Comic Books Comic Book • Page 406

King in Black issue 2. Wow.

 

(I think my comic store might have fucked up and put out all of DC's line up for next week)

 

It came, & it’s such a good looking book. So much comics material by so many gals & nonbinary pals. Can’t wait to read as much of it as I can next week.

Fun looking at the Kickstarter thanks in the back & seeing my name, @Deanna, & Anne from the Comic Lovers Facebook group I was in (before deactivating my Facebook), alongside a bunch of comics creators who backed it. (Funny to see Bendis listed as “Brian Bendis”; doesn’t look right without the “Michael” in the middle!)

 

Mine came yesterday, too! Very excited to dive in whenever I have time for comics again haha. After I get through the next 5 Stephen King books for my podcast, I should have less reading to do for that and more time for digging back into my unread comics.

 

Read Klaus & the Witch of Winter today, one of two Klaus one-shots I got out of a dollar bin the other month.

If you don’t know, Klaus is a Santa-as-superhero comic series written by magical non-binary anarchist icon Grant Morrison & drawn by Dan Mora (Power Rangers; upcoming Future State & Detective Comics). Basically, imagine if Grant applied their superhero sensibilities to a Santa Claus who’s also Superman with a dash of, like, Conan or Thor.

I initially didn’t care ‘cause the initial miniseries was marketed as a Santa barbarian origin story. But, these charmingly Christmas-y & comic-book-y one-shots are very up my alley. Really liked how this one weaved in elements drawn from Pinocchio & some Norse stuff.

 

C o m i c s !

 

Oh no.

 

I got the press release email and was instantly like "I don't think I want to open that."

 

Woof.

 

Big oof. Looks like if Taskmaster decided to be Spider-Man.

 

Looks like Firefly from DC

 

Looks like an Image Comics analogue of Spider-Man. Or, a Spider-Man analogue from an Image-lite publisher, like Upshot or whatever.

Honestly, if it were some creator-owned character, I’d probably like it. (Especially as someone who wants to make my own Spidey analogue someday, lol; I even have a tentative name & badly drawn first draft of a costume.) I’ve seen people online criticize the eyes, but I think they’re a neat design choice.

My problem is that I don’t want Peter Parker to look like this for the next year or two, especially if it’s because of a storyline in Nick Spencer’s uninspired ASM run.

 

So this is gonna be weird, not even sure if this is the right thread for it, but it's been rumbling around in my head since Wonder Woman 1984 and it's weird uh... themes, shall we say.

Has anyone here read much about/thought much about how, especially in some of the movies, superheroes are kinda/really fascistic? I'm looking for like references or books on that idea, or the idea of what a modern day people's superhero would look like, inasmuch as Shuster and Siegel imagined Superman to be.

Is this weird and rambling? Ignore me if it is lol

 

well I mean, superheroes in their current form can defiantly be read as being facist wet dream. This is an idea I’d say that’s explored in loads of work through ages via stories like the authority/the boys/watchmen/etc. This subject even dates back to the infamous seduction of the innocent which convinced parents comic books were evil, one of the arguments was that “super man is a facist influencing your kids”.

I don’t have much in terms of actual books / articles on this subject or really any comics that point to a more people/socialist hero . Closest thing I could think of would be grant Morrison new 52 action comics were he explores somewhat the early blue collar socialist days of supes. Morrison also briefly talked on this subject in supergods and the corporate/patriot shift super man took around WW2.

 

Superheroes as fascism has been a big enough topic for long enough that, if you do some googling, you’ll probably find a bunch of writing on the topic, lol.

Sounds like you’re asking for writing about comics (& film) more so than comic writing, but good deconstructionist comics certainly fit what you’re asking. The so-obvious-why-am-I-even-bringing-it-up example is Watchmen (& another 80s Moore comic, Miracleman); another good example I’ve never read & need to get to eventually is Marshal Law.

When it comes to the fascist subtext of comic book movies, a lot of that probably goes into how movies like Captain Marvel & Man of Steel are literally funded in part by the military, which also applies to other blockbusters like Michael Bay’s Transformers. Some of it might also be tied to the huge influence Warren Ellis (ew), Mark Millar, & Bryan Hitch had on stuff like The Avengers; I’ve never gotten around to reading The Authority, but from what I understand, it really leaned into the “fascist superheroes” idea. Both of those threads (military propaganda & power fantasy) could surely be traced way back to the Golden Age, like with those old WWII comics & whatnot.

When it comes to writers trying to take it back... I feel like there are comic writers here & there who have brought a decent worldview to their comics. Ann Nocenti’s Daredevil, the late Dwayne McDuffie & Milestone Media, Kamala Khan Ms Marvel, some Grant Morrison stuff... Maybe Fraction’s Hawkeye counts?

