Issue 1. Main character’s dad is in an active conspiracy talkfest. In Shanghai??
Recidivist Chinese supervillain. In Shanghai??
I worked in China for a few years. The writer hasn’t, I strongly suspect. The story is set in the wrong place. Singapore would perhaps have made more sense. I can’t work out whether this is some sort of English-language effort to enter the Chinese market, or, more likely, an effort to “minoritise” a DC character.
Otherwise, there wasn’t much to like about the lead character. He is a bully and a creep, who ends up getting super-powers by the end of the first issue. If this was an effort to set the main character apart from the altruistically motivated, then at least give the character some sort of redeeming quality. All we see is that he hates his father, picks on the fat kid, and is trying to sleep with the hot journalist.
Fenris: thanks for the tips. I will check these out.
My last name is very ethnic too, but I know very little about the region it is from. I do know many American-born Chinese-Americans (I live in NYC) who are almost as clueless about China as I am. His name alone isn’t enough. It’s entirely plausible that a California-born Chinese writer, whose parents are from Hong Kong and Taiwan, might not know Shanghai as well as someone who spent a few years there.
I’d agree, though I think it’s worth noting he admits in the end that he recognizes that he could be wrong.
Remember his final moments in Watchmen, and the comments which were replayed in Rebirth, were him asking Doctor Manhattan if he’d made the right decision and practically begging Manhattan to say that yes, everything worked out “in the end.”
However, in one of the great lines from the Graphic Novel, Manhattan says “In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”
I’d say what characterizes him the most is arrogance and a need for validation from others. After all, it takes a huge degree of narcissism to have the need to be called “The World’s Smartest Man”.
Watch DC cop out and make the Big Bad a grief-stricken Nite Owl, who is trying to manipulate things after Ozzy’s plan is revealed to the world, causing him to die by someone’s hands(or kill himself), and Silk Spectre to die in a riot.
Well, there’s also a potential difference between what he would have said then, and what he would say now.
Am I the only one who thought it was rather significant that Veight was named Ozymandias? As in, despite his general supposition of superiority, he’s not at all invincible and greatly overestimates his control of the situation. I assumed that the name was itself a sign of incredible arrogance, and yet ultimate failure.
Apologies for response long after it would have been timely.
After all, what was he doing just before that? Well, saying that he’d hoped that Doc would understand, of course; but then reacting to the sudden announcement that Doc is planning to leave the solar system for good. Veidt then blurts out a quick remark about how he’d regained interest in human life – only to get that shut down by Doc’s out-of-left-field reply about perhaps creating some in another galaxy.
Say that Veidt heads into that conversation hoping that Doc – fresh from agreeing to keep the secret, and killing Rorschach to keep the secret – will stick around and continue to help, preserving life hereabouts because he’s now firmly in favor of the plan; suddenly everything falls into place. Veidt leads off by saying he’d hoped the big guy would understand, and Doc weirdly changes the subject; Veidt tries to steer the conversation back to Doc’s regained interest in human life, and Doc throws him another curveball; Veidt then tries to rope him into talk of whether it all worked out in the end, and Doc once again gives him nothing to work with.
I mean, sure, it works the other way, too:
…but it’s easy for me to believe he was simply doing then what he did the last time he spoke with Doc: trying to get him, once again, to say Veidt was correct solely as a means to the end of then having him follow up with cooperation.
(Also, I can’t help but wonder: what if it had gone according to plan? Blake says he never had to look out that window; if he hadn’t – if there’s no murder for Rorschach to investigate, and no murder of Jacobi to frame him for; if Chess is never hired by a go-between to shoot someone, and Dreiberg never researches whether Company A owns Company B which owns Company C – then wouldn’t Veidt have pulled off the whole thing while fully expecting to never ask anyone for validation? Seems a little weird, if his ruling passion is supposed to be, y’know, a need for validation.)
Does he, though? AFAICT, the first time it comes up, someone else says that to him, and he waves it off by saying (a) he never claimed to be special and (b) other folks were just overenthusiastic; and then other people say it, but never in response to a request by him. (For example, Doc alludes to that sobriquet in the final issue – but he does it right after noting that nobody else on the planet has the intelligence to work with tachyons. So, what, Veidt doesn’t insist on being called that, even though he maybe is that? I can’t quite get my hooks into the ramifications.)
For what it’s worth, what Moore apparently said then – upon being told that he had to rework the concept, as he could no longer use the ‘Thunderbolt’ character – was that “Ozymandias is our replacement for Thunderbolt: a perfectly evolved man who takes human capability to its most extreme limit. I chose the name because it has a certain grandeur and pretension to it that seemed to fit the character somehow, and because it will enable me to use ‘Look On My Works Ye Mighty And Despair’ as a title for the chapter where a third of New York’s population bite the bullet.”
The same source has handwritten notes for the rework:
On the other hand, I spent half a decade engaged in anti-counterfeiting operations in southern China. There isn’t a city with a population above 250000 in Guangzhou province I haven’t visited.
But still, you might be right. He might know more about China than me. In which case, I bow to your remarkable insight that his name alone automatically gives him more knowledge about Chinese society and culture than me.
In writing this response to Candide (look, a pun!), I realise that just because it didn’t ring true to me, that would not apply to the average reader of the title.
And you’re also missing the fact that comic books present exaggerated, fictionalized versions of things. Including places and people that happen to exist in the real world.
But yes, I’m guessing someone of Chinese heritage who wrote American Born Chinese probably knows a bit more than a guy who spent five years as an outsider in China in an enforcement context.
I never said it was his name alone, and I thought people might be more familiar with his work. Your suggestion that I was arguing simply because of his name was very much in the spirit of your assertion that “Marvel backtracked on Nazi Captain America”, based as it was solely on the title of an internet article that had a retraction right in its text. I’m sure those keen observational skills served you well on your hunt for counterfeit whatevers.
They’re narratives about Asian life in America and a popular (most popular?) Chinese folklore tale. As the child of Asian parents born and living in America, he certainly did not just study, but lived “Asian Born Chinese”. He may, or may not, have spent significant time in China to understand how Chinese living in Shanghai live and think (in general). But, according to the Wiki, his parents are from Hong Kong and Taiwan, which are very different beasts.
I don’t know his background. All I’m saying is that having an Chinese name alone does not make him an authority, and that someone who spent significant time in the region might have a better view.
ETA: Seems TYphoonSignal8 said the same thing. Note to self, read all replies before replying oneself.
That seemed to be where they were taking him in that first issue. I guess its an acquired taste.
Guess we’ll never know, hmm?
More evening primrose, sweetheart.
In any event, the context of the story made no sense in respect of the Chinese society I am familiar with. And so I gave up on it after issue 1.
I read Superman #15. It seems as if the writer, Peter Tomasi, is
collecting or possibly aggregating Supermen from various realities. Most of them look like variants of the Kryptonian. Some don’t. The Justice League of Assassins’ Superman looked overcooked. or even boiled.
Reading a random single issue of a comic, in the middle of a storyline that builds on previous continuity, deciding you don’t like all this nonsense going on and it’s not for you…
… well, it’s certainly a way to *read *comics, but I’m not sure it’s a way to *enjoy *them.
Thank you Geoff Johns. It is pretty old school to get into message board snark over a comic book. I feel like I am back on the DCMBs in 2001. I regret being that publicly ridiculous.
But, to address your observation, most American comic books (at least those form DC and Marvel) are published as monthly periodicals, and then (sometimes) collected as trade paper backs. It is a mark of the skill of the writer to hook a new reader on the back of one issue. Warren Ellis did this very well with Planetary and Global Frequency. Each issue is self-contained (with some irregular exceptions) all fitting into a much broader framework. If I pick up a single issue of any title, essentially to sample it, and decide it isn’t up to scratch, then that’s not my problem. It is either the writer not being capable of containing a story in one issue, or it is the publisher’s problem in not selling the story as a collected work in the first place. I think that is a sound approach - not yours, clearly, but a valid and rational one.
I read Aquaman #12 yesterday on Fenris’ recommendation, and indeed, it is good. Setting aside Black Manta’s machinations, there is some decades-overdue world-building in the creation of Atlantean culture, an Atlantean high command, and even what seems to be some intra-Atlantean ethnicity issues. The extent of the Atlantean arsenal is revealed. I don’t know some aspects of the backstory, but the story gives me enough to follow it easily, and there is enough going on for me to wonder how it ends.
And also on Fenris’ recommendation, I have briefly skimmed Greg Rucka’s latest issue of Wonder Woman. I generally like Rucka’s writing but this didn’t grab me. I’ll give it another read.