Essentials

I'm curious about the recommended reading lists attached to the 2 page origins in the back of 52.

What criteria was used to determine "essential storylines"? Are these the stories you have read to understand these characters? Are these the best stories told using the character? Or are they just what's been collected into trade paperbacks, recommending the individual issues only as a last resort?

Take last week's recommended reading for Batman, for example. It's hard to argue with Batman: Year One on that list. It's not only THE definitive origin for Batman for the last twenty years, it's also a hell of a good story. But The Bat-Man in The Batman Chronicles is hardly the same character written now, and Batman: The Greatest Stories Ever Told isn't one coherent storyline at all (though I guess the individual issues collected could be considered essential).

But the real standout on the list is The Dark Knight Returns. It's the only storyline recommended so far that is absolutely out of continuity, a story set in the dark alternate future of 1986. Reading that book will NOT get anyone not familiar with Batman up to speed with the character currently starring in Detective Comics.

And yet...

No book* in the last 20 years has had such an effect on how Batman is written as Dark Knight Returns. Batman as obsessive, as fanatical, violent, asshole-ish, all comes from Frank Miller's depiction of what Batman would be like when he's old enough to have a late life crisis. So while reading the book won't give you the history of Bruce Wayne, you DO kind of HAVE TO read it to understand the history of Batman as a character.

But then ANY book could be Essential, if it has a profound effect on a character. Watchmen is essential reading for all the Charlton characters running around the DCU, especially the Question, Blue Beetle, or Captain Atom (hmmm....). All Star Superman will almost certainly become essential. And Kingdom Come, for good or ill, is absolutely necessary to read to understand why the DCU looks the way it does.

I guess it's just further proof that saying this story changes everything and this one changes nothing means nothing, and that any story could be the one that really takes characters to somewhere new. So why worry whether it lines up with other depictions. It's all Hypertime anyhow...


*arguably, Dini and Timm's Batman: The Animated Series is an even bigger influence, but the recommended list seems limited to books.

Ooh, a Happy Little Superman Fan Am I

I don't talk about him nearly enough, but it should be stated that my favorite superhero is Superman. I love that guy.

I was a superhero fan LONG before I was a comics fan. I VIVIDLY remember seeing Superman III in the theater, having no idea why or how Superman was fighting Clark Kent, but loving every minute of it. That may in fact be my first memory (I know I just made half of you feel really old, and the other half sort of young). I loved The Super-Friends, and the late '80s Superboy show. I waited forever for Superman IV to come out ("Superman was going to fight for peace! Hooray"). Looking back, I know all of that was terrible, but when you're young...

Anyway, it didn't matter, because it had Clark Kent, who's just great. To watch Christopher Reeves, particularly in the first movie, play it, was to instantly get it. Here was a schlub, the last nice guy in a town where nice gets eaten for breakfast, in painful love with the girl who wouldn't give him the time of day. Basically, he's you, he's me. It doesn't matter if you're a boy or a girl. We all know what it's like to be ignored.

But Clark has a secret! He jumps into a broom closet, puts on the bright blue and red costume, fixes his hair, and does amazing things! All eyes on him, everybody loves him, or envies him. He's free! Free from his job, free from the law, heck, he's free from the laws of physics! He can do whatever he wants... and all he wants to do is help. And he doesn't WANT to be loved for helping... he wants to be loved for being the last nice guy. He wants to be loved for being Clark. How can you NOT love that guy? How can you not want to be that guy?

But... though I followed him from lousy movie through lousy TV show and back, I wasn't reading the comics. I kind of knew they were still publishing comics, and I know I had an issue or two growing up, and even though I loved comic strips in the newspaper, I just wasn't walking into a comic book store to pick up the latest heroic tale about my favorite Kryptonian.

Until one day when I was thirteen my dad handed me this comic as a spur of the moment gift; he had no idea what he was unleashing on the world: (after the jump!)


Yeah, that's right. I became a comics fan because of The Death of Superman. So you can all just shut up about media friendly stunt storylines because they can Goddamn get new readers into the store.

You can also shut up about making comics more "new reader friendly" by simplifying continuity. Have you read this issue lately? It's got Matrix Supergirl, Chief Henderson, Cat Grant, Kismet, Blaze, Byrne's Kryptonian imagery, Gangbuster, NONE of which I had ever seen before, and it ends with the introduction of FOUR completely new characters. Was I scared off by entering in the middle of a story? Confused and discouraged by all the characters I didn't know and plots circling around?

HECK NO! I was hooked! I wanted to know more about these characters. Who they were. How they related to Clark and what it meant about his return. I made my parents take me to the local comic book shop (a now-defunct branch of Golden Apple, if you live in the LA area), and we picked up the readily available Death of Superman and Funeral for a Friend trades (also Panic in the Sky, because our local comic book dealer flat out lied to my parents, but that's okay, because Panic is a better intro to most of the DCU anyway, and the store's out of business now anyway). And I was definitely in until at least the end of The Reign of the Supermen, and the moment Superman shatters the genocidal Cyborg, looking bad-ass and strong, in retrospect my first F*$% Yeah moment, that was it. I was in.


Because the Superman books acted as a pseudo-weekly, I quickly developed the habit of going to the store every week. Because I'm borderline obsessive compulsive, I learned to go every Thursday morning (it was the summer) then every Wednesday afternoon. (I'm better now, I can usually hold out until Friday, sometimes even Saturday. Guess I'm an adult.) And while I was in the store there was this big Batman storyline going on too, so I started picking up that, and it spread from there...

But I always read the Superman titles. (Well, almost always, the Dominus storyline drove me away, but Luthor trading his baby to Brainiac 13 for power brought me right back.) So why am I NOW such a happy Superman fan? Because for the first time, in a long time, the Superman titles are actually GREAT. I mean, in the thirteen years I've been reading comics, they've usually been good, or good enough. Even when the storylines seemed more designed to get attention than tell a good story (the engagement, the death, the return, the break-up, the wedding, blue, blue and red) there was some really good writers and artists turning out decent work. Writers like Karl Kessel and artists like Stuart Immonen and others. And it was fun... but it was never really GREAT. I'd pick it up because it was available at the store and I'd be amused for 15 minutes, but I realized I wasn't dying to read it anymore. I mean, before November 16th, 2005, who was really LOOKING FORWARD to the next issue of ANY Superman comic?

Guess what comes out tomorrow?

No, no, not that. Or rather, not JUST that. Action Comics #842 is coming out, the second part of adventure where, well, Aliens Steal Our Stuff. Seriously, I've been looking forward to this issue since just seeing the cover by Dave. Freaking. Gibbons. And Kurt Busiek, Fabian Nicieza and Pete Woods are knocking out of the park an old school crazy-ass Silver Age Superman adventure. It's funny to think this is from the same writer who wrote the last issue of Superman, which mostly had him sitting on a plane, reading a book and thinking about a conversation he had with Lana the other day, which was ALSO a great issue.

Three FANTASTIC ongoing comics starring my favorite, favorite, favorite character. Some of my favorite writers, great artists I'm only now beginning to appreciate, and an editorial staff devoted to making Superman, above and beyond anything else, FUN!

I'm just waiting for the wink.