Andy Kubert

I'm not typically a reader of comic books. But Grant Morrison could almost persuade me to become one.

I came home from knee surgery to find myself bored, drugged, and distracted. Somehow, I ended up with a copy of Morrison's treatment of Superman in this renumbering of the Action Comics line (as a comics novice, I have almost no idea what that means, but it sounds good, and it was in the summary on Goodreads...). Superman has always been my favorite super hero, from the time I would, as a show more five-year old, stuff the edges of a red blanket in my shirt and zoom around the house channeling Christopher Reeve's version, fighting off the villainous Lex Luther and making the world safe. He's a man who is unequivocally good, typifying the Platonic ideal of the word, and yet is conflicted as the last of his race, alone on Earth, motivated by pure, unselfish intentions instead of desires for fame, glory, or wealth.

Yes, that can seem a bit superficial alongside more nuanced characters like Bruce Wayne/Batman, in the DC universe, or perhaps Tony Stark/Iron Man, in the Marvel. And yet, it's the need for an ideal that appeals to me. Yes, he's practically invulnerable, can fly, shoots lasers from his eyes (or heat rays?), has ultrasonic hearing and x-ray vision...but for kryptonite (and I never can figure out how every villain manages to get their hands on any of the stuff, given how far Krypton is from Earth, but whatever), he's practically a god--which is a big part of the critique Lex Luther, played by Kevin Spacey, levies at him in Superman Returns, and that looks to be a part of the upcoming Superman v. Batman film starring James Cavill and Ben Affleck. That's morally problematic, in a world where God is invisible and man must rely on faith to find deity. Instead comes this interloper, this god-like...super man, who we happen to call Superman, even against his better wishes...

So, there's a case to be made that Superman is more complex than on first glance. It doesn't hurt that a major part of his ethos is a moral strength as powerful as his physical prowess. All super powers aside, Clark Kent--Kal-El--is every bit as good a person as he is powerful. It's this moral simplicity, and the greater challenge of avoiding the corruption of ultimate power, that makes Superman resonate with me. He is a good person with great power in a corrupt world. How will he respond?

All this is a really long way to get to Grant Morrison's Superman -- Action Comics, Vol.1: Superman and the Men of Steel, which I much enjoyed, in my loopy, drugged up state. Heck, I think I caught myself crying--and I totally blame the drugs, again.

But seriously, it was fun trip back to visit my younger self, to find someone capturing the essence of who Superman was when I was young, before the world became more gray. Here was a young Clark Kent, just arrived in Metropolis, still wearing t-shirts and levis as he zips around the city helping the helpless and fighting the perps. It's a different America that he portrays than what we often see in the pages of the newspaper today, but one that still exists, if we look for it and become a part of it.

I look forward to reading the others in the series, hoping that Grant, and his fellow writers, can keep up the quality work. show less

This is close to the end of my Sandman spin-off runthrough. It's also stretching the definition of "Sandman spin-off," though no moreso than when I included Gaiman's early DC work like Black Orchid and Legend of the Green Flame. Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? actually teases you with an appearance of someone who might be Death... but turns out not to be. (Or so I think, anyway. Some evidently disagree!) The story takes place after Batman's death in Grant Morrison's Batman R.I.P. show more and Final Crisis, with all of his old allies and enemies gathering in Gotham to pay homage to him. Only... everyone thinks they did it. So we get a succession of stories told, by Catwoman, Alfred, the Mad Hatter, Joker, Robin, Clayface, Superman, each telling completely contradictory stories about something they did (or did not do) that lead to the death of Batman.

The stories range from a few pages to a panel or two to just dialogue, but each of them manages to be completely and utterly Batman. It's the greatest hits of Batman deaths, if he was allowed to have more than one. There are a lot of nice details-- my favorite part is the guy outside the club where the funeral is being held who watched the villains' cars-- in both the (beautiful) art (by Andy Kubert) and the writing. It's the perfect tribute to the Batman, the man who never gave up, no matter how crazy he seemed.

The whole funeral is overlaid by two people talking in caption boxes, who turn out to be Batman and not Death ("I don't think death is a person, Bruce."), and Batman passes from the funeral, from life, into something greater and beyond reality. Here, Bruce gets a chance to reflect on who he was and why he did everything he did. There are a lot of great lines, my favorite being, "Do you know the only reward you get for being Batman? You get to be Batman." And then he's done... or as done as Batman can ever be, because he's apparently got to pass on somewhere else. I know that when Darkseid kills Batman in Final Crisis, Batman actually goes tumbling into the past, so I assume this is all tied into that, but it works on its own as a story about the endurance and struggle of Batman, too.

The still-thin book is padded out by everything else Gaiman wrote related to Batman, which amounts to a weird set of stories. "A Black and White World" is about what Batman and the Joker do "off-panel" in their comics, but Simon Bisley's art is just a little too "gritty 1990s" to work for me. Check out those ears on the Batman! And those R. Crumb-style women. "Pavane" is about a Suicide Squad agent trying to recruit Poison Ivy, giving her origin story-- pretty good stuff. "Original Sins" and "When is a Door" are two linked stories about a news team visiting Gotham to do a feature on supervillains.

I like the frame a lot, being filled with big and small character moments, and jokes at the Penguin's expense, but "When is a Door," the teams encounter with the Riddler, ended up being a long metafictional rant about the death of fun in superhero comics. Well, Neil Gaiman, go write some fun superhero comics then. This is your world; as I was just reminded, Batman and the Riddler just live in it.

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Access a version of the below that includes illustrations on my blog.

The Man of Two Worlds is definitely a product of the time that brought us Animal Man and Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters: this is a darker reinvention of the Adam Strange story. Adam is a archaeologist periodically transported from Earth to the planet Rann by the zeta beam, which allows him to adventure there (complete with jet pack) for a short time before he's zapped back to Earth until the next zeta beam hits. On Rann, show more he has a wife named Alanna, whose father, Sardath is the inventor of the zeta beam and the leader of the council that rules Ranagar, the foremost citystate of Rann.

Bruning questions this whole setup in classic late 1980s/early 1990s fashion. Why would Adam be so willing to give up his home planet? Why can't the people of Rann solve their own problems? He explore Adam's family history, and also the political and biological situation on Rann: the planet is sterile, both literally and spiritually. Thanks to technology, reproduction rates and sexual interest are plummeting, and the Rannians lack the spiritual energy to do anything about their own problems. They can't do anything without Adam, but they resent him for that fact, which Sardath is careful to keep from him, since he needs Adam to reinvigorate Rann: Alanna is pregnant with Adam's child, the first child to be born on Rann in a generation.

It's a "dark" and "gritty" take on what was a pretty clear-cut superhero archetype. On Earth for the last time before the "mega zeta beam" whisks him to Rann permanently, Adam visits his sister and his dying father, and remembers the aspects of his childhood that turned him into a loner and an outcast, the kind of person who would be eager to give up his life and start a new one that is fundamentally a fantasy. But for reasons Adam doesn't quite understand, he's afraid of moving to Rann permanently, and he almost cheats on Alanna with Eve Fox, the doctor caring for his father. It would be easy to dismiss this as gratuitous "grittiness," but it really works on a couple levels.

First, is that life on Rann never feels fully real to Adam, mostly because of how much Sardath hides from him. I don't think he views Alanna as a real person, but as a sort of masculine fantasy: the attractive woman he constantly gets to save and then have sex with. Eve is very much a real, complex character with her own ups and downs, and the scenes between her and Adam were the real emotional heart of the book for me. The second is that Adam has always been a runner, as Eve points out near the book's end, but if he settles on Rann, he's not going to be able to run from what makes him uncomfortable any more. Overall, I like how the book deftly makes an interesting characterization for Adam out of the book's original kooky Silver Age setup.

