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Marvel's Sunday at C2E2: 'Thor' Crossover with 'Journey into Mystery,' McKelvie on 'Defenders'

David Uzumeri — 2012-04-15T15:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel

It was a somewhat slow day for announcements this Sunday at C2E2; besides the announcement of a new Gambit ongoing series, we learned that the Ultimate Comics "Divided We Fall" event will include all three Ultimate Comics titles and begin in July; the Asgardian titles Thor and Journey Into Mystery are set to clash in a major crossover in August titled "Everything Burns"; and Jamie McKelvie, fresh off of X-Men: Season One, will be joining Matt Fraction as the new regular artist on Defenders.The first major announcement of the day came at the Ultimate Comics panel, with the titles of the previously-announced-at-the-retailer-summit Ultimate crossover revealed as "Divided We Fall"; it will feature the return of Captain America since he left the public eye at the end of the Ultimate Fallout miniseries after feeling responsible for the death of Peter Parker. The three main Ultimate books will all feature this story, but contain parallel narratives rather than a standard crossover; it begins in July with Sam Humphries and Luke Ross's Ultimate Comics Ultimates #13 and Brian Wood's Ultimate Comics X-Men #14, with Brian Michael Bendis's Ultimate Comics Spider-Man joining the fray in August.

At the "Next Big Thing" panel, Since Matt Fraction's The Mighty Thor and Kieron Gillen's Journey Into Mystery were launched alongside Fraction's Fear Itself event miniseries, the two books have been closely related -- especially due to their sibling protagonists, Thor and Loki -- yet never formally crossed over. Starting in August, that will change, with Alan Davis and Carmine Di Giandomenico joining Fraction and Gillen on their books for "Everything Burns," running from Mighty Thor #18-22 and Journey Into Mystery #642-645. The crossover will apparently bring many ongoing plot points in both titles to a head, especially Loki's web of lies and Thor's trust for him.

Finally, they announced that Jamie McKelvie (X-Men: Season One, Phonogram) will be joining Matt Fraction as the new regular artist on Defenders, replacing previous regular artist Terry Dodson. (Cover art below is by Dodson, interior art by McKelvie.)

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Matt Fraction Takes Aim at 'Hawkeye' [Interview]

David Uzumeri — 2012-04-15T14:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Interviews

As Marvel Comics announced at the C2E2 convention yesterday in Chicago, the former Immortal Iron Fist creative team of writer Matt Fraction and artist David Aja are reuniting this August in an all-new ongoing Hawkeye comic. ComicsAlliance talked to Fraction about his take on the superheroic marksman.

ComicsAlliance: Where does Hawkeye fit into the Matt Fraction oeuvre, Alongside Iron Man, Thor and the Defenders? He doesn't seem like a character prone to the sort of high-concept idea-driven approach taken to the rest of your work. In your eyes, who is Clint Barton? What's the "kung fu billionaire" elevator pitch?

Matt Fraction: Oh, I'd disagree, but I think I have a jacked-up sense of what is and isn't high-concept and idea-driven. Or maybe Hawkeye is small-"i" idea-driven. I think, like [Invincible] Iron Man, if i gave you the 'kung fu billionaire' pitch it'd give the game away. Hawkeye is as far away from books about the richest genius in the world, the god of thunder, and the Weird Avengers as you can get.

He's the Avenger that's Just A Dude, under it all. No healing powers, no flight, no rays, no serums, not invulnerable, not magical, not gamma-iradiated or anything else. And yet he stands with Earth's Mightiest Heroes, as the saying goes, and he's running the Secret Avengers so... so who is he in-between? When the mask comes off? he's the Just a Dude of the Avengers, these are THOSE stories. About what he does and who he is when he isn't punching the clock.CA: The last time you collaborated with David Aja, it was on a mystical kung fu billionaire. What made Hawkeye the comic to reunite? Have you changed the way you're writing for David considering the time gap since your last collaboration?

MF: It's long been a favorite of David's, and while I turned it down initially, I found my way in and couldn't stop thinking about it... basically it's different than anything else I've written before, it's letting me do stories I've never done, that don't quite get told the way i want to do them, and... and David's the icing on the cake.

And I'm carrying over the scripts in my sorta-Marvel style that I developed writing Defenders, because, it's David, he'll just toss out what doesn't work and make it better on his own anyway. This has actually gotten us working closer together, working out tweaks and moments, me writing to his strengths and him drawing to mine. somehow.

CA: What are the Hawkeye stories that most define the character for you? What's the Hawkeye story that made you sit down and go, "damn, I really want to write Hawkeye"?

MT: I think there's something tonally about that Mark Grunwald mini that's always stuck with me; it was coming out right as I was really getting into comics, and the Peter Sanderson illustrations of all his crazy arrows in the Marvel Universe Handbook always stuck with me. It very much had that... almost-confessional, I'm just a regular guy who could believe all this crazy stuff is happening to ME? tone to it. I liked him in the Avengers through the eighties for sure. [Jim] McCann did great work with him not too long ago and I really enjoyed Jen Van Meter's recent Solo Avengers story with him in it.

But what made me want to write him was figuring out the first page of issue 2, that was my way into the character, the world, and what it all was and why I'd want to read it, let alone write it.

CA: How long-term are you thinking on this series? Do you have just a first year of story planned, or are the readers in for a multi-year Hawkeye mega-epic?

MF: It's all very self-contained, done in one or two stories. Of course there's a larger arc in mind but it's a cumulative story. I want, if nothing else, these first six issues at least to be entirely clean, hop-aboardable, no-previous-knowledge-required, beginning-middle-end Clint and Kate adventures. Which was part of the appeal to me, too; it's a big challenge I've never had before. And it keeps everyone from getting bored.

CA: What kind of antagonists is Hawkeye going to be up against in the story? Other than Trickshot and Swordsman, he doesn't have much of his own rogues gallery. Will he be doing his own thing or mixing it up with major Marvel Universe villains?

MF: Both, actually; I'd like to find him a Doom, a Kingpin, a Bullseye -- every good hero needs an arch, so there's that mission in the back of my head and a desire to bring out some other MU villains with whom it makes sense for Clint to scrap. On top of new guys we make up, either costumed and powered or otherwise.

CA: At four monthly titles (Iron Man, Mighty Thor, Defenders, Hawkeye) that's a big workload. How are you balancing that, or can we expect one or more of these titles to end in the near future?

MF: Eh, it's not so bad. I've been busier before. You just keep moving and you keep writing. I can produce a book a week, so that's what I'm doing. It all evens out.

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Marvel's Saturday at C2E2: Hawkeye, Scarlet Spider, Fantastic Four and 'Sabretooth Reborn'

David Uzumeri — 2012-04-14T19:15:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, News

Today at the C2E2 expo in Chicago, Marvel elaborated on a number of major announcements they've been teasing of late. Perhaps the biggest news is the introduction of a new ongoing Hawkeye series by part of the acclaimed Immortal Iron Fist team of Matt Fraction and David Aja; meanwhile, Khoi Pham will be replacing Ryan Stegman on Scarlet Spider, with Stegman moving to help Jonathan Hickman wrap up his Fantastic Four run. The previously-previewed Jeph Loeb/Simone Bianchi "Sabretooth Reborn" arc was also announced to begin in August's Wolverine #310.At the Spider-Man panel, Marvel announced two creative changes in the Spider-Man (and kind of related) corner of the universe showing a decent amount of musical chairs being played in the Mighty Marvel Manner.

The first announcement was that penciller Ryan Stegman would be leaving Scarlet Spider after launching it with writer Chris Yost and drawing five of the first six issues. Replacing him is Khoi Pham, who was just recently announced as joining the rotation on Daredevil but was replaced by Chris Samnee with what was to be his third issue (#14), leaving him drawing only the #10.1 one-off and the first part of the "Megacrime" arc in #13.

Of course, this isn't Marvel firing the highly acclaimed Stegman from a job -- instead he'll be joining Jonathan Hickman on his last three issues of Fantastic Four, starting with #609, featuring the return of the New Defenders from Nu-World and the future Hulk known as the Maestro. Where current Fantastic Four artist Ron Garney, and previous artist Steve Epting are headed is not known, but considering the Epting-drawn surprise ending of FF #16, I'll personally wager that Hickman and Epting will pick up that plot point as the new team on Avengers.

At the "Cup O'Joe" panel featuring Marvel CCO Joe Quesada, Marvel announced that (as has already been heavily rumored) the critically acclaimed Immortal Iron Fist team of Matt Fraction and David Aja's mystery project is in fact a new Hawkeye ongoing series featuring absolutely gorgeous, design-focused covers from David Aja. You can look for an interview with Fraction about this project later, but Aja seems to be applying the same considerable graphic design sensibilities that informed his portrayal of kung fu in Iron Fist towards the mechanics of archery with Marvel's roguish Avenger.

Finally, the "Wolverine: Sabretooth Reborn" project teased in the back of Wolverine #300 -- Jeph Loeb and Simone Bianchi's sequel to their "Evolution" arc that ran in Wolverine v3 #50-55 -- will in fact run beginning in Wolverine #310, following the conclusion of Cullen Bunn and Paul Pelletier's (apparently fill-in) arc featuring Jason Aaron-created villain Doctor Rot. Longtime Wolverine writer Aaron concluded his run in this week's Wolverine #304, moving many of his ongoing plots to his current series Wolverine & The X-Men.

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Catch Up on 'Avengers vs. X-Men': What You Need to Know to Jump On

David Uzumeri — 2012-04-04T17:00:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel

Today is the official launch of Marvel's big 2012 summer event, Avengers vs. X-Men, the culmination of eight years of stories for both major lines at Marvel Comics: the Avengers and, well, the X-Men. With few exceptions, the stories of the two teams have remained largely separate since 2005's House of M, but with Marvel pushing Avengers vs. X-Men as a tool to bring in new and lapsed readers, people might be curious about the sequence of events that led to this point. While the #0 issue sets up the major emotional crises surrounding the Scarlet Witch and Hope, and #1 does a good job setting up the overall story, it's still the culmination of a great deal of past continuity. And I'm here to catch you up.1977: The Dark Phoenix Saga

One of the first major longform storylines in Bronze Age comics was Chris Claremont and John Byrne's "Dark Phoenix Saga" in the pages of X-Men. There are numerous recaps of the story available on the Internet, but here's the short version: after her seeming death, telepath Jean Grey's telekinetic powers increase to the point of godhood, which manifests in a fiery bird projection. After saving the universe from a neutron galaxy in the middle of the spacefaring Shi'ar Empire's M'Kraan Crystal, her powers increased even more, until the mental manipulation of the Hellfire Club's Mastermind brought out her "dark side," turning her into the "Dark Phoenix" that was consumed by her own power.

Once she crosses the line and destroys a fully populated world with six billion souls, she gets hunted by the Shi'ar, and eventually takes her own life in a moment of clarity to stop herself from killing everybody. The Phoenix was later revealed to be a cosmic force of death and rebirth that possessed Jean Grey rather than a natural extension of her telekinetic abilities; the real Jean Grey later returned and was killed after again merging with the Phoenix at the end of Grant Morrison's New X-Men run.

2004: Avengers: Disassembled

2004's Disassembled event had a core narrative in Avengers #500-503, by AvX cowriter Brian Michael Bendis and artist David Finch (with some assists from Olivier Coipel, also an artist on AvX). In short, a few years before this story, Avenger Scarlet Witch had discovered that her children with robot husband the Vision were actually magical constructs of her reality-altering powers, and then slowly and secretly went insane, culminating in the attack that destroyed Avengers Mansion and killed the Vision. In the end, Doctor Strange exposed the true nature of the attack, and Scarlet Witch was secreted off by her father, X-Men Magneto.

Six months later, the Avengers reformed as the New Avengers under the same creative team, including new members with few ties to Avengers history such as Spider-Man, Wolverine and Luke Cage.

Meanwhile, Grant Morrison's run on New X-Men wrapped and was replaced with new flagship title Astonishing X-Men by Buffy the Vampire Slayer mastermind Joss Whedon and Planetary's John Cassaday, which reintroduced the team as superheroes rather than a mutant rescue group, bringing back the old costumes and re-embracing a more classic milieu for the team.

