Spoiler Warning: Announcements Suck
[It's been a month already, so here's last month's essay from the Comix Experience newsletter. For all who read this and live in San Francisco: Just go to Comix Experience on Divisadero and pick up the newsletter to get these in a little more timely fashion (as well as Previews written by me as well). And buy some comic books, too. Bri's good people and deserves your money.]
It’s been awhile since I’ve had any real problems with spoilers. After all, they announce their intentions pretty much right there in their name. They don’t call themselves “Random factoids of information that may, in fact, ruin your enjoyment of a particular narrative by revealing something that could impact the organic unfolding of the plot as dictated by its creators”; that’s some obscure post-rock band in Manhattan. No, spoilers are there to spoil. It’s what they were created for, and they do their job to varying degrees of success depending on how necessary secrecy is to said plot’s success.
(For example: It’s impossible to spoil anything Mark Millar’s written because, (a) all of his plots have exactly the same rhythm and are very easy to predict and, (b), all you have to do to spoil a Mark Millar plot is ask yourself “What movie is he ripping off this time?” and you’ll have a fair indication of where the story is going. You may mock, but wait until you see his new creator owned series, Mark Millar’s The Godfather With Superpowers.)
So, spoilers are just doing what they’re supposed to, and there’s something almost admirable about that. Who could be mad at the completion of something’s natural purpose, after all? Also, there’s that whole “Spoiler Warning!” thing that everyone feels compelled to do to warn you when they’re going to reveal that Lost’s island is really a living being just like X-Men’s Krakoa. Well, apart from there, obviously. But Spoiler Warnings are there to make sure that, even if you don’t want to know the ending of something, someone will be sure to interrupt – spoiler! – their sentence by – spoiler! – letting you know that it’s – spoiler! - a… Oh, you get what I’m saying.
Spoilers have become part of what’s occasionally called “the discourse” around stories these days. There are entire websites devoted entirely to seeking out and occasionally fabricating from nothing future spoilers for television shows and comic books; it’s become a cottage industry of making sure that people have to really work to get to the end of a story without knowing what’s about to happen and, well, you all know me: I’m a friend to any industry that isn’t immediately prefaced by the words “sex slave” or “fashion.” So, spoilers get something of a free pass where I’m concerned.
But announcements? They’re on my shitlist.
Those of you who don’t live on the internet may be unaware, but DC Comics – now owned by Warner Bros. after Disney’s buyout of Marvel Comics reminded Warners that they actually already owned DC but hadn’t done anything with it, leading to the greatest press release in corporate history, the already infamous “Warner Bros Announces That It’s Owned DC Comics For Years But Would Like To Remind You All And Maybe Get Some Press Out Of It Thank You Very Much” announcement of October 2009 – began 2010 with a series of announcements online about projects that fans would be excited to learn about, to try and take advantage of the fact that announcing anything these days seems to be a big deal. Most of these announcements were fairly harmless, if shameless attempts at fan service: Gail Simone and Ed Benes are reuniting for a new series of Birds of Prey (Explaining why Black Canary is getting dropped from the Green Arrow/Black Canary series, apparently; I look forward to the furore if they also split the marriage up in the process and try and explain that everyone knows that you can’t be married and be on a super-hero team), a new Keith Giffen co-written Justice League International series called Generation Lost (Co-written, oddly enough, with Judd Winick; JM DeMatteis is busy with Giffen taking over Booster Gold, which I’m sure will piss off the Dan Jurgens fans out there), Paul Levitz not only taking over the Legion of Super-Heroes in Adventure Comics, but also launching an all-new Legion of Super-Heroes series as well, that kind of thing. Very exciting for the fanbase, if a little retro. But it was their biggest announcement that boggled my mind:
Following Blackest Night, there’ll be a 26-issue biweekly series co-written by Geoff Johns and Peter Tomasi called Brightest Day about the aftermath of the event, and the future of the DC Universe.
I mean, what? Talk about spoilers! Now, because of that careless, shameless announcement, everyone knows that Blackest Night isn’t going to end with the eradication of all life by the bald Death God Nekron! Thanks very much for ruining the end of your biggest crossover event since, I don’t know, Invasion or something, DC! Jeez!
There I was, reading all of the Blackest Night series and crossovers and tie-ins and everything, excitedly following along and enjoying the story, Dan Didio’s promises of a new status quo echoing around happily inside my metaphorical ears, thinking: “Well, there’s only one way to have a truly shocking new status quo that you can’t talk about after all of this: Everyone is going to be dead.” You can imagine my hyper-excitement when that seemed to be coming true at the end of Blackest Night #5, with Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Arrow and lots of other characters that I don’t care that much about – Oh, okay, I admit it, I don’t care that much about Green Arrow, either – were turned into Black Lanterns alongside their already Black Lanterned fellow Justice Leaguers: It was all coming true! Nothing would ever be the same again!
I imagined the shockwaves that this would send across the entire industry. No longer would Marvel fans be able to claim that their books were the most nihilistic misappropriation of the superheroic ideal. Suddenly, DC’s superhero books would have two genres to play in: Melodramatic superhero soap opera and Melodramatic zombie soap opera. And every single issue could come polybagged with a promotional ring, leading to Marvel Comics self-destructing in a jealousy that even a hundred Deadpool variant issues wouldn’t be able to contain. It was a truly exciting time.
(A minor digression, for a second, to congratulate Tom Brevoort on becoming promoted to Vice President over at Marvel Comics. For a second, I was confused as to why he was Twittering comments about Marvel being smarter, more creative and better looking than DC; it seemed to be the ramblings of someone who’d lost the wood for the trees in the ongoing uneven PR war between Marvel and DC – or, to be more accurate, “Marvel employees taking shots at DC, who stay remarkably quiet about the whole thing” – but, as soon as Tom’s VP position was accidentally revealed via Marvel’s website, I saw it for the hazing ritual that it clearly was. Thankfully, we were spared the sight of Axel Alonso drinking Joe Quesada’s blood for his own promotion ritual.)
(Sure, Blackest Night #6 worried me slightly: What was with Wonder Woman rejecting the ring and being turned into Star Sapphire Woman? On one level, it bothered me because it massively undercut the premise of everything we’d seen before in the story: Seriously, if the other rings could do that all along, why were the Black Lanterns such a big deal in the first place? Just get lots of other Corps rings and turn everyone into one of the non-dead Lanterns. Problem solved. But more importantly, what were they doing, un-Black Lanterning even one character?!? This wasn’t the direction I wanted to see the story go in! But then I remembered that it was just Wonder Woman, and she could always just be killed again before the story’s end. In fact, if they played their card right, she could even die with the importance and dramatic effect of Janet Van Dyne’s death at the end of Secret Invasion. Oh, how I fondly remember that scene: “Janet! Your body is full of LastMinutePlotMcGuffin molecules! You have to die for this series to mean anything!” And you could just feel the anguish in Thor as he killed her – mostly because there was nothing in the actual book about it, so literally, you had to just feel it. No-one does emotional subtlety like Brian Michael Bendis, it has to be said.)
But now, with the announcement of Brightest Day, that time is but a distant goth fantasy. The spoiler is in the title! How can you have any kind of bright day, never mind the Brightest, if everyone is dead? It’s like the very opposite of Blackest Night or something. It got worse, as I read more about it: Dan Didio talked about it being referred to inside the DC offices as DC Universe: Rebirth, which was just adding insult to injury. “Rebirth”? Really? Oh, come on. It’s not enough that everyone’s not staying dead, now they’re getting reborn as well?
Apparently, Brightest Day won’t just be staying inside its own title; it’ll also become a branding on a number of other DC titles like Justice League of America and The Flash for a few months as the cruel optimism of Johns and Tomasi spreads like a cheery wildfire throughout the entire line. Next thing you know, we’ll be finding out that everything’s going to be headed towards some kind of hopeful idealism that befits characters created to embody the hopes of children around the world and give them some admittedly-distorted moral guidance and assurance that there is, indeed, value in doing the right thing. This kind of thing disgusts me, especially knowing that Marvel plan to do the same thing with their Heroic Age branding post-Siege (At least there, I’m comforted with the knowledge that it’s unlikely that the majority of Marvel writers will be able to stay away from pessimism for more than a couple of months. Yeah, I’m talking about you, Dan Slott). What kind of filth are we preparing to unleash on an unsuspecting industry?
And to find all of this out via an announcement? On a cold and otherwise unassuming January morning? That sort of thing just won’t stand. Announcements aren’t supposed to give you that kind of shock; they’re there for polite reminders that the store will be closing in ten minutes so please finish your browsing and head to the registers as soon as possible, or for letting you know that your flight is preparing to board and anyone in first class or traveling with small children is invited to come to pre-board right now.
At least with spoilers, you know where you stand.
The Future, Now!
[It's another weekend of working insanely hard, so here's the essay from last month's Comix Experience newsletter so that we don't fall into another long run of radio silence here.]
It feels like it’s been awhile since we last talked – Wasn’t it a year ago? – and as always happens during the holiday season, all manner of news was announced by comic publishers. As is only fitting, then, everyone here at The International Kingdom of FBR thought we should “mix things up,” as the kids say, and (with the use of our patented Pietroand Crystal Ball technology) reveal some of the hottest comic headlines of 2010 – before they happen!
Yes, that’s right; I said “hottest comic headlines.” I’m not quite sure what came over me. Can we move on already?
FUTURENEWSSTORY! DC’s plans for the Superman titles have already been partially-announced; this month’s solicitations reveal the Last Stand of New Krypton crossover, which in turn will lead into this summer’s War of The Supermen crossover. But few are prepared for what will come after that, as DC prepare for what may be their most controversial Superman project yet, Holidays With The Supermen.
Post-War, DC’s Earth will have collectively come to its senses and realized that, come on, it’s Superman and everything is going to be okay, leading to three months of special issues where Superman and his new Kryptonian family experience the various holiday traditions of the planet in a series of special one-shots that will temporarily replace the regular Superman books until the beginning of 2011. Explaining the idea, Dan Didio talked about reaffirming the importance of Superman to the DC Universe in general:
“What I thought people had lost sight of is that Superman is, he’s really an icon. Like Christmas, or New Year. But he’s an icon all year round, so we’re trying to remind people of that with books like Superman: Christmas Eve where James Robinson and Bernard Chang show the man behind the shield being iconic and wondering what to get Lois for Christmas while Hal Jordan talks about his threesome with Batgirl and Batwoman before getting his arm ripped off. But we’re not just focusing on Christmas, Superman and DC Comics are for everyone, so we’re also doing books like Steel: Kwanza Or Whatever It’s Called and Yeah, Superboy’s Jewish Now: Hannukah. It’s a very exciting time here at DC, we’re all very excited about these projects.”
Following these special issues, DC plans to launch Superman into his next greatest adventure, January Is The Longest Month Oh God Why Can’t The Holidays Go On Forever.
FUTURENEWSSTORY! As a response to potential fan backlash to Iron Man 2 when it hits theaters in May, Marvel announce that all future projects, whether they be movie or comic, will only be released if fandom asks very politely and then thanks them properly afterwards. In order to get everyone past initial problems with this way of thinking, the leading publisher has already made the decision to not release any information beyond title for all solicitations from June of this year onwards. In the words of Marvel President Dan Buckley, “These decisions are, of course, made on a purely business level and not just because we think it’s funny and because we can at all. And if you don’t believe us, we could always add ‘(Not Final Title)’ to the end of each solicitation, just to really mess you up. Just think about it, okay? Just think about it.”
FUTURENEWSSTORY! Following the success of Blackest Night, DC will turn the comic industry upside down by applying for, and – to the shock of every single living being on the planet, and yes that includes all animals and even plant life – actually being awarded, the copyright of all the colors of the visible spectrum. Talking in the heart of a literal media whirlwind that follows, Blackest Night and Green Lantern writer Geoff Johns told reporters that he knew very early on that it was the very basic concept of color that drove fans to the comic book stores in such numbers for the event, leading Executive Editor Dan Didio to successfully lobby parent company Warner Bros. into assisting them to stunning legal victory.
As a result, no other comic publisher is allowed to use any color in the title of any of their books – a legal decision that leads to a publicity black eye when Marvel Comics rename Black Panther as Negro Panther – and every single DC series gains a color somewhere in their title, leading to unprecedented sales figures for the publisher. By the end of 2010, in fact, Taupe Batman, Wisteria Wonder Woman and Justice League of Amaranth Magenta have taken the top spots of the sales chart for five months running.
The success of the decision allows DC to launch an entirely new line of “futuristic versions” of familiar characters using the HTML coding for colors to denote their science fictional origins. Despite initial retailer discomfort, Superman #FFCC33 and #0000FF Beetle quickly gain strong followings within the Mac user community, particularly among skinny men with beards and glasses who talk about Leet Speak a lot and find design website Clients From Hell particularly hilarious.
FUTURENEWSSTORY! In a stunning move, indie creator Bryan Lee O’Malley announced that he has scrapped all of his original work for the sixth and final Scott Pilgrim book and handed over creative reins of the series to popular Scottish creator Mark Millar.
Citing Millar’s ability to work within the Hollywood system as evidenced with his success on Wanted and Kick Ass, O’Malley said that he felt that, with the Pilgrim movie coming out this summer, he owed it to his fans to step aside and let someone more in tune with a mainstream audience take the next step forward. Fans of the earlier books in the series decried Millar’s decision to retroactively make Pilgrim a comic-reading virgin who finds a form of personal release through acting out fanboy fantasies in an increasingly unrealistic and ridiculous series of set pieces that betray a lack of experience in almost every social situation imaginable, but mainstream media critics hail the move as “groundbreaking,” “a stunning social satire unlike everything we’ve ever seen before” and “clearly the work of the man who should take the crown from Alan Moore’s head even before he is ready to give it up.”
By year’s end, O’Malley was unavailable for comment, having purchased his own private island with his profits from the new Pilgrim book and cut himself off from all contact with the outside world.
FUTURENEWSSTORY! Final proof, if anyone needed it, that comics have officially become a writers’ medium in the last decade has finally arrived in the shape of Marvel Comics’ 10 Years of Brian Michael Bendis At Marvel trade paperback, celebrating a decade of the bald writer’s (dark) reign at the publisher (Let me break away from the Crystal Balling for a moment to say that, while I was initially upset at the announcement of this book – Marvel having turned down my repeated, and increasingly insistent, demands for a similar 3 Years of Van Lente And Counting collection, not to mention the multiple volume What, It’s Got To Be Something Like Thirty At Least, Right? Let’s Say Thirty-Five, That Sounds About Right, Okay, Thirty-Five Years of Chris Claremont At Marvel COME ON YOU GUYS HE INVENTED THE X-MEN IN ALL THE WAYS THAT COUNT APART FROM ACTUALLY COMING UP WITH THE CHARACTERS OR THE CONCEPTS Jeez – I’ve since come to realize that it’s actually an important milestone for the House of Ideas. Sure, they’ve done creator-specific collections before, with their Marvel Visionaries line, but those have always been held back for people who were either dead or just dead-to-Marvel, with the exception of Chris Claremont, but let’s face it; X-Men Forever is like the comic book version of pity sex where Marvel is concerned. There’s probably some weird blackmail material involved in the fact that Claremont still has a job there). The Bendis book demonstrates Marvel’s realization of the value of their present creators… Or, more appropriately, the value of exploiting the brand name awareness of their present creators. The next step? Well, it’s not anything you’ve been expecting.
Due to be announced next week for an April 2010 launch is The Brian Michael Bendis Collector, a monthly magazine from the House of Ideas devoted entirely to Brian Michael Bendis. Based, in part, on TwoMorrows Publishing’s fine, entirely-anal-but-that’s-more-than-alright-with-me The Jack Kirby Collector, the magazine will feature excepts from Bendis scripts, previously-unseen interviews with Bendis, revealing email exchanges about Luke Cage between Bendis and editor Tom Brevoort, and interviews with those whose lives have been touched by Bendis, like Matt Fraction, Ed Brubaker and Tom Brevoort.
According to editor Tom Brevoort, the magazine was created because Marvel recognized the value that Bendis brought to the publisher:
“Everyone here at Marvel feels that Brian’s name alone can bring new readers to a title. Look at the success of things like New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, Dark Avengers, Avengers/X-Men: House of M and Ultimate Spider-Man Avengers. So we figured, what if his name was actually in the title? Originally, the plan was to have Brian write a new autobiographical comic every month in which he’d tell wacky and uplifting stories about his personal life and career in the comics industry, but then we remembered that Fortune And Glory really wasn’t as good as everyone said it was, so Joe and I put our heads together and decided that a magazine celebrating his immeasurable influence on the comic industry was the next best thing.”
Like its inspiration, The Brian Michael Bendis Collector will mix articles by professional writers and academics with pieces written by fans, with the first issue containing such essays as “Why Bendis F’in Rules” and “Janet Van Dyne Deserved To Die: Secret Invasion’s True Worth Unveiled.” Similarly, the magazine will also have theme issues devoted to the many different facets of his career, including his early independent work, his run on Ultimate Spider-Man and how many times he can write about the Scarlet Witch being crazy without actually ever doing something with that idea. But perhaps the most exciting part of each issue will be the monthly column by comics historian Mark Evanier, wherein he will explain what it was like being an intern to Bendis during his early days in the industry.
In one final move to create similarity between The Jack Kirby Collector and The Brian Michael Bendis Collector, Marvel announced yesterday that it was canceling Bendis at the end of this month, and that his death would not only ensure that the Bendis Collector would be a fitting memorial to his work, but also launch a new temporary branding for the publisher’s main line. Look for more details of Fallen Writer: The Death Of Brian Bendis to be released at the end of this month.
The Horror Of Holiday Journalism
(For the first – and probably last – time ever, I’m running an Ono essay while it’s still available in Comix Experience’s newsletter at the store in San Francisco. Normally, I wait until the new one is out, but this ceases to be topical… well, a few days ago really, but definitely today, so I figured what the hell. Happy Holidays, people.)
It’s the Holiday Season already, which means many things to many people: Children complaining that you won’t tell them Santa’s phone number so that they can text him their wish list for the year, stores filled with decorations that seem to have nothing to do with even the most commercial understandings of any known religious holiday on the planet, the same seven songs on every radio station you listen to, people on random street corners selling fir trees that are quite clearly merely seconds away from dropping their needles all over the ground trying to convince you that this is the tree that will make your family happy for the next three weeks at least… It’s a winter wonderland and no mistake. But just as you find yourself settling down in front of a Yule Log video and mug of steaming eggnog, kindly spare a thought for those less fortunate during this time of year. The ones who won’t get to celebrate with their loved ones. The ones for whom the end of the year doesn’t mean laughter, joy or even the innocent happiness of a peck on the cheek under the mistletoe.
I’m referring, of course, to journalists.
For journalists, the Holiday Season is the second worst time of the year (Closely following the summer, when it quickly becomes clear that the rest of the country is going on vacation and enjoying the good weather while it lasts, while they are stuck inside trying to come up with yet another angle on the already-tired story that’s dominating the headlines due to the fact that nothing of any interest happens in the summer and so everything will be written about, reported on and analyzed until it crumbles to pieces in front of your very eyes. What, you thought there was actually anything important about summer movies? Not at all! It’s just that, without Megan Fox’s piercing stare and limitless acting abilities, you would’ve read more stories about President Obama’s dog or something. It’s all a terrible sham). It’s the time of the year when editors turn to them and, without fail, ask for one of two things: A “Best Of The Year” list – which, this year, may also be a “Best Of The Decade” list, terrifyingly enough* – or a Gift Guide for concerned shoppers who care enough about the people they’re giving the gifts to that they want to them to be successful and liked, but not enough to actually know what they should be getting for said people without the help of a stranger who has been forced to write a guide that is generic enough to appeal to many different types of people who have almost nothing in common.
Neither of these things are fun to write. For one thing, both require varying amounts of research, whether it’s reading lots of back copies of their publication to find out just what came out that year anyway (And, inevitably, discovering that not only did that book that you were convinced was this year actually from three years ago, leading you to become concerned about your age if time is appearing to squash down like that and it wasn’t like that when you were younger and measuring your life in terms of school semesters and oh God those were the days what did I do with my life) or spending hours trawling through Amazon.com to try and find out what is actually selling these days and therefore might be worth recommending to people. Research, as anyone who’s read any DC or Marvel comic that has ever featured a scene involving a medical professional in any kind of medical setting can attest to, is both so hard and so boring that it’s not something that any writer wants to do at all; that’s how we end up with such scientifically unfeasible concepts as the psychic nosebleed or female hemophiliacs. Therefore, anything that requires any amount of research heavier than just going to Wikipedia a couple of times** is generally frowned upon, and last time I checked, Holiday Gift Guides aren’t on Wikipedia just yet, and user-generated Best Ofs won’t appear in time. That’s why no-one wants to write one of those stories.
And yet, they appear every single year without fail, just like Bing Crosby’s disembodied head following you around while you’re in Macy’s singing “White Christmas” and telling you how much weight you’ve put on since the last time he saw you, before adding a bombombombombom for effect. It’s what editors in The Biz call “supply and demand”: They pretend there’s a demand of it, so it’s the journalists’ job to supply it or else they’ll be demanding a new journalist who can write a simple story when it’s asked for, on deadline, no questions asked. Again, anyone who’s read any X-Men comic that wasn’t written by Grant Morrison or Joss Whedon in the last two decades*** is probably intimately familiar with the concept****.
Therefore: The Best Of The Year List and Gift List. We here at Fanboy Rampage Towers are no stranger to the zeitgeist when it comes to publishing fads – Who could forget our 3D issue, just a couple of years ago, or the month in the mid-1990s when every word came on its own individual Pog? The most successful gimmick we were tried, of course, was the issue of Comix Experience Onomatopoeia that came with five different variant covers, meaning that there were more covers than there were pages in the actual newsletter… But each one had its own headlines in the speech balloons down the right hand side that, when read in the correct order, revealed the end of the then-ongoing Infinity War mini-series from Marvel – and we also know what side our metaphorical bread is metaphorically buttered (Metaphorical butter, of course, because we choose to use a low-fat spread for health reasons) on. Oh, we’re not going to sell out completely, don’t worry; you won’t get a Best Of The Year list from us, because we just don’t dig an agenda that puts a value on art, man. No piece of work created by human hands is better than any other piece of work created by human hands, unless we’re talking about Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes, which was pretty lackluster to say the best, come on. But that aside – and, sure, if you really push us and put a metaphorical gun to our completely-non-metaphorical heads, we’ll admit that we really thought that Richard Stark’s Parker: The Hunter by Darwyn Cooke was kind of the bar for awesome over the last twelve months, so sure, you can imagine your own list that has that at the top, then everything else that was published in 2009 in the middle, and Astonishing X-Men: Ghost Boxes at the bottom if you really wanted, but are you really going to be that guy? Honestly? – we don’t do Best Of lists.
Gift guides, however… Well. That’s another story.
There’s an art to doing a truly great Gift Guide. Anyone approaching one has to come at it with a fresh mind and a clear head… A new pair of eyes and your ears to the ground… Your nose to the grindstone, and I think you know where I’m going with this. But you have to say goodbye to the old cliches and instead look at Society anew: What kind of people are there in the world? And what do they want? I’d be tempted to call it a meticulous science, but that would suggest that it’s only a science, and really, it’s so much more. It’s more like alchemy, but even alchemy is a bit too sciencey, so let’s just call it magic and accept that, like Doctor Strange and Doctor Voodoo have demonstrated, it’s not for the weak-hearted or for those with sensible hair. There are entire organizations dedicated to this kind of endeavor. Maybe you’ve heard them described as “Cool Hunters,” “Intellectual Pop Culture Strategists” or even “People Taking A Survey For No Immediately Apparent Reason.” They’ll ask you about your tastes, your likes and dislikes, and even what you had for breakfast this morning, and then frown when you say that you were in a rush and so skipped breakfast so that you could make it to work on time. These are the people who knew about Facebook, Twitter and even the entire internet before you did, because that’s what they get paid to do: Know things first, and then make sure that you know about them and want them too.
You don’t mess with the Cool Hunters.
For months already, these people have been at work, looking at what you’re reading and listening to and wearing, shaking their heads in silent despair the entire time, writing things down and planning out what to sell you for Christmas or the Religious Holiday of your choice. They map things out, create PowerPoint presentations and flow charts to explain why you should buy Product X for your girlfriend but Product Y for your Aunt Flo, and they put all of this information into giant supercomputers that even Jack Kirby would’ve been impressed by, ready to spit out suggestions for whoever can afford to ask.
The gift you should get anyone for the Holidays is one of those supercomputers. And, when they ask why, you should tell them that I told you that Knowledge Is The Greatest Gift Of All.
You’re welcome.
* – Seriously, am I the only person who is stunned that it’s been ten years since we were all concerned about the Millennium Bug and the Y2K virus? I mean, I know it wasn’t yesterday, but still, this seems ridiculous. I feel like there are entire years I must’ve missed in there. It’s like I was starring in a particularly unambitious version of Futurama or something.
** – For those who feel the need to just mess with journalists, editing a Wikipedia entry of someone particularly newsworthy to include a lie that is obvious enough for readers to catch it when reading it in, say, the San Francisco Examiner one day but subtle enough so that it’ll remain invisible to the reporter who decided to cut and paste instead of actually doing their own research is a way to do so that is fun, easy and surprisingly satisfying in an admittedly shameful manner. I highly recommend it.
*** – Chris Claremont left the X-Men books in 1991. Which is now almost 19 years ago. Again: See “Old, getting” and “Old age and senility, I think I’m closer to it than I actually knew.”
*** – Potentially available to the exception list is Chris Claremont, who not only invented the formula that X-Editors have tried desperately to stick to on his original run throughout the 1980s but has also shown a weird ability to nonetheless write whatever the hell he wants no matter what editorial prodding he is getting, presumably by saying “When you invent a multi-million dollar franchise that almost singlehandedly kept the publisher’s reputation for innovative storytelling alive when your editor in chief is pushing a retro agenda that will see books like X-Factor and Thunderstrike be published, then you can give me advice on whether or not to kill Wolverine and make Kitty Pryde into a miniature Wolverine even though it makes no sense whatsoever” whenever challenged. See: “X-Men Forever” and “No, Really, She Phased Through His Arm And Kept A Claw And Just Didn’t Notice? That’s Ridiculous.”
The Secret Origin Of The New Marvel Universe
(It’s Onomatoepeia weekend again, so while I’m working on that, here’s last month’s essay.)
Who isn’t excited about Marvel’s new mega-event, Siege (AKA The Story That Made JMS Leave Thor Because He Didn’t Want To Write A Crossover Into The Book, but marketing suggested that that was perhaps a little long to fit comfortably on covers)? The end to the uber-story that’s been dominating Marvel since 2006’s Civil War, and one that will finally reteam Steve Rogers, Tony Stark and Thor for the first time since 2003? You just try and stop me from running out to buy that only to see the $3.99 price tag and have a momentary twinge of doubt before picking it, and all of its attendant spin-offs, up anyway.
But what many people don’t know is that Siege is the result of many, many more months of negotiation than The Powers That Be in Marvel are willing to admit, and that J. Michael Straczynski’s leaving Thor was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to in-fighting at the publisher surrounding the project. The idea of reuniting Marvel’s core Avengers may seem like a no-brainer now, but the sad fact is, it’s the story that almost broke Marvel Comics apart.
***
10 Possible Earlier Names For Siege, from a leaked Marvel memo:
- Siege of Asgard
- Dark Reign: Siege of Asgard
- Dark Reign: The List: Siege of Asgard
- Avengers Reassemble: Dark Reign: The List: Siege of Asgard
- Yes, It Is Your Father’s Avengers
- Asgard Is Iraq But Without Saddam Hussein Do You Get It Yet Norman Osborn Is Azy-Cray
- We Have A Movie Coming Out With All These Guys In It, We Should Do Something About That
- Finally, Dark Reign Is Almost Over, Do You Really Need A Story Or Can We Just Pretend It Never Happened?
- Aw Yeah Avengers!
- Marvel Bromance
***
The idea of a “final act” to the storyline that started waaaaay back with Avengers Disassembled – back in those more innocent days when we all thought Hawkeye was dead and not just horrifically misused with his core concept abandoned in favor of a generic and meaningless ninja costume – has long been one that’s been floated around the Marvel offices, and not just by editors who then mysteriously found themselves moved to the Ultimate and Marvel Adventures lines. In fact, it’s a little known fact that both World War Hulk and Secret Invasion were both originally planned as being events that would bring the core Avengers back together, with the former being planned as a “Tony Stark gets some sense beaten back into him and then everyone goes after the Hulk, good times” storyline at first. So what has finally been able to make this happen?
President Barack Obama.
Yes, yes; you may know him as the charming and disarming 44th President of the United States of America, as well as a recent Nobel Peace Prize winner (If you’re a fan of Fox News, you may also know him as the man undermining America with his Kenyan Kommunist Ways, but the less said about that the better), but because you’re a comic fan, the one thing you definitely know about the man they don’t call Barry is that he’s one of us: A geek who’s unafraid to get out that lightsaber on the White House Lawn or admit that he read comics as a kid.
(This has been a double-edged sword, of course. On the one hand, comic fans across the world rejoiced when Obama became President, as it finally provided proof that, yes, we could do something with our lives if we really wanted to, it’s just that we’re too busy wondering whether or not Hal Jordan is going to have to use the power of all of the various Lantern Corps in order to defeat the Black Lanterns thank you very much. But on the other, it also brings a new expectation to fail to live up to when we don’t go into politics and reveal a humble yet inspiring public face that ushers in a new age of international optimism about the US. Still, you win some, you lose some. Can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs. A bird in the hand is worth two in the – Wait, I think I’m losing my place.)
For Marvel Comics, the election of Barack Obama has been a particularly surreal experience. Yes, he gave them the best sales of any issue of Amazing Spider-Man since the Green Goblin won the War on Drugs by throwing Gwen Stacey off the George Washington Bridge in that classic 1970s storyline, but unbeknownst to the Joe Quesada, Spider-Man editor Steve Wacker or even Stan Lee himself, the very creation of that story would affect the future of the Marvel Universe… forever.
***
5 Abandoned Plots To Get The Old School Avengers Back Together, from another leaked Marvel memo:
- Tony Stark discovers that Captain America’s assassination was not the work of the Red Skull, but instead part of a plan by Loki to finally demolish the legend of the Avengers once and for all, allowing him to eradicate the force for good that he had accidentally created forty+ years ago. Seeking to right this wrong, Iron Man makes peace with Thor and the two of them go to Hel to rescue the imprisoned soul of Steve Rogers.
- Steve Rogers wakes up after being shot to be confronted with Tony Stark and Donald Blake, who tell him that there’s a Crisis On Almost-But-Not-Infinite (for legal reasons, of course) Earths, and that the real Avengers are slowly being replaced by downbeat versions of themselves who can’t seem to get along. Only the three heroes can right this cosmic wrong – If Kang The Conqueror will let them!
- Turns out Iron Man was possessed for all of Civil War and The Initiative by a giant glowing alien insect that’s the personification of assholishness, and when he manages to get free of it, his first act is to apologize to Thor, who then takes Iron Man back in time to stop Cap from being assassinated and history is rewritten so that nothing post-Civil War counts in continuity. Which also means that Spider-Man is married again, so everyone complaining about that will be happy too.
