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Yes. And Eastman only penciled the cover. The art in the book is pretty neat.

Why is there a catman leading the Greasers to war against the Turtles?

I don't know much about Hank Pym outside of the Ultimate universe. Is Nathan Fillion really a good choice for the roll in Edgar Wright's Ant-Man movie? Because a lot of people seem to think so.

I finally got around to reading the first five issues of Swamp Thing last night and I was totally underwhelmed. Paquette is clearly very ambitious about the title and some of the images are quite memorable, like the snapped-neck rot zombies attacking with their faces flipped backwards or the cancer-ridden bully pressing his surprisingly ugly features against the plastic walls of William's sterile-enviro tent. But the cover framing and interpanel "organic" design, like art nouveau in the 70s, is just pretension. They're like doodles in the margins of notes for an especially dry lecture (not a misleading allusion to Snyder, by the way) and Paquette's mind sometimes seems to be on anything but visual narrative making some sequences of (ostensibly important) dialog confusing to follow. Indeed, artistic frustration seems apparent in Alec's perpetual balk and Abigail's omni-oppressive deadpan. The only character enjoying himself is trying to end it all. I'm probably reading too deeply, wondering if it's a coincidence.

Paquette may be a little off on this title but Snyder is the real let down. First, I'm sick of characters telling stories in place of the writer -- I'd prefer if the writer told the story using the characters. I just need to get this off my chest: Dear comic book writers, Please have something happen in the story. Sincerely, Manchu. Some might think I'm being a bit unfair to the first five issues of Swamp Thing. Plenty has happened. On the other hand, it's five issues of exposition -- for only three characters. And, not having read the older books, I still know hardly anything about any of them. The cosmological dichotomy of growth and decay Snyder either invents or carries on also seems facially problematic -- especially for the titular character. What better than a swamp to illustrate the close connection between these phenomena? I guess my expectations were pretty high. But it is Scott Snyder, after all, working on a modern-gothic tale of American horror.

Anyone else here reading it?

No, thanks for the review though.

Manchu wrote:Anyone else here reading it?

I share your sentiments entirely: it's yet another failed Swamp Thing relaunch, just Brian Vaughan's and just like Andy Diggle's. I'll give it 20 issues or so before it folds. The revived Animal Man is faintly more promising, but still not a patch on Grant Morrison's run.

If you haven't read the Alan Moore Swamp Thing from the late '80s, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend buying them in TPB in place of this recycled tosh.

English Assassin wrote:If you haven't read the Alan Moore Swamp Thing from the late '80s, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend buying them in TPB in place of this recycled tosh.

I took your advice even before you proffered it. Last Thursday, I ordered the six volumes of Moore's run and read three volumes this past weekend. It's pitch perfect by comparison. But that "by comparison" part is the real cinch, isn't it? My take on Alan Moore is that he tries to write the complete, absolute, and final word on an issue. It's not that he's a tough act to follow, or it's not just that in any case -- it's that he sets things up so you have to follow in the sense of following his lead. I don't think Snyder wants to coast along the ruts cut by Moore but his wheels keep falling into those tracks anyway. One thing I've noticed about Moore's run is how little action there is (even an early appearance by the dynamically physical Etrigan is a breath of fresh air in Moore's stagnant, fetid swamp) which is a stark contrast to Snyder's Abigail, screaming up on a motorcycle and shoving a shotgun in Alec's face in one fluid motion. But the subsequent high-speed getaway, which is not even a chase, ends up petering out into our heroes simply ... going to sleep. And then they have their significant dreams. And then there's a creepy supernatural kid.

If the history of comics was itself a comic book, Alan Moore would be a super villain bent on world domination -- who won.

At least it would well written.

That's questionable. Remember the webcomic Malfred posted earlier? "Put more rape in everything" ≠ "well written."

Manchu wrote:

English Assassin wrote:If you haven't read the Alan Moore Swamp Thing from the late '80s, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend buying them in TPB in place of this recycled tosh.

I took your advice even before you proffered it. Last Thursday, I ordered the six volumes of Moore's run and read three volumes this past weekend.

Despite the redundancy of my advice, I'm very glad you're enjoying them. If you haven't read them before, you may find yourself wishing to pick up the first few volumes of Hellblazer (the Jamie Delano ones), which shed some more light on a few things (which I shan't spoil by mentioning before you read them). The Swamp Thing also makes a triumphant return at the end of Mike Carey's excellent Hellblazer run, which is itself well worth a read.

Manchu wrote:It's pitch perfect by comparison. But that "by comparison" part is the real cinch, isn't it? My take on Alan Moore is that he tries to write the complete, absolute, and final word on an issue. It's not that he's a tough act to follow, or it's not just that in any case -- it's that he sets things up so you have to follow in the sense of following his lead. I don't think Snyder wants to coast along the ruts cut by Moore but his wheels keep falling into those tracks anyway.

I think you strike the essential problem, which is that Moore's Swamp Thing is the definitive one - he has done pretty much everything worthwhile which can be done with a superhero made of moss, and there's simply no need, on a creative level, for more stories. On the entirely commercial level on which DC work, however, a franchise which once sold well is something to be mined until it's dry, then reinvented and mined some more, hence endless revamps to ever-diminishing returns, whether creative or commercial. Were it not for Neil Gaiman being rather better at reading contracts than Moore, I'm sure DC would have put Morpheus in the Justice League by now.

If Morpheus could join the Justice League, I might be interested in buying and reading all those Sandman books.

It's just a weird argument your making Manchu. "Moore is too definative." Most stories that are good are definitive. That old beginning, middle and end trick but we've been over this before.

English Assassin wrote:I think you strike the essential problem, which is that Moore's Swamp Thing is the definitive one - he has done pretty much everything worthwhile which can be done with a superhero made of moss, and there's simply no need, on a creative level, for more stories.

I very strongly object to this. This is Moore's line, especially with regard to the Watchmen right now. Alan Moore has no grounds to say there aren't more stories to tell about anything. A better way to put it is that there is no need for more Alan Moore stories. And so the current problem with Swamp Thing is that Snyder is too tonally similar to and/or too influenced by Moore.


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KamikazeCanuck wrote:Most stories that are good are definitive.

I couldn't disagree more. I think most good stories open up new ideas and dialogs and approaches -- they leave room for more stories. Alan Moore's career in mainstream comics was about foreclosing all the possibilities. Everything is the last story with him. Grant Morrison is a total contrast. With Grant, everything is the first story -- including his stuff for the likes of Batman and Superman, which have been in continuous publication for ~80 years.

Manchu wrote:If Morpheus could join the Justice League, I might be interested in buying and reading all those Sandman books.

It works the other way too; Justice League Dark is pretty much the final nail in John Constantine's coffin. (Not that Hellblazer hasn't been predominantly mediocre since Ennis' run.)

Manchu wrote:

English Assassin wrote:I think you strike the essential problem, which is that Moore's Swamp Thing is the definitive one - he has done pretty much everything worthwhile which can be done with a superhero made of moss, and there's simply no need, on a creative level, for more stories.

I very strongly object to this. This is Moore's line, especially with regard to the Watchmen right now. Alan Moore has no grounds to say there aren't more stories to tell about anything. A better way to put it is that there is no need for more Alan Moore stories. And so the current problem with Swamp Thing is that Snyder is too tonally similar to and/or too influenced by Moore.

Well, if Snyder succeeds in establishing his own style and doing something worthwhile and new with the the Swamp Thing, I will be genuinely delighted to eat my words (and to do so while buying the trades); the abject failure of all the series' many writers since Moore to do so, however, suggests that the odds are against him.

That's exactly my point: no one is going to out-Moore Moore. The puzzling thing is why everyone is trying so hard to do so. Yes, Alan Moore's work has made DC a lot of money. But the reason he made them so much money is because he was writing his way. (Grant Morrison does the same thing and, being a smart guy, is not only making a lot of money for DC but also a mint for his own self.) I don't know if DC chose Snyder for Swamp Thing or Snyder chose Swamp Thing and DC was willing to let him have what he wanted after Black Mirror and American Vampire. I doubt the pressure to do Swamp Thing like Moore is coming down from the editorial staff or management. It seems more likely to me that Alan Moore's lasting legacy is not on how executives view sales. I don't think that has changed much since Moore was signing whatever contract folks put in front of him. I'd say Moore's legacy, and I'm talking about since the late 80s, has been this overbearing artistic influence, what Harold Bloom calls the anxiety of influence.


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English Assassin wrote:It works the other way too; Justice League Dark is pretty much the final nail in John Constantine's coffin.

All I meant was, I finally picked up Moore's Swamp Thing run because Swamp Thing is once again relevant to the DC universe proper and I felt I might need some context to understand Snyder's run.

Manchu wrote:That's exactly my point: no one is going to out-Moore Moore. The puzzling thing is why everyone is trying so hard to do so. Yes, Alan Moore's work has made DC a lot of money. But the reason he made them so much money is because he was writing his way. (Grant Morrison does the same thing and, being a smart guy, is not only making a lot of money for DC but also a mint for his own self.) I don't know if DC chose Snyder for Swamp Thing or Snyder chose Swamp Thing and DC was willing to let him have what he wanted after Black Mirror and American Vampire. I doubt the pressure to do Swamp Thing like Moore is coming down from the editorial staff or management. It seems more likely to me that Alan Moore's lasting legacy is not on how executives view sales. I don't think that has changed much since Moore was signing whatever contract folks put in front of him. I'd say Moore's legacy, and I'm talking about since the late 80s, has been this overbearing artistic influence, what Harold Bloom calls the anxiety of influence.

Comic books must be a very difficult beast, commercially, since the fans always seem to want things to be new, and yet at the same to be different. I'd agree entirely that Moore's run was such a success because he reinvented the character (at a time when he had the freedom to do so, since nobody cared about Swamp Thing, and DC were about to pull the plug on the series - this applies to The Sandman and Animal Man too), and that the only likely way to duplicate that success will be to avoid duplicating anything else.

The only problem with that line of reasoning is that it does leave me wondering "why Swamp thing at all?". It's a great shame that, geekdom being the way it is, comic book companies are so unwilling ever to take the commercial gamble of allowing their writers create new properties. (Admittedly, the last time DC did this, it was a disaster, but it was back in the mid-1990s, and was done in an appallingly hamfisted way. We still got Garth Ennis' excellent Hitman out of it, however.) It's sad to reflect that comic books like Watchmen, V for Vendetta and The Invisibles, which have shaped the medium and brought it to a mainstream audience - which is to say people who wouldn't dream of buying books about guys in brightly-coloured spandex beating each other up in front of prominent landmarks - wouldn't have been published today.

Manchu wrote:

English Assassin wrote:It works the other way too; Justice League Dark is pretty much the final nail in John Constantine's coffin.

All I meant was, I finally picked up Moore's Swamp Thing run because Swamp Thing is once again relevant to the DC universe proper and I felt I might need some context to understand Snyder's run.

This, of course, is obviously a good thing, and I'm very glad you're enjoying them. If you haven't read them already, I suspect you would find the trades of Grant Morrison's Animal Man even more likeable. (Even though, in this instance, he really does make it difficult for subsequent writers to produce a more memorable treatment of the character.)

On another subject entirely, has anybody been picking up Elric: The Balance Lost, and if so, is it any good?

I'm all for new properties except at the expense of established ones. Even if brilliant creators are allowed to do a new character in her or his own title month after month, I doubt any of them will ever replace Batman as the one who always brings me back to this product.

This touches on the issue KC just brought up again: mythic cycles versus discrete narratives. I can get characters that only live in a single story from just about every medium out there: short stories, novels, film, TV programs, video games -- and yes comic books. But only the comic book has seemed to produce characters too big to be contained by their stories. I can enjoy something entirely self-contained like V for Vendetta as far as it goes, which honestly isn't too far. Far more enjoyable, for me at least, is the notion that Superman is more than can be apprehended by any of our egos, even one as disproportionately inflated as Alan Moore's.

All Alan Moore did was get people to like a property that no one cared about in the first place. It's not like he killed Superman. Speaking of which, Superman is not has never been a good title because it is by far the most stagnant and non-changing of all comics. It's best known and probably best selling arch was The Death of Superman. Was whoever wrote that just stoking his ego? Did it take a lot of courage to bring him back and reinstate the status quo?
The reason nothing can ever be permanently done with Batman and Spider-Man isn't because these characters have some kind of special timelessness. It's because they are corporate brands owned by publishers trying to sell comics every month and more importantly hoping they can cash in with some movie rights.

First of all, people won't buy it just because it's for sale. Second: although it might take a lesser or greater period to thoroughly investigate as the case may be, every individual imagination is a finite space. The second most arrogant thing creators can do is assume their audience will never tire of exploring one vision, their own. The most arrogant thing is to assume all other visions are ineffectual to the point of nonexistence (i.e., Alan Moore on comics since 1986). When you hear the story I'm telling, you're hearing your story as well as mine. The idea that I have should have a monopoly interest in the meaning that exists in your brain is utterly repulsive. "Your thoughts belong to me -- after all, you got them from me in the first place." Only after he tells you his scheme does Ozymandias reveal he's already accomplished it -- that is, your own imagination is presented to you as a fait accompli. Over and against this preposterous slavery stands Superman and there can be no question who is the greater.

Manchu wrote:First of all, people won't buy it just because it's for sale. Second: although it might take a lesser or greater period to thoroughly investigate as the case may be, every individual imagination is a finite space. The second most arrogant thing creators can do is assume their audience will never tire of exploring one vision, their own. The most arrogant thing is to assume all other visions are ineffectual to the point of nonexistence (i.e., Alan Moore on comics since 1986). When you hear the story I'm telling, you're hearing your story as well as mine. The idea that I have should have a monopoly interest in the meaning that exists in your brain is utterly repulsive. "Your thoughts belong to me -- after all, you got them from me in the first place." Only after he tells you his scheme does Ozymandias reveal he's already accomplished it -- that is, your own imagination is presented to you as a fait accompli. Over and against this preposterous slavery stands Superman and there can be no question who is the greater.

Manchu, what is this nonsense? Ozymandius is not Moore. I get that you do not like Alan Moore but your acting like he kicked your dog. You try to dress it up with overly cerebral criticisms but all you've said is that how dare he have the gall to write a definative story? A story that would be hard to follow? That sound like a sarcastic comment someone would say to be complimentey but you at being serious. Honestly, it's the strangest criticism I've ever heard. He is simply writing stories and you perceive arrogance in it. That's your problem. Are you criticizing the work or the reputation?

