DC Comics: Infinite Character Crisis
The Dead Shall... not stay dead much longer...
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or your name is Robby Musso) you’re probably aware that DC Comics is about to publish a little thing called Blackest Night.
I pretty much wet myself when I saw the above promo for it at the end of the geekgasm that was Sinestro Corps War. And it’s only gotten bigger as time has passed on, what with the announcement of the 7 color Corps and the current Agent Orange arc.
Agent Orange needs a hug.
Blackest Night promises to redefine the landscape of the DC Universe in a way that the previous event, Final Crisis did not.
The question is, will it re-establish DC for the better, or the worse?
Let me state definitively that there is no doubt in my mind that Blackest Night will be so good that I won’t be able to walk straight for two days after reading it. Geoff Johns is arguably the best writer working in comics today. Just last night I was practically frothing at the mouth whilst reading him twitter back and forth with Jim “I could have your wife and child if I wanted” Lee about doing Red Bee: Rebirth together. Johns’ ability to weave back and forth through complicated and often contradictory continuity is nothing short of mind-boggling. I honestly believe he could fix both Hawkman AND the Summers/ Grey X-Men history.
So my problem isn’t with Blackest Night itself. Buy it. It will be good.
The problem is the fallout. Blackest Night’s weakest link will undoubtedly be it’s ability to resurrect fallen heroes and characters. For some time now there has been a growing trend in comics to bring back characters whose deaths were considered Sacro-sanct. We’ve seen the rebirths of Bucky, Jason Todd, Barry Allen, and even Uncle Ben (sort of-).
DC has continued this trend with a voracious appetite. Most recently there were two rebirths in Legion of 3 Worlds. You probably know of poor Bart Allen. The second one, I won’t give away. But as to Bart, its really rather pathetic how they’ve handled this once-great character. It was maybe two years ago he became the Flash after DC killed Wally. Then they killed Bart and brought Wally back. Now they’ve tossed Wally aside and brought back Barry Allen. Then they brought back Bart only to drape him in Barry’s shadow. Don’t get me wrong, Legion of 3 Worlds is tremendous– its one of Johns’ best books. But now we have four generations of Flashes, and that doesn’t even count all the Runners laying about in the fringe.
Then there was the resurrection of Kandor, the return of Kingdom Come Superman, Powergirl, Supergirl, Superwoman and on and on and on. There’s an entire planet of Supermen. Good stories? Yes. But the point of Superman is that he was the greatest hero in history. By making hundreds of thousands of copies of him, you take away a part of what makes him special.
Four generations of Wonder Women are back. (I’m counting Hypolita.) And I’m betting they’ll resurrect Artemis and bring it up to five.
And Batman. There’s a Battle for the Cowl. Again, cool story, but there’s all kinds of guys running around in Bruce Wayne’s drause. And that might be fine except for two things:
- No one believes Bruce will stay dead. He is one of the most famous fictional characters in history. More kids know about Batman than Tom Sawyer. This is not permanent.
- No one will be satisfied with the new Batman. The only barely acceptable character is Nightwing. We’ll be interested for the first year in how DIck Grayson handles the mantle this second time, but honestly, we’ll want Nightwing back. We like him as the voice of the next generation of heroes, but don’t quite know where he fits next to Clark and Diana.
The point is, DC is diluting the water. They’re poisoning their own franchises by giving each hero 50,000 copies. And Blackest Night, for all its brilliance, may just be the final nail in the coffin. (I know, I know…)
At some point, someone in DC editorial needs to just say STOP. ENOUGH. Let’s reign it back in. It’s too much.
Some 20-odd years ago, Marv Wolfman and George Perez started a little comic no one believed in and ended up redefining DC Comics for a new generation of readers. They simplified the structure of their world. Somehow DC has gotten away from that thought and reacted like an outstretched rubberband, snapping in the opposite direction. It’s time to simplify again. Eliminate the extraneous and convoluted.
Will Blackest Night do that? Or will it open the floodgates? I suppose we’ll find out in July.
—Adam Relayson is a blogger and Awesome Dude. He’s known for his sharp tongue and his devastating ability to get jiggy with the ladies. Hus work can be found primarily at #mce_temp_url# <—well, there.
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[...] BSI Comics contemplates the fallout Blackest Night will have on DC’s many character variations. [...]
Interesting article. Blackest Night is probably not going to make a lasting impact on the dilution issue. I’m guessing a few people will return from the dead, yes, but this can also be seen as a clearing of the decks to zombifie – and take offstage – unneeded characters. The status quo – of multiple copies of each successful concept – will likely maintain.
Your article raises a good question, but it’s really 20 years too late. DC began this problem in the 1980s:
1. They introduced a second Robin, and a few years later decided to retcon him into a jerk. Pretty soon he was unpopular, and was killed off to make way for a 3rd Robin.
2. They killed off the Flash to “reinvent the concept” in 1985, but backed out and decided since Barry was dead to just give his suit to his nephew. Status quo maintained!
3. Around the time of Crisis (1984) Green Lantern’s scripter had problems coming up with stories and decided it’d be easier to replace GL (Hal Jordan) with his back-up (John Stewart), and basically redo the old Hal stories, just with a rookie. Pretty soon he burned out and left the book, leaving the next writer solve the problem by bringing MORE GLs to Earth, making it a team book.
All between 1984 and 1987, by the way. By 1995, they’d coined the term “Legacy” as a catch-all description of this ‘musical chairs of superhero personas’ phenomenon. There were new Supergirls, a new Superboy, yet another rookie Green Lantern, etc. It seemed DC replaced every marketable, longterm character they had by about 1996. And *most* of those replacements are still around, crowding battle scene shots in crossovers.
20 years later, we have a comics readership fairly numb to spandex-overload.
At this point, rather than rebooting, retconning or explaining away why there are so many superheroes with the same costumes and names, the solution is very simple:
Forget about all these variations on a theme. Let them find lives off-panel, and stop talking about them.
And if…if…you can ignore internet fandom, then the problem will be solved.
I’m not sure where you get your point. As I mentioned at the end of the article, Crisis on Infinite Earths was used to eliminate a lot of messy continuity. It wasn’t entirely successful, but it did eliminate such problems as the age of the “Big Three” and Streak the Supercat and whatever that horse was that wanted to have sex with Supergirl.
So, it isn’t 20 years too late. It’s just the opposite. DC could use more of that kind of thinking, and in fact could have used Final Crisis to do just that. As it is, I hope there isn’t another Crisis for twenty more years.
Your examples don’t really apply, bc many of these changes didn’t put all of the characters together simultaneously, with the exception of GL. And since Green Lantern isn’t so much Hal’s province as it is a job title, its not the same thing.
My problem isn’t with the concept of heroes having legacies. I kind of like that. What I dislike is the fact that they are all operating at the same time with no real purpose.
Take the Flash. Jay Garrick serves his own purpose, and doesn’t exactly factor in here. Bart, however was killed less than a year ago so they could bring back Wally. Then Barry came back, making Wally superfluous. And Bart is there too. Now, aside from Jay and Wally, I cannot see a single reason for the characters to exist. They seem to be doing the same thing.
Thats the problem with Supergirl. I thought the introduction of her was really cool. But she kept getting shipped from writer to writer and none knew what to do with her. So she quickly became a lesser version of Powergirl. And then Superwoman came along. No idea why.
See, isn’t the idea of the characters existing. Its that DC keeps trotting them out to increase sales and then doesn’t know what to do with them.
What do you do with four Wonder Women?
And what is worse is the ones that are resurrected. Barry Allen really doesn’t need to be around. Neither does Bart or the other resurrection from Legion of 3 Worlds. And particularly with LoSH. As good a job as Mark Waid did, a LOT of it was ruined by the multiple Legions operating autonomously and interweavingly.
Anyway. I think some would benefit from just disappearing or retiring, such as Conner Hawk and Jason Todd. Others such as Speedy and Hawk and Dove, I would like to see murdered brutally.
[...] redundant characters running around the DCU these days. You can read his original article here. In the article, geist0 suggests that all of these characters shouldn’t be running around [...]