A Griftmas Gift To You
I am writing these words, opening this week's newsletter, on December 1st, 2021, a date which I wish to be consigned in memory as the day I have concluded all the non-food related shopping I wished to make in preparation for the forthcoming Yule. I do not see this as particularly extraordinary, mind you. First of all, recent experience has made me absolutely terrified of any and all supply chain issues, pushing me to act at the furthest reasonable distance from the holiday rush. Secondly, I live the debonair lifestyle of a man who has devoted his time to preaching the good word of Comics, and my soul find its contentment through the very many pleasures you will see me elaborately prattle on in the latter part of this missive. If I partook in the dark ritual you call Black Friday, it was only to buy a set of three blades for my Philips OneBlade electric razor, as the opportunity of getting a year's worth of essential grooming supplies at half the cost was too good to pass.
I do not bring this up out of an empty desire to brag about the somewhat reprehensible lifestyle of a comic book critic. I bring it up because looking at this week's biggest news story in comics got me in the very same headspace I experienced once my dark bargain with seasonal capitalism had been completed. This is all preamble to say this: anything I could write about Zestworld Comics, the latest venture capital-funded attempt to create and distribute comics through newsletters while making big claims of game-changing innovation, I have already written twice over, in pieces far less self-indulgent and far more motivated than the one you are presently reading. As with Substack, we have a comic book publisher that has been wholly uninterested in coming up with a technical solution that would make the acts of subscribing to a comic, purchasing a comic, or reading a comic any better or more enjoyable than it is under currently existing arrangements. Unlike Substack, however, they have been smart enough to sign deals with creators, writers and artists alike, rather than putting the burden of allocating resources to a few high-profile writers.
There is, however, an additional twist: Zestworld wants to get into collectibles. Their official announcement plays coy with what that would mean, but one needs only take the quickest of glances at the twitter accounts of the already announced staff, and their dream of "comics 3.0", to realize we're talking about those ever-dreaded non-fungible tokens that have only gotten bigger and worse since we saw them last. For the creators involved, it's a way to skim a little bit off the top of every single transaction happening in both the primary AND the secondary collectibles market. That is of course, if there is even a secondary market for those. Considering that one of the series they have announced is an Amanda Conner and Jimmy Palmiotti project called "Booty Powpow", I have my doubts.
The point, as it is and as it remains, is that it will fail, mostly because it deserves to fail. Doesn't it feel better, to know you've gotten that out of the way?
HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS: THEY NAMED THE COMIC "BOOTY POWPOW"
So, in the final issue of The Multiversity, a group of superheroes from every Earth in the DC Comics Multiverse comes face to face with the entity that sent the Gentry, a group of super-monsters best understood as a metaphor for a whole bunch of stuff best summed up as "everything sad and fucked up about the comic book industry". It's an entity that a number of its minions across the entire series has called "The Empty Hand", which is one of those Grant Morrison things where they tries to find an elegant solve to tie together a bunch of DC lore, this time about giant hands at the origin of the Multiverse, and which following writers just kind of ignore because they think they have something a bit cooler (see also: Barbatos). Anyway, Ivan Reis, who kills it the whole issue because he can't not kill it, makes a point of zooming in on The Empty Hand's forehead, showing an insignia that has been seen elsewhere in the series. It's the emblem of Ultra, from Ultra Comics, which is an highly experimental metaphysical horror story which purports to turn its readers into the eponymous hero. By reading Ultra Comics, one becomes Ultra, and therefore one gains awareness of one's power as a reader of comic books to create and to destroy universes with one's mind. (You see it manifest in the series all throughout; Al Pratt in Society of Superheroes reads Ultra Comics and gets driven into adopting mannerisms and a form of utilitarian cynicism pulled straight out of Watchmen; there's more, and also I would go on all day about the particular ways in which The Multiversity responds to Gibbons and Moore's ur-text but I know deep down within myself that Elizabeth Sandifer will eventually get to it and be better at it than I could ever be)
The point is: Ultra is The Empty Hand. You are Ultra, therefore you are The Empty Hand. We consume comic books and we make something out of them in our little heads. It can be a sad grey content slurry, or it can be something greater. It could be our wish for a better world, a world in which everything comes out all right in the end, and it could come true; the door has one side, and it opens both ways. As long as we wish for good to triumph over evil, the fire can burn forever. Otherwise we might as well give up and face oblivion. BUT IS IT OBLIVION, OR IS IT THE GREAT DARKNESS, AS SEEN IN ALAN MOORE AND STAN WOCH'S SWAMP THING #49? And did we need such a lengthy detour to talk about Justice League Incarnate #1? It's going to be a solid "maybe" on both; being that this is a solid "maybe" of a comic, I think it's appropriate. This is a comic that wants to be a big ambitious Grant Morrison comic in addition to being the second act of a big goofy smash-em-up for all the marbles comic book event, and to be fair it's pretty good at that, but it's not a Grant Morrison comic.
