It Had to be Said #6

Authorial intent is meaningless.

It really doesn't matter what a writer or artist (or editor) intended to say with any given piece of art (or, in our case, comic). What matters is what they actually say, and that is determined by the audience.

Lobo's a good example. He was intended as a satire of the ultra-violent superhero (Wolverine, specifically) but was read by an audience that took him totally seriously, to the point where he written seriously and became that which he was meant to mock.

And going in the reverse direction, All-Star Batman and Robin may be intended to be taken seriously, but is so gloriously over-the-top that many people love it as a parody (perhaps of itself, but a parody nonetheless).

This is complicated by the fact that art does not exist in a vacuum nor is "the audience" a monolithic entity. "The audience" is thousands of individuals with different backgrounds, experiences, and contexts for understanding. So each person interprets a work differently, and the meaning of a piece is fluid across people. Something I read as a celebration of female power, another might read as a dismissal of a woman's worth. And neither of us are necessarily wrong.

And a work's meaning changes over time, too, as new events reshape interpretations. The first issues of Watchmen, for example, were published before the Iran-Contra scandal broke. So while Moore and Gibbons' story of abused, hubristic authority could not have been intended to comment on the (then) current administration's illegal activities, by the twelfth issue it most certainly did! (Especially since the Tower Commission opened their report with "quis custodiet ipsos custodes," i.e. "who watches the watchmen?")

Which is a long way of saying, you can't defend your art by saying "This is what I meant to say" or "I didn't mean to offend anyone". Once your art is out among the public, you are just one more interpreter, and have no more or less authority than anyone else. If someone says your work is offensive, then it IS offensive, at least to them, and you cannot just say they are wrong. All you can do is decide whether or not you care.

Is it 2008 yet?

Grant Morrison does an exit interview for 52 and lets a few cats out of the bag:

The same pitch also introduced two new Japanese pop-culture inspired superteams - the venerable monster-huntin' crew of Big Science Action and the Super Young Team (whose members include Most Excellent SuperBat, Big Atomic Lantern Boy and Shy Crazy Lolita Canary) - both of which will appear in my next big DCU project in 2008....

...Doc Magnus' Plutonium Man will probably turn up again in the forthcoming Metal Men series....

...If you miss Vic Sage as the Question, you should be able to follow the adventures of Vic's counterpart on the Charlton/Watchmen world of Earth 4...

That's right, the mother-f@#$ing WATCHMEN WORLD

There's also something about sex with a jellyfish. Oh just go read it.

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.

Lex Luthor is Smarter Than You

Second hardest character in fiction to write? A protagonist that's smarter than the you are. If someone is a certifiable genius, if, in fact, her super power is being a genius, then how are you ever going to come up with something so clever and wise that it earns the distinction of intelligence beyond the merely human.

There's ways of writing around it, I suppose. The Richards Method is to have your character be a genius in a completely made-up field of study. If Richards expertise is Cosmic Radiation collection and manipulation, if he builds the world's best energy transmitter and no one else can, then he's a genius and no reader could say otherwise.

There's the Batman Method, where the character figures out instantly what took the writer three years to figure out, and without the advantage of being able to change the facts to fit the theory.

And there's the Ozymandius Method, in which the character does something completely insane, but since it causes everything to work out in his favor, he must, ipso facto, be a genius. Because it's the only explanation.

But when the character is a master strategist, who has all the time in the world to perfect her magnum opus, then anything you could have her do is, by definition, not something that requires a 12th level intellect to conceive of.

But that's the second hardest job. The hardest is coming up with an ANTAGONIST that's smarter than you are. Because then, not only do you need to come up with a plan so fiendishly clever that you wouldn't have thought of it in a million years, you then have to come up with someway of foiling said plan that doesn't invalidate the genius of it in the first plan. So you have to outthink yourself, and then outthink yourself again. And if you found a flaw, an obvious flaw, then your genius villain should have caught it in the first place.

Your only recourse is to hide said flaw in your villain's particular blind spot. Superman #2 is the almost Platonic Example of how to do it. Lex Luthor fairly ruthlessly and easily discovers Clark's secret in the space of one issue, proving that he is, in fact, an evil genius. But he dismisses the answer out of hand because he can't imagine someone with that kind of power not using it to subjugate others. That fundamental distrust is what makes Lex a villain, and what makes his thinking flawed.

Split the Atom!

Whoa. Hey there, Will Pfeifer. How's it going? Glad you liked the review.

As long as I have your here, would you mind if I ran a few things by you.

First, this is the second time that I got independent confirmation that my recommendation can be used to sell books. Will, would you mind passing that on to the DC publicity department? Maybe they have a review copy of an upcoming book lying around or something. I'm not saying anything... I'm just saying...

Second, I was wondering what happened to Captain Atom right after the end of the mini-series. There are four (4) different comics that purport to show the return of Captain Atom to the DCU, and they are all... different.

Superman / Batman #20 had a bald, amnesiac Captain Atom possessed by the Kryptonite Man. Infinite Crisis #7 had a confused Captain Atom replace a blowed-up Breach over Metropolis. Crisis Aftermath: The Battle for Bludhaven #5 had a comatose, damaged Captain Atom appear in Bludhaven. And your own Captain Atom: Armageddon #9 had a determined and hardened Captain Atom show up in the ruins of Bludhaven (which could be the same event as in CA: BfB, but not in S/B or IC).

Now normally, I'd just chalk it up to editorial error, and I usually hate turning an obvious mistake into a plot point, but the idea that Captain Atom really did return four (maybe three) different times, and there are now four (or three) different Captains Atom running around, one without hair, one with a Monarch suit, appeals to me, because it's arguably in character for Captain Atom, the walking atom bomb blast.

Because it means he fissioned.

Being shot out of the Wildstorm U split Captain Atom, and now there's lots of shiny, radioactive man-gods out there, ready to fight for justice and blow each other up. Maybe Breach, the Captain Atom of Earth-8, and a certain bald, blue, naked guy could join the fray, too. Just imagine: Crisis of Infinite Atoms. Captain Atom Red / Captain Atom Blue. Captain Atom: Clone Saga. Captain Atom: Attack of the Clones.

(huh, suddenly the idea sounds lots less appealling.)

Anyway, Will, just throwing that idea out there. Take it, leave it. That one's free.

Oh, and third, how does Captain Atom spit? Do energy beings in containment suits even have saliva glands? And is his spit radioactive as well?

Thursday Afternoon Recommendation

If the Question was one of the greatest beneficiaries of Hypertime, his Charlton cohort Captain Atom was one of its greater victims. While new versions layered interesting characteristics and interpretations onto Vic Sage, the same versions stripped whatever was interesting about Nathanial Adam away. DC already had a nuclear powered accident survivor by the time Captain Atom was introduced, as well as military men turned weapons of mass destruction, and soldiers from another era trapped in the present. And once it was clear how he wasn't like those people, he became defined by only one aspect, and, as Dave Campbell points out, it's not a very compelling one:

Captain Atom is a tool. Whenever writers need an asshole superhero, they get Captain Atom. He’s constantly trying to beat up other heroes on behalf of the federal government.

And that's basically it. His defining feature is that he's as powerful as Superman, but he obeys the authorities, and it's always the wrong choice to make. And since Captain Atom is also portrayed as honest and sincere, he comes across as insanely naive, if not a little mentally handicapped.

Which was why blasting him into the Wildstorm Universe in Will Pfeifer and Giuseppe Camuncoli Captain Atom: Armageddon (trade paperback on-sale this week) was so brilliant.


When the Justice League butts up against President Luthor, the reader knows the government is in the wrong and spends most of the time wondering what kind of stick is up Atom's ass that he can't see it too.

But when The Authority cuts a swath of destruction across the Washington Mall, leaving the charred corpses of thousands of terrorists and tourists in their wake, and the President is left wondering if there was anything he can actually do, well suddenly the idea of a gold skinned god who limits himself to the will of the electorate starts to sound pretty appealing.

Captain Atom: Armageddon is probably the best inter-company crossover I've ever read (which I know isn't saying much but...) because it actually contrasts the characters that meet, rather than the usual misunderstanding, fight and team-up model. The Wildstorm characters see the establishment asshole that Captain Atom is usually portrayed as. But from Captain Atom's point of view, he's trapped in a world ruled by amoral, hyper-violent superheroes who have terrified the populace into submission. There's no misunderstanding, they understand each other perfectly. That's why they fight.

The whole book could be read as a contrast between the morally rigid Marvel heroes of the 1960s (Steve Ditko was one of Captain Atom's co-creators) and the violent, morally ambiguous Image heroes of the 1990s, a pastiche Armageddon rings an almost literal death knell for. Having moved through the awkward adolescent rebellion phase of WildC.A.T.S. and the "I'm at college so I must be right about everything" false maturity of The Authority, a real adult, a crotchety old survivor of a forgotten era, has come to tell them that they are getting it wrong, and the world is in danger because of it.

And Captain Atom plays an interesting Ghost of Christmas Future. Like Mr. Majestic, he's a popular hero from a comics company bought by DC Comics. But while Mr. Majestic can still headline his own series (er, sort of), the Captain has been reduced to C or D-list status. His very presence screams "You may be a big shot in your own world now, but someday you're going to be a background cameo in Infinite Crisis on Infinite Earths. One day, I was like you. One day, you will be like me."

It suggests a model for future Captain Atom stories that could be interesting, the law abiding superhero in a world where the law isn't respected much, a walking conscience with the firepower to back it up. The Boys of the Wildstorm Universe proper, if you will.

'Course, he's not in the Wildstorm Universe anymore, and in the DCU our sympathy will always be with Superman and Wonder Woman over the man in the shiny skin, so either he should go back (if only to make some more time with the Engineer) or he should get some new "heroes" to play with.

Play up some of the aspects of his Watchmen analogue, Dr. Manhattan, his disconnect from humanity due to his powers, and how that hurts him, rather than coldly interests him as it does his blue-bald twin. Add in a supporting cast of government employees who work with him and aid him. Some he can talk to, rescue, be rescued by. Maybe one or two villainous, or at least venal, bureaucrats, so the whole thing doesn't read like government propaganda. An anarchic villain or two who maybe have an actually good cause but poor methods.

There's a really good character there. Pfeifer and Camuncoli found him. And the gauntlet is thrown for the next writer to make him great.

Or you could just keep writing the unlikable establishment tool with the stick up his ass. If that's your thing.

Question Time

To me, one of the greatest beneficiaries of Hypertime has got to be be The Question.

While everybody has a different favorite part of 52, everybody seems to agree that The Question is awesome. Whether he's mentoring Montoya with koans, rifling through barely organized files in his rusted out old van, cracking a Gauntlet joke, or casually breaking the fourth wall, everything he's done so far has been HIGHLY amusing. And that's not even getting into the kung fu.

But who IS The Question? Or rather, which Question is that? Is he Steve Ditko's Objectivist crusader? Denny O'Neil's "Zen Master of Crime Fighting"? Bruce Timm's paranoid conspiracy theorist? Even Rick Veitch's urban shaman?

And thanks to the wonders of Hypertime, the answer is "All of them." The Question is "comics' only Zen Objectivist conspiracy theorist." From wildly different authors' visions of who The Question is, we get some basic truths about him from where his different philosophies overlap. There's a fundamental belief that perceived reality and objective reality are very different, that our flawed faculties cannot passively understand the world and that truth must be actively sought by asking the right questions.

In short, "Things are never as they seem."*

So basically, any writer going forward, as long as he keeps that core, can go forth and write a great Question story, picking and choosing from all the earlier versions across time and media the parts he likes, jettisoning that which doesn't, and adding something of his own. Add in a bit of Mr. A. and Rorschach, The Question's creative doppelgängers, and one of the greatest character designs in comics, mix well, and you've got the character of the year.


*Of course, the philosophies diverge as to why reality can't be seen, whether it's because humans aren't rational enough, or whether they are too caught up in themselves, or whether They are hiding the truth from the world.

It Had to Be Said #3

Crisis on Infinte Earths did not fail in its goal of creating a simpler universe that new readers could understand.

Crisis on Infinite Earths succeeded in its goal of creating a more complicated universe that took better advantage of all the toys that DC had to play with.

Consider, if the purpose of the book was to simplify the universe, they should have just wiped out everything and started over from the beginning. Said THIS is the first appearance of Batman, everything that came before doesn't matter. (With Superman, they kind of did do that, but with the Man of Steel miniseries, not COIE, and it didn't take).

Instead, Marv Wolfman basically said, "You know the past 50 years of comics, spread out over three companies and innumerable separate titles? Yeah, almost all of those stories happened, but all in the same place and over a period of about 10 years." Does that sound like he was even trying to make things simpler?

No, what he was trying to do was create a world where THIS was possible:


Now, you can either start each issue explaining why Dr. Fate and Captain Marvel are on Earth 1 and just which Batman that is, exactly, or you can just accept that they are all from the same Earth and just go from there. Which would you prefer?

Then there's the fact that ongoing books sell better when they are tied to other, more successful ongoing books. It's one thing to read about Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters. But interest is peaked and sales are higher if you know that, at any moment, Wonder Woman might stop by. That's the main reason the Charlton characters were brought into the DC Universe, rather than be relaunched with Watchmen. (On the other hand, somewhere in Hypertime there's a 20 year old ongoing series set in the Watchmen universe, still written by Alan Moore and drawn by Dave Gibbons).

Besides, there's a lot of arrogance that goes into the thought that the DC U needed to be simplified, or still needs to be simplified, for new readers. Remember, we were all new readers, once, and unless you've been collecting since Action Comics #1, there was some piece of backstory you didn't know when you first sat down. Somehow it didn't stop you from having fun, why should it stop someone else? Anyone could understand parallel earths, anyone could understand unified earth, I'm pretty sure everyone will be able to grasp Earth-New.

No, if there's a problem with getting new readers to enjoy current comics, it lies not with the rich, confusing history created by Crisis on Infinte Earths, but with current comic not using that history properly. Comics too worried about correcting, contradicting, clarifying, or simply copying the comics of the past, and not worried enough about creating new stories, new histories, for the comics of the future.

There, it had to be said.

Ahead of Its Time

"What is this Hypertime that you speak of?"– Mark Waid at San Diego Comic-Con



Well, Mark, I'm glad you asked.

Hypertime was Mark Waid's [edit: Fine, FINE! and GOD OF ALL COMICS Grant Morrison's] attempt at replacing the parallel universe concept in the DC Comics universe.

Before 1986, most DC Comics were considered to take place in the same, "mainstream" universe and comics published by other comic book companies and even National comics published before the Silver Age were considered to take place in alternate dimensions, crossing over only through extraordinary measures. After 1986, that was changed so that ALL characters created for or acquired by DC Comics existed on the same Earth, which eased character interaction. (This, I consider, was a good thing, because crossovers are fun, create a richer history for the characters, and boost sales of the smaller titles through easier use of "guest stars.")

However, editorial mandate or not, DC Comics continued to publish books that did not take place officially in the DC Universe. Originally called "imaginary stories" and later branded as "Elseworlds," these stories took the familiar characters and either placed them in radically different settings or simply had events that would make an ongoing series difficult (such as, say, death). The most famous Elseworlds is Kingdom Come, by Mark Waid and Alex Ross, though The Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen could be considered Elseworlds as well.

On top of that, there were film, television, print and radio versions of all these superheroes out there, with varying degrees of fidelity to the source material.

The "problem" was that these stories, despite being unofficial, had a habit tying into the main universe. Following the The Dark Knight Returns, the "main universe" Batman began acting more and more like the dystopian, aging, paranoid, sadistic version. Following Kingdom Come, Alex Ross's character re-designs started to appear in the main books, as well as hints that, in fact, Kingdom Come was the future of the DCU. And the Batman Animated Series introduced two important new characters to the Batman mythos (Renee Montoya and Harley Quinn), as well as changing (and improving) the design and origins for most of the characters (notably Mr. Freeze).

