Weekly Comic Book Discussion : 1/15/2009

Cafe Society
21

My problem with the Denny O’Neil version again is my complaint with everything the man has written that I’ve read. If you don’t share his specific political beliefs, you’re either stupid/completely uninformed or eeee-vil.

Thus, you have very, VERY stupid Green Arrow* who’s…what? 30? 35? years old in the GL/GA series lecturing the 6 billion year old Guardians on morality and ethics. And WINNING. Keep in mind, he’s less articulate than a left-winger’s answer to Michael Savage would be…and he’s much further to the left (in those issues) as, say, Limbaugh is to the right.

There’s a great, GREAT series idea in the conservative (but not a totally spinless wimp) GL and the liberal (but not shrill and smarmy and perfect) GA travelling the country with the defrocked Guardian in tow. Hell, think Moore’s “American Gothic” Swamp Thing run (with less thuddingly obvious politics than Moore had–the idea was awsome, the execution…not as much) with those two characters. And an honest writer or writers.

But watching Green Arrow be right 100% of the time and Green Lantern and the Old Timer always get it wrong was just obnoxious. Hell, I like your “stiff and inflexible*”. But to me, O’Neil just played them as he plays anyone in authority: stoopid and evil.

*Green Arrow is often written intelligently, if bellicose/shrill. But in the GL/GA issues, he’s a moron who’s right by authorial fiat and solves problems by punching them. Which is fine if your problem is “Clock King”, but if it’s unfair treatment of Native Americans, maybe not so effective.

22

#7 - lethal force authorized against Fenris

Kidding! Truly, you are the Atlas of punsters.

23

“Tawny BITES!”

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

24

Okay, instead of having a separate “What the Hell is Going On in Final Crisis, No Really?” thread, maybe we can just hash some of that out here. Cause, damn, this thing is an unholy mess, even given it is Morrison.

This one, I suspect, is because way back in DC 1,000,000 Darkseid’s fate was to have been killed by J’onn. Morrison seems to like referencing those books – he also did so in All-Star Superman.

According to Sonny in this issue, he didn’t – this is a Sonny from an alternate Earth. I suppose which alternate Earth will become important as the Monitor plot plays itself out – probably, it’ll be Kamandi’s (which is, no doubt, where Checkmate is trying to open a beachhead).

I thought that Barry arrived over a month ago – then he and Wally promptly had to run for the future to escape the Black Racer. I think. Crap; I’ll have to re-read again.

Dunno on the rest; somebody else will have to try a go at 'em.

25

Wait–I thought Darkseid was killed by Aztek (or the black, female Aztek).

26

I was going by my questionable memory, so I checked on wiki first:

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But wait–I have a distinct memory from the Morrison JLAs of Darkseid having the Atom shot into his brain and then Aztek short-circuited her uniform and blew him (and the universe?) up. The “Rock of Ages” storyline (I just checked).

28

When you put it that way, I can agree with you for the most part. I wouldn’t say that Denny painted the Guardians as evil; however, I do agree that he handled the whole situation ham-handedly, and that he went overboard in making GA the righteous one.

I’m glad we can agree that characterizing the Guardians as stiff and inflexible wasn’t distasteful. It’s a shame that future generations of writers went too far in their liberties with the little blue guys.

29

Um… it was only a flesh wound?

Otherwise, I’d say that “Rock of Ages” happens before the Great Darkness Saga in LSH (by when he has apparently recovered, since that seems to be back in-continuity now with the upcoming LSH reboot or unboot or whateverthehell boot we’re on), and also before DC 1,000,000.

30

Agreed, mostly. I think we’re gonna have to disagree about O’Neil, but that’s cool ;). It’s fun to debate though. To me, when the Guardians defrocked the Old Timer* because he saved…someone, rather than let the person die to fix an oil spill that could easily have been fixed 30 minutes later, he portrayed them as stupid and possibly evil. They’d rather let someone (Hal?) die than let a couple hundred extra tuna die? Remember: Guardians could (at that point) move solar systems around without working up a sweat. An extra 30 minutes of oil-spill should be irrelevant.* *

It’s that characterization that I object to–these guys have lived six or seven billion years–I can buy that they’re set in their ways…but when O’Neil portrays them as short-sighted? :smiley: And it’s that characterization (that they do whatever the writer wants regardless of how out of character it is) that’s polluted the books ever since.

