Random comic book rants and thoughts

- Geoff Johns is ridiculously overrated. He's a good writer, he's meticulous and he knows his job, which is great. He's hot property now and he should take advantage of it. But he's not the god who single-handedly breathed life into DC; his material generally lacks subtext, the characterization is spot-on but basic and all in all, he's not the best writer ever. The fanboys who go out of their way to defend anything the guy has ever written, even if that's just the fucking list for the grocery store, can kiss my ass. I wonder if they'll even remember him in 10-15 years.

- I'm not really into pot, but if you people insist on smoking, can you at least make sure you get the good stuff? If you had a single healthy brain cell left in your heads, you'd realize that this near-complete and blatant return to the Silver Age is going to backfire, when in ten years time, Post-Crisis fans take over the company and start pulling the same shit, bringing back almost every aspect of the "Iron Age" (or whatever the hell people dub it). Are you trying to get comic books stuck in limbo?

- Congratulations, Dan. You did it. You brought Hal and Barry back. God forbid that actually something sticks in comic books. And you did it with such an ingenious plan! You traded them for Batman and J'onn. I'm struggling with your logic. You kill off Batman, when he's the hottest property out there and right when newbies are getting in, because of TDK. Now, I can see the business portion of the decision, but unless you intend to have him back in the cowl in less than six months, do expect this to blow up in your face. And why does the DCU need Barry back, again? You know, outside of pleasing fans.

- Apparently "Holy Terror", the Frank Miller story where Batman will fight the Al Queda is back on track. What the hell?
* Miller no longer gets Batman. He hasn't since Year One. His "All-Star" run can be fun, as something completely over-the-top, but it's not good Batman. It's ridiculous Batman.
* Guy has issues. If he doesn't, then he just shows off in his interviews.
* Based on his own statements regarding this title, his understanding of the situation in Middle East and the post-9/11 era is the same as that of someone who's literally implanted nano-radio in his brain, looping the same FOX News reports over and over and over. I can't be the only one who finds it completely off comparing Iraq to Perl Harbor.
* On occasion, loud, pro-American comics will come out. These *are* American comics and it's to be expected by foreigners and to be demanded by the Americans. The problem is that Batman is not Miller's character any more than he's mine. He doesn't get to transform him into a bomb-firing propaganda tank (if "300" is anything to go by). He wants to write the story of a brooding super-hero take on a terrorist organization? He can make up his own. Just stay the hell away from Batman.
* Batman and pro-American propaganda don't click. To promote something pro-Anything, you have to export the good things of this "anything" with something that represents them fully. With Superman, it works. He lives in a glorious city, works in the biggest newspaper, he wears blue and red and he eats apple-pie. Batman is the guy who saw his parents get shot in front of his eyes, dresses up in black, hunts down low-life criminals and flushes out corrupt cops and politicians. So, what's he going to export in an international mission against terrorism? The Second Amendment, the high crime rates or the rotten authority?

Pull. The. Plug.

- New Krypton. It's a story generally applauded by readers, though I struggle to see the reason. For starters, it's a bad idea. Having Superman as the sole Kryptonian survivor is a big deal, which Silver Age fanboyism frowns upon; so OK, since you're in that category, you bring Kara back. And then you give Superman a son. And then you have random Kryptonians popping in every now and then. Hell, the new Flamebird and Nightwing are Kryptonians. And now you have a whole damn city of them running around (currently on Earth, later somewhere else in the Universe). People say that it's better because it shows Superman is special because he's Superman, not because he's Kryptonian. Valid argument, if the damn thing was a one-time-only deal. The story goes like this: dying planet, desperate scientist, last son rocketed away to another world. The whole fantasy in Superman's origin, the appeal of the actual origin conceptually, is that he's the planet's last son. I can understand compromises with, say, Kara (much as I don't like her), but this is ridiculous. That aside, it's loooooong, it's boring and the timing is awful; a huge, world-changing scenario thrown in the middle of a hurricane of big events (Final Crisis, Batman's death, Barry's return and so on and so forth) is just too much.

On a related note, Kara your mother's a bitch. I hope she breaks her hip, the old hag.

- On the topic of Superman, he leaves Earth for New Krypton for a while. I'm taking bets about how long until Lois divorces him and Lana starts chasing him again. You know it'll happen.

- And while we're at it, he's also leaving Action Comics. Split on that one; I have no interest in the the new Nightwing and the Flamebird, who will be taking over the title, but Rucka's writing it and I like Rucka's work.

- Pa Kent's dead, if you didn't already know. I'll sit right there and wait for valid reasons why he had to die. Come on, I'm waiting.

- A lot of the above complaints can -at least in part- be blamed to Johns, so to avoid this from turning into a complete Johns bashing, his JSA "Thy Kingdom Come" story arc ended recently and it was pretty good. I know I said his writing generally lacks subtext, but in this particular case, he did a quite good job illustrating the complexities and dangers of an all-powerful being meddling with the human world. Would you give up your freedoms and philosophies and bow before a god that can make the world around you safe? The fact that this arc overlapped with "Kingdom Come", which centers around the same issue (albeit with superhumans, rather than actual deities) makes it all the more meaningful.

- On that related note, so far as I'm concerned Earth-22 is the original Byrne Earth, before it was raped by the stupidity of DC (be it in 2000 with Loeb's run or later with Birthright). I'm sure there are continuity contradictions, but until someone comes out and says otherwise, I'll stick to this belief. Sorry, but I need closure.

- DC, you know what's a good idea? Drop.the.fucking.crossovers. You been doing this for several years, but now you're out of control. I don't want to have to pick Supergirl, who I don't even like, to read an integral part of a Superman story. I don't want to pick Batman, to read about Nightwing (though I generally pick Batman and not Nightwing, but you get the point). And I don't want to have to read a gazillion different titles, tie-ins and add-on titles to make sense out of the clusterfuck of Final Crisis. You decided that it worked better to spread storylines across every book in publication right now. You might have even thought that it was a good business move, as it would force me, the reader, to spend more money on more titles and get familiar with them if I weren't already. But here's the thing: just because you decided that this way you can make more money, it doesn't mean that my boss will give me a raise to keep up with fucking comic books. So, what happens? I stick to the titles I buy, I can't make sense out of half of the stories, I get frustrated, I drop all your titles and buy beer with the money I save. Good business, huh?

- "Amazing Spider-Man" has been a bit of a hit-or-miss lately. I started picking it up after "Brand New Day", which was actually pretty decent (deus-ex-machina-marriage-disappearance notwithstanding), dropped it a while later along with many books and started again recently. It's got some decent stuff, but often it's just... too average for Spidey. What gives? Also, what the hell was that "Fear Itself" one-shot? What, Marvel will greenlight anything with the name "Spider-Man" in it these days? If so, I have a couple of pitches to send. They suck, but that doesn't seem to matter all that much.

- At first I was worried by IDW's promotion art for "All Hail Megatron", which directly identified the US with the Autobots and thus the good guys and the "Reds" with the Decepticons and thus the bad guys. But leaving politics aside, the book is actually pretty good. Clean, nostalgic Transformers fun, as the G1 cartoon would've been if it was aimed at an older audience. Good characterization, a decent plot, all in all, best Transformers fun I've had in a very long while. Pick it up.

- Back in DC and Superman, kind request: pick up All-Star. Morrison's story is done, but there are a million stories that can be told in the same form. I want a Golden Age All-Star. And then an Iron-Age one. And then back to Silver Age. And other random stuff. A Superboy-Prime one. And so on and so forth.

- I can't wait for "Superman: Secret Origin". It's pretty much going to lead me to the decision of whether or not I should keep reading Superman books. Sorry, but the mesh of Silver Age with the Donnerverse just doesn't do it for me. Here's hoping the story will rock my socks off and keep me into the books.

That's all for now.