crime, but when the rest of it is so dull, it comes off to me as a dirty shortcut. You want to write an old school character? Write old school attitude, not "toots". It's lazy.

Here's Thor all irritated after the Sentry supposedly blew up his brother:


Again, it's boring. It's stock. If you showed a sixth grader a copy of Journey Into Mystery and then asked him or her to write that scene, that's the dialogue that would get written there. "Take that, vile fiend!" And you know what? I get that it's difficult to have a real good handle on all of those different characters, and I get that not everybody can be Gail Simone and just knock it out of the park every time.

But dialogue is supposed to be Bendis's wheelhouse - what the hell happened? Here's your major comedic moment in an unnecessary splash page featuring Spider-Man:


That isn't funny, or clever, or interesting. If you're going to waste that kind of space for a "zinger", make it count. This is the best we could come up with for our special event? This is the filet mignon of comedy? Let a dozen 8th graders re-write the line, and I bet eight of them score more laughs.

Here's the thing that bothers me the most, though...

Unsupported, Unfulfilling, Illogical "Big Moments"
Here's Steve Rogers passing the torch at the end of Siege:


Where the hell does that come from? Did I miss something? What happened that told Steve that Bucky is the guy now? It certainly wasn't anything that happened inside of Siege proper. Steve certainly seemed to have things under control when he was holding a casual conversation with Nick Fury while doing battle inside of the Siege: Secret Warriors one shot.

You can't have an impactful epiphany with no set-up. Captain America has been a huge part of Steve's life for a long time. He's not going to give that up on a lark. It needs to make more sense than "Well, we have this Secret Avengers book coming out next month." It's fine if you have that....but then tell the story in such a manner that the transition seems natural, even imperative.

Siege did nothing of the sort. It's irritating to read that scene, because it's telling me that I'm an idiot who should just roll over and accept whatever is said. Well... no. I'm an entirely different kind of idiot. You can't just say it, at least not on my watch. It has to make sense inside the story, or it feels like a cheat. And this was a cheat.

Same thing goes for registration, frankly. True, Osborne probably put a sour taste in people's mouths over his stewardship of the law....but that doesn't make the law illegitimate. That means you don't hire somebody with a clinical psychosis to run the damn thing.

Siege didn't build up a case inside the narrative that would lead me to believe the public would suddenly abandon the concept of responsible, accountable use of powers. This is not as egregious and out of left field as the Cap thing. There are people who would recognize that it was the unlicensed heroes who stepped in and stopped the chaos that the licensed folks caused.

To me, though, there is no case for the obvious abolishment of registration. There is an obvious case for Marvel wanting to return to the status quo and forget all the earth shattering "never be the same" moments of 2005. But inside the story, it feels hollow to me.

In the end, Siege reads like a giant action piece, full of sound and fury, and signifying the next step in the conveyor belt of money. This was not a story. This was a series of explosions designed to distract us from the fact that we paid $15.96 for a commercial about the next 19 Avengers books they want to sell us. Color me unsatisfied.

- Ryan

Chronic Review: War of the Supermen # 1

War of the Supermen # 1
DC Comics
Script: James Robinson & Sterling Gates
Pencils: Jamal Igle
24 pages for $2.99

Spoilers ahead ye swabs, and now ye be warned.

Before we get to the Superman stuff, lets talk about something far more important: the Colgate "MaxFresh" ads attached to the DC comics this week. The Where Monsters Dwell guys were not pleased with this phenomenon. Not pleased at all. In fact, they had a little rip fest live on Air for Episode # 99. They tore those things to shreds with all the glee of a 1960s bra burner all hopped up on Gloria Steinem.

I'm not in love with those Colgate ads either. They detract from the reading experience, it's irritating, and it's redundant since there's a regular ad page for the damn product already in play.

I think the larger concern here is that these people don't have any noses. To me, if I were those people, fresh breath would not be my biggest priority. It would be the fact that I'm missing a nose. It is adorable that these two genetic freaks found each other, though. It gives me warm fuzzies to know that a couple of mutant degenerates can carve out a romance in a world that hates them for their deformity.

I'm so disgusting at this point that my real concern is whether this week's DC books can be considered CGC 9.8 if you take the offending Colgate ads out. Sad, really. But I digest.

Now, on to the War of the Supermen. Kudos to DC for their treatment with the zero issue on FCBD, by the way. It gives you most everything you need to know to dive in. Most everything, any way.

General Zod is riding a very favorable approval rating on New Krypton, and has decided that everybody needs to go to Earth and kick the ever loving crap out of it. I like the "100 minute war" tagline. I like the fact that James Robinson and Sterling Gates have correctly surmised that thousands of powered Kryptonians could take over our planet before you could watch Avatar front to back. Because they could. That, my friends, is a losing battle with or without a JLA.

But wait just a minute, folks. We're not completely helpless. Lois's father is a giant dick, and he plays rough as well. Matter of fact, he gets the first shot in. While Zod is busy amassing an army, General Lane blows up the entire planet of New Krypton with one Trojan Horse named Reactron.

Reactron is down in Zor-El's tomb with Supergirl and her mother. I'm not sure that I'm in love with the fact that Kara gets bushwhacked by her mother, thrown in a closet and "sealed" away from the blast. I don't care how emotional the situation is, it just seems weird to get your ass kicked that quickly by your mom. I also get that it sets up a story moment where Alura sort of redeems herself, but it feels a little contrived to me.

Also contrived is the fact that Supergirl is at ground zero of planet exploding event and survives completely unscathed. I don't care what kind of panic room she got locked into. The goddamn planet blew up. She's dead, dig?

My broadcast partner is not in love with Jamal Igle's art in this book, and I think I get it. Here's a shot of Superman when his little brouhaha gets interrupted by the end of New Krypton:


I don't know if that's concern, or horror, or disbelief. What it resembles most is a man who just ate 10-12 White Castles and is now preparing to take a massive grumper. Igle isn't getting an Eisner for that panel, is what I'm saying.

This series is delivering some pretty big moments, and we're just getting started, because Zod still hasn't landed his first salvo. After inexplicably surviving that blast, Kara grabs a flag and looks like she's going to Earth to exact vengeance on us for blowing up New Krypton. That's pretty cool.

I'm a bit ashamed to admit it, but this thing basically works at the same level that Siege does, except it's delivering all of that epicness for 25% less.

The stakes are appropriately high here, things are moving along at a brisk pace, and I can recommend this to most folks interested in comics provided they're either abreast of the Superman mythos or read the FCBD issue first.

- Ryan

Chronic Review: Green Arrow # 32

Green Arrow # 32
DC Comics
Script: JT Krul
Pencils: Federico Dallocchio
22 pages for $2.99


Boy, was I excited about Green Arrow # 32. You may recall I read the last issue and was pleasantly surprised. Krul was writing the story of a man gone too far with real emotional gravitas. There was blood on Ollie's hands, he was irritating everyone around him, and he was clearly not done with his vendetta.

The promise was for months and months of bridge-burning, moral choices, and a fresh ballsy take on a character I had previously been uninterested in. Green Arrow # 31 set quite a banquet. Green Arrow # 32 pulled everything off the table and then whizzed in my mouth.

I have never seen any book kill so much positive momentum so quickly. This was a runaway sports car that inexplicably hit the emergency brake and spit its smoking transmission out onto the pavement.

I don't want to give too many of the spoilery plot points out. To be clear, there are "happenings" in this book. It isn't that it lays still. Far worse than that, it reverses everything it was headed toward just 30 days ago in such an abrupt and unfulfilling manner that I half feel like filing a complaint for emotional abuse.

Ollie's quest for vengeance takes a left at Albuquerque.....hard. I won't say that his decision made no sense. In many ways, it made perfect sense, and sort of salvaged him as a heroic figure. But then why go through the sham of being interesting in the first place?

Ollie Queen went from a compelling man on fire to mopey-ass wet fish before you could turn the page. Gone was all the rage, all the intriguing possibilities, all the months of drama that could have been milked. Instead we get self-esteem problems and apathy. How wonderful.

Green Arrow turns himself in and heads to trial. That's where the only interesting item in the issue occurs - what Ollie does to Superman during court is actually entertaining. But this is also where the story gets disingenuous. If you're going to pull the rug out from your readers, at least make it sensible.

Queen is declared "not guilty" for the murder of Prometheus by a jury of his peers, and now insufferably self-pitying Green Arrow chastises the jury in his inner monologue. But waitaminute.....if Oliver so desperately wants to be punished for his sins, why didn't he...oh, I don't know....plead guilty??? If that's how he really felt about it, it makes no sense to put it in the hands of a jury. The decision is bullshit, patently transparent bullshit that serves preserving the status quo instead of the story.

I would have preferred one of two things. Either:

A) Go forward with where things were headed, and let Green Arrow's path of vengeance churn out months and months of potentially relevant and certainly entertaining stories about a hero gone bad.

B) Go forward with the new and not so improved Depressive Arrow, plead guilty, and run wild with a comic book preview of that "Supermax" Green Arrow prison movie they've been whispering about for years. You want action? You want redemption? Throw that dude in the clink and let him duke it out with the riff-raff. Sure, Brubaker just did it with Daredevil. You try to top him, out do him. I would respect that.

What we get is a judge who reads the "not guilty" verdict and somehow decides to gulag the man from Star City. Correct me if I'm wrong, here, but "not guilty" means "free to go". You can't just disagree with a jury and make up your own punishment if you don't like it. I know this is comics, but how am I supposed to buy into ANY of this?

This wasn't a story. This was a complete demolition of a story in the name of creating a fresh new re-booted # 1 issue. Fuck that. Fuck that in the face. This could have been special, folks. But we'll never know how special, because a whole year's worth of good comics were absolutely GOAT-ASSED inside of 22 pages. I'm guessing it's an editorial edict. Maybe Krul just lost his balls and bailed. Whatever it is, it sucks.

The sad thing is, this is probably a decision built on dollars. "We can't make this beloved character legitimately human and edgy, what will people think?" Well, they might actually buy your books. There's a novel concept. It's so weak, and right now I'm embarrassed for DC over their ridiculous bait and switch, and I'm embarrassed for myself for still buying into it.

Green Arrow just hit the chopping block.....NEXT!

- Ryan

Chronic Review: Siege # 2

Siege # 2
Marvel Comics
Script: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Olivier Coipel
40 pages for $3.99


OK. Not only is thing $3.99, but it's an event book, which makes it completely anathema to me. So why am I buying this piece of crap?

Well, for credibility. I love to bitch about these things, no place quite as comfy as my soapbox of toxic filth, and I feel that it's important to sometimes get dirty so that I know whereof I speak. I talk a lot of shit about event books, but I haven't really sullied my hands with a Marvel event since Civil War.

Didn't read Secret Invasion. Bumped into Dark Reign just a bit during my normal reading of Amazing Spider-Man, and I read the Punisher: List book because Timmy Callahan put me onto Rick Remender's work there and I thought I'd test drive it. And that's about it.

So now after reading the first two issues of Marvel's new "blockbuster" Siege, you'll know that I speak from experience when I tell you what a pungent slop of rubbish this story is.



Let me show you exactly why these books just don't, just CAN'T work right now. And listen, it's not all bad. I dig the respect that Ares showed toward Heimdall. I dig the text-heavy backmatter at the end that tries to sell the gravity of attempting what amounts to a coup.

And of course something potentially very strong happens in this book, and I'm about to spoil it, so buckle up. The issue's been out long enough where everybody knows the "big doing" of this issue, so I don't feel too bad.

To put it plainly, the Sentry rips Ares inside out. He does. And they show it, in the sort of detail that you would expect Jacen Burrows might even cringe at. And it affected me not one jot.




Here's the thing. There is debate about the reality of "event fatigue" and I suppose that everybody has their own threshold. Maybe somebody out there can still feel something. I can't. I don't see how anybody could at this point, because it's been done so many times in the last, oh I don't know, 3 minutes that it's all rote now.

Bob splashed the ground with Ares' guts. OK. But that's not what I register as I page through Siege. I feel like I have Rowdy Roddy Piper sunglasses on from "They Live". And instead of seeing exploding god meat, what I actually see is "Insert super impactful character death demonstrating harsh reality of conflict threat here."

Because we've seen this before, and this is where that goes in Act 2 of this little machine they like to run. This is where Bill Foster bought it in Civil War. This is where Martian Manhunter bought it in Final Crisis. Insert "impactful" character "death." Yawn. It's paint by numbers, it's coupon redemption storytelling, and it happens so often now you can't help but see the bullshit behind the curtain.

That should have been the coolest thing ever, a shocking moment and a departure into the macabre for a mainstream entity. Yawn.

See here's the thing that eastern philosophy gets that we just can't get through our thick western skulls: the yang only has power because of the yin. Your coffee cup is useful because of its empty space. Excitement only seems that way because of the quiet moments in between. Take away the quiet, and all that shouting just drowns itself out as white noise. And that's where we're at, folks.

Marvel can turn the volume all the way up to 11 and I can't hear it, because it's all we've been hearing for years now. Shocking secret. Never the same again. Change this team forever. You won't believe what happens next. Yawn.

And you can't tell me that this is inspired, that this is the story Brian Bendis has been waiting his whole life to write. He doesn't care any more than you do. Let me prove it to you with a little blurb that really full-on pissed me off:




"I'll do what I do." Are you kidding me? Does that line land for ANYBODY? Would you think that was cool if you were eleven years old, even? I certainly hope not. As though that line says anything, means anything. It's just lazy writing.

And before anybody thinks I'm going too crazy on Bendis, let me say that his work on Daredevil is some of the best superhero comics ever written, and he does know inspired storytelling, and he does know fresh dialogue. But ahhhhh....this aint it.

My Rowdy Roddy glasses see that line and it reads "Insert super cool character elevating moment here." It's all so transparent and so tiresome. He didn't want to write that line, but it was that time in the cycle, and if you don't really give a shit, dreck like that will slip out.

And by the way, everything in Siege will all be undone and ignored three months from now, when the next unbelievable-never-be-the-same-again bullshit washes over us, and we all know that now as well, as sure as the sun will rise, as sure as gravity. We've seen it too much and too recently to forget any more. Marvel, give us time to forget!

Hey. I love comics, and I'm not going anywhere. But this is not where the medium lives and breathes. This is assembly line, neutered, RUBBISH. I saw it, so now I'm sayin' it. Now go find yourself a copy of Secret Six or Fantastic Four and discover how a living comic book operates. Do it now!

- Ryan