The central showpiece of the affair is a trip to Earth-8, last seen getting smashed to bits by the arriving Gentry in the aforementioned The Multiversity #2. It operates in two modes, delineated by both a big plot event and a change in pencillers. The first, channeled through Brandon Peterson, is full-on Marvel Comics pastiche, in the ever-bantering full page-width panels of widescreen action that you instinctually associate with contemporary Marvel, with just enough of Ultimate and the MCU thrown in for color. It doesn't really last, existing as it does to get disrupted. Once the Justice League Incarnate show up, the wide panels get cut and become strips, a simple layout trick that prefigures the bigger change, happening a couple of pages later. Things go from bad to worse, and Darkseid shows up. This is where we switch to Tom Derenick's pencils, and where we see the bulk of our excursion's second mode: playful provocations mobilizing well-trod catchphrases and iconography to activate the pleasure centers of fanatics worldwide through the simple invocation of a "who would win in a fight" thought experiment. It is a great deal of fun; a lot of Morrison's finest works have done exactly that, and I liked it there at least as much as I like it here. But there's no deeper point at play, there's no metaphor, it doesn't seem to be curious about the world outside itself. That makes Dennis Culver and Joshua Williamson's work lesser; crucially however, it does not make it bad. It's a fine comic, made all the more fine by the connective tissue, where Andrei Bressan does a solid job holding together the many moving parts that will play a role in later issues, being as joyfully ludicrous as it is. I had fun reading this comic, and I wish to read the next chapter. If that makes me uncool among my peers, then so be it.
I just don't know how best to put in words just how great Wonder Woman Historia: The Amazons #1 is; it is a monumental achievement, one of the greatest comics to be released in my lifetime, one of the purest expressions of everything that is great and good about comics, whether that's American comics, superhero comics, or comics in general. I think the best way to go about it is to describe its very first storytelling decisions, to show you exactly the level at which Kelly Sue DeConnick and Phil Jimenez operate. The first page is a radical mission statement, written in white letters over a background all in black. It promises the history of the Amazons as told by the Amazons themselves; the word used, very purposefully, is the Ancient Greek ἱστορία; it's their story, told in their language, for themselves, in opposition to the stories that men have told about them. When you turn the page you're hit with an incredible two-page spread, depicting the Goddesses of the Greek pantheon, gorgeously presented and loaded to the brim with imagery and iconography, instantly overwhelming, and filled with so much detail you barely know where to start. It's a bit of a mind-blower. It happens on every single page turn.
This is a primordial creation myth, told in grand lyricism by the writer of Pretty Deadly, and illustrated with pamphletary zeal by the penciller of The Invisibles. It is as radically feminist as it is radically queer. It is unyielding and unafraid to confront the ugly truth of the patriarchy's many crimes. It is mythology and it is manifesto. It is a book so perfect and total in its approach that it demanded to have three color artists to cover the entirety of the ground it wants to cover. It is crafted at the highest possible levels of craft, so beautiful and intricate it can only be acknowledged. It is the comic book event of the year. This is a comic that DEMANDS you read a physical copy of it, because that's the only way you can experience it fully, from the ornate layouts to the many carefully designed figures. Anything else I could say would be said better by the book itself, so I'll stop here, taking it as granted that if you have the taste to read my newsletter, you've already gotten your copy.
That's it for the week! It's a weird one, because I want them all to be weird ones! It's a good one, because I can't help it! You know it's true, so do your part! Subscribe if you haven't! Tell your friends to check us out if you have! We are fully back in business for now and it feels good! I'm gonna go and cook some chili, in the mean time you go and HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS!