Injustice: Gods Among Us #35 - A Review

The penultimate issue of Injustice: Gods Among Us is built around an action-free conflict between Superman and Batman.  Yet despite a distinct lack of fisticuffs, this issue is far from boring. In fact, writer Tom Taylor hangs a lampshade on this point, with Batman explaining - in defiance of decades of fanboy arguments -  that if Superman truly wanted to kill him he could do so easily.  Likewise, Batman - like Taylor - demonstrates that the most effective weapon when fighting Superman is not wKryptonite or Magic... but words. 


Tom Derenick's art is a perfect complement to this particular issue.  Derenick's shadowy style is perfectly suited towards an issue set inside the Batcave.  The coloring team's palette perfectly complements Derenick's inks, with everything clearly defined despite being largely rendered in blacks and blues.

What Can One Man Do Against The Death Of Hope?

Earlier this week, I wrote a column in response to the recent ruckus regarding  J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman leaving Batwoman.  For those who missed the news, the creative team quit in the wake of DC Comics Editorial declaring that they didn't want Kathy Kane and her girlfriend Maggie Sawyer to get married.  My article was based around the idea that the comics industry in general seems to have acquired a fear of depicting happily married superheroes, with most of the married superheroes at DC Comics having been rendered single by the New 52 revamp and Peter Parker still single because of Joe Quesada's belief that a deal with the devil is less inherently sinful than a divorce.

The digital ink was barely dry when another scandal involving DC Comics emerged later that afternoon.  This time the source of trouble was a contest for amateur artists, vying for a chance to depict Harley Quinn in the #0 issue of her upcoming solo book.  The catch?  All four panels are meant to depict Harley Quinn attempting suicide in a number of comedic ways, with the final panel depicting her naked and in a bathtub.  Some fixated upon the nudity aspect of the contest but most were outraged by the suicide element.  Particularly since next week is National Suicide Prevention Week.

I've been struggling with how to speak about this for the batter part of a day.  More than any character in recent memory, Harley Quinn had always been portrayed as one of the most fun characters in comics.  And try as I might, I can't think of a better metaphor for the state of affairs at DC Comics right now than a suicidal Harley Quinn.

As it turns out, I didn't have to think of a better metaphor.  For I learned today that Hope has literally been erased from the New 52 universe! Metaphors are completely meaningless at this point.  For all better writers and critics than me have spoken about the sense of all hope and joy being removed from the DC Universe in recent months, never did we suspect it would soon be a literal truth.



So the question that has been on my mind for the past few hours has been how - how do we fight this?

Protest?  It's already been made abundantly clear that our opinions as mere fans are completely meaningless to The Powers That Be.  So far the only instance where public outcry made a difference was in getting Gail Simone rehired on to Batgirl and even that may have been due entirely to the threat of decreased orders from the distributor.

Boycott?  In most cases, we're already not buying the offending books.  Those offended by Tony Daniel's dismissal of a female fan's concerns over a romance-based Superman/Wonder Woman book that was likened to Twilight by reassuring her there would be just as many butt shots of Superman as of Wonder Woman can't effectively boycott the title without The Powers That Be using that as justification for the belief that all their fans are 45 year old men and that women don't read comic books.

Jessica Mills touched upon another challenge before us quite eloquently in her recent column - DC Comics and Institutionalized Sexism – Purchasing Power is Not Power.  She touches upon the aforementioned  problems with boycotts while pointing out another problem.  Namely that boycotting an entire company does little to strike against the management and only hurts the artists and writers whose work we are enjoying.

"Telling people not to buy DC Comics as a way to change things at DC Comics is short sighted and dismissive.  Not buying those comics means readers have to, not only give up on beloved characters, but pull their support of talented and dedicated writers, artists, and others"

 "I like reading comics.  I love Gail Simone’s work.  I love Greg Rucka’s work.  I’m not going to stop supporting THEM because the DC leadership refuses to acknowledge the terrible decision-making that continually alienates a large portion of their client-base."

I'm in a similar fix.  Any pledge not to buy any more Batwoman comics is meaningless since I was reading the series as the collected editions became available at my local library.  Refusing to buy the upcoming Harley Quinn book would send a message against Amanda Conner - an artist whom I have been dying to see on a monthly series again for some time now.  And boycotting the company as a whole will only hurt Jeff Lemire and Gail Simone and all the other creators whose work I am enjoying.

