Halfway Through the New 52

Still working my way through the issue No. 1 extravaganza DC is throwing. Here go some short reviews of the 13 books the company sent me this week:

The Good:

Batwoman: I would buy this book for the art alone, but the story is creepy and intriguing. JH Williams III continues the storyline from the original run of Kate Kane's adventures as the Batwoman, folding her ongoing personal story into the mystery of kidnapped children and ghostly intruders, as a secret government agency takes an interest in her activities. The most solid of the set this week.

Frankenstein: Agent of S.H.A.D.E.: Quoting Milton as he should, the creature leads a group of mutant monsters based on the Universal creatures (vampire, mummy, amphibian creature, and werewolf) to liberate a town overrun by Lovecraftian horrors. It reminded me of Hellboy and BPRD (in a good way), with the crazy technology of a Warren Ellis Authority tale. Try it.

Demon Knights: Gathering the various characters from DC's "past" that could be shoe-horned into a Medieval tale, we get to see Etrigan the Demon bonded to Jason Blood, Madame Xanadu pretend to love Jason so she can get close to Etrigan (or is it really Etrigan she's fooling?), Vandal Savage ... anyway. Good Lord of the Rings style fantasy adventure.

Resurrection Man: Without missing a beat, the original creators of the character return to his story, which could have been relauched without a change of universe. Mitchell Shelley gains a new superpower every time he dies and resurrects. Now he's being chased down by demons and angels as well as some of the same old enemies. Worth a try if you never sampled his series from the 1990s, and a can't miss is you remember him fondly.

The Bad: (Yes, I actually found a few I simply couldn't stand.)

Deathstroke: Spoiler alert, but if you couldn't see the ending of this story, where the super badass Deathstroke kills all the young up-and-coming members of his unwanted team, well, you probably shouldn't be reading comicbooks anyway. The book not only glorifies murder, it tries to make the villain into some kind of anti-hero. And it goes about it in a simple-minded way that's just insulting.

Red Lanterns: Atrocitus. Rage. I get it. Whereas the green lanterns tap willpower, and the yellow ones tap fear, the red ones tap hatred and rage. And their leader is called Atrocitus. They vomit blood while they fight. Awesome. I hate them. They make me want to vomit blood on this comicbook. They are one-note villains, not central characters of an ongoing series. Make them go away. Please.

Suicide Squad: They should just get it over with already. Ugh.

The Meh:
These could go either way. Not terrible, but not actually good. Sort of just there.

Superboy: Story of the clone of Superman and an unknown human, experiencing life in a virtual reality while he's studied by Deathstroke's daughter and a redhead who may be Fairchild from Gen-13.

Mr. Terrific: A "legacy" character taking the name of a hero from the 1940s, this guy uses super science to solve crime and save the world. He's also apparently knocking boots with Powergirl (is Karen Starr Powergirl in this new universe? I don't know. Maybe we'll find out soon.).

Legion Lost: Seven members of the Legion of Superheroes from the 31st century get trapped in the 21st century, but other than that I have no idea what's going on. I like the Legion, but these guys? I don't know yet.

Green Lantern: Starring Sinestro. Yes, I realize he was a Green Lantern in the recent movie, but he's not the character I tune into Green Lantern to watch at center stage. Also, why do you relaunch a whole comicbook universe, introduce it with Justice League (which takes place "five years ago" and shows us Hal Jordan as a new, brash, happy Lantern) and then give us Green Lantern No. 1, in which Hal is no longer a lantern? Confusing, yes. And frustrating. I want to see more of young Hal and his journey as a lantern in this new universe.

Grifter: Never read the old Grifter series, never got into the Wildstorm group series he was in, and doubt I'll read another issue of this one. Not that it was bad, it just made no impact whatsoever. Meh.

Batman and Robin: Most disappointing of the bunch, probably. This is Bruce Wayne and Damian, his son with Talia Al Ghul, taking up from the continuity of Grant Morrison's recent run on the title, with Bruce reclaiming the Batman cowl from Dick Grayson. Damian is a little punk, hateful, mean, disrespectful, careless. I'm hoping DC will ask fans to call an 800 number to see if he lives or dies. It worked once...

Okay, so we're halfway through the New 52. If I keep receiving these, I'll keep telling you what I think of them. You know where to find me.

Peace.

Adapting

I met with local artist and graphic designer Jayson Kretzer this morning to talk about adapting The Book of Gabriel as a graphic novel or comics mini-series. I knew we had a love of comics in common, but what I didn't realize until we talked was that we have similar views on theology. He has a great project of his own that mirrors some of the things in Gabriel, so we should click on all cylinders real soon.

His first order of biz was to put together character studies of the main heroes and villains. (He will be using a grittier style than you see in his web comic, which is very cartoony.)  I'll post some of those as they come in. While he's doing that, I will be reworking the text of the book into a comic script, rearranging some of the scenes to get more action up front and leaving some of the specifics for his brain and pencil to interpret.

I think this is going to be lots of fun. Our hope is that we produce the first 20 pages, inked and lettered, and shop it around to the publishers out there. While that set is making the rounds, we'll work on the next 20 pages. I believe the whole thing can be retold in five issues, or about 100 pages. We'll see. I'll let you know how it goes.

Meanwhile, check back later tonight for my reviews of 13 more New 52 books from DC.

The 13 (or so) New 52 I read this week

The DC reboot continues, and the company sent me 13 titles last week to read. That's a lot, even for comics. So I'm going to keep it simple with a list and short takes on each one. Here goes:

The Good:

Action Comics: Taking the idea that no one has ever seen a superhero before and running with it, Grant Morrison went back to the roots of Superman for this first arc: He has no actual costume, he can't fly (he leaps), and he has no qualms about beating up a guy who beats his wife, or dangling a man off the edge of a skyscraper to scare a confession out of him. This Superman has never met his match; he has the sheer power to make things happen even if police and governments can't; he wants to change the world. He's young — in his 20s — and brash, and impatient. And he enjoys the heck out of being Superman. This is my favorite book of the relaunch so far.

Swamp Thing: Told us what had changed since we last checked in with the elemental who thought he was a man. For one thing, Alec Holland is alive and has the elemental's memories. For another, Superman stops by to give the human part of the duo a pep-talk. Favorite line (something to the effect of): "I have memories of a woman with white hair. I've never met her. I have ...feelings for her." And the invunche-type creatures are just scary. (I'm a long time Swampy fan, with the whole of the 1980s/Alan Moore run, so I'm bringing some baggage along.)

Batgirl: My son and I disagree on this one. He didn't buy into the storyline, but I like it because it brings everyone's favorite Batgirl back to the fight, and the joy she experiences is clear in the expressions on her face (awesome artwork by Ardian Syaf). She's also not quite ready yet, freezing when a gun is pointed her way (her years as the wheelchair-bound Oracle are still in-continuity). Writer Gail Simone was the right person to bring Barbara Gordon back in black.

Animal Man: I never followed Animal Man's adventures, but an issue like this would make me interested in trying the series. It has an indie-comics feel, with domestic matters leading into his super-heroing, as well as the art style that also reminds me of 1980s horror comics (I mean, look at that cover!). Very scary bad things are happening in this story, and I want to know more.

OMAC: Again, I have baggage that pre-disposes me to being interested in this title. I own the original run of OMAC stories by Jack Kirby from the 1970s, was a fan of the other Kirby stories of era (including Kamandi), and this book purposely recreates his art style and storytelling sense (even mimicking some of the panels in the original tales). It's an updated Kirby with a feeling that any crazy thing might happen next.

The Meh:
Batwing: Meh. I predict this will be the first title from the New 52 to be cancelled.
Detective: Awesome art, terrible dialogue (both by Tony S. Daniel). Generic Batman story (up until the final image, which is all kinds of sick and makes me want to see what happens next). But still, any time you "hear" Sylvester Stallone as Judge Dredd when you're reading a Batman caption, someone made a mistake.
Green Arrow: (zzzzzzzzz.) This read like a rejected "Smallville" TV script. Young Ollie Queen fights bad guys who got their powers from a mystery source and who like to videotape their crimes for YouTube.
Justice League International: Again, my son and I disagree. He liked this one. I think it's the issue where nothing interesting happens. I don't care about any of the C-list characters (at least, as they're represented here) chosen for this international team that Batman horns in on for no known reason. Biggest gripe, though: If ANY character needed a costume overhaul in the DCU, it was Guy Gardner. Why does he still look like a Joe Staton caricature?
Stormwatch: I was a fan of The Authority in its early run. So much so that I went back to find the Warren Ellis-scripted issues of the series that it launched out of (the original Stormwatch title). I am not so much a fan of this one. I will give it another issue to see if it catches on, but so far, the muddled timelines of the characters have me a little confused (i.e., some of them that were Authority have never been in Stormwatch?) but maybe that's just because I keep forgetting this is "new" continuity.
Man of War: This is a war comic in a superhero world. The lead story is OK, in that it introduces a regular Joe who is the grandson of Sgt. Rock of Easy Co., the legendary WWII character. Rock stories were almost always worth your investment of time and emotion. Here, the new Rock is a guy who's good at his job and goes where he needs to go to get the job done. The backup story, however, read like war propaganda (gun worship, liberal-bashing and all) and just turned me off.

The ones I have yet to read: Hawk & Dove, which has horrid Rob Leifeld 1990s-era artwork, and Static Shock, which I'm looking forward to. I'll let you know.

Hawk & Dove: Terrible. It was everything I feared it would be, and worse. It looks and reads like it was stolen by a time traveler from Image comics in 1995. May beat Batwing for the first new title to be canceled.

Static Shock: OK. Nice to see this getting another shot. Crossing over from the Milestone line of comics DC helped launch in the 1990s, Static is a fan favorite because of light-hearted attitude and the WB cartoon. This has great potential.

Video Brainstorming

I met with Lou Columbus at Layla's Gelato yesterday for a coffee and brainstorming session. He offered long ago to shoot a promotional video for my novel, "The Book of Gabriel." And when I say "long ago," I mean back when the storyline was still a serial appearing randomly at PCityLive.com as part of my "366 Days" project.

Lou is a professional videographer, so having his enthusiasm for the project is gratifying and inspirational. (He's also a fellow fan of Bill Nelson and David Bowie, he has old Vampirella novels in his collections, and he once gave me — I repeat, gave me — something like a thousand comicbooks he had kept for decades. I'm still working my way through them.) In short, Lou is a giving fellow with my weird taste in music and entertainment. I'm lucky to know him.

Anyway. Gabriel:

Lou sees certain images from the story as essential to the video, and I agree. Many of them are probably unobtainable on a $0 budget, even taking advantage of public domain video and images. Some things we hope to work out include the opening image of the woman rising out of the sea; a shot of an armored form grasping a flaming sword; men walking on water; the other-worldly visage of Lady Grinning Soul; the Watchers twirling in the night sky; Satan in his nice cotton suit; portions of a chase sequence; and the photo of Joy in Gabriel's jacket pocket.

I'll let you know as we proceed.

Meanwhile, go here to see samples of Lou's videos; the sixth item down is a spooky trailer Lou shot for my friend Michael Lister's novel, "Double Exposure."
T

The New DC Begins

I've been a DC guy since childhood. My heroes were Superman, Batman, the Justice League, and all their assorted allies. I kept up with the Marvel heroes via my cousin's and friends' collections.
My favorite stories were the "crisis" multi-chapter tales that took the heroes of the regular DC universe to parallel earths, where they met the Justice Society (their 1940s counterparts) or the Freedom Fighters (heroes DC had bought from another company), and so on.

So when DC collapsed its multiple universes into one during the "Crisis on Infinite Earths" in 1984-85, I was OK with seeing all the heroes brought together into one reality; even if that meant the alternative versions had to cease to exist. You could no longer say those Batman adventures from the 1940s actually took place on "Earth 2" while the modern Batman's adventures were those on "Earth 1." Instead, you had to take all those old stories and say, hey, those were cool and we remember them fondly, but now we're going to tell all new stories about the hero. John Byrne got to retell the origin of Superman that threw out decades of old continuity -- and it was pretty cool.

