Comic Rant

This is one of those blogs that have been stewing in my mind for months before I finally committed it to… electronic medium? Doesn’t sound the same as ‘committed to paper’ but that’s a blog for another day.

A few months ago I was flipping through Green Lantern. I did this because Batman was guest starring in GL, and as I looked at this comic I realized that I was no longer the core audience of DC comics. I don’t know who DC’s audience is, but it’s clearly not me.
I’m not going to go into how much I hate Hal, but I will say I dislike Geoff Johns. Now I’m a part of a comic book yahoo group, which I intend to send this to, so I’m not going to call Johns a bunch of names… though I want to, I will just explain why I didn’t like this comic.
No matter how much you gild the lily, Hal is a cop killer. I say this because years ago in Green Lantern comic, Hal killed a bunch of Green Lanterns for their rings; based on the idea that Green Lanterns are ‘outer space cops’, Hal is a cop killer. Now, Johns has brought back several of the people Hal killed, but Hal still killed them or attempted to kill them- so I feel he would still be guilty in a court of law…. And guilty by Batman standards.
See that’s was the only thing I liked about the Days of Vengeance, when DC decided to make Hal the spirit of vengeance. Batman was the ONLY person in DC who said- “Hey wait a second, Hal had one of the most powerful items in the universe and it drove him insane; what are you guys doing letting him get MORE power?” This made sense as Batman is about Order, that’s why his opposite number (Joker) is about chaos and that’s why Batman can NOT kill the Joker.
So anyway in this Green Lantern comic, Batman calls Hal for help to deal with a bad guy. Now right away I have problems, as I really don’t see Batman calling for help even if somebody ELSE’S villain is in Gotham. It’s not like at the end of No Man’s Land, when we found out Luthor was the big bad, we saw Batman call Superman and go “ Hey Clark, I’m having problems with Luthor, can you come and help me?” Nope. Batman took care of it himself.
But the end got me, Batman FORGIVES Hal and I can’t deal with Batman forgiving a cop killer.
Which lead me back to I don’t like Johns as a writer. I know I’m not alone, but at the same time while looking at this comic I realized that there must be a few thousand people who like him. You see if all of the Flash readers hated him as much as I did, the book would’ve tanked while Johns was writing it and he’d be hard pressed to find a job at DC. Instead the book did well and Johns was given much of DC comics to write.

Likewise, I hate cross over events. I feel that for $3 a month I should be able to read a comic and understand it- without shelling out money for DC’s entire lineup. I don’t mind the issue 2 ‘guest stars’[ in the 80’s, DC and Marvel realized that a new book would have a large issue 2 drop and thus Marvel would have Spiderman or Wolvie appear in the second issue; DC would have Batman show up], and I don’t mind a ‘shared’ universe approach… Heck I would’ve loved it if Waid or Dixon had Nightwing or Flash guest star in each other’s books a bit more, to show the fact that these guys are friends who go wayyy back. But again I don’t like to be forced to read 3 other comics to understand Flash.
Heck the best ‘crossover’ event I read recently was Spiderman’s ‘The Other’… It was in all of the Spiderman books and the writing quality showed that more then one writer worked on it. I could tell when a writer I liked was on the book and when a writer I didn’t like was writing a chapter. Heck I thought it was interesting that at the beginning of the series, Mary Jane points out that Peter suffers from Survivor’s Guilt and might be a tad suicidal. This made sense to me and added an interesting dimension to the fact that Peter constantly ran out of webbing (due to bad dramatic writing). However at the end of the story arc, she dismisses this revelation- saying that she was merely projecting… and I felt that’s what happens when you have too many writers writing a story- they contradict each other.
But crossover events $ell. They have to make money for DC and Marvel, otherwise they would stop doing it. The comic companies know that people will buy EVERY chapter of a crossover, as well as the crossover ‘mini’ series itself like Infinite Crisis).

The last part of this ‘rant’ is for adj. and brings up a point I think she mentioned in one of her blogs. She mentioned her attachment to fictional characters. Well I’ve had the same attachment, and I think I understand the difference between her problem with a bad King Arthur story and a bad Nightwing story. The difference is that a bad Nightwing story can become CANON. That’s the reason I hate bad writers of comics, a good writer will take what has gone on before and build on to the characters to make them grow…
If she reads a bad King Arthur book, well she can just decide it was bad and not read that writer again…. But a bad writer on Nightwing can change the character for years to come, as they change Dick and have him do stupid things that he should never do.
It’s hard for me to pick a good example where I don’t pick on Johns, as he really messed up the speedsters for me… but there are a bunch of other lead ups to Infinite Crisis that will fit the bill.
Greg Rucka had Wonder Woman kill Max Lords. This to me changes how EVERYONE in DC who knows Di should look at her. She crossed a line that she can never uncross. Again, like Hal, even if they bring the person back Di’s intent remains. I feel that most Superheroes by being SUPER, should be better then us. And that’s where I have my problem. The writer defended this action by saying Di was a warrior, that’s what she was trained for and in this case she felt she had NO CHOICE. First, I find it interesting that in 60 odd years that NO OTHER writer has picked up on WW’s bloodlust. I’ve followed Wonder Woman for ages… and no one else has written her killing someone in cold blood. Even when she was fighting Nazis, I don’t remember Wonder Woman killing anyone.
I say cold blood, because her killing Max wasn’t on the battlefield. Max was tied up. Granted Max had used his powers to control Superman… and had promised he’d do so again. So Wonder Woman decided to kill him- that’s not manslaughter, that’s pre-meditated. And it makes Wonder Woman stupider then me, as I can think of a bunch of people I could’ve called, if I had a JLA communicator, to lock Max up… after I knocked him out so he couldn’t use his powers on who I called ( Hello John Henry Irons, I need you to make a prison that has a ‘clean’ air system’. Hey Oracle, can you get Orion? I need to get a boom tube and send someone to Mars. Hello JSA, Can Dr. Fate use his magic to get rid of someone’s powers?...)

So because Rucka made WW a killer and Johns brought back Hal, there’s a good chance that Brad Meltzer( another writer I dislike) will have Batman working with these two killers on the Justice League… Which is something I don’t see Batman doing.
And thus I don’t read Justice League. Or Batman. Or Green Lantern. Or any maxi series…. But somebody is, and those are the people who Marvel and DC are trying to get money from. I don’t know who these people are, I just know they’re not me, Evan or Adj. The three of us are busy reading Fables, Y the Last Man, Invincible and other non ‘main stream’ titles.