(I love this type of discussion. :p)
*He was the Old Timer much longer than he was Ganthet and I like the “Old Timer” name better. :wink:

**Not to mention that the Guardians were right in GL #76—Hal, regardless of how much white, liberal guilt he’s feeling was out of line in blowing up a bunch of tenements that belonged to a slum lord (and where will the “black folk” sleep that night? I mean, living in a rat-trap tenement sucks, but not having a roof over your head and having your meager possessions blown up is worse). And no amount of histrionics from GA should change their minds on that point.

31

Actually Aztek blew up the “anti-life factory” on the moon which Batman then rubbed in Darkseid’s nose before Green Arrow shot the Atom into Darkseid’s brain (and to be honest I don’t think that would even affect Darkseid; his skull stands up to Superman punching full strength and laughing it off so one 180-pound squishy human doesn’t seem like he’s be able to do anything to the nerve tissue).

Then Orion blows up the universe and the JLA members who were displaced in time go back to stop that.

32

I liked most of my haul this week. I did not care for Faces of Evil : Prometheus. I really, really liked FoE : Solomon Grundy (which was released last week, but my shop got shorted on them, so I got it this week.)

Titans was all set to disappoint me, but it’s swung the pendulum back to intriguing.

Final Crisis gives me deeply mixed feelings, regarding the confrontation between

Batman and Darkseid

And its result.

Loved GL Corps and Booster Gold as always.

GA/Black Canary was passable.

Invincible was solid.

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I got:

The Initiative. Art was crap and it was a cleanup after Skrulls, but still readable.

Captain Britain & MI:13: as usual, pretty good. I miss Meggan, and the end did give me an “oh shit” moment. Didn’t occur that the vampire restoration would recreate Dracula even though it should have, obviously.

Amazing Spider-Man: Mainly for the awesome cover: “Face it, Cougars. You just hit the jackpot!” And the Biden joke.

Faces of Evil (I keep wanting to call them Faces of Death)

Jericho: The cover looked creepy, and it should be good.
Solomon Grundy: Ditto.
Luthor: was Meh, mainly because I haven’t been following New Krypton.
Green Lantern: Agreed, the Guardians are being idiots. Perhaps…deliberately so?

34

Reread the whole Final Crisis run (including “RESIST” and “SUBMIT” as well as the two Batman issues and to be fair to Morrison, the thing is more coherent when read in a lump.

The biggest, most glaring flaw (aside from the fact that 10 minutes of Googling, looking on DC’s site, etc couldn’t give me a reading order (where RESIST and SUBMIT went). Morons–it’s not that hard to print a checklist. Take a page from Marvel on that) is that it feels like there’s a missing issue. Darkseid takes over the internet and starts spreading the anti-life equation at the end of an issue. Then suddenly (in RESIST) the world has been taken over for at least 30 days or so. There’s a very, very weird “missing issue” feeling there. There’s no exposition or flashbacks to the takeover either. How did Black Lighting stay free? We dunno. Who/How were the Watchtowers set up? We dunno. If Morrison didn’t want to spend an issue, hell, a single page showing how it happened would have worked. But that gap is jarring and not in a good, artsy way.

A couple other comments—unless I missed it, we dunno what happened to Dan Turpin. Did he turn into Darkseid? (if so, then why didn’t we see it and why didn’t boss Dark Side turn into him? Why did all the other, lesser Apokolipsian New Gods end up destroying their hosts?)

I don’t like Kalibak’s new look…heh…but neither did Mr. Tawney, so that’s ok. Kalibak is a big, dumb brute–the tiger-look was WAY too elegant for him.

I’ll be pissed if the Atomic Knights (Bloodhaven-variety) stay dead. I like them and it’s not like they’ve actually been used. I thought we were past the whole silly “I don’t like these toys so I’ll break them” period from the '90s.

I don’t like Morrison’s redesign of the Miracle Machine. The older version was sleeker and also somewhat creepier in it’s simplicity. Also, why wasn’t it used intelligently? I don’t know what it was used for (except to get Superman home) but if you’re going to risk using it, you might as well go for broke and wish that everything was all better. Obviously Superman didn’t.

I don’t remember if we’re supposed to spoiler speculation and guesses, so I’ll err on the side of caution, but this is just my guess as to Batman’s fate.

“This is the era of Gods in Men”, right? Bruce will become the new Highfather–God of Justice or some such.

35

I have no idea what’ll end up happening in FC 7 but I just don’t believe Bruce Wayne will stay dead for very long, if in fact that was Bruce’s corpse in the Bat suit. I spoiled it in case there’s anybody who doesn’t already know what I’m talking about.

Dan Turpin was “infected” with Darkseid and tried to fight him off, but a couple of issues ago Darkseid took over. It remains to be seen if, especially after being shot with Radion, he’ll be able to reclaim his body and oust the big bad.