They did it again several years later with "Infinite Crisis," which was kind of a bust. And there have been lots of little reboot attempts in the interim (anybody remember the electric Superman of the 1990s?). Now the heroes get all new costumes and origins (again) in a total revamp.

The difference is, with the rise of the Internet in the interim, every bozo and fanboy with Wifi thinks he's the font of wisdom, and nothing is better than tearing apart your heroes. Thus, lots of bad reviews of the new books -- the "NEW 52" -- and long before anyone ever saw anything more than some promotional art. (I firmly believe that's also what killed the Wonder Woman TV pilot made by David Kelly recently; fanboys savaged it online, having only seen a few promo photos, like the one at right. I watched it this week, and while it had some very weak points, it had some great ideas as well and might have turned into something worth seeing if it was allowed to go beyond pilot stage. Remember: Most pilots never air. They're just proof of concept. This concept was pretty good.)

Likewise, I'm here to tell you: Having read Justice League No. 1, the only book of DC's "NEW 52" titles to be released so far: It's going to be OK.

What we're getting is the beginning of these heroes. Batman is a young vigilante, hunted by the police and suspicious of all these other costumed adventurers appearing around the world. I hear Christian Bale's voice when I read his dialogue, and not in a jokey, growly way. There's no grand arsenal yet, no rogues gallery of weird villains, no baggage. (There's a great moment when Green Lantern realizes Batman is "just a guy in a suit.")
Superman is a mystery; people think he might be an extraterrestrial, the first one anybody on earth has ever (officially) seen. There's no ongoing relationship with Lois Lane. He's superpowerful beyond anything on earth and he has no perspective on what that means; he's never met another superhero, and he's never been tested to his limits (so far as we know). He has yet to realize there are tougher things than him out there.
Likewise with Green Lantern, who comes off very much like a Ryan Reynolds character: brash, over-confident, like you'd imagine a young test pilot might be. He thinks he's God's gift to the world, until Superman knocks him down without breaking a sweat. This is not the proven veteran of the Lantern Corps, not the legend. It's the "poozer" before he got taken down a peg, before he lost everything, before he battled his way back to life.

(I also think it's no accident that the characters are written -- and their costumes redesigned -- to emulate the movies being made about them. At left is Henry Cavill as the new Superman, and though it's difficult to tell in this photo, he has no red Underoos on the outside of this tights.)

These are the only three heroes introduced so far. I like that we get to see these guys grow and learn, and the writers get to establish a new status quo. I hope it lasts long enough to tell a bunch of good stories before the next reboot comes along. Please, people: Put it in perspective. None of this is permanent.

The other 51 titles DC is relaunching will make their debuts over the next several weeks. I look forward to seeing what they try to make of my favorite fictional universe. And I'll let you know.
T

Sneak preview: The Book of Gabriel

This is the image/cover mockup I'm working on for 'The Book of Gabriel,' which is a collection of my serialized story "The Traveler," which was in turn part of my "366 Days" online writing project. The story is "an Endtimes Fable" telling how a man named Gabriel got mixed up in the return of the Shekinah (the female aspect of God) and Satan's scheme to subvert her power. It explores parallel realities, dream worlds, time/space paradoxes, myth and legend, chapters from 'The Book of Cain,' the meaning of forgiveness, and the power of Joy. Look for it to debut in October at the Local Books Alive event at the Panama City HQ of the Bay County Public Library.

Words

Jack Saunders, Tim Riley and Matty.

Tuesday evening, I attended the opening reception of "WORDS," an exhibition of mail art organized by my friend Matty Jankowski (he of the bowler hat in the photos).

Matty, Jack, and Bettina Mead.

This is a quick photo blog to show you some of the folks in attendance. And considering how Matty told me the history of the saying, "A picture paints a thousand words," I'll let my pictures do the talking for his "Words."

Photographer Patrick Engman.

Artist Paulette Perlman, right.

The show will hang through September, as part of the library's upcoming focus on censorship and Banned Books Week. Watch your words.

Peace.