D.Rey here. To start, the answer the immediate questions that’s been on people’s minds, is:
- I have heard from several people who ordered the books that they have started to ship.
- And the Robert short story is being worked on, and you’ll see it in a couple weeks. I was hoping for this week, but some stuff came up, and it got postponed a bit. So right now, I’m aiming for the 17th, maybe even next week, if luck is with me. It’s usually not, so plan for the 17th. (A teaser can be seen in yesterday’s blog post.)
Now, I figured since we got a little time, I figured I’d spend this time talking about recent events, that’s mostly in comics this past week. Particularly about my favorite superhero, Superman. I’m sure most of you have heard this past week about the events that happened in Action Comics 900. (Yeah man, 900! I think only the Australian’s Phantom comic has topped that!) For those that don’t know Superman, after some incident with the Iranian government during a conflict, he renounces his United States citizenship. Now I’ve kept my mouth shut for almost all of it, because as much as I would love to rant off on how stupid and out of character this is, it’s:
1. Not unprecedented. In the Pre-Crisis Superman (Earth-Two), Superman was an honorary citizen of every country in the world, given to him by the United Nations. (Probably the only thing useful the U.N. has ever done… And it’s in 40 year old fiction.) So it’s not like it hasn’t been done before. Which brings us to…
2. It’s just a dumb story. It’s just a gimmick and it’s easily forgotten. Seriously, this is no different than any other stupid story told in comics. If it’s not popular enough, it’s easily and quickly forgotten. This is just a story gimmick, no different than the following dumb stories which were touted that “their lives will never be the same again!!”:
- Wolverine losing his adamantium, healing factor and nose. (Resolved with an image inducer and forgotten about.)
- Gwen Stacy sleeps with Normal Osborn, giving her age-accelerated kids. (Resolved with One More Day and forgotten about.)
- Batgirl (Cassandra Cain) is corrupted by Deathstroke and becomes the murderous leader of the Society of Shadows. (Resolved with making Cassie go away for a while and forgotten about.)
- Superman becomes a blue electric powered hero. And later, splits into a red and blue version. (Resolved with having something fix it and forgotten about.)
- Nightcrawler is really a demon, which his mother Mystique boinks a demon, who will bring about the end of the world by getting elected Pope. (Resolved with just forgetting about it.)
- The Punisher is killed by Wolverine’s bastard son, dismembered and becomes FrankenCastle. (Resolved with the Bloodstone and forgotten about.)
No, I wasn't joking. It really did happen.
- The Punisher gets plastic surgery and becomes a black man. (Resolved with it wearing off and forgotten about.)
- The Punisher kills himself, comes back as an avenging angel with glowing green guns. (Resolved with ‘he got better’ and forgotten about.)
- Tony Stark’s alcoholism overtakes him, and so teenage Tony Stark from the past comes to the present and replaces him. (Resolved with Franklin Richards and forgotten about.)
- Spider-Man becomes the avatar of the Spider-God. (Resolved with J. Michael Straczynski leaving the book and thankfully forgotten about.)
- Xorn. (Resolved with “it wasn’t really Magneto” and forgotten about.)
- Batman dies, but didn’t die, as he was sent back in time, and was a hobo living in a cave. (It’s confusing.)
- The implication that Superman’s villain, Metallo shot Bruce Wayne’s parents, as opposed to Joe Chill. (Resolved with Infinite Crisis and New Earth.)
- Tony Stark is a rich Republican, therefore he must be evil and willing to create an extra dimensional prison camp to throw people who disagree with him in there. (QUICKLY resolved because the movie turned Iron Man into an A-Lister. Thank you Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr.)
Great Rao, I wish this was photoshopped.
- Captain America is un-American because he doesn’t have a MySpace account and doesn’t watch American Idol. He’s later killed by the Red Skull. (Resolved with him returning back from the dead, due to him being phased in and out of time and forgotten about. Though we’re all still waiting on Steve to go up to Sally Floyd and punch her right in the fucking face.)
And of course the big one…
- Captain America is disenchanted with America after Nixon’s Watergate, renounces his citizenship, and becomes Nomad. Oh yeah, and like Nixon killed himself during that storyline too. (Resolved by putting back on the costume and forgotten about.)
And that's not even touching what Susan Richards was sporting during the 90's.
I could keep going, but I’m hoping you get the point. And every single one of those “character shattering” story lines was glazed over and quickly forgotten in under a year’s time. Two tops. When a story is dumb enough, it’s forgotten quickly enough, like Batman getting his back broken. And in my three decades of reading comic books, the only exception to this has been the still horrible “One More Day”.
And remember… It’s Superman that renounced his citizenship. Not Clark Kent. Clark has a social security number and a birth certificate. (Forged, yes. But he has them.) This is no different if Elwood Blues renounces his citizenship. Does that mean that Dan Aykroyd does too? Superman’s just an identity. It’s a role he plays. Just one he does secretly. The thing is, Superman really shouldn’t be used to tell political stories. (Superman IV learned that.) Some characters should be beyond that. Yes, it makes sense that Iron Man and Captain America get to be somewhat political. They deal with terrorists and threats to the peace of the world. Superman deals with alien invasions, mischievous imps from the 5th dimension and Lex Luthor. This is not a Superman story. It’s just something that was written to get people talking, and it worked. It’s still a young story and we need to see where it goes from here. And if it is a bad story (and it looks like it is) it’ll quickly go away.
In fact… I’d say in time for the movie next year. Superman’s bigger than any one story.
