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[SPOILERS for Doomsday Clock #10]
So in the new issue of Doomsday Clock is how it introduces the idea that the various continuity shifts in the DC Universe are not only Superman-centric, but said shifts also affect the multiverse at large. Explicitly stated at last is the idea that Dr. Manhattan, as we’d figured, is responsible for the recent “Rebirth” continuity changes, as he tests out the nature of the DC Universe.
This idea of “the metaverse” (as it’s called) is a weird and interesting one, which reminds me to some extent of “Hypertime.” As you may recall, Hypertime was DC’s previous attempt at created an in-universe explanation for the various continuity boondoggles that crop up in comics, particularly since Crisis on Infinite Earths (itself created to streamline the DC Universe and reduce continuity issues, ironically enough). Hypertime was a thing where changes/glitches/inconsistencies occurred due to the intermingling of the various timelines of the DCU, basically a way of saying “don’t worry so much about stuff, just enjoy the story.” It was maybe too subtle a distinction, as eventually, as I recall, it eventually just became “here are parallel Earths again!” and I don’t know that the idea of Hypertime was cropped up much in recent years.
Anyway, we don’t have the full story yet as to why the DC Universe, or “Metaverse,” does this, outside of Manhattan’s own interference. Maybe Geoff Johns is going to bring Hypertime back in this. Wouldn’t put it past him. I do like how it’s centering on Superman, and I think it is, as I said, an interesting idea. It’s just a shame it’s being used in a series that’s (if you’ll pardon the expression) doomed to be a footnote in the history of the original Watchmen graphic novel, a curiosity that will be discussed mostly in terms of “…yeah, they actually did that comic.”
Don’t get me wrong…I’m enjoying it, sometimes on its own terms, sometimes as the off-model exploitation of a seminal, and ultimately standalone, work. But, like the “Before Watchmen” comics from some years back, like the HBO series that’s coming, like that big-budget movie, it’ll be regarded as some strange offshoots that surround the original, but never touch it.
[maybe some SPOILERS for Doomsday Clock #9 ahead)
I keep telling myself I have another deep-dive post on the whole Doomsday Clock thing, as a follow-up to this entry (and a bit more here) but it never really coalesces around much more of a center than “man, are you seeing this?” which, oddly enough, is sort of the tone of Doomsday Clock itself. “Man, are you seeing Batman fighting Rorschach? Man, are you seeing DC superheroes using swears?” You know, like that.
Issue #9, due out at your finer funnybook emporiums this week, is sort of the ultimate expression of that, where we finally get what we paid that admission price to see. It’s the DC Universe Super-Pals versus Dr. Manhattan, and I’d be lying if I said this isn’t exactly what I wanted from this comic book. I know they’re trying to say some heavy stuff about the political and society impact of superheroes in the DC Universe, a somewhat less subtle mirroring of one of the themes, itself not so subtly expressed in Watchmen. And they’re leaning hard on the anti-hero sentiment (again, as seen in the older series, and also, I’ve read Legends, thanks). And yes, we’ve got the President in here, too…we don’t see his face, but it’s Trump, tying these shenanigans to the here and now, versus the inherent weirdness of seeing Nixon as President in the original’s time frame of the late 1980s.
Hmmm…didn’t mean to do a whole “Watchmen is like this, but Doomsday Clock is like this” thing there, but it’s pretty much hard to avoid when discussing a series that on a very surface level is aping its inspiration while trying to shoehorn the format into a milieu for which it wasn’t really suited. The trappings are all there, the art is quite nice, it remains, as I’ve written before, oddly compelling almost despite itself, but it doesn’t feel right.
It certainly succeeds in not being like pretty much anything else DC has ever published…or it could be exactly like material DC has published, with characters forced to conform to a structure for which they weren’t intended. Even Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, as different from the usual comic book mold as it was, still felt like a natural extension of what had come before. Doomsday Clock feels like having your Star Wars action figures fight your Micronauts toys. Yeah, you bet it’s fun, but clearly the two lines were never really designed to be compatible.
I’m still interested…I’m looking forward to seeing the metatextual hoops the series jumps through where the Watchmen property is being used to explain DC’s real world New 52/Rebirth publishing initiatives (which, while not a fan of how we got to this point with a surfeit of reboots/relaunchs, I still contend is a clever aspect of the Doomsday Clock project as a whole). And, as a longtime Superman fan, I am very curious about Dr. Manhattan’s connection to that particular bit of DC’s continuity changes (hinted at very briefly, but More on That Next Time, I take it).
