Dr. K Reviews: Batman: Reborn

Everyone who knows me knows that I love Batman. Even my students have begun to spread the word to each other that, if I ever ask them who would win in a fight between Batman and someone else, the answer is always "Batman."

And while I liked "Batman RIP" a heck of a lot, and I enjoyed what Grant Morrison did with Batman in Final Crisis, I really had no interest in reading Battle for the Cowl. I figured, as long as I could get confirmation that Dick Grayson was the new Batman, I would be fine skipping the series.

So, last month, I jumped into the new Batman comics that shook out of Battle for the Cowl, trying to figure out which ones I would be following for the duration of the "Batman: Reborn" storyline until the inevitable return of Bruce Wayne. (I did, however, skip Gotham City Sirens, as that series didn't interest me just based on its basic concept.)

Here, then, are my reviews of five of the post-Battle Batman comics that came out in June. I did discover, however, that my initial instinct was right: I didn't need to read Battle for the Cowl, as most of these comics got me up to speed easily.


I really don't care for Judd Winick as a writer of superhero comics, though I think he does his best work when writing non-powered heroes like Green Arrow (though his Green Arrow/Black Canary series was abysmal) and Batman. In fact, aside from the crap about Superboy punching a continuity wall and bringing back Jason Todd, Winick's previous run on Batman was inoffensive and readable.

It makes sense, then, that Winick's return to the character would involve a confrontation with the Scarecrow, the first villain Winick used in the previous run. Though the Scarecrow story barely starts in this issue, most of it is taken up with Dick Grayson's struggle in making the transition from Nightwing to Batman. There are some nice moments where Nightwing and Alfred come to the decision that Batman can't die, though it would seem that this is ground that should have been covered in the transitional miniseries. I like the interaction between Nightwing and Alfred here: Alfred admits that he can talk to Dick in a way that's different from the way he talked to Bruce, and that should pay out with some interesting character moments in the issues to come. Winick also seems to establish a clear purpose for this book in the grand scheme of the Bat-universe when Dick tells Alfred, "There'll be times when I'll need to go it alone." Therefore, I expect that this series will feature mainly Robin-less adventures, as opposed to the two other monthly Batman books.

However, compared to some of the other series, this one just didn't grab me that much. Part of that had to do with Ed Benes's art, though this appears to be his only issue of the series, as Mark Bagley is coming on for the next two issues. It also feels like this is the book that's going to concern itself the most with continuity issues and the new Batman's larger relationship to the DC Universe. While that's probably necessary for some readers, I prefer what some of the other series are doing with the new status quo.


Man, this comic is a freaking work of art. I love that DC snuck a superhero story that's a bit unconventional into its flagship title, instead of spinning it off into another new series, like Streets of Gotham. J. H. Williams III's art is phenomenal, shifting gears between experimental page layouts for the action scenes with Batwoman and more conventional storytelling for the character moments with Kate Kane. Greg Rucka is also playing around with the idea that Batwoman is still an unknown quantity, so the last panel leaves us wondering what kind of hero she will be.

I would also buy a monthly comic featuring the Question by Greg Rucka and Cully Hamner, so I have no problem with the larger pricetag for the Question co-feature. In its first chapter, this series makes me more interested in the new Question than any of the stories featuring her over the past couple of years. It feels like, in these two stories, that Rucka is getting to use these characters in the way he wants to after shaking off some of the 52 and Final Crisis baggage (though we do see that the Crime Bible is still going to be a factor at least in the Batwoman series).


This book is the shit, and it makes the whole Battle for the Cowl event worthwhile. As anyone who reads this blog knows, I am totally and unapologetically in the tank for Grant Morrison, but this is pretty much my ideal for a superhero comic. The interaction between a dark Robin and a more lighthearted Batman seems especially fruitful. Also, in just a few panels, the new villain, Mr. Pyg, is shown to be a disturbing and unsettling threat, much in the way Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers used The Joker in "The Laughing Fish." Finally, Frank Quitely's art, which was already amazing in All-Star Superman, seems to have progressed even further here. This is one of the few comics that I can't wait for every month.


I have a hard time understanding what the purpose of this new series is. It uses the same team that was previously on Detective--Paul Dini, Dustin Nguyen, and Derek Fridolfs--and it feels entirely consistent with their work on that series. I had hoped that this series could serve as a kind of "Batman Family" title, featuring some of the other Gotham heroes who are trying to fill in for the original Batman; however, from this issue, it seems to be just another Batman and Robin title. It just doesn't seem necessary.

Plus, I just didn't care for the story. As disturbing as Mr. Pyg might be in Batman and Robin, I was more put off by the mass casualties that Firebug causes in this issue. There have been so many mass killings and disasters in Gotham City over the past two years, it would be nice if the Batman books had a moritorium on such things.

I was a bit disappointed with the Manhunter co-feature by Marc Andreyko and Georges Jeanty. I was a big fan of the Manhunter series, and I was disappointed that it was cancelled, but Andreyko did a great job wrapping it up. However, the idea of Kate Spencer as Gotham City's D.A. is intriguing enough for me to stay interested, though that may not be enough incentive to keep buying this series every month.



