Avert Your Eyes from "Brightest Day"

As we all know by now, I love comic books. Comic books are a form of storytelling that combines the intimate methodical techniques of a novel with the visual flare of cinema. In many ways comics are superior to both formats as they can dispense the need for excessive Stephen King levels of exposition by just showing you a picture of what is happening and are capable of setting up much more dynamic shots than movie because the framework of a comic is not limited to the aspect ratio of a movie theater screen or television set.

Yes, comics can do just about anything and probably should try it all. Looking back at the 80s we had very daring writers assembling deconstructive pieces on super hero stories and analyzing the mental stress and odd social implications that a living breathing super soldier might pose to society. Unfortunately, the amazing lengths that comics such as Watchmen or Sandman took were inevitably the catalysts of the absolute destruction of the industry in the 90’s. Gone were the dark tales of cerebral meditation and in were the ludicrous large gunned, multi pocket wearing, amateurish anatomy of the Rob Liefeld age. Somehow comics survived and are now going through a revival thanks to a little bit of ingenuity and the knowledge that “fun” should always be a part of the equation.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the dark stuff; hell Preacher is so vile that it makes me giggle with delight and appreciate the message it’s trying to deliver with its overtly western feel. Despite this love of the macabre I have to say that silly fun will always rank higher on my personal comic shelf. The Bone series is easily one of my favorite comics to ever see Mylar. Ever since I collected the complete paper trade back I have made it routine to read through the whole thing at least once a year. Why? The characters are endearing, the quest is grand, and it knows when to take itself seriously and when to sit around and just goof off. Hell, this is a comic that takes the works of one of the most noteworthy writers of all time, Melville, and references him by naming a cute and cuddly creature after one of the most nihilistic characters in literature. In many ways it’s perfect. This sort of awareness is pivotal to its success; it understands its own universe and doesn’t deny what it is. So with all that said, let’s talk about Brightest Day.

For those of you that have read my stuff since the beginning, you might recall that I posted a rather negative review of cross over events in comics. To save time and space for those who never read the thing, I don’t really care for them. The idea of throwing together all the characters of a respective comic universe to do battle is rarely self contained within its own series and is nothing more than a ploy by the company to have people buying copies of comics from all of their various characters’ individual series.

Luckily Blackest Night was one of those rare gems that knew exactly what it was. First and foremost it was a Green Lantern comic and so it took great care in focusing almost exclusively on the events of Green Lantern that occurred before the cross over began. Sure there was some stuff about Mera and other supporting third tier super heroes, but it was always in small bursts that complimented the primary story. Blackest Night eventually ended and kicked off Brightest Day. As of writing this review I am 4 books in and what I see before me is a completely bland, insipid, scatter brained, juvenile mess.

I’ve always feared that comics might be in danger of going back in time to revisit the atrocities of the 90’s and books like Brightest Day are the reason. Imagine for a second, a comic book about super heroes within the pristine world where Superman and Wonder Woman reside that features a mother brutally murdering her own family and then ripping her own flesh off then proceeding to tear the skin off her now dead family. Oh I’m real…. Yes, this is a scene in Brightest Day. This is a scene that occurs within the standard DCU. Superman will forever be a hero who protects the people of a world where house wives do things on the level of The Collector. Sure I’m aware that sick things happen in life and many might point to me and say, “Stop trying to censor this! You just can’t accept the harshness of reality.” Well to that I say, this is a work of fiction and for the sake of entertainment I am always willing to suspend my disbelief. I don’t mind this sort of behavior in expanded universe material, but once you have the most brutal of horror movie events unfolding on the pages of what will soon be cannon, I think you’ve got a serious problem.

Yeah, Brightest Day is kinda weird and gross. Blackest Night had its morbid scenes as well, hell this IS a zombie apocalypse run, but nothing on this level of insanity. Fans will probably point towards Marvel Zombies and ask why I don’t mention the strange happenings there but honestly Marvel Zombies was always nothing more than kooky fan service. In no way was Marvel Zombies canonical and once you throw Ash from The Evil Dead into the mix you quickly realize it’s all for fun. Blackest Night and Brightest Day want you to believe in this mythology badly; they want you to understand even years from now that yes, zombies are real and yes they can drop kick Hal Jordan like a punk bitch. This is the sort of stupid ideology taken from the 90’s where you just give the loyal fans exactly what they want no matter how inappropriate. Yes, I blame the recent rise in the popularity of zombies for constructing this DC run and shame on all of you for spoiling what once was great.

So other than being gross what’s wrong with it? Well for starters it can’t keep focused. I applauded Blackest Night for its tunnel vision. Brightest Day on the other hand while still belonging to the Lantern comics only does so in spirit. Hal Jordan and Sinestro in the 4 comics that have been published to date have only made an appearance in the first issue and only on the first 3 pages or so. What the hell have they been doing? This is the White Lantern for god’s sake! Shouldn’t they be more interested in the presence of a brand new Lantern Power source? Shouldn’t they be interested in this since it is essentially ALL of the Lantern powers rolled into one with the awesome bonus feature of being able to bring the dead back to life in the non flesh eating George Ramero sort of way? No, of course they’re not. They tried lifting it a few times and Hal chocked it up to being the Sword in the Stone myth. Do I ever wish that were true, hell where’s the Disney version? That would be a lot more entertaining than this schlock.

Wait, didn’t Sinestro seize the power at the end of Blackest Night for a moment? Didn’t Hal Jordan and the collective A-list members of DCU also get some of its mojo towards the end? This Lantern must suffer from some kind of bi-polarness if it freely offers Sinestro its power at the drop of a hat and then isolates itself like some 14 year-old self mutilator the next.

Without any Lanterns around you’re probably wondering, well then who is the story about? Hate to break this to you but Brightest Day suffers from the biggest problem of most cross over events in that it can’t decide who to focus on. The story jumps back and forth between Aqua man and Mera, Firestorm, The Martian Manhunter, and the Hawk duet. *yawn* other than the Martian Manhunter I really don’t care too much about these other characters. They may have had their decent runs here and there, but I’ve never read them and am not interested in starting now. Furthermore, this disjointed narrative can work and has worked in the past but it requires a great deal of creative story telling that I don’t think is present here. Hell you want a great tale that jumps between numerous characters? Read They Came Like Swallows, watch any Quentin Tarantino film, play Final fantasy 6 as these are all great examples of how you can build up an emotional investment in numerous characters and subplots that coalesce into a single cohesive narrative.

Obviously, the events of these separate characters are all unified by the White Lantern, but as of chapter 4 I’m still not seeing it. By now there should be a clear indication of how these completely boring and uninteresting events involving zombie sharks and Martha Mansons are tied to one another other than the very ambiguous, it’s the white lantern’s doing.

Come to think of it, the more I study this, the more I see a desperate ploy by DC to try and inject their increasingly unpopular A-list stars with relevance in the same manner that they did with their C-listers over the last few years. Blue Beatle and Booster Gold are great examples of characters dug up from the mud and turned superstar over night. The difference here is that while those two had interesting stories written around them that were, believe this, fun and captivating, the characters of Brightest Day are just given a zombie face lift because that’s the most edgy and contemporary thing they can think of to appeal to the current market.

Where are the Lanterns? Why is this zombie thing continuing? How is this event going to sit within the DCU several years down the line? What is the logic in depicting such violence when you have creative license to do so in expanded universe material? Umm, shoot – I’m missing two here. Ah the hell with it. So far Brightest Day does not impress me one bit. I’m starting to think that maybe pandering to the fans of zombie culture may end up biting DC back in the ass if they’re not careful. I’ll stick around for now but I would prefer not to *guffah*.

Crossover Events. Part 1

Put enough socially inept and awkward teenagers in a room together and sometime before the largest of the children begins picking off the weaker ones for sustenance once the Captain Crunch is all gone, you’ll probably hear a “Vs” debate.

Versus debates are not difficult to pick up on, they usually begin with, “Who would win in a fight, blank or *missing value*” or “Dude, you are so stupid. Everyone knows so-and-so would trounce all over Captain Warble Nuts”. Once you’ve heard something along these lines, it’s best to walk slowly away being sure not to make eye contact with anyone involved in the conversation unless you want to be mistaken for someone who gives two rips about this masturbatory nonsense and accidentally get roped in.

In my youth even I have engaged in these arguments but quickly dodged out as an adult once I realized how silly it all is. Don’t for a second let some burger flipping youth convince you that either logic or science can be applied to these things. Despite not having laser vision there are a handful of people in this world who will try to make the claim that Genghis Khan could actually take Abraham Lincoln in a fair fight. Pashaw, I say!

A long time ago the editors over at Marvel and DC discovered just how feverish these feuds are and calculated a plan to make money out of it; and not the “let’s do good deeds for the people and turn a profit as an unforeseen byproduct” sort of way, but the “holy shit, can you believe these people are that brick faced retarded” art of asshole business. While spurious company rivalries are pretty good at keeping faces glued to newspaper print, crossover events are even better. Nothing gets a comic geek’s nethers wetter than the thought of having Batman and Superman team up, except for maybe authentic Aquaman Speedo tighties.

This is a rather clever marketing technique and it seems to have worked well for the two major corporate juggernauts over the years. Even my most cerebral studies get kicked to the curb like some poor misfortunate MIT graduate going through an Urban street gang hazing, when I see the prospects of Namor and Hawkeye teaming up to battle shape-shifting alien Skrulls. On a personal level, these “professional grade fan fictions” will get me reading them just to see if I can’t decipher on what page and panel number the lobotomy began.

But as I said before (and if not, I’m sorry), crossover events to me are just stupid. Sure there are a few that are good (key word good, not GREAT), but most of them are a complete waste of time. You might as well just go out to the forest and burn down the trees rather than having to go through this whole dog and pony show just to slim them down, dress them up in cheap prostitute inks, and wrap them in Mylar bags to protect them from Cheetos powder. Although explaining my hatred on a more technical level might help illustrate what I find so bewildering.

The writer of Superman is usually a different person from the man at DC comics who is writing Batman; in fact most of the superhero books are being made by so many different teams of artists/writers/letterers/inkers/colorists/editors that its befuddling to even imagine how any one person can pin this all down and draw a narrative thread connecting them all. Usually there is some fancy pants talking head at the top of this chain of command referred to as “editor and chief” which is another fine way of saying “man who sucked his way to the top”. Those who don’t believe me need only look in the direction of Joe Quesada.

What complicates this whole matter even more is within the single Superman story line you have a character that has been written by dozens upon dozens of writers spanning several decades. The madness steps a few inches deeper into lunacy when you have to whip out the Texas-instruments calculator to add up all the tangent universes, multiply by what-ifs, and divide by “oops we’re sorry, have a lollipop” retcons to even write a bare bones Superman plot. Then all of a sudden some whore at the top office in your corporate building comes down wearing a suit of money and says, “Yeah this is great and all, but I want all of you writers to go ahead and cram all of your ideas into one clown car and drive it right up the ass of all the fanboys. And if they don’t believe us, add in some editorials at the end of each comic we publish a few months before the crossover begins and be sure to reference minute details from old comics to build the illusion that we had this planned all along.” Surprise, surprise, this gamble usually pays off.

Now the key word I just used in that last paragraph was retcon, because retcon is the magical word that makes everything all right. No matter how shit for brains upside down all of the storytelling can get, comic companies can always press the reset button and see if they can’t find Princess Peach’s tasty golden locks in another castle of experimentation. So long as they get their money the companies will do their best to weed out the bad, cement the good, and leave all the fans so confused that they may end up getting their wires crossed and go off cosplaying as the Green Goblin wearing the Iron Man suit painted up in Captain America colors – no, that would just be stupid.