2005: House of M

In 2005, the summer event book House of M by Bendis and Coipel featured an alternate reality created by Scarlet Witch's reality-altering powers where mutants are the dominant species. It was eventually revealed that it was created at the urging of Scarlet Witch's brother, also-Avenger Quicksilver. Right before she changed the world back to normal, she issued the edict of "no more mutants," depowering the entire mutant population, except for two hundred individuals (how those specific mutants escaped this was never revealed). The Avengers and X-Men decided to keep Wanda's actions a secret from the world.

2006: Civil War

While the remaining mutant population were placed under government surveillance at the X-Men's Westchester mansion, the Avengers and the rest of the superhero community had a major crisis of conscience after the near-destruction of Stamford, Connecticut by a super-powered being in Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's Civil War. A superhero registration law soon passed, and the superhero community divided between Captain America, fighting registration, and Iron Man supporting it. Iron Man won, Captain America got shot for totally unrelated reasons, and the Tony Stark Era began. Stark essentially ran the entire superhuman community and leads the government-sponsored Mighty Avengers, while the remainder of Steve Rogers's allies fights underground as the New Avengers.

2007: World War Hulk and Messiah CompleX

A number of plotlines simmered in the background of 2007's major event, World War Hulk, written by Greg Pak with art by AvX artist John Romita Jr. This main event centered on the Illuminati -- a shadow council running the superhuman community consisting of X-Men founder Charles Xavier, Avenger Iron Man, Inhuman king Black Bolt, King Namor of Atlantis and Sorcerer Supreme Dr. Strange -- team ingup with S.H.I.E.L.D. to solve the Hulk problem once and for all by shooting him into space at a peaceful planet. Instead, he got directed to a gladiator planet and came back with an army to smash the hell out of Manhattan. The superheroes won, eventually.

Meanwhile, on the X-Men side, the first mutant since House of M was born, and born with her powers already active, rather than seeing them manifesting at puberty. The anti-mutant hate group the Purifiers burned down the Alaskan town where she was born, but not before she was spirited away by X-Men leader Cyclops's time-travelling son Cable, who ran a gauntlet with her from the various groups attempting to locate her, including the Purifiers, Mister Sinister and the Marauders, the turncoat Bishop (who claimed that this messiah baby led to his dystopian future) and the X-Men themselves. Eventually, Cable escaped into the future with the child with his father's blessing, and the mutant community regained hope for their future.

2008: Secret Invasion

In 2008's Secret Invasion, the New Avengers uncovered a years-old alien conspiracy to take over the Earth. The Skrulls, a group of alien shapeshifters who lost their homeworld years ago, had a fringe religious sect intent on making Earth the new Skrull homeworld. Using shapeshifting subterfuge, they infiltrated the superhero community they had clashed with so many times before in order to destroy it from within. The superheroes, as they do, eventually saved the day, but the final kill shot was given to Spider-Man villain and Thunderbolts director Norman Osborn, leading to the next year of stories.

On the X-Men side of things, after the mansion was destroyed (again) as a result of Messiah CompleX, the group relocated to sunny San Francisco under the unquestioned leadership of Cyclops.

2009: Dark Reign, Utopia and Messiah War

After Norman Osborn took control of the superhuman community in the wake of the Secret Invasion, he formed a new group, HAMMER, to replace Tony Stark's SHIELD, and an anti-Illuminati alliance called the Cabal with supervillain kingpin the Hood, Doctor Doom, Loki, X-Man (and Cyclops's girlfriend) Emma Frost and King Namor of Atlantis (yeah, he pulled double duty). Osborn also put together his own team of dark Avengers (in another Avengers title written by Bendis), while the former pro- and anti-registration forces alike teamed up in the New Avengers title.

Eventually, Osborn decided to pick a fight with the mutant community, leading to a huge brawl in San Francisco until Cyclops raised the ruins of Magneto (who had recently returned to the X-Men declaring his fealty to Cyclops's leadership)'s former asteroid base Asteroid M into the San Francisco Bay, forming his own island nation outside of Osborn's authority. This island was named Utopia, also the name of the Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men crossover written by AvX co-writer Matt Fraction in which these events occurred.

Meanwhile, X-Force was sent into the future to check up on Cable and the messiah baby (now named Hope). They fought Apocalypse together and went their separate ways, with X-Force (led by Wolverine) returning to inform Cyclops that Hope was not going to be a child when she returned, since she'll likely have grown far more in the future. Hope was also shown to have red hair and green eyes -- the exact same body features as the deceased Jean Grey.

2010: Siege and Second Coming

In early 2010, after the original Captain America returned, Norman Osborn decided to pick another fight, this time with Thor and the Asgardian Gods in Oklahoma. The Avengers came to rep for their boy, beat the crap out of everybody, exposed Osborn as a lunatic on live television and got the Steve Rogers Era to kick off, which Marvel branded as the Heroic Age.

Simultaneously, Cable and Hope finally returned to the present day, at the remains of the Xavier school in New York. They traveled from the east coast to west while the time-traveling mutant-hating robot Bastion tried to kill them. Nightcrawler died to bring her to Utopia, Bastion attacked San Francisco and enclosed it in a big forcefield dome, Cable and X-Force went to the future Bastion was from to try to kill him, a bunch of stuff blew up, Cable sacrificed himself to save his surrogate daughter, and Hope revealed that (as many fans expected) she was the Phoenix, saving the day.

2011: Fear Itself and Schism

In 2011, after about a year of the Heroic Age, Sin -- the daughter of Captain America's dead archenemy the Red Skull -- discovered some of her father's journals and used them to free the Cul, the Serpent, brother of Thor's father Odin and hidden Norse God of Fear. The Serpent called the Worthy, eight ancient spirits that possessed hammers that, when wielded by existing Marvel Universe characters, transformed them into vessels for that power, much as Donald Blake uses the Hammer of Thor to become Thor. One such character was the Juggernaut, Cain Marko (Xavier's brother), who attempted to destroy the X-Men and was repelled by X-Man Colossus making a deal with the evil god Cyttorak to become the new Juggernaut, since the original one had changed his allegiance to the Serpent. Over on the Avengers camp, Tony Stark got drunk again and used that as a sacrifice to get Odin to let him build some badass weapons for the Avengers, who used those badass weapons to beat up the Worthy while Thor died fighting the Serpent. (He came back a few months later; writer Matt Fraction has actually stated the main theme of Fear Itself was the impermanence of death).

Over with the X-Men, a new Hellfire Club composed of young children unleashed Sentinels on the X-Men, forcing the group into a philosophical quandry with Cyclops believing that the young mutants under his charge were training to become soldiers due to the necessity of a harsh life, while Wolverine supported the idea that the children should be allowed to be children and nobody should have to suffer like he did. In the end, the split became so untenable that Wolverine left with half of the mutant population to the ruins of Xavier's school to rebuild it as the Jean Grey School of Higher Learning; Hope, meanwhile, stayed behind with Cyclops on Utopia, where Cyclops assembled his "Extinction Team" of high-powered mutants with which he planned to both intimidate and save the world.

2012: Avengers vs. X-Men

The series Avengers: The Children's Crusade by Allan Heinberg and Jim Cheung, which began in 2010, finally concluded, resulting in both the exoneration and the return of the Scarlet Witch to regular life in the Marvel Universe. (It turns out that her insanity was masterminded by Doctor Doom.) In Avengers: X-Sanction, by Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness, Cable returns with his techno-organic virus threatening to kill him in 24 hours, armed only with the knowledge that if the Avengers kill Hope, they end up destroying the Earth. Eventually, Hope shows up and Cable seems to give in, and back on Utopia Hope cures her surrogate father of his techno-organic virus, leaving him recovering from his wounds.

Which brings us to now: the Phoenix is coming for Hope. The Avengers want to prevent it from coming at whatever cost; Cyclops believes it needs to come and use Hope as a vessel to rebirth the mutant race.

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First Image From CW's New 'Arrow' TV Show Debuts

David Uzumeri — 2012-03-19T14:15:00+00:00

Filed under: DC

Because "Green Arrow" is apparently too colorful a title for the CW's demographic, Arrow -- apparently the successor to Smallville on CW's DC Comics-inspired teen melodrama schedule slot -- has had its first image released today, and it certainly looks darker than the borderline neon Oliver Queen of Smallville.Apparently set in a completely different continuity from the other television show -- even though Oliver Queen was a starring cast member for years -- Arrow will focus on Oliver Queen, a former "trustafarian" (no, really, that's what the casting sheet says) who spent five years on a desert island practicing his archery and deciding to become a superhero after a tragic shipwreck. His former best friend is 28-year-old "Tommy Merlyn," who, from the last name, is likely to become Queen's antagonist. Stephen Amell (Private Practice, Hung) will be playing Queen, with Colin Donnell (Pan Am) playing Merlyn. Love interest Dinah "Laurel" Lance, known to DC Comics fans as Black Canary, will be played by Katie Cassidy (Taken, Supernatural) and Oliver's mother Moira will be portrayed by Susanna Thompson (the Borg Queen on Star Trek: Voyager).

With the pilot greenlit and the first costumed image coming out today, it seems safe to assume that, if picked up, the show will debut in the fall.

ComicsAlliance recently explored six thoughts on the new series; what are your impressions of the upcoming show so far?

(click to enlarge)

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Brian Wood on 'X-Men' and 'Ultimate Comics X-Men,' Jeff Parker's 'Dark Avengers' [Wondercon]

David Uzumeri — 2012-03-18T15:15:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel

Today at the "Next Big Thing" panel, Marvel made a number of announcements about their publishing line that take effect in June. Of particular interest are three major announcements: first, that Brian Wood will be writing both X-Men and Ultimate Comics X-Men in June; secondly, that Jeff Parker and Declan Shalvey's Thunderbolts will become Dark Avengers as of #175; and finally, that Dale Eaglesham will be joining Parker on an arc in Hulk dealing with the Mayan apocalypse.Brian Wood will be cementing his role at Marvel by replacing current writer Nick Spencer on Ultimate Comics X-Men, following up on the recent replacement of Jonathan Hickman with Sam Humphries on Ultimate Comics Ultimates. Wood recently returned to Marvel with the miniseries Wolverine & The X-Men: Alpha & Omega following the conclusion of his DC exclusive, and seems to be following up by joining the regular X-universe in full as well, replacing Victor Gischler on the adjectiveless X-Men title.

This effectively gives Spencer and Gischler no Marvel work for the foreseeable future; it's unknown what the latter is doing (perhaps focusing on his prose career or launching a new title dealing with his vampire subplots from X-Men), while Spencer seems to be settling in to a creator-owned lifestyle at Image like Robert Kirkman and Brian K. Vaughan. Wood will be joined on X-Men by David Lopez (New Mutants) for a title featuring Storm, Psylocke, Colossus, Domino and Pixie. (Vampire Jubilee, who's been a large part of the book since it began, apparently will no longer be involved.) Artist Paco Medina will be staying on Ultimate Comics X-Men.

Meanwhile, on the Avengers side of the tracks, Jeff Parker, Declan Shalvey and Kev Walker's Thunderbolts will become Dark Avengers with issue #175 after the conclusion of the current time travel arc where today's Thunderbolts will be forced to face their initial Busiek/Bagley incarnation. Luke Cage will stay in the title, and while there's no mention of other characters from the book's previous incarnation sticking around, the book will be populated from the New Dark Avengers introduced in recent issues of Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Deodato's New Avengers, such as the Thor cyborg clone Ragnarok, Hawkeye's brother Trickshot, Ai Apaec, the Dark Spider-Man and June Covington, Dark Scarlet Witch. The latter two were created by Portland resident Kelly Sue DeConnick and reused by Portland resident Brian Michael Bendis, so clearly some dark Northwestern pact has given them to other Portland resident Jeff Parker. Or maybe it's because something like 50% of the comics industry is in Portland, one of the two.

In other Parker news, Dale Eaglesham (recently of the eight-issue Alpha Flight miniseries with Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente) will be joining him on his other book, Hulk, featuring the exploits of Red Hulk "Thunderbolt" Ross. His arc will be dealing with the return of Mayan gods to herald the Mayan apocalypse, tapping into 2012 apocalyptic fever.

