DC News & Views

What is genuinely disappointing for me is that Williams is apparently only for a few issues because the “single story approach”. If he was only on a few issues because that’s what he has time for, I think I’d be okay with that. However, DC having the single story approach as a goal as opposed to an accommodation concerns me. Maybe its just flashing back to the “a new team every arc” JLA experiment that was largely miss, rarely hit”¦who can be sure. In any case, I guess I prefer creative teams to hang out for a bit. Well, at least Dini is staying for more than a few issues.

And who knows, maybe Rags has the arc after that.

By the by, why, in an article about Williams do we have art from Bianchi? Sure, it is a nice piece and yes, they both did stuff with Seven Soldiers, but still. Bianchi is not even mentioned in the article. Ahh well, everything article needs an image, I suppose.

Well, it’s not art from the series, but at least it is a Williams drawn Batman. Oooo, Newsarama, you just got taken to school.

At least this is one fine picture of Superman punching a robot in the face. I’ve always said that any good Superman story features robot face punching.

And like that, the robot realized that Superman did not appreciate “Yo Momma” jokes. Sadly, it was too late.

I was not sure if I was going to hang around on Action (or Superman for that matter) post Up, Up, and Away (especially since I pretty much bought that on a lark) and now I’m even less sure. It is nothing against the team, I like a bunch of Nicieza’s stuff over the years and we all know that Busiek is all sorts of great. My fear is that this book will be in a holding pattern that will sap my love for the character and by the time the “real” new team comes on I’ll just be too tired of waiting to bother picking up the issue. Still, it is only three issues so maybe the waiting will not be so bad.

As for why I will not be picking it up, the miniseries just failed to connect with me. I really liked the concept of the Thanagarian and Rannian trainees working together, but that was never developed enough for my tastes and the rest just never seemed to pique my interest at all.

This whole article is a bit of a sham though. There is a part about three paragraphs in that makes it pretty clear that the interview was conducted before Blue Beetle #1 or Infinite Crisis #4 came out. The Pulse seems to be doing that sort of thing a lot lately.

Well, that’ll probably wait until Atom: Rebirth. Until then, Ryan Choi is top dog.

The important thing to know about the Madmen is that, really, there is only one Madman. He’s a former criminal acrobat turned janitor turned criminal mastermind (sort of) named Fleeter. The deal is that he’s always the Madman, but he can “link” to other people’s minds. The result of doing this is that these people become his unwitting accomplishes. They evolve into the Madman look (which is rather dashing if I do say so) and mirror his movements.

It sounds a bit silly perhaps, especially given the garish outfits that go along with being a Madman, but it is actually quite terrifying. This man can jump into your head and push you to commit crimes or do whatever else he wants. He is, in a way, the Purple Man of the DCU, another kind of cheesy villain who can be quite scary when written that way (like causing prison riots in Daredevil comics around #150 and just about any time he is written by Bendis). So this is not so much a Revamping as a stripping down.

I used the same comparison in Who’s Who that I will use here. Picture all the Agent Smiths in the Matrix Reloaded piling in on Neo. Imagine that, but with infinitely less order. That’s the potential of the Madmen. Add in the fact that, unlike Neo, most heroes loath to hurt civilians under the mind control of a devious criminal and you have a very viable threat.

Oh, and we are ditching the “mirroring” thing. It is too confusing. Instead, they are more like puppets on a string. They’ll do as Fleeter thinks them to do, so they might he stab a civilian while Fleeter is stealing that civilian’s car or wife or what not. Of course, as with any good mind controlling villain, the more people who he controls, the harder it is for him to maintain that control.

It is this Madman that our Revamp revolves around.

In Star City, a series of bizarre cases of theft have gripped the populace. Each bears the same signature style, but they all have been perpetrated by different people. They are young, old, fat, thin, rich, poor, very religious, and atheistic. Because the cameras at the scenes of these crimes are always taken out first, there is no footage of the criminals in action. However, they always leave behind fingerprints. The only other thing the perpetrators have in common is that they have absolutely no recollection of the crimes that they seem to have committed.

The police are stumped and their gloriously goateed mayor (and sometime superhero) Oliver Queen can’t seem to unravel it either. Then, one night, a security guard is killed at the scene of a robbery with the same MO. Then, another a few days later. Then a rich couple in their home. The bodies are starting to pile up and the city is seized by fear.

Richard Dragon, arguably the best male martial artist in the DCU (and certainly in the top 5 overall) is passing through town looking for Connor Hawke. The two have not seen each other since they were kidnapped and forced to fight in an international tournament against the likes of Lady Shiva and Dragon is looking to make amends with Hawke for his behavior back then. Sadly, Connor is off on some island somewhere so Dragon decides to take a brief walk around before hopping a bus out of town.

While out on his stroll, he happens upon a jewelry store robbery. He easily takes down 3 of the garishly dressed villains, but a fourth gets away. Dragon chases him down the street through an outdoor market. As Dragon pushes through the scattered crowd, we see more and more faces turn towards him, changing into the same look as the criminal he’s chasing. (Think of the scene in Fallen when Denzel THE MAN Washington pursues a body jumping serial killer on a city street. Each time Denzel thinks he has him, another random passerby turns and sings a bit more of “Time is On My Side.” Same thing, except no one stops singing). Before he realizes it, he is surrounded by these garish grinning people, these Madmen. They descend upon him and overwhelm him by sheer force of number. He might be one of the best fighters the DCU has to offer but there is simply too many of them. Bruised, bleeding and nearly blacking out, Dragon lashes out blindly and connects with one of them. This Madman gasps and all the other ones fall away, reverting to their normal “form”. As Dragon slips into unconsciousness the Madman, Fleeter, runs away.

Three days later, Dragon is coherent enough to relate the story to the police and Queen realizes who he is dealing with. He contacts Steel who outfits the police with headsets to block Fleete’s power and the Star City PD stops messing around. For two weeks, they have Fleeter running scared. They have cut him off from each and every score he’s attempt, raided and sealed off every safe house he has. It seems like only a matter of time before they catch him and then, the trail goes cold.

Perhaps he has finally just fled the city, the popular theory goes. And, after a month, it seems like that could very well be true. Then, one Monday mid-afternoon, people in Star City’s capital building start acting strangely. Their appearances change. Before Queen knows it, he is sealed in a building overrun by Madman affected staff members, legislators, and security guards. It is Green Arrow alone against scores of people. That would be tough enough, but he also knows that he cannot hurt them because they are not responsible for their own actions. His only chance is to break Fleete’s concentration, but Fleeter has learned from his mistakes. He’s not showing his face. In fact, he may not even be in the building. No one really knows how powerful Fleete’s mind is. What does GA do? What can he do? He’s running out of places to hide, he’s running out of places to find Fleeter. How long before one, or two, or several of the Madmen find him? And if they do, and becomes a matter of kill or be killed, can Queen make that call? Can he live with that decision?

And there you go. Madmen from chumps to terrifying force in a few easy steps and, probably, no more than four issues. Plus, an appearance by Richard Dragon!

I’m pretty sure that was an aberration though. A misstep. The exception that proves the rule of Birds of Prey being damn good reading.

I’ve got all sorts of questions that I am sure this issue will answer some of. For instance, why does Bones want Psycho represented anyway? What’s the deal with Kate’s ex’s new wife? Where’s Mark Shaw? Does Dylan’s tongue reach his eyebrows?

Then, I read the preview pages. The art, while not Tony Harris’s, is still very good. So a breath of relief there.

Alright, I sort of did know it was. But only because I read an interview where Seagle talked about it. I was surprised then. And actually, even knowing that Adam would be heading to Africa, this issue still managed to go in a direction I was not entirely expecting.

For one, I did not expect Seagle to play the “sex and violence” card so early. Sex and violence are so bizarrely intertwined in American culture that I figured it would have to come up eventually, I just did not expect it right off the bat. Seagle goes for it, however, and it largely works. The faint message that Americans have (and perhaps will) always view violence, despite its destructive nature, as more acceptable to participate in and certainly more acceptable to show, than sex is made manifest in Adam’s actions. Here is a man of God (not in the “of the cloth” sense, but still) who punches a complete stranger in the face with little provocation and is almost literally frothing at the mouth to kill those people that killed his girlfriend. And yet, he still is horrified by the site of native African women walking around their village topless or boys touching themselves without shame.

Sadly, Seagle does not always trust the power of image and metaphor to get through to the reader. An excellent scene of Adam putting the hurt on a reporter and admitting his enjoyment of it is capped off by his half sister Cyndi (amusing bit of naming there, eh?) telling Adam, “Fighting’s like sex.” With that line, all the smartness of the scene drains out of it. The “sex/violence” card is a good one to play but if you spoon feed us the metaphor, well, it ruins it.

There are also issues of cultural relativism and America’s need to dictate terms (moral in this case) to the rest of the world as Adam “confronts sin” in an African village that has no concept of the sins that he is seeing. Again, however, Cyndi’s dialogue almost screws the pooch (if you can forgive that unfortunate turn of phrase) when she tells Adam that he might have the right to preach morality “in America, but you’re not in America now.” It is very frustrating. Seagle is bringing up challenging ideas, but he cannot let them stand on their own. Cyndi is like a metaphor sledgehammer, making sure we “get” all the deepness that is being laid out in front of us. And it is doubly depressing since Seagle has done a fine job otherwise of laying it out. If he’d only trust us and himself, the result would be a lot more satisfying.

(I am so angry, prepare yourself for spoilers.)

Also, why bring back Force of July (see, I do not recognize their new identity) just to kill of most of the team in the first issue? The Force was already dead. Isn’t it a touch unnecessary and cruel to give them new life just to snatch it away again? It seems that way to me.

Getting to the more important parts of the book, we find this book still is not all that great. Problem #1 is the sheer number of characters that Gray Palmiotti throw at us to start with. Between the new Force of July, the new (I assume) Atomic Knights, the Nuclear Legion, Father Time, a new Human Bomb, a new Firebrand, this issue introduces a total of 18 characters that we are mostly or wholly unfamiliar with. Actually, you can probably throw Monolith and his two social worker friends in on that list too because only about 15 people read that title anyways. That’s a lot to absorb all at once and with almost none of them given a real personality to speak of, there is not much reason to make that effort anyway.

The plot revolves around secret testing, a walled off Bludhaven, and the beginnings of violent unrest. However, these are really only bullet pointed moments that stand to introduce that aforementioned giant cast of characters.

Artwise I like what I see. Jurgens is reliable and Palmiotti is an excellent inker. I only have two complaints. First, what’s up with Wonder Girl’s face? Second, why are so many heroes wearing sunglasses?

Now, I like Lex, don’t get me wrong. I think he can be fascinating when written well and while he’s not a billionaire industrialist and top notch manipulator here (he’s more evil scientist, but thankfully not cackling, wearing green battlesuit evil scientist) he’s written pretty darn well.

The reason it is a problem is because Clark Kent is shunted to the side for it. If this book is aiming to give us a feel for the man behind the Man of Steel (and it seems to be, what with the new origin box and the loss of powers) we need to have that man be front and center.

With that not being the case this time, the book trips on itself and Clark ends up looking kind of wooden and ineffectual.

And so on.