Are You Ready For The NEW DC UNIVERSE?

Well, THAT explains a lot!

I am not.

I wasn’t even ready for the last one.

About five years ago, the DC universe had experienced years of major upheavals, including retcons, all the way through Infinite Crisis. I was anticipating seeing what it would look like when the dust cleared.

And we had Blackest Night and Brightest Day, which set up a whole new set of mysteries, conflicts, and the beginnings of story arcs. (Brightest Day was more set-up than story.) They introduced the first new Aqualad in fifteen years, and I was intrigued. They changed Hawkgirl into some lost air elemental thing that Hawkman had to find, and I was annoyed - Hawkgirl deserves better than to be an off-panel damsel in distress, the object of some “important” character’s quest - but I was curious about how the issue would be developed and resolved. (I’m a fan of the JSA Hawks.) So they had my attention - and my expectations, which I think it is fair to say they had set.

And then DC said: Nah. We’re going to junk all that. And they created The New 52, with its own set of mysteries, conflicts, and the beginnings of story arcs. Because they were bored with the ones they had just created? I don’t know.

When The New 52 was created, it had a built-in overall story arc. A new character, Pandora - depicted as some sort of cosmic weaver or multiversal puppet master - apparently leveraged off the Flash’s failed attempt to fix the evil changes to history made by the Reverse-Flash and restore the pre-Flashpoint timeline (the one I had been primed to explore) to merge three universes - DC, Wildstorm, and Milestone - into one, because the heroes from all those universes would be needed to counter some vast, approaching threat that she could see coming. And so we had the 52-verse.

Now, merging fictional universes is a very difficult thing to do well, at least if you want the result to be an interesting and coherent fictional setting. It takes a great deal of careful thought, and, if multiple writers and editors are involved, a great deal of coordination. I’ve rarely seen a good job of it. It’s one thing to incorporate something like Bram Stoker’s Dracula into the Marvel Universe - the Dracula setting and backstory is narrowly constrained, so you can make it fit. But, just for example, combining the histories Earth-1 and Earth-2 into a single timeline post-Crisis on Infinite Earths - that’s much harder. Especially since (i) they are already versions of each other, with overlapping characters and events; (ii) some heroes basically started over from scratch, but others (who were interconnected with the former) just kept on keepin’ on; (iii) the creative staff did not nail down what they wanted to do with certain (problematic) characters, and used them before their status was determined; and (iv) some writers and editors were obviously committed to the project, but others seemed to have a attitude of Really, Who Cares, It’s Just Comics.

Which is why the post-CoIE DCU, despite its charms, was at least as messy as the universes that had come before, if not more so. And why writers kept returning over and over again to disparate versions of previous events, as though obsessively scratching at scabs, rather than let the universe develop forward.

Reading The New 52, I get no impression that they learned anything from their previous attempts. Or maybe they learned: Don’t Bother. It didn’t feel to me like they were creating a fictional setting, a shared universe, a timeline (whatever phrase you prefer). It felt like they were throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what would stick. The immediate contradictions, the incoherent characters (if you can explain how an amnesiac alien with no academic credentials quickly became one of the most renowned archaeologists on Earth, feel free), the complicated but unexplicated backstories, the constant eventification, the jump to Future’s End, the destruction of the fledgling Earth-2 - there were some good stories mixed in, but taken as “the DC Universe” (which is, after all, how it was marketed and sold), it was just a mess.

As for the merging of the three universes, which was supposed to give the whole project some shape…. Pandora reappeared, but with a character, backstory, and powers that seemed disjoint from her role at the beginning of things. Milestone was reduced to a poorly-handled Static Shock (with Hardware in the background), quickly - and, in my opinion, sadly but appropriately - cancelled. (I was a big fan of Static in the Milestone era. One of the things I liked about him was the relatively normal, grounded  setting of his family and school friends. They tossed that entirely.) Hey, where was Icon? He might have helped out against the Crime Syndicate. Or anything.

The Wildstorm Universe? Mostly represented by Stormwatch, with a connection to the DC Universe given by a very confused Martian Manhunter - was he a superhero, or did he have contempt for superheroes? Had he ever been in the JLA, or was that a typo? Anyway, cancelled. As was Voodoo. Every now and then there would be a Daemonite story, but it never felt like they belonged there. The idea that the universes were brought together for a reason? It seems to have faded away. Quickly.

Look, on one level I’m easy. I love superheroes, always have; I grew up on them. And with the characters I’ve known and liked for decades? I’ll give it a try, I really will.

But on another level: I’ve got standards. For comics, movies, TV shows, books. I want to read about characters, with personalities, who react to their experiences in character, and are even changed by them. I want to read stories that have been thought through - stories where the writers seem at least as interested as they want me to be. And if you’re going to create a fictional setting, especially a science fiction/fantasy setting, I want to to be an interesting one, a coherent one, one that is worth exploring. I grew up on The Lord of the Rings too, and Dune. I don’t expect perfection, really and truly. But I expect a good-faith effort.

This is particularly true with serialized fiction, where presumably they want me to come back month after month. There I expect the writers to follow through. If they create a mystery and give clues over time, the mystery should ultimately be solved, and in such a way that the clues are meaningful. If they set up a character’s quest, we should be able to see the quest succeed or fail. If they start a story arc, the arc should be continued, not dropped like a hot rock. When I trust that the writers will follow through, then I will come back month after month - even though not every month is a home run.

At DC, they seem to have lost all interest in this. Frankly, they seem bored. Bored with their characters, bored with their stories, bored with their universe. They keep breaking things, like kids with an old toy, rather than developing them over time. They create mysteries, conflicts, arcs - and then just abandon them. They use frequent and arbitrary retcons to make things easy on themselves. Why should I be interested? What’s the payoff?

Look, I’m not a little kid. I understand that the so-called “DC Universe” is not a real place, and not primarily a work of art (although it can be) - it’s a marketing tool, plain and simple. But just because something is marketing doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be truth in advertising.

THE NEW DC UNIVERSE! New characters! New mysteries! New story arcs!

Why should I be interested? Spend money, time, emotional investment? I’ve been there before. And the payoff is smaller and smaller each time.

MISSING: Have You Seen This Man?

Mom And I Would Read Books Or Play Board Games Until He Was Done

Gotham is kindly offering me another example of the ubiquitous Paternal Narrative.

Both of young Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed, and he is obsessed with finding out by whom and why. Increasingly everything he thinks, says, and does is focused on his father. A Wayne Enterprises exec tells him that Thomas Wayne and Grandfather Wayne knew all about the company’s illegal activities, and accepted them. Lucius Fox says Thomas Wayne was a stoic. Alfred insists that, if Thomas Wayne had a secret life, Alfred would have known, and also that Thomas Wayne was a good man. “Even good men have secrets,” says Bruce, and sets out to find them in his father’s study.

He doesn’t even think about his mother, who was also murdered. Did she know what was going on at Wayne Enterprises? Was she a good woman? Did she share Thomas’s secrets? Did she have secrets of her own?

Apparently that’s too absurd to even be considered. I’m not even talking about the fact that the plot points ceaselessly at Thomas Wayne, as Bruce adds his father’s picture to the Murder Wall and searches through his books. The plot will go where the plot will go. It’s that Bruce, and Alfred, and Selina, and, of course, the show itself doesn’t take out a single moment to suggest, hey, Martha Wayne was also killed, maybe we should think about the possibility - if only briefly - that it had something to do with her. Even if that line of investigation leads nowhere, shouldn’t it be on the Wall?

We get a glimpse of Martha Wayne’s life from Bruce. When his father was in the study, the door locked and everyone forbidden to disturb him (and when, it turned out, he was descending into his secret Batcave), “Mom and I would read books or play board games until he was done.” In this scenario Martha is quite precisely reduced to the level of a child, doing the same things as her pre-teen son while her husband, a Master of the Universe, pursues his important and hidden goals. Although maybe she was reading a more sophisticated book. Maybe.

Thomas Wayne actually had a very busy public life. He was a medical doctor - I don’t know what kind of practice he had, but it’s hard to imagine him letting his M.D. go unused while there were people out there who needed treatment. And he was the CEO of a major multinational corporation - the number of meetings and business trips that implies is enormous. Let’s just imagine the possibility that Martha Wayne, in her free time - after young Bruce went to sleep, or while the highly reliable butler was watching him - had a secret life all her own. Maybe she investigated the nefarious dealings of Wayne Enterprises, while her husband maintained a false front to keep his criminal executives distracted and unsuspecting. Or maybe Thomas is building equipment for her down there in the cave, and at night she goes out as a vigilante, protecting the poor people of Gotham from the crime and corruption that infects her beloved city. Maybe this is what got her killed (with her husband as collateral damage), and she is the good, stoic, determined, secretive hero that Bruce should aspire to be. Imagine!

But that’s silly. She’s just someone’s mom.

And Mother... Mother!... Where did you leave the meatloaf recipe?