- Let Dan Slott write the entire Avengers franchise and give him six months to sort it out. He might ignore continuity to do so (Hello, Hank Pym suddenly being so insanely smart and pro-active), but if there’s one man you can trust to get Cap, Shellhead and Thor back together, it’s Slott. If he seems unwilling, promise him Wonder Man and the Beast as well.
- Everyone was a Skrull. Again.
***
Readers may not have noticed, but certain powers that be within Marvel are very fond of the idea that hopelessness equals drama. That’s why every successive Marvel event has ended with things being worse for our heroes than they were before; House of M depowered the mutants, Civil War outlawed superheroes unless they were willing to give up their right to privacy, Secret Invasion meant that they also had to agree for an immoral supervillain who was also somewhat insane and, worst of all, World War Hulk gave the Marvel Universe Jeph Loeb’s Red Hulk. It’s a common mistake, thinking that drama = conflict and that conflict = everyone’s lives being depressing, put upon and essentially horrible (Longtime Marvel fans will remember Stan Lee making that same mistake with the little-discussed failures Journey Into Misery and The Soul-Destroying Piss-Man, although the latter is well-regarded amongst the alt-comix community for the visionary artwork of Steve Ditko), but with sales continuing to rise with each new depressive branding, it was looking as if the readership was as happy enough to buy into it as the creators. Then, however, Marvel published the Barack Obama issue of Spider-Man and their one big mistake was made.
See, Marvel didn’t have the rights to Barack Obama’s likeness. And, sure, while he’s a public figure, the White House has some great lawyers, and one thing led to another and suddenly all manner of secret deals were being put in place to save Marvel from costly financial and public losses resulting from the four page story… including letting the current President of the United States dictate certain creative decisions concerning the future of the Marvel Universe.
Many have wondered why the X-Babies have made a comeback, and brought the characters from Marvel’s appallingly-uninventive Star Comics line with them – the truth is, Planet Terry is Barack Obama’s favorite comic book and he demanded it. Others have wondered what the deal is with the cancelation of New Warriors, and the answer is simply that Obama thought it sucked. But those are small fish next to the second biggest issue on President Obama’s list of necessary moves to make his Marvel: Reunite the real Avengers.
The news that Marvel had to reunite the trinity of Thor, Iron Man and Captain America or else face public ridicule, bankruptcy and potential government bailout did not go down well internally; Brian Michael Bendis threatened to quit over what he saw as people muscling in on his territory as creative dictator for the publisher, while Mark Millar threatened to make another public statement about his own confused political opinions, reportedly telling Joe Quesada “I’m as lefty as Lenin, but John McCain would never have tried to tell us how to do our jobs! Plus, he was a war hero, and Obama sounds like something Jack Kirby would create and now I don’t know what to think.” Only the gift of Marvel stock and the promise to sell the company to Disney, thereby guaranteeing a financial windfall was enough to calm them down, and even that wasn’t enough for editor Tom Brevoort, who had to be forcibly restrained when given the news.
Eventually, however, almost everyone at the publisher came around to the idea – with the exception of Thor writer Straczynski, who decided that a life writing a midlevel team-up series at DC was preferable to having plotlines dictated by major political figures, sadly unaware that Sarah Palin was about to be announced as his collaborator on Brave and The Bold just months later.
And so, finally, Siege has been unveiled to the public, ending a tense few months at Marvel Comics. Editorial and creative figures within the publisher are said to be relieved by the fan reaction to the storyline, allowing them to get around to the one remaining item on Obama’s MU agenda: Explaining that whole “Peter Parker and Mary Jane making a deal with the devil to get divorced” thing.
Look forward to Spider-Man: One More Brand New Day Again in early 2010.
Ten Days
(If it’s a weekend where I’m doing io9 – including the 5 US Presidents Who Could Save Us From An Alien Invasion, thankyouverymuch – as well as the Comix Experience newsletter, then it’s a weekend where I’m far too slammed to come up with blog content. Which’ll explain why there was nothing yesterday (Sorry, all), but! Here’s last month’s now-no-longer-even-vaguely-relevant essay from the CE newsletter to give you something to read today.)
They’ve become known as the ten days that rocked the comic landscape! Ten days during August and September 2009 when the American comic industry as we knew it was irrevocably altered, thanks to two business decisions made by men, women and cartoon rodents who wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between Johnny Storm and the original Golden Age Human Torch even as they eagerly and avariciously listed them as two entirely distinct intellectual properties to shareholders (Clue: Only one of them would call Crystal of the Inhumans his girl, in the “Hey, buddy! Watch what you’re doing around my girl!” sense. And that’s because only one of them actually has working genitalia, because only one of them is not a stinking robot). As the comic industry reels from the realization that Hollywood didn’t really like it at all, it was just pretending to so that the comic industry would loosen up and give up all its ideas for potential hit movies, we take this opportunity to look at Marvel’s purchase by Disney and Warner Bros’ creation of DC Entertainment and explain for you all: What does it all mean?
How Mickey Mouse Took Paul Levitz’s Job But At Least He’ll Be Writing The Legion Again, So That’s Something, Right?: A Fanboy Rampage Special Report
Part 1: The Mickey Mouse Club.
August 31st, 2009: A day that will live in infamy for many, even though I just had to Google the date and was surprised that it wasn’t later. That was the day that millions of people woke up to the news that the Walt Disney Corporation was planning to purchase Marvel Entertainment in a stock and cash transaction worth 4 billion dollars, and at least half of them didn’t, as I did, assume it was some kind of elaborate scheme and then go back to sleep.
Within hours of the early-morning announcement of the buyout, Disney and Marvel held a conference call for investors, during which everyone sounded remarkably awake and happy about the deal, telling everyone that Marvel would stay exactly as it was, just like Pixar had (apart from that whole “Pixar being forced to make Toy Story 3 to keep Disney’s licensing division happy, even though no-one at the studio wanted to” thing), that Disney management understood that Marvel was already a corporate juggernaut dedicated to eradicating all of its competition by releasing so much product that other publishers would be forced off the shelves and raising prices because they were confident that fans would buy Avengers books at $3.99 even if it meant they’d have to drop a Dark Horse title or two to keep up, especially when they release continuity-important one-shots on a regular basis in addition to the monthly titles, and that, no, Mickey Mouse wasn’t really on the call, that’s just what Marvel Editor in Chief Joe Quesada sounds like when he’s excited. But for fans who weren’t invited to the call, all that existed were questions. Questions like:
• Does this mean that notoriously family-friendly Disney is going to stop rapist and murderer Norman Osborn from running the Marvel Universe, as depicted in the very realistic and not overlong or adolescent at all Dark Reign storyline?
• Does this mean that notoriously family-friendly Disney is going to stop books like X-Force (wherein superheroes are presented as black-costumed, red-eyed murderers), Thunderbolts (wherein supervillains are presented as pretend-superhero murderers) and Dark Avengers (wherein supervillains are presented as pretend-superhero murderers but it’s different characters so it’s not the same book at all, okay? Jeez, you’re all so picky with your “Oh, look at me, it’s the same idea as this other book, Marvel are milking this admittedly-thin idea for all it’s worth in an ill-timed cynical move that reflects the just-completed Bush era much more than the more optimistic, reflective Obama era in a curious misstep for the normally more-zeitgeist aware publisher!” Like Thor and Captain America don’t both fight crime!) from being published?
• No, seriously, Marvel’s still going to be all bad-ass and crap, right? I mean, they are, right? Come on, you can tell me. Seriously, come on, man.
• Is the Thing related to Mickey Mouse now? I mean, they both have three fingers, don’t they?
No answers, however, were forthcoming. Requests made to Marvel’s publicity department went unanswered, and even the normally fact-filled (Did you know that Marvel editor Tom Brevoort is grouchy?!?) Twitter feed of Joe Quesada offered nothing but mocking commentary hinting at the underlying fear and self-hatred of a man being slowly crushed by the gears of corporate entertainment machinery built around his ample frame. Documentation stolen from the Marvel offices at this time, however, revealed that the Disney buyout was actually orchestrated by Marvel executives who not only had no idea about how to follow the success of Iron Man and Secret Invasion. One email we recovered from the kerosened shell of a Dell computer read “Please, please. We are convinced we’re going to mess it up. You guys have been doing this for years, and if you buy us then everyone will blame you not us. How many characters do you want us to have? 2000? 5000? We’ll come up with a list. Will that make it easier? Oh God, save us please.”
Little did everyone realize that, across the crud-filled streets of Manhattan, Marvel’s main competitors were about to show everyone what a small world it really is, after all.
Part 2: That’s Entertainment.
With the comic industry still reeling from the idea that famously portrayed underdog Marvel Entertainment – what with their position as comic industry leader left almost untouched in more than a decade, their incredibly successful movie studio and licensing deals that would keep them solvent for many years to come even if everything else tanked – was now part of the Corporate Monolith of the entertainment industry, and the repercussions that came from that news – What if Disney started looking at the the possibility that the market couldn’t really support five monthly Avengers titles longterm? How can Marvel employees continue to claim that DC can afford to fund new formats and new ideas because of their corporate backing when Marvel has more backing? Whither all those “AOL Comics” jokes now, Joe? – September 9th 2009 changed everything once again.
The changes at DC Comics were, in truth, twofold, and at this point, it’s difficult to guess which one will end up being more important in the long term. In simple terms, what had happened was this: When Warner Bros. executives saw the news of the Disney/Marvel buyout, they freaked out. How could they get their hands on these kinds of headlines, they asked themselves – and preferably for less money than 4 billion dollars. Were there more of these “comic book publishers”? The relief was quite literally barely perceptible on the faces of the WB Source Wall when an excited accountant explained that Warner Bros. actually already owned one – and that it was the one that published Batman!
Plans were quickly put in place to announce this stunning development to the world with as much fuss as possible. Possible branding ideas were thrown around marketing departments like sweat-filled hackey sacks: “SUCK IT DISNEY: Warners Was There First” was deemed a mite too aggressive, while “Warners Has Owned DC Comics For Years: Who Knew?” considered a little too likely to make WB management look like doddering old fools who would constantly try and make live action movies out of Scooby Doo without realizing that it really, really, gets a little bit creepy watching a CGI animated dog eat a sandwich when you really think about it. Eventually, someone hit upon the idea of building an entire licensing division around DC Comics and announcing that, thereby managing to boast about the ownership of DC Comics in “stealth” mode. Thus, DC Entertainment was born.
Here’s how you can tell that WB’s announcement on September 9th was rushed: There’s actually a part of the official press release that said “We have no idea what’s going on, give us a few months.” Don’t believe me? Here it is:
DC Comics will celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2010 (NEW FUN COMICS #1, the first DC comic, began publishing in 1935), at which time more explicit details regarding DC Entertainment’s corporate and management structure, film and content release slate, creative roster and business objectives will be unveiled at a multi-faceted anniversary celebration and press conference in the first quarter of the year.
If ever anything demonstrated that changes were afoot at the normally-so-prepared-they’ll-announce-Justice League: Cry for Justice-more-than-a-year-before-it-debuts publisher, it’s that level of confusion… Well, that and the loss of publisher and president Paul Levitz.
Part 3: The Man Who Sold The World.
Ignore the moustache and quiet demeanor; as befits someone who works in the comic industry, Paul Levitz’ outer shell is but a secret identity for a man who’s saved the industry more times than you’ll ever know. For decades the conscience of DC Comics – and, on many occasions, the industry in general – Levitz has also been responsible for some of the biggest, and most positive, changes in the industry in general in recent memory, amongst them creator ownership and renumeration and careful nurturing of the bookstore market. Oh, and not destroying the Direct Market in the 1990s, but you should ask Brian to explain that one himself.
The creation of DC Entertainment came at the same time as Levitz stepping down as publisher and president of DC Comics. Rumors have flown as to how connected the two events were: Was Levitz fired? Did he quit, repulsed at the idea of the proud comic company he had led for years being turned into an idea machine for the craven movie industry and countless other Smallvilles? Was he forced, at gunpoint, to sign a pre-written resignation letter by WB executives eager for him to appear to step aside voluntarily, allowing them to appoint their own stooge to the position, giving them control over the publisher in a bloodless coup that would go unnoticed by everyone? Obviously, that last one is ridiculous; they only do that kind of thing over at Fox. All that is known is that, at this important time in DC Comics’ evolution, the company is without the one man who probably told Dan Didio “Dan, that’s a really bad idea” more than anyone else and lived to tell the tale.
Part 4: Where Do We Go From Here?
So where do we go from here? In only ten days, the two publishers responsible for about 80% of the direct market have become swallowed by Hollywood and, assurances for the safety of the publishing part of the companies aside, pretty much everything else is unknown for now.
Luckily, these events happened only days before the sealing of a local time capsule, so I slipped a short message inside before the close, asking time travelers from the future to pop back and tell us what became of the comic industry in years to come. Sure enough, Rokk Krinn soon appeared in his time bubble and told me all I needed to know. In the interests of preserving the time line, I sadly can’t share his message in its entirety, but I will tell you this: Jack Kirby was more of a visionary than any of us thought. Start preparing your loincloths, people… and don’t be too nervous when tigers start growing humanesque bodies and taking over society. It’s just what’s meant to happen.
Broadway Is Dark Tonight
(Because at least part of this weekend was spent writing the Onomatoepia newsletter, here’s the essay from last month’s, as way of apology.)
It should be noted, even though the world collectively forgot to be shocked by the news at the time, that Spider-Man: Turn Out The Dark (also known as “That Spider-Man Musical With The Worst Name Imaginable, Seriously Bono, We Don’t Care If You’re In U2, That’s A Ridiculous Name And Even You Know It And By The Way, Stop Selling Out And Appearing In Advertisements For Everything Under The Goddamned Sun, Wasn’t Having Your Own Special iPhone Brand Enough For You People And, Really, We Were All Being Polite And Pretending To Like ‘Vertigo’ Because You Haven’t Done Anything Good In Years” – although that title was only ever unofficially used in the trade magazines as it was thought to be too long for a theater marquee) has been forced to shut down pre-production after running out of money and is now no longer expected to open in February 2010 as originally planned. There are many reasons for this – some of which we’ll go into in this special edition of Fanboy Rampage Goes To Broadway – but the main one is, undoubtedly, the simple fact that it was a musical based on a superhero, something that historically has never done well.
Thanks to the internet, many people now pretend to be aware of such Broadway misses as It’s A Bird… It’s A Plane… It’s Superman! and What’s The Smell Of Fish, Oh It’s You, Aquaman – Most fondly remembered these days for giving the young Stanley Tucci his first professional acting role, as Squiggle The Baby Porpoise, of course – but the rain-splattered streets of New York’s fabled theater district is covered with the corpses of many other failed attempts at bringing the magic of the superhero genre to the stage. Tonight, we’ll list just some of the more high profile of these miserable failures for your musintertainment. Join us – After this break!
Shall We Bat?
The partnership of Jerome Kern and Ira Gershwin produced many popular movie musicals from Cover Girl to… well, Cover Girl, but a little known fact about the musical careers of both men is that, following the initial success of National Publications’ “Batman” character after his 1939 introduction, creator Bob Kane teamed with the songwriters with the idea of taking Bruce Wayne to Broadway. Initially announced as “an evening of dramatic entertainment punctuated by beautiful music and romance,” the playfully-titled Who’s That Masked Bat? was to feature a story “written” by Kane – Experts who’ve looked over the remaining notes believe that it was, unsurprisingly, actually the work of Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson – with five songs by Kern and Gershwin.
The show, sadly, didn’t even make it to the end of the writing process; Kern, already warned by his doctor to stick with Hollywood as the process of working with artists in such a confined space as a theater caused him multiple heart attacks, withdrew from the project following a series of arguments with Kane over whether or not Bruce Wayne should reveal his secret identity to Selina Kyle’s Catwoman character during the climactic number “Darling, I Have Something To Tell You (We Both Lead Double Lives That Bring Us Into Such Repeated Contact That It Must Either Be Fate Or Crappy Writing),” and the entire project was forced to be shelved when Gershwin’s brokered peace between the two was surprisingly ended by Kern’s death in 1945.
(Much criticized at the time, few comic fans realize that Jeph Loeb’s “Hush” was actually based upon the unproduced show, complete with Kern’s much-hoped-for reveal. The idea to adapt the show wasn’t Loeb’s, however, but instead something that artist Jim Lee came up with when Loeb missed several deadlines upon visiting a psychic and being told that he would one day write Marvel Comics’ Ultimatum. It took Loeb months to come out of the entirely understandable shock upon learning that terrible truth.)
This Is The Dawning Of The Age of Galactus
Buoyed by the surprise success of their hippiecal Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical when it opened on Broadway in late 1967, writers James Rado and Gerome Ragni looked around the shifting American culturescape for material for a follow-up that would have a similar pop-cultural impact while also allowing them to deal with even more “out there” themes and imagery. This coincided with Marvel’s Stan Lee opening his heart to the idea of selling out just a little bit more, and Lee, Rado and Ragni collided in a cloud of smoke, dreams and bullshit before announcing to the world that Broadway would soon tremble before the might of Spider-Man: The All-Singing All-Swinging Pop Art Musical.
The plot for Spider-Man was simple; Rado and Ragni convinced Lee to allow them to expand upon the classic origin story to allow for a poignant lament on the inescapable nature of destiny by the radioactive spider that bit Peter (“Got These Fangs For A Reason”), a nude bedroom number between Uncle Ben and Aunt May (“Don’t You Know I Love You Despite Your Wrinkles And Unexplained Health Problems That Will Plague Our Nephew For Years To Come”) and, most unexpectedly, an extended “freak-out” following Peter discovering his powers that changed his chosen career from pro-wrestling to go-go dancing at the Coffee Bean (featuring the classic “That Boy (Ain’t No Woman, But He Sho’ Knows How To Move),” later a radio hit for Billy Preston and Syreeta). The villain of the piece wasn’t a familiar Spider-villain, but instead a new creation of the writers, The Man, said to personify everything that was, like, squaresville and old-fashioned about America at the time. In a controversial (and ultimately excised before the show premiered) scene, The Man admitted to Spider-Man that he thought that Vietnam was groovy, and that Paul McCartney was an underrated but essential part of the Beatles’ cross-generational appeal, offering a comforting familiarity for older listeners that eased their entry into some of the more outre songs provided by an increasingly erratic John Lennon; unsurprisingly, it was the latter opinion that was deemed too much for the target audience, and Ragni and Rado agreed to replace the exchange with a dance number where Spider-Man showed his disapproval by taking off his shirt and screaming at the sky.
Despite the title, Spider-Man wasn’t the only Marvel character to appear in the show. Mr. Fantastic, the Thing, Professor Xavier and Captain America all made cameo appearances, with Cap demanding that he be replaced by a native American to truly personify America’s spirit before breaking down and weeping. In a final scene that many thought unnecessary, Peter Parker learned that while we were all beautiful people, the planet was about to be eaten by Galactus and so everyone should live life as if every day was their last, a lesson followed by a reprise of Hair’s infamous “everyone gets naked and has a love-in on stage” finale.
With music written by The Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian, Spider-Man opened in early 1969 to rave reviews. It was only when Stan Lee visited the show and realized what had happened to his beloved and, by this point, much-licensed characters that he sued the show’s producers for slander, libel and words he’d never heard in the Bible and managed to get the show closed and expunged from the public’s memory (That last part came from a deal with Mephisto. You don’t want to know what he whispered in his ear).
To this day, you can occasionally find small underground revivals of the show in rep theaters across America, closely followed by those responsible for such revivals mysteriously disappearing and never being spoken of again.
Razzle Dazzler
While many are familiar with the origins of Marvel Comics’ Dazzler – Namely, a Hollywood producer, record executive and Marvel Comics editor got drunk in a bar one night and decided to make a superheroine who could be played in a movie by Donna Summer and have records released in the real world, but then everyone sobered up apart from the Marvel editor – far fewer know the true story behind Jim Shooter’s Dazzler The Movie graphic novel, in which Dazzler falls for the most thinly-veiled Frank Sinatra analog that you could legally get away with, gets fat (except she doesn’t), starts smoking and then realizes that she’s not going to do it anymore. Or something. As you can tell from its inclusion here, it was originally going to be a Broadway musical.
The 1980s were a weird time for Marvel Comics. As the company grew in stature, it started looking for new outlets with which to unleash the creativity that had resulted in such books as Peter Parker, The Spectacular Spider-Man, The West Coast Avengers and New Mutants. Sure, there were the Saturday morning cartoons like Spider-Man And His Amazing Friends and The Incredible Hulk, but Shooter – the company’s gargantuan editor-in-chief at the time, and a man who’d gotten his start in the industry at age 14 and therefore had no experience of the real world – was convinced that there had to be more. Before too long, the publisher was working with toy manufacturer Hasbro to co-create the Transformers and GI Joe toylines in a deal that would see them make absolutely no money whatsoever from the subsequent multi-million-dollar movies each franchise would generate, but that wasn’t enough for Shooter. He wanted mainstream.
It was a wish that almost came true. As anyone who’s seen respected documentary The Muppets Takes Manhattan knows, the Big Apple is full of con artists pretending to be Broadway producers, men who’ll “love” your idea as long as you can invest a certain amount of money in the production yourself, just to “get it started.” Sadly, James Winston Shooter turned out to be as good a judge of character as Kermit T. Frog, and so it was that he invested the entirety of Marvel Comics’ profits in the promise of a Dazzler Broadway show that he, he had been informed, would have to write by Monday and, if possible, include a starring role for the “producer”’s good friend Frankie Sinatra. With stars in his eyes and ants in his pants, Shooter turned out a script in record time, only to discover that the producer had disappeared with the money, leaving the editor-in-chief with the best thing he’d ever written – Well, in his opinion, but bear in mind that this is the man who created Star Brand – and a bankrupt company. What could be done?
The answer, according to Shooter, was to turn the script into a comic, and show the world what comics were really capable of. It was the 1980s, after all, and books like Maus, Raw and American Flagg were showing mainstream critics just what the medium could really do, so why not blow them all away with the newly-renamed Dazzler: The Movie? Shooter knew that only the graphic novel format would suit such a groundbreaking book, and that it deserved the best art team possible – but, sadly, they weren’t available, so he went with Frank Springer and Vinnie Colletta. Rushed into production to save Marvel from years of financial woes that would involve the publisher being bought and sold all over the place before finally having to declare bankruptcy, Shooter saved himself from guilt and thoughts of foolishness over his actions by knowing that this book, more than any other, would define the cutting edge of comic storytelling for years to come.
The rest is history.
Spider-Man: Turn Off The Electricity, Please.
And so, finally, we come to the most recent casualty of the war between comics and Broadway, Spider-Man: Turn Off The Dark. Those involved with the production have claimed that they don’t know what went wrong, but I think it’s fair to say that “Spending all of your $40 million budget six months before the show’s supposed to open” and “Hiring movie actors with no Broadway experience” should probably be warning signs of some kind. Also, that name – which, in case the Scrabble buffs at home haven’t worked it out yet, happens to be an anagram of “This Show Is A Terrible Idea,” only with some other letters.
It’s hard to say whether or not this final failure will convince the world of that business we call “show” once and for all that superhero musicals are a bad idea – As you read this, Warners are working on The Wonder Woman Look-At-Those-Gams Revue for a late 2012 opening, featuring the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes as Diana’s Amazon high-steppers, after all – but we can all hope so. Although, if any Broadway producers happen to be reading this, I do have a script for a Green Lantern show that would knock your socks off. Just picture it: Thirty-six dwarves, painted blue, singing in harmony about needing to impose order on the world…
On Captain America’s Rebirth
(June’s Onomatoepeia essay, written concurrently with this io9.com post; as you can see, I was obsessed.)
Can we, for a second, talk about this whole Captain America: Reborn thing? Thanks.
For those who don’t have an internet connection and/or obsessively live online in fear of accidentally missing the next big news story that is much less actual news as much as a specially-timed press release announcing a story that a particular publisher thinks will be beneficial to them only if announced at a particular time and in a particular place, I’ll give you a quick introduction to what you’ve missed. A couple of months ago, Marvel solicited a comic called Reborn #1, and pretty much didn’t say anything about it. They said that Ed Brubaker was writing, Bryan Hitch was drawing, gave the price and then added, as if it was an afterthought that, oh yeah: Maybe Reborn wasn’t actually the title of the comic after all.
Of course, everyone assumed that this meant that the comic was all about Captain America coming back to life. Not only was Ed Brubaker writing, but the last time that Marvel pulled the “We’re not telling you anything/Maybe that isn’t even the real name of the comic, aren’t we sneaky?” card, it was for Fallen Son, which turned out to actually be called Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America. Not only that, but who else in the Marvel Universe is both dead and a big enough name to carry their own top-secret series? It either came down to Cap or Phoenix, unless Marvel was suddenly planning to put a big-name, high-profile creative team behind a push for Willie Lumpkin: Reborn.
(Willie Lumpkin is actually dead, right? I’m not sure about that, and Wikipedia is such an unreliable source that it actually tried to convince me that Mark Millar and Steve McNiven’s Old Man Logan was something other than a mash-up of Mad Max and The Unforgiven, so it’s not like I can rely on it for anything. I just feel as if he has to be dead by now. Wiggling your ears may be a fine party trick, but it’s hardly likely to keep you alive during Civil Wars, World War Hulks and Secret Invasions. He’s got to be a goner by now, even if we’ve not seen it. Maybe I should pitch that to Marvel.)
Once the rumor that Steve Rogers was coming back from the great beyond only two and a half years after visiting there in the first place hit the internet, there was nothing to be done to keep it a secret… or, apparently, to make it interesting. Reactions from fans ranged from “Eh” to “Eh, maybe it’ll be good,” and that, my friends, was where everything went wrong.
My anonymous sources within Marvel told me that the general apathy about the idea of Steve Rogers coming back to life caused mild panic at the House of Ideas. Why, the creators of some of Marvel’s top-selling titles wondered, weren’t the fans going online and talking about who could possibly be the top secret character about to be reborn, especially with such a subtle print ad as the one they’d come up with using Captain America’s star emblem? Was their mysterious marketing campaign too mysterious? Just as Norman Osborn had taken over the political heart of America in the “groundbreaking, and not at all just a bigger version of Thunderbolts for the last year” Dark Reign, had something other than Marvel Comics taken over the heart of the comic book faithful?
Fear gripped the fleshy throat of Marvel Editor In Chief Joe Quesada. After all, Captain America’s return wasn’t just meant to be an epic in and of itself – Although, come on, he rationalized in his mind, how could anyone not realize that it was an epic when they were refusing to release a real solicitation? Doesn’t everyone realize that, when you make a point of not talking about something, it’s because you want everyone else to talk about it? – but also the turning point for the whole Dark Reign branding and event, the final piece of a long, cluttered and expensive puzzle that will once again put Thor, Tony Stark and Steve Rogers together again as the real Avengers, fighting against the oppressive forces of Norman Osborn’s oppression? If fans didn’t get excited about Reborn, then how could they know that it was Important?
(The Real Avengers, by the way, is currently still scheduled to launch July 2010, heading up Marvel’s next branding, This Shit Is Getting Real. Bringing the number of ongoing Avengers titles up to five – New, Mighty, Dark and The Initiative being the other four, unless you also count Ultimate Comics Avengers, but only someone who didn’t realize that that book happens on another Earth so doesn’t count would do that, duh, the series will be written by Brian Michael Bendis and illustrated by whoever Marvel thinks they can try to convince you is popular at the time. Hey, it worked for Billy Tan. Other This Shit Is Getting Real books will include Real Iron Man – in which Matt Fraction kills off Tony Stark before revealing that he’s not really dead, he just downloaded himself into every computer in the world and turning the series into a Marvel version of Tron – and Real Hulk, in which Jeph Loeb does whatever the hell he wants, as long as Ed McGuinness gets to draw it all in double page spreads, and we all wonder how the hell there’s more than one Hulk ongoing monthly these days anyway. Oh, and I’m sure someone else will be revealed to have another illegitimate kid, just like Skaar and Dark Wolverine. My money’s on Thor, if only because I want to see a book called Li’l Thunder and Li’l Lightning being taken incredibly seriously by the powers that be.)
Clearly, drastic action needed to be taken. And so, Marvel announced in late May that they would talk about Reborn on June 15th, when a mainstream publication would make an announcement about it that would – and I’m honestly quoting here – “possibly on par with the media coverage we received during Civil War” (Sadly, the press release from Marvel omitted the important following words: “No, we’re not blowing up parts of Connecticut again”). A few days later, Marvel released another statement saying that they were also releasing Captain America #600 on June 15th – two days earlier than it was originally due, and a special Monday release if your retailer was willing to pay more money for the “pleasure” – but that wasn’t related to anything about Reborn or said Civil War-level press coverage that was supposed to be happening on that very same day at all. Nooooo. That would just be crazy talk. Still, the various Marvel decisionmakers figured, now people would have to speculate wildly about how awesome Reborn was going to be.
(A slight detour here for a second, but does anyone actually remember what the media coverage for Civil War was actually like? To the best of my memory, there was a moment of “OMG, Spider-Man’s taken his mask off!” kerfuffle on a particularly slow news day, and that was about it. Am I forgetting lots of other press, or was Marvel actually sending a coded message that there would only be press coverage if nothing else was actually happening on the world on the same day? If it’s the latter, then, well played, Marvel. Sneaky, but your asses were well and truly covered on that one.)
Nonetheless, the stunts worked – people started talking about Reborn. Sadly, they mostly talked about how obvious it was that it was the Steve Rogers Captain America getting reborn, and how disappointed they were about this because they’d really liked the Bucky version of Cap, and anyway, hadn’t Ed Brubaker repeatedly said that Steve Rogers wouldn’t come back while he had any say in the matter? Occasionally, someone would also point out that this kind of thing was really better left to Geoff Johns and Ethan VanSciver, who were making a considerable career for themselves in bringing back the characters from their youth over at DC, before pointing out that Flash: Rebirth is much more similar to Green Lantern: Rebirth than Johns would admit, even down to the last page reveal in the latest issue (If [mystery villain not named to prevent spoilerrage] gets scar in the shape of lightning on any part of their body before the end of the series, a la Sinestro in GL: Rebirth and Superboy Prime in Infinite Crisis, it may be time to send Johns in for a tune-up. Just sayin’).
Retailers, meanwhile, tried to parse out what the hell Marvel was doing. Surely it was too obvious to just bring Steve Rogers back to life, and how would doing so get them the mainstream news coverage that they were talking about? And what the hell was this about releasing Cap #600 two days early, but only if they paid for a special shipment? All manner of possibilities were floated about what could possibly be going on: Was the actor playing Cap in the new Captain America: The First Avenger movie going to be announced? Was a new Captain America going to be unveiled, and would he be black? Was Obama going to appear? Was Obama going to be the new Captain America? Luckily, the comic industry is a business and, as Marvel’s customers, they could easily ask them directly what was going on… No, wait, I forgot; I’m talking about the comic industry. Instead, they were told to just wait for the big press announcement, as well as everyone else.
Here’s the real problem with what happened: Everyone assumed two things here about Marvel Comics, neither of which are actually true. Firstly, that Marvel was too smart to really obviously tease the return of Captain America without then turning it around and doing something unexpected like not make the reveal that Captain America was coming back to life. And secondly, that no-one at Marvel could really believe that the mainstream press would treat a comic character coming back to life with the same excitement and fervor as they did killing one off in the first place.
To be fair to everyone, it’s not as if that second assumption was completely insane. Surely, everyone must have assumed, Marvel would remember the way that the press got overexcited about the death of Superman all those years ago, and then pretty much ignored him coming back to life months later. I mean, that’s just not the kind of marketing mistake that you’d think a publisher about to do a very similar thing would make. But here’s where I have to point you back in the direction of the first assumption. Remember: Never assume when it comes to Marvel Comics. In that case, “assume” just makes an “ass” out of “you” and “the entire comic industry that isn’t Marvel Comics.”
And so, June 15th came along, and so did the news announcement: Steve Rogers was coming back to life.
To say that jaws hit the floor would not only be a gross overstatement, it’d also be an outright lie; despite Marvel’s various attempts to make the idea of Steve Rogers returning to life not seem (a) inevitable and (b) kind of dull, really, the reaction from comic fandom seemed almost deafening before you realized that, no, that lack of noise wasn’t because it was too loud, it was because there was no noise to hear. It was as if the collective mind of everyone who’d heard the news was blown just because they couldn’t believe that it was quite that lame.
There are lessons to be learned from this entire affair for everyone. For one thing, we’ve all discovered that saying nothing other than “It’s going to be big, you just wait” will actually succeed in creating some level of buzz about your announcement. We’ve also discovered that, when everyone has guessed your big secret, just going ahead and announcing it in a newspaper as if it was still a secret will still get you headlines on almost every comic-related website in existence. And, most importantly, Marvel has discovered that distraction really is the easiest way to sneak out information that you don’t really want too many people to pay attention to at the time. While everyone was paying attention to Reborn officially being renamed Captain America: Reborn, Marvel editorial quietly admitted that that Brubaker/Hitch team was actually Brubaker/Hitch/Butch Guice and entirely based on the understanding that when – I’m sorry, I mean “if” (Okay, I don’t, really) – Hitch falls off schedule, Guice will take over the penciling of the series.
Sneaky, sneaky, Marvel. And yet, no-one seemed to notice. There’s a reason you guys are, like Wolverine, the best there is at what you do. It’s just a shame that what you do sometimes isn’t very nice, as well.
Redefining Death In The DC Universe
(Onomatoepeia time again – This is from May.)
Color me unsurprised to read that DC head honcho Dan Didio is telling interviewers that their summer event Blackest Night will have far-reaching consequences for the DC Universe, including the deaths of some fan-favorite characters, especially considering that the whole thing is about dead people coming back to life (Including Pa Kent and the Flying Graysons! Finally, DC’s characters are embracing all their parental issues and coming to terms with them in a mature, adult way that is only slightly undercut by having said parents be undead agents of a mysterious evil force that’s probably hellbent on doing something that will involve the multiverse in one way or another, as all DC’s events seem to. Nonetheless, I support their bold move, and look forward to the next weekly DC title, Dad Comics). After all, isn’t that what we come to event books for? No-one really bought Civil War or Secret Invasion because they couldn’t wait to find out whether Mark Millar had reached a whole new plateau of managing to make characters sound insincere and surprisingly shallow or because they just had to read the next Brian Michael Bendis Spidey bon mot like “Skrulls? You mean the green guys with the funny chins? Yeah, that’s right, I’m speaking like I’ve never met a Skrull before because it gives my writer a chance to force some humor into the story while also allowing for exposition for new readers, even if it does sacrifice characterization (I am so lame).” No, event books are supposed to feature events so shocking that you can only see them at least two issues in advance (Hello, death of Wasp) and normally involve dying; it’s part of the contract that we all signed when we agreed to read superhero comics in the first place (That wasn’t just me, right?).
And so, I’m fully prepared for Hawkman and Hawkgirl to die for a second time in as many years – Seriously, what was with their dying/non-dying at the end of Final Crisis? – because that’s what I want to see when I pick up Blackest Night #1, much more than I want to see undead Ronnie Raymond or undead Aquaman… or, for that matter, undead Hawkman and Hawkgirl. But then, after promising me that I’ll get what I pay for, Didio went on to make me very worried indeed. He promised that Blackest Night will also “redefine what death means in the DC Universe.”
Wait. What?
Exactly how will it redefine death? Isn’t death pretty well defined already? As in, “It’s not being alive?” Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of loopholes in staying dead in the DC – and, for that matter, almost every other superhero and soap opera – Universe, but that doesn’t mean that there’s a problem with the definition of death, more one with the definition of (a) how permanent death is, and (b) the revolving door on the afterlife. It’s always worth remembering that almost all of DC’s most recognizable superheroes have now, at one point or another, died and come back to life. Think about it for a second: Superman? Yup. Batman? He’s still “dead” (Okay, omega beamed into the past and/or another Earth, but I’m still curious as to what the deal was with that Batman-costumed corpse in Final Crisis). Green Lantern? Yes. Flash? Just come back the other month. Green Arrow. Indeed. Hawkman? Numerous times! Aquaman’s only purpose in the last few years has been to die! Only Wonder Woman has so far escaped the afterlife, and that’s only because she was made of clay in the first place. So looking at it like that, I can see the point of trying to come up with some new rules regarding dying in the DCU… I just don’t know how they’re going to get around to doing it.
(I really hope that there’s some Blackest Night tie-in that is just 32 pages of characters sitting around, saying “You know, I’m really glad that I managed to come back to life before all this happened. It’d have sucked to have been a Black Lantern, don’t you think?” to each other. Brad Meltzer could write it; he’s really good at stories full of faux gravitas and very little happening, as anyone who read DC Universe: Last Will & Testament can tell you.)
If nothing else, I’m uneasy with the idea of Geoff Johns being the writer to come up with the new death rules. If there’s been one writer who’s done more to damage the permanence of death in the DC Universe over the last few years, it’s Johns, who seemingly can’t help himself when it comes to the old resurrection game. In one sense, you can’t really blame him; I mean, Green Lantern: Rebirth was a big hit, and ended up making his name and giving him a franchise that allowed him to do Sinestro Corps War, Blackest Night and the upcoming final part of the series, Rainbow Lanterns: The Animated Series. Who can really say that he was wrong to go back to that well with The Flash: Rebirth and the dual returns of Superboy and Kid Flash in Legion of 3 Worlds? Admittedly, that last one still seem more than a little like the writer was all “Seriously, I just got around to reading that last Flash series, and you killed off Bart? What the hell was that? You made him all old and angst-ridden and changed his character entirely and then just killed him off? Were you guys all high? Jeez, just leave it to me. I’ll fix it. Seriously, I’m sick of having to clean up after you guys. Next time, stop doing stupid crap in the first place,” but I can’t say that I disagree with him too much. But my point remains: The man is hooked on bringing characters back to life.
Sure, at least he does it in an interesting way. Any other writer would’ve come up with some lame “Hey, that wasn’t really Hal Jordan who went mad, killed people and died, the real Hal was… uhhhh… asleep! And now he’s awake again! Yay!” excuse, but Johns decided to go the “Okay, so there’s this giant yellow fear god, okay, and he was, like, possessing Hal, who is dead, but he can get better…” route. Same with Flash: Rebirth, which at least starts with the idea that Barry Allen should’ve stayed dead all along, even if - spoiler! – we all know that he’s going to be fine and dandy and running around like a mofo by the end of the series. Me, if I’d been given the job of writing the same series, I would’ve just had it start with Barry saying “Hey, you all saw that I came back during Final Crisis, right? So, you know, there’s my rebirth story right there. Time for a quick nap… Back in a flash!” before winking at the reader, thereby showing you just why I’ve never made it as a professional comics corpse-regressioner.
(My other Rebirth pitches, just because: Aquaman: Rebirth opens with Arthur climbing out the ocean, perfectly alive. Someone – let’s say it’s the assembled stunned Teen Titans – point out that he was dead, and he just laughs it off: “What, dead? No, I was in a sea coma, and the salt in the ocean just preserved me very well while I healed.” I’m getting to the core of the character, you see? Same with my Martian Manhunter: Rebirth idea, which is him wandering into the JLA HQ and pointing out that he has no idea who that guy they thought was him getting killed, because how likely is it that a guy who can turn invisible, change his shape and has all of Superman’s powers could just get killed by being stabbed like that in the first place. The other five issues would be everyone trying to find out who the fake J’Onn was, before the final issue reveals that it’s really a rogue Doombot trying to make up for his past sins, leading to an all new Marvel Vs. DC miniseries. I’m telling you, I have it all planned out, just waiting for the greenlight from the powers that be.)
But I digress. My point, way back when, was that – even if death needs to be redefined for the DC Universe, a point I am already entirely unconvinced about – there must be a better person to redefine it than the man who has probably caused the need for redefinition more than anyone else at the company in the last ten years. Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that Geoff Johns is a bad writer, or that he shouldn’t be given as many high profile projects that will, at some point, involve a guest shot of some sort by the Legion of Super-Heroes as possible, because neither of those is anywhere close to true. But what I am saying is that, perhaps, there is someone better suited to be given the task of settling, once and for all, what “death” means in a fictional reality where demons rhyme and Jim Starlin keeps being given opportunities to try and make people care about Captain Comet.
That man is, of course, Tim Gunn.
I know, I know; you’re stunned by just how logical it is. It’s alright. Sit down and take a moment to compose yourself, we’ll all still be here when you get back.
Gunn, for those of you who don’t watch television’s Project Runway is the fashion world’s version of the Avengers’ Jarvis, only with more gay and more hair. He’s endlessly helpful, kind and humble, and with a quick wit that makes you love him even when you’re slightly embarrassed to watch him try to pick up the hep young kids’ lingo like “holla atcha boy” (Don’t ask), all ingredients that make him the ideal person to finally help define death for DC moving forward.
The problem, you see, is that I was reading Dan Didio’s statement too literally. Death, as a concept, doesn’t need any redefinition at all in the DC Universe or anywhere else. It’s Death, the personification of that concept, that needs what Mr. Gunn would eagerly describe as a makeover after decade of confusion about its look. Consider, if you will, that while Death in the Marvel Universe has one simple look – Hooded, cloak and the skull-face, which may not look good to us but drives Thanos wild with desire – DC’s Death has tried to be a little more… variable with the image. We’ve seen the Black Flash, riffing on Barry Allen’s classic costume, we’ve seen the ankh-ridden goth look, and who can forget the Black Racer, where death came with skis? But now, in this new millennium, it’s time for something new, and you can’t blame Didio for worrying that the Black Lantern thing isn’t going to convince critics. So why not seek out a fashion professional to redefine the look of Death for a whole new generation, and try to grab a few headlines while you’re at it? It seemed like a no-brainer… at least until Marvel announced that they’d already sewn up Gunn for an appearance in Marvel Divas, their fashion-forward mini-series.
It’s a setback, I can’t deny it. If not Gunn, then who could possibly take his place? Isaac Mizrahi, who’s already proving to be a distant second in Runway rip-off The Fashion Show? I don’t think so – and don’t even come near me with suggestions of the hosts of TLC’s top-rated-for-a-minor-cable-channel What Not To Wear. So, sadly, perhaps we’re left with Geoff Johns leading the charge once again after all. On the plus side, now that he’s no longer writing every book that DC publishes any longer, there’s every chance that Didio could send him to fashion school for awhile to try and come up with something that wouldn’t seem too out of place on the runway of New York Fashion Week… or, at the very least, an episode of Ugly Betty. Just make sure that no-one lets him rip an arm or two off the final costume. He has a tendency for that kind of thing, sadly.
The Sad Cost Of Dark Reign
(Yet another Onomatoepeia essay – This one, let’s charitably say, from March.)
Hey.
Mebbe youse guys remember me. Names’s Peter Petruski, and yeah, yeah, I know that sounds like that guy offa that Heroes show on TV that everyone useta watch, but I was there first, awright? Anyway, youse aren’t supposeta know my real name, oh no. I worked hard so everyone would know – and fear! Don’t forget fear! – me by my work name for alla these years, which is why this whole thing chaps my ass so much. See, Imma certified genius, right? One a those big brains that normally wear white coats and smoke pipes and stuff, but I decided that I didn’t wanna write grant applications and papers and allathatcrap, so I went into business for myself, sellin’ secrets and robbin’ banks and everythin’ was jake for awhile, ya know? And then they got involved.
Like I said, Pete Petruski don’t mean nothin’ to youse, and that’s the way I like it. But I’m sure ya all hearda… The Trapster!
No?
Aw, crap, see, this is my problem right here. But even if that name never really caught on, there’s no way ya ain’t never hearda… Paste Pot Pete!
Yeah, yeah, yuk it up awready. I heard it all before, wise guy.
See, now you just sound like Norman. Norman Osborn, I mean. Yeah, didn’t think I knew him, didja? Well, I do. I known ol’ Normie more than 40 years now, from the good ol’ days when he was still dressin’ up in green and purple and smackin’ around that Spider-Man kid when Ditko was still drawin’ him. Man, those were the days, lemme tell ya. Ditko was drawin’ him, Kirby was drawin’ me, and we all had this sweet life; we’d only haveta show up every few months, grumble and look menacin’ for a few pages and then we’d be taken to jail, but it was an old-school jail, all clean and with access to whatever we wanted so we could be ready to escape and show up again at a moment’s notice. None a’ this “six issue mini-series” crap from today, where ya gotta show up for months of foreshadowin’ and spend whole issues fightin’ with every single thing in so much focus. Jeez, I’m tellin’ ya, I did a Fantastic Four a couple years ago, and that almost killed me.
Where was I? Oh yeah, that’s right, Norm Osborn.
So like I said, me and Norm, we go way back. And I’m on the internet the other week and, lo and behold, there’s Osborn all over everythin’. “Dark Reign,” everythin’s sayin’, “There’s this new Dark Reign and the bad guys have taken over the Marvel Universe, with Norman Osborn takin’ over the Avengers and SHIELD and everythin’” and I see that and I think to myself, man. I gotta get in on some a that sweet action.
Don’t get me wrong, I know that I ain’t been the most popular guy lately, and I been keepin’ myself to myself, but I figger, if bad guys are takin’ over, there gotta be somewhere I can be, right? Like, if we’re in charge now, surely I can get somethin’, ’specially ’cause me and Norm, ya know? From way back. So I call him up, or at least, I try to. He’s workin’ at this new place now, HAMMER? It’s like some SHIELD replacement but staffed by bastards or somethin’, best I can tell. And the receptionist there is like the queen bastard, she’s totally doin’ her best professional gatekeeper mode, all “I’m sorry Mr. Trapster, but Mr. Osborn isn’t available, he’s meeting with the President who looks a lot like Barack Obama but officially isn’t in case we end up in legal trouble for profiting from an appropriated likeness that we have not asked for permission to use,” and I’m all “Jeez, lady, yer killin’ me here, just tell him it’s Paste Pot Pete awready,” and she’s “Perhaps you don’t understand how important our unnamed Obama-esque President really is” and talkin’ about five printin’s for Amazing Spider-Man or somethin. I dunno, it was like Norm had sold out, you know? Become onna the suits already.
So I started ta ask around. I went ta see the Wizard, I figgered that, if anyone could figger out a way for me to get to see Osborn, it’d be the smartest guy around. Little did I know that he was just as bad off as I was. He’d finally worked out this guest star gig in New Avengers where he’d be this flunky to this Hood punk, and he was hatin’ it. We met up for patty melts and he was bitchin’ about how this Hood didn’t have the history we had and wasn’t, like, smart or crap, just had this magic cloak and there was a demon or somethin’ but even then, he had his own series already and was gonna get another one. I was all “Yeah, man, it’s not like the old days,” ya know? Just agreein’ and trynna convince him that Osborn could change all that. All we hadda do was see Osborn and he’s fix us up.
Eventually, he came ’round to my way a seein’ things. I’m not gonna lie, I mighta slipped him some a my magic paste in his coffee to help him along, but that’s what friends do, right? They help each other, even if it includes makin’ him puke a little to see the light. So he slips me one of his patented flyin’ disks and that night, I take a little trip to the top o’ Stark Tower to see the great Norman Osborn himself.
Ya shouldda seen his face when he saw me floatin’ outside his window like that. He was all “You look some cut-rate Superman” and I was all “Yeah, well you’ve turned into a Lex Luthor with hair, and dumb hair at that” and I think I got under his skin a little with that one. I remember when everyone thought he was dead, we’d hang out and read Superman comics and he was always so jealous of Lex, sayin’ that he shouldda done that in the first place, the whole “Machiavellian Genius Behind The Scenes” thing, and have suits and flunkies and crap alla time instead of flyin’ around on his tiny Goblin glider. I never thought he’s actually do it. But look at him now, runnin’ the world! All he needs is a Kryptonite Ring and he’s classic 1990s Luthor. Ya gotta admire a man who follows through on his derivative ambitions like that, ya know?
So after an hour of pretendin’ to ignore me, he finally opens the window and lets me in, and asks me what I’m there for. He’s got his grumpy face on, so I lay it on the table. I’m all, listen Osborn, we go back a long way, and now that you’re pullin’ all these strings like Phil Masters, I figger ya owe me somethin’. He’s all smirkin’ and doin’ the steeple-fingers thing and sayin’ “Oh, really?” and I’m like, yeah, come on, you’re The Man now, do me a solid.
Mebbe somethin’ I said got to him, ’cause next thing I know, he’s askin’ what it is I want, exactly. I’m all, hey, I know how it works. Just gimme a three issue mini-series of my own to get myself back on my feet and then I’ll be ready for the big time. Just three issues of Dark Reign: The Trapster and then I’ll take on the FF, Spider-Guy or any of the seven million Avengers teams goin’ around these days. I’m like, listen man, I see Elektra and The Hood and Venom and even the freakin’ Lethal Legion gettin’ their own series these days, and if there’s one thing I know, it’s that I’m as worthy of some schmuck’s $3.99 as the Lethal Legion. Gimme a shot, I says, and I’ll make you proud.
You could see him bein’ unimpressed. He did that whole turnin’ his back and speakin’ quitely and then turnin’ back and shoutin’ thing he does, sayin’ that I didn’t understand the game anymore, that not just any guy gets their own series these days and that I didn’t have “the depth” to go over well to a new audience. And then he got mean. “You’re a joke,” he said, right to my face, “You’re a punchline, today’s audience wants murderers and moral ambiguity and depth and not geniuses that called themselves Paste Pot Pete.” He’s all “Even Dan Slott wouldn’t put you in one of his books,” and that kinda hurt, I gotta tell ya. But I didn’t blink, I was all “Hey! I been in the background of recent Spider-Mans, ya crumb!” and then tellin’ him that I’d worked out this whole new origin for myself so that people would, like, treat me with respect again.
What if, I told him, what if I was, like, sexually abused or somethin’, and my paste gun is, like, a metaphor for my own sexual dysfunction? Like, the paste and my junk… and then he’s all “That’s disgusting” and “We don’t go anywhere near that area after the whole radioactive spider sperm incident of 2007″ and “Who would write that kind of garbage anyway” and I’m all, “Hey, Geoff Johns would totally tear off some other guy’s arm to come up with an idea like that!” Like, it’d make me into a more sympathetic figure, and then I’d be all morally ambiguous and stuff like you want because I’d be doin’ it to get back at my dad or my uncle or my doctor or my priest or society or somethin’, and there could even be scenes where Mr. Fantastic, like, turns into my dad durin’ a fight and I’m all “Ya won’t do it to me again” and cryin’ and crap. People would love that, I’m tellin’ ya.
Normie was havin’ none o’ it. He said that he controlled what happened in the Marvel Universe at least until the next summer event, and then whispered that he was sure that Bendis and everyone else had no idea what to do next, so he figgered he was safe for another year at least, and then he said that as far as he was concerned, I was a bit player in the larger continuity and was gonna stay that way. And then he pressed a button on the Wizard’s flyin’ disk and I shot straight out the window like I was Bruce Wayne’s bat or somethin’. Whammo and glass everywhere. Didn’t stop ’til I hit Brooklyn.
So that’s how I’m here, tellin’ ya all this, ya see? Osborn’s gotta be stopped. I don’t give a crap about the greater good or him tarnishin’ the name of the Avengers or any o’ that, but he’s holdin’ me and my kind down. Used ta be a time that blue-collar geniuses like me had a chance with the big guys, but these days it’s all conspiracies and behind the scenes mental warfare and no fightin’ unless it’s a mass fight scene where nothin’ really happens because there’re too many people there. That ain’t why I got in the game, and I’m bettin’ it ain’t why you did, either. I figger that either we take Osborn out ourselves or just jump ship to DC while no-one’s payin’ attention. I mean, I could totally see myself takin’ on the Flash or somethin’, especially now that Barry Allen’s comin’ back. You think he could outrun a guy with a paste gun? I think you know what I’m sayin’.
You ain’t got Geoff Johns’ phone number, do ya?