Meanwhile, things are falling apart on Rann. With Adam's imminent permanent settlement, Rannian sentiment against him and Sardath has reached a peak, which is exacerbated when the mega zeta beam temporarily drives Adam mad, causing him to attack Sardath. Suddenly the fears of the dissidents are validated, and without Sardath, the Ranagarian council (all made up of duplicates of Sardath) begins to fall apart. The rival citystate of Zared takes advantage of this chaos, and begins advancing a plan to conquer Ranagar. This part of the book was less successful for me: the Ranagar dissidents are often pretty simply characterized as jealous of Adam, which diminishes their understandable objections to Sardath's plan. That said, Captain Delaken, who is the head of the Cityguard (and thus supplanted when Adam became the city's protector), goes from uncontrollably jealous (he was also an old flame of Alanna's, which seemed unnecessary to me) to a reluctant ally, which was a pretty well done transformation. He apparently also appeared in some of the space-based issues of Starman; I'll have to look back at them and see. I also liked Marleah, one of the leaders of the rebels, though she's summarily disposed of when her contribution to the plot is over.

Throughout, though, Andy Kubert really impresses as an artist, as does his brother Adam as a colorist. Some of their characters look a little same-y, but they handle both the sci-fi vistas and the ordinary Earth sections of the book really well, combining expansive sci-fi visuals with a slightly grotty tone that reveals the darkness beneath the wondrous surface. The last few pages of the story give Kubert some splash pages that really let him strut his stuff as artist, and he's great with facial expressions and (to a lesser extent) action.

Overall, the middle of the book has Adam scrabbling around in the Rannian desert while things spiral out of control back in Ranagar. It's competently done, but not as interesting as the insight Bruning provided into Adam's character in the earlier parts of the story. Things get pretty nuts in the very last part, as a number of big events happen: 1) Evelyn Fox is brought to Rann by the mega zeta beam, 2) Zared invades Ranagar, 3) Adam brings Alanna's exiled mother back into the city, 4) Alanna dies giving birth to her daughter, Aleea, 5) Sardath snaps and discovers the joys of nonsense, and 6) Ranagar is launched into space in a giant egg, saving it from Zared by placing it in orbit.

I'm sort of torn by most of these events. On the one hand, they promise interesting future developments, but on the other hand, they irrevocably change the setup of Adam Strange stories. Bruning might have got away The death of Alanna seems unequivocally a mistake, though; the whole point of the end of the story is that Adam Strange can no longer run from his problems, yet the death of Alanna allows him to permanently escape his fear of commitment. Any imagined follow-ups to this book would have been more interesting with Alanna than without. And really, follow-ups are the problem. If this had been an out-of-continuity tale like its contemporaries Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns, I think all the other changes would have worked: the end implies great adventures to come of a new, more realistic sort. The working title for the book was The Fall of Adam Strange, and it really does feel like the last Adam Strange story, like Dark Knight Returns was for Batman.

But it's not; in theory, I think this was a set-up for a whole new cycle of Adam Strange adventures. Much as The Longbow Hunters transformed the basic setup of Green Arrow and was followed by an ongoing, this seems like it was supposed to as well: instead of Adam constantly zeta beaming between Earth and Rann, and smooching Alanna, we'd get Adam trying to build a new society inside the space-egg of Ranagar, with the help of a nonsensical Sardath, Doctor Evelyn Fox, and Alanna's mother, while trying to raise his child on his own. I can imagine an ongoing series with this setup would have been good (though Bruning really shouldn't have killed off Alanna), but it never happened. If an ongoing series had resulted from this, I think I'd view this ending differently, but as it is, it seems like Bruning broke all the toys when he was done with them. Adam Strange has been "deconstructed," and that has left him nowhere to go.

A brief coda: I actually already read the follow up to this story, though I didn't know it at the time. Adam Strange and an orbital Ranagar appear in 1996's Green Lantern vol. 3 #74-5, a two-part epilogue to The Darkstars. We don't see any Adam Strange characters other than Adam himself (indeed, Evelyn Fox has never appeared again at all), but Ranagar needs defending by the Darkstars because of the events of The Man of Two Worlds. Adam tells John Stewart, "A few years ago Ranagar was at war with Zared, another city on the surface of Rann. Ranagar was lifted into orbit. What saved us then makes us sitting ducks now." At the end of the story, Green Lantern safely lowers Ranagar back to the surface of Rann to save it from a decaying orbit, apparently beginning a slow process of undoing all the changes to the status quo made by Man of Two Worlds.