On the surface, Red Robin has the clearest purpose of all the new Bat-universe series. Tim Wayne, formerly Tim Drake, travels through Europe trying to find evidence that Bruce Wayne is still alive after Tim has lost the Robin job to Damien Wayne. However, this issue mainly involves Red Robin complaining about getting distracted by crimefighting while he's on this quest. I'm not sure exactly what evidence Tim is finding in Europe, as Bruce Wayne is lost in prehistorical times, though his investigation may have something to do with Ra's al Ghul, who appears at the end of this issue. I'll probably give this series one story arc before making my final decision, but if it turns out that Red Robin's quest is interminably delayed by other plots, I may get quickly frustrated with it.


So, I'm hooked in to Detective Comics and Batman and Robin for the duration. The others, I'll give one story arc before I make my final decision, but Batman and Red Robin are definitely on a shorter leash than Streets of Gotham.

Final Crisis Post Mortem, Part 5

One tie-in I should have included in the previous post was the Final Crisis Sketchbook, which actually preceded the regular series and reveals just how far the initial plans for the series changed in the final product.

The foreward indicates that Morrison and artist J. G. Jones met in May 2007 to begin initial plans for the series, and from the content of the sketchbook, it looks like they generated a shit-ton of ideas, many of which never made it into the series. For example, they came up with redesigns for the New Gods and Forever People (the latter being completely revamped and updated). Only the designs for Darkseid, Metron, The Black Racer, and Mister Miracle appear in Final Crisis (and the Mister Miracle design was previously used in Seven Soldiers).

The Forever People update is particularly fascinating. As the scan shows, Morrison's idea was to make the new Forever People the 21st century equivalent of what hippies were for the youth of the 60s and early 70s. This makes some sense, as the Forever People have always been the Fourth World concept that aged the worst. However, it would only be a matter of a few years before this concept were to become dated once again. (I do, though, think the updating of Vikin the Black as "Black Viking" is pretty cool.)

The most extensive and detailed concepts in the sketchbook come in the section on Japanese superheroes, and like the Fourth World updates, most of these never made their way into the series.

The Big Science Action team is mentioned in the series, but the description in the sketchbook fleshes out their history and members in great detail. Most of the members--Cosmo Racer, Boss Bosozuko, Hammersuit Zero-X, and Junior Waveman--are fusions of Marvel characters with Japanese pop culture. Jones's art in this section is much less sketchy, looking like Big Science Action got well beyond the idea stage and may have been jettisoned late in the game. Even the Super Young Team, which has a prominent role in Final Crisis, does not look as clearly developed or finalized as a concept. Morrison has created out of whole cloth a history of Japanese superheroes in the DC Universe, and I'd like to see DC run with a Super Young Team series that would capitalize on these ideas.

At the time the sketchbook came out, it was difficult to see how all those ideas were going to work together in one series. And clearly, Morrison is an idea machine, and those ideas may get diluted as they move from that initial stage to the final product. Whatever the case, the sketchbook probably gives us the closest thing to undiluted Morrison as we can get, and it would be interesting to see more of what was generated during these brainstorming sessions.

Final Crisis Post Mortem: Submit and Batman

Superman Beyond 3D is certainly essential to understanding the conclusion of Final Crisis, and that contradicts statements made by Dan DiDio and Grant Morrison that one could follow the main series without reading the tie-ins. In fact, many of the problems with Final Crisis seem to stem from the marketing of the series before its release. It would be nice if, as a result of this series, DC developed more secure marketing plans for its events, which could be sustained without contradiction throughout the event.

I don't want to spend to much time on the marketing of the series, as it really has no bearing on the story itself, and it will ultimately be irrelevant as the series moves in to its future as a collection (the marketing did set expectations for many readers and may have led to some disappointment). I also wonder, though, about the eventual publishing future of this event. The Final Crisis hardcover will not contain Superman Beyond, which I think is a mistake. However, DC is releasing a Final Crisis Companion trade paperback, but I'm not sure what the contents of that will be. At the very least, it should contain the Morrison-penned tie-ins.

Final Crisis: Submit is probably the least essential of the Morrison tie-ins. In terms of plot, it serves the purpose of getting the Tattooed Man to the Hall of Justice in Final Crisis 4, and it places in his hands the sigil that will resist the Anti-Life Equation. The story also plants the seeds for Tattooed Man's conversion from villain to hero.

While the appearance of Tattooed Man at the Hall of Justice in Final Crisis 4 is sudden, it's not the only sudden, unexplained appearance of a character in that scene, or in the series in general. I can't imagine, if I hadn't read Submit, that I would be any more confused by the character's appearance than I would Green Arrow's, The Ray's, or Wally West's family. Hence, the tie-in does not fill in any significant blanks in the series, and there are probably many more significant ones later in the series that could use some elaboration and explanation.

As it is, though, Submit is a satisfyingly straightforward story, and a departure from the more disjointed storytelling technique that Morrison uses in the main series. In fact, the story is fairly basic in its plot: Black Lightning rescues Tattooed Man and his family from the Justifiers before submitting to their control himself. But, as it stands, it is also fairly unremarkable in relation to the rest of the series as well. At the very least, Morrison proves that he can do a plot-driven action story.

Batman 682 and 683 are a different matter. These issues are, for Batman, the equivalents of Superman Beyond. These issues take Batman from his capture in Final Crisis 2 to the point where he could shoot Darkseid with the god bullet in issue 6. In a storytelling style similar to the later issues of Final Crisis, the narrative is disconnected and nonlinear, but the explanation for that becomes apparent at the end of the first issue: Batman is being subjected to a psychic attack as a prisoner of Darkseid's minions, Simyan and Mokkari, after his capture in Final Crisis 2.

In these two issues, Morrison takes us on a Cook's tour of Batman's career, from the goofy Silver Age stories to the grittier modern stories. These two issues present a perfect encapsulation of Batman as envisioned by Morrison. Morrison's Batman, as depicted here and in RIP, can beat any attack because he has prepared for them all, and a psychic attack that might destroy a powered hero will not bring him down. I especially like Morrison's take on the Joker, showing how Batman's arch nemesis can move from comic villain to homicidal maniac yet still consistently remain the same character. If anything, I hope Morrison's work on Batman sets a new status quo for the character whenever he returns after "Battle for the Cowl."

Final Crisis Post Mortem: Superman Beyond 3D

Many critics of Final Crisis have complained--rightfully so--that too much important stuff happens in the two issues of Superman Beyond that should be included in the main series. Essential information about Mandrakk (who only shows up in the main series in the final issue), the origin of the Monitors, and the nature of the multiverse appears in Superman Beyond, and I would also argue that many keys to reading Final Crisis appear here as well, especially since reading itself is such a crucial part of Superman Beyond.

However, the two issues are also tied together through the use of 3D technology--a gimmick I appreciate in spirit if not in practice, as the 3D glasses don't fit around my regular glasses very well, and the 3D effects always come off as distorted for me.



The 3D glasses, or "Overvoid Viewers," themselves are presented as artifacts of the story world and, therefore, provide the most obvious example of Morrison making the reader a part of the story. Like Superman, we get to upgrade to "4D Vision" in order to see the story as he sees it. In fact, the Overvoid Viewers are "forged from Superman's own cosmic armor" that he wears in issue 2. And the 3D effect, when it works, enhances images where Superman reaches through the page and out to the reader.

I like Douglas Wolk's analysis of this page. He reads the caption text about "A sound like breathing" and "The whole continuum...trembles, as if cradled" as a reference to the reader's relationship to the comic: the reader breathes and cradles the comic in his or her hands.

This isn't the first time Morrison has done something like this--he's done it before in Animal Man and The Invisibles in particular. In fact, as both Wolk and Marc Singer (among others) point out, Superman Beyond is heavily self-referential to the point of having an autobiographical subtext (I especially like Wolk's reading of Morrison's "anxiety of influence" over Alan Moore). Morrison "self-quotes" from almost all of his major works here, including Animal Man, The Invisibles, Zenith, and JLA (especially Rock of Ages, World War III, and Earth 2).

This may lead to accusations that Morrison is repeating himself, and I will admit he does crib a lot of the best bits from his JLA run, though I don't hold that run in as high esteem as a lot of Morrison fans. (For one, that's the first of Morrison's works where I got the sense that the final product really missed something in the transition from script to page. It's been a problem in Morrison's career that artists seem to have difficulty bringing his vision to the page. I'm trying to be politic here because, as some commentors have pointed out in earlier posts, that may not be a problem of the artist per se, but rather a failure of communication from the writer to the artist.) I would say, however, that Superman Beyond (and Final Crisis in general) does not represent a mere repetition, and that Morrison does move forward with ideas that have been developing throughout his career. In particular, Superman Beyond presents the clearest articulation of Morrison's idea that the shared universe and continuity of a comic book company is essentially a single story (or a "self-assembing hyper story," to be precise). The infinite book that Superman and Captain Marvel read obviously embodies that concept (and it makes my head hurt just thinking about it. One would assume, if it contains every book possible, that it contains every rumored, aborted, or unpublished story in the DC Universe as well, meaning I could read Alan Moore's "Twilight of the Superheroes" and Rick Veitch's final, censored Swamp Thing story, or Jamie Delano and Neil Gaiman Swamp Thing run that was supposed to follow Veitch's or ....).

As in Final Crisis, Morrison finds moments here that show how he perfectly "gets" a character. And in this exchange, we see both the quintessential Superman and Ultraman: Also, Doug Mahnke really nailed Superman's profile there.

Morrison also makes a strong case here for keeping the Fawcett-style Captain Marvel around, even if he is relegated to Earth-5. Though Superman and Ultraman are meant to form a "symmetry" that, when brought together by Allan Adam (who, as a Dr. Manhattan analogue, represents the logical conclusion of the Superman concept), combine to defeat Mandrakk, Captain Marvel serves as an important complement to Superman as well. Captain Marvel can, after all, read the infinite book, and he intervenes to keep Superman and Ultraman from destroying each other. Captain Marvel is a character who works fine in his original conception, and I don't understand why DC feels the need to keep screwing with his status quo, especially by darkening the character up. But I also think the character works best when kept to his own separate universe, with its own rules, logic, and continuity, and perhaps Morrison is making that possible here.

In rereading Final Crisis for these posts, I've treated Superman Beyond as Final Crisis 3.1 and 3.2. I'm assuming that Legion of 3 Worlds will explain how Superman got from Lois's bedside to the 31st century in FC 6, but the delays in that series leave that particular story connection up in the air. Next, I'll touch on Batman 682 and 683, as well as Final Crisis: Submit and their relation to the overall story.

Final Crisis Post Mortem, Part 3

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone for the support and debate that's been going on in the comment sections. With the debate, I especially welcome the opportunity to defend or, if necessary, revise my thoughts on this series. As long as it all stays civil.

Also, I want to thank everyone who participated in the song meme. That sure turned out to be a thing, didn't it?

By the way, I agree with New York Magazine's Vulture Blog, this one was my favorite. (And while you're there, check out the Registered Weapon web comic--it's hilarious.)

I'd like to point everyone to a couple of articles in Final Crisis that are worth checking out. Steven Grant in his Permanent Damage column at CBR makes some points about the series that dovetail with what I've been saying, though he comes down a bit more ambivalent on the series than I do. I especially like how he separates the (mostly failed) publicity for the series from the story itself.

Also, Andrew Hickey is doing a nice series of posts on Final Crisis, with the effect of kicking me in the ass to get my series done before he makes me redundant. He even does an insightful, extensive analysis of the song that Superman sings to kill Darkseid.

And, finally, Marc Singer provides some essential reading on Final Crisis (though our opinions on the series differ), while also (sadly) bringing his blog to a close. Marc does an amazing job breaking down the various climaxes in the final issue, and he makes a strong case for ignoring the external controversies (shipping delays, editorial statements) when evaluating the story itself. I've admired Marc's blog and his academic writing, and I look forward to his promise of more of the latter in the future.

As I promised, I want to talk about some of my favorite moments in Final Crisis. I'm going to consider just a few here, as I've already gone through some in the previous post.

Other than the death of Batman, one of the most talked about scenes in the series was Mr. Talky Tawny's defeat of Kalibak in issue 6. It was, in fact, a pretty awesome scene. After reading the story as a whole, though, I marvel at it even more. Morrison devotes several pages to Tawny, while giving the new Aquaman only three panels (two shots in issue 3 and one in 7). The Tawny story, though brief, is one of the few complete narratives in the series, going from him offering Freddie Freeman some Tiger Tea to Tawny using the strength of the Tiger Tea against Kalibak, and ending with him becoming leader of the tiger men.

I also really like the trial of Hal Jordan scene in issue 5, with this conclusion that gives a sense of urgency to this turning point in the series: the Guardians have realized their own fallibility, which also proves just how screwed up things are, and they unleash the whole power of the Green Lantern Corps despite the uncertainty of their success. This scene also forms a nicely contained narrative, and it makes me wish that DC had hired Carlos Pacheco to do the whole series. Nothing against J. G. Jones, who did a fine job, but if Pacheco could have done the whole series as well as he did this Green Lantern scene, that consistency could have gone a long way to overcome some of the series' flaws.


While I initially thought this shot was awesome, I'm starting to rethink my first impression after reading Marc Singer's commentary on it. I like the gathering Morrison has set up here--angels, Supermen from all the parallel universes, the Green Lantern Corps, the Super Young Team, and the Zoo Crew--but I agree with Singer that nothing much happens as a result of it. This is, almost literally, the A-to-Z of the DC Universe, symbolizing the range of stories that can be drawn from this universe (though to be really inclusive, it should contain Scooter, Prez, Date with Debbi, Sugar and Spike, and Cap's Hobby Hints, among others). And this really should have been a double-page spread, while the shot of all the Supermen in the previous spread (though awesome in itself) could have been reduced.

Next, I'll start covering the tie-ins, beginning with the Morrison-penned issues.

Final Crisis Post Mortem, Part 2

When I studied James Joyce in graduate school, the professor approached the author's work in a way that stuck with me. He argued that A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses teach the reader how to read them. In other words, these novels contain cues within the text itself that help the reader follow these unconventional narrators, and once the reader recognizes these cues, the reading process becomes much less difficult.

While I wouldn't necessarily say that Final Crisis is the superhero comic equivalent of Ulysses, I do think that the text of Final Crisis does cue the reader with some metacommentary that can make this unconventional narrative less challenging.

This metacommentary takes a couple of forms. The first type is fairly straightforward and takes its inspiration from film: the POV shot. This serves the purpose of making the reader a part of the story, like this one from the end of issue 1:

So, at the end of the first issue, we are symbolically left in the story world until the next issue starts with the image that opens this post--yet another direct address to the reader.

We get a similar shot in issue 5, this time from the POV of Darkseid's henchman Symian:The image is complicated by the fact that the hands in the panel are holding what amounts to a comic page, just as our real hands are (unless you read your comics by laying them down flat on a table and use tweezers or a high powered fan to turn the pages in order to avoid having human hands touch them).

The second type is a bit more complicated. Characters in the story occasionally use dialogue that can have a secondary level of meaning beyond its diegetic significance or importance to the story, where it directly addresses the reader with directions or other metatextual information. Often, such scenes occur in panels where a character is looking directly into the "camera" and addressing an ambiguous "you." (This technique features more prominently in Superman Beyond, where the 3D effects work to involve the reader in the story with even more depth. I'll cover this in a later post.)
Metron's lines, "Have no fear. Here is knowledge," lets the reader know that he or she has (or will have) the knowledge necessary to get through this story. That knowledge may come from an understanding of DC Universe continuity, but it's not necessarily so. The series foregrounds storytelling and imagination frequently, especially in the final issue, so our cultural knowledge of stories in general should get us through. Other cues, like Frankenstein quoting Paradise Lost in issue 5, let us know that we have other sources to draw from as well.

These two panels resonate throughout the series, but their importance can best be summed up as such: "What you are about to experience will be a challenge. At times it will be confusing, but you have what you need to get through this." It's knowledge--or, better yet, applying knowledge through imagination--that not only gets the reader through the story, but also allows the superheroes to triumph in the end.

Many of the other direct addresses to the reader come from Darkseid's minions, and their dialogue serves the opposite purpose of Metron's lines. In issue 2, as the possessed Alpha Lantern Kraken takes Batman prisoner, she looks to the "camera" and says, "The life you know is over. Mine now." Such images recur throughout the next two issues as Darkseid's power grows and his possession of Dan Turpin becomes more entrenched, until we get to this image at the end of issue 4:He looks at us and gives us the thumb's down. We are screwed. But we're now also subject to the chaos and destruction that Darkseid creates.

With the reader made a part of the story, the disruption that the world faces with the release of the Anti-Life Equation at the end of issue 3 manifests itself as a disruption of the story's structure and linearity as well. Note at the end of issue 3 how we go from Oracle deleting the internet to the Flashes moving forward in time, past the point where Darkseid has won (note, too, that Barry Allen has already given us a warning of what's to come when he tells "everybody" to "RUN!" at the end of issue 2). We are immersed in the chaos, and we are frequently told that the story is spinning out of control.

Many reviews of the series, even negative ones, point to the fact that the first 3 issues were the best, because that was where the story made sense. And it's at this point that readers split: either you accept these cues, go along with the chaos and destruction, and finally participate in the resolution, or you reject the storytelling shift and refuse to go along (and accept Anti-Life--Just Kidding!).

Reading the series through the lens of this particular interpretation helped me to arrange a coherent story from what seems on the surface to be a disconnected series of events. In fact, that disconnectedness is essential to my understanding and enjoyment of the series. I freely admit, my interpretation came from some good will toward Grant Morrison as a writer based on years of reading and enjoying his comics.

But if this interpretation holds up, then it turns out to be a huge risk. It's not what a lot of readers want from a superhero comic, but because it is a huge, company-wide crossover with promised significance, a lot of readers felt compelled to follow it despite the fact that they would otherwise reject such unconventional storytelling. It would be like if MGM and the Broccolis handed over the next James Bond movie to Guy Maddin--it would definitely change the way we think about James Bond movies, but most moviegoers aren't there for that.

And while this interpretation might help justify some of the apparent "flaws" in the storytelling, it can't make up for some of the practical problems the series faced, like production delays and fill-in artists.

Next: some favorite moments that were just pure, good comics.

Final Crisis Post Mortem Interlude: The Song at the End of the World

In Final Crisis 7, Superman finally kills Darkseid by singing a song into the newly constructed Miracle Machine. Morrison doesn't let the reader know exactly what song Superman sings, but instead leaves it up to the reader to fill in this particular gap.

Here's how I like to think it went down:



What song do you think killed Darkseid?

Updated

Chris Sims presents a good argument that only the unholy sound of Katy Perry could destroy the ultimate evil. If only she would then be encased in inertron to protect the rest of us.

Dorian imagines that Superman would destroy Darkseid with a song about his own existential angst.

Mike Sterling believes that Darkseid could be brought down by the same thing that caused my parents to bang on my bedroom door and scream, "KEEP THAT NOISE DOWN!"

Benjamin Birdie says what everyone already knows: Superman is a big Bikini Kill! fan.

In Kevin Church's world, Superman is singing the Ladyhawke cover.

Dave Campbell helps explain why Darkseid destroyed Indiana first.

Bully also presents a strong case that Michael Parè has something to answer for.

Special thanks to Kevin Church for putting the image and text together and saving me from throwing in a sloppily pasted word balloon and text in ComicSans.

Final Crisis Post Mortem, Part 1

Now that the main Final Crisis series is over, and all the tie-ins but Legion of Three Worlds completed, I thought I'd throw in my take on the event as a whole.

While I enjoyed the main series quite a bit, the tie-ins were a mixed bag, so I'm going to devote the next few posts to assessing those in relation to Final Crisis itself. I would have to say, though, in general, that DC diluted the brand too much by attaching the Final Crisis label to unrelated or inferior product. That's not to say all the tie-ins were bad, but that the better ones were only tangentially related to the main story, while others were disappointing (the exceptions being the Morrison-penned tie-ins).

I've especially been enjoying much of the online conversation that has emerged on Final Crisis. Some criticism, like Benjamin Birdie's reviews at Comic Book Resources and Douglas Wolk's own assessment and his useful annotations on all Final Crisis-related comics, has sent me back to the series with new eyes, illuminating some aspect that I hadn't seen in my original reading.

Like Wolk, I'm also fascinated with the negative reaction to the series, notably the anger that comes out from some bloggers, as well as from commentors on blogs that review the series favorably (all it took was for Chris Sims to say "I loved it" for the hate to start on The ISB).

The angry, negative reaction seems to come from two directions (I'm excluding from these responses negative reviews like Jog's of issue 7, which, while ultimately negative, does present a balanced assessment of the effect of the series' ending on his opinion of earlier issues [though I would say that 29 “deeplys” are a bit excessive in explaining its flawed condition]. I also exclude criticism of the book's uneven schedule and the lack of a consistent artist on the entire series--these are legitimate criticisms, though the former should have no effect on an assessment of the series as a whole.). One, readers found the series dense and confusing. I have to say that, while I don't agree with this assessment, I do have sympathy for it. Part of that sympathy comes from the fact that my area of specialization is British Modernism, and I've watched my own students struggle with the unconventional narrative experiments in Joyce, Woolf, Ford Madox Ford, and others. Morrison has done similar narrative experimentation with Final Crisis, playing, at times, with a nonlinear structure without cueing the reader to the time shifts and intentionally leaving gaps in the narrative that the reader must actively fill in.

But often when I teach Modernist texts, students react with a sense of antagonism, as if the writer is trying to trick the reader and hide meaning in a text that should otherwise be straightforward and transparent. This is similar to the negative response that Final Crisis received, exacerbated by the fact that superhero comics tend to follow pretty standard narrative conventions and present fairly passive reading experiences (though continuity in superhero comics tends to require some level of active reading). Such a sense of antagonism led Final Crisis haters to claim that Morrison was using the series to express his own hatred of superhero comics--an evaluation that proved to be wrong in the end.

However, as a student, what attracted me to Modernism as an area of study was the immense amount of freedom its texts give the reader as a participant in the creation of meaning, and it is this same effect that attracts me to what Morrison is doing in Final Crisis. Heck, he basically tells the reader that he or she has a job to do in the story on the first pages ("Man...Have no fear. Here is knowledge.") and in later appearances of Nix Uotan and Metron. That active role the reader must play in this series is exciting: we become creative forces in the DC Universe through our knowledge of continuity and our interpretations of the text.

The second kind of harsh negative reaction comes from those who seem to have a preset narrative for Final Crisis in mind and react angrily when it doesn't meet their expectations. Or, worse, they believe that they've divined Morrison's and DC editorial's intentions behind the series and are critical when the series hasn't met those goals. They were fed by rumors that editorial exerted a heavy hand on Morrison, forcing rewrites that added to delays in publication and to the readers' confusion.

Such assessments often went so far as to declare the series an artistic and commercial failure even before its completion. Many critics, for example, commented on DC's failure to adequately publicize the death of Batman in issue 6, not taking into consideration the obvious possibility (especially obvious to those familiar with the standard conventions and tropes of comics narratives and cliffhangers) that such publicity wouldn't be necessary if Batman were to be shown alive in the very next issue (in fact, imagine the online fan backlash if DC engaged in a media blitz announcing the death of Batman in issue 6, and, just a few weeks later, the Dark Knight turned up alive in the very next issue). Most notably, former DC employee and current Marvel writer Val D'Orazio referred to the series as a desperate and cynical attempt to establish Marvel-style darkness and seriousness to the DC Universe in an effort to compete with Marvel in sales. She even went so far as to refer to the death of Batman as classless, “sensationalist crap” and "one of the most ugly fucking things [she's] ever seen in [her] life." In other words, she appears to have wanted Final Crisis to be a certain thing—a “Marvelization” of the DC Universe—and she deems the series a failure when it doesn’t meet that particular desire. She also cites, as evidence of the series’ failure, the fact that it was outsold by Marvel’s massive crossover, Secret Invasion. However, as the author of an upcoming miniseries starring niche characters Cloak and Dagger should know, sales are never a determiner of quality.

Such reactions, however, fail to take the long view or to consider the fact that the series wasn't over yet. As both Benjamin Birdie and Rachelle Goguen, among others, have pointed out, the final message of the series is optimistic, but Morrison had to take the DC Universe, and the readers, through the deepest pit of despair--a threat to which they had lost before they even knew a threat was there--in order to make that optimism even more triumphant.

Serial narratives like superhero comics present an obstacle to criticism, as reviewers often find themselves in the position of evaluating only part of a story when they choose to focus on individual issues. Such critics may have to give the creators some benefit of the doubt regarding the overall plan for the series, or they have to hold out hope that their predictions and negative assessment bear out for the remainder of the series. And with Final Crisis, apparent flaws in the narrative turn out to be part of the overall design that is only apparent with the final issue, especially the disjointed nature of the narrative, which, in the end, is acknowledged by characters in the narrative (in issue 6, Nix Uotan announces to Metron that he "can't coordinate" all the events happening simultaneously, as if the narrative has taken on a life and momentum of its own).

Jog makes a fair point in his review: "Final Crisis, in contrast, has functioned primarily as oscillating series of thematic prompts that sort of look like a story when you stand back and watch them all swinging in a web of trails, but don't particularly connect as one when examined closer." I think it's easy to see Final Crisis as a disconnected series of events that don't really cohere. (Even the more negative critics agree that there are some awesome individual moments in the series.) However, this view is only true if you expect the passive reading experience of a narrative that lays out the connections for you. This is not necessarily a bad expectation--most Western forms of entertainment train us for a passive viewing or reading experience. But another valid view allows for the reader to make the connections him- or herself--to fill in the gaps with the story that Morrison trusts us to make--and to participate in its creation.


Readers of superhero comics have always benefited from a strong participatory role. Part of the appeal of DC and Marvel comics for many readers is the opportunity to engage in the history and continuity of these shared universes. When I started reading comics in the early 70s (about the time I started reading, period), one of my favorite series was Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes. My first exposure to the series had me hooked, and I wanted to learn more about these characters' histories: how they joined the team, who died, who got married, etc. Over the years, I would feel smart when I got a reference to an earlier story or recognized an obscure character.

With Final Crisis, Morrison has kicked that participatory tradition up to another level, proving, like Mister Miracle's letter from the New God's alphabet, that comics can be a medium "free from restrictions," much in the way artists from other media did throughout the 20th century. It’s also the ne plus ultra of Scott McCloud’s concept of “closure” that he describes in Understand Comics, where the gap in the gutter between comic panels is filled in by the reader, who is trained by the narrative form to make certain decisions regarding that transition from panel to panel. Closure, for McCloud, is what separates comics from other artforms, and Morrison is combining that concept with the reader’s knowledge of DC Universe continuity to create a new kind of closure.

Perhaps some debate could be had as to the wisdom of using a company-wide event as a vehicle for narrative experimentation. But I would reserve that debate for those who have better knowledge of the business side of the industry. I, for one, was glad DC put out a series that challenged me and inspired an intellectual conversation about it.

In the next post, I'll discuss some of my favorite moments in the series, and then in later posts, I'll move on to the individual tie-ins.

Dr. K's Top Ten Superhero Comics of 2008, Part 2!

Tonight, we continue my top 10 list with my top 5 superhero comics of 2008. As an added bonus, I'm typing tonight's post with a cute snuggle kitty named Zoe on my lap!


5. Final Crisis

Like Batman: RIP, Final Crisis has been another Grant Morrison series that many readers have complained is too confusing. However, with the last couple of issues, the pieces have started to fall into place, and Morrison's plan has become evident. If Batman and Final Crisis teach us anything, it's that Morrison does have a plan, and persistence and attention will be rewarded.

In this case, the series started off slow, with DC's superheroes following small clues that point to something going on with the New Gods. However, What Morrison has done is launch us, and the heroes as well, into a scenario where, no matter how quickly they put the clues together, it is already too late. The sense that the heroes have failed before they have begun gives this universe-spanning crossover its weight.

Plus, there are moments, like when one of the Guardians tells Hal Jordan that he has "24 hours to save the universe," that genuinely give me goosebumps and remind me why I still get a kick out of superhero stories.

Nonetheless, this series will ultimately be a flawed masterpiece for Morrison due to the inconsistent art and publishing schedule (though the latter won't matter when the collected edition comes out). I wish J. G. Jones had been able to finish the series himself because he has already proven with the Marvel Boy series that he gets Morrison. Alternately, Carlos Pacheco's pages in issue 5 are fantastic, and he would have made a fine artist for the entire series.

4. Action Comics

It's been a very long time since I was excited about Superman comics. But the work of Geoff Johns and Gary Frank on this series have been consistently good from the "Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes" arc to the "Brainiac" story. In each case, Johns has taken some convoluted continuity and made sense out of it, which is basically his stock in trade. But he's also telling great stories, with entertaining twists on some old concepts. Johns's script and Frank's art combine to give us Superman in his purest form: noble, heroic, but also human. And that "humanity" gets further explored in the "New Krypton" crossover, where Superman has to deal with the presence of 100,000 Kryptonians on Earth.

Also, the latest issue saw the return of the Creature Commandos and G. I. Robot, and we all know how I feel about those characters.

3. Catwoman

This year saw several good series get cancelled by DC, including Manhunter, Birds of Prey, and Blue Beetle. But no cancellation was more regretable for me than Catwoman. For 2 1/2 years, since DC's "One Year Later" bump, this has been one of the most consistently well written and drawn series from DC. Even when it was saddled with unfortunate crossovers, like this year's for Salvation Run, the Catwoman issues proved superior to the main series. And it was one of only two monthly series for which I had a real sense of anticipation every month. The reason for that anticipation is two-fold. First, writer Will Pfeifer made Catwoman a morally complex character genuinely worth caring about, making scenes like the one where Selina gives up her baby a real emotional shot to the gut. No other comic this year gave me the same emotional reaction. Second, Pfeifer knows how to write action, and almost every issue ended with a real cliffhanger that I couldn't wait to see resolve.

And, I would add that Pfeifer writes the hell out of Batman. Every cameo Batman made was a gem, especially because the situation with Selina and her baby brought out a side of Batman that does not get explored in his own books.

Will Pfeifer and David Lopez did manage to end the series on a classy note, including cameos of themselves in the last issue. DC is continuing to collect this series in trade paperback, so anyone who missed out on it can still check it out.

Also, this was Zoe's favorite series this year as well, and she threatened to jump off my lap if I didn't place it higher on the list.

2. Captain America

2008 was the year that comics made me care about characters for which I had little past interest. This was especially true for Marvel Comics. I have long been primarily a DC reader, but this year I read more Marvel series than I ever have. Hercules, Sentry, Iron Fist, Iron Man--thanks to writers like Jeff Parker, Matt Fraction, Paul Tobin, Greg Pak, and Fred Van Lente, I'm enjoying the heck out of a lot of Marvel comics. But no series this year kept me more excited from month-to-month than Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting's Captain America, which spent most of the year working through the latter 2/3 of the epic 18-part "Death of Captain America" story. Brubaker has made Bucky an interesting character as the new Cap, and he has also filled the series with a great supporting cast and a collection of formidable villains.

In addition, Brubaker was extraordinarily prescient to come up with a story where the Red Skull manages to attack America by creating a banking and mortgage crisis. Cap has always been best when he's relevant to the current state of American culture, but this plot was nothing short of uncanny in its currency.

I've also especially appreciated that this book has kept outside of the larger Secret Invasion crossover that has dominated Marvel this year. Brubaker got to take his time with a long story, and yet it managed to stay well-paced and exciting throughout the year.

1. All-Star Superman

With this list, it's going to look like I'm in the tank for Grant Morrison. But All-Star Superman is a true masterpiece, and it will go down in comics history as one of the great works of the superhero genre. It doesn't necessarily transcend the genre, but that is not a bad thing because Morrison is clearly trying to create the definitive Superman story here. And unlike Batman: RIP and Final Crisis, this series hit with a clarity of purpose from issue 1. The premise was simple: Superman was dying, and he had to complete 12 labors before his life came to an end. But within that simple framework, Morrison created some mind-expanding superhero stories.

