Good Comic/ Bad Comic 1: Retcon

When you are reading ongoing comic series, mostly superhero comics, there are two big elephants you have to deal with, retroactive continuity called retcon and Comic book deaths. Both aspects can be handled in a god way or in a bad way, like every other thing in storytelling. Retcons are mostly unavoidable, because when you have a series running for years and decades, you have also different writer, interpretations of this series and maybe the one or the thread and development you want to get rid of.

Now there are different ways of retconnig. First the Addition, where you add several thing to the history of a character without denying any existing events already occurred, second the Alteration which mostly says: “What you saw isn’t really what happened.” It can also be some deus ex machina who alters magically the reality, third and last is the Subtraction which removes entire events or history and gives place for redefining the whole subject.

So I like to take a look in this first entry of “Good Comic/Bad Comic” on two retcon’s done recently in the two major publishers of Superheroes, Marvel and DC. Like the title of this column says I will start with the good comic.


Green Lantern: Rebirth

Next to Batman, Green Lantern was one of my favorite books. I started with the downfall of Hal Jordan from a hero to a villain and Kyle Rayner as the last GL. So I was not very pleased to hear that they planned to bring back Jordan, because Geoff Johns came around and said: People there were so many things done to this character it is all messed up, let’s go back to basics.

I am a very careful reader, especially when we are talking about ongoing series in a shared universe. People who collect every single issue of their hero will always stay a miracle for me, because I don’t see the need to have such crap like “The Clone Saga” wasting space in my precious collection. A very wise policy is to go with a writer, because when you like one writing style, you most likely will follow him through different books. But even with this tactic you will face restrictions for example Grant Morrison is sometimes a bit to nasty for me and I can’t follow every of his stories.

Johns statement, as much as I fought it, has a very true core. The character of Hal Jordan is maybe the one big casualty of DC Comics from the “Dark Age of Comics”. You may remember, Superman died, Batman got his back broken but both heroes returned to their status quo due different plot devices. Not Hal Jordan, his city was destroyed by a supervillain, so Jordan went mad and on a killing spree, erased several Corps members and his masters The Guardians except for one. He became the villain Parallax, who later wanted to restore the universe in his image but was of course stopped by his former friends. Later he sacrificed himself to stop another menace called the Suneater and in yet another major event he became the new host of The Spectre. That is really a lot to swallow.

Meanwhile Kyle fought his own way through his series, but there was a little problem. With the Corps and The Guardians gone, Kyle was just another Hero with a gimmick. I was really a fan of his adventures, but a lot of stories centered on searching new candidates for the ring and the fact that he was the last of his kind. And to be quite frankly we have enough Last Of Their Kind (Superman, Starfire, Martian Manhunter etc.) One of the main elements of the book was missing, even as a newbie I could sense it in the unconsciousness of my brain.  

This book is also a very good example of the importance of good storytelling. Condensed is the story as followed: A
big yellow bug who is the personification of fear was imprisoned a long time ago, then Sinestro, Hal Jordan’s archnemesis, woke him up and the bug took over Hal Jordan. A man was taken over by a big yellow bug. Superhero comics, you got to love them. In the hands of some other writer this story would maybe fail because of stupidity or maybe he would make a to sophisticates trip out of it. What makes this tale even better is that Johns establishes his own playground, he gives the GL Mythos his very own stamp.

He introduces us to the emotional spectrum in which every important emotion has its own color and which will play also a role in the later events of “Sinestro Corps War” and “Blackest Night and he gives us a Hal Jordan who is a bit arrogant but nevertheless strong willed and good hearted. Nobody is just one dimensional here, everybody has got his motivation. Kyle Rayner discovered at the edge of the universe that Parallax is in fact the embodiment of fear and returns to earth to warn his fellow heroes. Sinestro planned the whole scheme because Jordan blamed him once for his crimes and due this Sinestro is a cast out on his own home world. Very interesting is to see how different the green energy of the ring materialized with each wielder. There is Kyle the artist, John the architect and every different mind creates his own images with the most powerful weapon of the universe. We also learn that not everybody can be a GL, because you need to force your will violently into the ring.

Green Lantern Rebirth is an invitation to join the adventure. It is full of promises of coming events and powerful battles. I think I give it a shot and try some other paperbacks of this series. 





One more day

How I already stated I follow more the writers than the series. One of my most favorite ones is Joe Michael Straczinski. Together with Alan Moore and Peter David he builds for me the holy Trinity of authors. I’m dead serious when I finished this entry I will catch a black cat to sacrifice it for their glory.