In conclusion, it’s all been worth it just for Guy Gardner is this issue.
Long story short, I’ve had some recent health issues that, among other things, have been affecting my vision. No, I’m not blind or anything, but fine details and small print were suddenly out of my reach, to the point where I couldn’t read comic books (GASP!) and more importantly, couldn’t read things like, say, my weekly Diamond invoices or even the cover prices on comics. Like, even with my normal vision, I was having trouble making out cover prices set in that 2-point type some publishers like to use. But with recent events…feh.
Anyhoo, not to worry, I’ll be fine, I’m having treatments and my vision has more or less normalized. I still need real glasses, and not these dollar-store readers I’ve been depending on, but that will have to wait until one of my eyes fully heals so it can be properly tested (another long story short: I had a hemorrhage in one eye, and it’ll take time for the blood in there to be reabsorbed).
Thus, if you’ve noticed a preponderance of typos on the site of late, well, there you go. Not that life here on Progressive Ruin Isle has ever been totally relaxed and tpyo-freee, but now that my vision has recovered sufficiently improved functionality, I’m going back and noticing some egregious errors. I’ll fix ’em as I can find ’em, folks, so I appreciate your patience.
Meanwhile, this means I have a pretty good sized backlog of new funnybooks to plow through and see what everyone’s complaining about now. The thing I don’t like about DC’s biweekly schedule for some of their books is that, even though I don’t take home all that much, even a slight delay in reading the new comics, and then suddenly BAM I’m like five issues behind on The Flash or whatever. Frankly, I’ll be glad when everything gets knocked back to monthly…it’ll be so much easier to keep up. I don’t mind some biweekly books, and the way things are going, that’s where DC is basically headed anyway. In fact, now that I’m thinking about it, there aren’t too many biweeklies left. Huh.
So what did I read? Why, Doomsday Clock #7, natch:
This is it, The Big One, the issue where something finally seems to kind of happen, as Dr. Manhattan at long last makes his onscreen big blue appearance after like two something years of teasing. And yes, in answer to the question everyone’s been pondering, he does present the Full Manhattany, which would have been a first, I think, for a DC comic starring their establishing superhero characters if it weren’t for, well, you know. But all in all, a good year for penises over at Detective Comics Comics.
As I’ve said in the past, I’m oddly fascinated by this series while also recognizing the issues with it. I don’t know, I feel like Doomsday Clock is totally going to Millennium it and the final issue will be the introduction of the new Watchmen superhero team with new member Tasmanian Devil and their new leader Cyborg. …Well, maybe not, but now that the can of Watchmen has been opened, seem unlikely DC will just try to shove ’em back in there.
Oh, another specific point about this issue: wasn’t one of the points about Manhattan’s character originally that he witnessed what was happening around him but couldn’t act on it, that he was “a puppet who could see the strings,” resigned to the inevitability of the actions he’d relate from the past? That the entire premise of Doomsday Clock and how it all relates to DC’s “New 52″/”Rebirth” universe(s) is based on him changing something he’s observing in “the past” (which for him is just as “present” as “the actual present” due to his unique perspective unbound by linear time) seems…a bit odd. I mean, I suppose technically one could extrapolate Manhattan’s ability to change things in the past at various points in the timeline as he experiences it, but…that seems contrary to how he’s presented in Watchmen, where he’s locked into a pattern he can’t change, only observe as he exists through it.
But then again, at the end of Watchmen he seems to be more willing to fiddle with things, so maybe “let me go into what you normies think of as ‘the past’ and futz it up a bit” could come from there. Then maybe he can dip into his own past and prevent that guy from stepping on that watch, preventing the whole accident that made him Dr. Manhattan in the first place. You know, so long as we’re low-end Quantum Leap-ing things in this joint.
So anyway, Doomsday Clock, it remains a thing. I was going to cover a few other recent books, but…well, let’s save that for next time.
So I haven’t really said a whole lot about Doomsday Clock beyond my “wonder how it’s gonna sell” post back in September. Well, I can tell you now, after three issues of it have been unleashed upon an unsuspecting world, that it actually is selling very well, thank you, and even the second printing of the first issue is moving briskly.
That’s all just basic, non-opinionated stuff, I realize. I haven’t really come right out and said anything specifically about the content of the series, beyond some joking around, mostly because…well, I’m a retailer. I sell these things for a living. Not that this comics blogging doodad is an official part of my store or anything, but certainly a non-zero percentage of my customers are aware that I spend a small portion of my free time typin’ funny about funnybooks here. And I’ve seen enough examples of other retailers slagging off, say, Mutant Shenanigans: Alpha on their official store blogs/online newsletters/review columns etc., and then wondering a month later “huh, Mutant Shenanigans: Alpha isn’t selling at my store…wonder why?”
Not that I plan on really slagging it all that much, but the other day I did say this on the Twitters:
“Haven’t really said much about the actual DOOMSDAY CLOCK series itself, but it’s sort of a combination of ‘woefully misguided’ and ‘absolutely fascinating’ (in that I obsess a bit over out-of-context Watchmen usage).”
There’s…a lot of meaning that can be packed into my use of the phrase “woefully misguided.” That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s something that’s not entertaining in some fashion. Take, for example, Crisis on Infinite Earths, a series I like quite a lot. Sure, at the time we all probably thought it was a good idea, taking what was an overly complex/high entry cost shared universe and paring it down into something a bit more comprehensible. However, it could be argued that it turned out to be quite misguided, a stripping away and recataloging of crazy ideas and wild imagination that, in the decades since, DC Comics has been trying to undo, and in some way making it far more complex and difficult to enter than whatever problems Crisis was supposed to solve.
As such Crisis and its impact became problems mostly in hindsight, starting with small things (“whoops, we fucked up Hawkman, sorry everyone!”) and quickly ballooning into much larger issues (“oh, hey remember continuity? Here’s some more different continuity!”). Doomsday Clock‘s…quirks, shall we say, were anticipated well ahead of time. We were all watching that person in the scary movie, reaching a hand out to the door handle, while we shouted “NO, DON’T OPEN THAT DOOR!” Reasonably sure we all foresaw the inherent awkwardness of combining a singular, self-contained work by creators at the peak of their skills with a decades-old haphazardly-assembled, repeatedly rebooted, shared universe to the point of using the former as another tool to shore up the latter.
Now this is all sounding relentlessly negative, and I’m really not trying to be. As I said about the Crisis series I was using as an example, I enjoyed that comic. Outside of the nostalgic feelings I have for it, Crisis remains beautifully drawn, and a solid final “hurrah” for the DC Universe that was, before the DC Universe, of which there was no stopping them now, took over. Now, the Doomsday Clock itself I’m finding enjoyable in a weird way. As noted above, as a dealer, I’m happy with it sales and interest from my customers…I’m having people coming specifically to pick up this comic. As a responsible comics fan, I should probably be upset that the property being exploited without creator consent…yes, the work is technically DC’s but rights were dangled in front of Moore/Gibbons with no real intention of giving those rights to them so long as the comic sold.
As an irresponsible comics blogger and pop culture…observer, I guess, since “wallower” makes me sound bad…I am as I said in my tweet, “absolutely fascinat[ed]” by the Watchmen characters being exploited out of context (as in this Heroclix set, or this comic where DC-by-way-of-Charlton-Comics superhero the Question meets Rorschach). And this Doomsday Clock series, along with the two-year teasing/weaving of Watchmen material into the regular DC Universe, is sort of the ultimate “out of context” usage of the characters. Yes, it probably shouldn’t have been done. Yes, this isn’t really adding anything to the original work.
Nonetheless, seeing these characters and these situations and these attempts at aping the style and storytelling of the original remains oddly and strangely compelling, in a way that DC’s previous Watchmen event “Before Watchmen” was not. In “Before Watchmen,” the characters were working toward an endpoint, the events of Watchmen itself. The creators working on those comics couldn’t deviate too far from the paths already designed for these characters…not to say they didn’t take them in directions that could be deemed outside their original intentions, but at least they were mostly remaining within the constraints of an already-established fictional milieu.
Doomsday Clock escapes that by being “the sequel,” with all that open road ahead, and oh yeah we’re totally crossing over with Justice League characters so we’ve got, like, multiple universes to play with now. (Okay, I’m not unaware of the irony that this sounds like the opposite of my criticism of Crisis on Infinite Earths.) There’s no longer the worry about putting the pieces back in place…now they can scatter them about however they want. The fascination I mentioned before is in how this new creative team is playing with others’ toys, how they mimic what’s come before, how they change what’s been established, and so on. (You know, like superhero comics in general.) I genuinely am curious how this mixing of worlds will play out, not just plotwise but in just the simple mechanics of decisions made in putting together this event.
Even by duplicating the original’s format by including the text-heavy backmatter, you don’t get the same sense of that world-building the original worked so hard to establish. Much of what made Watchmen, aside from its deconstruction of the superhero genre, was its attention to detail, from the technological/political impact of Dr. Manhattan, to maintaining consistent physical settings (like just having the same street and building layouts from issue to issue), to little things like Dan wondering where the hell all his sugar cubes went (taken of course by Rorschach in a previous issue, and eaten by him throughout the rest of the series).
Doomsday Clock is a different animal with different purpose, and the depth of the original has been replaced mostly by trivia (“hey that guy’s daughter is Elasti-Girl from the Doom Patrol!” and other such nuggets that end up in clickbait listicles breathlessly detailing those Easter eggs “you may have missed!” somehow despite them basically being shoved in your face and captioned “THIS IS A REFERENCE TO SOMETHING”). The new series appears to be primarily about reclaiming superheroes from the legacy of Watchmen and similar descontructive attempts, in that the last two years of DC’s overarching storytelling has positioned the previous “New 52” continuity reboot as a literal attack on the DC Universe by Dr. Manhattan.
Not saying that isn’t a valid, and in its way, clever method of approaching real world publishing strategies within a fictional universe, though it strikes me as odd putting a decades-long best-selling property into an antagonistic position against their main line of books. Granted, we haven’t see the full story yet, so perhaps there’s a “redemptive” conclusion yet to come that corrects this negative portrayal. Especially if they plan on keeping any of the Watchmen characters around in the DC Universe after everything’s all said and done. (Hello, Rorschach Team-Up.)
Anyway, Doomsday Clock. Probably shouldn’t have happened, but here it is regardless. It’s a weird thing that will almost certainly end up only as a footnote in the original Watchmen‘s history. It remains, however, a crazy amalgam of a comic, not quite as Watchmen-esque as it wants to be, but tonally strange enough to not feel strictly like a DC superhero comic either. So long as it’s a one-shot thing à la that Simpsons/Family Guy crossover, which was another peculiar mixing of styles that kind of worked okay once, that’ll probably be fine. But, to repeat myself, “Hello, Rorschach Team-Up” is not a thing I said entirely facetiously.
Oh, and by the way, if Doomsday Clock takes place a year ahead in DC continuity (well, more like 18+ months ahead now that it’s gone to a bimonthly schedule), and Superman is getting his red trunks back in Action Comics #1000 (due out in just a few months), does that mean that cover to Doomsday Clock #1 pictured above is already out of date? Or, in a variation of what I suggested here, maybe instead of fighting over the trunks, Superman actually lends them to Dr. Manhattan. “Now, now, sir, you can’t go walking around Metropolis like that!”
I know we’re all supposed to be outraged at DC continuing to repurpose Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen, but man, I just laugh and laugh and laugh at this:
…partially for the chutzpah…well, okay, mostly for the chutzpah of DC to even do this, and partially out of my own curiosity over how it’s even going to work, and partially out of my own misguided love for weird permutations of the original story, like, say, this toaster.
And seeing this cover finally got me to put together a gag involving that title “Doomsday Clock” and its superficial similarity to a particular piece of dialogue from a page in Preacher:
Ever since Doomsday Clock was announced, I had this stupid idea in my head. And now here it is, in all of yours.
Anyway, I have no idea how I’m going to order this. Well, that’s not entirely true, I do know how I’m going to order this, I’m just not sure how it’s going to sell. With that Batman/Flash crossover “The Button” associating DC’s use of lenticular covers with “special Watchmen tie-in events,” using lenticular covers for the Mr. Oz storyline coming up in Action Comics, where the Watchmen tie-in may not be as strong as had been presumed*, may lessen the sales boost said covers may give to Doomsday Clock.
Or I’m just overthinking it. While that Mr. Oz storyline may or may not have solid ties to the overarching Watchmen thing, Doomsday Clock is totally being pushed as “SUPERMAN VERSUS DOCTOR MANHATTAN” which should drive sales to even those folks who feel like they weren’t getting enough Watchmen content in that Action story. Boy, I’m sure assuming a lot about that Action comic I haven’t read yet.
At any rate, I’m reasonably certain sales will start out strong, but 12 issues over presumably a year (or a year-and-a-half, if not more) is a long stretch to keep interest up, even in something as wildly out there as a Watchmen/DCU crossover. There’s gonna be some attrition unless there’s a big sales-driving surprise partway through, and even then, who knows. There’s the kind of comics marketplace insight that keeps my two or three readers coming back.
I was looking back at some of my old Watchmen posts on this site, and from this entry in 2010 I quoted an excerpt from a DC press release:
“However, DC comics co-publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee said, ‘Watchmen is the most celebrated graphic novel of all time. Rest assured, DC Comics would only revisit these iconic characters if the creative vision of any proposed new stories matched the quality set by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons nearly 25 years ago, and our first discussion on any of this would naturally be with the creators themselves.’”
I don’t know what conversation DC had with Gibbons about this, but I’m sure any conversation with Moore probably ended with him slamming down his rotary phone after shouting “don’t call me again!”
I am curious as to what’s going to happen once DC no longer has this Watchmen subplot running through their series and special events. Will we finally get that epic multi-part storyline teaming up current Batman with Dark Knight Returns Batman? Then again, DC just wrapped Dark Knight III, and I think they’ve threatened a IV, so that franchise is still going on. Maybe…Rōnin joins the Titans? Angie Thriller becomes a…I don’t know, Indigo Lantern? Daniel from Sandman teams up with the Justice L…oh, wait.**
* I won’t “spoil” what Mr. Oz’s reveal might be, but you can Google around and see what people are assuming. Or look here on the Tweeters where I just straight up say it, back when it was still a crazy idea and not the likely correct one.
** Yes, I know they asked Neil Gaiman. Yes, I know Sandman is technically in the DC Universe. Let me have my little joke.
So the thing everyone has been wondering about Watchmen‘s Doctor Manhattan finally making his full debut in the forthcoming DC Universe comic book Doomsday Clock is, of course, what they’re going to do about Doc M’s…er, “Downtown Manhattan,” as it were. I’ve made passing reference to this situation in the subject lines of a couple of posts here, but I am curious as to what they’re gonna do.
As we all know, one of the ways…well, okay, the main way…Manhattan’s continuing alienation from humanity was represented in Watchmen was his no longer caring about such social niceties as “dressing.” He gradually wore less and less and eventually there he was, freely blowin’ in the wind. Now, he’d wear clothes when he had to, like during that ill-fated television interview, so maybe for this DCU story, Manhattan may well be fitted out with his own super-suit, just to fit in. Or, as is stated at the end of Watchmen, he’s rediscovered an interest in humanity, so maybe we’ll get the reverse of what happened in the original story, and he just slowly dons more and more clothing over the course of Doomsday Clock. Like, swim trunks, then some Dockers, and then, inevitably, the muumuu.
The other option is just “Austin Powers”/”Opus’s Post-Surgery Beak”-ing it and have Manhattan in the altogether, but always having his naughty bits blocked by, like, conveniently-placed potted plants or furniture or even just careful shadowing, or something. That may feel a little contrived after an issue or three, however, and I’m sure that last thing anyone would want is for this story to feel contrived.
Or they can go full Ken Doll, and just…um, smooth things out, I guess. Or go completely the opposite direction and say “screw it, we don’t have the Comics Code to worry about anymore!” and just reveal Manhattan in all his anatomically-correct Manhattan-ness. I mean, honestly, what’s gonna happen, the comic might get some publicity? (Okay, and maybe some comic shop will get in trouble for selling it to a five-year-old, because there’s always someone. Maybe NOT such a great idea.)
But hold on…I have an idea: a shocking plot twist that solves the problem of Nekkid Manhattan and a certain Superman redesign mistake.
Superman and Doctor Manhattan finally meet in this Doomsday Clock series. Superman says “ah, HA, you no-goodnik, I finally found you! Now to kick your butt out of this continuity for good!” And Manhattan’s all “whatever you want, buddy, I’ve got what I came for” and he steps out of the shadows and he’s wearing Superman’s long-missing RED TRUNKS. And then get our knock-down, drag-out fight over the remaining eight or nine issues of the series, and the final pages are basically a variation of this Tarzan sequence.
Yes, I know this idea is fantastic. DC, you have time to rewrite Doomsday Clock. I suggest you use it wisely.
• • •
Speaking of brilliant writing, I’m about ready to launch the ol’ “Swamp Thing-a-Thon”
on my Patreon, in which I review all them Swamp Thing comics. I’m looking at this Monday, barring any problems like being driven off the internet for this post. It’ll be the usual rambling and occasional
intentional humor and unintentional insight you’ve come to expect from a guy pushing 50 who’s still writing a comics blog after everyone’s moved on to posting their content directly to the chips in your brain. (I’m assuming that’s what they do, I haven’t really been keeping up.) The first installment (about
House of Secrets #92, natch) will be available here for free right away as a sampler, but future installments will only be available to Patreon donors at least for several months, before being posted publicly.
Anyway, we’ll see how this goes, and I’m always open to suggestions and creative criticism once I get started on this new project.
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
I’ve had this ongoing fascination with the many ways Watchmen has been exploited by parties aside from the original creators. I mean, there were the wristwatches, the role playing game supplements, the Heroclix miniatures, these weird-ass shirts, the pseudo-crossover with The Question, the video games, the toaster, and I understand there was a movie at some point, too. Of course, the majority of it was all toys and tchotchkes and whatnot, and not actual comics, God no. Who could imagine Watchmen comics not by Moore and Gibbons? You’d have to be crazy to do something like…oh wait.
I had thought for sure the next step past Before Watchmen was going to be After Watchmen, the continuing adventures of Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, and Ozymandias, and Dr. Manhattan, and maybe Seymour. And in a way, that’s what we sort of got, once the whole “DC Rebirth” thing kicked off with a special one-shot that explicitly referenced Watchmen that tied it into the current DC Universe.
Anyway (did I mention SPOILERS because here they come) I was as at least somewhat correct in my suspicions that any actual on-page appearances of Watchmen characters in this whole “The Button” storyline would be very limited, saving it, apparently, for the just announced Doomsday Clock series coming this fall (and given a big ol’ two-page ad in the back of Flash #22 — or a four-page ad if you count the button-to-S-shield sequence, or even a forty-page ad, if you count this whole “Button” storyline). Despite the arguments that can be made for the whole…misguidedness, perhaps, of the situation, I can’t deny there was a weird sort of frisson seeing even just the brief glimpse of that specific character at the conclusion, our first physical appearance of someone from Watchmen in the DC Universe “Rebirth” narrative. Well, unless Mr. Oz turns out to be anything other than a red herring. (Personally, I think he’s Bubastis.)
I do like the general conceit of the Watchmen tie-in to the DCU, in having the “New 52” reboot actually being an attack on DC’s regular continuity by outside forces (i.e. a certain big blue presumably still naked guy). And that’s all “The Button” was really about, letting our heroes know that their universe is screwed up and that some immense power outside their universe was responsible…and also letting the characters and we readers know what’s at stake…that there’s still so much of their old pre-reboot universe that’s still fighting to come back. I do anticipate the eventual in-story explanation they’re going to have for why any of this was happening in the first place, why the character would do what he apparently did, and so on. The real world explanation, of course, is that clinking, clanking sound that makes said world go ’round.
Oh, and Swamp Thing is guest-starring in Batman this week. There’s a very nicely done two-page spread in this issue, which you should point your peepers at. Usually I wince at that much square-footage being used for so little in the limited amount of space any given comic book has, but I’m going to let it pass. This time.
Well, all I can figure is that Free Comic Book day took a lot out of me, as I didn’t really have the energy during the past week to generate that award-winning [NOTE: not actually award-winning] Progressive Ruin content the entire comics industry depends on [NOTE: nobody depends on it]. But I’m well-rested [NOTE: mostly] and in fighting trim [NOTE: nothing about Mike is trim] so let’s see what trouble we can stir up today:
I had a couple of comments in response to my FCBD post-mortem I wanted to address. First, Dave Carter of Earth points out, in response to customers (and me) wanting a Sonic the Hedgehog freebie this year:
“Archie appears to have lost the Sonic license, or at least they aren’t publishing any Sonic comics any more.”
Well, by cracky, that appears to be the case, doesn’t it? I guess I hadn’t really noticed…when you’re slogging through 500 pages of Diamond Previews, it’s easy to overlook the fact that maybe something that should be there isn’t. And, a quick check at the distributor’s website shows nada forthcoming from Archie Comics involving any sort of spiny mammal content. I did a quick buzz about the Internets and saw a lot of discussion on the topic, so I guess I’m just not looking in the right spots to have had this particular bit of information at my fingertips. It’d be a shame if the Sonic comic book franchise did vanish from the stands…especially since Archie still has that prime grocery store placement.
Dean wonders
“Mike, as a retailer, what’s your opinion of Marvel’s HYDRA FCBD promotion?”
Hoo boy. The Secret Empire event comic is the wagon Marvel is hitching all its chickens to for the next several months, so of course Marvel is going to want one of their FCBD comics to be a plug for it, like their Civil War 2 freebie was last year. Now, by and large, a lot were given away, and a handful of conversations I overheard seem to be at least intrigued by the concept — “whoa, Captain America is a bad guy!?” It’s yet another “how does our hero get out of this one?” story, designed to unfold over the next several months and keep readers in suspense. No one really thinks Cap is going to stay a bad guy, and that everything will be fixed. How it will be fixed is naturally the hook for the event.
But.
I suspect a number of people are coming into this fresh, and haven’t encountered the online brouhaha and the somewhat controversial “Hydra makeover” promotion and the whole “so is Hydra the same thing as Nazis or what?” debate. Without all that baggage, this one-shot could have been fine as a come-on for Marvel’s big event. A bit overwrought, maybe, but what superhero crossover event isn’t, really. However, that baggage does exist and there’s a tone-deafness in the responses to the online anger regarding this series, its promotion, its timing, and the defense of it by those involved. Basically, it’s turned into a huge mess and a public relations issue for Marvel, to the point where they had to put out a press release to tell fans “look, Cap’s gonna be fine, we promise.”
That’s a lotta typing around Dean’s question, so let me see if I can narrow it down a bit. For folks coming into the “Secret Empire” event fresh, the FCBD giveaway may be have been an intriguing introduction to the event. For folks who are more aware of the historical context and of the current reaction to said event, the FCBD book was probably just digging that hole a little deeper.
Personally, I feel like this is a bit like the Spider-Man Clone Saga from the ’90s. If they told the story, were in and out and done in, like, six months, it would have been fine. But dragging it out like this, particularly in the face of increasing consumer rejection, isn’t doing the company any favors. The Clone Saga almost killed the Spider-Man franchise, leading to a more-or-less still ongoing series of relaunches and reboots. Not that Marvel’s been shy about relaunching/rebooting any of their titles lately, but I suspect Cap may need some serious refurbishing after this to get readership back.
On the other hand, Secret Empire sales in the shop have been ticking upward in the last week or so, so what do I know.
• • •
In happier news:
…I hope this never, ever stops.
[Some minor SPOILERS for Batman #21 ahead.]
The lentincular covers are back on the shelves this week, thanks to DC’s first installment in the “We’re Finally Getting Around to That Whole Watchmen Thing” storyline running through Batman and Flash for the next few issues. Ah, the long-missed “zzzzzip-zzzzzip” sounds of those covers sliding against each other as customers pull their copies off the rack. Actually, I’m surprised it took DC this long to get back to doing these fancy movin’ picture covers, since they certainly grab attention (even if they’re hard to stack on the rack in any sizable quantity if you don’t have anything at the front of the shelf to keep them from toppling over and falling off, since they don’t exactly lay flat). I mean, I can understand why they don’t, given the extra lead time it takes to get these printed after taking in orders, so saving them for special occasions like this, where it’s worth the extra hassle, makes sense.
However, I will note that I’m getting lots of requests for the non-lenticular variants on this issue, as compared to the newsstand editions of the lenticular covers the last time we did this which mostly just kinda sat there and stared back at me from the rack with their sad little eyes.
Of course, none of this has anything to do with the actual content, which is the first storyline to actually revolve around the connection between the DC Universe and the Watchmen since that DC Universe Rebirth special from last year. Yes, there have been references here and there to “something bigger” going on behind the various reality-changing shenanigans going on, most notably in the recent “Superman Reborn” series of comics, as well as the occasional mention in Flash and either Titans or Teen Titans or maybe both…I’m specifically thinking of whatever one had the old Flash villain Abra Kadabra. The whole “Dr. Oz” thing that’s been in the Superman books had been assumed by some folks to be Ozymandias from Watchmen, though that seems a little too on-the-nose and obvious (which doesn’t rule it out, I do realize). He is involved somehow in the whole Watchmen event, but I feel like there’ll be a different reveal than “Gasp! It’s Ozymandias!” Maybe it’s Bubastis. Or an in-his-fightin’-trim Seymour.
Anyway, we don’t get a whole lot regarding any actual Watchmen characters yet, aside from what we can assume is an off-screen Dr. Manhattan doing away with the villain. There’s also a bit of business where the Comedian’s button reacts to the Psycho Pirate’s mask…a reference to (and likely a plot point based on) the conclusion of the now-30-year-old Crisis on Infinite Earths, which left Psycho Pirate as the one character who remembered the pre-Crisis multiverse…well, aside from everyone else who remembered it. (That situation was more-or-less twisted back into its original intent later in Animal Man.) And on top of all that, the comic is laid out in the 9-panel-grid in which Watchmen was largely presented.
I’m not 100% convinced we’re going to see any Watchmen characters in this particular story, honestly, beyond maybe a fleeting glimpse…I mean, we’ll find out within the next three weeks, of course. There’s more to come, too…the Batman issue I just placed orders for is already following up on the events in this storyline, so my guess is whatever big reveal we’re getting now is going to be “huh, there’s a multiverse and this button is from another universe and someone from said universe is futzing around with us.” Okay, I think the characters knew most of that already, but my point is that the full-on “Naked Blue Man Versus the DC Universe” is waiting for a Big Event Crossover Thingie down the line, and not happening in this Batman/Flash crossover that’s running now. Like I said, we’ll find out how right or wrong I am soon enough.
So there’s a little extra information brought to my attention by pal Christopher in regards to that lost DC Comics Presents Swamp Thing/Superman team-up that I mentioned last time. Christopher informs me that an interview with early ’80s Swamp Thing scribe Marty Pasko in Back Issue #87, Mr. Pasko relates that he had a script for said team-up ready to go, but the script was assigned to artist Alex Toth, who never got around to completing the job and turning it in. Though no details about that story were related in the article, Christopher guesses that this may have been the story promised in Saga of the Swamp Thing #16, and I’m inclined to agree with him. Ah, well…that’s too bad, as I’d like to have seen an Alex Toth-drawn Swamp Thing…I know his Superman wasn’t too shabby.
In other news:
Pal Rich has published his book Watching Time: The Unauthorized Watchmen Chronology, which is pretty much what it sounds like: a gathering of all the events from all across the Watchmen universe, from the original comics to the prequels to the movie and even the video games, and placed into a chronological order. Each entry is tagged with its source, so you can determine the level of its relevance yourself. Rich even points out where there are contradictions between sources on particular topics (such as multiple conflicting details about the character of Rolf Müller, who may or may not be Hooded Justice).
There is an enormous amount of information presented here, and for someone like me, who likes seeing how the various interpretations of the same material/franchise fit together (or don’t), there’s a lot to enjoy. And yes, even the unproduced film scripts are included in the chronology. Rich was very thorough. Also noted is the virtually hot-off-the-presses inclusion of the Watchmen characters in the DC Universe “Rebirth” event. No, Rich doesn’t know any more about what’s going on there than we do. He can save that for Watching Time Part Two!
Now I’m a little biased here, since, as implied by the “pal” above, Rich has been an online chum for some time now, and I am in fact thanked in the acknowledgements in the book (I helped look into a couple things for Rich as he was putting this together), and he was good enough to send me a digital copy of the book to peruse. However, I think I’m going to end up getting a print copy of this to keep with the rest of my Watchmen goodies. And you can, too, if you go to his promo page and follow the various store links there.
In other, other news: I produced another in my “Back Issue of the Week” entries for my store site. I like writing those…it’s very “back to basics” blogging that I don’t do enough of here. Hey, remember when it seemed like bloggers were rediscovering this comic every couple of months? I don’t think I ever got around to writing about it…maybe now’s my chance!
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