I'm not hiding a personal attack behind "overly cerebral" rhetoric. There's this thing called the Dark Age and it was pretty much ushered in by the Watchmen and the Dark Knight Returns. You say Alan Moore is "simply writing stories" but the fact is that those stories have been tremendously influential. Without Alan Moore, I doubt we'd have Rob Liefeld for example. It's not like his stories aren't good (or rather, it's not that they're indisputably bad) but they have shaped the industry and fan expectations in a way that is hard to overemphasize. (When Zack Snyder's movie came out, DC sold another million copies of the Watchmen.) And then there's the matter of how Moore himself perceives his work and his influence and he's none to shy about sharing. It's simply matter of paying attention.


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KamikazeCanuck wrote:Ozymandius is not Moore.

I am not saying that Ozymandias is Moore's one-for-one avatar. But is it far fetched to think a character in a story might actually be part of the author's self expression? And did you ever consider that the Watchmen is a story about comic book superheroes? I mean, that it tells us about superheroes as literary devices rather than just recounting the adventures of Nite Owl and the rest? Ozymandias is (part of) Moore's way of telling us what he thinks about this literary form. He stands for circumstances being beyond the capability of heroism, reluctant or otherwise -- that the reach of the superhero far exceeds his grasp, even when the hero in question is functionally omnipotent. It's no wonder that, in the wake of this story, Brian Azzarello could write Lex Luthor's core motivation as the belief that Superman's existence renders humanity meaningless ... a viewpoint that comes directly from Moore's recycling of an obscure Charleston character into Dr. Manhattan. Did you even realize that Ozymandias freaking superpower is storytelling? And it's the same with Rorschach, for whom death is preferable to giving up on "the truth." I'm not making this stuff up; it's right there on the page for anyone who bothers to pay attention.

Well Manchu if you had also been "paying attention" you'd know that Moore has said his intention was that Watchmen have 5 distinct outlooks from the 5 different main characters. Which it does. Many people identify with more or are more interested in different characters. I personally don't care anything for Ozymamdius, I find him to be the second least interesting character of the whole thing. I suspect he registered a lot more in your mind and you projected the writer on to him. Truly Moore suffers from multiple personality disorder if he is all the characters? Or perhaps creating fully realized yet diverse characters is a hallmark of a good writer.
Also while I honestly don't pay attention to what Moore says as much as you he has also lamented the influence Watchmen has had on the industry. While proud of his work he has said it is sad that 2 decades later it's still regarded as the best comic book. He has said it should have been surpassed a long time ago by something from the new generation.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:Well Manchu if you had also been "paying attention" you'd know that Moore has said his intention was that Watchmen have 5 distinct outlooks from the 5 different main characters. [...] Truly Moore suffers from multiple personality disorder if he is all the characters?

Really? You're telling me to pay attention? Really? Let's look back one post.

Manchu wrote:I am not saying that Ozymandias is Moore's one-for-one avatar. But is it far fetched to think a character in a story might actually be part of the author's self expression?

KamikazeCanuck wrote:While proud of his work he has said it is sad that 2 decades later it's still regarded as the best comic book. He has said it should have been surpassed a long time ago by something from the new generation.

My God, this is exactly what I've been talking about: Moore declares he's the only one who matters and people line up to nod. For feth's sake, Moore's Dark Age was undermined as early as 1996 by Mark Waid and Alex Ross in Kingdom Come.

You yourself are saying that his peers are influenced him. Creating an entire "dark age". That's a pretty big accomplishment. Why is it Moore's fault that a subsequent generation was influenced by him? That's why when he said there's no need for these Watchmen prequels I just see it as an extension of what he said years ago. That Watchmen shouldn't be held up like this and other writers should have stepped out of his shadow. How are the supposed to do that when they are borrowing from him again? He's rather have them creating great original works of their own but your negative predisposition towards him makes you think he is bragging. He doesn't need to apologized for being critically reclaimed.

You previously said Moore can show comics can be taken seriously now let's see what else they can do. What does that even mean? Not being taken seriously willl happen all on it's own, you don't need to work at it. Being taken seriously is hard though. I know you don't like Christopher Nolan's Batman. I don't know your opinion on Tim Burton's but I find them similar in their darkness. I prefer Batman that way. For many out there, not joking, Adam West is the ultimate Batman. That Batman is the pinnicle of all Batman can be. Neither preference is wrong. It that goes both ways. Some, like me, prefer a grittier comic book world.

If this "dark age" was "killed" then it was killed by the "bad girls" phenomenon. An entire age driven by giant boobs. I'll take Moore's pretentious-to-some deconstruction of the graphic novel medium over super-big-and-shiny boobs comics any day. That is what else comics can do.

Some of the things you're saying, I'm in 100% agreement with. But I think we're drawing different lessons from shared concepts or at least talking past each other a little.

The "bad girls" are very much of the Dark Age. And Nolan's Batman is the most unambiguously Dark Age interpretation of the character since the Dark Knight Returns -- not surprising since it draws explicitly from Frank Miller as well as The Killing Joke. Burton's Batman was also a product of the Dark Age but those movies look a lot more like the Silver Age next to Nolan.

That's a good example actually. Unlike with previous eras, there's a real ambiguity to when the Dark Age ended or whether it ever did. You can see that with Nolan. Going on chronology alone, Burton's work (which I love FYI) should be far, far darker than Nolans. Think about it: The Dark Knight Returns was published in 1986; TKJ in 1988; and Burton's Batman film was released in 1989. And yet the phenomenal success of Nolan's films shows us a real retrenchment of that style in a much harder cast. Same with animation: Batman The Animated Series was shockingly dark in the 90s but Young Justice (a show about kids!) makes TAS seem "cartoonish."

One of the lessons we can draw is that the system of labeling eras is only good to a point. Hell, the serials from the 40s are pretty damn dark compared to the camp sensibility of the Adam West show. In fact, the story goes that the 60s program was a parody on the seriousness of the serials. Bob Kane's Batman from '39 is really dark, too. And so are the O'Neil/Adams stories immediately following the zany high Silver Age.

So I'm not here to say the Dark Age was gak. Yeah, there was Liefeld. And the pouches and the boobs. And yeah I hate a lot of things about TKJ and Year One and TDKR -- especially in terms of how oppressive their influence is. But I love Neal Adams. And I can't deny that Frank Miller and Alan Moore were major watersheds. That's why they're influential.

Let's just think about Shakespeare as an example. I know his plays are great. But what if Shakespeare's greatness meant we'd never have another play because the good plays had already been written -- and Shakespeare himself was holed up in Avon telling us that no one has ever managed to write a play of any worth. At that point the influence of Shakespeare becomes toxic rather than stimulating. That's the kind of taint that Moore's work and Moore's influence have spread. And it's my contention that this isn't a coincidence. There have been a lot of great comics writers but the great majority of them have inspired others (including Moore) to push things in different directions whereas the Watchmen just gets played again and again (look up Moore's Twilight of the Superheroes if you want to know what his plans were regarding this -- basically a rewrite of the Watchmen with DC characters).

I don't really object to Moore's deconstruction. I object to Moore's apparent contention that deconstruction is the end of all things. Kingdom Come introduced us to reconstruction and Grant Morrison has developed that into a high art. Batman RIP surpasses the Watchmen as much as the Watchmen surpassed the Silver Age -- and unsurprisingly Batman RIP is the great rehabilitation of the zaniest episodes of the Silver Age. Troublingly for some, Morrison's writing is not totalitizing; it's much harder to read and doesn't twist the reader's arm into adopting its viewpoint. A lot of people just gave up on it as entirely inaccessible -- no Rorshach to push you around. (Take a look at some of the articles reds8n has posted here about Morrison's books.)

KamikazeCanuck wrote:All Alan Moore did was get people to like a property that no one cared about in the first place. It's not like he killed Superman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman:_Whatever_Happened_to_the_Man_of_Tomorrow%3F

Yes he did.

Speaking of which, Superman is not has never been a good title because it is by far the most stagnant and non-changing of all comics. It's best known and probably best selling arch was The Death of Superman.

I'm sorry that's nonsense.
Back in the day Superman used to sell over 1 million copies a month, over multiple titles.
And of course when he first appeared he could "merely" leap tall buildings, outrace a locomotive etc etc. All the other stuff -- flying, heat visions, time travel " super ventriloquism", the fortress of Solitude, Superboy, the Legion of Super Heroes etc etc all came along much later.

For what... 10 years plus..... Clark and Lois were actually married.

Was whoever wrote that just stoking his ego?

Only a little bit. The original plan was to have the marriage but that was verboten due to the success of the Lois and Clark Tv show.

Did it take a lot of courage to bring him back and reinstate the status quo?

I don't think there was ever any doubt he would return, the trick is if you can pull it off successfully. Given the sales boost and the new characters that spun out of the story and are noew pretty much part of the mythos -- see Steel/John henry Irons being intro'ed early in the current Action Comics run I think they were successful.

The reason nothing can ever be permanently done with Batman and Spider-Man isn't because these characters have some kind of special timelessness. It's because they are corporate brands owned by publishers trying to sell comics every month and more importantly hoping they can cash in with some movie rights.

I think you're partially correct here, $/£s talk after all. See the return to the "more iconic" versions of several of the DC characters.

That said one would point out what was happening in the Batman comics in the last few years goes pretty much directly against this yes ? Biggest and best selling Batman films ever and the comics had Dick Grayson -- who isn't even mentioned in the films -- running round as Batman with Bruce's bastard son as Robin

With regards to Moore.... hmm...

I love some of what he's done. His Swamp Thing run I've owned -- in the B & W reprint trades -- for years and love it to bits. But I think the best bits is when he sues the other DC characters and toys as well. I've been to talks he's done about magick, drugs and all manner of leftfield topics, and he's great to listen to.

