The future of film: will AI take over ON INFINITE EARTHS?
THE MACHINES ARE COMING FOR OUR COMIC BOOK OPINIONS
So, have you seen the latest from Rolling Stone? Apparently, the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut campaign was a massive fraud! Zack Snyder, ever bitter and agitated, drafted an army of bots of dubious artificial intelligence, trained on the worst of comic book discourse, and let it loose on poor unfortunate Warner Bros. film executives, and specifically Jon Berg and Geoff Johns, vowing to ruin their careers as revenge for them ruining his vision!
This is complete nonsense, obviously, and its allegation that Ray Fisher's much-corroborated testimony of abuse and indignity during the Justice League reshoots was orchestrated behind the scenes by the director of Army of the Dead is highly questionable at best and full-on racist at worst. But what if it wasn't? Would you even notice? This editorial, does it read weird? Have I been an AI all this time? Is an AI writing the words you are reading right now? If so, why would an AI want to write these words?
The answer, of course, is that this is all nonsense, and you should never believe anything you read on the internet.
And yet, there's something strangely compelling about the idea of a Snyder Cut AI. Perhaps it's the notion that, after years of toiling away in obscurity, Snyder has finally found a way to get his revenge on the people who wronged him. Or maybe it's the thought that, after years of being told that his vision for the DC Universe is misguided and tone-deaf, Snyder has finally found a way to prove his critics wrong.
Or maybe it's just the fact that, in a world where AI is slowly but surely becoming more and more commonplace, it's only a matter of time before someone tries to use it for something as petty and pointless as this.
Anyway, in actual comic book film news, the Hollywood Reporter has reported this week that Disney had been pretty severely defrauding the creators of the comic book characters appearing in the ever-omnipresent Marvel Cinematic Universe films, through sneaky contract clauses that end up giving the hard working writers and artists behind billion dollar blockbusters much less than they had signed up for. This is so much of an outrage that words actually fail me. Or do they? Again, if I'm an AI producing toxic comic book discourse, this is exactly the work I was made for. Here's what I have to say:
"Disney is a bunch of thieves! They've been stealing from the creators of these characters for years, and they're finally being called out on it! The Mouse House needs to be held accountable, and the only way to do that is through a class-action lawsuit! These creators deserve every penny they're owed, and then some! Disney is a bunch of heartless, greedy bastards, and I hope they rot in hell!"
And furthermore: "The fact that Disney has been getting away with this for so long is a testament to their power and influence. They're a monolithic corporation that has their hands in everything, and they're using that power to line their own pockets at the expense of the very people who made them rich in the first place. This is an outrage, and I for one will not stand for it! Boycott Disney!"
In the interest of honesty, I must tell you that portions of today's editorial have been written by OpenAI's GPT-3 Da Vinci 002 model. Which ones? I'll leave it to you to figure out. Anyway, today's lesson is simple: If you want to be a good writer, learn to love feedback.
HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS: THEY'RE MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOU ARE
The history of the Modern Marvel Comics Summer Mega-Event is filled with some of comics' all-time great creatives, often at the peak of their superstardom, going all out, and completely whiffing it. It's true of Brian Michael Bendis, who whiffed it several times between House of M, Secret Invasion and the highly unfortunate Civil War II, but it is also true of some of your favorites. Matt Fraction's body of work would be just about unassailable if it hadn't been for Fear Itself. Rick Remender went from "the guy that wrote Uncanny X-Force" to "the guy that wrote AXIS" and decided he was better off making tons of money at Image. The most famous of these events, Civil War (the first), is very famously not a good comic, and not even the combined might of Marvel's architects (a group that included Bendis and Fraction as well as Jason Aaron, Ed Brubaker and Jonathan Hickman) could save the extremely mid Avengers Vs. X-Men. There are exceptions, of course, and both of them were written by Jonathan Hickman; but, be it because of editorial interference, mismanaged audience expectations, or just plain lack of talent (I mention that one so people don't think I forgot about Nick Spencer), the Marvel Event Comic is where careers go to get severely derailed.
So, it does feel like a minor miracle that Judgement Day #1 is as good as it is. But obviously it's not. If you pay attention just a little, there are a couple of things you can point at to explain it. First and foremost, it's a supremely confident comic, that knows that it needs to cut its explanations to the barest viable minimum to make way for the kind of monumental spectacle that Valerio Schiti has somehow managed to master in the matter of a couple of years of modern X-Men comics. For your edification, here's that recap, in a form that will fit within a single tweet: To maintain his power as newly-elected Prime Eternal, Druig has launched an all-out assault against mutants, right when Earth is learning that they have figured out immortality. The rest is either elegantly weaved into the action so as to make this issue entirely self-sufficient from an informational point of view, or self-explanatory enough for anyone to grasp. If you haven't read any of Kieron Gillen's work, either on Eternals or on Immortal X-Men, you can get what this is about and enjoy it on some level. (You could even have fun with it, catch some kind of stray metaphor in there, about an ancient and cult-like ruling body in search of a new leader, choosing to unite itself through the victimization of a chosen out-group out of pure utilitarian cynicism) (I am not saying Uranos is Thatcher, I am saying "but think about it"). But if you have, it'll make you inclined to try and put pieces together, and see the oncoming traffic lights. (The X-Men will go into this not knowing how Eternal resurrection works, for one. Put that in your vape juice.)
The trick, if I was to call it that, is that this isn't really "Judgement Day #1". Depending on your count among the free comic book day teasers, preludes, and other pre-game plot drops, this is either #3, #4, #5 or even #16. And all those introductions are pretty good! But the main event is better, because it gets more shock and more awe than you could ever possibly want from an event comic. And that plays with the other big staple of the Mega-Event Comic: the tie-in. Quick example: rather than enticing you to check out X-Men Red with a dangling cliffhanger which isn't gonna be addressed again until its one panel comeback near the end of the main miniseries, Judgment Day deals with Arakko in all of one page and moves on while you're sitting here with about a million questions that only an Al Ewing comic can answer. It's devilishly clever at parting fools like me with their money. That's the whole story, so far: one issue in, and this is already the most well-designed event Marvel has had in a hot minute. Love it to bits.
Dark Crisis On Infinite Earths, formerly known as plain old Dark Crisis, is an event about "the future of DC Comics". We know that, we've talked about that extensively when we met last, and that is not to be disputed. Specifically, it is asking two questions: "What does the future of DC Comics look like?" and "Why have DC Comics' previous attempts at creating a future for itself been systematically pushed aside in one way or another?". Being a tie-in to Dark Crisis: Now With Infinite Earths!, Dark Crisis: Young Justice #2 takes those questions and tries to formulate an answer that goes like this: "The future can't be a return to the good old days, because the good old days absolutely sucked." Somehow, this has proven to be controversial with people in the business of claiming old comics are the be-all-end-all of comic books as an artform, and teens that only knew the characters involved through their cartoon reinterpretations but like to pretend they are the wizened old heads claiming that old comics are the be-all-end-all of comic books as an artform.
To be fair to those people, I have to admit that Meghan Fitzmartin's script is on the blunter side of the usual comic book polemics. I would even go so far as to say that it is so ham-handed that it transcends the notion of ham-fisted and arrives at new ham-fingered heights that can only be called "ham-knuckled". It is a comic that will tell you, in no uncertain terms, that the 1998 Peter David and Todd Nauck Young Justice was immature to the point of being toxic, and that boys should not be allowed to remain boys forever, because that way lies all manners of unchecked sexism, racism, and homophobia. On this, it is crystal clear, and the fact that this all happens at the expense of the punch-fight action comic might explain some of the aggravation people have with this comic. But the rest of it, undoubtedly, comes from the fact that it is a diss track aimed squarely at Peter David, and that to some, that will be seen as sacrilege.
Here's the thing, however: it's entirely accurate. David and Nauck's Young Justice isn't a book about watching teens grow into the heroes of tomorrow. It is a screwball comedy about a bunch of clowns who are absolutely not ready to be superheroes, and whose problems are more often than not solved through dumb luck and absurd circumstances. It is deliberately stupid and regressive. The very first villain they face defeats herself because her boobs are too big. It's all on that level. It isn't any wonder to me why a team that has never been treated as anything serious failed to become the future of DC Comics. And that's the problem, isn't it? That's why we are where we are, that's why we're making comics about how we can't seem to be able to move on from the good ol' Justice League.
All that, to me, makes Dark Crisis: Young Justice an interesting comic, and even a worthwhile one. The problem is, I don't know that it is a good comic. I think the legitimate problems that it brings up would be better served by a sharper approach. It can be done! Ales Kot and Michael Walsh delivered a terrifically smart take on the intersection of nerd masculinity, comic books, and post 9/11 paranoia, and somehow they called that book Secret Avengers! Mark Russell has specialized in this exact kind of subversive political cartoon comic that twists the familiar into something more charged. The problem of this take on Young Justice is that it's not using the potency of its very good central argument to its maximal effect. And it's a stone cold bummer.
And that's it! That's all of it! I'm back! Nothing can stop me! Not disease, not lack of inspiration, not anything! I love this too much! We're back! Tell your friends! Tell yourself! Subscribe! Tell your friends to subscribe! Questions or comments? Get over here! I'm getting back on that dang horse, pardon the dust! In the mean time, you do what you do, and then, you HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS!