Miscellaneous (Superheroes) - "C" Page 2

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Challengers of the Unknown Must Die!
see my review here

Colossus: God's Country
see my review here

The Contest of Champions
see my review here

Cosmic Odyssey  1991 (SC TPB) 200 pgs.

Written by Jim Starlin. Pencils by Mike Mignola. Inks by Carlos Garzon.
Colours: Steve Oliff. Letters: John Workman. Editor: Mike Carlin.

Reprinting: Cosmic Odyssey #1-4 (1988 prestige format mini-series)

Rating: * * 1/2 (out of 5)

Number of readings: 2

Published by DC Comics

Evil Darkseid and the benevolent New Gods discover Darkseid's long-sought after anti-Life formula is, in reality, an other-dimensional entity on the verge of crossing into our reality. They recruit earth superheroes Superman, Batman, J'onn J'onzz, John (Green Lantern) Stewart, Starfire (of the New Teen Titans), with Etrigan the Demon, Dr. Fate, and Adam Strange cropping up. Divided into smaller groups (teamed with New Gods Orion, Lightray and Forager) they must stop the Anti-Life entity's agents from blowing up some planets, thereby collapsing the galaxy and allowing it entry into our dimension.

O.K., Cosmic Odyssey isn't great. In fact, it's not even that good. But there's a kind of breezy readability to the thing that makes it passably enjoyable on a non-think level. Or, at least, that's what I wrote after I first read it. But after a second reading...I was even less enthused by it.

The story's one of those grand concepts, with sumptuous painted colours by Steve Oliff adding a lot to the atmosphere. It starts out promising a complex, multi-faceted story (a promise that, admittedly, doesn't get fulfilled as the story becomes more straighforward and unsurprising and kind of thin for its 200 pages). Though it is kind of interesting considered in a publishing context. In a sense, it reads a lot like one of those crossover sagas DC churns out every year (beginning with Crisis) -- y'know, DC heroes unite to combat a cosmic threat. Except, of course, this isn't a "crossover" saga, but is entirely self-contained (other than expecting the reader to have familiarity with at least some of these characters). And it's the only one published in a "prestige" stiff-cover format. So, in that sense, it can be fun for readers who'd like to read a crossover epic...but hate trying to track down the various issues involved.

The concept is pretty familiar fair, as is the separate teams format. There's very little that's fresh or innovative. Some criticized Starlin's taking the anti-Life concept from Jack Kirby's New Gods and turning it on its head by having it be a living sentience. In a way, though, that goes to the heart of what's wrong with Cosmic Odyssey.

Starlin seems to be repeating himself.

Most of the characters never quite seem in character. I'm not an expert on all of them, but there's a sense Starlin wrote the characters to suit his style, rather than styling his writing to suit the characters, sometimes clumsily shifting between portentous formal dialogue and slangy patois...in the same character! A writer should bring his thumb print to a work, but there needs to be a balance. Likewise, Anti-Life as a kind of Death entity seems like Starlin was just dragging out the ideas he'd been working with over at Marvel Comics, with Thanos and Captain Marvel and Adam Warlock, and imposing them on the DC Universe (Starlin's Thanos seemed like a Darkseid rip-off anyway).

There are even a couple of scenes that echo Batman: The Cult, which Starlin was working on at the time.

Attempts at big emotions and moral ruminations tend to fizzle. The heroes don't save all the planets, and the staggering loss of life shakes one of the characters...but later the good guys blow up an entire dimension (that may or may not be inhabited) with only a momentary qualm. Starlin drags out questions of right and wrong, but seems hesitant to deal with them (or maybe I just refuse to acknowledge what he may be saying). Heck, the solution to the character grief stricken by the loss of life caused by his actions? He's basically told to just get over it, dude, these things happen!

This makes it sound like Cosmic Odyssey is a challenging, provocative saga. It's not. In fact, it fails to engender much emotional reaction, pro or con.

That's partly because Starlin rarely succeeds in puting us inside anyone's head. With these eclectic characters, you'd assume he chose them 'cause he really wanted to write them. Instead, other than maybe Batman (who Starlin was writing at the time) he doesn't seem to know what to do with them. He does contrast Orion's war spirit with Superman's more Liberal views, but in a way that seems a tad heavy handed.

