By Britt Schramm
April 18th, 2005
I’m tired. Tired with people who say that they don’t surf the web while they’re working but yet they still receive pop-up ads whenever they launch their Internet Explorer. Tired with drivers who seem to wait for an engraved invitation to make a left hand turn across traffic. Tired with one of my VPs who always insists on using “synergistic” instead of “symbiotic” because each moment that she drones on, it becomes more apparent that she’s assigning me work that she was assigned to do. And yes, I’m even tired with the number of books that are coming out about the Red Sox winning the World Series. I mean that I’ve been a diehard Red Sox fan since the summer of ’78 but when Johnny Damon comes out with a book called “Idiot”, I’m gonna have to judge that book solely by its cover. But most of all, I’m tired of big event comic books.
I think that you know the one that I’m referring to – Identity Crisis/(Countdown to) Infinite Crisis, DC’s super spectacular mega-series. I know that this series has been written about previously on PftL but I don’t think that the timeline of the series has actually been broken down. So, for those who don’t want to leave this here column to google what I’m talking about, here it is in a nutshell.
First, there’s Identity Crisis, which is a seven-issue miniseries from last year. But in actuality, it was more than those solitary seven. There were a ton of tie-ins books like Flash, Manhunter, and Teen Titans, which added another dimension to the overall story. (There are maybe more that I’ve missed but what there is all I could think of at the time.) And the Adam Strange miniseries, which introduced DC’s lone start traveler back into their continuity, should be lumped in with the Crisis series even though it wasn’t plastered with the IC logo due to its inclusion into Countdown.
Next is the aforementioned 80-page one shot, Countdown to Infinite Crisis, which came out a couple of weeks ago, serves its purpose by laying the groundwork for the four 5-issue miniseries that are spawned from its pages: Villains United, The Rann-Thangarian War, OMAC (One Man Army Corps) and Day of Vengeance. Not to mention that there will probably be more of the prerequisite tie-ins similar to the last series. However, it’s still not over.
Eventually, near the end of this year, we should see the release of Infinite Crisis, possibly the new reigning champion of all event comic books with promises by DC that this series will shake the whole DC continuity to its very core. Haven’t I heard this song and dance somewhere before?
My problem with these event books isn’t the creators or even the stories themselves per se. It just seems like the true purpose for these books is to just to sell an outrageous amount of units while making almost zero long term changes to characters as possible or just reverting whatever changes that were made back to the status quo after a few years pass.
Now, I’m not too altruistic; I know that for the most part the whole comic book industry wants to make a profit. But, when you see Identity Crisis #1 published in a tenth printing with a new cover (just like the previous nine), it make you wonder who’s really buying these books? (Actually, I don’t wonder who is purchasing them but I don’t want to offend any of those completists or speculators out there by telling them how sad it is to have ten copies of one book. It’s not 1992, folks.)
Plus, who has the disposable cash to buy all of the different mini-series? I figure that DC’s defense is that you don’t have to buy all of them to get the story’s main plot points. Seriously, how can anyone write that with a straight face? It’s like watching a pirated DVD copy of “Sin City” from some vendor on the street. Oh sure, you’ll may get most of the plot. But, you miss out on little subtleties and nuances of the movie since half of the time the sounds crapped out due to the guy who was holding the camera in the theater either is crunching the wrapping trying to get to his fifth bag of Sour Patch Kids. Or the first third of the movie was black because the moron forgot to take off the lens cover. Either way, you miss something that could be vital to the story or at the very least the back-story.
The same logic should apply here. If someone exceedingly wants to read this story, they’re gonna buy all of the books, not just the ones that will just cover the main plotline. Because they’ll want the full story, not just one or two aspects of it. And what’s worse is that DC (whether they will admit it or not) actually plan on all of those collector-type fanboys and girls to gobble up every issue and come back for more. The lip service that DC is paying is almost insulting if you ask me.
As for the character developments, why have them at all if changes that are being made to these characters while they’re in these big event comics are being reversed after only a few years? Where is the lesson in failure if it’s going to be wiped away like a whiteboard? Where’s the growth? Hell, I’m not really a huge continuity geek. I know, it’s a shocker. But truthfully, who has time for all of that record keeping? Especially when almost all of the books that are currently in publication by the Big Two have been rebooted more than once in the last ten to fifteen years.
I’ve been trying to narrow down all of these “epics” into one that would crystallize my point about these big event comics for y’all. Recently, there have been some real winnahs like:
- “Underworld Unleashed” (a devil-like villain tries to created havoc on Earth by offering the DCU villains their hearts desire for a price with all of the miniseries’ covers sporting highlights of putrid neon green ink)
- “DC One Million” (the sun becomes a tyrannical life form in the future and gives the future JLA a highly infectious virus that could spread throughout the present day while they come to gather 20th Century superheroes to celebrate the return of Superman in the year 85,271 and gives readers a possible futuristic glimpse at some of the DC characters)
- “Genesis” (superheroes lose powers to some otherworldly entity called The Source with the added feature of Jack Kirby rolling over in his grave due to the misuse of the Fourth World characters in this John Byrne trainwreck)
- “Superman: Our Worlds At War” (a freakin’ huge robot called Imperiex comes to destroy the earth and gives Ed McGuinness some Mecha design work)
And just so you know, I’m just not targeting DC books. I could point out some truly stinkers that Marvel has put out. But they kinda beat me to the punch with their thinking that the original “Age of Apocalypse” was so good that they dug it back up for its’ 10th anniversary and published a new and really awful miniseries to commemorate it. Thanks, House of (Recycled) Ideas.
But I think that I’ve found a miniseries that would do the trick.
Everyone should remember DC’s “The Final Night” from 1996, right? If you can’t, don’t worry. It follows the same formulaic template that most of these event books use to try to duplicate the success of “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, the template originator.
In the case of “The Final Night”, there’s an unstoppable force coming to eat the sun thus plunging all of the planets in the Milky Way into everlasting night. All of DC’s superheroic heavy hitters like the JLA, Legion of Super-Heroes, Capt. Marvel and Parallax gather together to devise a way to stop this intruder. The solution is conceived to stop this monster and the disaster is safely averted in the nick of time by the power-crazed Hal Jordan/Parallax making the ultimate sacrifice. Doesn’t sound bad at all, does it?
For almost ten years, Hal Jordan was memorialized throughout the DCU in words and in monument for that last spark of humanity when he made a decision for good in the face of death. That is until “Green Lantern: Rebirth”, an indirect IC tie-in, was green lighted thus neutering the entire tragic concept that was Final Night.
Wow, those hours spent reading that miniseries is something that I’ll never get back. All the while, DC saying with a smile “Thank you. Please come again.”
So, when I was reading Countdown and saw that Ted Kord’s cranium was converted from a hard top to a convertible, I thought to myself that even though he’s a B to C list superhero, he’ll in all probability be brought back to life in another big series down the road. But this time, I’ll read the series in the store and wait until the trade comes out before I drop a dime on this project.
Therefore, fool me once, DC, shame on you. Fool me twice, well you know the rest. That is unless Johnny Damon is writing the next big event miniseries. Then, I’ll already know what the subject matter will be. And if I still buy it, then I’m the “Idiot”.
That’s all for now. See you next go around. And don’t forget to keep your boards and bags together and keep your continuity straight.
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