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'Saga': Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples Bring a Stellar Sci-Fi Comic Into the World [Interview]

David Uzumeri — 2012-03-14T16:15:00+00:00

Filed under: Image, Indie, Interviews

Brian K. Vaughan has come back to comics with a vengeance. With the conclusion of Y: The Last Man in 2008 and Ex Machina in 2010 -- and his departure from Lost after its fifth season in 2009, the highly successful creator dropped out of seemingly the entire public eye for a year. Vaughan return today with the first issue of Saga, ably abetted by the fantastic art of Fiona Staples (North 40, Mystery Society). While Vaughan's previous work has been very rooted in modern life and reality, from the politics of Ex Machina to the gender politics of Y, Saga charts new ground in an entirely invented science fiction universe that is beset by a war between the factions of magic and science, and home to one very special and unusual baby.

Saga #1 is 44 pages of story for $2.99 (print and digital), a significant value proposition in the current marketplace, and personally, I thought it was a corker. It's a very strong first issue with a unique identity, even (and especially) in the somewhat well-worn genre of epic fantasy comics, and ComicsAlliance talked with Vaughan and Staples about the first issue and the future of the series. But let's let Brian and Fiona take over.

ComicsAlliance: This is your first comic book work since the conclusion of Ex Machina, and instead of working with DC Comics/Vertigo again, you chose to go to Image, joining a number of major mainstream comic creators like Grant Morrison, Ed Brubaker and Jonathan Hickman. What's so attractive about publishing through Image?

Brian K. Vaughan: I love all the other companies I've worked with, but I think Image might be the only publisher left that can still offer a contract I would consider "fully creator-owned." Saga is a really important story to me, so I wanted a guarantee of no content restrictions or other creative interference, and I needed to maintain 100% control and ownership of all non-publishing rights with the artist, including the right to never have our comic turned into a movie or television show or whatever.[Image's] Eric Stephenson was the only publisher I spoke with who was thrilled to make that deal, and co-creator Fiona Staples and I didn't have to sign exclusives or agree to work on a bunch of corporate-owned titles to get it. Eric didn't even mind when we said we wanted our book to always cost $2.99, but to never be less than 22 pages long, a potentially risky equation in this marketplace. There's always a chance our gamble won't pay off, but so far, I couldn't be happier that Fiona and I decided to bet on ourselves by doing this series with Image.

CA: This book also charts new territory for you as a writer as your first major work in the space opera/fantasy vein. What has that transition been like? Are you creating the worlds organically as you write, or is there a big D&D-style sourcebook bible of the planets, the people, and their history somewhere on your hard drive?

BKV: Well, the universe of Saga is inspired by a weird "paracosm" I've been building in my head ever since I was a little kid, so I know a disturbing amount about its history, economy, etcetera. That said, the place only became real for me once Fiona started drawing it. Her characters and worlds are somehow both much more grounded and way more insane than anything I ever imagined. Anyway, Saga is definitely less research-intensive than a book like Y or Ex Machina, but the goal is always the same, which is to hopefully tell a cool story with beautiful visuals about some aspect of modern life I don't really understand.

CA: How did the storybook framing device come about? The narration lettered into the art is distinctly different from the standard comic book approach used throughout the rest of the book, or from typical caption narration. Why choose this approach?

BKV: Yeah, I don't think I ever wrote narration in any of my previous comics, so I guess I wanted to push myself to try something new with Saga. I've been reading a sickening amount of children's books recently, and I noticed how much my kids love whenever the text sort of playfully interacts with the images, rather than being cordoned off in a caption box or whatever. Felt like it might be a cool device to steal for Saga, particularly because of the unique relationship our narrator has to the events she's commenting on. Designer Steven Finch does amazing work with all of our dialogue, but that narration is the one thing Fiona letters herself, and I just love how organic it feels.

CA: The series so far seems to be based on a science vs. magic dichotomy, but both cultures are still similar enough to ours that Marko grew up with dogs and school buses. Are the cultures of Wreath and Landfall splintered off from a common stream, or is this giving too much away? How much of the "secret history" of the universe will we discover over the course of the series?

BKV: Like all warring factions, the people of Wreath and Landfall have much more in common than either side would like to admit. We'll definitely reveal more about this carefully crafted universe down the line, but I'm not a fan of world-building for its own sake. First and foremost, Saga is a story about people, not some impenetrable mythology.

CA: I love the robot people with television heads, and honestly, the sex scene in the first issue made me laugh out loud. Where'd the 1950s antiquated look of these guys come from and how do they fit into the societal picture of Wreath and Landfall? Are there any particular fantasy stories that influenced your work?

BKV: Thank you! I don't know, I've been fascinated with old televisions ever since I started writing for TV, so I'm sure that had something to do with it. I'm not terribly well versed in fantasy, so I'm mostly influenced by my own weird fetishes and observations about the real world. Though it's not exactly analogous, I suppose the Robot Kingdom's relationship to Landfall is almost as weird as the United States' current relationship with Saudi Arabia. Regardless, that sex scene is actually vitally important to our larger story, so I'm grateful that Fiona was deranged enough to show our bluebloods in their (mostly) anatomically correct splendor.

CA: Fiona, how'd you get started working with Brian? Were you introduced to him by a third party, or did he choose you on your past work?

Fiona Staples: It was our mutual friend Steve Niles who hooked us up! I worked with Steve last year on Mystery Society, and he was gracious enough to mention my name to Brian.

CA: How did your work on titles like North 40, Mystery Society and Hawksmoor prepare you for helping Brian create a whole new fantasy world from scratch?

FS: I'm not sure that it did! The comics I've done before have all taken place in the real world- screwed up, weird, or historical versions of it, but still obviously our planet. I guess working on those books helped in the sense that doing any kind of research, on whatever topic, will give a person a wider pool of ideas to draw from.

CA: Did the otherworldly nature of Saga require more design work than the average comic project?

FS: Definitely! There aren't very many items in Saga that I can just copy from real life, so everything from clothing to interiors to vehicles needs to be designed. But on the flip side, I don't need to worry about things looking "accurate." Rather, I try to design them to look "authentic," and look like they make sense in the context of that world.

CA: What are the major influences for your fantasy worldbuilding in Saga? Do they come from within or outside the fantasy genre?

FS: Most of my influences come from reality- just various places on Earth, particularly the ancient world. If I decide one planet's architecture is going to be loosely based on the Greek Islands, or one is going to be inspired by Mesopotamia, that's an easy way to keep the looks of those places consistent as our heroes trek around. And if I need to draw a convincing waterwheel or suit of armour or whatever, it's easier to modify something historical than to concoct those things out of thin air. I'd rather build the world from the ground up than poach things from other fantasy stories, but that said, I think a lot of the Final Fantasy games have really cool, well-realized designs! I'm also pretty inspired by Monkey Island, Sam & Max, Corto Maltese, illustrators like Maxfield Parrish, and tons of stupid things that I save on a Saga board on Pinterest. But hopefully you'd never know it by looking at the comic.

CA: What are your favorite fantasy stories of all time?

FS: I'll never love anything as much as the ones I read as a kid: The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald, The Dragon of the Lost Sea series by Laurence Yep, Brian Jacques' Redwall, and of course the Narnia books. I haven't found anything as an adult to equal the impact those books made on me!

Preview of Saga #1:

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Point/Counterpoint: 'Justice League' Shines with Strong Characters

David Uzumeri — 2012-03-08T14:30:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Opinion

A few months back, I wrote an article analyzing Geoff Johns's writing style that described his general approach as "Johnsian Literalism," a single-minded focus on theme where every plot point, supporting character and antagonist in a superhero story is extension of that character's core concept. I added that it looked like Justice League might be Johns flexing his muscles in a different direction, and with the conclusion of the first arc, it looks like I was right.

In Justice League, Johns has made a deliberate decision to mix up his formula and switch up his style, eschewing continuity puzzlework and relentlessly thematic stories for a character-driven book focusing on the personal relationships, friendships, enmities and alliances of these god-men and god-women. It's not about an idea; it's about people.In the first arc of the comic, Batman, Green Lantern, Superman, Flash, Wonder Woman, Aquaman and Cyborg join together to fight an invasion from Apokolips, during which Darkseid shows up personally. Batman finds out from Steppenwolf and Desaad that Darkseid is looking for his daughter, who is apparently on Earth. And in terms of the overall plot of the arc... that's about everything that happens.

But those plot points aren't the story Johns is telling. They're simply tools that help him explore the real story: the people. This is a totally new origin for the Justice League in a totally new DC Universe with fully reimagined heroes who serve as the focus of the story. This is Geoff Johns writing character-first, instead of theme-first, and it's very interesting.

With the New 52, Johns is both no longer master and also no longer slave to seventy years of continuity. His writing career prior to this was focused largely at DC Comics, consisting of stories built from seeds planted by other writers over years of history. But while using the vast history of the DC Universe started out as Johns's greatest strength, over time it began to overwhelm his writing, which is why seeing him try something new in Justice League is so refreshing.

Johns discussed the shift in his approach during an interview with Ain't It Cool News:

To write a book, like Justice League or Aquaman or Green Lantern and be able to tell my own story and not worry about the constraints of past stories is new to me... I wanted to make sure it was all about character first and personalities, because there's nothing more fun than watching Batman and Green Lantern trying to do something together... I wanted to make it all about the character interactions and relationships. At the same time, I wanted to make sure that the plots, the stories and the adventures they were facing were massive, so I'm trying to take a completely different tone to all my books and add more humor than usual. There's a lot of humor in JUSTICE LEAGUE, and AQUAMAN and GREEN LANTERN. So I wanted to change how I wrote, so for me, this is a big, big challenge. A massive challenge and a big departure from what I usually do.

The members of the Justice League are a little younger in the relaunched book, and a little skewed from their previous incarnations. They're all distrustful of authority, and they all start out hounded: Batman by the GCPD, Green Lantern by the Air Force, Flash by the cops at his own job, Aquaman by Atlantis, Wonder Woman by military handlers, Superman by Lex Luthor and the military, Cyborg by his own father.

They all agree to stick with the Justice League because the team's public face ultimately legitimizes them. By working together once in a while, characters like Batman can leverage that participation into a blank check for their solo adventures. On a macroscale, Justice League is the story of the birth of the concept of the superhero, evolving from masked men and vigilantes.

On a microscale, though, what it's really about is how these seven people relate to each other, and why they work well together. That's why Johns introduces them one-by-one rather than bringing the whole team together at the beginning. We all know the Justice League is going to beat Darkseid, but we don't know how Batman and Aquaman are going to clash over leadership. We know the world will come to love and accept them, but we don't know how the relationship between Cyborg and his hard-to-please father will develop.

That character work is where Johns really shines, with each hero's personality incredibly clearly defined, even when you apply Plinkett test and try to describe them without referring to their backstory, role in the plot or appearance. Superman's cocky, headstrong and driven to do what's right no matter who stands in his way. Batman's a distrustful, altruistic loner with a sardonic wit. Aquaman's a macho outcast and natural leader; Green Lantern's an eager-to-impress horndog. Flash is by-the-books, responsible and has respect for the law. Wonder Woman has a joie de guerre and is in awe of everything around her. Cyborg is struggling with his own body and earning his father's pride.

This all comes together in a scene in the fifth issue, where on a single page Superman and the Flash discuss (and take action on) the role of authority and whether to retaliate against the military, Hal Jordan reveals way more about his own need for approval than he ever wanted anyone to know thanks to Wonder Woman's lasso, and all of this actually makes Batman crack up mid-fight. The characters are ricocheting and reflecting off each other in new and interesting patterns, and it's this chaotic froth of relationships that makes the core of the book, not trying to figure out who Darkseid's daughter is.

Justice League is a book where the external conflicts exist to facilitate the character work, rather than the other way around, a book that dispenses with Johnsian literalism in favor of humanism. In short, Justice League is a totally new direction for Geoff Johns, and I can't wait to see where it takes one of the biggest writers in the business and his comics.

Read Chris Sims's counterpoint.

