The Watchtower 9.14.03-Blockbusters

Archive

part one written over a week ago but kept from being put on the site due to computer problems

Hello again. A slow news week in the comics world, but not a slow week in terms of big-time events. I think you all know what I’m talking about folks, the event that was 20 years in the making, and, if you ask me, worth every minute…the kick-off of JLA/Avengers. I have both the privilege and the pressure of being the first guy who really gets to comment on issue #1 and the potential for the rest of the series, so here goes…

The Battle of the Century…and Last Century

So you all know the story: JLA/Avengers was originally supposed to come about back in 1983 and it was legendary artist George Perez’s dream project. Unfortunately, editorial decisions on the sides of both Marvel and DC (the most prevailing theory that then-Marvel Editor-In-Chief Jim Shooter did not like the plot turned in and DC got frustrated with Shooter’s reluctance to play ball). Perez did several beautiful pages of work in hopes that the editorial problems would work themselves out, but they didn’t, and Perez’s work lay dormant (it can be viewed at various places around the net).

Two decades, and several inferior Marvel/DC crossovers, later, Joe Quesada became Editor-In-Chief of Marvel and contacted Perez, informing him that getting JLA/Avengers published was one of his goals in his tenure as E-I-C. After a few years of negotiation and work by Perez and former Avengers collaborator Kurt Busiek (Mark Waid was at one time attached to co-write, but bowed out), the dream became a reality this past Wednesday with the release of the first of the four issue mini-series.

*I will do my best to avoid spoilers, but some may get dropped*

First, no surprise whatsoever: some of the best art I’ve ever seen. Perhaps I’m biased, George Perez is my favorite artist of all time, but I think I’d get some support here. The care put into each and every panel, twenty years of love, is evident. Nothing feels rushed, no aspect is not done down to the most minute detail. Perez is of course the master of drawing 800 characters in a panel, and it shows here. The catalog of characters he’s built up over the years also shows as even cameo appearances (more on these later) look like they are characters Perez has drawn for years.

The two final things I have to say about the art: first, I love that unlike so many other artists, Perez gives a unique look to every character, special attention and details for each one. Captain America’s face does not look like Hawkeye’s, nor does Superman look like he could be Bruce Wayne without a mask. The second thing is of course the brilliant fight scenes that kick off the book (and that most have already seen at least the teasers of in Wizard). In drawing the fight scenes, Perez does not just create battles, he creates entire living environments in which the characters live and do battle. Every landscape and background feature becomes part of the fight. George Perez deserves all the praise he’s going to have heaped upon him for this series (if there’s any left to give him after all the man has already accomplished, but this is his coup de grace) and then probably deserves a lot more too.

But I’m a writer, so let’s talk about the writing. Kurt Busiek was the x-factor in this equation as longtime Perez, JLA, and Avengers fans were wondering whether or not he could deliver a story that would measure up to what everybody already knew was going to be some of the best art of all time, in a story featuring THE best characters of all time. Well Busiek delivered…oh boy did he deliver.

Issue #1 is packed with more story than you get in some six-issue story arcs and not a bit of it feels rushed. The main story feels appropriately epic and not contrived and I will try not to go into it here so those of you who haven’t gotten a chance to read it yet can enjoy it in all its splendor. But the true goodness is in the details. Busiek manages to provide plenty of fun one-panel cameos that give Perez an opportunity to draw even more characters and they make the book. The Marvel and DC universes are as much the stars of this book as Thor or Wonder Woman, with Busiek taking us on the scenic tour of each, right down to environments, characters and items that comprise over sixty years of story-telling lore. And if I may be allowed one minor spoiler, the way in which Batman dispatches of a certain Marvel vigilante after harping on his teammates to avoid similar situations…Busiek adds a wicked sense of wit to the action-packed proceedings.

Busiek gets the voice of each character just right, even the ones who only appear momentarily, but especially the featured players. Now after his lengthy run on Avengers, the fact that Busiek can write Cap, Iron Man, Vision, et. Al is no shock. But his dead-on voices for Batman, J’onn J’onzz, The Flash and the rest of the Justice League tells me that Busiek was born to write JLA. I also have heard from more than one person the appreciation that Busiek utilizes the full capacity of every character power-wise, right down to ol’ Aquaman himself.

And then there’s the icing on the cake, the touch that takes this crossover and puts it on a whole other level from any that have come before is the very intelligent look Busiek and Perez take at the contrast between not only the JLA and the Avengers, but really the way Marvel and DC have crafted their stories and worlds for years. I don’t want to give too much away, but buy the book and you’ll see what I mean…in everything from the different ways the two teams handle their adversaries at the beginning of the story to the attitudes of the characters upon entering the universe that is not their home. I always felt gypped in the Marvel/DC crossovers of the 90’s when crossing over from one universe to the next seemed like such a nonchalant thing…not the case here.

I can’t say enough good things about JLA/Avengers. If you haven’t picked it up yet, you’re doing yourself a disservice.

Bat-Bits

-In probably the biggest comic book-related news of the week, Christian Bale (American Psycho) was announced as the new cinematic Batman. This casting choice has drawn more or less universal praise from the internet comic scene so far, and I shall be no exception. Bale has the perfect combination of intensity to play Batman and that brilliant sense of fake aloofness he showed in American Psycho to perhaps be the best Bruce Wayne yet, and he’s got a sense of comic as well as dramatic timing to boot. Indeed, I could find no flaw with this decision…

…until I read what Alan Donald had to report in this week’s All The Rage over at Silver Bullet Comics:

“a couple of sources have led me to believe that the Darren Aronofsky Batman: Year One project may not be as dead and buried as people believe. I’m not sure how much credence to put into this but apparently David Boreanaz (Angel) has expressed a very serious interest in the title role and he is supposed to be bringing the huge comic book fan and Buffy creator Josh Whedon onboard too. This does sound like a fanboy’s dream, but I’ve been unable to find out anything more.”

…

As a complete Buffy superfan, how am I possibly supposed to react to this? What fan of Angel has not been dead sure that Boreanaz would be the perfect Batman (or at least young Batman) ever since the first season of the show?

And yet Bale is pragmatically the perfect choice. Age-wise, he’s better, as even though Boreanaz is getting up there in the years, he still seems a bit young to play Batman. Plus, Bale simply has more range as an actor…but Boreanaz just has that “cool” factor that a new Batman franchise is going to desperately need.

In the end, it comes down to a guy who has all the qualifications versus a guy I would just gain more personal satisfaction from seeing take the role of the Dark Knight. In a perfect world, both of these movies could be made and both men could be Batman, one young and one old. But let’s face it: that wouldn’t work. Warner Brothers is looking to resurrect a franchise here, and in order to do that they need one and only one face that is going to be associated with Batman for years to come.

I’ll go ahead and say that Bale is the better choice…but you better believe I’ll be wondering for years how Boreanaz could have done it (not to mention how Joss Whedon could have written it).

Of course Boreanaz would be the perfect Nightwing, but I’m guessing they’re not going to repeat the mistakes of the last Batman franchise by bringing in too many characters too quickly, and by the time they do, Boreanaz will be too old for the part. Of course with all the renewed interest in DC’s Titans franchise, a feature film with the classic Wolfman/Perez cast would be the perfect opportunity…

-On a lesser note, I can’t understand why the internet seems to have turned so harshly against Jeph Loeb & Jim Lee’s “Hush” run on Batman. I am enjoying and am intrigued by this storyline more than I have been by anything else in the last two years (excepting “Blitz” over in The Flash). Aside from the fact that I think Loeb is crafting a top notch mystery (more on that in a moment), let’s not kid ourselves and forget that the main draw for this shindig from the start was always Jim Lee. Has Lee been a disappointment of any sort? No way! The guy has shown that he still draws some of the best action scenes, hottest women, most deranged women, and best heroes in comics, not to mention the life he’s breathed into Gotham (I can’t wait to see what he does with Metropolis). If anything, he has gotten better as a storyteller than he was in his X-Men days. His “flashback” panels (especially the one with Alan Scott battling the original Icicle during the Superman issues) are some of the most gorgeous things I’ve ever seen.

But aside from that, I think Jeph Loeb is doing a bang-up job in a high-pressure position. He had to know that people were going to buy this no matter what simply because of Jim Lee and the microscope would be on him…and boy has it ever been. I fail to see all these flaws in the story Loeb has been weaving that everybody else has been finding. It’s a mystery, folks, and that means that we can’t fully judge if these “flaws” are actually flaws or just red herrings and such until it’s all been laid out on the table. Does Loeb still have the chance to drop the ball big time if the resolution sucks? Yes, but I just don’t see that happening; I think the choice for who is Hush may be something obvious (or maybe not…I’m not sure…which is the best part!), but I still have faith that the explanation of the why will be worth the wait.

And I’ve got to offer additional kudos to Mr. Loeb for finding a way to work literally every bat-character he could into the story just so we could see how Jim Lee drew them all and not make it seem trite. As far as the “ultimate red herring” from last month…I friggin’ loved it. The last page of Batman #617 kicked all kinds of ass and it didn’t matter how much I knew it couldn’t be legit, just the fact that there was even a chance that they’d try something so bold was one of those cool feelings you only get so often from comics. And even when it turned out to be a lie, I thought the explanation was so well thought-out and the little details (“he never called me Bruce”) made it all worth the while.

Thanks Mr. Loeb & Mr. Lee for a fantastic run.

This & That
-Has any series fallen from grace faster than Marvel’s Exiles? Once upon a time not all that long ago, this was one of the books I liked forward to picking up more than just about any other on a monthly basis. Honestly, I haven’t felt that way in maybe two years. It feels like everything has been in cruise control since just after the magnificent “A World Apart,” and that was like two years ago. Even Blink’s departure last year felt like business as usual, and honestly, the ramifications of her leaving have not been explored at all, waste of a terrific character (with T-Bird, at least we got a superb Nocturne issue out of his sacrifice). It feels like the plot is consistently overwhelming the story, and the writers (both Judd Winick & Chuck Austen) get overwhelmed with creating the alternate worlds, and spend little time developing the characters at all. The narration at the beginning is consistently the part of the book of the book with the most depth; formerly-awesome characters like Mimic & Morph feel like they’re there solely for exposition. Even the guest stars seem wasted lately; the recent “Avengers Forever” arc had me real excited to see my favorite Avengers twisted into perverse vampire versions of themselves and then totally failed to deliver. The vamp Captain America seemed to be written like any generic vampire character; he just happened to be dressed like Captain America. Even Mimic seems to be tired of going nowhere as he delivers his usual “I hate fighting bad versions of my friends and idols” speech with nothing behind it whatsoever. I think back to the brilliance of the first year of Exiles and mourn what it has become.

-On the flipside, JSA has totally bounced back from a “blah” series of arcs following the “Return of Hawkman” and totally kicked it back up to form with the suitably epic “Princes of Darkness” and the very enjoyable #52. The new art by Don Kramer is crisp and I’m literally interested in everything #52 set up, from the possible relationship between Jesse Quick & Hourman to the ongoing Black Adam saga and what role the new Eclipso will play. As much as I hate to say it, because the guy is a kick-ass writer, the series does seem to benefit when David Goyer is out of the picture and Geoff Johns is flying solo (the “House Rules” two-parter and the standalone issue with Batman were way better than “Stealing Thunder”…on the other hand, Goyer’s early work on the book made anything that has happened since possible, so I will be eternally in his debt).

-Just so I don’t come off as totally dissing on Judd Winick, I think he’s surprised everybody with how perfectly he’s taken over Green Arrow. It’s a very solid read right now, exploring a very real character who acts exactly as I would expect somebody like Ollie to act. Winick nails the supporting cast as well and the art remains top-notch. GA has really lucked out since his return from the dead; what other series has had three high profile creative changes in under three years and had all of them put out stuff that can compete with anything else in the industry? Heck, even that fill-in issue that Scott Beatty wrote with Count Vertigo in it was awesome…just don’t bring up “Urban Knights…”

-I have made no secret about it: I don’t like Grant Morrison on New X-Men. I hated it from the moment he had Wolverine proclaim that he didn’t like his classic costume and have felt that he was being incredibly arrogant writing characters with names and appearances like those we knew before, but personalities from out of nowhere. I loved Grant’s JLA, but stopped reading New X-Men after the second arc. That being said, the final three or so pages of #146 made me a Morrison believer all over again. I should have remembered that with Grant, you should always judge his overall body of work on the pay-off…just brilliant delivery and it makes every back issue suddenly become interesting again. If you don’t know what I’m talking about…just pick up the book.

And with that, it’s somebody else’s turn on Monitor Duty. Until next week…