Spoiler Warning: Announcements Suck
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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.
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