Mike Sterling's Progressive RuinThe reason cows are out of season since 1969

But not my beautiful golden mane of hair.

§ January 6th, 2021 § Filed under this week's comics § 8 Comments

[Some minor SPOILERS, particularly for the end of Death Metal, below.]

So Generations: Shattered is the Dan Jurgens-est of comics, fitting as Mr. Jurgens is one of the writers and surprise, Booster Gold is also prominently featured. As is a return to some “Death of Superman” stuff, which, as I’m sure anyone who’s read this site for any length of time will realize, is always welcomed by me.

Anyway, this is all very…I don’t want to say “old fashioned,” or “retrograde,” or anything like that, because that maybe feels a little dismissive at best, insulting at worst. Let’s say it’s more “traditional” in tone when compared to other recent-ish crossover events, which tend toward the edgier and more self-aware (like, oh, say, Dark Nights: Death Metal, which I’ll address in a moment.) It’s a basic “we must gather heroes to fight the menace” story, with the twist being that the heroes come from alternate and seemingly incompatible time streams (versus “from across the multiverse,” as in the obviously-inspirational Crisis on Infinite Earths).

Again, not a bad thing. Not a bug, but a feature that this comic feels like a plain ol’ dopey comic from the ’80s or ’90s, uncomplicated and plainly told without a drop of irony or the previously mentioned self-awareness. Well, maybe a tad of the latter, as I believe the stated purpose of the Generations event, prior to its being pushed back for some apparent retooling, was to pin down a definitive timeline for the DC Universe. As such, as I’ve said before about many DC crossovers, the event is about the DC Universe itself, and I’m guessing the larger purpose of redefining parameters for this fictional world is informed what would otherwise be a good guy vs. bad guy punch ’em up.

But it’s easy to ignore the metatextualness of it all and just enjoy it for what it is. I mean, I wish it wasn’t $9.99, but that’s the way of the world now, I suppose.

Speaking of lots of money, I haven’t sat down and figured out what it would cost you to have collected every installment of the latest Dark Nights series and tie-ins, but given they were all $4.99 to $8.99 apiece (except for the $3.99 Justice League issues), I suspect the answer isn’t one anybody’s going to want to hear. Now, most of them were good, which eases the burden at least a tad, but as someone pointed out to me, well, somewhere online, this is only going to encourage Dark Nights 3, This Time Everything’s $9.99 A Pop.

The upshot of all these Dark Night shenanigans is, once again, more multiverse to play with, which is fine, I mean we’ve been there before, DC’s always tryin’ to roll back that old devil Crisis on Infinite Earths, but it doesn’t hurt to kinda reestablish that again. Oh, and that all the characters “remember everything” and I can’t wait to see the implications of that, if there are any. Sounds maybe a little Hypertime-ish, and probably like Hypertime it’ll be misused or ignored. Will this mean that Superman will remember hangin’ out with Hocus and Pocus and their cynical rabbit? I hope so.

This “Future State” event, which is replacing DC’s regular titles for the next couple of months, feels maybe like a bit of bad timing? The industry, and the economy in general, are not in positions to give people reasons to not spend money. Interrupting your ongoing comic book series with apparently unrelated sidestories smacks of that Convergence event from a couple of years back to me, and boy did people actively skip most of those.

Now “Future State” seems like maybe it’s a little better thought out this time, in that plot elements introduced in these minis may feed back into the regular monthlies (which seems to be the case with this Swamp Thing series, from what I’ve read in interviews). I initially had a negative reaction to these comics, in that I had a number of customers explicitly tell me they weren’t interested, but then, in the last week or so, I started getting folks stated that they were, and thus maybe things will work out anyway. Price points are a put-off ($5.99 on Superman of Metropolis, $7.99(!) on The Next Batman), but one of my previous naysayers did backslide a bit on the $3.99 Wonder Woman one, so there’s hope. Particularly if the regular ongoings do reference these Future State books, which could mean some back issue sales down the road.

You know, in case you ever wondered why the hair of comic shop owners goes grey.

Oh, the comic itself…it’s fine, interesting. Extrapolates from earlier comics where Swamp Thing builds additional, sometimes almost human-like, bodies, which has me wondering if the other swampy people we see in this comic are all ultimately just aspects of his mind or their own autonomous beings. There is a line of dialogue in which Swampy notes that their emotional knowledge is “borrowed” from him, but I think it’s ambiguous if that knowledge is copied from him or literally his brain entended into their beings. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Wouldn’t be the first time. Find out next Swamp Time, same Swamp Channel, I suppose.