The Comics Professor

That being said... : What I would do with the post-Flashpoint DC Universe

In yesterday's post, I lamented the impending radical reboot of the DCU. Let me be Mr. Positive now, and list a few things I would do, had I the power, to simplify the DCU and bring it "back to basics" without (potentially) reversing years of continuity:

1. Mostly restore the pre-"Batman R.I.P." status quo in the world of the Bats. Dick realizes he will never "be" Batman, and now that  Bruce is back, Dick can return to being his own man (or Babs' own man). Nightwing was a magnificent character (with a great costume), and the DCU needs him back. I would keep Damian as Robin, though, and Tim can stay Red Robin or choose another identity not so closely tied to Robin. That way, we have Bruce Wayne as the one and only Batman again, with a young and impetuous Robin by his side--the "classic" coupling--and the rest of the Batverse can stay as is (including Steph as Batgirl, provided there is a place for Cassandra, and Babs as Oracle in some form).

2. Return Wonder Woman so she bears some resemblance--not primarily visual--to her classic roots (as Johns did with Hal and Barry already). This may be the plan, who knows, and the new costume, especially as tweaked by Lee in the JLA promo picture, has grown on me. But restore the origins to what most people know, including Steve Trevor being involved with Diana's trip to "Man's World" (cue James Brown--heh!). And please, DC, get her right this time. That, in itself, may make this whole reboot worthwhile.

3. Superman is fine--keep the younger Supes in the Earth One line, but don't. mess. with. Superman. He's your key property right now with the upcoming movie and 75th anniversary coming up. Don't let Grant Morrison write some metacontextual, oh-so-clever Superman book--hey, I liked All-Star Superman, but as an ancillary title, not one of the main books.

4. Keep Hal Jordan on Earth more than has been done the last few years. I loved the Wein/Gibbons run on Green Lantern in the 80s, much of which took place on Earth with Carol fighting "normal" villains. Green Lantern Corps can handle the sci-fi- aspects of the GL world, but keep Hal "grounded" a good bit of the time.

5. Restore the JLA to some line-up focused on the Big 7 (or 6, as they're doing), without the needless de-aging. I loved Meltzer's line-up, as long as it took to come together. Do something like that again, but do it right.

6. Don't know what to do with the Teen Titans--perhaps they need to give them a rest for a while.

7. Do not touch the Legion--the return of Paul Levitz has been an 80s fanboy's dream.

8. Restore the glory of Aquaman, of course, as I have faith Johns will do--he was redeveloped wonderfully through Brightest Day, so don't mess that up. I see Aquaman as DC's Thor, capable of supporting his own separate world--can you imagine Atlantis fleshed out as well as Lee and Kirby did with Asgard? Peter David did just that, of course, with The Atlantis Chronicles, so build on  that if you want--just make us Aquafans proud, please.

9. Secret Six stays, end of story.

There is a chance, of course, that we're all overreacting to the skimpy details DC has given us regarding the reboot. Things may not change that much--more than the minor tinkering that resulted in New Earth after Infinite Crisis, certainly, but perhaps not a complete rollback. I wouldn't mind a short round of "spot the changes" like "One Year Later," as long as much of the DCU is kept the same--if someone is going to tinker with the past at the end of Flashpoint, let them be minor changes, not radical ones. Change for the sake of change is never wise--I just hope Johns, Lee, and Didio keep that in mind too.

Go, Mogo, Go

Warning: Planet-sized spoilers for Green Lantern Corps #60

(as well as a little shameless self-promotion)...

 

 

Reason and emotion face off in Green Lantern #62 and "War of the Green Lanterns" preview

More about Krona's plan are revealed in this week's Green Lantern #62, as well as in the preview of "War of the Green Lanterns" included in all of this week's DC books.

Spoilers after the jump...

Green Lantern and Philosophy at The Green Lantern Corps

Check out the forums at The Green Lantern Corps, where they've started talking about Green Lantern and Philosophy: No Evil Shall Escape this Book. I recently joined the discussion myself  - hopefully I'll get the chance to share some tidbits with the devout GL fans. (I started with the table of contents to the book.)

And of course, check back here often for details about the book as the May publication date approaches!

Should superheroes take political positions?

In the latest Hot Button feature at Newsarama, Vaneta Rogers discusses social commentary in superhero comics with writers Denny O'Neil (notable in this particular context for his classic run on Green Lantern/Green Arrow), Judd Winick (controversial runs dealing with hate crimes and AIDS in Green Lantern and, uh, Green Arrow), and Greg Rucka (celebrated for redefining The Question and Batwoman as complex, nonstereotypical, and ethnically diverse lesbian characters). The article as a whole is a very good read, but this part stood out in particular:

Greg Rucka, who recently co-wrote with O'Neil a modern issue of his once-socially-relevant The Question, said the decision to make Green Arrow markedly liberal in O'Neil's comics was one that worked at the time, but he understands why publishers shy away from introducing political motivations to other characters.

"I think publishers are more frightened of political backlash than they are of issue backlash," Rucka said. "I do think that yeah, if you introduce political stances for your major characters, you have opened up a can of worms there. If you're telling stories in a shared universe about heroism, you don’t want to imply that X hero is only a hero for the Republican party, and is therefore not going to be doing heroic and noble things for everybody else. You never what to establish a risk of status quo that makes them less heroic.

Let me say first that I feel that defining political orientations for 2nd-tier (or lower) characters is fine, especially when they're set in opposition to each other: Hal and Ollie during O'Neil's run, Ollie and Carter Hall (Hawkman) in more recent comics, Hawk and Dove in their various incarnations, etc. But the thing that scared the bejeebies out of me when the DC Universe Decisions miniseries was announced (and luckily quickly forgotten soon after its release) was that they were going to define political stances for the top tier characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman--especially Superman.

Why did this concern me so? Contrary to what Mr. Rucka says, I don't think defining a superhero as liberal or conservative would imply that he or she would help some people and not others in an emergency (though examples do exist, such as Ollie early in O'Neil's run), but making a hero's politics explicit does reduce the appeal of that character to a significant portion of the fanbase.

Furthermore, it contributes to the perception that our political affiliations define us. If Superhero A is conservative and Superhero B is liberal, many people will take those facts to determine much more about their characters than seems appropriate. There's a lot of room for widely different types of liberals and conservatives in this world (not to mention all the people who reject both labels). And I like to believe that most liberals and conservatives (excluding the ones on the extreme fringe of each group) have more in common than not.

So even though Mr. O'Neill "defines" Hal as an authoritarian (conservative) and Ollie as a progressive activist (liberal), they were still both heroes who fought evil--just in slightly different ways with slightly different emphases, styles, and tactics. But compared to the villains they confronted (super- or not), they were still heroes first and foremost. Liberal and conservative heroes may fight evil in slightly different ways, which can be interesting to see (as with Hal and Ollie, or Ollie and Carter), but can also be distracting if not handled delicately and sensitively (at which Decisions almost failed, but ultimately didn't, as I remember--whew).

That said, there are some heroes that should never be defined politically, and instead should represent the best of both (all?) political orientations, values that unite us all (though we disagree on their implementation), such as justice and equality. These heroes can stand as the moral (and political) centers of their respective comics universes, and if the other characters are defined more to the left or right relative to them, then the center will hold them together.

Superman, of course, is that character in the DCU, though his role as such has not been emphasized very much, though sometimes he functions this way as part of the Trinity, with Batman to his "left" and Wonder Woman to his "right," such as in the build-up to--and, literally, in the first issue of--Infinite Crisis. More clearly, as we all saw after Civil War and through Dark Reign and Siege, Captain America is that character for the Marvel Universe. The two are, as Mr. Rucka said, heroes for us all, but not because they don't exclude anyone from their heroism, but rather because they represent all of us in their characters. Let the other characters orbit Supes and Cap in their own unique ways--some a little to the left, others a little to the right--but I would hope the companies would retain balance overall, and focusing on their centers is, I think, the best way to do this.

Oliver Queen's Self-Loathing in Green Arrow #7

That was strange--I just read Green Arrow #7 last night, one day after I wrote this Psychology Today blog post on self-loathing, and what do I find Ollie and the mysterious Lady of the Forest discussing?

No big spoilers here, particularly concering the Lady's identity, which is tangentially relevant but not essential to exploring Ollie's attitude toward himself. After some discussion between them, the Lady says to Ollie, "Even you have some faith. In people if nothing else," to which Ollie replies, "People can  fail. Disappoint." The Lady responds, insightfully, "And yet, you only seem to hold that view of yourself." Ollie reasons, "Maybe I'm just beating them to the punch," to which the Lady says, "Or maybe you feel you don't deserve such people in your life."

The last two lines especially point to self-loathing on Ollie's part, feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness which he projects onto other people; if he doesn't think he's good enough, he assumes other people feel the same way about him ("maybe I'm just beating them to the punch"). Check out the Psychology Today blog post for more on this...

Of course, it is easy to understand why Ollie feels this way, having lost so much since Cry for Justice: Lian, Dinah, Roy, and a huge star-shaped chuck of Star City, not to mention a certain degree of respect among his colleagues for executing Prometheus (an act which, by the way, is discussed in several chapters in Green Lantern and Philosophy, in the context of discussing the difference between Ollie's and Hal's moral reasoning as well as retributivist justice). I hope that part of Ollie's current stay in the Brightest Day-Enchanted Forest will involve dealing with his recent lapses (as well as his older ones) and reflecting on his character.

The Spectre, Atrocitus, and Retributivism in Green Lantern #61

Oh, boy, it doesn't get much better than this... this week's Green Lantern #61, featuring the Spectre, Atrocitus, and the Butcher, talking about vengeance, justice, rage...

SPOILERS after the jump...

Green Lantern and Philosophy available for pre-order!

Just want to let everyone know that Green Lantern and Philosophy: No Evil Shall Escape this Book (Wiley), edited by Jane Dryden and myself, is now available for pre-order at Amazon (through the link above and to the right).

I'll share more details about the book as the May 2011 publication date approaches, but Jane and I are very happy with how the book turned out, and rest assured that many of your favorite GLs are covered, from the big four of Earth (and Alan Scott) to Mogo, Soranik Natu, Laira, Jack T. Chance, Sinestro, and more. (And we didn't forget G'nort, Ch'p, or Itty!)