#but go back to Superman Ideology in that there is an alien that comes to earth and believes in the inherent beauty of humanity

[grooviestsadpapaya]

I know this won’t get much interaction bc this is a Zelda blog mostly but LOOK AT MY SUPERHERO OC LOOK AT HER. Her name is Carmen and I love her, her superhero name is Boomslang and she Loves Monstrous Freaks

[thevindicativevordan]

What are Mark Waid's takes you don't agree with?

The Lois/Superman/Clark love triangle is essential to Superman’s narrative. Either have Lois date one of the identities, or have Clark and Lois date someone else while still teasing the possibility they might get together. Having Lois chase Supes while Supes tries to point her towards good ol’ Clark doesn’t interest me at all, nor do I think the general public wants that anymore.

Lex being CEO of Lexcorp/a villain with good publicity is a bad idea. I love mad scientist Lex and The Last Days of Lex Luthor does provide an example for why that status quo might be better. It’s been a while since we’ve seen Lex cut loose and just slaughter people, handcuffing him like that hurts him in the long run… but I like CEO Lex! I think that’s a better place to position Lex for the opening years of their feud, culminating in Lex getting elected to the Presidency and Superman bringing him down. After that you go full supervillain Lex, with him being the most despised man in the world only fueling his hatred - he had everything he wanted and the goddamn alien took it away! - as he becomes singularly focused on killing Supes without caring anymore for maintaining the facade of benevolence.

Clark is just a disguise. By all means, emphasize that Superman is not a normal person with normal problems, but he grew up thinking he was Clark Kent. Superman and Kal-El are identities he discovers later on, even Waid doesn’t seem to want to bring back Superbaby retaining full memories of Krypton. I agree with PKJ that it makes sense for Superman to think of himself first as “Clark”, even though I vehemently disagree with takes that try to say he’s just a simple farmboy. If I had to choose an identity to be real, I think I would say “Clark” is the real one, and the nervous neurotic wreck Clark comes off as at the Daily Planet is actually how he really feels. Superman is just the visage of confidence he projects to the world, at heart Superman is a huge dork who is nervous/shy. Basically the MAWS/American Alien approach to Clark being the “real” identity rather than the Byrne one where Clark is as cool as Superman. Of course the ideal is the Busiek approach where both halves are valid parts of who Supes is.

I don’t think having lots of other Kryptonians around is a good idea. Definitely not the Kandorians. Waid likes having lots of Kryptonians around to contrast them with Superman, and his approach to how they can be around yet Supes remains unique in TLDoLL is a good one… but I prefer the current mainline take to Kandor. Let Kal access the Kandorian libraries, but he shouldn’t actually be able to talk to them.

Maybe his takes on Superman’s villains outside of Lex? He’s barely used them which makes it difficult to judge his approach, but his Metallo was straight out of the DCAU. Reads as old fashioned compared to how Morrison and PKJ have updated him. Brainiac in TLDoLL is the Silver Age incarnation and again, Morrison and Venditti had superior updates. Zod was fine, wasn’t a bad Terrence Stamp impression like Jurgens, and there were the bones of an interesting take there. I know that Waid believes Mxy NEEDS to stick to the whole “he plays pranks until Supes tricks him into saying his name backwards” formula and I’m sorry but that is painfully lame. Maybe Waid’s execution of that would win me over, but on a ideological level I think that approach to Mxy sucks, and is why he isn’t taken seriously.

Perhaps it would be shorter to say that I diverge from Waid when he’s too stubborn to properly update old Superman lore. Morrison loves to play with old stuff too, but their Brainiac was a genuinely thoughtful update that built on what Johns had done, rather than just recreate the Silver Age Brainiac like what Waid seems intent on doing. Waid doesn’t want to be seen as “retro” but he absolutely is. Put Hickman and Waid side by side and tell me which of the two reads as more “modern” given they are both sci-fi fanatics. Waid is a solid and enjoyable superhero writer, but what he doesn’t know how to do is create something new. He only knows how to take old stuff and make it more palatable for modern audiences.

[rwac96]

How about this prompt?

Superman showing Homelander that he’s just a cheap copy of the Last Son of Krypton.

Probably go “all out” like he did against the Elite, just to show how pathetic and far from being a god Johnny really is.

In case it wasn’t obvious, I absolutely, deeply, DEEPLY, DESPISE the idea behind Homelander’s character.

The blonde man in red, white & blue gasps; his vision blurry as he felt his legs becoming wobbly. His gaze focused on the man in red & blue, the one who he called 'Outsider'. The one he deemed unworthy, anti-American, and any derogatory statements he could think of. But now, he found himself bleeding and bruised; which was something that never happened to him before.

Then, in the blink of an eye, Superman rushed toward Homelander and delivered a right hook to his face. Being knocked off his feet, the 'Defender of America' was hurled a few feet into the air; the Kryptonian flying after him and then brings both of his fists down onto his back. John bellowed in pain, finding himself being sent down toward the earth, only to be caught by his opponent.

"I'm obsolete?" Superman spoke, as he held the blonde man by the collar of his uniform. "Funny, coming from someone who doesn't know how to fight."

"S-So what?!" Homelander spat, his tone filled with spite. "I fight for this country! I'm you who doesn't bullshit around!"

"You're none of that John," Kal said, dropping Vought's 'mascot', and bringing him down to his knees. "you're a cheap imitation, a copy created by a corrupt company. A legacy of a deranged and dangerous man who followed a ruinous ideology."

"WHAT DOES IT MATTER TO YOU!?" The man screamed at Metropolis' Hero, "I PROTECT THE UNITED STATES, YOU ALIEN FUCK!"

"You don't," Supes replied, "if you truly cared, you would show people that there's a better way. Instead, you're led by your base desires, your indulgences, and your ego. John, you were manipulated, raised in a lab, and used as a tool to expand the interests of those who want to reshape their world in their own image."

[artbyblastweave]

 Because I’ve never seen this spelt out or said out loud, I’m gonna voice my pet take that Taylor Hebert reads like an examination of the Spider-Man Archetype. 

Seriously, there are a shitload of parallels, from powers, to personality, to life circumstances. 

