Showing posts with label Will Pfeifer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Will Pfeifer. Show all posts

Friday, April 27, 2007

"Quick, Eat the Children"

So Hippolyta turns to her top generals and says, "We're going to march on Washington D.C., slaughter their leaders, destroy their monuments, and kill one little boy."

There's some muddled confusion so Nubia steps up and asks "Why one little boy?"

And Hippolyta turns to Wonder Woman and says, "See, I told you no cares about Washington!"



Okay, so anyone who knows the original version of that joke knows I just did a bad, bad thing, but the point remains: no reader cares when they see Amazons blow up the capital building (which is certainly full of people) or invade the Mall by the tens of thousands. But kill one little child right in front of the reader, and everyone decries the violence present in Amazons Attack.

Or to put it another way, one dead child is a tragedy. One thousand dead children are a statistic.

I honestly don't get you people, sometimes. The ones that don't think such violence belongs in superhero comics. To me, that's just unfathomable. Superheroes use violence to protect people from extraordinary, fantastic threats. Those threats themselves have to be horrible. An army that has no mercy for children? There's a word for that... what is it? what is it?

Oh, I remember, "Bad Guys."

NEWSFLASH: The Amazons are the BAD GUYS of Amazons Attack. That's in case you didn't get it from the F*&^ING TITLE!

Within the first four pages, Will Pfeifer and Pete Woods establish the threat as a large, superpowered army that kills everyone they come across. We know what the Justice League is up against and why it NEEDS to stop them, immediately. That's called good writing.

And as for those who think that it's out of character for Amazons to be so warlike, all I have to say is, "ARE YOU HIGH?" The only consistent part of the myth of the Amazons is that they are a tribe of Warrior Women. Think Xena. Think the "Amazons" in Y, the Last Man.* Even if we limit it to DC Amazons, this was a tribe last seen pulling out the "Purple Death Ray" against a horde of invading OMACs. They do nothing but fight or train to fight! And considering they learned their combat strategy and tactics three thousand years before the Geneva Conventions, they're probably not taking many prisoners.

But maybe you just don't want to deal with the consequences of large scale violence on a personal level, or maybe you just don't want to think about children dying. I almost understand that, I guess. I suggest you read something more all ages appropriate, like Jeff Smith's Shazam: The Monster Society of Evil. Nothing bad happens to children there...

What?
Oh Dear!


*See, I do read non-superhero comics.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Save me from Tom!

Baa! I've joined MySpace. Baa!

You can find me at http://www.myspace.com/stevenpadnick.

Be my friend!

Update: Thank you, uh, Warren Ellis. You're too kind. Gail, Will, the gauntlet's thrown. Was' up, now?

Sunday, November 12, 2006

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, November 09, 2006

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.