One of the reasons why I like him so much is, that I cannot remember any story of him that disappointed me. Of course during his work on Babylon 5 and Spider- Man there were some weaker episodes, but nothing where my inner critic said “Not good, this bad storytelling”. Well that changed with the emergence of “One More Day”, a story driven by editorial decisions and Marvels way to confess that they are too lazy to bring the marriage of Peter Parker to an real end.

The synopsis of this big hyped event is as follows: Peter’s Aunt Mary is dying because of a gunshot. Our hero consults different scientist and magicians in the marvel universe, but no one can help him. On his way he meets a little girl and a red haired woman, the latter one shows him alternative lives of his in which he didn’t became Spider-Man. It turns out that both are illusions created by Mephisto, the devil of the Marvel Universe, and he offers to save his aunt in exchange of his marriage, he or anybody would remember that he was married. He gives him ONE MORE DAY to think about it and Peter goes to his beloved wife MJ to talk about it. She agrees of course with him to save Aunt May, who declared in another series, that she is an old woman and is ready to die. Long story short, they strike a deal and Peter wakes up with no memories of his marriage and he lives of course again together with his Aunt May. Years of character development and development in comics in general are erased.

This story was totally editor driven. The editor itself, Joe Quesada, drew the issues. The artwork looks very pretty, but when we start to pay too much on the pictures, we forget the content of a story.
Here are the main points why the marriage had to be erased.

1. Peter’s marriage to a super model makes him look like Billy joel.
Who is Billy Joel? (I looked at Wikipedia, and now I know who this Joel guy is)
I know that David Bowie is married to a model. And Leonardo DiCaprio dated Gisele Bündchen. And Johnny Depp’s spouse at the moment is Vanessa Paradis, the girl who was sitting in the nineties only dressed with a necklace on a pool while singing a song on MTV and looking damn hot and I was in my puberty. Johnny and Leonardo you know. Johnny is now in his mid forties and the girls would still drink him up. So being married to a model is a very bad thing.
And hey what about dealing with MJ like a character not just an eye candy? Write her back as a student. Let her say: I am done with this model- industry, it is too much pressure, I have earned enough money to go back too university. That would have been character development and a serious treatment of a person. But that is maybe a too long thought. And it would have been material for story telling. Where is the fucking problem?!

2. Peter’s marriage makes him less relatable to younger people.
Yeah, remember kids, only marry when you are over forty and by the way Quesada, there was this movement lee initiated to make comics cool among students and you maybe have recognized that students are much too young for marriage because they are all over twenty. The situation of those two married makes soap opera writing difficult. We all knew that a marriage and its problems is one of the topics soap operas never touch.

3. A divorce would have aged the character.
Isn’t that a logical point? That is a clear statement; you shouldn’t marry when you are under thirty. The very funny fact is, that knew people who already did this unspeakable thing, and they are happy. It is nothing for me actually, because I am a self centered pig, but everybody who married among my friends and classmates is happy. I hope when Mr. Quesada realize this, his view of the world will collapse and he will need serious help from a psychiatrist. But let’s face the statistics, divorce is increasing in these years and it would add some real live tragedy to let Mary and Peter recognize, that they are too young for living together until death they part. That would have been actually in harmony with one of the traditions of the Marvel Company, which published the first Superhero Comic without the Seal of the comic code. Either way it is a missed opportunity.

4. The marriage situation makes soap opera writing less possible.
I am not a fan of soap operas, but due my two sisters I have an idea how they are working and when you are in a foreign country, soap operas or Tele Novelas are a good source for learning the language. And maybe I am a bit of a smart ass, but I think that two young people working on their marriage is surely a good source for heart moving soap opera like writing.

Last but not least there is the big elephant in the room that Peter Parker, Spider-Man, an All American Hero makes a deal with the Devil. Yes Mephisto is a magical monster from another dimension, but that didn’t change the fact, that he is the substitute for the Devil himself in the Marvel Universe. I am an Atheist, I don’t think there is a horned guy waiting for my soul, but even for me it is just awkward when a symbol of the everyday heroism strikes a deal with the symbol of pure evil. That is just wrong, also in the way of storytelling because it is just a very foul excuse to pull out a deus ex machina, or in this case a daimon ex machina, who serves as a magic plot device, that you don’t need to explain.

That is cheating the audience. This story is the way of Joe Quesada to flip the audience off. It is a single “Fuck Off, I don’t give a shit for you” to all the readers of the book. He can explain as much as he wants, but he cannot explain it away.

And thank you Mr. Quesada for ruining with your hatred for marriages the work of one of my heroes.