I already know from experience that boycotts don't work.  I boycotted all things Marvel Comics for a goodly while over One More Day, wrote some rather good articles about why the storyline was a bad idea and it did nothing.  Eventually I focused my personal boycott on all things Spider-Man, purely so I could justify seeing The Avengers and supporting Joss Whedon (Browcoats Forever!).

So what can I do?  What can one man do?



And then it hit me.  We fight them the same way we do a bully.  We treat them as we would any disruptive child who makes a mess just to get attention.  We ignore them. 

Marvel Comics editor and One More Day apologist Tom Brevoort let the secret slip - that they see even bad publicity as good publicity and bad attention is still attention.  That they fear apathetic fans far more than angry fans because angry fans are still buying the comics.

So this is where I will start.

As a fan, I'm not going to pick up any more books out of habit in the hope that they're building toward something big.  If they can't do something to keep me entertained for one issue, it's not worth my time.

As a critic, I'm not going to bother writing reviews for long-running series or crossover events just to keep people informed as to what is going on.  If the book isn't worth reading most of the year, why should I care about it for the three months it's involved with the books I do care about?    

No more angry rants drawing curiosity .  No more hash-tagged Tweets giving you free publicity.  And no more second chances.  I'm that sort of a man.

Arrow - Season Two - New Trailer And The Casting of Amanda Waller

SOURCE: The CW’s Arrow Casts Spartacus Actress As Our New Amanda Waller (The Mary Sue) 

 
Rumors abounded that Amanda "The Wall" Waller would become a part of the cast of Arrow when it was revealed that Deadshot would be returning and that Michael Jai White would be playing the part of Bronze Tiger - both characters having been a part of Waller's Suicide Squad.  While we cannot confirm or deny that a Suicide Squad style team will be a part of Arrow's storyline, we can confirm that Spartacus actress Cynthia Addai-Robinson has been cast as Amanda Waller.

I'm withholding any judgement until we see her on the show.  While the odds probably weren't good that The CW would ever cast CCH Pounder or Angela Bassett in the part (even ignoring the younger, sexier Amanda Waller in all the New 52 comics), I take it as a good sign that they cast an actress better known for playing tough female characters than the model-types that usually grace The CW's shows.

Also, we now have a new trailer for Season 2 of Arrow.



Comments?

Fear And Loathing Of Love And Marriage In Superhero Comics

Who said that comic fans don't want to see people getting married?

What prompted this question is today's news that J.H. Williams III and W. Haden Blackman are leaving Batwoman as of Issue #26, citing editorial interference in their plans to have Kathy Kane and Maggie Sawyer get married.  Williams was quick to note that DC Comics' objection was to marriage in general - not a marriage between two lesbians.  The evidence does bear him out, given that nearly every major married couple in DC Comics pantheon of superheroes has either been broken up since the New 52 revamp or not appeared at all. 

Clark Kent and Lois Lane?  Not an item.  Barry Allen and Iris West?  Flirting but he has a new girlfriend.  Wally West and Linda Park?  Don't even exist!  Ditto Ralph and Sue Dibny.  Heck, the only married couple I think is still around is Aquaman and Mera and they've interacted so little in his book you'd hardly know they were married!

Of course DC Comics is far from alone in being guilty of this sort of thing.  Do the words One More Day ring a bell?  Does everyone remember how that whole mess started because Joe Quesada thought the reason Spider-Man's sales were dropping were because the fans couldn't relate to a happily married Peter Parker?  Do anyone but me and the guys writing Spider-Fan.org remember that they tried killing Mary Jane off because of that theory and all it did was upset the fans?

"But Starman," I hear you metaphorical masses say.  "Superheroes get married and divorced all the time!  It's a common element in drama in many genres!" 

That is true, dear masses.  Yet there is a world of difference between simple drama preventing marriage from occurring and a refusal to consider a plot element completely. 

It seems that the very idea of marriage itself is under attack in our comics due to some mistaken belief that young readers do not want to read about married couples.  This seems odd given the belief some publishers have that their key demographic is 45-year old males, but that's a whole other argument.  So we still have the question - where did this idea come from?

Any ideas?  I'd love to hear about them.

The Blackbeard Legacy - Part Two

I'll be honest, me hearties.  Your Captain did think better of continuing with this series.  Not out of any compassion for you, of course, but because there is precious little in this second chapter of The Blackbeard Legacy worth making fun of.

It would be fair to say that nothing that advances the plot happens in this issue.  In point of fact, nothing happens in this issue at all!  Now, a bad comic I can make fun of easily.  But a boring comic?  Aye, that's a challenge that makes even my stout heart tremble a bit.

And yet I shall persevere and try to weather this challenge!  Because even if I can't deliver my best, you still deserve for me to try!  Besides, I  haven't gotten any new comics this week and I've got nothing else to blog about right now.  So if ye haven't already been exposed to Part One of The BlackBeard Legacy, click this link before continuing.on past the next image.


Our story begins with a wizened woman wearing tattered clothes and a skirt made of bones, standing on a beach.  This is the same woman we see on the Chapter Title page, though - unlike on the title page above - her skin is not green.  This, apparently, is Obehmana.  Our narrator, Hannah Teach, tells us that Obehmana is a witch/bounty hunter who - although Hannah didn't know it at the time - had been hired to track her down. 


We see Obehmana raise some zombies and it's quite spooky and terrifying.  Shame that's the last we'll see of them until the end of the issue.  Suddenly, we cut to Hannah waking up in bed, screaming.  Apparently she's been having reoccurring dreams of zombies coming for her.  Or some other reoccurring nightmare.  The narration is less than clear about this.


What is clear is that the log-book Hannah stole mentions a key of some kind.  The key is apparently some kind of "Beautiful Circle" and is located in Cuba.  Hannah admits to herself this seems unlikely but the man who compiled the log isn't given to tall tales, so it must be the truth.    


After a brief scene in which Madison (the blind bounty hunter from last issue) voices her objections to going to Cuba and Hannah blows her off, we arrive in Cuba.  At this point we discover just how low the writers of this series will go in a cheap attempt to maintain reader interest as they indulge in the lowest form of humor possible - blatant parroting.

That joke's not dead yet! It's getting better!
I don't know what's worse - the fact that they've been reduced to copying Monty Python skits wholesale for a cheap laugh or the fact that they misquoted the very thing they're ripping off!  As any teenage boy of a certain intellectual bend could tell you, the Norwegian Blue has "beautiful plumage" - not "lovely plumage".

The next four pages see Hannah and her crew questioning every damned person in the town about a mysterious key.  Apparently nobody in the crew bothered to put ranks in Gather Information because all they get is confusion, propositions and lines that I'm sure are references to the random townsfolk dialogue from various classic NES role-playing games or old TV shows.


Eventually, Hanna makes her way to a tinker's shack that most of the locals seem to avoid.  Even Hannah, who is no shrinking violet, seems a little disturbed by the contraption that the tinker seems to be working on.  She asks about the key, claiming her book says they have it.  The tinker denies this and sends Hannah packing.


So... wait a minute.  If Hannah's log book told her exactly who she had to talk to about the key, why did she send her crew off asking random people in the street if they knew about a key?  Was Hannah just trying to keep her crew busy and distracted from the fact that there's no treasure waiting at the end of their journey?

That seems likely and Hannah does admit to lying to them in the narration, when she says she's sure the tinker does have the key and that they should come back later and make a show of force to get it.  The irony being that the tinker DOES have the key and he's half-ready to give it to Hannah rather than worry about it since it's never done him any good.


Our issue ends with some random drunk woman running into Obehmana and her zombies.  Remember them?  The bad guys who were set up as a big menace at the start of this comic?  Yeah, well the story ends before we get to see the poor unfortunate become zombie chow.  Or be turned into a zombie herself.  Or indeed anything interesting or exciting happen.

This comic sucks!  There's no action at all.  Nothing really happens except our hero fails to find a key.  It's never explained why she needs the key in the first place.  A villain is introduced but doesn't do anything.  And the only real continuation of the plot  from the first issue is the revelation on the penultimate page that Hannah's whole reason for wanting to track down Blackbeard is because of his part in her mother's death.  We're half way through this series and we're just now finding out our hero's motivation!

Next time won't be as dull but it will make you angry for entirely different reasons.