They both are:

superpeople with a bug motif (duh)

fifteen-year-old scrawny, Gangly, Nerdy, glasses-wearing brunettes from blue-collar liberal backgrounds with grossly judgmental running commentary on everyone around them

 relentlessly bullied by their more popular peers, with their costumed identity acting as a release valve where they get to be powerful

Are mourning the death of a beloved, idealized parental figure that they posthumously outsource a lot of their moral reasoning to 

Are keeping their living parental figure in the dark about their costumed career to “protect” them (and because said parental figure finds their costumed alter ego objectionable

constantly mistaken for or smeared as malevolent criminals despite their good intentions

conducting themselves in a deeply creepy and borderline inhuman manner, (it’s pretty normalized now, but Spider-Man had extremely unsettling locomotion when he debuted! He was a creepy thing to see on a wall at night!)

motivated in large part by a single “come-to-jesus” moment where they realized the costs of using their powers self-indulgently (Uncle Ben and Dinah)

possessed by enormous Atlas complexes, routinely breaking their own backs to save people who hate and fear them

street-level “friendly neighborhood” heroes, focusing on protecting and servicing a specific locality 

fighters with a style built around predicative, extrasensory battlefield awareness, using wits, webs, and on-the-fly deduction of weaknesses to hit well above their weight.

Where it diverges:

For Taylor and Peter, the bullying is presented as the pre-power status quo. For Peter, this fades into the background as his costumed life picks up and as he segues into adult life; for Taylor, it irrevocably fucks up her headstate from the word go and colors how she engages with literally every situation she encounters. Spider-Man is hounded as a criminal because of bad luck and bad marketing; Skitter is hounded as a criminal because she’s actually a criminal,  with a lot of her genuinely well-intentioned actions parsing as warlordism and cult-of-personality-building to a reasonable outside observer (because, you know, they are.) Spider-Man hides his life from Aunt May out of a sort of groundless fear she’d stop loving him; Taylor hides her double life because her surviving parent has genuine and reasonable ideological objections to her lifestyle. And, because Worm lets the consequences of the superheroic lifestyle play out without reboots or resets, Taylor’s Atlas Complex takes all of two years to utterly destroy her as a person, which, lets face it, is what would very likely happen to Spidey if there weren’t a metanarrative mandate to keep him alive for further adventures.

There’s too many parallels for this not to be intentional. It’s not as clean a line to draw as what the story does with Armsmaster (what if Batman’s prep time just wasn’t enough to keep him competitive) or Jack Slash (What if Joker’s metanarrative immunity was a codified power)  or Scion (what if Superman was an alien alien) but I do like to pitch Taylor as “Peter Parker if the story let him be as fucked up as his traumatic life circumstances indicate he should be.”

[ty-talks-comics]

Best of DC: Week of January 1st, 2019

Best of this Week: The Flash #85 - Joshua Williamson, Christian Duce, Luis Guerrero and Steve Wands

Amidst everything going on in the DC Universe right now from Year of the Villain to the end of Doomsday Clock, there’s been a lot of really underrated books that DC’s been publishing and Flash Definitely falls into that category for me. Of course, Flash is no low-tier character, but as it stands, there’s not a big conversation surrounding Joshua Williamson’s run with the character like there is for the up and down runs of Batman and Superman, but there should be!

Joshua Williamson and his revolving art team of Christian Duce, Scott Kolins, Rafa Sandoval and Carmine di Giandomenico have pulled off some of the most consistently fantastic Flash storytelling in recent years. From the Speed Force Storm to Flash’s “Final Showdown” with Captain Cold and finally here with Rogues’ Reign, these stories have only seen Flash become an even better character with depth after he’s been tested over and over with insurmountable odds and overpowered enemies while still being riddled with doubt.

This issue of Flash acts as the penultimate issue to the Rogues’ Reign storyline and sees us learning a bit more about some of the Rogues as individuals while at the same time, breaking them apart even further. This book is less centered on the various speedsters, but more around their lack of control over their powers and Flash continuing his rivalry with King Cold to the bitterest end.

The book begins with four panels of King Cold, Leonard Snart, monologuing to himself. We get a great big focus of the Symbol of Doom in the sky as Snart says that it’s the end of the world, but at least he’s going out like a winner, unlike his loser of a father. One of the many defining characteristics of Cold up to this point and in other stories has been his hatred of his father and his aversion to become anything like him. However, he’s become nothing more than a self-fulfilling prophecy because his life is nothing more than misery because of the sacrifices he made to get to where he is.

Cold helped Luthor’s ascension and the rise of Doom by accepting Luthor’s Gift and allowing himself and his Rogues to become ultra powered, but in doing so, has alienated himself from his friends and family now that they all have what they want. Duce frames all of this excellently by first placing Cold in shadow before he looks at his glasses, as if reminiscing about his old life before putting them on and looking towards his death at the end of the world.

Soon after, we cut to Kid Flash and Avery receiving training from two unlikely sources; Heatwave and Weather Wizard. Though they were seen as reporting in to King Cold a few issues ago, it was brief and mostly to air some small grievances that they had with the way that Cold was running things. Here, we get the reveal that they’d been working with Golden Glider since she broke off from her brother and Mirror Master under their noses. In a brilliant double page spread by Duce and Guererro, we see that they’ve been helping the speedsters keep their speed under control.

It’s a pretty warmhearted scene followed by more where Gold Glider comforts Flash about their presence. Williamson makes Heatwave and Weather Wizard come off as two men that have suffered hardships in their lives, leading them to the life of crime, but still managing to have hearts. Glider tells Flash how Weather Wizard wanted to escape the life of crime that his family was involved in when he was a kid, but never could which lead to him hurting people he loved. Heatwave suffers similarly from his pyromania being the reason his parents died, but it’s painted more as him having a sickness he can’t control. Glider tells Flash that they want to stop Cold so that things can go back to the way that they were.

Duce draws these scenes with a surprising intimacy. Amidst all of the intense action, Duce draws Heatwave with a sense of pride as he watches Kid Flash control his speed better, Weather Wizard stare in his lonesome because of everything going on and shows the kids eating with their teachers after a long day. On top of all of this, Flash has a nice scene where Golden Glider teaches him how to ice skate after he asks her to get back into what was one her hobby. Guererro colors all of these scenes with warm tones, even in the ice which is primarily blue and white. Flash and Glider’s colors give off something of a happy feeling.

One of the recurring themes of this run has been relating to the Rogues in meaningful ways and Williamson does an excellent job here of contrasting all of them to an amazing degree.

After Flash makes a bad joke to Golden Glider, causing her to become morose, Weather Wizard steps in and tells them that they’ve found where Mirror Master has been hiding and the entire crew go to find the last two pieces of his great mirror. Kid Flash asks Golden Glider if she used to date him and she confirms this, stating that she didn’t know why, but that she knew all of his tricks.

Mirror Master has always been one of the Rogues of lesser renown because well… he's an idiot. Only in the sense that he's never used his powers to a degree where people needed to be afraid of him, but thanks to his upgrade they need to. In actuality, his access to an entire Mirror Dimension makes him one of the most dangerous people in the DC Universe as a potential spy or thief because A LOT OF SURFACES REFLECT. Flash and the other Rogues learn this the hard way when Mirror Master springs a trap on them, revealing that he knew that Glider and the others betrayed Cold.

When the Rogues and Speedsters finally encountered Mirror Master, he looks absolutely devious with a wide grin and his wide grin as they did everything they could to stop him. Duce’s poses were dynamic and captured how intense the fight was, the furious facial expressions were very well done and crystalline backgrounds were beautiful. Guerrero’s colors stood out in how distinct each of them were. Mirror Master’s glossy white clashed with the other characters, especially Flash’s vibrant reds and Weather Wizard’s dark greens. By easily besting all of them, he showed just how dangerous he could be.

He teleports them all to the King and Snart notes how disappointed he is and how the Rogues could have ruled the world together. This causes Glider to snap at him, saying that he never told the Rogues what that would entail - the end of the world under Luthor. At this point Captain Cold is so far gone that he just doesn't care anymore and Williamson has been leading him down this path since the beginning.

In Rogues Reloaded, Cold had the idea for the Rogues to get one more heist over on The Flash before retiring completely and that was foiled with all of the Rogues being defeated. In Welcome to Iron Heights, Snart decided he'd run an operation from prison but Barry Allen and his former ally, Godspeed foiled that plan too. Because Cold had murdered another inmate to throw off the scent, this led to a fist fight between Cold and Flash which saw Cold's defeat and transfer to Belle Reve Penitentiary. Obviously the defeat had an adverse effect on Cold because he was so sure that he would overcome, but didn’t. He lost again.

Captain Cold has always been one to hold family in high regard since he's never quite had a functioning one side from the Rogues, so his time on the Suicide Squad was devastating to him. I mentioned in past Flash reviews that watching teammates die mission after mission must have done something to his psyche and Lex Luthor took advantage of that when offering him and his actual friends a way to win against The Flash. All of that led to this.

King Cold, feeling betrayed and pissed off, freezes his former friends and sister, leaving only The Flash to fight him one on one again. In their last fight, Cold wanted it to be one on one without any powers, but he lost that fight because of Flash’s iron will. As he removes his cold weather clothes, he reveals that Luthor’s Gift wasn’t just improved gear, but it was a supercharge of power implanted into him. Their final face off will be hand to hand with powers.

This final shot is absolutely poster worthy. Duce conveys the rage emanating from both of them with jaws wide as if they were yelling at each other. Fists are cocked back, ready to pummel their opponent into the ground, especially Cold as he has frozen his arms up to the elbow for maximum impact. What makes this even better is the Symbol of Doom hanging over them in the background like a terrible omen. Guerrero manages o make so many colors fit together in a brilliant display. Flash and his signature red and bright yellow makes him look heroic, the underdog in a fight shrouded in dark greens and cold greys. Cold is paler, his normally blonde hair turned completely white and his arms as blue as his cold blood.

I absolutely loved this.

Duce and Guerrero killed the art in this issue. On the scale of Flash artists for me, Duce is high up there. They manage to blend high intensity action with nice character moments to get the reader invested in character’s emotional states through visuals. Guerrero accentuates this by coloring scenes so that they fit each individual mood and can blend these all together when there’s a clash of ideology or character. Of course, Steve Wands is the glue that holds all of this together his letters are perfectly placed, distinct for each character and give every situation the proper weight to individual lines.

The Flash is an underrated hit that everyone should be reading, especially in regards to the Flash/Captain Cold saga. Their rivalry has been a grand center point on the level of Batman and Bane’s right now or Superman and good storytelling (zing!) I can only wonder where things go from here and what will happen to Captain Cold after this because this is probably the highest he’s ever flown, so how will he fall?

[tessatechaitea]

Superman: Up in the Sky #4

Best DC cover ever or greateast DC cover ever? Those are the only two choices.

Die Tasche. Die Tasche? DieTasche! Die Tasche. Shtop.

The story begins with somebody talking about a race for charity between Superman and The Flash. They say it was televised and that people bought tickets to sit along the route and watch it. Seems like a huge scam to me. How long could it actually take Flash to run around the Earth ten times? Like fifteen seconds? I could probably do the math on it but I don't want to show off. But this story assumes that Flash and Superman didn't run so fast that people couldn't at least see them blur by. So this kid telling the story says that Lex Luthor offered to double the money to charity if Superman loses. And Superman heard it with his super-hearing which meant Superman was going to just have to win no matter what! He'd just have to believe he was faster than The Flash and then be faster than The Flash. Because that's how comic books work. What makes a hero is the secret reserve of strength and will and confidence that only appears when the hero is about to be defeated. People who are defeated aren't heroes because they don't have that reserve. They are losers. Big stupid losers. Did you die from your cancer? Not a hero, jerk. Did you fail to get that promotion at work because you didn't complete the project a hero would have completed at the last minute? Total loser. Did one of your kids drown in the pool because you gave up on the CPR like a big jerko loser dumb-dumb? Yeah. Not a hero. Maybe even a villain! But Superman, being a hero, now had to win the race for charity! And The Flash apparently isn't a hero because where were his secret reserves to beat Superman? What an idiotic failure. Although I haven't finished the story yet! Maybe Superman is still going to lose just like the cover implies! I bet the point of this story is that Superman loses sometimes but nobody ever gives up hope in him! And he always tries his hardest! And maybe even before the race, he made a bet in Vegas that Lex Luthor would bet a billion dollars against him which would pay off like a billion to one!

Lame. Superman wins.

Superman wins but the dumb kid telling the story doesn't explain how. The kid just goes on and on about contradictions but totally uses the word incorrectly. Like saying "Superman is faster than a speeding bullet" is a contradiction. Is it? How? If Superman is faster than a speeding bullet than he's faster than a speeding bullet and that's not a contradiction! Stupid idiot kid. The kid is so dumb I bet the kid got the story wrong and just made it up to make herself feel better. Because the kid telling the story is the girl that Superman is looking for and she has to believe that Superman can do the impossible (like win a race against The Flash) or else she's just going to rot on whatever planet she's lost on. So the story is about hope or something. Superman hopes and so Superman does. It's kind of like Oprah's Secret, I guess? It doesn't make any sense but since it's Superman, you always know he's going to win. Even that time he died, he won by killing Doomsday as well. So see? Blade was wrong. You should always bet on red! And blue! The second story is also about hope. Hey! Are all these stories about the hope Superman gives people?! I've been duped! I thought this was going to be a bunch of stories about how hard Superman can punch bad guys! Stupid DC Comics hiring some intellectual namby-pamby like Tom King! Writing stories that are all, "Superman shows how faith and hope can inspire us to be better than we are!" Whatever! I hope the next issue is about Superman punching a gigantic space monster! Superman: Up in the Sky #4 Rating: Oh yeah! The second story was about Superman interacting with Clark Kent because they were struck by magic space lightning and separated into two unique people. As if that's a thing! Somehow Superman's Kryptonian DNA makes him all logical and shit while his human upbringing makes him all emotional and valiant and sacrificial and awesome! Isn't that the way it always is? Humans are the greatest beings in the universe because they know how to cry while reading Shakespeare! Everybody else in the universe is a boring old rational Vulcan! If another alien species is allowed to be emotional, they only get one emotion. Like how Klingons are angry and Ferrengi are sneaky and Romulans have huge cocks and Guardians of the Universe are assholes. Only humans have mastered the spectrum of emotion and that makes them the best! Go Clark Kent! You teach that Superman a thing or two about hope! Now merge with him again for next issue and get to punching shit!

[aion-rsa]

Jupiter’s Legacy: Mark Millar on the Genesis of His Superhero Story

https://ift.tt/3xWTFe6

This article is presented by:

Superheroes have a long history. After flying onto the scene more than eight decades ago, led by Superman, along with fellow octogenarians Batman, Wonder Woman, and Captain America, the pantheon of capes-and-tights characters has expanded to include countless more. And as legendary creators made their mark across decades, the origins and powers of these icons transformed almost as frequently as their costumes.

Meanwhile, the superhero team The Union, from the comic book saga Jupiter’s Legacy, have 90 years of consistent fictional history, with a singular overarching story, envisioned by one man: Mark Millar.

After discovering both Superman and Spider-Man comics the same day, at the age of four in Scotland (where he grew up), the now 51-year-old writer would go on to make a significant impact on the superpowered set. But he wanted his own pantheon.

And with Jupiter’s Legacy, Mark Millar has created a long history of superheroes of his own—now set to be adapted as a Netflix series.

“I wanted to do an epic,” he says. “Like The Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars… the ultimate superhero story.”

Co-created with artist Frank Quitely and published by Image Comics in 2013, Millar calls Jupiter’s Legacy his love letter to superheroes—and part of his own legacy.

The story begins in 1932 with a mysterious island that grants powers to a group of friends who then adopt the costumed monikers The Utopian, Lady Liberty, Brainwave, Skyfox, The Flare, and Blue Bolt. Told on a grand scale with cross-genre influences, the story spans three arcs: the prequel Jupiter’s Circle (with art by Wilfredo Torres), Jupiter’s Legacy, and the upcoming June 16, 2021 release Jupiter’s Legacy: Requiem (featuring art by Tommy Lee Edwards). With the May 7 debut of the Jupiter’s Legacy series on Netflix, the story will now also be told in live action.

Millar established himself in the comics industry in 1993 and crafted successful stories including Superman: Red Son, Wolverine: Old Man Logan, The Ultimates, and Marvel Comics’ Civil War—all of which have inspired adaptations and films, and led to him becoming a creative consultant at Fox Studios on its Marvel projects. His creator-owned titles Kingsman: The Secret Service, Kick-Ass, and Wanted, have likewise spawned hit movies.

But compared to Jupiter’s Legacy, none of those possessed such massive scope and aspiration as the story that explores the evolving ideologies of superpowered individuals, and how involved they should be when it comes to solving the world’s problems. Relationships are forged—and shattered by betrayal—with startling violence and titanic action sequences (both part of Millar’s signature style).

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“From Superman and the Justice League to Marvel to British comics—inspired by guys like Alan Moore, and so on, I’ve thrown it in there… it’s got a bit of everything,” he says.

That “everything” extends beyond comic books. Millar drew inspiration from King Kong’s Skull Island, and references the cosmic aesthetic of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which informed the “sci-fi stuff.” The writings of horror author H.P. Lovecraft “were a big thing for me,” when it came to The Island, created by aliens, “that existed before humanity, and that these people are drawn out towards where they get their superpowers.” The character Sheldon Sampson/The Utopian is a Clark Kent/Superman type, but his cohort George Hutchence/Skyfox is more than a millionaire playboy stand-in for Bruce Wayne. Rather, Millar based him on British actors from the 1960s—Peter O’Toole, Oliver Reed, Richard Burton, Richard Harris—who were suave rascals.

“I loved the idea of a superhero having a good time, getting on with girls, drinking whisky, smoking lots of cigarettes,” Millar said.

At the risk of sounding “so pretentious,” Millar jokes, he also pulled from Shakespeare. Indeed, the comics are as much a family saga as a superhero one (and written by the much younger brother of six whose parents died before he was 20). Utopian is a father to his own disappointing children, and a father of sorts to all heroes. He is Lear as much as he is Jupiter, the Roman god of gods. The end of his reign approaches, and various factions have their own appetite for power—such as his self-righteous brother who thinks he should be a leader, or Utopian’s son, born into the family business of being a hero, but who could never live up to his father’s expectations, or his daughter who is more interested in fame than heroism. 

He views Jupiter’s Legacy as more thoughtful than Kick-Ass, Kingsman, or Wanted. The plot’s driving action hinges on a debate about the superheroes’ philosophies and moral imperatives. It seeks to address a question Millar asked when he was a kid reading comics.

“Why doesn’t Superman solve the world’s problems?” he recalls thinking. “Why didn’t he interfere and stop wars from even existing?… Is it ethically wrong to stand aside and just maintain the status quo, especially when the status quo creates so many problems for a lot of people?”

On one side of the debate, Utopian believes interfering too much with society’s trajectory is a bad move. It’s not that he is cynical; quite the opposite. He thinks things are actually improving in the world. His viewpoint is there are less people hungry across the globe than ever before, and less people with disease. Millar describes Utopian as a “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” kind of hero, to borrow a phrase associated with Superman, and believes capitalism works. As his hero name suggests, Utopian thinks a better world is within reach, even if it takes generations, and encourages even the heroes to be patient and trust people to do the right thing because they are innately good.

“He says, if you look at the difference somebody like Bill Gates has made in Africa—just one guy—if you look at capitalism taken to the Nth degree, then it pulls everybody up, and poverty in places like India, is massively better just compared to a generation ago.”

Besides, as Utopian says to his impatient brother Walter/Brainwave, in Jupiter’s Legacy #1, being a caped hero doesn’t make them economists and, “Just because you can fly doesn’t mean you know how to balance a budget.” Plus, the notion of using psychic powers or brute force to simply make the world “better” is out of the question. Or is it?

The mainstream awareness of superheroes baked in from more than 80 years of stories, and the shorthand that especially comes with 13 years of the Marvel Cinematic Universe commercial juggernaut, has provided Millar with a set of archetypes to lean into. It was true of the hero proxies in the Jupiter’s Legacy books, and he says it’s true of the show. In fact, he says audiences are so sophisticated with regards to these types of characters they’ll be able to immediately slip into his universe, and that “a lot of the hard work has been done for us.” He adds that audience literacy with superhero tropes also provided him something to push against.

“The Marvel characters lock these guys up in prison at the end of these movies,” Millar says. “Everything’s tied up neatly with a bow, the rich are still the rich, the poor are still starving, and the superheroes aren’t really doing anything for the common man in any very global sense. These guys have just had enough of that.”

Millar’s comics technically kick off in 1932, when Sheldon first brings his friends on a journey to The Island, but his story goes back to 1929 when the stock market crashed, and the Great Depression began. This is likewise when the Netflix series will begin, and Millar says it’s because of the historic parallels between then and 2021.

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“We’ve been in a similar situation as we are now: there’s impending financial collapse coming out of a global pandemic,” he says. “The idea is that history continues and repeats itself, and people make the same mistakes over and over again, and the superheroes are saying, ‘Let’s actually fix everything.’”

Continuing the theme of parallels, when discussing the inception of Jupiter’s Legacy with Millar, The Godfather Part II comes up more than once because of the film’s dual storylines following Vito Corleone and son Michael, separated by decades. However, while the comics contain some flashbacks, the plot doesn’t unfold across different time periods simultaneously. But the Netflix series will shift between eras, with half of the show during the season taking place in 1929, for which Millar credits Steven S. DeKnight, who developed the series.

“The way Steven structured it was really brilliant, because I saw these taking place over two [different] years,” Millar says. “[But] The Godfather Part II track shows you the father and the son at the same age and juxtaposes their two lives.”

As a result, he says the series is a visual mash-up of genres that’s both classical and futuristic.

“It just feels like a beautiful period movie, then when it gets cosmic, and it gets to the superhero stuff, it’s a double wow… it’s like seeing Once Upon a Time in America suddenly directed by Stanley Kubrick doing 2001.”

This is a notable advantage to bringing the story to television, as opposed to making Jupiter’s Legacy three two-hour films as he originally planned with producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura in 2015. Millar says that to tell the Jupiter’s Legacy story properly on screen would require 40 hours, and with a series, what would have been a one-minute flashback in a movie can now be revealed in two hours of its own. 

It was another director who has since made a name adapting ambitious comic book properties that extolled to Millar the benefits of television: James Gunn. When Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy, The Suicide Squad) had a chat with Millar about the project, Gunn said it could never be done as a movie. “The smartest guy in the world is James Gunn,” Millar says.

An exciting challenge of adapting his work for television is that the series will expand on the backstories and concepts of the books. For example when Sheldon Sampson and his friends head to The Island in the first issue, it takes up six pages. Within the series, half of the first season is that journey, and what happens when they arrive.

“Six issues of a graphic novel are roughly about an hour and 10 minutes of a movie; for something like an eight-part drama on TV, you really have to flesh it out,” he says. “It just goes a little deeper than what I had maybe two panels do.”

He emphasizes, however, that these flourishes won’t contradict the comics. Though he sold Millarworld to Netflix, he remains president so he can maintain control of his creations.

Overall the series has made the writer realize the value of television, and while a second season has not yet been confirmed, he’s already thinking about a third and fourth, and how it will dovetail with the upcoming Requiem. The story that began in 1929 continued through 2021, and collected in four volumes, will soon continue far into the future in the concluding two volumes.

“We saw the parents, then we have the present, and then we see their children in the next storyline,” he says. “That storyline goes way off into the future where we discover everything about humanity, superheroes, all these things. It’s a big, grand, high-concept, sci-fi thing beyond that.”

Listening to the jovial Millar discuss the scope of his Jupiter universe, which is imbued with optimism, one might not think this is the same person known for employing graphic violence in his works.

He thinks his films especially are violent yet hopeful, and fun. Kingsman is a rags-to-riches story, and “you feel great at the end of Kick-Ass, even though you’ve seen 200 people knifed in the face.” But he doesn’t consider his writing to fit under the dark-and-gritty label, and he’s not interested in angst, which he finds dull. With Jupiter’s Legacy, the comic and the show, he views the tone as complex but not “overtly dark.”

Additionally, Millar says he thinks society needs hopeful characters such as Captain America, Superman, and yes, The Utopian in 2021—as opposed to an ongoing genre trend of heroes drowning in pathos.

“The Superman-type characters are just now something from a pop culture, societal point of view, we need more than ever,” he says. “The last thing you want is seeing the world as dark, as something that makes you feel bad. Never forget Superman was created just before World War II in the midst of the economic depression by two Jewish kids who were just scraping a living together… I just think it’s so important when things are tough to have a character like that that makes you feel good.”

Even though Utopian suffers for his idealism in the comic, Millar says his ideas are passed on. This is The Utopian’s legacy. 

“Ultimately, he wins if you think about it,” ponders Millar.

After a successful career spent creating characters and re-shaping superheroes with 80 years of history, the new pantheon of Jupiter’s Legacy may become one of the defining and lasting features of Mark Millar’s own legacy. 

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Jupiter’s Legacy premieres on Netflix on May 7. Read more about the series in our special edition magazine!

The post Jupiter’s Legacy: Mark Millar on the Genesis of His Superhero Story appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3ts8eCS

[birdwired-blog]

Thor: Ragnarok and the MCU

Thor: Ragnarok might just be the best Marvel film since the Avengers. Characters they have been growing for five years have finally reached maturity and they’re let loose in this a film that understands a bold concept is better than an intricate story. In a series that has carved a near ideological stance on narrative construction, finally understood that their movies are about quirky outsiders rolling their eyes along with the audience at unbelievable circumstances. They’re goal is to create a 250 million dollar blockbuster, that still feels like it’s on your side.

Spectacle may be expensive, but it’s cheap. Any multimillion dollar franchise can give us spectacle. You can have spectacle in any flavour: fantasy, magical, sci-fi. Marvel films have always seemed to have had an edge over their competitors, but it’s not because of brand recognition (Superman or Batman would be more popular brands, after all), it’s not because they focus on characters either. Even the transformers understood the need to focus on their characters. So what is Marvel’s secret?

Marvel have learned to incorporate the fan’s understanding of their franchise through the use of metanarratives. Like a Shane Black film, The characters speak in a distinct cinema literate dialogue. Not only are they marbled with references to other films, the story structure itself is presented with an air sarcasm, so any of its perceived clichés can be dismissed as intentional or unimportant. Its shared universe is presented to us like a huge risk that Marvel is somehow weathering, despite the odds. The hard core fan understands the story is perfunctory, the characters will often acknowledge how derivative the plot or their nemesis is, usually through the intertext of another film. The moment in Avengers when Captain America acknowledges the reference to The Wizard of Oz (1939), is a funny bit, but it’s also a clear signifier that even this man out of time is playing along at being cinema literate. It’s here where Thor has always tripped up in the past.

With phase 2, Marvel entered their darkest and arguably weakest period. Thor: The dark world (2013) was grim; it lived up to its subtitle. Marvel tried to build on the world they created in 2012 by focusing on the fallout from the conflict in The Avengers: Stark’s post traumatic stress disorder in Iron man 3, Thor’s troubled relationship with Loki. This concluded with Avengers 2: age of Ultron (2015). Marvel films have always lacked a strong concept, so when they focus on their own story they start to become tiresome. By design the world and its people lack specificity, the players are already in place and it only ever relates to our own world in a general way.  Many complain about the villain of the week set up in these films, but any attempt to hold a long contiguous conflict would (and did) damage the series. While it is true that today’s  audiences can use the Internet to stay informed about long running film series, the reality of it is the stories don’t matter. From the moment they cast Robert Downey Jr in Iron man they established a series entangled in the real stories of its production and actors. As long as the audience have an understanding of who the actors are and what role they’re playing, they can jump into any of these films without much difficulty. The essential part of making this expanded universe work isn’t storytelling, it’s casting.

Tony Stark’s arc in the first Iron man film neatly matches Robert Downey Jr’s own career from ambitious talent, to egomaniacal self destruction, to eventual redemption. Through casting alone we already understand Tony Stark. The story we’re actually being told is Robert Downey Jr’s story, so the plot about robots and super villains are alienated. The typical role of a protagonist is to act as a bridge for the audience into a the strange world of the film. With Marvel the protagonists also act as gatekeepers; they keep us out by deliberately undermining the threats they face by quipping at them. We’re not here to take these stories seriously. The real heart is in the metanarrative: Will Robert Downey Jr clean up his act? Can this cross film continuity super team work? Can a modern audience accept the incarnation of America’s best ideals?

In 2011 Thor wasn’t a character, but a face that fitted a part. It was Natalie Portman that rolled her eyes and swooned with the audience while she admired some blonde guy’s impossible physique. The question was how could Marvel make this ridiculous character believable, Marvel’s answer was to take it all seriously. As the series got darker, it was clear that cynicism would not stick to Thor’s pre-modern origins, but where was Thor’s gusto and drinking? In the intervening years Chris Hemsworth was able to grow a Hollywood personality that matched his party-loving onscreen persona. He graduated from ‘looks the part’ to a persona we understood, and after two films he was ready to be the lead man. 

 Although the prologue does manage to get the plot started, all of it is overshadowed with awkward slice of life humour. Thor’s encounter with a devil-like monster is broken up with him turning in his chain to miss every other sentence; it subverts the cliché of villain capturing the hero to explain his plans with mundane humour to contrast against the absurd theatricality. The understanding is Thor is played by an actor that understands these clichés and mocking the film’s own weaknesses. After a brief encounter with their sister, Thor and Loki fall into a time bubble and straight out of the canon. Thor’s hair is cut so he appears more like his actor and he enters a battle arena to face off against the hulk. In another film this encounter would be unbearable fan service, but instead the film makes its intentions completely clear: this is a holiday where consequences and circumstance take a back seat to fun. The characters, who are enslaved into a deathmatch (a situation which in reality would be terrible), have the very best of time because they too are aware of ludicrous opportunity for spectacle. Taika Waititi, the director, plays a happy-go-lucky fellow slave. Again, this is a wink to the film literate audience members; the director is communicating directly to the audience that this is all just some silly fun. Even the character’s names are deliberately shallow; Grandmaster may as well be named Jeff Goldblum, that’s all we understand the character to be. Goldblum, known for his naturalistic, likable performances is cast as a slaver who seems more interested in giving his audience (both those in the arena and those of us in the cinema) a good show. We see the actors bulge at the seems of these characters, they seem almost embarrassed by their own grandiosity. They create specificity with a character who are otherwise broad.

We can see the inverse of this casting policy through Tessa Thompson, who is playing a former Asgardian valkyrie. Unlike the rest of the cast she is sincere and involved with the world around her. In fact, her situation within the film’s story drives her to drink. Her awareness is limited to the film’s reality, and so it falls on her to drive the plot forward. Valkyrie gets the most pronounced character arc in this film, a past failure keeps her from returning home to fight again, but it’s Thor we remember, because Hemsworth was finally able to play the fun version of Thor we were told about two films ago.

Thor: Ragnarok finally delivers on its promise; we were told that Thor was an obnoxious windbag who loved to battle, drink and make merry, but until now the films focused on responsibility and Thor’s role in a coming intergalactic war. This film is the crystallization of Marvel’s very best attributes as it actively rejects its own universe to focus on story about Thor’s capacity to entertain if we just allow him to enjoy himself. 

Once our heroes escape their time bubble, we return to story like school after Christmas and work our way through one last big action sequence before destroying another villain of the week at a great cost that will be mentioned briefly in a future film. But Thor: Ragnarok has one more thing to say: with the destruction of Asgard, the Marvel cinematic universe is not a setting, or a story; it is the characters and they’ll survive, even after you’ve long given up on the story.

[iainwrites]

suteko said: So do you know the backstory of our businessman villian? From what my hubby who is a long time DC reader says…he is alot more than a scumbag human rich guy. Expect some really interesting twists

Thank you so much for getting the gears in my brain turning.  “Interesting twists”, is it?  Here are some interesting twists that can now occur thanks to the inclusion of one Morgan Edge.

Predictions and possibilities after the cut.

1: Intergang.  A criminal enterprise (with all that that entails) spanning a good chunk of the world, which Edge was once the leader of.  They have employed notable badasses and weirdos like Kyle Abbot (a I-shit-you-not werewolf), Whisper A’Daire (a I’m-not-fucking-with-you snake woman/naga), Tobias Whale (who will be showing up in Black Lighting), and a man named Torque who had his head turned 180 degrees, yet still lives and uses special equipment to see all around him.  Yeah.  If Intergang exists, expect some prime weirdness.  Interesting thing about Intergang: they’re also known for some high tech weaponry, which is given to them by...

2: Darkseid.  Yeah.  THE prime big bad in DC (most of the time).  Ruler of Apocalypse and its denizens, holder of the Anti-life Equation, possibly the source of all evil (depending on whether Grant Morrison is a writer for the show and please God let this happen).  Interesting thing about Darkseid: In the Superman/Batman comes run, Supergirl was abducted by him, and turned into one of his Furies (think his highly trained and insane female brute squad).  It didn’t last long, but it was a big moment.  And thinking on it, a lowly human was the one to make Darkseid blink and release her.  Hmm... who in Kara’s life would go straight to the wall to save her and threaten the living embodiment of Evil...  The only problem with this is that the DC-movie verse is going to be including Darkseid and his side of the New Gods (to be discussed), which may mean the TV shows won’t be able to play with that property.   Another interesting thing about Darkseid: he’s a member (sort of)...

3: The New Gods.  Who we’re kind of already met, with the Black Racer in The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow.  He’s kind of an avatar of Death.  Not the only one, mind you.  Because that would be too easy.  But I digress.  The New Gods are pretty much as they sound: super powered higher beings, including such notables as Scott Free, the master escape artist (and his wife, Big Barda, who is... big.  And badass.), Metron, information king, the Female Furies, the previously mentioned all-woman squad of death, and numerous others.  If Supergirl is going to be the “space/alien” show of the DCCW franchise, these guys are going to be no brainers.  But they aren’t who I’m excited for.

4: For this one, I’m focusing solely on the 2006/2007 comic event 52.  What happened in those 52 issues is so damn ripe for the picking, especially since Supergirl has opened the door for Intergang using Morgan Edge.  In one of its storylines, Intergang is being investigated by The Question, DC’s super paranoid, super badass, no-faced-man who don’t quit until he finds the answer and Renee Montoya.  Now, Maggie on the show is a bit of an amalgamation of Renee and Maggie (both of whom are lesbians and we shall not talk of how that ship ended up) from the comics, so it may not work out so well to bring her in.  Renee has a solid history to draw from in the comics, however, so if the show wants to introduce another strong lesbian character to the show, they have one ready to go.  Importantly, we also meet Kate Kane, aka the modern day Batwoman, who has a history (yeah, that kind of history) with Renee.  Kate is notably known for being a badass and having very, VERY red hair.  And dear Rao, have I wanted Alex to suit up and this would be the perfect route for the show to take her down if they wanted her to go from DEO agent to superhero.  This could also give us the opportunity to introduce other members of the Bat-clan to the show, even if its not Batman himself.  Side interesting facts about 52: it included a side plot about a cult focused on Krypton-ese ideologies (convenient) and also focused on Ralph Dibney (who has just shown up in The Flash) being broken down, coming back together and proving that he can plan a long game like nobodies business.

Oh.  And there’s a space dolphin religion and Lobo side plot that would kill me dead if they included it in any way, shape, or form.

All this, and more that I haven’t even considered, just because Supergirl included Morgan Edge.  We could be in for some really weird and amazing stuff.

[totesmccoats]

Mister Miracle #1

Mister Miracle is a masterpiece.

Which, is to be expected from Tom King and Mitch Gerads at this point in their shared and separate careers. What’s really impressive is how they keep raising the bar, and this first issue already has deeper characterization and a more intriguing plot than some entire runs.

We open on Scott Free having just slashed his wrists open, and waking up in a hospital after being found on the bathroom floor by his wife, Big Barda. Even before he’s released, we see that Scott isn’t just a superhero, he’s a celebrity, and everyone from the press to Superman start asking him why he did it. But through all the noise – including a painful visit from his brother, Orion – Scott notices things have been off since his suicide attempt. For one thing, Barda’s eyes are brown now, instead of blue. For another, Barda tells him that his friend Oberon – who he was just talking to – has been dead for a month, and that they pulled the plug on him. But worse is that Darkseid has finally found the anti-life equation.

Starting with a suicide is a stunt, to be sure, but one that King doesn’t make light of; and while we’re not sure what pushed Scott over the edge just yet, the book does an amazing job of establishing that things aren’t right in the world that he’s waken back up in. Besides all the plot details, there are formal elements of the story that clue the reader in. Things become cyclical, with panel layouts and dialogue repeating themselves. And there’s the art. Gerard uses filter effects on his art to give the impression that we’re seeing the story played out through a camera lens, with different parts of any spread in focus at any given time; or color effects like what you’d get from a bad VHS recording. One character’s eyes appear to be taped onto the page rather than drawn on. And then there are things that I just appreciate, like how Barda towers over Orion, or how cartoony Scott looks with his mask on compared to the more realistic style Gerard uses for every other character.

But if there’s one thing that convinces me completely that King is the right writer for this book, it’s the two panels he writes of Barda putting Orion in his place, throwing his angst back in his face and telling him that he knows nothing of the pain that her and Scott share. Its two panels that show a greater understanding of Kirby’s 4th World mythos than, again, most other entire series. The entire scene it’s in is wonderful, but those two panels are key.

If you missed out on The Vision, don’t make the same mistake twice, pick up Mister Miracle.

  The Flash #28

Following his last fight with Thawn and the encounter with the Negative Speed Force, Barry has some new and destructive powers that he’s yet to get the hang of. He’s also more irritable than usual.

Barry’s got a black suit! This one’s not an alien symbiote, but it the Negative Speed Force looks to be having the same effect on Barry; increasing his powers at the cost of his emotional stability. He’s even doing the whole “if they knew what I really sacrificed for this city” shtick in his inner-monologue. I’m having fun! Also, the black and red lighting that accompany Flash’s new powers the perfect amount of edgelord for the story. Man, I am so glad that we’re past the point of edgy superheroes being cool and can have stories that acknowledge how bad those are while still establishing that such a sudden change in character actually is narratively engaging just on a character standpoint. Because, and what keeps this story from being a parody, is that the negative powers do seem to be acting as a metaphor for depression, exhausting Barry, making him anti-social, and visibly destroying things around him. It’s being played for pathos instead of cool, and it works way better because of it.

  Secret Empire #8

First thing I want to say about this issue, I love the cover art.

Second thing, it’s basically an issue-long deus ex machina, but it’s also one of the better issues of this event so far. Though events that I’m guessing happened mostly in the tie-in books I didn’t read, Sam Wilson is Captain America again, leading the Underground in their last ditch effort to use their fragment of the cosmic cube to rewrite just enough of reality to give them a fighting chance. And their plan to bring down the shield and the darkforce just so happens to coincide with the other heroes’ own plans to bring the fight to Hydra.

Basically, if this were an anime or a Sonic the Hedgehog game, this is right about where the main theme would kick in. It’s an issue that reminds me that when Nick Spencer doesn’t trip over the half-tied shoelaces of his political analogies, he can actually write a pretty good superhero story.

  Amazing Spider-Man #31

Because of the serial nature of comics, you could easily measure a writer’s worth by how exciting they make the inevitable slide back into the status quo. And if that’s what you’re going by, then Dan Slott has to be one of the best. And that’s not in small part because of how broadly he deviates from it. In this issue, Slott demolishes years’ worth of contributions he’s made to Spider-Man to bring him back to basics; literally even stripping him down at one point; and he manages to do this in a way that also reinforces the themes and core values of the character.

I’m not sure if the rumor that he’ll be stepping away from the book at issue #800 has been confirmed or debunked, but if it is true, he leaves behind one of the greatest (and the longest) runs of the character.

  Ms. Marvel #21

Ms. Marvel helps the captured inhumans and mutants escape the neighborhood militia, but only barely. They escape to the mosque, but Discord and his goons aren’t far behind, and Kamala is too exhausted to continue fighting much longer.

The shoe doesn’t drop until the last act of the issue, but when it does, it’s a doozy. Wilson is an expert in making weaving political commentary into her stories in ways that compliment both the message and the metaphor being used to tell it. In this case, how easy it is for allies to betray a cause when an opposing ideology appeals to their own bitterness. If you’ve been on left-wing twitter recently, you know it’s something that PoC’s, women, and LGBTQIA+ folks are constantly guarded about; and this comic manages to highlight the issue in a way that’s sympathetic without letting any actual villains off the hook for endangering people.

  Unbeatable Squirrel Girl #23

Squirrel Girl continues to be the best comic Marvel is putting out, using its recap page to skewer Secret Empire and event comics in general, and also Spider-Man, while affirming how much better a story it’s telling in its own little corner of the Marvel universe.

And that story is about how Doreen, Nancy, and the other contest winning programmers from Wakanda, K’un-L’un, and Latveria need to debug the programming in the 70 million year old alien computers that keep the Savage Land hospitable to dinosaurs before they all die out – again. But more importantly, Doreen wants to set Nancy up with the cute Latverian boy she’s crushing on, but all he can think about is Doom!

This issue squeezes a ridiculous amount of mileage from Latveria jokes, and every single one of them lands. Aside from some dinosaur puns, Latveria jokes are basically all this book is doing, but they are all so good. Who’da thunk a comic book dealing with characters living under an egomaniacal dictator could be so funny? Ryan North, that’s who.

  The Wicked + The Divine #30

Dionysus waits in the underground for Morrigan to release Baphomet, enduring all of her abuse. But he can’t stay down there forever, as he’s a key part of Woden and the Norns’ plan to activate Ananke’s machine. Meanwhile, Baal and Ammy are still on the lookout for Sakhmet.

This issue, and probably this arc, will be pregnant with anticipation. In the backmatter, Gillen describes this arc as the two minutes before a set, and that feeling definitely comes across in this issue. The tension between Dio waiting underground and him needed to be present for Woden’s plan is palpable as the issue’s bumper-pages become a countdown clock.

There’s also a great couple pages where each panel shows a shot of some of the Pantheon’s Instagram accounts. Seeing the reflection of the phone in Woden’s helmet is one of those neat little details; while a Baal fanpage snapping a pic resembling the cover of The Dark Knight Returns might have taken me out of the book a little much.

  Kill or Be Killed #11

Having discovered the demon in his father’s artwork, Dylan managed to convince himself that it was all in his head, renounced killing, got back on his meds, and started to catch up on his school work. He even reconnects with Kira, who invites him on a date to a Halloween party. Life’s looking up for him, and then he gets sick, like he did the first time after not killing for a while, and he finds out that the Russians are still on his trail.

This really is the “Spider-Man No More!” part of the story, down to a panel with him dramatically exiting an alley. He gives up the mask and things almost immediately improve. The cops stop looking for the vigilante, he catches up on the normal life he left behind, and even manages to pick things up with a newly interested Kira. But that makes for a boring story, so soon enough he gets pulled back in.

But as the beginning of the issue is quick to remind us, that was inevitable. Dylan still has to become the shotgun wielding badass we saw in medias res. The real genius of this brief period of happiness is to once more give Dylan something to lose when it all inevitably goes wrong again.

  Redlands #1

Redlands, Florida 1977. The tree outside the local police station burns, nooses still hanging from its branches. The police inside barricade themselves in to defend against an enemy they thought they had hanged this morning, but is now clear they have no recourse against. A young girl approaches their door, and letting her in also lets in the evil they fought so hard to keep out.

The first issue of this series is the third act of a really good horror movie. The last fight against an unstoppable power. And the atmosphere is laid on thick from the first page. The burning tree, the nooses, the scared cops, there’s no need for exposition, we already know everything we need to understand that this night will be far shorter than the police barricaded inside want to believe.

This is also the book’s greatest weakness, too, however, as we have no sympathy for the cops. This issue essentially has no stakes. We want the cops to die, and their powerless to do anything but. Meanwhile, our protagonists, who don’t show up for most of the book, have nothing to lose, and because they haven’t been properly introduced, it’s hard to root for them yet.

But, just as a first issue to a new series, this is explosive; and the atmosphere goes a long way to telling you what this series will eventually be about, I think. Largely an issue-long cold open, I can’t wait to get the story started in the next one.

Comic Reviews for 8/9/17 Mister Miracle #1 Mister Miracle is a masterpiece. Which, is to be expected from Tom King and Mitch Gerads at this point in their shared and separate careers.