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'Animal Man' and 'Swamp Thing' Intertwine in an Epic Mythology of Horror and High Fantasy

David Uzumeri — 2012-03-06T15:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC

When DC Comics relaunched its superhero line last year, it tapped writer Scott Snyder (American Vampire) for Swamp Thing and Jeff Lemire (Sweet Tooth) for Animal Man, two Vertigo mainstay titles defined by monumental, careermaking runs by creators Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, respectively. Together, Snyder and Lemire have mixed and matched the characters' histories into an epic mythology linking the two characters that tells the ages-old story of the history of life on earth, and the battle between the Green (the life-force and connection of plant matter), the Red (the life-force of animal matter), and the necrotic forces of the Rot. The two complementary titles are finally meeting in the "Deadworld" crossover event this August, but for all of the shared connective tissue between the titles, it's remarkable how incredibly different they are in their approach not only to horror but to general storytelling as they explore the same story from two different angles.Despite their creative synergy, Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire couldn't come from more different creative backgrounds: Lemire drew his own indie comics and Snyder came out of writing prose fiction. These are two creators tackling the medium from monumentally different perspectives, and this is noticeable if for no other reason than Snyder uses a hell of a lot more words while Lemire tends to be way more comfortable letting the art tell the story.

The story of Animal Man so far is that the villainous Rot is trying to claim Buddy "Animal Man" Baker's daughter Maxine. Maxine, apparently, is the real champion of the Red, not Buddy, and Buddy was only given powers to protect her. (This leads to a somewhat hilarious/apropos retcon of Grant Morrison's Animal Man, as the Red claim they came as Morrison's reality-writing aliens to give Buddy "a narrative [he] could more easily comprehend.")

Three former champions of the Red, now working for the Rot as the Hunters Three, chase down Buddy's wife Ellen and son Cliff while Buddy and Maxine commune with animal spirits in the Parliament of Limbs, the fleshy counterpart to the Parliament of Trees from Alan Moore's Swamp Thing. Buddy and Maxine eventually get back to Earth and meet up with the rest of the family, as their new companion Socks the Cat (actually an ancient champion of the Red) tells them they need to find Alec Holland, the Swamp Thing.

Animal Man's horror is immediate and real, coming for your family, your children, the entire concept of domesticity. It's all supremely visceral stuff: manipulation of flesh into hideous sculptures of guts and tendril, attacks aimed primarily at the protagonist's family, body horror, survival horror, and more body horror. Seriously, artist Travel Foreman -- who's regrettably leaving the title to seek less depressing material, and I can't really blame the guy -- has put on a clinic over the course of the first five issues, ably assisted by inkers Dan Green and Jeff Huet and especially colorist extraordinaire Lovern Kindzierski. The whole thing feels like a sequential Francis Bacon painting, and I don't recommend it before bedtime.

In general, it's arguable that Swamp Thing, with art by Yanick Paquette and Rudy Marco, is more ornate than Animal Man, in its approach to both storytelling and horror. Animal Man punches for the gut, while Swamp Thing's horror is a distant, creeping wasteland. But what Swamp Thing loses in immediacy, it gains in scale, because much like The Dark Tower novel series by Snyder's mentor Stephen King, its goal is less jumping out to scare you than slowly selling a massive threat.

Swamp Thing is less horror at its heart than high fantasy. Alex Holland has returned to the living after the events of Brightest Day, and is being targeted by the Rot, which is building a kingdom in Arizona and New Mexico for their lord Sethe, who's implied to be Set, Satan, basically every figure opposing life in human mythology. (I am totally going to get crap for calling Satan "human mythology.")

Just as the Red runs in the Baker bloodline and the Green in the Holland bloodline, affinity for the Rot runs in the bloodline of the Arcanes, descendents of old Swamp Thing villain Anton Arcane. His daughter, Abby -- Swamp Thing's lover and girlfriend for most of the Alan Moore run and on -- is still around, this time as a badass biker chick with a shotgun trying to deny her true nature, as well as his son (and her half-brother) William, a new character with an allergy to chlorophyll and the ability to manipulate necrotic tissue (which, to be fair, brings Swamp Thing into the body horror realm as well). For six issues, basically everyone keeps begging Alec Holland to man the hell up and go become Swamp Thing to beat the crap out of the Rot, but he won't, and when the Rot finally takes Abby and he gives himself in to the Green, the Parliament of Trees is already burning, so he's S.O.L.

Still, Swamp Thing can't really be characterized as a horror story, because Holland doesn't really have anything to lose. None of the relationships he has in the book are really his; they belong to Swamp Thing, which is to say the Swamp Thing that pretended to be him while he was dead. The Arcanes make up the book's entire supporting cast so far, with one of them as a sneering villain and the other one becoming, for now, a damsel in distress, with Holland as the reluctant warrior-king who needs to claim his destiny. The scene at the end of #6 where Holland is impaled by a chainsaw in a swamp is almost a bizarre inversion of the Arthurian Sword in the Stone; while it performs the same role in the cycle, with the hero finally accepting their destiny, it's a dude getting impaled on a damn chainsaw.

Despite their vastly different approaches, the two books have become so narratively interconnected that one couldn't exist without the other. As time has gone on, Animal Man's creepy body horror and immediate danger has set up camp in Snyder's narrative; meanwhile, the scope of Animal Man is increasing from the personal to the global. This interconnectivity isn't a curse, but rather a blessing to both stories, making them not only stronger individually but also even stronger together. The two books, and their creators, are feeding off of each other, and the honest collaboration between their disparate approaches has lead not just to the upcoming "Deadworld" crossover event, but to better comics for both of them.

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Grant Morrison & Darick Robertson's 'Happy!' and the Renewal of Image Comics

David Uzumeri — 2012-02-28T11:00:00+00:00

In a weekend that contained a bunch of surprising news in the world of creator-owned comics -- such as the return of Phonogram, new Steve Niles books with Tony Harris and Scott Morse, new books from Brian Wood & Ming Doyle and Nick Spencer & Riley Rossmo, and a sequel to Howard Chaykin's Black Kiss -- the most surprising news, delivered by Image Publisher Eric Stephenson in Steve-Jobs-"one-more-thing" style, is that Grant Morrison and Darick Robertson will be collaborating on a new series, Happy!, out this year.

It's appropriate that the Happy! teaser image is a blue feather, since this project really is the feather in Image's cap for what looks to be a downright astounding 2012, likely the best collection of true creator-owned talent since the early days of Dark Horse (Paul Chadwick, John Byrne, Frank Miller and Mike Mignola). While Image Comics was a creator-owned powerhouse in the early 1990s, the initial founders' studios eventually became overshadowed by Image Central, which is the portion of the company that publishes the purely creator-owned material outside of studio imprints like Jim Valentino's Shadowline or Marc Silvestri's Top Cow. It has long been a stepping stone for new creators making their way into the big leagues or a preferred outlet for a few established creators, with many popular DC and Marvel writers taking their creator-owned works to Vertigo, WildStorm, Icon or other imprints of the Big Two.

But even before the announcement of Happy!, that scenario had begun to change. And thanks to an incredibly strong 2012 roster that includes both new faces like Morrison and a host of other talents, Image is now unquestionably not just a place for up-and-coming talent, but a prime publisher for veteran comics talent with existing, loyal fanbases.In 2012, Image has or will have major new series coming from creative teams like Ed Brubaker & Sean Phillips, Kieron Gillen & Jamie McKelvie, Mark Millar & Frank Quitely, Nick Spencer & Riley Rossmo, Brian K. Vaughan & Fiona Staples (with another BKV book coming by Marcos Martin) and Jonathan Hickman & Nick Pitarra (with another Hickman book coming by Ryan Bodenheim). This is on top of existing creator-owned successes like Spencer and Joe Eisma's Morning Glories and Robert Kirkman & Charlie Adlard's The Walking Dead and Kirkman & Ryan Ottley's Invincible. Last year they published Severed, a series co-written by DC Comics wunderkind Scott Snyder (Batman, American Vampire).

On its 2012 release roll, Image has one of the major architects of the modern DC Universe in Grant Morrison and two of the official, company-minted Architects of the Marvel Universe in Brubaker and Hickman. Given their status at Marvel, it seems likely that they could have taken Fatale and Manhattan Projects to that company's in-house creator-owned label Icon if they wanted (indeed, Icon publisher's Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Criminal), but they went with Image. For his part, Morrison describes his new work at Image (which will apparently extend beyond Happy!) as "rawer" and "more unrestrained" than even his Vertigo work.

As for why these creators have come to Image all of a sudden, I can only speculate, but the smart money is on, well, money. And control. If you do a creator-owned book for Image, you don't write a participation contract with DC/Vertigo, you own it outright, including all the media rights. There's supposedly a similar philosophy in place at Marvel's Icon, but so few creators (the writer list caps out at Bendis, Mack, Straczynski, Brubaker, Fraction and Millar) have published work through the imprint, and the barrier to entry ("become a successful work-for-hire creator for Marvel") is so high that the details of that publishing agreement are pretty much 33rd-degree Masonic rites. Still, there must be something more attractive about Image if Brubaker specifically took his his latest collaboration with Sean Phillips from Icon.

Equally interesting, though, is not just that Image was attractive enough to draw Grant Morrison, but that that Grant Morrison was even open to the idea of leaving DC in the first place. His remarks in recent months have cast him in the persona of something of a DC company man, and other than his screenwriting work there was no indication that he was planning on writing for anyone other than DC at any time in the near future. He's been completely exclusive with the company since 2004 with regards to comics, producing a whole mess of DC Universe books as well as the first two segments in the Seaguy trilogy, We3, Vimanarama! and Joe the Barbarian for Vertigo. Other than Seaguy: The Slaves of Mickey Eye and JtB, all of his Vertigo creator-owned work came out in the first year of his exclusive with the company. I suspect he's either been completely devoted to Superman and Batman for the past few years, or he's been holding back what's usually a font of creative energy that will be unleashed at Image.

Additionally, I wonder if this will bring changes to Morrison's public image. He got a lot of crap from the Internet last year -- somewhat justifiably so -- for his alleged whitewashing of the history of Superman co-creators Joe Siegel & Jerry Shuster as "well, they signed a contract." I wonder if that vision will change as Morrison finds himself more enmeshed in truly creator-owned comics. All of Morrison's creator-owned projects up until now have been published by Vertigo (excepting "St. Swithin's Day" and a few other curios from the '80s and early '90s), so this is the writer's first foray into true creator-owned comics, at least in this era.

Nobody yet knows what Happy! is about, who it stars, how many issues it is, or when it's coming out (other than "2012"), but it's a monumental piece of news because Morrison is one of the genuine heavyweights of the last 30 years of comics possibly going all-in with Image Comics on his creator-owned projects.

Where both Image and Morrison go from here, I can't wait to find out.

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Scott McDaniel Speaks Out On The 'Static Shock' Creative Meltdown

David Uzumeri — 2012-02-08T16:15:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, News

Static Shock co-writer John Rozum spoke out recently about what he said was "really going on behind the scenes" of the cancelled DC Comics title, which besides being one of the first New 52 series to be discontinued was also one of the very few superhero comics starring an African American hero in the leading role and. Fans were disappointed not just by the loss of a spotlight for the beloved character, created by Dwayne McDuffie and John Paul Leon, but by the overall quality of the book as well. Made in response to these criticisms, Rozum's remarks painted an unfavorable portrait of both his co-writer and artist Scott McDaniel and the book's editor, Harvey Richards, laying blame at their feet for the breakdown of the book. Yesterday, McDaniel responded with his own incredibly in-depth account of what went wrong with Static Shock.We took a look at Rozum's side of the story last month, when the writer put forth the story of a flighty editor and an overzealous artist who usurped his own place as the primary storyteller and drove him off of the title. Rozum claimed that the poor quality of Static Shock ultimately hurt his professional reputation. Key accusations included that McDaniel had questioned Rozum's years of writing experience by quoting from Robert McKee's popular Story: Substance, Structure, Style and the Principles of Screenwriting, that decisions on the book were made without him, and generally that Richards and McDaniel mortally wounded what he could have made a successful book by smothering it with their own vision.

McDaniel's response paints a different picture, that of a book that was in dire straits from the start, long before he became involved in any kind of plotting capacity. After reading a Comic Book Resources poll which indicated Static Shock was doomed to commercial failure right out of the gate, McDaniel -- a self-professed "math and numbers nerd" -- shared an analysis with the rest of the creative team that resulted in a specific direction for the book:

I'm sure Harvey actually had better data than I did (I only had Diamond Estimates, and no clue to the level of digital comics sales). Harvey was just as concerned as I was, so I assumed the Diamond Sales Estimate was pretty close to the ACTUAL sales (at least for STATIC SHOCK).

To me and Harvey, the best chance for STATIC's survival was to plan big, exciting stories. Create solid story that QUICKLY grew to important and dramatic climaxes for Virgil and Static. There was no time to play it safe, or to do slow-burn stories. Time was our enemy. We needed something nearly geologic to upset the repeat of history in order to keep the book alive.

John dismissed this information, and our strategy, entirely. In his opinion, Harvey and I were too concerned with sales and gimmicks and not legitimate story.

This part of McDaniel's account would appear to jibe with that of Rozum, who said, "There was more concern about seeing that the title sold and didn't get cancelled than there was in telling good stories." Rozum specifically criticized shocking (no pun intended) plot twists like Static's sister being cloned and the hero's arm getting cut off, and felt that McDaniel and Richards' interference was killing the quality of the story and thus the sales.

In turn, McDaniel characterized Rozum's focus on story as an active unwillingness to assist Static Shock in maintaining enough sales momentum to actually continue. In his remarks, Rozum suggested Animal Man was a success simply by letting a talented creative team do what they do best, a charge McDaniel attempted to repudiate with, well, graphs, bringing Rozum's own critically-acclaimed but low-selling title Xombi into the argument as well:

If you started ANIMAL MAN at the same #1 level as the six cancelled series (imagine grabbing that red line and dragging it downward until it overlaps the 6 titles at issue #1), IT TOO WOULD BE FACING CANCELLATION at this time. John, your argument fails.

The difference: ANIMAL MAN had larger fan support. ANIMAL MAN debuted clearly higher than all the cancelled books. It'll survive the historical cooling pattern. Fans of ANIMAL MAN, REJOICE!

Second, for all the "turd" bashing, STATIC SHOCK is performing exactly as the other titles are performing. In fact, the STATIC SHOCK line is on the graph - it's just perfectly buried under another data line! ALL are cooling historically. They just didn't debut high enough to survive. None had enough fan support.

I know John is very proud of his work on XOMBI. That's great. He's never expressed any indication that he suffered editorial interference on Xombi, so that's out of the equation. So why didn't Xombi soar?

Xombi was cancelled because of low fan support. You can see it on the graph, way down at the bottom! That's not an indictment of the quality of the XOMBI creative material - it's simply a matter of not enough fan support.

Just like STATIC and the other cancelled titles.

McDaniel also repudiated Rozum's assertion that he quoted McKee's Story at him -- it was actually Syd Field's Screenplay. The passage in question was, McDaniel said, to inform Rozum that a writer should always know his ending, something Rozum claimed he didn't in the case of the first Static Shock arc. It should be noted that opinions differ on this technique. Famously, Stephen King did pretty well for himself flying by the seat of his pants, and the Rozum/McDaniel feud may have inspired Eisner-winning comics writer Ed Brubaker to opine this morning, "Lot of great writers don't know their ending before they get there. Dennis Lehane, for example, doesn't outline. There are no rules." But secure in his own writing philosophy, McDaniel pushed on:

Again, I asked [Rozum] to simply state what he planned to do with Static. Just describe what challenge he'll face, or what he'll learn. How he'll grow.

John replied that he didn't know yet. He hadn't yet written that part of #6.

Frankly, I was stunned. And boy, I felt those old familiar urges returning hard and fast. [It is unclear what urges McDaniel is referring to] John was the writer in charge, and he couldn't say where he was going with the title character.

I asked him how he could possibly write issue #4 without knowing where he was going in #6.

He replied it wasn't necessary to know that yet.

Crom and Mitra! I think steam literally shot out of my ears. This guy was steering the boat, and I feared he didn't have a clue where he was going with the lead character.

The defining moment that soured things permanently for McDaniel was when he suggested a way to merge Static's school and work lives, an idea that Rozum laughed at on a conference call:

I suggested to John and Harvey that we make the "Dwayne G. McDuffie Center for Science and Mathematics" a charter school, entirely funded and staffed by S.T.A.R. Labs employees, as a way to give back to the community, bringing excellence in math and science to the urban inner city community of Harlem. It was great - we could bring the S.T.A.R. Labs to Virgil, and keep Virgil surrounded by a fun, youthful supporting cast.

This is important, and it rings like a bell in my memory: John literally laughed out loud at this idea, and muttered something like "that's ridiculous" as he laughed.

This isn't meant to be boastful, but I thought this was a brilliant idea. It hooks all these various elements together in a fun way: the Labs, the tech, the teen supporting cast. And John literally laughed in my face.

The overall portrait that emerges when you compare both Rozum and McDaniel's accounts is, frankly, a pretty sad one: a writer, an artist and an editor all tried to make a book succeed, they had creative differences, things got ugly, and now the Static Shock's enduring legacy ten years from now will be "oh yeah, that New 52 book that had the creative meltdown." It sounds like Richards and Rozum had massive creative differences about the book's direction before McDaniel even entered the equation, and McDaniel's sensibilities simply lined up more with Richards's as to how the book should be executed. Would this situation have turned out differently if McDaniel hadn't been invited to help out with the plotting? I have no idea.

We can only present cross-sections of McDaniel's post, since the entire document is over 15,000 words, but if you have further interest in more details of the behind-the-scenes of Static Shock, I recommend reading Rozum and McDaniel's accounts and making up your own mind. It's a sad eulogy for a book, and an unfortunate shroud over incoming writer Marc Bernardin, especially considering he's doomed to only get two issues before the book concludes with April's issue #8.

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'Watchmen' Prequel Announced by DC Comics: 'Before Watchmen' [Updated Art]

David Uzumeri — 2012-02-01T12:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, News

This morning, DC Comics announced its long-rumored new Watchmen project, a prequel titled Before Watchmen that expands on the characters and world of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's seminal 1986 comic book, which was adapted into a 2009 movie. Featuring a variety of top-tier writers and artists across the comics industry, it will expand on the history of the world of Watchmen and of many of the book's most popular characters.

Seven miniseries have been announced on DC's Source blog:

RORSCHACH (4 issues) - Writer: Brian Azzarello. Artist: Lee Bermejo
MINUTEMEN (6 issues) - Writer/Artist: Darwyn Cooke
COMEDIAN (6 issues) - Writer: Brian Azzarello. Artist: J.G. Jones
DR. MANHATTAN (4 issues) - Writer: J. Michael Straczynski. Artist: Adam Hughes
NITE OWL (4 issues) - Writer: J. Michael Straczynski. Artists: Andy and Joe Kubert
OZYMANDIAS (6 issues) - Writer: Len Wein. Artist: Jae Lee
SILK SPECTRE (4 issues) - Writer: Darwyn Cooke. Artist: Amanda Conner

More information and updated cover art follows.

The list of talent is packed with names of some of DC's most popular and talented creators, and original Watchmen editor Len Wein will not only be writing Ozymandias, but also "Curse of the Crimson Corsair," a pirate tale that will be illustrated by Watchmen colorist and appear as a two-page backup across the various Before Watchmen titles.

With the exceptions of Wein and Higgins, none of the creators involved in this initiative were involved in the original production of Watchmen. This announcement does clear up where quite a few popular creators, such as Jae Lee, J.G. Jones and Amanda Conner, have been working for the past year or so since ending other projects.

The publishing event will be capped off with Before Watchmen: Epilogue, a single issue by multiple writers and artists that will presumably bridge the gap from the prequel to the original series.

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'Winter Soldier' #1 Deploys Marvel's Super Spies In Super Style [Spoiler-Free Review]

David Uzumeri — 2012-01-31T10:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Reviews, Opinion

In 2004, writer Ed Brubaker began a run on Marvel's Captain America (that continues to this day) with a 13-issue epic reintroducing the long-dead Bucky Barnes, former partner of Captain America, as the Winter Soldier, a brainwashed Soviet agent brought in and out of stasis all throughout the Cold War to participate in all forms of assassination, espionage and other skullduggery. Following his own brief career as the Sentinel of Liberty, Bucky is back in his Winter Soldier guise with an aim to atone for all the nasty things he did during his days as a Soviet assassin. On sale this week, Winter Soldier #1 features the work of Brubaker and artists Butch Guice and Bettie Breitweiser, and you can read what we thought of it after the cut.When Steve Rogers died in the aftermath of Civil War, Bucky took up the shield and flag from 2007 to 2011, until he perished at the hands of the Red Skull in last summer's Fear Itself event. Of course, that didn't last very long, and a few short weeks after the book's conclusion came Fear Itself #7.1 by Ed Brubaker and Butch Guice, which revealed that Bucky requested to appear dead in the eyes of the world. He was secretly resuscitated before going back on the road with his girlfriend Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow, in the interest of finding a bunch of dirty commies and shooting them all in the face for liberty.

That brings us to this week's Winter Soldier #1. If you're one of the many fans who've been following Ed Brubaker's Bucky Barnes saga for the past seven years, then you're unlikely to be disappointed in the story. Brubaker continues to write Bucky and Natasha as the Nick and Nora Charles of nerve-pinching-you-into-paralysis-before-blowing-up-your-house, and it's definitely going to be fun to see Bucky mix it up as himself, as opposed to as Cap, with the Marvel Universe at large.

This first issue of Winter Soldier invokes the familiar Marvel Universe-inflected super-espionage that's made up the vast majority of Brubaker's very good-to-excellent work with the character, but what's completely new and different in this first issue is the artwork.

Butch Guice and Bettie Breitweiser have been working with Ed Brubaker on Captain America for a while, but this is a dramatic step up for them both. The best description I can come up with for the art in this series is that it's like watching ghosts of smoke act a scene behind a cracked windowpane in the rain. For all of Guice's shadows and blacks, Breitweiser enhances every panel of the book with an otherworldly hue, creating paranoid scenes that look and feel pallid and grim -- and that's just the present-day sequences. Haunting images of the past are just that, distorted, monochromatic, and bleeding together in pale blues and spot reds. It's the long winter of Bucky's memory between 1945 and 2005.

Guice's linework is excellent too, and he's clearly developed a full partnership with Breitweiser, creating a world photorealistic enough to be recognizable but also skewed and distorted through funhouse-mirror perspectives, jagged panel layouts, dream sequences, computer screens and HUDs so that it feels like trying to play Metal Gear Solid on a TV screen that's frosted over, while somehow remaining completely clear. This an absolutely beautiful comic.

Winter Soldier #1, by Ed Brubaker, Butch Guice and Bettie Breitweiser, is in stores and comiXology this Wednesday from Marvel Comics.

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Batman Incorporated #7-8: The Wild West and Digital Frontier [Annotations]

David Uzumeri — 2012-01-23T16:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Annotations

After a long hiatus, we're back with more detailed annotations of Grant Morrison's epic Batman Incorporated! In this installment, we'll take a look at #7 and #8, the former a Western adventure featuring Chief Man-of-Bats and Raven Red, and the later a high-tech videogame-inspired digital romp featuring Oracle.

Batman Incorporated #7 (Grant Morrison & Chris Burnham): "Medicine Soldiers"

Page 1: Man-of-Bats and Raven Red are wandering around distributing medicine and checking on people in their community. The activist guy in the Superman shirt -- I'm not sure if that detail is from the script or was thrown in by Burnham, but given he rescues Man-of-Bats near the end of the issue, it's tempting to see him as the other half of a kind of Reservation's Finest. Man-of-Bats stated he was Sioux in his first appearance back in Batman #86; that area today would be related to the Republic of Lakota and Russell Means (whose activism might have been a bit of an inspiration for this story).

Page 2: We last saw Man-of-Bats and Raven Red for a few pages in Batman #681, when they came with the rest of the Club of Heroes to help bail out Robin from the Black Glove and the Club of Villains, back at the end of "R.I.P." Their only other appearance in the run previous to that was in the Black Glove arc on Mayhew's island in #667-669.

Page 3: After kicking down the door to Lucy's derelict house, they find she's overdosed on heroin and left a suicide note as well as her son (watching Go Go Gophers). Morrison's going out of his way to develop Man-of-Bats as a more populist hero than Batman, and certainly far more actively community-minded. The fact that his identity isn't secret probably helps with that -- although, as we'll see, that has other consequences.

Page 4: Here, we're introduced to Man-of-Bats's alter ego, Doctor Bill Great Eagle. He was simply "Great Eagle" in his original appearance back in #86, with Raven Red being "Little Eagle"; this has apparently been retconned to a last name for authenticity. This fits with his established characterization as a doctor, including when he surgically removed the bomb from the Knight in Batman #669; back in #667, his son chided him for his behavior when drinking, so it's interesting he'd be protesting against the liquor trade. The new head of the hospital is making vague threats at Bill Great Eagle, and it's likely he, like the cop later, is an agent of Leviathan.

Page 5: Man-of-Bats and Raven Red hit up the local casino so Man-of-Bats can yell at Sam Black Elk, the son of the original Black Elk who Man-of-Bats and Batman teamed up to fight way back in #86.

Page 6: Where did Sam Black Elk come home from? Most likely, a Leviathan training and indoctrination camp. Man-of-Bats picks a fight, presumably to make a point to his son.

Page 7: Not much to annotate here, but for the sake of completeness, Man-of-Bats punches Black Elk out and Raven Red gets the hell out of Dodge.

Page 8: Man-of-Bats finds the Leviathan mind control wavers on Black Elk's body and thinks they're standard drugs, while the cops come in.

Page 9: I can't help but feel that there's a certain significance to Leviathan's mind control wafers tasting like spearmint. Their indoctrination is candy-coated, likely as yet another middle finger to Batman, but we'll get to that when we reach the big villain reveal.

Page 10: Raven Red arrives back at the Bat's Cave -- where, in a great detail, Man-of-Bats is selling tours raise money for his people -- and declares his intention to quit to nobody in particular...

Page 11: ...except Batman is watching. Burnham's depiction of the Bat's Cave as a budget Batcave is really well-done, especially the wooden nickel in the place of Batman's giant penny. The ghost shirt is an actual Lakota legend; it doesn't seem to have played any part in any previous Batman stories. Back in 1998, the Lakota actually did retrieve a ghost shirt from a museum in Scotland; with Morrison living in the area at the time, it's likely this is where he got the idea.

Page 12: The new cop who replaced Man-of-Bats's friend Joe Standing Horse is revealed to be a Leviathan agent; we also discover that at some point, Black Elk discovered and publicly revealed Bill Great Eagle's identity. It's worth noting that back in Batman #86, Black Elk's general plan was to wound Bill in the shoulder and then see if Man-of-Bats had a wounded shoulder as well to prove his identity. To foil Black Elk's trap, Batman and Robin dressed up in redface (no, really) and pretended to be Man-of-Bats and the then-Little Raven, who's apparently been aging slower than Dick Grayson.

Page 13: Sam Black Elk goes absolutely crazy, stabbing Man-of-Bats in the stomach and being a hypeman for Leviathan. "Everywhere the standard of the bat rises, it will be chopped down" will be used, with various variants, quite a few times in the series coming up; it definitely seems to be a central tenet of Leviathan's programming.

Pages 14-18: The car stops and they bring out Man-of-Bats, who's holding Black Elk hostage. He vows to put them all in full-body casts before going down, but is saved by Batman and Raven, who gallop in on horseback. Man-of-Bats dives in front of a bullet to save his son, who also gets shot while tending to his father, except he's still wearing the bulletproof ghost shirt, which turns out to actually be bulletproof. Sam Black Elk is then taken out by a mob of townspeople -- led by the guy in the Superman shirt -- who come to Bill's aid.

We get a lot more insight into Man-of-Bats's past in this scene after he's shot, as well -- he was apparently in Iraq, which would explain how he got his training (and also really confuses the timeline since he was a member of the Club of Heroes with the original Knight, who we saw in the Falklands, but who cares?).

Finally, one last comment about the relationship between Bill and Charlie. Given Morrison's own father's activism and the way it affected his home life (as explored fairly thoroughly in Supergods), it's difficult to ignore the idea that those experiences were a major influence on the way Morrison wrote the relationship between these two characters -- one which, in the end, is still very loving, and ends in reconciliation.

Pages 19-20: Bill is saved with a blood transfusion from his son, who then chitchats with Batman about the encroaching Leviathan infiltration of the area. Batman reveals that the wafers from earlier were a Leviathan mind control agent, which is the first time we've discovered that Leviathan's mind control is chemical as well as psychological.

Batman Incorporated #8 (Grant Morrison & Scott Clark): "Nightmares in Numberland"

Wish me luck. And I'm going to try to forget I have a computer science degree.

Page 1: On this first page we're introduced to Bruce Wayne's Internet 3.0, which we first saw teased way back in the Batman: The Return oneshot. Internet 3.0, it turns out, is just Second Life mixed with a virtual reality component. I have no idea how they got there, or how. We don't see anyone wearing a headset or anything. We know Batman constructed it, and he shows off how real it all is, but why he made it? No idea.

Page 2: The virtual meeting is attacked by a SWAT team of computer virus zombies, and I've got to tell you, if I had a nickel for every time that happened on GoToMeeting...

Page 3: Technically, Internet 3.0 access wouldn't come with antiviral software "installed"; the antiviral software would actually live in Internet 3.0. Especially when that antivirus software is one person...

Page 4: Barbara Gordon, Oracle, in her last ride.

Pages 5-7: Oracle and Batman beat up some computer worm zombies, who claim to be made up of "dead numbers." Bruce is noticeably distracted, and unlike Oracle, he isn't able to maintain multiple avatars at once. The fact that the worms are reciting bits from Chun Wei's deleted poems would imply that they're made up of deleted data, the necrotic tissue of the Internet, which fits the zombie look.

Page 8: Bruce and Oracle touch base on the nature of the enemy, and the fact that one of the investors must have purposely brought the virus through Oracle's firewall. She teases Batgirl's upcoming adventure at the finishing school, as well as notes the recurring themes of mazes, nets and webs, all of which point back to the sinister mastermind Doctor Dedalus, a.k.a. Otto Netz, and his daughter Kathy Webb/Kane.

Pages 9-13: The investors run down the hallway and run into the virus's mutation engine, which replaces the host program's code with its own. Batman attacks it while Dr. Solomon runs away due to his claustrophobia and asthma -- or attempts to. He falls into an elevator shaft, and Batman respawns to catch him, apparently curing him of both of his ailments.

Pages 14-15: At this point the mutation engine decides to modify the code of the users' avatars, meting out ironic punishments Spectre-style by transforming Belle Bourgeois into a bitch (literally, a dog) whom Mr. Velocet immedialy falls in love with, and Chun Wei into a macroencephelactic. Wei comes up with the idea that the virus is actually the old Internet fighting back against its successor, which is the closest this issue comes to lining up with the theme of warring parents and children that's made up the vast bulk of Incorporated.

Page 16: The trojan horse who brought the virus into the network is revealed to be Mr. Tanaka, who made his fortune with a videogame called "Judgment in Hell City 666."

Pages 17-18: Everything goes straight-up Tron as everyone gets power armor and zombies attack and they have to make it to the roof of the building and then they do and somehow this lets Oracle quarantine the virus. Also, Tanaka's basically revealed to be a Leviathan agent, paraphrasing Sam Black Elk with "wherever the standard of the bat rises, it will be torn down."

Page 19: Here we get the big reveal: Oracle's found out that Leviathan started out in Mtamba, the same country Batwing was investigating. Here, though, we find out that Mtamba was actually the name of Jezebel Jet's home country -- a fact which was not mentioned at all in any issue previous to this in Morrison's run. At this point, Batman and Oracle believe she's behind Leviathan, although we know better from future issues.

Page 20: And all's well that ends well with the investors, who apparently had a great time nearly funding an international terrorist organizaton.

Buy Batman Inc #7 and 8 online or at your local comic shop.

Links to my other annotations:
- Batman: The Return; Batman, Inc. #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6
- Return of Bruce Wayne #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6; Batman #700, #701, #702; Batman and Robin #14, #15, #16
- original Batman run and previous issues of Batman and Robin

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'The Shade' Takes Darwyn Cooke & J. Bone to Times Past [Preview]

David Uzumeri — 2012-01-10T15:30:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Previews

Spinning off from Starman, the James Robinson and Tony Harris' DC Comics magnum opus of the 1990s, The Shade is a twelve-issue miniseries that revisits figures from the titular immortal's past in a globe-spanning adventure that seeks to resolve a conspiracy to murder the former villain. The book's present-day action is depicted in three main arcs: the first one, issues #1-3, just finished up with artwork by Cully Hamner; Javier Pulido is drawing issues #5-7, and Frazer Irving issues #9-11. After each arc is a "Times Past" issue, a la Starman, set progressively further back in time, culminating in the final issue which will feature artwork by Gene Ha and finally depict the long-teased origin of the Shade.

On sale this week is the first of those Times Past issues, set in 1944 and illustrated by the incredible team of Darwyn Cooke and J. Bone. Formerly of The Spirit, nobody can do period adventure like these two artists, and you can check out a preview of their work after the cut.We're not the only ones excited to see Cooke and Bone's interpretation of Robinson's signature anti-hero. Naturally, the writer himself is a big fan of their work on the book, as he told DC's The Source blog:

"It's a thrill to work with Darwyn and J. Bone on the first 'Times Past' single-issue story within the overall 12-issue Shade series," James Robinson exclusively told THE SOURCE. "After the wonderful work done by Cully Hamner, it's exciting to see another interpretation of DC's Master of Shadows, with Darwyn and J. Bone bringing their own unique vision to one of the Shade's 1940s adventures. I'm also thrilled by the final piece of this visual puzzle, this being the color by Dave Stewart who's brought a subdued yet sublime palette to the tale. I hope everyone enjoys this adventure of saboteurs and mystery men where we learn a little more about the Shade's mysterious past."

Contrary to previous rumors of cancelation, The Shade editor Wil Moss confirmed via Twitter today that the series will finish, and that continuity cops need not worry themselves about the New 52, as the mini is meant to fit in with Starman above all else.

Three issues of The Shade have been released so far, and all have been heavily enjoyable, especially for fans of Starman. It doesn't look like issue #4 is going to disappoint, especially with the gorgeous artwork of Darwyn Cooke, J. Bone and colorist Dave Stewart and of course cover artist Tony Harris. Indeed, every artist announced for this series is a powerhouse talent, and with DC apparently committed to seeing The Shade's full twelve-issue run through, the story is likely to make an absolutely gorgeous collected edition.

But why wait? The Shade is a compelling read it even in single issues, and issue #4 will be available on comiXology and in finer comics stores tomorrow.

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Tyranny of the Ochlocracy: Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato's 'Flash'

David Uzumeri — 2012-01-03T17:30:00+00:00

Filed under: DC

Prior to the launch of DC's New 52, if you asked basically anyone what the most visually inventive book of the relaunch would be, they'd answer J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman's very good Batwoman. After Williams's virtuosic work on Batwoman: Elegy with Greg Rucka -- not to mention the rest of his career! -- it'd be a natural conclusion to draw. And somehow, it turned out to be the wrong one. Artist/co-writer Francis Manapul and colorist/co-writer Brian Buccellato trumped it in spades on the relaunch of The Flash, with a level of imagination that only increased from issue to issue.The first hint of this came when DC began promoting the first issue's title page the promotional rounds, an absolutely gorgeous piece of work that integrated the design sense of the logo into not only the artwork but the actual storytelling. Manapul drew Barry Allen disarming an army of mysterious sci-fi marines in a breathtaking clockwise sequence that was immediately readable despite its complexity, guiding the eye in a circle across a sequence where the Flash basically hands all of these dudes their butts in a series of small panels within the letters of his own name.

Then it kept getting better.

