(The Question checks up on Detective Montoya. Excerpt from 52 #4.)
I’m all about the comic books. Obviously. More people should read them, the good ones at least, particularly people that I know. The benefit would be mutual. They’d get to enjoy some quality art and writing. I’d get a few more ears to bend after reading my weekly short-stack of four-color entertainment. As it is, I have just so many of you to work with.
Typically, a worthwhile tale in any comic book requires a certain amount of backstory and context. For example, one of my first favorite story in The Uncanny X-Men involved an anti-villain called Nimrod. This was shortly after Rogue joined the team, having been a villain herself just a few issues earlier. Professor Xavier is nowhere to be found. I believe he was in outer space with the Shi’ar. So anyway, Nimrod (who is a kind of Sentinel, but evolved somehow) and Rogue (who ends up absorbing the mutant abilities of almost every single X-Man, making her a blue-furred, metal-skinned, teleporting, phase-shifting badass) face off in this huge battle royale that … see? I’ve lost most of you already.
Having said all that to say this, now would be a good time to step into comics. The big two of the industry, Marvel and DC, are doing epic stories that are as well-written as they are accessible. Marvel completed the massive House Of M crossover story arc last year, a move that was essentially like punching a giant “Reset” button on the entire Marvel Universe. To follow-up, Marvel has launched another crossover arc: Civil War. The set up? An instant of catastrophic superhero irresponsibility leads to a Congressional push for registration of identities and powers that splits the hero community in half with Iron Man leading one side and Captain America rallying the other. Events in the arc have merited at least two mentions in the mainstream press. And given that superheroic icons have historically had to die (albeit temporarily) in order to see the light of print, this is a good sign.
DC has had its own share of news coverage lately. In the course of an ambitious year-long weekly series called — wait for it — 52, DC will reveal a new female hero named Batwoman. What’s getting all the attention is not the fact that she is, well, a she, but that she — or at least the alter-ego of she — likes other shes. But really, the introduction of a lesbian crime-fighter isn’t nearly as noteworthy as the quality of work that is going into 52 itself. So what is 52?
In 2004, DC published Identity Crisis, a crossover series that shook the foundations of the Justice League, leaving several heroes (and their families) broken and eyeing one another with severe mistrust. 2005 (and the start of 2006) took the rest of the DCU through a much bigger event called Infinite Crisis — a callback both in name and plot to 1985′s Crisis On Infinite Earths. As House Of M was to Marvel, so was Infinite Crisis to DC ten-fold. If HOM was a reset, this was more like shoving the DCU through a compactor. Alternate storylines and realities were combined and fused into a single timeline. As things can go with cosmically ambitious events, the last few issues of Infinite Crisis lacked some of the oversight that marked the first few, but what’s done is done. The biggest effect of the event is something called One Year Later. Back in April, the storylines of almost every DC monthly were pushed one year into that character’s future with no explanation of what happen’d in-between. Green Arrow, left for dead, stabbed in the back with his own arrows with on a rooftop in a burning Star City in March, appeared in April as his alter-ego Oliver Queen, the newly elected mayor of no-longer-burning Star City. And so on.
52 will attempt to give an explanation for just how the DC Universe changed from the end of Infinite Crisis to One Year Later. And so far, the series is doing a bang-up job. Keeping a weekly comic series going is very difficult work. DC attempted a weekly back in the late 80s with Action Comics, their Superman mainstay. It didn’t last. What makes 52 different — and more likely to succeed — is that it is a collaborative effort involving a handful of writers and a double-handful of artists. Storyboards are being created for each issue by veteran Keith Giffen, then fleshed out by an artistic team that changes every few weeks. For this reason, I suppose, the art of issues 6 and 7 hasn’t been as spot-on as the earlier issues, but the story remains intact in the capable hands of Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Geoff Johns and others.
52 is developing as a very fun learning experience, making it perfect for those newly arrived to comics. There’s no real need to worry if you’re lost in the plot, because chances are good that everyone else is just as intrigued and perplexed. After seven issues (the eighth arrives today) we’ve met our main characters (a good mix of somewhat-famous-faces and not-at-all-knowns like Black Adam, Booster Gold, The Question and Steel), we’ve established story arcs for all, we’ve seen clues for several bigger developments and we find ourselves deeper with each passing week. The best comparison I’ve seen so far to something more mainstream is to ABC’s Lost.
The difference here is that I’ve faith that 52 will actually deliver on some answers, rather than prolonging the agony of mystery for the sake of being mysterious.
There you have it. Two out-of-the-ordinary summer reading suggestions. If you only pick one, I’d suggest going with Civil War, as it is more accessible and relevant, certainly. But 52 is a lot of fun, as it has been far too long since I’ve read a comic that left me needing to talk about it with each finished issue.
And besides, television is nothing but repeats right now anyway.