I've really enjoyed Mignola's art on Hellboy (which I read long after) but I'm not sure he was as well suite to more conventional super heroes. His style borrows a bit from Kirby, a bit from Walt Simonson, and on one hand the work is neat and splashy, but it adds to the dispassionate feel. Mignola spends a lot of time drawing characters in long-shot, or from behind, or with tight-lipped expressions, or (with Garzon) their faces heavily shrouded in shadow. As art, it's stylish, but as storytelling, the characters are little more than props. When called upon to show shock or horror, Mignola can do those expressions, but it's in the subtler, more common place scenes that the expressions rarely convey nuances. Actually, it reminds me a bit of some European comic artists I've seen.

The story probably warrants a nominal "mature readers" warning -- no, Starfire, back then the most scantily-clad of mainstream superheroines, doesn't pop out of her costume; no one cusses; nor are the themes "mature"; but it's a bit grisly in spots. It's a stylized grisliness, though, so my caution may be reactionary.

Ultimately, with a first reading I sort of felt that Cosmic Odyssey was a bit bland but can help while away a few afternoons, just don't expect anything more. But recently re-reading it again after maybe 4 or 5 years...I dunno. I found it a bit of a slog. It just wasn't that interesting. This story also seemed to return Etrigan to the DC Universe and killed off one of the New Gods (and I think he stayed dead, too).

Original cover price: $ __ CDN/ $19.95 USA 

Crisis on Infinite Earths 2000 (SC TPB) 368 pgs.

Written by Marv Wolfman. Pencils by George Perez. Inks by Jerry Ordway, Dick Giordano, Mike DeCarlo.
Colors; Tony Tollin, Tom Ziuko, Carl Gafford. Letters: John Constanza.

Reprinting: Crisis on Infinite Earths #1-12 (maxi-series) 1985-1986

Rating: * * * (out of 5)

Number of readings: 2

Published by DC Comics

Most fans have at least heard of DC Comics' Crisis on Infinite Earths, the maxi-series that reinvented the "reality" of the oldest consistently publishing comic book company. At long last (well, at the tail end of 2000) DC released the epic in a trade paperback for those who missed it either in its original serialized format, or in its pricey hardcover version.

I had never read the series. In 1985 comics were getting pricey (I had no idea just how pricey they'd become, of course) and the great reads seemed few and farther between. When DC announced it was overhauling its line with Crisis, I decided it was time for me to go, too. Eventually I fell back into reading comics and inevitably my curiosity led me to reading Crisis on Infinite Earths. I mention all this just to put my opinion in perspective -- I read it 16 years after the fact.

The story has a mysterious villain destroying whole universes, whittling away at DC's multiverse -- wherein earths existed in parallel dimensions, each with its own superheroes. An enigmatic, omnipotent being, Monitor, is determined to preserve as many of the universes as possible and gathers together heroes from various universes to help. Eventually the heroes triumph, but the end result is that reality has been remade as a single universe where all the characters either co-exist...or no longer exist.

Crisis was, obviously, an awesome undertaking, a story that attempted to throw in almost every character in the DC catalogue. There probably isn't another artist who could have handled the task as well as George Perez -- certainly not who was working at the time. He crams each page with tiny panels and crams the panels with little details and finely drawn, impeccable figure work, all laid out with edgy panel composition. For pure quantity, you get your money's worth. Writer Marv Wolfman holds up his end by providing lots of dialogue. Sometimes the panels are so small and the dialogue so much that letterer John Constanza has to spill word balloons into neighbouring panels. It's a 12 issue series that, in other hands, probably would've been 24 issues.

Is Crisis a good read? Well, yes.

It's a big spectacle that can be fun just for the sheer number of characters, featuring (literally) an earth-shattering menace, and buoyed by Perez's art, aided by inkers Dick Giordano, Mike DeCarlo, and, mainly, Jerry Ordway (an overwhelming inker, admittedly -- sometimes you can find yourself forgetting it's Perez's pencils underneath Ordway's inks). For older readers, the story evokes all those old Justice League/Justice Society team ups that were an annual event in the Justice League of America comics throughout the '60s, '70s and early '80s.

Is Crisis a great read? Well, no.

There are too many characters. Admittedly that's the point: to squeeze everyone in. Almost everyone gets a line, true, but very few get a lot of lines, or very good lines (even A-list heroes like Batman and Wonder Woman have just bit parts). The plot unfolds a little too linearly -- despite the fact that it leaps around from the far future to the distant past, jumping from reality to reality. Wolfman basically comes up with his premise...then sticks with it for 350 pages. There are some questions that keep us turning pages (who is Pariah? what is the Monitor's plan? etc.) but considering the saga's size, unexpected plot turns are few. There's repetition, particularly in the first half, with too few moments that gel into memorable scenes in and of themselves. The "action" tends to be a lot of scenes of mass fisticuffs.

The use of the god-like Monitor, and some subsequent characters, helps push the story along, but it reduces the familiar heroes too often to being kind of unthinking props who just go where they're told. Considering this was the swan song for some of the characters, it's disappointing. Wolfman also introduces brand new characters, spotlighting them sometimes at the expense of the established heroes. The irony is that most of the original characters introduced have long since faded into obscurity!

The saga is better in the last half than the first, and a couple of double-sized issues (#7 and the concluding #12) stand out, the greater pages allowing Wolfman and Perez to shape more well-rounded chapters.

There are technical lapses, as is probably unavoidable when dealing with the warping of time and space and reality -- spots where you find yourself going, "hey, that don't make sense", or where Wolfman glosses over plot points. And at one point Captain Marvel Jr. refers to Mary Marvel as his "sister" and the Golden Age Superman is more poweful than I remembered. And since this was a "crossover" epic -- one of the first -- there are a few annoying spots where characters wander off and we're advised that their adventure continues, not in the next issue of Crisis, but some other comic entirely.

In the annals of mass slaughter depicted in comics, the hundreds of billions cavalierly wiped out in Crisis is unmatched. To make matters worse, it was not done out of any artistic desire, or to tell a great story, but simply because DC Comics wanted to clean house. I don't want to get too metaphysical, but when the heroes rage against the villain it's hard to get swept up in their indignation. After all, he didn't kill billions...Marv Wolfman did. Likewise, in the series most notorious twists -- the deaths of the original Supergirl and the Silver Age Flash (not to mention Dove, Lori Lemaris, Aquagirl, the earth 2 Huntress, and so on) -- there's some of the same ambivalence. It's hard to be entirely moved because it was an editorial more than an artistic decision. Supergirl and the Flash evince an atypical ruthlessness in their last moments, too, which is curious.

Admittedly, all that's from the perspective of reading it years later, when all of this is ancient history. At the time, it might have been more powerful.

There's a little too much of the "Iconanism" that seems to have become prevalent in comics. Where the Marvel Age was all about emphasizing a superhero's humanity, the modern Iconic Age (as I think of it) is more about Wagnerian chest beating, defining superheroes by their being superheroes. Even when Wolfman tries to squeeze in character bits, it's mainly characters reflecting on superheroism. If I read one more character musing what a "true hero" another character was, I was liable to throw the comic across the room. When Supergirl dies, we're treated to a half page eulogy delivered by Batgirl at her funeral -- it's heavy handed, it's expository, it's...Iconic! Far more affecting is a later, understated scene where Brainiac 5 is embittered because of Supergirl's death.

With that being said, #7 (with Supergirl's death) and #8 (Flash's death) are among the better stand alone issues -- not because of the deaths, but the stories are more focused. Wolfman also shows an unusual sensitivity for continuity by having the Golden Age Superman -- the hero that largely begat the DC Comics empire in 1938 -- take a pivotal role in the climax.

The series was intended to redefine and clarify the DC Universe -- it did neither. Even how the series ends (with the heroes remembering the pre-Crisis) was instantly contradicted by the regular comics (where even Supergirl went unremembered -- this despite Superman vowing to "miss her forever"). Once DC opened the door to "redefining" its universe, new editorial regimes have done so at least twice, so that even hardcore fans aren't really sure what is, or is not, continuity. There's also an uncomfortable tendency to brow beat. Knowing what they were doing was bound to be controversial, Wolfman has the only character who bemoans the changes be a raving lunatic in an asylum. A not-very-subtle way for Wolfman to get in a pre-emptive swipe at his critics.

Crisis is arguably more craftsmanship than it is art, though it may well be as good a version of the story as was possible given the parameters. Is it the classic it is heralded as? Not really. It's a bit draggy in spots and I can think of similiar stories, both after and before, that were as good or better. But it's still an enjoyable epic that reminds you when DC Comics' reality was an interesting, diverse place to be.

This is a review of the story as it was originally serialized in mini-series format.

Crisis on Multiple Earths
  various volumes are reviewed in the JLA section

Crossover Classics: The Marvel/DC Collection, vol. 1 1992 (SC TPB) 280 pgs.

Written by Gerry Conway, Jim Shooter, Len Wein, Chris Claremont. Pencils by Ross Andru, John Buscema, Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez, Walt Simonson. Inks by Dick Giordano, Terry Austin, Joe Sinnott, Mike DeCarlo, others.
Colours/letters: various

Reprinting: Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man (1976), Marvel Treasury Edition #28 - Superman and Spider-Man (1981), DC Special Series #27 - Batman vs. The Incredible Hulk (1981), Marvel and DC Present the Uncanny X-Men and the New Teen Titans (1982)

Rating: * * * * 1/2 (out of 5)

Number of readings: 2

Published by Marvel/DC Comics

Over the years, comics companies occasionally put out joint projects, teaming up their heroes with characters from a rival company. Marvel and DC have engaged in enough of these co-productions that they've actually put out at least four TPB collections.

These early adventures seem to arise from a less continuity obsessed age. They are just meant to be fun, the stories apocryphal as there's no attempt to explain how these characters from separate companies co-exist. It's just assumed they are part of the same world already and the writers don't waste time coming up with some explanation about cosmic rifts or dimensional overlaps. It means you can just enjoy them for themselves, as a kind of "what if...?" alternate universe where Marvel and DC heroes live together.

The downside is that sometimes they do a good enough job with the character interaction that you almost feel a bit sad realizing that these characters will never meet again and, as far as their regular adventures are concerned, never did!

Anyway...

The first TPB volume collects the first four projects, beginning with Superman vs. Spider-Man. First published in 1976, this was the first ever company crossover. And there was some effort made on the part of the publishers to recognize that milestone. Originally published at treasury sized dimensions, and at 92 pages, it was one of -- perhaps the -- longest single issue comics produced to that point. And read now, it's easy to shrug and say it's a pretty minor, straight forward affair.

But it's also darn enjoyable.

Sure, it sets up pretty obvious narrative targets for itself and then proceeds to check them off. So we have Superman and Spider-Man, introduced in solo scenes, a teaming up of their two most identifiable arch foes, Lex Luthor and Doctor Octopus, the inevitable misunderstanding that leads the two heroes to come to blows (justifying the "versus" of the title), which is resolved fairly quickly so they can properly team up and save the world from the villains' earth shaking plot. Along the way, each characters' supporting cast is thrown in for minor effect.

And on its unpretentious level: it works. It isn't supposed to be "Steppenwolf", it's supposed to be a grandiose romp that keeps you turning the pages, while boasting an epic scope, the action ranging from New York and Metropolis, to Africa, to space. The creative talents help. Scripter Gerry Conway had written for both characters, so there's little sense of a writer struggling with the personalities (although his Luthor is mayhap a tad more ruthless than usual). While artist Ross Andru had done a long stint of Spider-Man (working with Conway) and he had drawn Superman from time to time. So the visuals are perfectly evocative. In fact, this may be some of Andru's best work. And his pencils may be helped a lot by inker Dick Giordano -- Giordano's a curious inker who can bring out the best in some pencillers, even as he can be ill-suited to others. But here I think he lends a bit more shading and contour to Andru's people. An unbilled Terry Austin actually inked most of the backgrounds. Austin may not have received official credit, but credit is due, as his meticulous inking helps create a textured, tangible backdrop for the heroics. (Austin seemed to go through a period of "ghost" inking -- I detected his uncredited background work in Superman #295 from the same period...he usually coyly "signs" his work by working the name Austin into a background sign or billboard).

There is some attention paid to the characters' different personalities, with Conway effortlessly evoking the two series. There's even a joke where Spider-Man runs off looking for a phone booth to change costumes in, only to find phone kiosks (anticipating the same gag in Superman, The Movie) which was presumably meant to play up the contrast of Spidey's messy "realism" contrasted with Superman. Likewise, Andru's art evokes the kind of open clarity of Superman's Metropolis and the cluttered "grittiness" of Spider-Man's New York.

