He Is The Lightning! He Is Mad At Comics!
It is usually pretty safe to take a break in the final weeks of December. Nothing much is supposed to happen at that time, because people are supposed to enjoy their well-earned holiday breaks with friends and/or family. Late-stage capitalism, in its pursuit of killing everything that is sacred save for itself, has once again made a complete mockery of tradition, which is why, last week, Marvel Comics released Timeless #1, a fun enough character piece centered around Kang the Conqueror, which mostly exists as a vehicle for a two-page spread and one final page full of very symbolically charged images one is meant to read as prophecy relating to storylines coming to pass in 2022. One of those images apparently involves the logo of Miracleman, a character once made famous by a series of comics from Garry Leach and some guy named T.O. Writer.
Over the past decade or so, and very much inspired by the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's post-credits scenes and teasers, Marvel Comics have become experts in the very particular art of the last-minute game-changing reveal. In the spirit of the new year, and to celebrate last week's game-changer, let's look back once more, and remember the all-time greatest twists and revelations from the past decade of Marvel Comics.
THE RETURN OF QUINCENT PRIBB (2014)
In 1996, the entire Marvel Universe, as well as comic book fans of all stripes, mourned the death of Quincent Pribb, a fan-favorite member of Captain Marvel's supporting cast, who had passed away tragically in Captain Marvel #14, as part of the build-up to Battle for the Space Hole. It came as a shock to many when, 18 years later, Quincent was revealed to be alive again, in a teaser posted on Marvel's official twitter account. This raised a number of questions, like "Who is Quincent Pribb?", "Should I care about Quincent Pribb?" and "Wouldn't it be better to have context for Quincent Pribb so that his return would be resonant in any way, rather than just having this be out there and entirely meaningless? I understand that this is supposed to be shocking but how shocking can it be really, if you just present it to me like that? I feel like, if this was supposed to have any sort of emotional buildup, you're massively shortchanging it by putting the info outside of a comic, especially when this is supposed to be about a comic".
THE NEW PRISM PALADIN (2016)
This cult press release dropped in September of 2016, right as The Prism Protocol #2 hit the stores, turned the Marvel Universe on its head when it revealed that Jeffy Crab, who had yet to even appear in the event miniseries, was in fact the all-new Prism Paladin that had caused so much trouble for the Avengers. Once again, the world was shocked, with fans everywhere saying, in unison "Man, you just kinda spoiled one of the major hooks of your event right there in a press release. Why would you even do that? I know the pre-order system is what it is but that hasn't stopped you before, you have already sold books sight unseen to retailers a couple of times, why would you ruin the climax of one of your currently ongoing events in a press release this long before the comic was published? I feel like you're being openly disrespectful to the people who follow your comics on a week-to-week basis, and that's just a real bummer! You couldn't preserve that reveal for them? Come on, man."
WHO KILLED BIMPO GURGE? (2020)
Need I say more? I'll leave the final word to fans on that one: "Bimpo Gurge isn't even dead yet! You're spoiling an entire fucking story, beginning to end, on a fucking variant cover, on a book that's not even related to either Mole Man OR Bimpo Gurge in any way! Just for the cheap pop! Jesus Christ what is wrong with your marketing team? What kind of soulless fucking monster would try to make comic books so wholly irrelevant to the business of comics? There's more to life than the fucking brands! What the fuck is wrong with you? What the fuck is wrong with everyone! I am mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore!"
HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS: GOING FROM ZERO TO BEALE IN LESS THAN A WEEK
There's a visual at the end of Batman Incorporated #13, the final issue of the final statement on all things Batman from Chris Burnham and Grant Morrison, that has been haunting me ever since I saw it for the first time (though, upon reexamination, my memory of it might come from the time Patrick Gleason and Peter Tomasi revisited it in their own volume of Batman and Robin, if such an occurrence even exists). It involves Bruce Wayne and a pair of open graves, a grim reminder amongst many in that issue that nothing in Batman comics can ever end. Not his trauma, and not the vast international criminal conspiracies of his many adversaries. In some ways, it is the dark echo of another visual from a Morrison-penned comic: the headstone on which Superman engraves "To Be Continued", as drawn by Doug Mahnke at the end of Final Crisis: Superman Beyond. (Itself revisited in Cary Nord, Steve Orlando and Ryan Sook's New Age of Heroes revival of The Unexpected, which for a while was the closest thing I had to a new volume of The Defenders) The fact is, these cartoon heroes are functionally immortal, kept alive by basic economics. Batman and Robin will never die, because the market demands it. In some ways, it's wonderful. In most ways, it's actually really fucking sad.
Jonathan Hickman has never been shy about his admiration of Grant Morrison's work, and so I felt it was necessary to take this little detour, and bring to mind that little bit of imagery before we got to discussing Inferno #4, which is for now his final word on all things X-Men and Krakoa. If you expected a big fireworks display of some kind, I can understand why you'd be disappointed. It has the dazzling epic action and the intense character drama, all of it of reasonably-sized consequence, illustrated with imaginatively violent flair by Stefano Caselli and Valerio Schiti, with the bold and dramatic color work of David Curiel to set an appropriately somber mood. It has Hickman's trademark callback acrobatics: someone says the exact opposite of a big statement someone else said in an earlier comic; someone else finds themselves in circumstances that look exactly like events that have happened before; and all the while some key pieces of layout, a 9-grid page there, a page cut in 4 panels of the exact same length and width, get re-used to show a change in circumstances. By the end of the issue, however, it has all turned bitter: plans fall apart and no one gets what they want; the existential threat against mutants is clearer and more dangerous than ever; the Quiet Council is getting ready for endless maneuver warfare, and worst of all: this is the new normal. This is forever.
I can't help but read it as Hickman admitting defeat in the face of the X-Men line's success. The Krakoa experiment worked too well, and it is becoming business as usual. For now, at least, there's no need for Hickman to lay out plans for an endgame no one in charge is asking for. So instead, he sets the brain trust of the X-Office for success, with a strategically deployed powerbummer of an event, a perfect vehicle for the kind of pure existential angst that Kieron Gillen will make a five-course meal out of. I could cry about the crass commercialism of it all, or I could see it as a gesture of total trust from one great writer to his peers. I respect Inferno more than I like it, but do not be fooled: I liked it a bunch. Onwards and upwards, and make it hurt.
As The Amazing Spider-Man demonstrated last year with the launch of Beyond, it is very tricky to turn your book into a weekly event. If you want to convince people to spend their hard-earned cash money every single week your story line is running, you have to hit them hard, and you have to hit them fast. You have to make it feel essential from the get-go, or else you're doomed. It's pretty hard, but if you can pull it off, there's nothing in comics that is quite as fun or as rewarding. Enter Detective Comics #1047, the first chapter of Shadows of the Bat, to show everyone how it's done. First and most obvious: Ivan Reis drew it, and that automatically makes it as blockbuster as it gets, especially when paired with Brad Anderson's colors. But this comic doesn't just feel big by default: it feels big because Ivan Reis, who is a fucking expert at this, lays out the action so as to leverage verticality, through a great deal of very tall and very narrow panels.
Then again, Patrick Gleason did some great stuff with the idea of reflections and that didn't help Spider-Man one bit. The thing that actually makes this introduction so great is in how it's structured. First, you have ten pages of a fairly standard issue of Mariko Tamaki's run of Detective Comics, loaded with politics, intrigue and serious discussions of the storytelling premises of Batman comics (here it's Arkham Asylum and how the mentally unwell get treated). Players are set, connections to earlier issues of the book are made, and it all seems like business as usual. But then, ten pages in, it jumps to a situation that has gone full-on Die Hard. It's intense and overdramatic, it's violent, and it's completely ludicrous in all the right ways. The jump is jarring, because it's done in the issue's only double page spread; it's shocking, and, most important of all, it leaves you wondering what just happened, why, and how. That doesn't just make for a great cliffhanger, it makes for a killer hook. That's how you get people to come back.
The rest is mostly promise: it's all the characters you like, in Gotham, without Batman getting in the way. There's a lot to like here, just like there's a lot to like in the backup, a horror piece by Blanco and Rosenberg that promises to go into the many failures of the old Arkham Asylum. If you wanted to get someone into the weekly grind of comics, this is what you would give them. It's big, it's fun, and it's very clear. This is a format that demands you put your best foot forward, and DC did just that. Good job, everyone.
Yes! Good job everyone! Good job me! Good job you! Despite everything, we have made it back! It's a new year, but the call to action is still the same! Subscribe! Tell your friends about the newsletter! Have fun! Please make it so comics arrive on Wednesdays again! Once you've done it all, we'll be here again, with more of this! And always HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS!