Wednesday, October 4, 2017

Things I Have Read This (and Last) Week: Green Arrow #31 Is OK, The Evil Batmen of Red Death and Murder Machine are Delightful, I Don't Know How I Feel About Evil Jor-El

For various reasons I was unable to post last week so here are my reviews of things I have gotten caught up on over the last couple of weeks:

GREEN ARROW #31

Hard-Traveling Hero has been a fun ride with Ollie travelling the country, hooking up along the way with various members of the Justice League, proving his worth to them after years of being largely looked down upon by the rest of the superhero community. I personally found him lecturing Batman on the fact that there are really no good billionaires highly enjoyable. That said, the final issue kind of fizzled for me. Maybe because I thought there'd be some kind of resolution to the entire Ninth Circle issue and there wasn't (and unfortunately that arc will take a pause for a bit due to Dark Nights: Metal tie-ins), but I felt like the long-promised reunion of Green Arrow/Green Lantern took a backseat and lacked any kind of heartfelt interaction between the two, or even a nod to their shared past (if they even still have one in this current canon). Ollie punched a skeletor looking dude in the face on a space station and then that was about it. Overall meh conclusion to a pretty good arc. I did enjoy the reaction of each Justice League member when Ollie (who has spent years trying to redeem himself in their eyes) turns around and declines their offer of membership, though.

ACTION COMICS #987

If you're Extremely Online, like I am, you'll probably have seen this issue as the one that led to full conservative diapers because Superman saves some migrant workers from a gun-toting redneck. For that alone my review is positive, because abso-fuckin-lutely do we need Superman as a guardian of the marginalized and oppressed now more than ever (not to mention how hilarious it is that people think Superman, a literal undocumented alien created by two Jewish guys upset about the rise of fascism, should be some kind of xenophobic right wing icon).

The other big news in this issue though, is that we are finally given the identity of the mysterious Mr. Oz character who has been hiding in the shadows since the start of rebirth. Turns out he's Jor-El, who somehow survived the destruction of Krypton, who has decided that Earth is a shithole and he was wrong to send his son here and he's going to kill us all to rid Kal of the burden of defending us.

Oh boy. I have thoughts here, folks. Like most people my first reaction was "HOW DARE THEY SULLY THE NAME OF PATRIARCH OF THE HOUSE OF EL." Making Superman's father a genocidal dick is a bold move here, and one that can go horribly wrong. However, well, let's break down my initial objections to it and why they might be wrong:


1) HOW DID HE SURVIVE THE EXPLOSION OF KRYPTON? THAT'S DUMB
I don't know. I also don't care. Welcome to comics. You know what other character survived something that would absolutely 100% have killed anyone in real life? All of them. Supes is supposed to be The Last Kryptonian, but then his cousin shows up, and the family dog, and Zod and his crew, and the Eradicator, and so on and so forth. Lots of shit somehow survived the explosion. Just get over your initial reaction to that plot point and move on. Comics gonna comics.

2)JOR-EL CAN'T BE BAD WHEN SUPERMAN IS SO GOOD
Can't he, though? I mean Jor-El doesn't raise the kid, that's kind of the point. Despite what almost every damn movie iteration of Superman would have you believe, Jor-El isn't really supposed to do anything but put that baby in the rocket and die. Superman is a product of the Kents raising a god-like being to believe that he was put on the planet to help people. Having Jor-El live on as an AI or ghost or whatever in order to advise Clark on his Special Destiny really just diminishes the importance of the Kents and of Clark's own innate desire to help people. Jor-El could totally be an asshole, even assholes can love their children and want them to escape certain doom. Heck, this isn't even the first time it has been hinted at that Jor-El might have some dick-ish qualities. Alan Moore's Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow showed an alternate version of Krypton where the planet didn't explode and a discredited Jor-El, viewed now as a crackpot, becomes the Kryptonian equivalent of a Fox News loving MAGA crank.

3)HUMANITY DOES KINDA SUCK
You're going to tell me you haven't thought "man, this planet really sucks" at some point? Imagine watching your kid try over and over to help raise humanity above its base instincts toward cruelty and savagery and constantly fail and not coming to the conclusion that they don't deserve him. Add Jor-El being horribly scarred both physically and mentally by watching his entire planet die and you might see where his addled mind might come to the conclusion that he needs to "save" Superman from the planet Earth by getting rid of us.

Now look, I'm not saying I'm 100% on board here. This arc better have a payoff worthy of all the status quo-fucking it did, but I'm willing to give it a shot.

Batman: The Red Death


I love Scott Snyder more than any writer in comics history, the record will back me up here (and so will my review/retrospective on Snyder's Batman run that should drop later this week), but I'll admit to some great trepidation over the basic plot of Dark Nights: Metal being The DC Universe vs Evil Batmen. That premise has some serious schlock potential, and has to be more than a gimmick to really work.

If the first two one-shot origins for evil Batmen that we've gotten so far are any indication, it's really going to work. Batman: the Red Death is a great What If story that I wish could get the full Elseworlds style graphic novel approach rather than just a single one-shot comic. In a world where Bruce loses the entire Bat-family because he wasn't fast enough, it absolutely makes sense that a crazed, broken Bruce would try to steal the speed force, convinced that the hero the world really needs is a Batman who can be everywhere at once. He also accomplishes this theft by running over Barry with a cosmic treadmill modified batmobile, and that's the greatest sentence I've ever typed.

The book also explains exactly how the Dark Multiverse works, and it is an intriguing concept. Instead of the regular multiverse, where each world is a variation of earth prime but is legitimate in its own right, the Dark Multiverse is only temporary, every world comes to life created by your own fears and nightmares, and because they are just that, dark "what ifs" the worlds crumble not long after they appear. Except now someone is pulling all of the evil Batmen from their worlds and moving them to Earth Prime in an attempt to keep them all from harmlessly disappearing.

Long story short: read this book. It is legitimately great.

Batman: Murder Machine


Batman: The Red Death is a more fun Evil Batman idea than Murder Machine, in my opinion, but I think the origin for the murder machine actually seems more like something the "real" Bruce would do. After Alfred is murdered by villains, a grief-stricken Bruce uploads Alfred's consciousness into an AI that would allow him to "live on," only AI Alfred naturally goes all Hal 9000 on us and decides the best way to "help" Batman is murder all of the villains, and then all of the heroes, and then basically anyone who might ever hurt Batman. It makes sense really that a man who dedicated his entire life to dressing up like Dracula and punching criminals in response to the death of his birth parents might also have an unhealthy response to the death of his surrogate father that would work out very poorly for the entire planet.

That wraps up this week's book reports, obviously this week's books came out today and I'll probably end up recapping them later in the week. I know for sure that with All Star Batman #14 being the end of that title and the (at least temporary) end of Snyder as a writer of a Batman monthly I will be writing a very long piece about his entire run on the character so far and why I feel it's the best in the character's history. See you then.

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