disjointed thoughts from a water-boiler on the 23rd rainy day in a row:
So, um, reading a recent issue of Wizard, in between features on why the new Justice Society will be "the most important comic of 2007" and the low-down on how Alex Ross would beat Wonder Woman in a fight (throw her into the sun, duh), there's an interview with Grant Morrison on Animal.
Sez Moz: "I'd been reading Watchmen and other 'real-life superhero' books and I thought they were a dead end. I wanted to make a stance against that stuff and get back to the big, weird, imaginative stuff that said comics could do anything. With Animal Man, it's clear that I'm planting a flag in the sand, trying to suggest a way you can still be intelligent but be wilder and more imaginative."
Also just read (for the 8 billionth time) New Frontier (but for the first time Absolutimatized), and felt certain parallels with Watchmen so strongly. Only, where Moore asks "what if superheroes were just as flawed as the rest of us?", Cooke asks, "why aren't we trying harder to live up to our ideals?" That whole 1986 Moore/Miller school of cynical dystopia and antiheroes STILL lords over the comics biz, especially over that branch of readers which considers itself "literate".
I don't know what my question is, or what point I'm trying to make. Just trying to bring together these things that I'm thinking about. Did superhero comics END in 1986 w/ DKR and Watchmen? Has everything since then been either reaction or rehash?
Has Busiek's Superman (and to an extent Morrison's All Star Superman, though that's still sort of a boutique rehash comic, y'know?) been the first, y'know, straight up big name superhero comic that's intelligently enjoyable without leaning on the twin crooked crutches of cynicism that've propped up spandex since '86? Geoff Johns's pre-Identity Crisis Flash had glimmers of this, but it never really made it there, and then Johns went off the rails COMPLETELY.
random other tidbit from the WizMor conflab: "I wanted to talk about the role of the creator and that behind all these comic books is just some guy who feeds his cats."
― Huk-L (Huk-L), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 21:34 (nineteen years ago)
Cynicism is part of historical modernism, so on or about 1986, comics weren't for kids anymore.
― c('°c) (Leee), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 21:57 (nineteen years ago)
Is there supposed to be another crooked crutch
that was never thrown?
I'd definitely say GMo's JLA. Exciting expansive stuff about how fucking awesome the superhero world is.
Which are the Busiek Superman comics again? I've read all the post-OYL ones, but I don't know which are which. Action/Superman alternated during the Up Up and Away story, right? What has the one that's not being about the Auctioneer been doing?
― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 22:03 (nineteen years ago)
Up, Up and Away is Busiek AND Johns, the separation of duties has never been expressed, AFAIK. That was awesome thrill-powered Superduperness that managed to a) SAY SOMETHING about Superman b) tie-in to MEGA-EVENT and c)entertain.
The Auctioneer was Busiek's Action fill-in while Donner/Johns got their duck in one row.
Over in the Superman-proper, Busiek had Supes fly to eastern Europe to battle some Superman analogue (ie, mucho-powerful orphan alien crashed on earth) with the key differences being A) Alien is UGLY B) found by Soviets and submitted to horrible experiments C) ANGRY! then Arion the Sorceror from 5700 BC pops up and FITUS INTERUPTUS launches a whole new storyline without ANY resolution to Alien Orphan Smackdown. Arion shares VISION from the FUTURE where Superman is responsible for OH NO DYSTOPIA, like, Metropolis is half-capsized and Luthor is a good guy, and Parasite has absorbed Superman and is sort of half-zombie, half-Superman, which CREEPS out Lois Lane.
Yeah, yeah, of course GMOJLA. I think I may have discounted it purely b/c Electric Slide Superman.
― Huk-L (Huk-L), Tuesday, 21 November 2006 22:42 (nineteen years ago)