Oh how does DC drop the ball. They’ve perpetrated a hat-trick of meh.
- Brightest Day was a concern at the very beginning. I remember commenting that it felt like a sleek aircraft on the tarmac slowly winding up it’s engines. There were some notable explosions that were, on reflection, where it was really at. The biggest payoff for Brightest Day was Deadman learning to live. This of course was undone at the end, of course, so even the biggest feel-good part of the event was whacked with a tire-iron and left to float around in limbo. The climax of the tale was more about stroking Alan Moore than it was about a really good story. It harkened back to elements of the DC Universe that nobody remembers and nobody values. “The Parliament of Trees” and “Swamp Thing”. That went out with disco balls in your bedroom back in the late 70’s kids. So that’s the first most painful bit of meh. Brightest Day. An investment for sure, lots of little minis to soak up the money like little sponges and a payoff that made 40 and 50 year old comic nerds happy but left the rest of us in a lurch wondering what the hell happened. Upon later reflection the entire Blackest Night/Brightest Day was really just a monumental reach-around for Alan Moore. Marvel did a zombie thing, zombies seem like such a great idea… blah blah blah. We forgave Blackest Night because it had a payoff at the end we valued, enough to forgive the obvious Alan Moore heavy petting. It wasn’t until we got shafted with Brightest Day did we discover that we had been sold. Sold to advertisers, sold to the ghost of the still living Alan Moore, and most damningly, sold to the nostalgia that DC seems to be utterly trapped in. Which of course leads us to…
- DC’s re-(whatever) event. They are redoing everything, killing off a raft of beloved characters, incinerating the past 75 years of comic book history all in a bid to regain what they’ve lost. Traction and relevancy. I’ve written about this before, the precipitous drop in sales, how last month was better than this, and so on and so forth. The cross-eyed procession done by both of the giant comic book houses when it comes to their events and pricetags, ie “Fear Itself is worth the money!” and “Flashpoint doesn’t have to break the bank!” point out quite clearly that we know it’s a ploy and so do they. This wouldn’t come up unless the fans were tired of $200 misadventures (cough, Brightest Day, cough). It’s bittersweet to me that they are going to do day-and-date release for both physical comic books and digital ones. I suspect that DC hit a point where the pain from poor sales drove them like a horde of disorganized Trollocs right into the sunny vale of the digital comic world. Yes, that’s right, I used a Wheel of Time metaphor, it’s apt! This re-(whatever) you want to call it feels like a clutch. It’s a back-against-the-wall move that has the metallic tang of desperation splattered all over it. “We need hip young heroes with bad attitudes and saggy pants! We need to amp up the Speed-P-Diddy-Yo factor in our stories!” And what do I have as proof for this conjecture? They eliminated the Justice Society of America. The characters, the setting, the story – all gently and transparently euthanized. Jay Garrick doesn’t go out in a Speed Force draped blaze of glory, he just evaporates in a puff of logic. Piff. All gone. Jay Garrick? Who? Yeah. Who. This isn’t the only speedster to get the short end of the stick. Our favorite Speed Force Scarecrow of course is Wally West. If you were able to put a team of DC people in a room, strap ’em down with “I Love Me” jackets and then over the PA say “WHAT ABOUT WALLY WEST?” they would all moan, their eyeballs would slide back in their heads and they would dash their brains out on the nearest wall until they all stopped moving. I’d like to think this was in any way inaccurate but we’ve seen as much, in the little taste of the ostrich-head-in-the-dirt reaction when we posed this very question to DC during C2E2. The only thing I brought to the setting were the straight jackets, the lunatic asylum, and the ultraviolence.
- The third bit is the upcoming Green Lantern movie. People like me, who are very fond of the Green Lantern series of comic books are beyond-thrilled that we’re going to see a live-action rendition of our beloved Lanterns. I’m even willing to put aside my urge to throw erasers at Hal Jordan for the time being (think Roger Rabbit). Of course we’re enthralled beyond all reason and enthusiastic beyond measure but I distinctly was very leery about GL hitting the silver screen. I implored the people at DC “Please, if you are going to do it, do it as best you can.” Because anything less would be a heartbreak to the Green Lantern fans who put their entire comic-book-fandom on the line for DC’s effort to cinematically monetize the Green Lanterns. I was at least initially buoyed up by the early reports that the first 15 minutes of the movie make it worthwhile, but then all my good vibes crashed when I saw the reviews of the movie from rottentomatoes.com. 33% Fresh. It is as I feared. It’s going to be a niche movie with a heavy blade. It’s going to make fanboys like me squeal with delight but it’s going to alienate the casual moviegoer who isn’t into comic books.
So it’s just a matter of time now. These three meh-tastic events all lined up and it really tests my affections and my loyalty to DC. I can hope for a few things. I can hope that the “Lets go stroke Alan Moore” well has dried up and we can get to some truly original storytelling instead of digging up 1975 and trying to pretend that it’s a PYT, which, if you have seen me, anything from 1975 can no longer be regarded as a PYT. How about something new DC? Something novel, something daring? Something you didn’t find floating around a pile of very old and very fally-aparty comic books from the deep past? On your current track, it seems as though this is the death-rattle before the end. That I think is the saddest thing, all of this, just falling apart.