As impressive as that title page is -- and Manapul continually ups the ante with each issue on that regard, merging design and storytelling with a flair I haven't seen in mainstream comics since, well, J.H. Williams III -- it is eclipsed by his work in the second issue. Barry Allen's scientist friend, Dr. Darwin Elias, teaches him how to use his mind as well as his body to tap into the Speed Force. Manapul uses a series of branching panels, almost like a flowchart (but not quite), to portray how Allen's mind is working as quickly as his body, examining his surroundings and formulating courses of action -- and then acting on them -- in a split-second, as Barry sets off a chain of events that saves a man's life, stops a robbery, and nets him a free apple within the time it takes for a single neural synapse to fire.

We're also introduced to the first arc's villain, Mob Rule, a collective of clones who all share a telepathic link, as well as a rapidly-approaching expiration date. Logistically, this is an almost perfect enemy for the Flash: the fastest man alive versus the man who can be everywhere at once. The fact that Barry Allen learns how to think fast while fighting this villain is no coincidence; since his villain can coordinate at the speed of thought to use his omnipresence, Allen has to learn to think as fast as he can run to have a hope in hell of keeping up, never mind foiling them.

This culminates in the end of the third issue, as Allen attempts to use his hypercognition in a situation with so much stimuli that he's unable to distinguish between what he's predicting and what's already occurred. His neural pathways become so congested that he ends up getting shot, and at the beginning of the fourth issue, we're shown that what saves him is instinct -- shutting down the hypercognition and just reacting rather than attempting to predict anything. Thinking fast nearly killed him.

What makes this occurrence so impressive on a narrative level is how thematically tied it is with the rest of the story. As much adulation as I've thrown on Manapul's art, he and Buccellato's script is incredibly impressive as well, especially for two rookie writers. As much as I heaped scorn on DC's decision to give so many artists writing gigs with the New 52, the entire experiment was worth it for this result.

In the very first scene of the very first issue, Barry Allen and his now-girlfriend (and coworker) Patty Spivot are attending a tech symposium where Allen (and his alter-ego the Flash) meet Elias for the first time and Elias describes the Law of Congestion, which states that the more roads you add, the worse traffic will get. (It's more than likely that Manapul was inspired in this regard by recent developments regarding the ongoing war between streetcars and automobiles in the city of Toronto, our shared hometown.) While a seemingly throwaway line, it's actually a perfect metaphor for what Barry Allen is discovering with his new augmented cognition: while sometimes useful, if he overuses it and tries to take in too much -- as he does when Mob Rule attempts to shoot him at the end of #3 -- he ends up with a bullet passing through his head.

The only thing that saves him is, at the last second, tearing down the mental highways (much like the highway in Seoul that Elias references, the destruction of which greatly reduced traffic congestion) and acting on instinct, moving fast enough so that the bullet grazes him rather than passing through his brain. Less highways reduced congestion, just as Elias predicted, except it took place in the metropolis of Barry Allen's mind rather than the physical world.

This is not bush league superhero comics writing, and it's perfectly married to -- indeed, inseparable from, a Siamese twin -- the art and coloring of Manapul and Buccellato. This isn't even touching on Barry Allen's newly-introduced college friend Manuel Lago, the genetic template and "father" of Mob Rule, who never stopped running from trouble in any form and whose self-denial almost leads to Barry's death, as he can't imagine his own clones capable of hurting his best friend. Or Allen's relationship with Patty Spivot, and his continual obliviousness to Iris West's increasingly-more-obvious attempts at courtship. Or Buccellato's gorgeous colors, which perfectly complement Manapul's artwork and are just as integrated into the narrative process as the panel layout.

What Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato have managed to create with Flash is not simply the best comic of the New 52, but one of the best superhero comics of the year, an absolutely mind-blowing debut for new writing talents, and the best Flash story since Grant Morrison, Mark Millar and Paul Ryan made me cry as Wally West tapped the power of the entire human race to beat a Sonic the Hedgehog analogue (and also his childhood imaginary friend) for the fate of the Earth in the brilliant "The Human Race."

I can't wait to see where they go next.

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All Killer, No Filler in Gigantic 96-Page 'Fantastic Four' #600 [Review]

David Uzumeri — 2011-11-25T14:30:00+00:00

Filed under: Marvel, Opinion

This week saw the release of Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting's Fantastic Four #600, celebrating not only six hundred issues of the seminal title but also more than fifty years since the book's debut. Hickman's run on Fantastic Four has been a definite highlight of the past few years of superhero comics, embracing the cosmic scope and incorporating elements of almost every era of Fantastic Four history: Stan Lee & Jack Kirby, John Byrne, Walt Simonson, Mark Waid & Mike Wieringo, even the extended Tom DeFalco run.

The 96-page anniversary issue not only progresses a large number of Hickman's ongoing storylines, it also adds a number of new wrinkles, catches the new or returning reader up on the saga so far, looks gorgeous, and is somehow still a bargain at the whopping retail price of eight dollars for a single issue of a comic book.The first story in the issue, the first part of the arc "Forever," is by the regular Fantastic Four team of Jonathan Hickman and Steve Epting, and continues the story that's been building not since the very beginning of Hickman's run with enough recap to catch up new readers but not so much as to halt narrative momentum. The Earth is under attack by both the Kree and the Inhumans, both of whom seem to be being manipulated by a new Supreme Intelligence of the Kree race. Meanwhile Nathaniel Richards, Victor Von Doom and the one remaining Reed Richards of the Council petition Kristoff, Doom's adopted son and the current ruler of Latervia, for aid.

While all of these plot machinations move forward in the main story, the issue itself centers around a last-page reveal that sparks the story of the first "backup" tale -- actually the longest story in the issue. Beautifully drawn by Carmine di Giandomenico, it's a fairly classic and rote escaping-gladiator story, but Hickman infuses it with enough novelty and creepiness that it's incredibly entertaining while also enhancing the thematic underpinnings of his larger run. I'm tempted to say this story is, in fact, the highlight of Hickman's work on the book and characters so far.

The final three stories are also excellent. "Black Queen," drawn by Ming Doyle, expands on a sequence from earlier in the run, where Medusa joined up with her husband Black Bolt's prophecied universal wives without much of a complaint, which seemed somewhat out of character at the time; here, we see the psychic conversation between Medusa and Black Bolt that lead up to her decision Doyle's art is very well-suited for this sequence, combining Jae Lee's iconic take on the characters with a little bit of Ditkoesque weirdness.

The fourth story in the issue, "The Arc," features art by Leinil Francis Yu, and ties in with recent events in Matt Fraction's The Mighty Thor to reintroduce Galactus. It is, as one would expect, gorgeously drawn. Perhaps the most visually interesting sequence in the issue, though, is the final story "Remember," with art by Farel Dalrymple and Lovern Kindzierski. Hickman and editor Tom Brevoort go so far as to allow Dalrymple to letter the story himself, which combined with Dalrymple's rougher, less polished, more expressive "indie" style marks it in sharp contrast to the rest of the book, or the rest of Big Two superhero comics for that matter. It's a lighthearted but ominous Franklin and Leech story that, like all the other stories in this issue, picks up plot points from earlier in Hickman's run and points towards their futures in upcoming issues of Fantastic Four and FF.

There are 96 pages of story in this issue, and whether you're new to Hickman's run on the characters or have been reading since the very beginning, they're all satisfying. This is a textbook anniversary issue, chock full of brand-new content and all controlled by a single authorial intent that makes every page essential reading. All killer, no filler. The eight-dollar price tag might be a bit off-putting, but the math backs it up: $2.99 / 20 is way more than $7.99 / 96, and a digital version is available here. Both in quality and quantity, Fantastic Four #600 is the real deal.

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The Geoff Johns Literalism Method: A Primer

David Uzumeri — 2011-11-17T15:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Opinion

Geoff Johns is quite possibly the single most successful superhero comics writer in the business today, with an almost alchemical ability to transform any struggling franchise or character into a top-tier title ripe for spinoffs and multimedia exploitation. It's a feat the writer performed not only with Green Lantern, but also with DC Comics' The Flash and Justice Society of America. The "New Geoff Johns #1 Issue" is a market force to be reckoned with, and this past September he began to do it again with the New 52's Justice League and Aquaman.

What is it that Geoff Johns does so well when it comes to revitalizing characters? It's very simple: reduce the character or team into a single core idea and rebuild every aspect of the mythology around that idea. I've termed this "Johnsian Literalism," and it's an approach that's becoming more widely used.A character's location, family, friends and villains should all reflect or refract an aspect of that core idea -- a crystalline, fractal concept that extends itself into every narrative tendril of every story. In order to see how Johnsian Literalism has been applied throughout the course of Johns's work, let's examine how it has functioned his most successful franchises and speculate about the formative influences that helped him develop this distinctive approach.

Green Lantern (2004): Overcoming Fear

Johns's run on Green Lantern centers around a single, overwhelming concept: manifestations of willpower. For years previous, the Green Lanterns had been known for not having fear, but Johns's run reframed the concept around very specific theme of overcoming fear. In his inaugural storyline, Green Lantern: Rebirth, Johns explained that tarnished hero Hal Jordan's bout with megalomania as chronicled a decade earlier in Green Lantern: Emerald Twilight and Zero Hour: Crisis in Time -- stories in which Jordan murdered the entire Green Lantern Corps and sought to rewrite history as he saw fit -- was actually the result of possession by an ancient fear parasite. Called Parallax, the creature was imprisoned in the Green Lanterns' Central Power Battery, which also explained the GL power rings' ineffectiveness with the color yellow (a limitation that was lifted, naturally, when the fear monster was excised from the battery).

This distinction between denying fear and overcoming it was central to the first 25 issues of Johns's GL series. All of his villains suffered from or were themselves manifestations of fear. Hal's hometown, Coast City, was consumed with fear in the aftermath of an apocalyptic attack by genocidal aliens in the '90s. Hal had a fearful brother with children whom he'd raised to be afraid of the world. The monster Parallax, itself the living embodiment of fear, conspired with longtime villain Sinestro -- repositioned in Johns' run as a kind of Space Osama Bin Laden -- to assemble a corps of space terrorists, who of course use fear as their primary weapon, to screw with Hal Jordan and his space cop friends. The villains fed off of fear, Hal Jordan tried to get in touch with his own fear, and everyone around him was fearful or inspiring fear.

The theme of fear is in the very core of the comic and extends out to every interaction of the characters, and the result was one of the most successful superhero reboots of the modern era. Indeed, Johns' work on the series, particularly on The Sinestro Corps War, was held up as the model for the rest of the DC line, and continues to be an influence in the wake of the New 52.

Justice Society of America (2006): Family

Interestingly, the next time Johns used the technique was on a book he'd written before: Justice Society of America, previously known as JSA. Johns had worked on JSA with screenwriter and film director David Goyer, but returned with that crucial new Geoff Johns #1 Issue and an entirely new direction that recalibrated the franchise on a single axis: family.

Characters like Wildcat, who'd previously been eternal loners, were given long-lost children. Hourman and Liberty Belle were not only engaged, but actually got married (relatively rare in superhero comics). Even villains like Black Adam were searching for their own families. Some surrogate families were formed, like the sisterly bond between Stargirl and Cyclone. Ultimately, the Justice Society were just that, a society; they hung out together, ate together, lived together.

That familial relationship was at the core of every single story Johns told with the rebooted team. He pushed the book into the top ten consistently, which is notable enough on its but the last volume, JSA, hadn't sold anywhere near as well despite also being written by Geoff Johns. It wasn't just his name that led to the title's new success, it was the new approach.

The Flash (2009): The World's Fastest Man Needs to Slow Down

Johns took over The Flash with 2009's The Flash: Rebirth. Like Justice Society of America, it was a franchise he'd written before but in an entirely different way. The book was drawn Ethan Van Sciver, echoing the hugely successful approach to Green Lantern. After the Silver Age Flash, Barry Allen, returned in 2008's Final Crisis by Grant Morrison and J.G. Jones, Johns picked up the narrative ball and ran with it, reimagining Barry Allen and the Flash's world around the central concept of speed and the necessity to sometimes slow down and appreciate life.

This involved changing Barry's backstory: after his resurrection in Blackest Night, Professor Zoom travelled back in time and killed Barry Allen's mother, framing Allen's father for the crime. Thus, the post-Final Crisis Barry Allen was a slightly different character from his previous incarnation; now haunted by the vestiges of memory of a life with his parents he didn't have, the "cold case" of his mother's murder -- of which his father was unjustly jailed -- drove him to pursue forensic science to ensure the validity of verdicts.