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When I first heard about the Before Watchmen series, I was somewhat curious but mostly skeptical. My opinion was that the original graphic novel provided a great deal of back story on its characters already (one of the many reasons I love that book so much), so this would be superfluous. Add to the mix that the original author as well the illustrator of Watchmen were neither involved in the project, and my doubts were high. Still, curiosity prevailed and I finally decided to check out Before show more Watchmen, starting with the bound book covering Nite Owl and Dr. Manhattan. Besides my unbeatable curiosity, another thing this book had going for it was that DC had gathered a team of highly prized creators to helm this effort.

In the original novel, Nite Owl/Dan Dreiberg was one of my favorite characters but also the one with the least back story, so it was a given that I’d want to read his prequel. Turns out I was rather disappointed. Dan struck me as one the nicest and least problematic characters in the original book, someone who simply got in to the costumed hero business because he idolized the first Nite Owl so much. Here he is given an abusive past with a father who victimized Dan’s mother while he was unable to help. There are also several allusions to the first Nite Owl having done something horrible, which was again sad to see, as he also struck a chord as a genuinely “good guy” in the original novel. Furthermore, this section of the book doesn’t read like Watchmen; it’s more or less any costumed hero getting his bearings, finding mentors and partners, and getting ensnared by a buxom woman - in this case, a high-class madam who seems to be a masked vigilante herself. As a superhero story, it’s entertaining escapism; as part of the Watchmen universe, it simply isn’t up to par. Likewise, the illustrations throughout are well done, but they are also pretty standard fare for comics in terms of being straightforward grid sequencing. This section’s rating is only three stars in my opinion.

As he wasn’t really a beloved character for me in the original story, I probably wouldn’t have read Dr. Manhattan’s prequel if it weren’t included in the same bound book with Nite Owl. In this case, that ended up being a good thing. I really enjoyed this part of the book, which touched on deeper themes and gave the reader pause for thought. While a lot of Dr. Manhattan’s back story was already explored in the original Watchmen, new details are created here, including 10-year-old Jon’s harrowing escape from Nazis – an event that later played in to his watchmaker father’s decision to abandon his trade and spurred Jon into his career as a physicist. We also see the building blocks here of the main crux of the Watchmen conflict and climax, with a brief look into the thoughts of Adrian Veidt as he pulls the wool over the Dr. Manhattan and talks him into re-creating his energy signature. The illustrations are far more interesting here, and there’s more creative license taken with the comics layout. My particular favorite is when the book literally reverses as we’re pulled into Veidt’s thoughts, a very clever and effective device. While this still isn’t exactly Watchmen, this seems like a suitable homage to it and a worthy contribution to its universe. I’d rate this section with all five stars.

An unexpected bonus at the end of the book is the inclusion of the back story to Moloch, one of the longtime enemies of the Minutemen/Watchmen. Being a relatively minor character in the original story, his background was really never explored nor one that seemed necessary to do so. The origins imagined here is comparatively trite – he looks funny, people make fun of him, he turns to crime in revenge. The real piece of interest here is again seeing how Veidt manipulates Moloch in to being a player in his master plan without revealing the details of that scheme. The religious overtones in this one were perhaps a bit much, but it did bring another layer to the story at hand. Like with the first section, the illustrations here are well done but nothing particularly spectacular. This section gets a three and a half star rating.

Overall, I do appreciate how the creators here were able to fashion something new out of an older story, incorporating elements of the original novel throughout but without necessarily simply re-creating them nor entirely re-imagining them. It’s more like they took the original events and discovered new life around them, putting them into a broader context. Inevitably, these Before Watchmen comics will strike strong chords – purists will hate anyone touching the source material while those just wishing there was more Watchmen to read will eagerly clamor towards them. For myself, I found this title both sadly lacking (the Nite Owl story), surprisingly on target (the Dr. Manhattan story), and giving new perspective (the Moloch story). While I wasn’t overwhelmed by what I found in its pages, it was certainly well done enough that I will go on to seek out further titles in the Before Watchmen series. show less