Here is what is wrong with the DC Universe
January 29th, 2009 -- mini-url
“The story of a *child* rocketed to Earth from a doomed planet…”
“In brightest day, in darkest night, no evil shall escape our sight…”
Yeah? Prove it.
“Criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot, so my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible…”
“Flash Fact.”
Just writing these phrases gave me chills. As I sit here, eating my 7-11 banana, my mind boggles at the wealth of powerful story material that DC Comics has to work with and play with. Truly iconic figures and an army of beloved (and lovingly behated) supporting characters, all with strong character traits and flaws, are available to work with and mingle across the entire DC Universe.
So why, I ask you, are comic fans getting stuck with a dead Batman that we have already been assured will come back with nary a scratch, two simultaneous summer events that have nothing to do with each other, one of which is essentially a serialized Elseworld, and story lines that, when set side by side, contradict each other without validation or explanation?
In Wonder Woman, gods and god-killers are rumbling near a shattered shopping mall, with members of the JLA handily defeated; in Superman, the bottled city of Kandor has finally been expanded and over a hundred thousand fully-powered Kryptonians have taken to the skies, recently forming New Krypton at an orbital point directly opposite of Earths; in Batman…well, Batman’s dead, but this doesn’t stop him from appearing in Final Crisis #6, where he, frankly, dies again. Never one to stay off the slippery horse of mortality, he remounts that buttery bronco, along with the rest of the JLA, miraculously neither scratched nor scathed, in the Faces of Evil: Kobra one-shot. This issue, incidentally, promises us that “KOBRA strikes the DC Universe in 2009!”, which raises the question, “is there any Universe left?”
The greatest fallacy of the DCU lies with the lack of impact their residents have on their environment. It’s exactly like reading a MMORPG chatlog:
<JLA> Superman: hay guys whats up <JLA> Wonder_Woman: not much lol <JLA> B00STER_G0LD!!!: just grindin <JLA> Superman: ne1 down for a LOD raid? i think we got enuff people on <JLA> Superman: we still need to get a braniac arm to update base <JLA> Superman: i hear they upped the spawn rates woo! <JLA> Wonder_Woman: k one sec lemme wrap this director steel mish <JLA> Superman: kk <JLA> B00STER_G0LD!!!: can i join <[Login] The Justice League teleporter lights up as GL_JonStewart joins the game> <JLA> GL_JonStewart: any groups? <JLA> Wonder_Woman: yeah LOD raid <JLA> GL_JonStewart: awesome lemme start patroling the zone so they spawn <JLA> Superman: right on anyone else? <JLA> B00STER_G0LD!!!: can i join <JLA> Superman: yo batman you want in on this <JLA> Batman: ... <JLA> Batman: I am vengeance. <JLA> Superman: stfu <JLA> Batman: ...hnnh <JLA> Superman: ohnoes ma and pa are calling, gotta log, bbl <[Logout] Superman enters a phone booth, puts on his glasses, and goes to work> <JLA> B00STER_G0LD!!!: can i join
Butts are kicked, people are wounded, tears are shed, and the resiliency of the human race is the moral of the story. The quest is resolved and rarely, if ever, discussed again.
Big deal.
If DC editorial, at whose feet this must all be laid, wants to stop playing continuity grease monkey and start telling good stories, they would do well to ponder deeply the last bit of this rant:
The DCU has too many heroes for too small an Earth. Let the WWII heroes die a noble death and stay dead. Let them be remembered, in continuity, and let their legacy shape the heroes of tomorrow as martyrs to the cause. Let them, in short, be flashbacks.
The DCU has too many events happening in too short a time-frame. Create one or two salient plot points that originate in one series, say the Kandorans in the current Superman books, and let them proliferate through the DCU and affect the characters. Let’s see different sides of the story, different aspects and motivations of the major players, and have a dynamic solution to the problem.
String us along! Fake us out! Even younger readers want to see their heroes needing to be heroic, not having their heroism given to them by virtue of reputation and regimented formula.
But don’t confuse us by shoving outlandish late-50s pseudo-continuity into our eyes and assuming we’ll get the joke. Like any nostalgia based on a previous decade, be it clothes, music, or questionable hairstyles, there is a fine line between “accentuating a modern method with a splash of yesteryear” and these guys.
In short, pare down, simplify, and remember: the best way to cut a Gordian Knot is with Occam’s Razor.
Flash Fact.
Tags: batman, Booster Gold, chatlog, DC comics, dc editorial, dc sucks, dc universe, elseworlds, faces of evil: kobra, final crisis #7, flash fact, funny chatlog, gordian knot, In Brightest Day, jla, kandor, krypton, kryptonians, mmorpg, new krypton, occam's razor, superman, superstitious and cowardly lot, Wonder Woman
Nice article, but um I think DC is just going to throw another half dozen meaningless non-related event storylines at us. instead. k tx bai.
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Cory Ringdahl Reply:
January 29th, 2009 at 8:53 pm
@ckarath, I have no doubt of this.
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Comment by ckarath — January 29, 2009 @ 8:26 pm
I’m just curious what’s on your pull list is like. Are you a spurned DC reader?
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Cory Ringdahl Reply:
January 29th, 2009 at 8:56 pm
@Sparky, I like the Nightwing book as a “guy in tights solves crimes” replacement to Batman, who hasn’t actually solved a crime mystery in about ten years. I’ve been enjoying parts of the current Superman run. Blue Beetle gets my vote for enjoyable series.
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Comment by Sparky — January 29, 2009 @ 8:39 pm
Blackest Night will be awesome, you’ll see!
Ohshi
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Cory Ringdahl Reply:
January 29th, 2009 at 8:52 pm
@Nick, does Solomon Grundy get a black ring OMG
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Nick Reply:
January 30th, 2009 at 1:06 pm
@Cory Ringdahl, How would a zombie Solomon Grundy speak?
Like Oscar Wilde?
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Comment by Nick — January 29, 2009 @ 8:50 pm
DC needs more heroes fighting heroes. I can’t get enough of that shit.
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Cory Ringdahl Reply:
January 30th, 2009 at 4:44 am
@Erik, Then you will *love* this noise.
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Comment by Erik — January 30, 2009 @ 3:26 am
I think you’re missing the two bigger issues with the DCU, one internal and one external.
The external one is simple. DC isn’t an independant company. They’re a fully owned subsidiary of AOL/Time/Warner. They are run by a conglomerate that wants to maximize issue sales. Crossover events increase issue sales in the short term. Major dramatic events increase issue sales in the short term. There are long term consequences of that, but once the long term costs outweigh everything, ATW can always sell off the intellectual properties and hard resources and walk away haviing made their money selling steaks off the cow.
The internal issue is fundamental to most DC characters, and structural in nature. Their characters are all interesting only in terms of what they can do. Their weaknesses tend to be either minor, imaginary, or ridiculous. When the weaknesses become untenable to keep interesting, the weakness is eliminated. Superman is the iconic example. He’s indestructable except by kryptonite (an imaginary substabce not native to earth) which is rare and hard to come by except that Lex Luthor seems to have a deal to buy it by the ton and any villian who wants to be a real threat has to have access to some.
When I compare this to Spiderman, for example, who has a moral crusade that makes it hard for him to build a relationship, hold down a job, or pay his rent, it’s easy for me to spot the weakness with with I can relate.
Green arrow sleeps around and is kind of a jerk, That’s not a superhero weakness, it’s a character quirk. The only deeply interesting character on an emotional level among the front line DC characters is Batman, and even then he’s not really capped to the limitations of a normal person, but he comes close. The biggest difference between the DCU and the MU (and the IU and DHU to lesser extents) is that DCU characters are defined by what they can do. MU characters are defined by what they can’t.
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Comment by Cobra Baghdad — January 30, 2009 @ 1:36 pm
Nice rant. I haven’t bought a DC comic or GN in months, nothing appeals to me anymore.
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Comment by Matt Schuster — January 30, 2009 @ 1:37 pm
I don’t want to be a buzzkill or anything, but according to the end of Final Crisis #7, Batman is alive and well. This is no surprise for two reasons:
1. Who really dies in the DCU?
and
2. The Omega Sanction (which supposedly killed Batman in FC#6) merely traps the organism in a series of alternate realities, each worse than the previous one.
With this in mind, seeing Batman stuck at the beginning of time, watching Anthro pass away while he scratches his bat symbol on the wall, is really more of an answer (or rather connection) to the beginning of FC – by this, I mean the same cave drawings Bruce Wayne is working on in the final page.
But this is beside the point.
I really appreciated reading this rant, because you are completely right on so many aspects. I don’t think we can completely blame Dan DaDio for all of the most recent issues, but I feel as though he has swayed the DCU in a direction few of us want, or rather, need.
I can’t say I read as much DC anymore (I’m actually veering towards the Vertigo band wagon). Probably because everything in the DCU seems so superficial.
And I’ve got to say, I loved BOOSTER_GOLD!!!. Practically sweating in desperation.
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Comment by Erika Szabo — January 30, 2009 @ 2:45 pm