However, Barry was so focused on his goal that he couldn't slow down and appreciate life. The setting of Central City also reflected the hero; Johns explicitly portrayed it as a place that never slowed down, deliberately pointing out the city's dependence on coffee and the hurried approach the law (other than Allen, of course) took to solving cases and moving on to new business. It was Get It Done Fast, Methamphetamine City, and the book's core theme -- the need to slow down and enjoy life -- built itself in the center of this new Barry Allen and expanded to the rest of The Flash's world. His extended family was something he needed to slow down and appreciate; justice was something you needed to slow down to get; patience, and accepting what you have, is more important than haste.

Johns's final Barry Allen story, this summer's event series Flashpoint with Andy Kubert, saw Allen attempt to change the past and resurrect his mother but instead nearly destroy the entire world. At the end, before he re-attempted to change the past and stop himself, The Flash has a conversation with his mother where she reassures him that her death is okay and that Barry needs to accept that she's going to be gone.

The New 52 (2011): Green Lantern Accepts Emotion, Aquaman's a Fish Out of Water

This brings us to Johns's three New 52 titles: Green Lantern, where the central concept has evolved from accepting fear to accepting emotion in general; Justice League, which actually avoids the standard Johnsian Literalism approach by moving the focus from theme to character, and Aquaman with Ivan Reis, which features a classic Johnsian Literalism approach: Aquaman is a fish out of water.

Aquaman's origin as a half-human, half-Atlantean product of a forbidden love between an underwater princess and a fisherman forms the core of his character; stuck between two worlds and popular in neither of them. The surface dwellers of the DC Universe don't take him seriously; his fellow Atlanteans consider him an outsider. He isn't at home anywhere, feeling like an awkward outsider in basically every situation -- it's possible this will also color his experience in the Justice League, but he hasn't shown up in that title yet. It seems likely that as the series and its scope increases, that theme will progress even further out; his wife, Mera, is already in a similar fish-out-of-water position, and it can be expected that the new villains, the Trench, will somehow tie into that theme as well.

Johns mastered this approach and made it very popular in superhero comics. Variations from other writers include Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction's Immortal Iron Fist and Jason Aaron on Ghost Rider. They utilized aspects of the Johnsian approach to extend the legacies of their characters into millennia-spanning epics and create entire worlds around the main characters and their themes, like vengeance in the case of Ghost Rider or accepting responsibility in the case of Iron Fist.

But now that we've established Johnsian Literalism as a successful and recurring technique, we must ask how did the technique develop? The evidence of David Goyer's influence in shaping Johns's approach to writing is extremely convincing, especially if you look at much of Goyer's recent film writing, such as on Blade or Batman Begins.

The theme of blood -- both literally and metaphorically (i.e. ancestry) -- runs through much of the Blade films. The vampires themselves are elitist about being "pure-blood" vampires as opposed to converted ones, Blade is haunted by his blood, and the hero's love interest is even a hematologist. Blade fights the "Blood God" at the end of the first film, and kills the villain by injecting him with a compound that makes his blood explode.

Similarly, Batman Begins focused on the theme of fear, as anyone who's seen the film and read ComicsAlliance's Cinematic Batmanology probably knows. Bruce Wayne had to overhome his childhood fear to become a figure of fear and inspire fear, but a different fear from that inspired by his antagonists Ra's al Ghul and the Scarecrow, who reveled fear, rather than using it as a weapon like Bruce did. Considering the long run Goyer and Johns had together on JSA, it's certainly possible that Goyer's heavily thematic approach informed and influenced the more refined Geoff Johns take. The pair also worked together on the short-lived Blade television series for Spike TV.

Whether or not Goyer was a definite influence on Johns, the similarities between their styles, as well as the successes they've inspired, are undeniable. Johns has pioneered an approach to taking over a character's mythos that has changed the superhero landscape and provided a model for young writers to map their efforts after. Johns managed to create a framework for managing a character's history and mythology that still encourages creative storytelling and building on existing continuity. The market reaction has been resoundingly positive, with the highest sales for Green Lantern, Justice Society of America, Flash and certainly Aquaman in years.

Will a new project that uses his trademark Johnsian Literalism replace Green Lantern when Johns's work on that title finally comes to an end? Will Johns eventually apply this approach to Justice League? It's hard to say, especially since his schedule seems pretty filled up right now between three ongoing DC titles and his work as the company's Chief Creative Officer, overseeing the DC brand as it develops in film, television and other media. But judging by his construction of Aquaman so far, Geoff Johns hasn't dropped the technique, and it's likely to not only continue but expanded further and, as the way this kind of idea transference works, perhaps inform a new successful approach by another creator.

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DC Publishers Talk New 52 Costume Redesigns, Chip Kidd Batman, Earth One [NYCC]

David Uzumeri — 2011-10-16T19:00:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, News

DC Comics Co-Publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee joined moderator and Senior VP Sales Bob Wayne for the DC "Meet the Co-Publishers" panel, which discussed dates for more Earth One books, a new Batman graphic novel from Chip Kidd, information on the New 52 costume redesign process and DiDio's personal connection to Oracle, and more.A new Batman book titled Batman: Death by Design is on the way from designer and writer Chip Kidd (Bat-Manga) for summer 2012, with art by Dave Taylor. DiDio pointed out that Kidd has also done a great deal of work on logo and design elements for may DC properties, from 52 to the All-Star line.

The Geoff Johns and Gary Frank standalone graphic novel Batman: Earth One got a summer 2012 release date, while J. Michael Straczynski and Shane Davis's Superman: Earth One Vol. 2 was projected for fall of next year.

Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso's long-awaited Spaceman is coming out on October 26th, and will be priced at $.99 digitally and $1 in print. The reason for this difference is that digital price points have to be in 99-cent increments, and Diamond requires a comic be a dollar to appear on the sales charts. Jim Lee stated that the book was for fans of Flashpoint: Batman, 100 Bullets and "fans of space."

As would be expected, DiDio delved into the New 52 relaunch, which he said kicked off in the DC summit after last year's New York Comic Con when he knew "something was broken and needed to be fixed." He said that while the existing costumes worked, they felt they needed to become more contemporary. DiDio pointed out King Shark as an example, whom Lee had felt looked far too much like Green Lantern villain the Shark until his revamped hammerhead shark look in the new Suicide Squad.

With regards to the Harley Quinn redesign, Lee said that they wanted to change the character's style to match the tone of the book, as well was the Arkham Asylum and Arkham City games. With regards to Nightwing, DiDio described how the original design had the red logo and it was later changed to blue, and right before the cover left the office, the editorial team came to DiDio with two variants -- one blue, one red -- and they eventually decided on the red version, which DiDio said was "more dynamic."

When about how Barbara Gordon's de-paralysis demonstrates DC's commitment to diversity during the audience Q&A, DiDio stated that this was a long-standing discussion at DC, and that Barbara Gordon as Batgirl is the most recognizable and effective version of the character, alongside stating that his own sister is in a wheelchair and an inspiration to him, so it was a personal issue for himself as well.

Questioned about Secret Six, the fan-favorite Gail Simone book that did not get a new #1 in the new 52, DiDio said that "Suicide Squad is filling that need," and that will be where DC's focus resides. Lee added that the spirit of the New 52 was to go forward and narrow the line to the most "iconic and important" characters, and that if the creators continue to look back and draw from the past, that is against the spirit of the initiative.

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DC Comics' Superman: All Access Panel [NYCC 2011]

David Uzumeri — 2011-10-15T18:15:00+00:00

Filed under: DC, Conventions, News

Artist Shane Davis (Superman: Earth One), editor Matt Idelson, writer Mike Green (Supergirl), artist Mahmud Asrar (Supergirl) and writer/artist Dan Jurgens (Superman) took to the stage at New York Comic Con to tell fans what they can expect from DC Comics' line of Superman titles. Click below the jump for news on the new creative team of Superman, the next volume of Superman: Earth One, the new look of Krypton and future destinations for Supergirl.

SUPERMAN: EARTH ONE VOLUME TWO

"Real men wear their underwear on the outside," artist Shane Davis joked as the cover to Superman: Earth One was displayed for the New York crowd. While the "New 52" version of the Man of Steel no longer wears briefs, Davis' Earth One incarnation of the character still has the classic Superman costume. The forthcoming graphic novel is the sequel to Davis and writer J. Michael Straczynski's best-selling volume 1, which Davis said had "romance and adventure." In contrast, the artist said the second volume would have more "sex and violence" while remaining PG-13. Pages were shown of Superman stopping a tsunami and a dictator cutting off limbs of some of his constituents. Superman fantasizes about what he could have done to the dictator, like disintegrating him.

Also shown were pages of the Parasite, who in this story will start off as a serial killer and won't be as much of an actual energy glutton as the classic villain, but rather have an addiction to power itself. "The most powerful man has his hands tied," Davis said. The Parasite lives in a more real world and can't upset humanity's balance of power.

ACTION COMICS

Pages were shown of Superman saving a cat and people freaking out and throwing bricks at him, John Corben entering the Steel Soldier suit, and a depiction of old Krypton by Gene Ha featuring Jor-El, Lara and Krypto. Apparently Lara's family thinks Jor-El is a crackpot scientist.

SUPERGIRL

Writer Mike Green explained that unlike some of the other New 52 books, they're completely reintroducing their hero with Supergirl. The circumstances of her arrival on Earth will remain a secret for now. The cover of issue #5 was shown, and it features Argo City, her traditional hometown. In issue #4, Green and Asrar will explain why Supergirl was already fully powered when exiting the rocket that brought her to Earth.

SUPERBOY

Idelson stated that Superboy is the most changed character in the entire New 52 because he's "a new blank slate." Superboy was described as not knowing what "morals, values or feelings" are.

SUPERMAN

Starting with Superman #7, Keith Giffen and Dan Jurgens will be co-writing the book with Jurgens drawing. Jurgens is of course best known as the writer and artist behind the landmark "Death of Superman." The pair gave the following statement to DC's The Source blog:

"In my mind, Superman is still the first and best," said Jurgens. "He is the premier character in comics. As a writer, the thing I like best about Superman is the incredibly wide parameter of stories that suit him. Whether it's a cosmic enemy that threatens the entire planet or a next door neighbor who's confronted with an incredible moral dilemma, Superman is at home with both and everything in between. As an artist, the thing I like is the sense of power and integrity Superman embodies. There's something about drawing that majestic figure in flight with the cape and classic 'S' shield that will always be a kick. Working with Keith Giffen, one of the most creative guys in comics, who comes up with more ideas in five minutes than most guys do in a week, is the topper. I can't wait to get started."

"Are you kidding? It's SUPERMAN! The sky is the limit!" said Giffen. "I don't care what anyone says, Superman is DC's flagship title and Dan and I are going to sweat blood to make sure that everyone out there knows why. The sense of wonder that defined the character for so long is, most definitely, coming back. Big time."

The panel then opened up to Q&A.

On continuity: If Superman's continuity has been rebooted but Batman and Green Lantern's have not, how then can previously published Superman stories in which he appeared with Batman and Green Lantern still have happened? The panelists said that such concerns would be best revealed in story as necessary, as opposed to creating some kind of continuity roadmap for fans.

On Earth One: When asked whether the Earth One books were considered Elseworlds, Shane Davis stated that if the regular books are like TV shows, the Earth One titles are more like movies. He also confirmed that Superman: Earth One and Geoff Johns and Gary Frank's forthcoming Batman: Earth One take place in the same universe.

On retelling old stories: When asked if they had plans to bring back the Eradicator, a figure from the Superman comics of the 1980s and 1990s, the panelists commented that they're not trying to retell old stories in the New 52, but rather brand-new stories with new characters and situations.

On the differences between the Pre-52 and New 52 Superman: Dan Jurgens stated that he doesn't think of them as "old Superman" and "new Superman," but rather that the elements of a good Superman story will never change, and those elements are all still there with this new incarnation of the character.

On a new Superman/Batman title: "Not yet."

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