The First Annual HYBC Enemies List Bracket!
A couple of weeks back, DC Comics announced the first-ever "DC Round Robin", a four-week single-elimination style tournament pitting 16 comic book pitches against one another, with the winner turned into a full-fledged 6-issue miniseries. It was a bad idea, for reasons which I am about to list:
- This is not how a round-robin tournament works.
- Pitting several of your underserved fanbases against one another is not a good way to create the kind of enthusiasm you'd want this kind of marketing operation to generate, especially when they're to eventually run against some of the largest fanbases in all of comics.
- This is made even worse by the fact that several of the pitches in contention had minority leads. When you present the possibility of an all-queer Justice League spin-off only to have it crushed by the overwhelming popularity of another goddamn Batman spin-off, whether you want to or not, you're sending the message that queer readers wanting to see themselves in your published catalogue are always gonna get passed over in favor of another comic where Jason Todd wonders aloud to God about the latest thing he's done while looking at the guns in his hands.
- Single-elimination style tournaments are generally bad, and I take this opinion from no less an authority on these things than Jon flipping Bois.
Does that mean that we must do away with any and all tournaments? Of course not. But we must reexamine the purpose of such events. If we cannot use them for joyful celebration, then why not try the opposite? What is the opposite of "joyful celebration" you ask? Simple. It's "spiteful excoriation". And so, in our further efforts to better the comic book industry through high-quality critique and coverage, I present to you the premier event in comic-book based spiteful excoriation: The first annual HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS Enemies List Bracket, pitting against one another 8 of comic's most loathsome individuals, as determined by me through a series of long-held grudges of varying validity. We're still trying to figure out when and how we're going to make this happen, but in the mean time, let's just look at the current enemies list to try and see where the favorites are, through a quick look at their crimes:
- Brian Azzarello: Probably killed Vertigo because you HAD to put a dick in your mediocre Batman/Constantine crossover story didn't you!
- The SARS-CoV-2 virus: Got between me and my comics. Also killed some people I GUESS.
- Geoff Johns: Just go and read last week's newsletter. It's a good one!
- Salvador Larroca: Used the demands of licensed movie tie-in comics as an excuse to become one of the worst artists working in comics today, while also talking shit about his collaborators. Just plain awful guy!
- Alan Moore: You would think it's the inflammatory statements about the comic industry he delivers on a deadline whenever a new book needs promoting but no. It's because of Supreme #55, a.k.a. "The Racist issue of Alan Moore's Supreme", a.k.a. one of the worst comics I have ever read.
- Dan Slott: Shockingly bad at posting, while making outright hateful comics like his Fantastic Four run and Iron Man 2020. Has declared eternal war against me and every other fan of Kieron Gillen's Iron Man run, and that is a crime that will not be forgiven.
- Nick Spencer: You made a whole-ass run about shrugging your shoulders in the face of rising fascism, culminating in an event that brought further ruin to the comics discourse.
- Joss Whedon: look I know he hasn't made a comic in a hot minute but do you really need a reason to hate Joss Whedon? I don't think you do
Are you surprised? Are you excited? Are there names that you think should have made the cut but didn't because their crimes are so egregious they're basically dead to me? Sound off wherever you want and however you want! This tournament is for you! Let's roast these fuckers!
HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS: YET TO FIND AN INDUSTRY THAT WOULD NOT BE MASSIVELY IMPROVED THROUGH BLOODSPORTS
Unless you've been extremely careful around social media, it is extremely likely that you've had the big reveal of Rorschach #7 spoiled. It's also likely that you've read a lot of opinions about it, because such is the nature of this beast we call "the social media discourse around new comic book releases". I will ask you to indulge me, however, because I have a track record of being correct about these things. I warned you last month that things were about to get buckwild, and they did. I've been diligent about picking up what the series is putting down, and I will urge you once again to read previous installments of this newsletter, which will provide very necessary context. And now that I'm done bragging, let's talk about Frank Miller.
For all the attempts at ditching the most showy trappings of his previous works, Tom King is still intent on delivering a structured work of art. The first six issues of Rorschach have asked questions and laid down tracks. Now that we're in the second half, it's time to take what we've learned, and shape it into answers. Why did an aging cartoonist put on a mask, take up arms, and try killing a presidential candidate? It's got something to do with a séance, grief, comic books, and fear. It's scared men, inventing a history, making a wish, and thinking that wish has come true through the power of wishful thinking. Notice here that every part of the previous sentence matches with a theme explored in the previous issues: #2 was about the scared men through its study of Wil Myerson, #3 and #4 were about misremembered histories and what people put in the gaps as it applies to Laura Cummings' understanding of the events of Watchmen, and #5 and #6 were about how we see the story of ourselves through the examples of Turley, Wil and Laura.
This is where we should take a moment to examine the choices made in Jorge Fornés' pencils, and in Clayton Cowles' lettering. The big showpiece is, once more, Fornés' impeccable mimicry of Ditko, whether in the pirate take on the iconic Amazing Fantasy #15 cover, or in the one panel of Pontius Pirate action that's given the Miracleman #1 treatment. But it's the direct callbacks to Watchmen #3 and Watchmen #12 that I found most intriguing. They look correct on the page, they carry the imagery once deployed by Dave Gibbons, but a quick check, and you'll notice they're wrong. Doctor Manhattan was sitting the other way around in the iconic panel of him alone on Mars. There were no tentacles on the first full page splash showing the grim aftermath of Veidt's plans. These are small mistakes, but still big enough that their presence feels intentional. Their story is not THE story, and it is important to draw the distinction. And as the story returns to the domain of big superhero conspiracies, we see once again the page revert to Watchmen's three by three grid. But there's gaps, there's negative space, and this is where the drama of the issue plays out. It's a lacuna, of vision and thought, in which an idea takes seed.
Which leads us to the letters. The central conceit of the issue is tape recorder noise, played over and over again until the characters listening hear a call to action. Key to making this work are two things: the sounds of machinery, done in bold, clear, easily identifiable sound, and the sounds of the tape, which through a combination of layout, design, and writing, are just unreadable enough to communicate the dedication and the despair of the people that pull meaning from it. It needed to be pitch-perfect, and it was, so I wanted to point that out.
None of this has been about Frank Miller so far, but I had to get it out there since it's essential context for why's he's there in the first place. First, of course, is the fact that this is one part of the book's alternate history that is based on actual events. The séance at Otto Binder's house is real, it happened, and a teenage Miller was one of the attendees. But second, and far more interesting, is the attempt Tom King makes at creating a context around Miller's reactionary streak, which has manifested itself as virulent racism in works and statements made in the decade following the 9/11 attacks, but must be understood as part of a wider pattern. The Dark Knight Returns doesn't exist without the trauma of getting mugged a couple of times in New York City, in the same way Holy Terror doesn't exist without the trauma of a terrorist attack happening in a place you've been to. In the fictional Frank Miller's final monologue, Tom King puts it together: it's about comic books as a mean to understand fear, in order to eventually make it go away.
But what happens when that doesn't work? What happens when you're faced with the unthinkable, whether that's the death of a child, a fake alien attack, a real terrorist attack, or any of the dozen things this world and its self-appointed custodians can come up with to make you existentially terrified? What happens when imagining a simple solution doesn't do anything to solve the problem? You look for answers elsewhere, and you become a radical. You put on the mask, and you take action. Frank Miller made a couple of bad books and said a bunch of stupid things. Tom King joined the intelligence community. This is the insight of Rorschach as a series; it is as well-executed a look into the mind of radicals as you're gonna find on the shelves today. I don't know where it's going, they could ruin it in the next five issues, but I've got a feeling they won't, and I know what I am talking about.
On the other side of the Great Toms Of Comics divide, we find Tom Taylor's first foray into the world of gigantic blockbuster miniseries, in a team-up with the already legendary Andy Kubert that they just had to call Batman: The Detective #1. Surprisingly, it's a book that I wish I loved more than I actually do. Andy Kubert reaches new levels in his mastery of action comic book storytelling, whether it's in the incredible spectacle of the issues' many fight scenes, or in the slower and more purposeful design of its quieter moments, told in big incredibly composed splashes. The imagery in there is big, it's memorable, and it's all carried with remarkable efficiency. You may have seen scenes like this before, but here they're at their most perfect expression.
The problem is that it only feels like a Tom Taylor comic on occasion. There are well-timed jokes, there is an interest in going to an under-explored corner of the DC Universe to build something new there, but a lot of the writing feels uncharacteristically bland. It's mostly short clipped sentences in first-person narrative captions, focusing on the sensorial immediacy of the aging Bruce Wayne. Way too much of the dialogue is about inflicting pain, or feeling pain, or talking about the people Batman's inflicted pain to, and not enough of it is about the genuinely cool new takes on Knight and Squire.
Taylor is usually at his greatest when he gets to impose his own style on the narrative, and, stylistically, this is a book that feels beholden to another. Wouldn't you know it, that book happens to be The Dark Knight Returns. The two Toms went and relased two books that are BOTH haunted by Frank Miller in some way. One is likely the most fascinating single issue I'm gonna read all year. One kinda disappointed me. Still, you gotta appreciate a nice coincidence.
And that, dear readers, is a good bit of synchronicity to leave you on! Thank you once again for reading, sharing and subscribing to this nonsense, which has felt especially self-indulgent this week. There wasn't room left to talk about that dang new Wonder Woman that's how bad it was! Ah well, there's always next time, so until then, to you and to everyone else: HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS!