The Worst
and the Best of 2004
January 12, 2005
By Avi Green
It’s that time of year to look back and review what came during the
rest of it. And to look over the bad things first before getting to
the good stuff later on. So here goes.
And the losers are...
Identity Crisis. I will
never, I repeat, NEVER be able to understand how it is that nobody
can see misogyny when it’s there, or any other form of prejudice for
that matter. But aside from that, what really offends me about this
collosally overrated miniseries, DC’s “event of the year”, is that
it destroys much of what made the DCU such a wonderful thing to read
about years ago, and dumps on the past without offering anything of
similar quality to show for it. Rather, what it does and what the
fatal flaw is about this atrocity, is that it practically makes
almost every superhero here seem either as amoral as the villains
they fought against, or just plain stupid and even ignorant.
The miniseries is supposedly a murder mystery story, but the thing
is – just how many more murders do we really need to see in comic
books anyway? And deaths of both major and minor characters, to say
the least, is starting to become more than a bit overused, not to
mention more than a bit insulting to boot. And the victim, it pained
me to see, was none other than the beloved Sue Dearborn-Dibny, wife
of the Elongated Man, Ralph Dibny, and a character in whom I saw
some good aunt-like qualities, and who could make a good mentorial
figure for various other characters in the DCU. (Not to mention that
I have an aunt who looked almost like her years ago.) But it gets
worse. After being revealed as having been pregnant at the time when
she died, in issue 2 of this miniseries, Sue was retroactively raped
by – get this – a costumed supervillain, that being Dr. Light.
Now I suppose this might be the age of “hyper-realism”, whatever
that means, as someone once argued to me, but even so, I have to ask
– doesn’t the whole idea of what is more or less a cartoon character
in a funny-looking costume going around doing something like that
sound more than a bit absurd? Not to mention almost silly?
No wonder I couldn’t take that whole premise seriously. Forget that
it was way out-of-character for Dr. Light to begin with, and that he
was much more honorable than that in the Silver/Bronze Age, what I
don’t see is how it even makes for a convincing premise, whose sole
reason for existence was to serve as a source of anger for the male
characters.
To make matters worse, the “revelation” of Sue’s victimization was
almost entirely ignored soon afterwards, and even then, she was
carted off the panels right afterwards, and aside from a very brief
scene of her crying and being angry and miserable about what Arthur
Light did to her, we never even get to know how she personally feels
beyond that. We never get her own personal viewpoint or discussion
of how she felt to be a victim at the hands of Light, who’s unlikely
to ever regain the kind of prominent status he had years before
again after this atrocity.
This pretty much sums up how just about all the women are depicted
in this bigoted little book, as either ineffective in combat (Black
Canary) or in magical skills (Zatanna), or, they’re depicted as nosy
and scheming, as in the tragic case of Jean Loring, the ex-wife of
the Atom, being revealed as the murderer. Yep, you read that right,
a WOMAN is revealed as being the culprit behind both the death of
the first woman, and even the death of Robin’s father, Jack Drake,
and sending the other superheroes on a wild goose chase.
That also very much sums up the main problem with the miniseries:
it’s forced beyond belief in its implications, phony in its
resolutions, and worst of all, it all seems so perfectly, and
deliberately, planned in how things will look and be shown. Wonder
Woman, rightfully described by Karen Berger as a sensitive, caring
woman when she was a leading editor at DC, is here made out to look
like she doesn’t care about what’s been going on at all, and serves
as little more than a tool for Green Arrow when it comes to
investigating the possible suspects, who aren’t even guilty in any
of this, which in turn makes Ollie out to look like a pimp.
Now it’s true that even the male characters here come off very
badly, and I felt sorry for Flash when he was stabbed by Deathstroke
in the third issue, but that doesn’t mean that the misogyny isn’t
there: the women have virtually no voice of their own whatsoever,
and to make matters worse, when Jean is revealed as the culprit, not
only is she abruptly revealed as insane, she even invites Ray to hit
her! I’d rather not get into details about her incarceration at
Arkham (!), or what a newspaper headline announces afterwards.
Most irritating thing about this series is how it uses a couple of
“moral equivalency” methods, that doubtlessly being the male
characters being as much victim to acts of insult as the women are
to being made to look inferior. But to make matters even worse, is
that the miniseries reeks of the same errors as those that littered
some of Marvel’s own books in the 2001-2003 era, such as Amazing
Spider-Man’s 9-11 issue, and even Captain America in Marvel Knights:
“blaming the victim”. (Be
sure to check this
old classic of mine for more on that subject.) This list of
scapegoats includes not just the USA, but even Israel, and after
reading this article in The Forward, in which the author speaks of
his Jewish heritage, claiming that it finds its way into his works,
and reading a TV review in the New
Yorker, in which I discovered that the Jewish mother of one
of the characters is described, not as Jewish, but rather, as
“nothing” (I don’t even want to think about what the rabbi told
him), I realized that it could be even worse than I thought. So in
other words, Meltzer is attacking his own birthright? Tsk…this is
something I’ll certainly have to write more about later on.
In a way, I almost feel sorry for some of the knee-jerk members of
establishment who not only defended this book regardless of its
distasteful execution (including Alex Hamby of Hero Realm, someone
whom I used to respect but now find myself unable to), and then,
when it became apparent that mystery was not the real theme here,
actually went so far as to make up excuses by claming/arguing that
it wasn’t a mystery to begin with, but rather, ummm…gee, I don’t
know. A suspense tale, perhaps? Please, can’t they do better than
that?
Identity Crisis is a glaring example of how crossovers, or even
so-called “events” that come close to being that, are getting worse
and worse, and the companies that own them are not even trying to
offer any genuine pleasure to new readers that can make them
genuinely impressed. This series, to say the least, is something
that can further the impression that comics today are little more
than a source of entertainment for perverts.
Recommended links:
Comics
Worth Reading essay
Reading
Along essay
World
Famous
Comics:
Tony's
Tips column
Fourth
Rail review
Notes
from
the
Peanut
Gallery reviews
Paperback
Reader
review,
by
Erin M. Schadt
Comics
Worth
Reading
weblog
entry, 7-28-2004
Precocious
Curmudgeon
weblog
column,
July 28, 2004
Comics in
Context #57: As Grim as it Gets
Comics in
Context #58: Crisis of Conscience
Ninth Art
article from July 19, 2004
Ninth Art
review page from August 9, 2004
Spatula
Forum review
Titans
Tower weblog review
Cinescape
review
Savage
Critic
review
by
Brian Hibbs
Polite Dissent
review
Google
groups discussion
Delenda
Est
Carthago
weblog
review
Websnark
weblog review
Comics
should
be
Good
weblog entry
Sequential
Tart discussion
BeaucoupKevin
review
Howling
Curmudgeons
entry
from
December 16, 2004
Franklin
Harris weblog review
The
Johnny
Baracadi
Show,
Dec 18, 2004
Precocious
Curmudgeon
weblog
entry,
12-20-2004
Dave Fiore's
Culture Blog, 12-21-2004
Ninth Art
yearly wrapup for 2004
Ninth
Art article from December 20, 2004
Dead
Chicks
and
Mayhem
weblog, December 20, 2004
Highway
62,
December 31, 2004
Comics
in
Context
#67:
Mistaken
Identity (page 7)
Dave Fiore's Culture
Blog, Jan 3, 2005
Avengers Disassembled.
Writer Brian Bendis may have made it no secret that he borrowed – or
rather – recycled – the terrible John Byrne-scripted plot from West Coast Avengers in the
early 1990’s, wherein the Scarlet Witch (and Quicksilver) went nuts
and went over to the bad side Magneto was on at the time, as the
catalyst source for this underwhelming mess, but that is still no
excuse for what it’s turned out to be in the end: just another weak
excuse for making change for the sake of change, and introducing a
new volume called New Avengers, which features some not-so-new faces
on it, such as Spider-Man, and probably even – gulp! – Woverine as
well.
Now I can certainly more than accept Spider-Man as part of such a
team, but Logan? Be reasonable, please. And when you see that the
women of the Avengers came off very badly in the end, you know
something’s wrong.
Obviously, from what’s turned out, it’s apparent that this is
something that’s given the blessing to be fixed later on, Scarlet
Witch and all. But even so, that’s no excuse for it’s being done in
the first place.