But I think there's times he talks out of his arse, especially when it comes to legacy and creativity in comics. I don't recall him moaning and bitching about everything being the same and there being nothing new when he was jobbing for Image comics writing X men sorry WILDCATS, Superman Supreme or any other of the crude copies and ripoffs he's worked on over the years.

Fair play to him I think he sort of acknowledges this in a Splash Branigan short.

Frankly he's now coming across as a moany old man droning on about how everything was better in the old days. I respect the stand he's taken but moaning after one has burnt one's own boats or bridges is churlish in the extreme. I was actually quite amused to read how he's so against Watchmen prequels as everything that needed to be said has been said.... and then going onto complain about how DC have stitched him over over the contract -- a contract that ahs paid him good royalties for many years now -- as if they hadn't kept the book in print then the rights would revert to him/the creators.

... ..now... why do you think they'd be interested in those then eh ? Or is it actually a case of there's nothing more I want anyone else to say with the characters ?

There's things of Moore's I'd still be very interested in seeing -- I can't be the only person here who's read the online stuff about his DC Twilight of the Gods/ proto Kingdom Come which sounds immense... but I'm less and less interested in hearing what he has to say. I thought much of his comments about the recent Dc events concerning Green lantern were especially dumb and spiteful, and laughable when you look how he's used existing/obscure bits of continuity in his own work.

Manchu wrote:But only the comic book has seemed to produce characters too big to be contained by their stories.

Now that's a very nicely-put way of looking at it, and I'd agree that talented writers are capable of conveying this is their work - Grant Morrison is indeed the exemplar of this.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:The reason nothing can ever be permanently done with Batman and Spider-Man isn't because these characters have some kind of special timelessness. It's because they are corporate brands owned by publishers trying to sell comics every month and more importantly hoping they can cash in with some movie rights.

It's difficult to argue, however, that this is not also true.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:All Alan Moore did was get people to like a property that no one cared about in the first place.

It's quite possible to read that sentence as "Alan Moore got people who didn't read comics to read comics.", which would also be true.

KamikazeCanuck wrote:It's not like he killed Superman. Speaking of which, Superman is not has never been a good title because it is by far the most stagnant and non-changing of all comics. It's best known and probably best selling arch was The Death of Superman. Was whoever wrote that just stoking his ego? Did it take a lot of courage to bring him back and reinstate the status quo?

I'm actually unsure as to whether you're being sarcastic here, particularly since Moore did kill Superman in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow. The Death of Superman sold a colossal number of comics in a time in which sales volumes were many times their present level - indeed it, along with the multiple-cover, polybagged X-Men v2#1, is often blamed for the crash which ended that boom.

Looked at twenty years on, however, time has not done it any favours (even if one ignores Superman's mullet), and it compares, as a Superman story, very poorly with, say, Kingdom Come, Peace on Earth or the recent Infinite/Final Crisis stories. The dialogue is stilted (written by the Marvel method), the art is scratchy, and everybody knows (as they did at the time) that the ending will be a cop-out. It's no coincidence that collections of material published around the same time, but written with a measure of integrity, rather than as publicity gimmicks, have continued to sell over the intervening twenty years (Sandman, Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns, by way of example, all of which continue to appear in the lower reaches of the IGN charts, and have done so consistently since publication).

Manchu wrote:There's this thing called the Dark Age and it was pretty much ushered in by the Watchmen and the Dark Knight Returns. You say Alan Moore is "simply writing stories" but the fact is that those stories have been tremendously influential. Without Alan Moore, I doubt we'd have Rob Liefeld for example.

Whilst I see the logic, it's perhaps a little unfair to blame Alan Moore (though I might indeed point a finger at Frank Miller) for Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, et al. having taken the superficial "darkness" of their work, and pasted it onto low-quality superhero hackwork. That's like blaming Jane Austen for Bridget Jones' Diary, or Umberto Eco for The Da Vinci Code. 1963, Tom Strong and (perhaps most remarkably) Moore's well-regarded reinvention of Leifeld's otherwise execrable Supreme, demonstrate that his oeuvre is not limited to grit and gloom.

Manchu wrote:Batman RIP surpasses the Watchmen as much as the Watchmen surpassed the Silver Age -- and unsurprisingly Batman RIP is the great rehabilitation of the zaniest episodes of the Silver Age. Troublingly for some, Morrison's writing is not totalitizing; it's much harder to read and doesn't twist the reader's arm into adopting its viewpoint. A lot of people just gave up on it as entirely inaccessible -- no Rorshach to push you around.

Now I would take issue with this. Firstly, Banman RIP, though infinitely better-written than The Death of Superman, is still fuss about nothing; a year on, Bruce is back in his Batcave as though nothing had happened. Secondly, though we'll need to wait twenty years to judge it fairly, I don't imagine that, for all its good points, it will have become, as Watchmen has, a cultural reference point accessible to those outside geekdom.

@EnglishAssassin: Are you thinking of Final Crisis? Batman didn't actually die in Batman RIP. Also, whether or not the events of a story are rendered "permanent" by subsequent writers doesn't seem to me to be the only criterion of success.

It's hard for me to understand this "loved outside of comic books" criterion of success, too. What does it matter if people who are ignorant of a genre can reference a couple of best sellers? Where is this hip intelligentsia who read the Watchmen but couldn't tell (or care less about) who Nightwing is? And why should I care what they think? It seems to me that "the wider audience" is the movie-going and TV-watching public. Their approval is registered in dollars. These are the same people who have handed over millions to Kim Kardashian. I guess by that standard Kim is far more culturally significant than Alan Moore.


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English Assassin wrote:Whilst I see the logic, it's perhaps a little unfair to blame Alan Moore (though I might indeed point a finger at Frank Miller) for Rob Liefeld, Todd McFarlane, et al. having taken the superficial "darkness" of their work, and pasted it onto low-quality superhero hackwork.

Let's not push the argument too far. It's not like Rob Liefeld is Alan Moore's protege. But Moore and Miller did set the stage for guys like Liefeld and McFarlane to look down at their bristol board and see something serious rather than ridiculous. And, more importantly, Moore and Miller created an appetite for darkness among the fans.

TBH, I don't have any interest in running down the 90s. That's when I was head over heals for anything with an X (or "2099") in the title and didn't give a crap about whatever was going on with DC if it wasn't Batman. (I never even bought the Death of Superman black cover.) I liked Cable then and, although I have no idea what is going on with the character now, liking him doesn't embarrass me. While Lady Death and Witchblade didn't do it for me, I definitely thought Domino and Psylocke were incredibly hot. The AzBats costume, a parody of what Liefeld did for Marvel, was for me the epitome of cool. Spawn was a close second and I'd still laud Angela and Redeemer as visually as well as narratively provocative.


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Also, would one of your kind Britishers do a Yank a good turn by flipping through this and tell me about it:

Manchu wrote:Some of the things you're saying, I'm in 100% agreement with. But I think we're drawing different lessons from shared concepts or at least talking past each other a little.

The "bad girls" are very much of the Dark Age. And Nolan's Batman is the most unambiguously Dark Age interpretation of the character since the Dark Knight Returns -- not surprising since it draws explicitly from Frank Miller as well as The Killing Joke. Burton's Batman was also a product of the Dark Age but those movies look a lot more like the Silver Age next to Nolan.

That's a good example actually. Unlike with previous eras, there's a real ambiguity to when the Dark Age ended or whether it ever did. You can see that with Nolan. Going on chronology alone, Burton's work (which I love FYI) should be far, far darker than Nolans. Think about it: The Dark Knight Returns was published in 1986; TKJ in 1988; and Burton's Batman film was released in 1989. And yet the phenomenal success of Nolan's films shows us a real retrenchment of that style in a much harder cast. Same with animation: Batman The Animated Series was shockingly dark in the 90s but Young Justice (a show about kids!) makes TAS seem "cartoonish."

One of the lessons we can draw is that the system of labeling eras is only good to a point. Hell, the serials from the 40s are pretty damn dark compared to the camp sensibility of the Adam West show. In fact, the story goes that the 60s program was a parody on the seriousness of the serials. Bob Kane's Batman from '39 is really dark, too. And so are the O'Neil/Adams stories immediately following the zany high Silver Age.

So I'm not here to say the Dark Age was gak. Yeah, there was Liefeld. And the pouches and the boobs. And yeah I hate a lot of things about TKJ and Year One and TDKR -- especially in terms of how oppressive their influence is. But I love Neal Adams. And I can't deny that Frank Miller and Alan Moore were major watersheds. That's why they're influential.

Let's just think about Shakespeare as an example. I know his plays are great. But what if Shakespeare's greatness meant we'd never have another play because the good plays had already been written -- and Shakespeare himself was holed up in Avon telling us that no one has ever managed to write a play of any worth. At that point the influence of Shakespeare becomes toxic rather than stimulating. That's the kind of taint that Moore's work and Moore's influence have spread. And it's my contention that this isn't a coincidence. There have been a lot of great comics writers but the great majority of them have inspired others (including Moore) to push things in different directions whereas the Watchmen just gets played again and again (look up Moore's Twilight of the Superheroes if you want to know what his plans were regarding this -- basically a rewrite of the Watchmen with DC characters).

I don't really object to Moore's deconstruction. I object to Moore's apparent contention that deconstruction is the end of all things. Kingdom Come introduced us to reconstruction and Grant Morrison has developed that into a high art. Batman RIP surpasses the Watchmen as much as the Watchmen surpassed the Silver Age -- and unsurprisingly Batman RIP is the great rehabilitation of the zaniest episodes of the Silver Age. Troublingly for some, Morrison's writing is not totalitizing; it's much harder to read and doesn't twist the reader's arm into adopting its viewpoint. A lot of people just gave up on it as entirely inaccessible -- no Rorshach to push you around. (Take a look at some of the articles reds8n has posted here about Morrison's books.)