It took five years before the next DC/Marvel crossover. It was still Superman AND Spider-Man (not "vs") in a story sub-titled "The Heroes and the Holocaust" -- and now with the Hulk and Wonder Woman thrown in in minor supporting parts. Once again a Marvel and DC villain team up and the whole world is threatened with destruction. But if the first team up seemed a bit like they were just trying to meet the modest expectations of the combination...here there's a stretching of the formula, with a mixing up of the two supporting casts as Peter Parker gets a job at the Daily Planet while Clark Kent moonlights at the Daily Bugle. With Marvel clearly the creative diving force, it's written by Jim Shooter who, though he had perhaps less hands on experience writing these characters compared to Conway, nonetheless does a nice job of capturing their essences, and contrasting personalities. His Spider-Man is particularly good, with the mix of self-doubting insecurity and genuinely funny quips. And this time the paired villains -- Dr. Doom and the Parasite -- offer more contrast with each other than peas-in-a-pod Luthor and Octopus. Doom's portrayal is one of the best of the character, capturing his arrogance and (justified) self-confidence, truly making him seem like a dangerous menace, while tempered with a bit of pathos. Shooter threads little moments of human drama throughout for some nice character touches.

Marvel stalwart John Buscema provides the pencils, with Joe Sinnott inking the figures and a variety of inkers doing the backgrounds (making the comic a good demonstration of just how much an inker can influence the pencils when the level of detail to the backgrounds change from page to page). Buscema is a strong choice, with an almost effortless feel for narrative and composition -- his panels don't draw attention to themselves, even as his choice of angles and composition is rarely less than dead on. But he -- or Sinnott -- maybe found the 62 pages a bit of an ordeal, as the visuals can be a bit sloppy at times, with cheek bones a bit lopsided, or muscle lines not quite where they should be. And, of course, though Buscema had occasionally drawn Spider-Man, he hadn't drawn Superman or his cast before, and Sinnott couldn't claim even a Spider-Man connection. The result is that although the art is quite good (and Buscema's Doom particularly evocative, exuding a regal confidence even when slouched in a chair) the visuals are less evocative of the characters than Ross' had been in the first team up. They suit the characters perfectly: Spider-Man moves with a fluid litheness, Superman stands imperiously (Buscema maybe having honed that pose from years of drawing Conan). But it's a bit as if new actors have been cast in familiar roles -- well cast actors, but new nonetheless.

Obviously, in a story involving super villains and world domination, this is just comic book-y fun. But there are a lot of little touches, in dialogue, in scenes, in visuals, in plot twists, that seem to indicate they weren't just going through the motions. But maybe because of that, it lacks some of the unpretentiousness of Conway's epic. Shooter's is arguably the more ambitious story...Conway's, though, might be the more fun.

The third Marvel/DC project broke away from the guys in red & blue for a Batman vs. The Incredible Hulk story, sub-titled, "The Monster and the Madman"...for what is arguably the best of the bunch here. Teaming Batman and Hulk might seem an asymmetrical partnership, but that's precisely why it works, allowing the story to seem less like a contrived team up between two like characters. Batman is more the clear hero and the mercurial Hulk a wild card. Likewise, the villains -- DC's The Joker allied with the Shaper of Worlds, one of Marvel's ubiquitous cosmic beings who are amoral more than strictly evil -- avoid the pitfall of repetition, with two significantly different personalities.

Scripter Len Wein had written for both characters, so everyone's perfectly in character -- at least, for the time, with Wein's pre-Crisis Batman an arguably more rounded, multi-faceted persona than the one that came to dominate in later years. Likewise the Joker, though still a dangerous killer, isn't quite the one man massacre he is these days -- in fact, like with Doom in the previous story, the Joker here lingers in my mind as one of the most memorable portrayals of the character.