And also unlike Morrison's other work this year, he was working with an artist in Frank Quitely whose imagination and talent can keep pace with the writer's wild ideas (Quitely is on a short list of artists, along with Cameron Stewart, J. G. Jones, Doug Mahnke, Chris Weston, Richard Pace, and Charles Truog, who seem to "get" Morrison's scripts in a way that a lot of other artists seem to struggle with). Quitely's art is just stunning on this series. Though I like Gary Frank's realistically muscular Superman in Action Comics, I also enjoy the sheer hugeness and solidity of Quitely's Superman. This is a book that just gets better with each reading.

Like I said in the previous post, 2008 was a great year for superhero comics, and there were a lot of series that would have made the list in any other year, including The Immortal Iron Fist, Invincible Iron Man, Green Lantern, Booster Gold, and Secret Six. I expect the latter three series will be strong in 2009, especially Booster Gold, which would have made the list if not for some pretty mediocre fill-in stories. True Believers was another series that almost made the cut, but the later issues didn't quite live up to the promise of the first, though I still enjoyed it.

As always, suggestions for series I may have missed this year will be greatly appreciated. I'll be back soon with my thoughts on some graphic novels and indy comics from 2008.

Dr. K's Top 10 Superhero Comics of 2008, Part 1!

I normally shy away from doing end-of-the-year top 10 lists for a variety of reasons, the primary one being that, once the end of the year rolls around, I have difficulty remembering all that I did in the previous year. But 2008 was a great year for superhero comics, and so I thought I would put together a list of my favorites. So, below is a list of my favorite regular series and miniseries that I followed in 2008. Please feel free to make recommendations in the comments for things I should have listed or should have been reading.

10. Omega the Unknown

When Marvel announced that novelist Jonathan Lethem was going to revive this obscure 70s title, I immediately went to my collection to re-read the original Steve Gerber series. That series was one of the more bizarre of Gerber's many bizarre ideas at the time. I have to admit, I didn't always understand what was going on in Lethem's series from month to month, but when I read the entire series as a whole, it came together as an innovative riff on Steve Gerber's original 70s concept. I'm glad I stuck with it. And the final "silent" issue showcased artist Farel Dalrymple's talents. Congratulations to Marvel for putting out this unconventional series.

9. Madame Xanadu

Though DC's Vertigo books would not normally be counted as "superhero" series, Madame Xanadu is the closest thing to a DC Universe title published by Vertigo. Writer Matt Wagner incorporates many aspects of the DCU in this series, including references to Jack Kirby's Demon mythology and frequent appearances by the Phantom Stranger (though his name is never actually mentioned). A recent appearance by Death from Neil Gaiman's Sandman series also shows Wagner's desire to tie the series into that corner of the Vertigo universe as well. Wagner appears to be quietly making this series the centerpiece of the Vertigo universe in a way that hearkens back to Vertigo's beginnings, when its books made the transition from the DCU proper. In that sense, it's clearly an attempt to return to Vertigo's roots and attract readers who may have been turned off by Vertigo's lack of a clear brand identity.

The development of the main character and the series's historical scope--moving from Arthurian England through the French Revolution--has continued to be surprising and engaging from month to month. But the real revelation here is Amy Reeder Hadley's art, which is just gorgeous and sumptuous in its detail. It would be wonderful if this series became the breakthrough hit that Vertigo has not had for a while outside of the Fables universe.

8. The Incredible Hercules

I followed this series during World War Hulk, but I dropped it soon after. However, I heard such good things about it that I went back and picked up the collections and issues from this year. And now I'm hooked. Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente weave in mythology to reimagine the way gods and humans interact in the Marvel Universe. Their characterization of Hercules as a god doomed to repeat the same mistakes while still being haunted by them adds depth to a character who has generally been depicted as a blowhard, albeit an entertaining one. But, most of all, this is a fun book, and the writers have made me interested in a character that I had only previously cared about as the strong guy in the Avengers.

7. The Age of Sentry

Speaking of characters I cared little about in the past...I liked Paul Jenkins's original miniseries about the Silver Age hero who had been forgotten by the rest of the Marvel Universe, but later appearances of the character in the New Avengers and elsewhere had made me wish that Sentry's first story had been his last. Now Jeff Parker and Paul Tobin have written a miniseries that presents Sentry's goofy Silver Age stories, recreating that milieu perfectly. Every issue has been more entertaining than the last, and I'm glad to see that Marvel has gotten smart by giving two of its best writers more work in 2009.

6. Batman

Lots of readers have complained online that this book was difficult to follow, especially during Grant Morrison's epic Batman: RIP story. But recent issues have shown that Morrison, like Batman, has had a plan all along, and subtleties that have been building for the last two years have all led to this story, which establishes exactly what a bad-ass Batman is. Unfortunately, DC has chosen one of this book's creative peaks to remove the main character from the title completely, leading in to something called "The Battle for the Cowl," for which I have no interest.

While Batman: RIP was an entertaining and complex read, it was nearly sunk by the art of Tony Daniel, who, while a dynamic artist, was inappropriate for this book. It often seemed like Daniel had difficulty understanding Morrison's script, and his storytelling often did not flow well. This, more than Morrison's script itself, may have caused the confusion that many readers felt, and it often seems to be a problem that plagues Morrison's books with other artists as well.

That's the bottom 5 of my top 10. Tomorrow, I'll return with the top 5 series of 2008, along with some honorable mentions that didn't quite make the list.