You're going to have to define what the "Dark Age" is then. From your original description it sounds like when comics became more mature. The Bad Girls age as far as I'm concerned actually undid that or at least slowed it a bit. Unless Dark age is meant more like "when comics suck". For me The Watchmen and Witchblade are moving in opposite directions and the only reason to say one owes something to the other is because it simply came after it chronologically.
Are we in the Dark Age now? I guess we must be but It could be argued it was just an evolution of the medium in the first place.
Overall I get this sense from your points that you'd think that comics would be better if The Watchmen and Moore never existed. I don't know if that's what you think, but I don't agree and I also don't think he's even remotely as toxic as some of their creators to come after him in the Image revolution.

reds8n wrote:

KamikazeCanuck wrote:All Alan Moore did was get people to like a property that no one cared about in the first place. It's not like he killed Superman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman:_Whatever_Happened_to_the_Man_of_Tomorrow%3F

Yes he did.

Speaking of which, Superman is not has never been a good title because it is by far the most stagnant and non-changing of all comics. It's best known and probably best selling arch was The Death of Superman.

I'm sorry that's nonsense.
Back in the day Superman used to sell over 1 million copies a month, over multiple titles.
And of course when he first appeared he could "merely" leap tall buildings, outrace a locomotive etc etc. All the other stuff -- flying, heat visions, time travel " super ventriloquism", the fortress of Solitude, Superboy, the Legion of Super Heroes etc etc all came along much later.

For what... 10 years plus..... Clark and Lois were actually married.

Was whoever wrote that just stoking his ego?

Only a little bit. The original plan was to have the marriage but that was verboten due to the success of the Lois and Clark Tv show.

Did it take a lot of courage to bring him back and reinstate the status quo?

I don't think there was ever any doubt he would return, the trick is if you can pull it off successfully. Given the sales boost and the new characters that spun out of the story and are noew pretty much part of the mythos -- see Steel/John henry Irons being intro'ed early in the current Action Comics run I think they were successful.

The reason nothing can ever be permanently done with Batman and Spider-Man isn't because these characters have some kind of special timelessness. It's because they are corporate brands owned by publishers trying to sell comics every month and more importantly hoping they can cash in with some movie rights.

I think you're partially correct here, $/£s talk after all. See the return to the "more iconic" versions of several of the DC characters.

That said one would point out what was happening in the Batman comics in the last few years goes pretty much directly against this yes ? Biggest and best selling Batman films ever and the comics had Dick Grayson -- who isn't even mentioned in the films -- running round as Batman with Bruce's bastard son as Robin

With regards to Moore.... hmm...

I love some of what he's done. His Swamp Thing run I've owned -- in the B & W reprint trades -- for years and love it to bits. But I think the best bits is when he sues the other DC characters and toys as well. I've been to talks he's done about magick, drugs and all manner of leftfield topics, and he's great to listen to.

But I think there's times he talks out of his arse, especially when it comes to legacy and creativity in comics. I don't recall him moaning and bitching about everything being the same and there being nothing new when he was jobbing for Image comics writing X men sorry WILDCATS, Superman Supreme or any other of the crude copies and ripoffs he's worked on over the years.

Fair play to him I think he sort of acknowledges this in a Splash Branigan short.

Frankly he's now coming across as a moany old man droning on about how everything was better in the old days. I respect the stand he's taken but moaning after one has burnt one's own boats or bridges is churlish in the extreme. I was actually quite amused to read how he's so against Watchmen prequels as everything that needed to be said has been said.... and then going onto complain about how DC have stitched him over over the contract -- a contract that ahs paid him good royalties for many years now -- as if they hadn't kept the book in print then the rights would revert to him/the creators.

... ..now... why do you think they'd be interested in those then eh ? Or is it actually a case of there's nothing more I want anyone else to say with the characters ?

There's things of Moore's I'd still be very interested in seeing -- I can't be the only person here who's read the online stuff about his DC Twilight of the Gods/ proto Kingdom Come which sounds immense... but I'm less and less interested in hearing what he has to say. I thought much of his comments about the recent Dc events concerning Green lantern were especially dumb and spiteful, and laughable when you look how he's used existing/obscure bits of continuity in his own work.

I's still say getting married to the only girl he's ever been involved with and power fluctuations (which have more to do with how difficult it is to write a guy who's all-powerful like Superman rather than plot developement) isn't much for 80 years. Superman is often trapped from development from his own iconicness. Anyways these are simply personal preferences anyway and all we can do is explain why we view things in that way; no one is wrong.

Yes, Moore is a crazy old man but usually crazy and weird people make good artists: writers and musicians.
I'm not saying he's the comic book messiah or anything, in fact I've read very little of his stuff but what I have read I've liked. Liked a hell of a lot more than the usual stuff I find in my pull box.