The plot, though unavoidably contrived, nonetheless holds together well enough, each twist and turn arising logically from what went before, so that it's a well structured story. And Wein has a great ear for dialogue, for phrasings, easily evoking personalities with just a line or two...and some funny Joker quips. The art is by the inestimable Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez with his mix of realism that doesn't sacrifice dynamism, and even a nice eye for details and minutia -- how a background character sits conveying character. There's one panel where Bruce Banner starts to transform into the Hulk and in that panel there are three other faces, with each one registering a unique reaction to the transformation. Garcia-Lopez may never have drawn the Hulk before, but has worked on Batman, so it all seems nicely evocative. Dick Giordano is listed as inker but, like with the first Superman vs. Spider-Man comic, he actually had a fair amount of assistance...here from Mike DeCarlo who is only given a "with thanks" acknowledgement. (Actually writer Marv Wolfman is also "thanked", indicating Wein had some help, too).

Closing this collection is the X-Men and New Teen Titans story -- sub-titled "Apokolips...Now." Breaking away from the "classic" characters of Superman, Spider-Man, etc., it's the first to feature "newer" properties...but ones that were smoking hot at the time. The X-Men had already risen from semi-obscurity to become one of Marvel's biggest series and, likewise, the revival of the Teen Titans -- transparently modelled after the X-Men -- was one of DC's biggest sellers at the time (the X-Men continue to be a major franchise for Marvel, while the Teen Titans have seen their fortunes wax and wane over the years -- but in 1982 were the belle at DC's ball). Written by regular X-scribe Chris Claremont, it involves the two teams being caught up in the schemes of DC master villain, Darkseid, to resurrect the Phoenix force -- this taking place after the classic Dark Phoenix Saga, but before the concept had been run into the ground by subsequent revisitations.

Darkseid had had little connection to the Teen Titans even in their own series. Maybe Marvel Comics stalwart Claremont figured this would be his only chance to play with Darkseid and the Fourth World concepts. Or maybe he just felt it would ad a freshness to the story, by mixing traditional aspects of the two series (the X-Men's Phoenix and The Teen Titans' foe, Deathstroke the Terminator) with a less cliche adversary (as opposed to having them up against Magneto or Trigon). Claremont's writing can run a bit hot and cold, from clever phrasing and character insight...to heavy handed and leadenly verbose. Though no one could claim a better understanding of the X-Men back then (having been their sole writer for years) he actually seems a little more comfortable, a little looser writing the Titans -- maybe a little more hyped at working with characters he hadn't written before. But both teams are generally in character, with Claremont pairing them up well in spots (the two youngest, Kitty and Changeling, hitting it off, or strategists Robin and Cyclops settling into an easy groove) -- though there are so many (14!), many of them only have a few lines here and there.

The story is fast paced, with the action following fairly logically from the premise (at least, as logically as it can involving a lot of sci-fi babble about energy auras and the like!) By virtue of the Phoenix concept, there are attempts at providing a deeper emotion beneath the action and adventure, but it can seem a bit perfunctory. Ironically, maybe it's too fast paced, without enough time to slow down and let the characters breathe as they could in the other team ups collected here. And by virtue of the Phoenix stuff, this is probably the most rooted in continuity of the four team ups in this collection.

Walt Simonson might seem like an odd artistic choice. The Titans were being drawn by George Perez and the X-Men were still remembered for John Byrne's art -- both men with detailed, clean, realist styles. Yet even with old Byrne inker Terry Austin on board (finally getting a proper credit years after the Superman vs. Spider-Man story!), Simonson's rough and raw style is hardly evocative of either. Yet it's energetic and Simonson has a nice eye for the grandiose scenes involving alien technology and cosmic barriers. Many years later Simonson would take his own whack at Darkseid and the Fourth World characters (in the series Orion), so you wonder if he was encouraging Claremont to use them here in the first place.

Ultimately, it's a perfectly enjoyable adventure, but it remains my least favourite of the team ups here -- good, but not quite exceptional. Of course, it's the only one of these that was originally published in normal, comic book sized dimensions. And maybe that skews my review of this TPB, since the other stories I read in all their over-sized grandeur...whereas the TPB collection shrinks them down to regular dimensions.

Company crossover stories don't necessarily engender expectations of high quality. But these early attempts maybe disprove that cliche. If you want to kick back with some of your favourite heroes, in truly epic (62 to 92 pages), stand alone "big screen"-style extravaganzas, presented by a lot of top notch creators, with beginnings, middles and ends and without having to worry over much about continuity -- you probably can't do much better. font>

This is a review of the stories as they were originally published in individual editions.