Dollhouse: 'The Target' (1x02)

The second episode of Dollhouse is a major improvement over the first, addressing a lot of the issues I had with that episode, and providing some welcome arc elements, but also still suffering from the basic problem that the premise still doesn’t make much sense, and dealing with the premise leads to a lot of people behaving in ways that feel contrived and don’t make much sense in a real world emotional context.

The good thing about the episode was that it worked well as a mix of standalone and arc stuff. The scenes in the woods were generally exciting, and I particularly liked the evolution of Echo’s imprint as time passed, and the encounters with the earlier versions of herself. I do think a major opportunity was passed up by having that canteen she drank from laced with some unspecified poison instead of LSD or something like that which could have provided the perfect excuse to send her on a journey through her own memories, and do some more creative filmmaking.

Whedon’s shows have never been known for their filmmaking merits. Outside of his last period Buffy showcase episodes, like “The Body” or “Restless,” the shows were directed in generic TV style. The writing and performances were strong enough to overcome that, but here on Dollhouse, the show often feels distinctly like a generic Fox series, and the woods setting here felt like something that would be on a syndicated fantasy series circa 1998. There are striking images from time to time, particularly the overhead shot of the dolls going to sleep, but in general, the show isn’t doing that much groundbreaking visually.

The twists in the woods story did genuinely surprise me at times. The revelation that the park ranger was after them was great because the scene was set up as a way to show us how prepared the Dollhouse team was. It didn’t feel arbitrary that he would appear because the purpose of the scene was to show that Boyd was prepared for any contingency.

The other thing that did impress me about the episode was how much background we got, along with the development of the season’s “big bad,” the rogue doll Alpha. The scene where Boyd is bonded to Echo was particularly interesting, probably the best scene of the episode.

But, there’s still a lot of issues. Topher, the programmer guy, feels like a character that Whedon has beat to death in previous stories. He’s like a recast for maximum genericness version of Warren. Buffy was a show that was ostensibly much goofier than this one, but even in one episode, “I Was Made to Love You,” we had a much better understanding of the emotional stakes that drove Warren to invent April. The feelings were right on the surface, and even though it treated in a goofier way, the whole sexbot concept felt sleazier and more interesting there.

Warren was understandable as a very real person, the kind of guy who was never able to connect with women and because of his robot building genius, was able to make the perfect woman for himself. It’s a wacky story, and not exactly realistic, but it’s emotionally understandable. Here, everyone is in this weird business secret agent mode, and there’s not much recognizable humanity on display.

And, the problem is, the show’s concept basically demands a constant diet of illicit sex and violence to make sense, but is there any point to a show about a woman who’s constantly raped, then brainwashed to forget about it? That ostensibly makes a statement about women’s role in society, and the perception of female value, but what is that statement. The single Warren robot story said a lot more about that, and did so in a way that was absolutely heartbreaking in a way I find hard to believe this show will reach.

Joss has always been at his best when he uses the action side of a story as a device to turn individual emotions in to a larger than life struggle. I never watched Buffy for the narrative, I wanted to see how the characters were affected by what happened. That’s why even a bad Buffy episode can be really enjoyable, because it’s nice to spend time with those characters.

And, the problem with Dollhouse is that Joss has created a show that explicitly makes impossible the thing he excels at, extended character development. Now, it is hinted that Echo will remember her past selves, and struggle to rediscover her true self. That’s possibly interesting. I don’t really care about the mystery of who Echo is, but I think there could be a great story in Echo trying to invent a new self after living for so long with the comfort of imprinting.

But, even if that happens, we’re still left with a bunch of characters at the Dollhouse who don’t have any clear motivations for what they’re doing. Boyd seems like a nice enough guy, so why would he get involved with this operation? Is it just for the money, or do they have something on him too?

Ultimately, I think the biggest issue is the tone. This episode had a lot of good things about it, but there’s still the fact that the premise makes no sense, and no one acknowledges that absurdity in the way they did on Buffy. There’s some jokes with Ballard, but because we’re emotionally aligned with Ballard, and we know that the Dollhouse exists, those guys come off as the delusional ones.

This was certainly an improvement, but the show’s still got a way to go. We’ll see what happens next week, at least it looks like it will be a more fun than portentous episode.

Battlestar Galactica: 'No Exit' (4x15)

On this busy TV night, I jumped right from the premiere of Dollhouse, a show in its infancy to Battlestar Galactica, a show on the slow path towards death, though death may be the wrong word. No show ever dies, that would imply the total extinction of the universe and the people within it. As we saw on The Sopranos, a show simply chooses a moment to cut to black, the world and its people go on. Even after Six Feet Under’s parade of death finale, we’ve seen a new generation that will live on and carry the legacy of our main characters forward.

This is particularly apt in an episode that’s largely concerned with past lives and an unending cycle of war and violence that will continue as long as humanity pushes out of that primordial swamp and reaches for the stars. It’s an episode that reveals much of the central mysteries that were set up with the introduction of the Final Five, mysteries that trace all the way back to the miniseries. It’s a very intellectual hour, one that juxtaposes the rambling narrative of Anders with flashbacks to Ellen Tigh and “John”’s discussions about the creation and future of the cylon race.

After a few clunkers, this episode brought the series right back to the place that I love, pondering questions of identity and humanity in really fascinating ways. It was interesting to watch this right after the Dollhouse pilot, since both series deal with core sci-fi questions about how much of our identity is our own and what elements go in to the construction of a human. Is someone like Echo still human? Is Cavil more human than machine? At what point does a construct personality become something real? How can creators maintain control over their creations?

The issues all have a very Blade Runner feel, and the Cavil/Ellen confrontation feels like an echo of Roy’s interrogation of Tyrell. Both are asking why they had to be the way that they were. Most people like to think that they’re the architects of their own identity, even as they blame specific inadequacies on the way they’re raised or genetics. But, what would it mean to know that you were created for a specific purpose, with all your flaws and personality traits decided by a group of five people. The reason the cylons have such reverence for the five is that the five made them. What does it feel like to meet your maker? There’s an element of awe in it, but there’s also a blame as you recognize that they built you flawed.

To some extent, we all have met our makers, our own parents. The Cylons’ desire to meet the five feels a bit like an adopted child’s desire to meet their birth parents, there’s this belief that meeting your creator will explain what you are. But, aren’t we more than the sum of our parts? I don’t see myself as a random combination of traits from my parents, I think there is something new and different that emerges out of that combination, in the same way that blue and yellow make green, a color that has a resemblance to what it came from, but at the same time is something completely new and different. In philosophy/religion, that’s what you’d call a soul, that essential thing that makes you you. We are built out of the parts of our parents, but we can become something more and transcend those origins.

But, let me briefly interrupt this philosophical line of thinking to discuss the most bizarre element of an episode that featured a lot of bizarre things, and that’s the inexplicable cameo of Daily Show correspondent/PC John Hogman as “the brain guy.” It felt like he had won some kind of contest that gave him this part on the show since he felt totally out of place in the world of the series. This wasn’t even a case where it’s a guy legitimately trying to act, but laboring in the shadow of a past famous role. He wasn’t acting, he was just there reading the lines, and doing everything short of winking to the audience to remind us that yes, this was John Hodgman. I don’t understand what happened with that casting. It felt almost like a comedy sketch, that’s how off he was in this universe.

Anyway, back to the substance of the episode. The basic idea of the Final Five, as I see it, is that they started out as essentially human on Earth, perhaps a future version of the society we currently live in. Sensing the imminent destruction of the planet in a nuclear holocaust, they brought back the technology to transfer consciousness to other bodies, rather than reproduce organically, and used this to preserve themselves after the planet was destroyed. Then, they jetted across the galaxy and created the human looking cylons in an attempt to stop the cycle of human/cylon violence that has waged for an eternity.

They attempted to do this by creating what is essentially a human/cylon hybrid in the existing seven, or perhaps eight, models that we know. But, Cavil is not happy with this form, and sees only the limitations of human perception. He wants to feel more, but is unable to do so inside the “cage” that his creators built for him. As he says, he has more in common with the centurion side of the family than the human one. He wants that mechanical certainty, but is stuck with the burden of being a human.

It’s interesting that Ellen designed John/Cavil after her father, particularly considering the fact that she had sex with him to save Tigh on New Caprica. The choice of who will be the Final Five was essentially random, and I don’t think that the Ellen we saw previously has much in common with the character here. I suppose that’s part of the point, that Cavil and the Cylons chose to punish these characters by forcing them to experience the humanity that the five forced on their creations. Wouldn’t Cavil’s ultimate revenge be to turn Ellen, the creator/god of their race into a lush, a woman who falls prey to all the vices and flaws that humans can deal with?

This background information also explains why the cylons were so interested in creating a cylon/human hybrid. The goal of the Final Five is to bridge the gap between humans and cylons, so Hera would serve as a literal representation of that alliance. The reason that Tigh and Six can have a child is presumably because Tigh isn’t like the cylons he knew, he came from a place where people could reproduce regularly, not just through the resurrection ships.

The other notable fusion in this episode is Adama’s decision to let the Galactica be fixed with Cylon technology. This is a literal representation of the gap bridging process that the Five exist to do. They are designed to end the endless cycle of human/cylon war, and integrating the two cultures via the Galactica is a perfect way to do that.

I love the episode and all the philosophical points it raises, but I’m curious about how this new information will be integrated into the story, and how the mission of the Final Five relates to the overall direction of the series. This episode implies that the whole point of the series is to overcome the differences between the two races and come to an alliance, the point that we reached when they reached Earth. But, what does that mean for our characters, and where will they all end up when the series reaches its close?

To some extent, I wish this cyclical war stuff had come in a bit earlier. We’ve always had the cryptic “this has happened before and will happen again,” but it was so vague that it didn’t have emotional traction. It was an interesting question to ponder, but not until now do we really understand the full scope of what it’s referencing. Perhaps they’ll be able to knit it all together in the other Final Five, the last five episodes of the series, we’ll see. Even if it doesn’t all quite hang together, if the episodes are as dense and challenging as this one, I’ll be satisfied.

The episode ends with the question of what’s happened to Anders. I’m guessing that he suffered a brief “death” during his surgery, and has been resurrected with Cavil’s people. That would lead into a final war with Cavil, and an attempt to break the cycle of violence. At the beginning of the series, the Cylons functioned largely as a metaphor for terrorism, and the cycles of violence that rage between the Western world and the Muslim world. In that respect, this story is a perfect allegory for the conflict that’s happened before and will happen again here in our world. What will it take for us to end the cycles of violence that have raged in the Middle East for years? It’s probably precisely the kind of cultural hybridization we see here, a breaking down of borders until the differences between us are so minimal as to not matter at all. But, that process will not be easy, and there will always be the hardliners. We saw the human hardliners dealt with last week, now they will have to deal with the cylon hardliners.

I’ll just add that even though the episode was largely dialogue based, there were still some awesome visuals. I still love the look of the Cylon baseships, the water droplet lights and eerie neon strips of red. There were also some awesome starburst explosion effects during the flashbacks. While the show is largely about gritty, “realistic” visuals, they still manage to get some of the most beautiful images ever seen on TV in there from time to time.

So, the show is back running strong. I’m eager to see where it goes next, and after all the darkness, there’s a new feeling of hope that this all might turn out okay in the end.

Dollhouse: 'Ghost' (1x01)

After nearly five years without a Joss Whedon TV show on the air, he finally returned tonight with the first episode of Dollhouse. As with most Whedon series, it’s a problematic pilot, one with some great moments, but also a lot of flaws. The greatest flaw is the premise itself as presented now, one that seems destined to run up against a wall of irreconcilable elements unless some major changes happen.

Let me start with the flaw, then delve into what I liked about the show. The basic flaw is that I just didn’t care about the standalone plot. I had no stake in the characters involved, and the entire situation was clichéd with nothing to distinguish it from movies we’ve seen countless times before. I was reminded of Man on Fire, which turned a similar situation into an over the top hallucinogenic haze of insanity. The reason it had to do that was because we’ve seen this story many times before. And, because the show has to split its time between the various ongoing subplots, the time at the Dollhouse and the standalone of the week, all of the standalone stories will probably draw from archetypal elements we’re already familiar with.

Typically, our interest in the situation would stem from seeing how our main character engages with that story. But, in this case, the actual identity of our main character is the central question of the series. So, to see a “Miss Penn” succeed at her job every week just doesn’t seem like something that will be particularly interesting, particularly because she’s always going to mess up the mission in some way than manage to pull it off in the end.

Why did they program her to have asthma here? That question is addressed by Topher the programmer when he claims that having the human flaws gives them a drive to acheieve their mission that they wouldn’t have if they were “perfect.” He says that they’re not the “greatest hits” versions of people, but wouldn’t have the “greatest hits” model be precisely the reason you’d use this service? They’re offering the service of someone who’s beyond human, so why not play that up? In the case of this episode, wouldn’t it be more interesting to create the ultimate infiltrator agent, and have Echo get at them that way, rather than going through the typical channels.

The problem is that the show is built on a premise that should be all about exploring the sleaziest, dirtiest side of humanity. Each week should be a wallow in an activity so criminal and heinous that the people involved don’t want anyone to know about it. But, the network standards, and our rooting interest in the show hinge on putting the characters in essentially “heroic” situations.

But, I think the most interesting aspect of the show was the juxtaposition of these childlike, sheltered characters with the immoral behavior of their “parents” who run the dollhouse. The actives are commodities, they are designed to be used, and the most interesting standalone missions would be ones that put the characters in situations that stretch the boundaries of societal acceptability. As we’ve seen from the Elliot Spitzer scandal and countless others, people in power are willing to risk all they have for thrills, sexual and otherwise. So, a lot of the missions should involve Echo being built out as someone’s idealized girl, the one who will do things that no one else will. But, I don’t think we’re going to see a show that sends our hero on a variety of prostitution missions, so that’s not likely to happen.

But, there’s other ways that we can have her transgress societal rules. My mind flashes back to Salo, a film that I disliked, but raises essentially the same questions we’re addressing here, what would you do if you could use people with no consequences? I don’t think the guys from Salo had hostage negotiator anywhere near the top of their list.

But, I shouldn’t judge the show on what I want it to be, let me address more what is actually there. As I said before, I didn’t care much for the standalone story at all, and my fear is that this show will be one where you’re forced to sit through a half hour of fat to get to what’s really interesting about the story every week. It’s definitely reminiscent of Angel season one, where the show went through a variety of different scenarios trying to find its voice. Joss just isn’t great at writing standalone stories like this, and I’m not particularly interested in watching them. The only really cool moment in that section of the story was when Sierra burst in all business at the end to retrieve Echo and the girl.

That said, there was a lot that was great about this episode. I love the atmosphere in the Dollhouse, the slightly stilted way that everyone speaks, and the dreamlike way they move around. I also loved the final shot of them all going to sleep in their little cocoons, juxtaposed with a more hopeful ‘Caroline’ in the past. That video brought back memories of a similar juxtaposition in Cowboy Bebop’s classic “Sleep Like a Child,” which juxtaposed Faye’s videotape message to her school friends with her in the present day trying to sleep in the hollowed out ruin of the home where she grew up.

I liked Amy Acker’s character, and the uncertain way that all the higher ups treated the actives. There’s a lot of questions of identity and morality involved, and I’m sure they’ll be explored in more depth down the line. I want to see more of the actives’ world, and understand better how they interact with each other and view themselves. Is it an idyllic existence for them? Would they want to leave if they could? Those are the questions lingering now.

I also liked the setup of a couple of subplots, with Helo’s (he’s still Helo to me…) search for the Dollhouse, and the mysterious Alpha. But, I feel a conflict between what feels like the core of the story, breaking down the Dollhouse and trying to find an identity outside of it, and the long term future of the show which hinges on the Dollhouse existing. It feels like The Prisoner if Number 6 never tried to escape and instead just went along doing his thing every week. It was that need to escape that drove him, and that’s what needs to build in Echo. The case of the week is quite literally irrelevant to her character, as it’s erased every week. I’m sure there will be some lingering consequences occasionally, but it feels like those stories by definition will cease to matter after they happen.

So, I’m uncertain about the show’s future after seeing this first episode. I just didn’t care at all about this standalone story, and it’ll take a really good one to make me care about them in the future. I think most of the interesting stories that stem from this premise lie in places that will be difficult to fully explore. But, I’m hopeful that all the random pieces will knit together as time passes and we’ll see more of the world and get to the more long term character development that is Joss’s forte. Joss knows what he’s doing, and I’m sure once this show gets through its first few episodes of growing pains, it’ll be something great.

Big Love: 3x01-3x04

Big Love is a show I’ve always had mixed feelings about. That cast is full of actors I love, and the premise raises a lot of potentially interesting issues. In its first two seasons, the show had some really strong episodes, but never made the jump to great TV. The ‘Golden Age’ HBO series, like The Sopranos or The Wire or even Six Feet Under, all did things that you didn’t see anywhere else. They were full of incredibly rich characters and explored huge issues within their continous, novelistic plots.

In short, those shows justified the “It’s not TV, it’s HBO” tagline because they are like virtually nothing else in the history of TV. When I see people call Showtime the new HBO, I cringe because all the Showtime shows I’ve seen are essentially edgier versions of classic network shows, and like a lot of FX shows, they’re more interested in being edgy for edginess’s sake than in building compelling stories and world. Weeds is a particular offender in this respect, but Dexter also suffers from the fact that at its core, it’s a CBS style procedural. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being like a TV show, Buffy is very much a TV show in style and presentation, but the writing kept the characters evolving and that’s what made it such a great series.

In the post Sopranos era, there’s a lot of highly serialized shows, but there’s very few shows that enact real change in their universes. Shows like Rescue Me, 24 or Alias are full of ongoing plots that make them seemingly incomprehensible to new viewers, but really what they’re doing is variations on a theme. 24 will always spin back to the mole, the nuclear bomb, Jack going rogue, just as Alias perpetually wound its way back to Sydney working for Sloane. Rescue Me has extended stories, but after the stories resolve themselves, the characters are essentially the same as they were before. The problem with this is that you wind up with a merry go round of couplings and scenarios such that by the fifth or sixth season, everyone has fucked everyone, and there’s nowhere left to go.

But, the best shows only get better as time goes on. To some extent, The Sopranos repeated itself narratively. The structural plot of all the middle seasons can be summed up as a new family member comes into town and causes problems for Tony until he crosses the line and has to be whacked at the end of the season. It happens to Richie, Jackie, Ralphie, Tony B, and to some extent, Vito. But, within the repetition, there’s an evolution of Tony’s character, and a deepening of our understanding of his world and what’s going on around him. The weight of what’s happened weighs on the character in believable ways. You can’t honestly believe that Jack Bauer has been through all he’s been through on the series, but Tony’s continuity seems plausible.

All of this is a way of saying that what separates good shows from great shows is the capacity for real change, to deepen and expand the universe as time passes. Big Love’s third season is doing just that, telling its best stories yet in a really focused, intense opening run.

Part of what makes the season work so far is the way that Roman’s trial has served as a structural centerpiece for the whole show. One of the things that’s hurt the show in the past is that the stakes are smaller than we’re used to on TV. At their core, The Sopranos and Six Feet Under are just about a family and their struggles to deal with the world, but the backdrop of the mob and the gravty of the funeral home helped make those shows feel deeper and more significant. In the case of Big Love, the stories at home can sometimes feel frivolous or soapy without that sort of heavy grounding. I hate to say that on some level, because that sort of if it’s not life or death, it doesn’t matter logic is what contributes to our glut of doctor and lawyer shows, but that’s the way it feels.

But, the presence of Roman’s trial as this looming threat for the family makes it easier to appreciate the less dramatic b plots. It also alleviates the disconnect between the compound and Bill’s family that has caused problems for the show in the past. The family’s courtship of Ana is a great story, but is it a strong enough centerpiece to unite all the show’s disparate characters? Perhaps not, but now it doesn’t have to carry that load, it was able to simmer in the background, amidst a variety of other stories.

That’s not to say that the Roman trial was even the most compelling story on the show. What’s interesting is how it’s forced the other characters in to different and challenging positions. Nikki in particular has gotten stronger material this year than ever before. I find it a little implausible that Roman Grant’s daughter could so easily infiltrate the D.A’s office under an assumed name, but once you get past that, her story there is great. For one, it’s always interesting to see her drop the Compound style and try to fit in with regular society. But, it also forces her to explicitly confront the outside world’s view of the compound without being able to instantly snap back with her usual defenses. The condemnation simmers there, and by the end, she’s forced to confront the fact that she is a victim of the abuse that Roman is being tried for, and no matter how much she may love him, her father is guilty of the crime. And, her own feelings about the marriage she was forced in to prevent her from spouting the party line defense.

The high point of this is her tearful collapse on to the D.A’s shoulder after she sees the photos of her in the Joy Book. But, her loyalty to her family is such that she still assists in sabotaging the case. I like the way the arc played out, the way her inevitable assistance to Roman is juxtaposed against our desire for her to speak out against him. I want her to move into our world more and leave those old values behind, but she can’t do that so easily. The Sopranos was brilliant at juxtaposing our hopes for what would happen against the characters’ inevitable moral weakness and this story pulls off something similar. And, Sevigny thankfully gets to explore new dimensions of the character as time passes. The revelation that she was married once before is the perfect retcon, something that adds new depth to a character without contradicting anything that’s come before. In act, it goes a good way to explaining why she’d be willing to move off the compound in the first place.

Our moral alignment with respect to the various characters is one of the most complex things about the series. Watching it, I can’t relate at all to Bill and his family’s belief that the reason they’re on the Earth is to churn out kids and have more and more wives. The revelation that Nikki’s on birth control made her even more sympathetic to me because I think it’s perfectly understandable that she would want to have more control over her own life. Her work at the D.A’s office may have began as espionage, but I think by the end she legitimately enjoys it.

So, the question arises, are we supposed to believe in what Bill and his family are trying to achieve? Because they’re the main characters of the series, ostensibly we’re behind them in their quest to woo Ana. Certainly it was tough to watch Nikki and Margene squabbling during their “date” with Ana because I wanted Ana to like them. And yet, at the same time, the values of their world are so distorted and incompatible with how I see things that my attachment and general positive feelings towards the characters are juxtaposed with this dislike of their value system.

That’s why I like that the show has confronted this head on, both with Sarah’s total rejection of her parents’ lifestyle, and with Nancy and Lois’s shock at Bill’s plan to take on a fourth wife. Sarah is one of the most interesting characters in this season, clearly just biding her time before she can get out and move on. She started out growing up in a ‘normal’ family, how would she feel when all of a sudden she winds up in a zoo of children and a messy hierarchy of three “mothers” looking out for her? What control does she have when they seek to add another wife. She’s got none, and that makes her want to get as far away from that world as possible.

Throughout the series, I’ve found the kids’ storylines among the most interesting, and the addition of the bizarre compound people gone wild flophouse adds another layer. Frankie and his fellow Compounders seem to have a kind of “what happens outside the compound stays outside the compound” mentality and are living it up. I’m not sure how that jives with one of the girls chastising Sarah for dressing in a way that pleases Satan, but I suppose that’s the bizarre moral world they live in.

The central question of the season seems to be how much can you compromise on the road to salvation? Roman and his crew use coercion, threats of violence and bribery to ensure that he goes free. Bill’s entire casino business is a way to preserve his lifestyle and protect him from risk. But, is he morally compromising the very sanctity he’s hoping to preserve? If he sacrifices those morals, does that mean he’s just a guy with a bunch of wives because he can? That’s the question raised by Nancy in the last episode, the idea that he’s dabbling in this and is adding another wife because he can.

There’s no easy answers there, but this season’s first four episodes have been stronger than any in the show’s prior history. I’m hoping they can keep that up without Roman’s trial around to act as a structuring element. At least there’s a bunch of other interesting plots in development that will be able to pick up the slack.

Batman #686: "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" (Part 1)

Picking up where Grant Morrison left off, Neil Gaiman’s Batman #686 presents yet another spin on the death of Batman. This one also appears to be taking the “It’s all true” approach to Batman, mixing elements of pre-Crisis Catwoman with post-crisis Barbara Gordon and a reincarnated Joe Chill for a pretty mysterious opening. Is this a dream like trip through hypertime that Batman takes on his journey between worlds? Are the various deaths he experiences a piece of his journey through Darkseid’s Omega Sanction? Or is it just an excuse for Gaiman to get a bunch of characters he likes together and tell some fun stories about Batman.

I haven’t written that much about Gaiman on this blog, but I do love his work. Sandman was the first long form comics series I read, and I still think it’s one of the high points of the medium. I was debating at the New York Comicon who the fourth best writer in comics is, with everyone having the foregone conclusion that Moore, Gaiman and Morrison are the top three. I can’t argue with that, Gaiman doesn’t write that many comics, but what he writes is usually really strong. 1602 didn’t work so well, but I’ve liked pretty much everything else I read by him in comics.

I’d still love to see Gaiman get to conclude his Miracleman run. I’ve only read “The Golden Age,” and there he did the near impossible of following up on Alan Moore’s legendary run in a way that didn’t step on what Moore had created, and only served to deepen and expand the universe. It’s a shame the series has been trapped in legal limbo for so long, one day, hopefully Gaiman will be able to finish the story.

When reading a Grant Morrison comic, the thing that overwhelms you is the amount of ideas. In Final Crisis, there’s a dozen cool concepts littered on every page and you can’t believe that he has this vast store in his mind to draw from. With Gaiman’s work, what has always amazed me is the huge amount of stories. Sandman knitted together its larger story with countless standalone stories. Where do they all come from? This issue is similar to a lot of Sandman arcs in that it uses a gathering of a bunch of people as a framing device for various smaller tales, each from a notable member of Batman’s supporting cast.

I’m not sure what the end result of all this will be. How can all these different incarnations of the characters be there together? I think it’s the perfect thing to tie in with the Omega Sanction, that this is Bruce’s hallucinatory journey through a series of different lives and deaths, watching all his friends betray him and leaving him utterly alone. Selina, particularly this Earth 2 version, and Alfred have always been allies of Bruce, why would they kill him?

The Selina story covers a piece of the Batman mythology that I love, but hasn’t really been touched on in either of my two favorite comics Batman stories, Morrison’s Batman RIP or Miller’s The Dark Knight Strikes Again. The uncertain flirtatious relationship between Selina and Bruce, Batman and Catwoman, can be great because it explores the thin line between Batman and the criminals he hunts. If Catwoman can so easily switch sides from good to bad, why can’t Bruce do the same thing, and, could he find himself on the other side without even meaning to be there?

The relationship is most brilliantly explored in what is still the finest Batman film, Batman Returns. There, we see Bruce go one step further than he does in this comic and offer to throw away the Batman persona and settle down with Selina, only to have his image of an idyllic homelife rejected. The two of them need that fire to be together, they aren’t normal, and can only really be together as Batman and Catwoman. One of the things I love about the film is Selina’s defiant rejection of his offer of a classic heteronormative dream life, marriage to the most eligible bachelor in Gotham, a good looking guy who’s also incredibly rich. She has moved beyond that world now, and doesn’t play by their rules.

Wonder Woman is so messed up in a history of bondage and power/subservience, I’d argue that Catwoman is DC’s real feminist hero. Sure, she may be a villain some of the time, but the character argues for a rejection of traditional feminine roles, and the embrace of a new kind of independent lifestyle. I’d really like to see Morrison’s take on the character in his next batch of issues.

Catwoman’s story here is largely about the impossibility of being together with Batman, primarily because he has his way of doing things, and doesn’t see much room for someone with her own approach. He is attracted to her when she’s a criminal, but when she tries to fight crime, he just chastises her for doing it “wrong.”

Here, Selina does achieve the kind of domestic dream that she rejected in Batman Returns, but she gradually loses the fire that drove her as time goes on. In letting Batman die on the couch, she is making it possible for her to kill herself. As long as he was out there, there was always the hope he’d come back to her, and things could be like they were. When he comes back and she finds out that he knew she was there all the time, but never chose to see her, she decides that it would be best to let them both die together. Only, she’s too scared to do herself, and instead she just watches the man she loved, a piece of herself, die.

The Alfred story is also extremely interesting. It works fine as a straight up elseworlds type story, but I’d argue it functions more as Alfred exercising his guilt for enabling Bruce’s delusions over the years. In letting Bruce become Batman, Alfred indirectly upped the ante in the crime stakes, and paved the way for supercriminals like The Joker. We see that dramatized here with the story of Alfred literally creating supervillains as a way to make Bruce feel better.

The whole story feels a bit like the portions of Watchmen that discussed how much better it felt to go out in costume when the villains were wearing costumes too. If Alfred hadn’t created ‘The Riddler,’ Bruce might have gotten over his depression naturally and given up the illusion of being Batman. But, Alfred kept raising the stakes to keep him happy, and eventually the illusion he’d constructed spun out of control.

And, as time went on, the illusion became real, which is discussed in the scene with Bruce and Alfred at the window. The fight against evil is real, therefore the evil itself must be real as well. The whole story is interesting in light of the rampant speculation that Alfred was the force behind the Black Glove, and also in light of the idea that Bruce was his own worst enemy, another possible candidate for Black Glove status. Batman RIP was largely concerned with the idea that only Batman himself could come up with a villain powerful enough to defeat him. This story would take place early in Batman’s career and play off the idea of Batman and The Joker as symbiotic entities, each becoming more violent and powerful in response to each other, riding together on an inextricable path towards destruction.

I’m still not sure what the overall setup for the story is, but this was a great, really dense issue that brought back memories of just how good a comics writer Gaiman can be. This is stronger than 1602 or Eternals, and it made me wish that he’d jump back on an ongoing, or just do some more work in the DCU or anything. I want more Gaiman comics. But, for now, this two parter will do.

New York Comicon 2009: Day 2 and 3

Besides seeing the Joss Whedon panel yesterday, I saw a bunch of other stuff at the comicon. On Saturday, I went to the Torchwood panel. Eve Myles and director Euros Lyn were there. They screened a trailer/EPK type promo piece for the season. To be honest, it looks okay, but not that impressive.

I’m not that big a fan of Torchwood in general. It feels stuck in that Angel season one mode of heavy, way too serious and self consciously dark standalone episodes that never really add together. The second season had some good episodes, but the finale was botched by condensing what should have been a two or three episode arc into one episode. Angel found its voice by going more operatic and over the top, which huge, sweeping arcs and sustained character development. This season is one big story, which could work. But, the trailer looks like more of the same.

Still, it was nice see Eve Myles there, and she was pretty funny throughout. There wasn’t any huge news out of the panel. PC Andy will be in the season, and Rhys will have a bigger role. No Mickey or Martha though, disappointing after the tease in the Who finale. I’ll definitely be watching, but Torchwood just isn’t as good as I’d like it to be.

On Saturday, I also had the chance to speak to Chris Claremont for a little bit. He was promoting his new series, X-Men Forever. He said that the series would explore the question of why no mutants ever get old. The promo material looked pretty nice, I’ve got a signed poster on my wall now, and it’s got the best X-costumes since Quitely’s. These outfits find a nice balance between the superhero style of the past and the civilian style Morrison had. They look like regular clothes versions of the characters’ old style spandex outfits. So, Gambit’s got a black coat, a suit and a pink shirt instead of the pink body armor thing. Rogue wears a green vest over a black shirt, that sort of thing. I wish the poster was online, but I can’t find it anywhere.

He also had pages from an upcoming series called X-Women with Milo Manara. It’s supposed to be out in the summer, and the preview art looked gorgeous. I read Manara’s story in Sandman: Endless Nights, and this story has the same really detailed line work as he had there. Claremont’s worked with a lot of journeyman artists, but he’s also had some great collaborations with people like Art Adams or Paul Smith. It’s nice to see him get to work with a real topline talent on this one.

I also spoke briefly with Louise Simonson and heard a few stories about working on X-Men back in the day. Since I was there ostensibly to work with Sequart and promote my Invisibles book, I didn’t go for any sketches or anything like that. Trying to keep it professional now, y’know?

Anyway, part of that is the next book that I’m working on. Expanding significantly on my blog posts from a while back, I’m going to be doing an analytical look at the Chris Claremont X-Men from Giant Size to X-Men #3, with side looks at relevant sections of X-Factor and New Mutants, and the various minis. It’s a huge project, but I think it’s a hugely important piece of comics history that hasn’t been thoroughly covered, so I’m taking on the task. I’m planning on interviewing Claremont and Simonson, and hopefully other relevant people, as part of the process, and possibly doing a companion documentary as well. We’ll see what develops, but I’m hoping to have that book completed and available for purchase at the next New York Comicon in 2010.

As for The Invisibles book, the title is now going to be Our Sentence is Up: Seeing The Invisibles, it’ll be in the August previews, and available in stores in October. So, look for that.

So, this weekend, I picked up a ton of X-Factor and New Mutants issues to fill in the gaps, and I’m pretty close to having all the books I need to cover for this era. I also got two volumes of Frank Miller Daredevil, which I’ve never read, and am excited to check out.

The con was certainly missing something without Morrison, but it was fun nonetheless, and just zipped by. I was really tired at the end of it, but it was a great three days.

Dollhouse: The Ten Minute Preview

I’ll cover more general stuff about the New York Comicon later today, but I first wanted to write up the Joss Whedon panel, and in particular, the ten minute opening act of the Dollhouse pilot that was screened.

It’s been a long time since Joss had a show on TV. I didn’t watch Buffy until after the series had ended, but I did catch up to Angel in the last season, and I remember how awesome it was to be able to see new Joss every week. That feeling will be back this Friday, a night that will feature one of the best blocks of TV of all time, with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles segueing in to either a rejuvenated Friday Night Lights or Dollhouse, then on to Battlestar Galactica. That’s a lot of TV for one night.

I think expectations are very high for Dollhouse. The longer someone’s away, the more you forget about their flaws. Buffy and Angel, great as they became, all had very shaky and uneven first seasons. Watching on a weekly basis, I doubt I would have made it through the first year of Buffy, but seen as part one of a much larger narrative, it’s easier to accept the flaws and move along. But, with Dollhouse, we don’t know what it will become, and people will be judging it against the heights and depth of Buffy or Angel right from the beginning.

That said, it does start very strong. The series begins with a slightly stilted scene that shows us a brief glimpse of the pre Dollhouse Echo, then plunges us right into the world of her missions. I really like the energy and immediacy of the pilot. Eliza Dushku, as Faith, had an energy and reckless abandon that no other character in the Buffyverse did. She was all action, not introspection, and that quality comes across in the first few minutes, where we condense an action packed weekend into one scene that shows us the kind of life she leads.

From there, we delve into the Dollhouse itself and see the process of wiping her memory. The scenes do have some flaws. There’s some obviously expositiony dialogue, the kind of “As you know” style of characters telling each other things they should all know already. There’s also a few forced Whedonisms, like when Echo talks about the flaw of the clean slate metaphor, the fact that no slates actually are clean. And, a reference to a carriage turning into a pumpkin that bothers me since I feel like it’s an overused cliché.

That said, the thing that jumped out to me about the series was the ambience and aura surrounding everything. The premise is full of interesting philosophical questions, and I think that the first ten minutes bring these to the fore in an interesting way. There’s a line where one guy says that they wipe their minds, and the ‘dolls’ can live a worry free life, everyone’s dream. Is it better to just forget the bad parts of your life and exist in a happy haze? Probably not for everyone, but for some people, most definitely.

A lot of my favorite works of fiction combine heavy philosophical questions with over the top pop action. The Invisibles or The Matrix: Reloaded both walk that line, the former more skillfully than the latter. I’m more interested in characters and ideas than imposed narratives, and if this show can manage to work the way these first ten minutes do and downplay traditional narrative in favor of compressed hyperpop moments that raise questions to think about, it could be amazing. I’m guessing that the main show will have a more normalized feel, and according to promo material, at least the first seven episodes are standalone stories. But, with Whedon, I’m sure they have building consequences and purpose beyond simply the need to fill an hour.

When I say narrative doesn’t interest me, I mean that I don’t want to see a story of the week that raises some questions and then answers them. I hate procedural shows and most mysteries because they’re all about a constant character interacting with elements that change over the course of the episode and then disappear. To some extent, that sort of storytelling is intrinsic to this series. The character that Eliza plays will always disappear at the end of an episode, and she won’t remember what happened. How is it possible to make us care about her then, outside of an abstract interest in her as a philosophical object? That’s the trick of the show, and I’m sure a lot of her arc will involve her gradually rediscovering her own humanity, and having to deal with the consequences of that.

Speaking after the clip, Joss and Tahmoh Penikett did a bunch of joking around, and fielded the usual “I love your work…oh my god I’m so nervous…you’re awesome, ok, um, I’m a screenwriter, what should I do to make good scripts?” type questions, but along the way Joss talked quite a bit about the inherently contradictory nature of the material, how it can simultaneously be perceived as a feminist critique of a culture that objectifies women, and an objectification of women. Certainly, the promotional material plays off of this, using a naked Eliza in the context of what looks almost like in universe advertising for the Dollhouse itself, but also sells the show as a similar experience to what the Dollhouse itself offers, an hour with this beautiful woman who can be anything you want.

The concept is full of contradictions like that, and you could easily read the real Dollhouse as Joss himself, putting people through their paces in roles created by him to play out what are to some extent his own fantasies. I’ve talked a lot before about the similarities between Chris Claremont and Whedon, and this premise feels right out of that dirty recess of Claremont’s mind that keeps going back to mind control and submissive/dominant role playing type scenarios. Whedon is a bit more upfront about his feminist intentions, and exploring the contradictions, but he’s in that same place as Claremont, simultaneously creating strong female characters and then putting them in situations where they’re made utterly powerless.

I also think that there’s nothing wrong with exploring those things in fiction, or real life if it’s between consenting adults. Our identities are all constructs, created to fit the mold of what’s acceptable in society, and what happens when our desires conflict with society? In the case of Dollhouse, it seems that the rich and powerful will be able to play out their fantasies through these people, and in that sense, the clients are just as interesting, if not more so, than the dolls themselves. In reality, you’d probably wind up with a bunch of old, ugly, rich men hiring these people, but in TV, it seems that you’ve got more eccentric, wealthy young men doing the hiring.

So, I’m a lot more excited for the show than I was before seeing it. The first ten minutes were far superior to any Whedon pilot to date. It almost feels like an entire episode is compressed into that first act, and I think by that first commercial, the major ideas and narrative drive is laid out, so we can then segue into something like the second episode when we presumably see more of the characters and they go on another mission. The show is already begging for analytical treatment, and even more than Whedon’s other works, it’s got a complex philosophical question at its center. He said that his other shows were about conveying messages and he was clearly behind those messages, but here, he’s a lot more uncertain about the central mission, and the show doesn’t exist as a polemic to convince you of anything.

Other highlights from the Q&A included him and Tahmoh riffing on some Battlestar stuff, a promise of more Doctor Horrible in the future and the advice that if you want to make a movie or write for TV, don’t wait for someone to hire you, just make it. Very sage words. He also mentioned that the retooling process happened partially because he didn't know the show yet. But, elements of the original pilot are sprinkled throughout other episodes, and that by the end of the season, they sync back up with the original plans, and that the season apparently ends on a really high note. It sounded to some extent like the first few episodes are a network concession, and that the real core of the show comes out at the end of the season, when the storytelling becomes more serialized. He also said that, much like with Buffy, the end of the season brings things to a solid resting place, so if the show doesn't continue, it doesn't sound like we'll be stuck with an awful cliffhanger. Well, I’m eager to see the rest of the Dollhouse pilot on Friday, look for a full review then. If the ten minutes raised this many questions, I’m sure the full episode will raise even more.

New York Comicon 2009: Day 1 Report

One day is down at the comicon and so far, it’s gone pretty well. Being at the comicon all day is kind of weird, since time is really nebulous. There’s no windows, so one minute it’s 2:30 and the next it’s 6. Time dragged a bit early in the day, but zipped along at the end.

Today, I didn’t go to any panels, and didn’t really talk to any artists or anything. I spent most of my time sitting at the Sequart booth, talking up our books and just talking comics with some friends of Sequart. Final Crisis definitely remains the contentious topic, with lovers and haters all expressing their opinions in a discourse that features a lot more modified respectful feeling than you’ll typically see on the internet. I think it’s a testament to Grant’s work that he has created a major company event that is so personal and evokes such disparate emotions.

I also got to talk up my Invisibles book a bit to passers by. That book will be in the August previews, so it will come out sometime around October. I saw the preview copy today and it looks good.

Besides sitting at the booth, I wandered around and picked up the Morrison/Millar Aztek and Flash trades, filling in some of the remaining gaps in my Morrison knowledge. I also grabbed a whole bunch of New Mutants and a few 80s X-Men issues to fill in the gaps in my collection for a forthcoming project, on which more will be announced later. I’m hoping to leave the con with the entirety of X-Men/New Mutants/X-Factor and the associated minis from 1974-1991 in my possession, in various forms. Thanks to the dollar bin, that’d doable at not too much money. It’s great to pay cover price on 25 year old issues.

Speaking of Claremont, the biggest announcement out of the con for me was Claremont’s upcoming X-Men Forever series, which will pick up where his run on the book ended with X-Men #3. I believe at some point in my blogging on the series, I suggested a series like that, but who’d have thought it would really happen. Claremont of today is a very different writer than 1991 Claremont, but I’m still eager to see what he does with it, and how he plays off the story that he created, unencumbered by the influence of awful 90s concepts and Marvel editorial influence. It could be great, we’ll see soon enough. I’m hoping to talk to Claremont a bit tomorrow, so I’ll report back on that.

Also, I’m hoping to check out the panel on Torchwood tomorrow, and get an update on the next season of that show. Then, Sunday I’m looking forward to the Joss Whedon and Dollhouse panel, as well as the late con fire sale where I’m hoping to grab some $1 trades. We shall see.

New York Comicon 2009

This weekend is one of my personal biggest events of the year, the New York Comicon. In the past, that may have been a nerdy thing to say, and it probably still is, but no shame in that. It’s great to spend a weekend at a place where you can have lengthy conversations about the minutiae of pop culture. Everything once in a while, you just need to be able to discuss the relative merits of the 170s vs. the 220s in Claremont’s X-Men run, or the nature of hypertime and the multiverse.

And, this year, the con won’t just be about wandering around spending money for me, I’ll be based at the Sequart table, where I’ll be promoting my upcoming book Our Sentence is Up, a compilation of all my Invisibles posts from this very blog, all edited and re-worked to be more coherent and better. I spent a ton of time revising it to get a solid draft ready for the con. The book won’t be released until Q3 this year, but I believe that a few copies of the draft version will be available at the booth, with comicon exclusive blank variant cover. Store this one in plastic, it’s putting your kids through college!

So, I’ll be there for most of the time, and floating around between various panels. The guest list is pretty amazing, even with the just dropped news that Grant Morrison wont’ be able to make it. Obviously he was my top guest to see, but Joss Whedon and the many others there will make up for it. I’ve met Whedon before, go here for my classic drunken Joss Whedon story.” I doubt I’ll get the sort of facetime I did then here, what with him likely being mobbed by his fans at all points, but he’s always a fun speaker. There’s a bunch of other interesting panels, the Torchwood one in particular I’m looking forward to.

I did two days at the con last year, and felt like I just barely saw it all, this year I’m doing all three days, but will have more business to do than last year. So, it should fly by. If you’re attending, stop by the Sequart booth, I should be there more often than not.

Battlestar Galactica: 'The Oath' (4x13)

I’ve seen this episode getting a lot of love from the online world, and I just don’t get it. I feel like I must be on the opposite wavelength from a lot of BSG fans, starting right from the miniseries, which I’d consider to be one of the series twin highpoints, along with the New Caprica arc, but most people seem to find lacking next to the series. This episode had all the flaws of recent serialized TV shows that have lengthy plot arcs, but no real change. Events happen, but they spin like suspended wheels, turning forever, but not really going anywhere.

After reaching Earth, it becomes unclear what the show is about. The thematic and narrative substance of this season has been the humans’ uneasy alliance with the cylons, and the changing nature of humanity/cylon in a world where the people closest to you can turn out to be the enemies you hate the most. That’s rich thematic territory, but it’s been handled really poorly here, with almost all the interesting parts of the story happening offscreen, while onscreen we’re treated to a succession of scenes that spin wheels before our return to the inevitable status quo, with the possible cost being the sacrifice of a minor character, not even a surprise when we’re in the show’s final season.

That may sound harsh, but it’s simply because the show can be so incredible, it’s frustrating to see an episode like this. There are characters I really care about on this show, Sharon, Baltar, Starbuck, Helo, D’anna, but most of the characters actually on the Galactica never grabbed me. I love Michael Hogan’s performance as Colonel Tigh and he’s always fun to watch, but when you put him and Adama in a situation like this, you know exactly what’s going to happen. You might not know the plot events specifically, but you’ll get some gruff masculine bonding, some barely audible mumbling and two old men acting bad ass. It’s fun to watch on some level, but I just don’t really care because we’ve been through so many similar conflicts before. There’s been so many attempted coups, mutinies and power struggles between these characters, this just feels like the same thing. We know that Roslin and Adama will get back in power, and we know that they’ll keep going forward on the Galactica because the show resolutely refuses to change from that status quo. This episode reminded me more than anything of 24. It’s the same story told on cycle, but the intensity of the performances can make you forget that.


That’s not a huge deal in and of itself, you could make the same argument of any show. The Sopranos basically repeated the same arc in seasons 2-5, new guy shows up in town, causes trouble, creates conflicted feelings in Tony then gets killed at the end of the season. But, we got a sense of real change in Tony. The point there wasn’t the narrative, it was about exploring the characters. But, the characters here just aren’t as complex and layered as the people on The Sopranos or the cast of Buffy. And, the ones who are, or at least had the potential to be conflicted and challenging in that way, are almost perversely left out of the center.

In the show’s first season, I was so wrapped up in what was going on with Sharon and her arc. But, since then very little interesting has been done with her. She’ll get a couple of scenes an episode, but no sustained arc or personal development. Baltar has been sacrificed at the altar of whatever the plot requires, here reverting to his cowardly old self after a seeming real conversion last season. Either arc is okay, but we’re not given enough time with him to really appreciate the distinction.

And, I don’t think the cylon metaphor really makes sense in this episode. It feels kind of like a Nazi soldier discovering they’re actually Jewish. It should be a shock to the person, and put them in the position of having to figure out who they actually are, if everything they believe conflicts with their own true identity. I don’t get why the Chief isn’t saying I’m the same person I was before, nothing’s changed, the conflict between label and person. For Tori, it seemed like being a cylon liberated her to do what she really wanted to do, her conscience was off, any action justified by her cylon programming. But, I think there’s a lot of missed opportunities in exploring what being a cylon means to these characters.

Ultimately, the things I love the show for are its more metaphysical and philosophical elements, and the surreal beautiful images it conjures. We’ve seen that recently. The Starbuck finds her own body sequence in the premiere was as haunting and beautiful as anything the show’s ever done, but since then, they’ve stuck with the people messing around doing stuff that doesn’t really matter.

You may say, what matters at all? This is just a TV show, time will pass either way, there is no tangible measure of progress. One man’s wheel spinning is another’s riveting action. And, there’s really no answer there. Art is subjective, there are elements in this show that enthrall me and others that I just don’t care about. And, the more I watched this episode, the less I cared. Where are the cylons, where’s an interesting story with Baltar? I hate to judge art on what I want it to be rather than what it is, but when you’ve got so many interesting elements on the bench, it’s frustrating to spend all this time on a story that just didn’t do it for me.

Final Crisis #7: 'New Heaven, New Earth'

After a tumultuous seven issue run, Final Crisis wraps up with its best issue yet, an issue that manages to resolve all the threads in a satisfying way, and perhaps achieves Morrison’s long discussed goal of making the DCU a sentient entity. The parents of the universe are gone, the gods are fallen and it’s up to the characters to invent their own world. A large part of the issue is about the characters gaining the agency to control their own story and build this fifth world of their own design. It’s at once a return to the pre-Crisis DCU, and a celebration of everything that has come since. It’s a complex issue, and not everything about it works, but the overall impact is huge, I think this is easily the best issue of the entire series, and a great way for Morrison to wrap up his current time in the DCU.

The issue begins with a trip to an alternate world where there’s a black president and a black Superman. I was already talking about the resonance of Obama and this comic, and this opening fuses the iconography of Obama and Superman to foreshadow the emergence of a new, better world at the end of the series. It’s also a pretty badass moment to have the president rip off his suit and have a Superman costume underneath. The discussion afterwards about using the “wonder horn,” and the music they hear makes a lot more sense after seeing what Superman does later in the issue.

The issue is odd because it violates so many seemingly basic rules of writing, and in the process proves that rules are good, but what really lingers about a story is the energy and experience of it. The early parts of the issue are told in flashback, or perhaps narration in the present, it’s unclear. Images flow from the narration in a seemingly stream of conscious way, drifting from fight to fight in a haze of action. What this means is that we don’t get to see some important story points. I’m frustrated that we don’t get a closer view of Shilo activating his boom tube, after all the buildup of his story, he either doesn’t appear or is barely visible in this issue. I also find it frustrating that we never really see Wonder Woman liberated from her Justifier enslavement, we can infer it, and we get an emotional beat when she crumbles the mask, but we don’t get the seemingly critical moment when her mind comes back to the surface.

So, there’s some sloppy story construction on those beats. I’m not sure how much is a product of the art and how much is conscious choice. I will say that Doug Mahnke kills it on this book. I’ve heard a bunch of people say they wish he had drawn the whole thing, and I can’t disagree. JG Jones did a good job when he was on time, but he wasn’t good enough to justify the delays or art mess. He’s not Frank Quitely. If Mahnke could have drawn the whole story in a timely fashion, it would have been great to have him on board. At least in terms of art, the series goes out on a high note.

The other major issue is the amount of deus ex machina in the story. On some level, a story about gods is going to always involve this sort of ending, but the stuff about the monitors doesn’t feel as developed as other elements of the story, and that makes it feel kind of out of place here at the end. Darkseid was the villain of this whole thing, and to end on a different, somewhat related, but not really connected story thread feels a bit off. But, I think Darkseid gets a good finale too, so it works okay. It’s partially an issue of pacing, it might have been better to have Batman do the final strike on Darkseid in this issue, while Superman was off with Mandrakk and the Monitors so they could be intercut instead of happen in succession.

One of the things I love about the issue is the sheer epic quality of the story. I think that all three Crises, for their flaws and merits, manage to feel truly epic and important for the universe. They stand as testaments to the insane over the top storytelling capabilities of the DCU. On a meta level, the tour of all of the aspects of the DCU in this series is a way of showing its strength, the power of its lifeblood, a way to combat the vampiric death that Mandrakk represents.

This issue’s use of narration in particular makes it feel huge. I’d be hard pressed to say exactly what sequence certain events happen in, but I felt the importance of them, and was emotionally engaged throughout the entire thing, Lois’s narration serving as a way to heighten our emotional engagement with what’s going on. Yesterday, I said that Superman Beyond worked on an intellectual level and a pure spectacle level, but it didn’t have the emotional component. This issue has all three firing at full cylinder, reading the pages, I was really excited to see what came next because it really felt like anything could happen. There were a ton of panels in here that just made me smile, and that’s one of the greatest things about Morrison’s work, and superhero comics in general. They can be so huge, so archetypal that it transcends the traditional demands of a story and just hits you in that part of the brain that loves spectacle and excitement.

In Superman Beyond, we saw Zillo Valla claim that Superman’s origin story was the most powerful story in the multiverse, the story that could pull Dax Novu back from the darkness. Here, we see that story invoked again, and replayed as part of the battle against Darkseid. It starts with the rocket full of Batman’s iconography. Batman is just as powerful an archetype as Superman, the core things that make him who he is will survive any threat against the world, he’ll always find a way. I love the idea that in a world made of story, symbols and images are the life essence, if those can be preserved on another world, Batman will find a way back to life.

That’s perhaps the boldest innovation in this miniseries, the idea that the DCU is literally built on stories. It will live on because it’s always “To Be Continued,” and the characters will perpetually deal with the same archetypal story elements. Something like the Joker/Batman conflict is a founding principle of the universe and it will always cycle itself through again and again.

Superman’s confrontation with Darkseid is really well done. At this point, Darkseid has infected virtually the entire populace, the world itself is evil, so what can Superman do? As Darkseid says, “Kill me and you kill everything!” So, Darkseid does precisely that, he fires the bullet at Orion, which he knows will eventually come back to kill him, and in the process, he intends to take the whole world down with him. At least that’s the way I see it, the whole bullet backwards in time thing is pretty hard to fathom, but this view of it makes sense.

I love the payoff on the Flash’s long run through the entire series. They bring death to Darkseid and zip off in a haze of trippy visuals and the sort of crazy science dialogue that Morrison does so well. Lois describes it as “the story of the flashes outrun Death, the Black Racer.” In some ways, this caption is used simply to facilitate the dissemination of narrative information, but I’d argue that the goal is also to transform this story into instant mythology. This is a story so huge they’re already telling it to kids within the DCU, it’s the creation myth of the fifth world, the way that the world was saved and changed and rebuilt. And, the crazy brilliance of the Flashes outracing Death and bringing him to Darkseid lives up to that kind of mythos.

From there, we see the dissolution of the world, conveyed in a series of perfectly chosen scenes that convey what I view as the dissolution of the entire multiverse. We see all the scientists working together to buil this Miracle Machine, even our old friend the Chief from Doom Patrol, whose head is no longer in a jar. This builds to the dizzying assault on Checkmate and the Atoms doing something. These panels are drawn from the pure reservoir of superhero stories. This is what every comic should feel like, filled to the brim with insane images and concepts. Morrison has talked about how comics have to up their game now that films can do superheroes. This is what he means, this is a comic that spans universes and does something you’ve never seen before in every panel.

It’s also a marvel of economy. The Arrow and Canary resolution is touching and funny in just three small panels. I love their hands barely touching as they drift through space, staring down at the Metron symbol. A panel down we can another fuck yeah moment with the appearance of Most Excellent Superbat and his team in action. I don’t know who these characters are on an individual level, but Morrison makes me care about them through the sheer pop joy inherent. Who doesn’t want to save Lolita Canary? Who doesn’t love Lighting Flash dashing between panels, all in a massive buildup of light and fire.

I’m honestly not totally sure on exactly what happens at this point in the comic. I know that the Checkmate satellite explodes, apparently killing Mister Terrific and Hawkman and Hawkgirl, while the Super Young Team and the others evacuate via Mister Miracle’s Boom Tube. Then, there’s a separate JLA satellite where the survivors of all the destroyed multiverse worlds stick around. So, are those worlds entirely destroyed, and then rebuilt later on, or are the only survivors the ones who were stuck in the freezer? I guess it might be that everyone’s possessed by Darkseid, and it takes Superman’s wish to make them better again. It doesn’t really matter, perhaps a couple more reads will make it clear.

The sort of free association storytelling is present in the panels where Renee tells her story. Speaking to Overman about his cousin’s death, we jump to a scene that may or may not have ever happened where he screams in the rain while holding her body. On one level, this is likely an allusion to the original Crisis’ famous dead Supergirl cover, but it also works as a visual way to express the emotion he’s feeling. The walls of reality are breaking down at this point, emotion and logic are converging into a psychogenic reality where idea and feeling are indistinguishable from physical reality.

This brings us to Superman realizing that Darkseid intended to kill himself to bring the whole world down into the black hole with him. If he possesses all their minds, his death will destroy everyone. But, Luthor won’t have that. As I mentioned in earlier reviews, Luthor always exists in reverse moral polarity to the world he’s in. Now that he’s in an evil world, he’s going to fight for good.

Luthor claims that “Libra was the anti-life equation and now he’s not.” So, was Libra a physical incarnation of the concept of anti-life? I’m not sure about that, maybe it’s more that Libra was some kind of vessel used to channel the anti-life into our reality. I’ll have to reread to see what exactly was up with Libra throughout, but the point here seems to be that Luthor and Sivana have created a machine that co-opts the anti-life equation and overrides it. So, using this machine, they’re able to rescue the people under the control of Darkseid and restore their individual will.

This leads to the fantastic moment where Frankenstein rides a giant dog and hacks the head off of someone. It’s great to see Frankenstein back in action, I’ll always have great affection for all the Seven Soldiers characters, and particularly with Mahnke drawing, Frank is as good as he’s ever been.

The Morticoccus virus comes seemingly out of nowhere here. Apparently, it was mentioned in Countdown, and is a call back to Kamandi. The way it reads here, it sounds like the “god-bacterium” could easily be Darkseid himself.

So, this all leads up to Superman’s final confrontation with Darkseid. This is another huge fuck yeah moment. The world is seemingly collapsing, but Superman knows the nature of this world, it’s made of “vibrations,” of stories. If you put a better story against this bad one, the good one can win out. Darkseid is the bad virus designed to destroy the world, Superman is an agent of good, rebuilding the world from within. He sings like only he can and Darkseid explodes, unable to withstand the onslaught of pure universal essence.

I love these sorts of moments because deep down I do believe that good and hope will always overcome darkness. As in this series, things can go bad for a long time, but progress will always win out in the end. I don’t think a moment like this is hokey or unearned, it kills it on an emotional level. Love will win out in the end, you can have a whole world of darkness, but all it takes is one little light to make things bright again.

This leads up to the confrontation with Mandrakk, and our intersection with the stuff from Superman Beyond. Mandrakk is the anti-story, the desire to end the universe and prevent the characters from developing any further. He invokes Superman’s origin story, but positions Superman as his father, a man who failed to save his universe. The origin is the powerful keystone of the entire reality, and Mandrakk is trying to twist it to serve his own ends.

Superman igniting the Miracle Machine with his solar battery is a literal representation of the light concept I was talking about before. I love the panel where he reaches his hand out and seems to have a tiny galaxy spinning below him, electricity arcing to create the Metron symbol around his head. There, he truly is a god, the benevolent architect of a new reality.

This leads to another fuck yeah moment when we see a legion of Supermen descending on Mandrakk, shouting “Let the sun shine in!” You can’t help but play the euphoric Fifth Dimension song in your mind, the music that tore Darkseid apart now echoing in your own mind, a truly bizarre bunch of characters stand and tear down Mandrakk.

The choice of such wacky characters as a bunch of Earth-35 animals and Captain Carrot can easily be read as a meta assertion on the health of the DCU. Mandrakk is the kind of reductive writer who seeks to tear down the magic of these characters, while Morrison wants the universe to be strong in all its bizarre contradictions.

The assembly of Supermen also reinforces Superman’s status as the ur-hero of the DCU, the source of everything that has followed. He has inspired all these others, he is the true god and architect of this world, and next to that power, Mandrakk is decidedly insignificant. He is staked, and the cancer eating at this world is gone, the “symmetry of the orrery” is re-established, Darkseid’s hold is slackened and the world can go on again.

Part of this is Nix Uotan’s emergence as a fully realized 5-D aware being. His story is kind of a reverse John a Dreams. He starts out beyond reality a piece of the core universal essence that is chipped away into an individual form to become a monitor. Then he falls in to our reality and gets lost in a human life, forgetting that he was ever anything more than that. But, now he’s fully realized, he has his monitor powers, but also human emotion to anchor them. There is a power in our lives and loves on this world, and that’s what Mandrakk doesn’t understand.

In his power, Nix summons the “Forever People of the 5th World” and the Super Young Team shows up. This reinforces the idea that new characters will be inheriting the roles of the old archetypes in the new world. The Super Young Team are the new Forever People, Shilo the new Mister Miracle, and I’m sure we’ll see a new Orion and others in the future. But, where does that leave the original New Gods? They are seen here watching over the birth of a new Earth, Earth-51, rehabilitating the graveyard world into a flourishing New Genesis. The war is over and a new world can be born.

At this point, the Fourth World gods seem to have passed beyond physical form, and serve more as touchstones for the next generation. They are the archetypal essence of good, and will reign supreme in a world where the archetypal essence of evil has been defeated and fallen deep down in to a black hole. And, they will guide Earth 51 to better things. It’s a classic Morrison trope, the worst, most corrupted thing drawn back to goodness through positive influence. Earth 51 is Quimper, plunged through the worst shit and reborn as a glorious flower.

This all leads up to the Monitors abandoning their post and descending down into reality to live as humans. The Monitors were old order gods, trying to maintain order in the universe, to keep the parallel worlds separated and limit humanity. They are the evolutionary shackles that helped us grow, but have to be thrown out as we advance into a new world. They are in some ways like Barbelith, and the dissolution into white here echoes Jack’s entrance in to the supercontext at the end of The Invisibles.

Superman Beyond equated the Monitors with the DCU’s writers. So, does this ending imply that the DCU is now beyond writers, it’s a self sufficient entity guiding its own way. One could argue that if this is meant to be Morrison’s farewell to the universe, he’s sending it off to a place where malevolent gods no longer control it and the characters are free to live out stories without his outside influence. Throughout Morrison’s DC work, we’ve seen negative portrayals of god-like controlling figures, from Morrison himself in Animal Man to the Time Tailors in Seven Soldiers. Both the Monitors and Time Tailors are mixed influences, but the point of this ending seems to be that it’s time to stop trying to control everything and to let the universe direct itself.

Superman is such a strong idea, he can guide things forward in a fine way. There’s no longer needs for an intermediary, people have shown that they can control their own destiny. Our heroes are now like the gods of old, and the fifth world has begun. We get very little glimpse of what that fifth world will entail, but I guess that’s ultimately up to you. We’re all Nix Uotan, waking up anew, ready to write our own story.

In a lot of ways, the story is comprable to The Invisibles’ liberation from the needs of a structured universe at the end of the series and the journey out to the supercontext. The DCU has been engineered to specific ends by these monitors, they thought that they needed to rule like that to ensure the safe progress of the universe. They sought to keep the universes apart and organized because it was too dangerous to let them mix. But, the people here have shown that they can manage their own reality. The child universe has become an adult and we don’t need the gods to guide us anymore. We can be our own gods. As King Mob said on his way to the supercontext, “I’m ready to play with the grown-ups, babe.”

This leads up to one final big moment, the return of Batman, who’s stranded way back at the Dawn of Man, drawing his sigil on a cave wall. Will the bat symbol become as enduring a symbol as Metron’s sigil? How will he make it back to the present day? Has he become a god? Who knows, but the ending feels right, and I’m eager to see Morrison pick up his story again when he returns to the title in the summer.

So, after all that, what is the major takeaway? The DCU is built on stories, and as such, the Miracle Machine can control it by rewriting the story. When Superman wishes for a happy ending, he’s essentially rewriting his own reality. He’s the ur-hero, the source of all good in the universe, and he’s always going to do just the right thing. This version of Superman seems very influenced by Morrison’s vision of the character in All Star Superman. I think he works even better than Morrison’s JLA Superman, outside of All Star itself, this is one of the best Superman stories of all time.

At this point, he seems to have become meta aware of the nature of the universe. He knows it’s built on stories, and will always continue on, but he’s got to make sure this story goes out on a happy ending.

And it does. After all the messy darkness of the previous six issues, this single issue manages to resolve pretty much all the narrative threads and give us a glorious rush of hope to overwhelm all the darkness. It’s a lot to fit in a single issue, but Morrison pulls it off, and makes it emotionally relevant. I had mixed feelings on Final Crisis throughout, I really liked most of it, but it didn’t hit me in the way that the best Morrison does. But, this issue, he’s at his best, and it’s a great farewell to the DCU for now. I want to read some creator owned work soon, but in a year or so, I wouldn’t mind a trip back to the DCU to check on the Fifth World’s progress.

Final Crisis: Superman Beyond #2

Final Crisis ends tomorrow, and I’ll be reviewing it tomorrow afternoon. But, before that drops, I’ve got a few things to say about last week’s Superman Beyond #2. This is an issue that’s frustrating on some levels, but really exciting on others.

My major trouble with the issue is the fact that it’s both a retreading of themes that Morrison has handled better elsewhere, and an essentially insular work. What does this book have to say about our world as a whole? What relevance does it have to your life or mine? There’s certainly some, but it’s more about the DCU itself, and the process of reading superhero comics. Some of Morrison’s best work, particularly pieces of Seven Soldiers and Flex Mentallo, were largely meta narratives about the nature of superhero comics, but they managed to tell those stories in a way that retained emotional relevance to the real world. They were about real people in a crazy world, this story, with its myriad of Supermen and convoluted Monitor mythology, loses that connection to reality and becomes, much like the original Crisis, a spiral into the mythology of the DCU itself.

My other major problem with the work is that all the major stuff has been covered elsewhere in Morrison’s canon. Final Crisis is by its nature a kind of greatest hits journey through his years of DCU writing, but at its best, the main series has managed to touch on new aspects of the universe and feel fresh. Here, the old sucking out the joy of superhero comics meta theme has been covered before. People have read Mandrakk’s fall into corruption as another riff on Alan Moore’s influence on superhero comics, a theme that Morrison handled much better in Zatanna #4’s Zor battle.

Both Seven Soldiers and Flex flourished because they used superhero comics as a way to riff on parental abandonment issues and emotionally arrested development. The Zatanna Zor battle is a riff on Alan Moore, but it’s also a confrontation with her own unresolved father issues, and consequently it has a strong emotional impact. Superman Beyond hits the popcorn spectacle and intellectual sides of things, but only occasionally hits me on an emotional level. Flex Mentallo, the greatest superhero story ever written, deals with superheroes from an aspirational point of view, spinning through the adolescent power fantasy and ultimate parent fantasy as a way of exploring our hero’s psychological condition.

I think ultimately a large part of it comes down to the fact that I generally enjoy the struggles of loser heroes rather than the super confident adventures of Superman. In All Star Superman, the entire series is about exploring Superman as a god totem, an inspiration to humanity who will show us the way then move on. The series often uses Superman in the way that Gaiman uses Morpheus in Sandman, or Miracleman in his run on that title, as an idea rather than a character. The All Star stories work because they deal with the idea of Superman and use him as an entrée to emotional engagement. The two greatest moments in the run are both in issue #10, the page where we see Superman comfort a girl who’s about to commit suicide, and the audacious finale where we find out that Superman actually created our world, and the idea of him was so powerful he infected our minds and emerged in our fiction.

This issue riffs on that idea, placing the Platonic ideal of Superman in conflict with a villain who feeds on the essence of the DC Universe itself, the Bleed. The life blood of the DCU is quite literally stories, it’s in the continuing narrative of these characters that the universe maintains its life. Stay out of the stories too long and your life will wane. That’s what happened to the characters in limbo, in the DCU, death is ephemeral, the only real way to die is for people to forget you. In that sense, the characters have more in common with gods than traditional literary characters. It is our belief and interest that sustains them. We know Batman will never die because he’s too powerful a thoughtform. Our desire for narratives about the character feed him, and out of that lifeblood, he’ll always emerge. So, who is the ultimate threat to these characters? It would be a character who could quite literally drain the stories out of them, and prevent them from continuing on.

The series presents a cosmology that’s similar to The Invisibles. In the lower world of the DCU itself, there is a division between good and evil. Characters align on either side and exist in “dualities.” But, on a higher level, there is no duality, only symmetry. That’s what Captain Atom says, and it takes a ritualistic fusing of matter and anti-matter to send Superman to the source of reality, the world of the monitors. When he reaches that world, it’s similar to the cosmology of the Outer Church and the Archons. The Monitors are the creators of the world, they guide the world forward, while Mandrakk struggles to destroy it. But, Mandrakk is the creator of the world as well, there are no sides, only circles.

In the higher realm, Superman exists in the form that was built by Dax Novu, a form that I’d argue represents the ur-superhero from which all other superheroes, and the DCU in general flows. Superman is an ideal that inspired every other superhero that followed, so you could easily argue that the source of the DCU is that platonic ideal of Superman. The story is powerful enough to fuel the entire universe, that’s why Zillo Valla tries to use the story to save Dax. Perhaps the story that inspired the universe can pull Dax Novu back from evil.

It doesn’t, but Superman still overcomes Dax. The battle is essentially the life force of the DCU, Superman, the ur-superhero, versus the destructive impulses that try to tear down heroes. It could easily be read on a meta level, Mandrakk is the kind of writer that seeks to tear down the mythology and take the magic away from the DCU, but no matter what’s thrown at him, the myth of Superman remains strong. I do think that’s a really interesting point, and ties in nicely to the themes of both Final Crisis and Morrison’s Batman run. All these books came out of the post 9/11, Iraq War depressed mindset, and I think Morrison’s essential point is that hope is so strong, it’ll always overcome the people who try to tear us down. Obama has been associated with the iconography of Superman, and it’s easy to read this as a story about the rebirth of the best of America, and the world in general, overcoming an era of vampiric destruction.

But, the story doesn’t end, and it’s in the final couple of pages that we get my favorite beats of the story. For one, I love the throwback to the winking Superman of the 50s, as Lois struggles to recall this crazy story she imagined. But, it’s the final page that had me just saying “Yes!” out loud. For Superman, and the DCU in general, stories are their life blood, so “To Be Continued” means that they’ll survive another day.

That final page also echoes the end of Mister Miracle, where Shilo burst triumphantly out of the grave. There, Morrison presented Achilles as the ur-superhero, who inspired future heroes. Much like in The Invisibles, Morrison is presenting similar concepts through different lenses, here Superman is the inspiration, there it’s Achilles, but it’s the same idea. This essential force of good will always overcome the forces that prey on life. Hope will overcome fear and repression will crumble. Sure, it’s still out there, but it’s in that struggle that we get better. The very idea of a grave in superhero comics is somewhat ridiculous, as we saw in Batman RIP, it’s just one more obstacle. The hero will always find a way out.

In a recent interview, Morrison talked about his recent comics as experiments in audience participation. With Batman RIP and Final Crisis, he’s been leaving room for the audience to discuss and reinterpret old stories through the lens of his current material. I love that concept, and I think in general, it works well. So much of the furor around Batman RIP was the speculation about who the Black Glove was and what Batman’s final fate would be. I don’t think the finale, either in Batman proper or in Final Crisis quite lived up to it, but the experience of speculating was a lot of fun. And, I think after the story’s over, you can read it as simply a great story.

An issue like this can be read on a straightforward level, as just a wacky Superman story, and I think it works there, more or less. But, it’s more interesting to analyze in light of Morrison’s other work and on that meta level that I’ve been talking about here. I think it is a great issue, and the more I write about it, the more layers I uncover. I think that’s largely Morrison’s point with the issue. But, I don’t think that excuses that lack of immediate emotional impact on the initial read.

The question that lingers now is what will happen in the last issue of Final Crisis. We’ll presumably see a universe wide rebirth and explosion into a glorious new age. But, how much time will there be to cover all this. Things looked pretty dire at the end of #6, how much can be resolved? Word has it that the issue will be along the lines of Seven Soldiers #1, a supercompressed narrative. I love Seven Soldiers #1, but that issue had the emotional attachment of all the previous character minis. I’m not as attached to the characters in Final Crisis. But, if it can match the intellectual density and moments of ecstatic emotion that Seven Soldiers #1 had, it’ll be a great conclusion. We’ll find out tomorrow.

Battlestar Galactica: 4x11-4x12

We’re two episodes into this season of Battlestar Galactica, and so far, the show’s been full of everything that I like, and everything I dislike about it, pretty evenly split between the two episodes.

The season premiere was full of the sort of impressionistic storytelling and compelling blend of intense realism and surreal mysticism that characterizes the show at its best. More than anything else in that episode, I absolutely loved the look of certain scenes, and the strange feel they created. Kara burning her own body as the sun sets is as arresting an image as the show has ever produced, full of strange implications, but also absolutely gorgeous on a purely aesthetic level.

The rest of the episode dealt with the characters’ reactions to finding out that the Earth they’d been waiting for is a desolate, uninhabitable wasteland. On the one hand, I think this is a weak story twist, to have them abandon Earth and keep journeying through the stars. I’ve always found it frustrating that there’s an inevitable reversion to the status quo. Part of it is probably budget reasons, but to spend not even an episode on Earth feels like a lost opportunity.

But, the impact of finding an Earth that is completely uninhabitable was handled well. Dee’s suicide was a major shock, and you got a really palpable sense of despair on the ship. It was an incredibly heavy episode, one that drew me right back into the world of the show after nearly a year away.

Unfortunately, the season’s second episode was considerably weaker. Pretty much everything I dislike about BSG was contained in this episode. The show positions Roslin and Adama as heroes, and occasionally does these stories where they obtusely do whatever they want and complain when people won’t go along with whatever they want. Is it so ridiculous to let the quorum have some say in the direction of the fleet? I want them to align with the cylons, but I still think it’s absurd for them to say that the president can do whatever she wants, and that Zarek is a traitor simply for wanting to stick to democratic process.

Now, the question that always lingers is, is the show saying that Adama and Roslin are right? Maybe there’s an implicit critique of their behavior here. But, the way it’s framed, I don’t think that’s the case. This is the same as them stealing the election from Baltar, a totally self absorbed behavior that for some reason the show accepts as the right thing to do. The moral position of the show seems to be an almost fascist view that Roslin and Adama know what’s right, and it doesn’t matter if it’s not democratic, they’ve got everyone’s best interests at heart.

I think the political compass of the show has been distorted by the fact that Roslin and Adama now agree on everything. The essential tension of the show at the beginning was the hawkish tendencies of Adama versus the more idealistic, peace loving Roslin. Now, they’re the same, and there’s no character of equal weight to oppose them, particularly when they make such a big deal of staining Zarek’s reputation. It seems that we’re to believe that only a corrupt politician could oppose the noble Adama and Roslin.

I like Adama and Roslin when they’re away from politics. One of my favorite scenes in the entire series is the flashback to the two of them on New Caprica, talking about a cabin by the lake. But, when they’re placed in these political debates and act incredibly nasty, it’s hard to feel for them, and the show becomes a weird echo chamber arguing for nothing in particular.

That whole episode was just generally uninspiring. But, the season premiere was lyrical and beautiful as only this show can be, so hopefully it will be the good BSG that shows up for the rest of the season.

Final Crisis #6:'How to Murder the Earth'

I’ve been re-reading The Invisibles over the past few weeks, as part of getting the book ready, and I’m in the heart of Volume III right now. That makes it unfortunate timing for the release of Final Crisis #6, an issue that’s solid Morrison, but pales next to the brilliance and progressive feel of late period Invisibles. I love almost all of Morrison’s work, but I do think he’s been trapped in this kind of turned to 11 insane superhero storytelling for a while now, and it could be time to go back to something more introspective, along the lines of “Karmageddon.”

FC #6 is as strong an issue as most of Final Crisis to date, and I’m sure read under normal circumstances I would have been more into it. There are some absolutely fantastic moments, most of them involving the use of the Metron symbol to tie the resistance together and cut holes in Darkseid’s power. I love the moment where the Tatooed Man ignites his symbol and throws chaos into the onslaught of justifiers. Also awesome is the two page spread at the end where Metron tells Nix Uotan about the oncoming fifth world.

The issue is also notable for the ‘death’ of Batman. Again, people say that he’s dead, but even Morrison is making it clear that this is just part of Bruce Wayne’s ongoing evolution. The Omega Sanction is just another version of Thogal, a series of deaths and rebirths that will culminate in Batman eventually being reborn again. Morrison just wrote a lengthy story that made it clear that Batman is always prepared for anything, surely he can overcome the worst that Darkseid has to offer. What I hope is that we’ll get the rumored Bruce Wayne as god of the fifth world story, at least for a little bit before everything eventually resets to the status quo.

But, I’m hoping that after Final Crisis is over, Morrison takes some time off from big superhero comics and does some more restrained comics. I love the intensity and scope of this book, but when I read the incredibly precise ‘Karmageddon,’ or even look at the very specific emotional moments of “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” I want to see more stories like that. During The Invisibles, he balanced the heights of JLA with the more grounded Invisibles, we need that counter now. I’d love to see him do another long form creator owned project, or at least a couple of minis. I’m sure there’s a lot of stories still to tell in the DCU, and I do want to see those, but I want to see something closer to Seven Soldiers or The Invisibles as well.

Update

Unfortunately, I haven’t had as much time to post here lately as I’d like to. There’s been a whole bunch of different stuff happening with me, most of it good, that’s prevented me from doing a lot of posts. A month ago, I got laid off from my job, which has prompted me to move out into the world of independent video production. Thankfully, I’ve found some work and have a few things in development that will hopefully make some money.

Obviously, no one wants to be laid off, but I think this will be for the best in the long run. I didn’t really want to work a job that wasn’t creative and zapped all my free time by making me work the 3-12 shift for over a year. I wanted to quit eventually anyway, so this just accelerated the process. It’s let me focus more on doing creative stuff, and the sort of independent production that I’ve always really wanted to do. Basically, right now I’m doing the job that I’ve always wanted to do. The question is, can I sustain it as a viable way to make a living for the long term? I don’t know yet, but at least I can enjoy this time, and keep networking and building up a client base.

So, if you need any video services, anything from making a commercial to shooting a family event, send over an e-mail and I’ll put something together for you.

But, shouldn’t that mean I have more time to blog? Well, I’ve been putting a lot of time into preparing the very first book to come out of this blog, a revised and expanded of my Invisibles postings from 2007. It’ll have all those in edited form, plus some other content, including hopefully an interview with Grant Morrison. It’s coming out from Sequart, who previous released Tim Callahan’s Grant Morrison: The Early Years. We’re looking at a likely Q3 release this year, and now I’m going back and revising and expanding those posts for the book release. Look forward to being able to pay money for the same content you used to enjoy for free. But, this content will look so pretty on your bookshelf.

So, that’s pretty exciting. Once I’m done with that, I should have time to write up more of the stuff that I see. For one, there hasn’t been any ongoing TV show to watch lately. But, starting next week we’ll have Battlestar Galactica back, and a month after that, Dollhouse will debut. So, there will be plenty to write about there.