Recommended links:
Ninth Art
article from September 6, 2004
Comics in
Context #63: The Syndrome Syndrome (page 3)
Panoramically
Challenged, 11-24-2004
Panoramically
Challenged, 11-25-2004
Precocious
Curmudgeon, December 22, 2004
Amazing Spider-Man: Sins Past.
I guess the character assassination against the Atom and his
ex-wife, and even the Scarlet Witch, wasn't enough, was it? Now, it
looks as if even Gwen Stacy's been getting her turn in front of the
gun. This is yet another of Marvel/DC's incredible discriminations
against female characters circa 2004, and only serves to further my
impression that J. Michael Straczynski's got very little affection
for the characters in Spidey's world, if at all.
Batman: War Games. I think I
can sum this one up in one word: obnoxious.
Just like IC above. That is what sums up even the bias featured in
here against Stephanie "Spoiler" Brown. And to think, that this
second of DC's needless crossovers that exist only to defame and
cheapen their source material, also existed solely for the purpose
of killing off yet another female character, not to mention even a black character as well, that
being Jean-Paul Valley, the vigilante also known as Orpheus.
Flash #213. Now here’s a
disgusting idea for “updating” a villain: have the Turtle, a crook
who worked well enough as a one-shot kind of criminal in his time,
be implicated as a possible child-molester while on the loose in his
latest scheme to milk the town of all its money. Or is that his real
intention? I don’t know for sure, and I really don’t care. What I do
know is that I’m astounded and disappointed in Geoff Johns for
resorting to a low denominator for the sake of trying to make an old
villain who’s outdated interesting. In some cases, his updates
certainly worked well enough, but here…wow, he really bombed out.
And the following issues, which claim that Barry Allen and Zatanna
worked together once to try and change the Top’s personality,
because he was more morally bankrupt than the other Rogues, does not
make much sense either. I just hope he was only lying when he said
that he got the other Rogues’ to reform when they did though.
Now for the good stuff…
Superman/Batman
#8-13:
The Supergirl from Krypton. Wow. It may not be 100%
perfect, but the return of Kara Zor-El to the DCU and Superman’s
world proved to be quite a crowd-pleaser, and while some may not
think Michael Turner’s artwork is great, I do. It was with this
story arc that the book really picked up (though I can’t say I’m all
that eager to try out the following arc), and from sales, I can see
that this was how some people thought to retaliate against Identity
Crisis’ disrespectful treatment of continuity and its characters.
Practically every issue of Kara’s return was number one on the
charts!
I figure it’s possible to say that, after this, Darkseid will make
as good an archnemesis for Kara as he does for Kal-El. Yes, I
wouldn’t be surprised if the two of them do have a showdown in the
future. Wouldn’t that be something? As it would if Kara and even
Bart “Impulse/Kid Flash” Allen were to become a teen couple, their
otherly-world and different-timeline backgrounds making them a
perfect match for each other.
Kara Zor-El’s return to the DCU, plus the news of a new solo series
for her later this year, was by far one of the best things about
this year, and I strongly recommend checking this out.
Wonder Woman #203-205. Greg
Rucka’s storyline here turned out to be very interesting, and I
can’t wait to see what happens in the upcoming battle with Medusa,
revived by Circe for the sake of her sisters. Plus, even the
upcoming crossover with the Flash, in which the new Zoom joins
forces with Cheetah!
Birds of
Prey. Gail Simone's run on DC's sleeper hit series that
began with Chuck Dixon as the writer, was one of the best surprises
of the year, with Ed Benes' artwork one of the best things going for
it as well as Simone's writing, which is as funny as it's exciting
and adventurous. Quite simply one of the best showcases for Black
Canary, and Babs Gordon, and also the Huntress, who joined full time
as a partner with Dinah and Babs under Simone's penning.
Hawkman. The Gray/Palmiotti
team has certainly succeeded in turning out some good stuff on this
title, giving the Winged Warriors some more good adventures to match
the quality of those produced by Geoff Johns during the first two
years of the fourth volume, including a battle against vampires
who've invaded St. Roch. I’m very excited to see in time what more
can be done with Lion-Mane and Trygg the Sorceror.
And with that, we now end this column! Have a good year, everybody.
Copyright 2005 Avi Green. All rights reserved.
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