 

Awesome posts guys, thank you - definitely gonna be checking out some of the stuff you guys mentioned too.

Yeah, I don't know, I just like think I went down a path of thinking that like... there's the obvious fascist overtones of the movies (with the military influence and all) but then little things like how when you think about it, Superman could stop *so much* suffering, but he doesn't (mostly so there can be stories lol) but whenever he's portrayed as actually trying to do that, it's never benevolent and always ends in a fascist Injustice/Lord Superman scenario, and I guess I was just brainstorming "what would that look like if it *was* benevolent and can that even be done" and then the whole fascistic superheroes thing popped in aaaaand it was just a whole tangent maybe spurred by some Green Lantern if you catch my drift lol

 

That’s more or less how Alan Moore ended his Miracleman run, in issue #16 drawn by John Totleben (originally published by Eclipse, now owned by Marvel).

If you’re not aware, Miracleman (originally named Marvelman) was a British “Captain Marvel”/Shazam analogue created in the 50s, to fill the void left by Fawcett getting sued into oblivion by DC & no longer sending their Captain Marvel stories overseas to be reprinted. Alan Moore, pre-Swamp Thing, relaunched the series, initially for the anthology magazine Warrior, & used it to deconstruct superheroes before doing the same in Watchmen.

(Funny how much Alan Moore used pastiche & analogue characters. Miracleman is Shazam; Watchmen started as an idea for Archie’s Mighty Crusaders before shifting to the Charlton characters, then new characters; his unfortunately overlooked work for Rob Liefeld in the 90s used DC analogues like the Superman-type Supreme.)

The run ends with Miracleman becoming a god & reshaping society into a utopia, against the wishes of the world powers.





The unfinished Neil Gaiman trilogy that followed (which I haven’t read yet, which Marvel & Neil still sometimes talk about finishing someday) takes place in this utopia. I’m really curious how he handled that foreboding, melancholy-at-best “happily ever after.”


...anyways, yeah, one of the problems with this line of thinking in ongoing comics is the way superheroes would break the real world. Which is why I don’t mind, say, Iron Man’s tech becoming part of the MCU’s daily life, or the aftermath of the “blip” not getting explored too deeply on a civilian level: Either you ignore those implications & allow ‘em to be fantastical stories for children, or you follow that thread & end up with a fundamentally different story set in a fundamentally different world.

As for what a benevolent Superman in real life would ideally do? Action Comics #1 paints a pretty decent picture, I’d say. Like, you can bet Supes wouldn’t let Mitch McConnell block those $2000 checks, lol. But, it’d be really hard long term for any single well meaning individual with that much power to keep that anarchist/socialist activism from turning into fascism. Especially if we’re talking Superman with modern power levels. Like, how does a superpower force democracy on people?

 

I feel like I haven’t gotten Stacey Lee interior pages in forever. Interested in whatever this ends up being.

 

Any of y’all have favorite comics of 2020 lists?

I’ve got a couple things I wanna read today first, but I’m already pretty sure The Magic Fish & The Loneliness of the Long Distance Cartoonist are my top 2. Not sure which mainstream comic ranks highest for me, since I didn’t read a lot of monthlies; probably either X-Men: Marvel Snapshots or Magnificent Ms Marvel?

 

I was looking into what's coming out soon and I think the only DC things I'm excited for is Man-Bat and Swamp Thing.

Weird times

 

Harley Quinn, Detective Comics, & Nightwing all look really good to me post-Future State, in March. I don’t read DC monthly anymore, but if I had more disposable income, I’d put all 3 of those on my pull.

Based on things you like, I’m surprised you’re not into Tynion’s Batman & the Joker book spinning out of it next year.

 

Those 3 dude look cool for sure, I'm just so behind on what's going on for anything Batman related the past several years.

I definitely saw those and they seem interesting but I feel I'd be lost. I'm still working through King's Batman run

 

Finished Batman Vol 2: I Am Suicide this morning and seemingly I'm supposed to believe that Batman goes commando under the Batsuit...that just seems uncomfortable

 

Haven’t posted in here for a minute but I have a weirdly kinda specific question I figured people in here could help with:

I decided to read Grant Morrison’s Batman run because I’ve had a few of their volumes for awhile and why not yknow. Anyways, I’m doing Batman & Son right now and am enjoying it but just got to the “Clown at Midnight” interlude and... how essential is this bit? I have no problem with the writing, Morrison is kicking as always but I don’t think I can deal with those CGI images lmao

if anyone has any takes lmk, might need to just grind through it which is fine

 

my LCS is raffling off Journey into Mystery 85 and I just bought a few tickets for it. Probably less than a dozen people have purchased tickets as well. The winner will be announced tomorrow. Fingers crossed~~~