Hypertime was an attempt to address this reality. Mark Waid's [edit: and Bald and Beautiful Grant Morrison's] concept had two major differences from the previous theory of the Multiverse.

The first is that it included EVERYTHING. Every imaginary story, every Elseworlds, every movie, musical, every possible appearance by anyone anywhere. Presumably, this also included works that DIDN'T involve DC characters directly, like comics published by Marvel and Dark Horse. It certainly included comics published by Wildstorm, which DC Comics purchased the same year Hypertime was introduced. DC Editor Mike McAvennie once described it to me as "All stories are equally imaginary."

The second difference was that, rather than parallel Earths, the different worlds crisscrossed all the time, feeding into each other. So if, say, Smallville introduced a Lex Luthor who grew up in Smallville, yes, suddenly the DC Universe Lex Luthor had a childhood in Smallville as well. Under the old version, the Smallville Lex would have had to literally tear open a hole in the fabric of time and space and take the non-Smallville Luthor's place in order for that to occur. Under Hypertime, that changed history just sort of happens.

On the macroscale, it meant that any story, anywhere, COULD be an in continuity story for any one particular issue of, say, Impulse. Even if it's a fifty year old comic, or published by the Marvelous competition, or if it's a 19th century proto-horror novel. On the microscale, it means that every individual issue is a current within the main stream, which may or may not affect the other currents. After all, as Kurt Busiek once said, "they're all fairy tales we pretend take place in the same world because it's more fun that way."

BUT... as the quote above suggests, in the wake of Infinite Crisis, Hypertime is concepta-non-grata at DC Comics now. In fact, writer and editor alike act as if Hypertime has been, ha ha ha, erased from time. And the reason is... Hypertime never really worked. No one [edit: Not even 12th level intellects Mark Waid and Grant Morrison] ever did anything particularly interesting with Hypertime. Mostly, writers just treated it as another word for Multiverse, with the added bit that it might include some of our favorite Elseworlds characters (such as one AWESOME (and criminally uncollected) Superboy story).

Why was that? My theory is that Hypertime was too metaphysical a concept. Quite frankly, it was just a description of the way the creative process actually works. If he or she sees a good idea, consciously or unconsciously a writer will incorporate that idea into their work. Acknowledging, in story, that that happens may reduce fanboy whining about what is or is not in continuity (Yes, it's all in continuity), it doesn't actually help tell a better story. (At least not one that I can think of.) And so it's become passe.

Or has it? DC has, for now, stopped their Elseworlds line, though if New Frontier, JLA Classified, Bizarro Comics, Solo and the ALL-STAR line are any indication, they haven't stopped producing comics that are outside established DC continuity. They also still publish the Vertigo books, some of which still have an ill defined connection to the Justice League world, as well as Wildstorm's superhero and non-superhero books.

And despite the fact that Infinite Crisis ended three months ago, and DC has been publishing "New Earth" books for two months before that, we still don't know what the structure of the new DC universe is. We know that multiple Earths DID exist, it's been hinted that they still do, but it's also clear that Barry Allen, Jay Garrick, Billy Batson, Eel O'Brien, and Ted Kord were all born on the same earth, or at least everyone in the DCU remembers it that way. Similarly, the two page spread in Infinite Crisis #6 implied that EVERY comic DC ever produced, including the Zero Hour Legion and, ha ha ha, the Tangent Universe ARE also part of the New Earth, in some way. (My personal favorite part of Infinite Crisis #7 was the kids finding the Tangent Green Lantern on a beach).

So, was Hypertime really erased? Could it even be erased, considering it was just a description of the way comics were written anyway, an acknowledgment of the imaginary quality of the stories and the complexities of the world of ideas? Or have only our memories of Hypertime disappeared? For if GOOD ideas can cross from current to current, shouldn't BAD ideas be sluiced out, floating down the stream and getting lost in a sea of forgotten thoughts and half-formed dreams, never to be seen again?

Until, of course, one good writer has one good idea...