Tarot Tuesday: The Magician

Can there be any other candidate than Batman for the role of Magician?

1. The Magician (Batman)

Sure, I guess there could be - actual magic users like Zatanna or Dr. Fate being the prime alternative candidates - but for a card that represents skill, willpower, dedication, and a good deal of self-improvement, I think Batman's the one. Maybe it's just me, but The Magician has always been an aspirational card in the tarot deck. That is, when you get your first deck and you're just shuffling through looking at the pictures, The Magician is the dude you want to be.

Same thing with Batman. Given his Just A Guy status, he's certainly the most identifiable of the classic DC heroes. In the twisted logic of not-real realism, people think, "Hey, with an unlimited budget and total dedication, I could be Batman too." Of course, we can't and being Batman is just not a practical way to fight crime in the absence of comic book villainy, but still, we dream.

Just as we dream of being granted access to the mysteries of the universe via a deck of cards we picked up at a Border's going out of business sale. Step 1: Pledge Self. Step 2: ?????? Step 3: Become Batman and/or Magician.

Batman is the Magician because he worked for his abilities. Sometimes he had to be a bit cunning in obtaining the training he desired, but he built himself from the ground up, something that gives him a unique inward looking perspective on himself and his role in the world. Contrast that to Zatanna, who is a Homo Magi (ie, born with her powers) or Fate whose powers stem from his magic helmet.

So we go with Batman, sitting alone at his computer, hidden away in the sanctum sanctorum that is the Batcave. The keyboard is his altar, the tap tap tapping of keys his sacred litany, and the display on screen his revelation.

Arkham City and Twisted Mirrors

So I started playing Arkham City this week. Well, I started trying to play Arkham City at least. Save Points are the bane of the Dad Gamer's existence. You never know when you'll have to deal with your kid getting his head stuck in a shoe, waking up in tears from a previously sound sleep, and so on. Toss in the constant looming threat of Mom commandeering the TV for required teenage vampire viewing, and you're left with 15 minute play sessions.

And when the game only saves after/before long cut scenes, that really, really blows. I may restart the game on Easy just so I can move quickly through the beating up mooks portion of the game.

But as a video game interpretation of a comic book? The game's pretty good. I like that villains left out of the first game, presumably because they were not insane enough to be locked up in Arkham, are out and about in City. I admit a fondness of The Penguin. There's been some complaints about the treatment of women in the game, namely Harley's horrible outfits and Catwoman being called 'bitch' a lot. I agree that Harley's introduction was sad - look, the camera is going to be pointed at your outfit, Harl, so there's no need to draw attention to it via dialogue. I have not progressed far enough to encounter the Catwoman stuff in bulk.

It's strange going from Arkham City to watching an episode of Batman: the Brave and the Bold. The switch happens when the toddler is unleashed (head freed from shoe) due to violence concerns, but I dunno about that. City is so dark, I doubt he could tell if someone was hitting someone else. Meanwhile, Brave and the Bold punches are often in slow-mo, back-lit by a primary color halo. Still, there's the whole bitch thing and given the rate West is picking up new words, that's one I'd rather he not start busting out.

The dread responsibility of a parent, I know.

Anyways, after finishing Season 1 of tBatB, my mind is currently wrapped up in thinking about The Injustice League or Crime Syndicate or whatever the heck they call the Evil Versions of DC's main heroes. I still think about that old Chuck Klosterman piece about Archenemy vs Nemesis and it makes me wonder - are the negative versions of heroes better archenemies (flat out foes) or nemesi (dark reflections too close to home)? Basically, archenemies would never encounter each other without a fight while nemesi could have a super-awkward HBO-style dinner together.

For example, I think Batman and Owlman would get along. I mean, they would be seething at each other the entire time, but I suspect they share enough common traits that a few hours together would not be a horrible debacle.

On top of that, I wonder if the negative reflection characters should simply have the same powers as their primary, just used towards nefarious ends, or should they be entire reimagings? Basically, should we just be slapping a goatee on these folks, or should we allow them to have developed along another path? If we do the latter at what point do we diverge? What details do we change?

Let's use Superman as our example as he already has a few evil versions. There's Ultraman, the gangland style Boss of Bosses evil Superman from Earth-3, Bizarro, a twisted caricature of Superman, and even to some extent the various totalitarian Supermen like the leader of the Justice Lords or even Red Son Superman. Each of these versions have similar powersets but differ in origin. Heck, the Justice Lords version has the same origin as regular Superman, except that he went through some tragedy that lead to a major rethink.

So if I had to come up with an Earth-3 'evil' Superman, what would I do? Tricky. Baby Kal-El being found by different people who do not inspire him like the Kents did has been done to death. So instead, I'd have our Kal-El come to Earth fully grown from a non-exploded Krypton. As a baby, Kal's dad indeed thought Krypton was going to explode and loaded his firstborn into a rocket. When Krypton didn't blow up, though, the baby was recovered from orbit, Jor-El was locked up in an asylum, and Kal grew up in an orphanage, the Balloon Boy of the planet.

Growing up, Kal entered the Science Academy, determined to wipe the stain of his father's name from his family's legacy. Except he wasn't working in the physical sciences. Instead, he became a sort of sociologist-psychologist with a focus on studying how people react to calamity. So when he discovered the existence of Earth, a world of no import populated by people who were psychologically very similar to Kryptonians, he went out to "run some experiments." The fact he developed superpowers when bathed in the light of Earth's yellow sun was just a happy accident - Kal had come with a bevy of deadly Kryptonian devices.

Rather than an evil Superman who cares about material goods and power (Ultraman), is a unfocused force of destruction (Bizarro), or a misguided zealot (Justice Lord/Red Son), we have a Superman who cares more about himself and his theories than anything else. He is divorced from humanity the same way a research scientist is divorced from her lab rats. He operates with a secret identity so as not to affect the outcomes of his experiments, not because he wants to live any closer to the people. He is, pretty much, an uncaring godlike figure who tests man for his own ends. Contrast this with Luthor, who for all of his crimes, at least has a faith in humanity (his). If anything, this evil version of Superman is closer in spirit to Brainiac.

Would this version join an evil Justice League? I doubt it. But that's because I don't think an alternate Earth where the baddies are winning would ever create such an organization. Sure, after they won they might (ala Wanted), but I can't see the Villain of Tomorrow signing up with a bloodthirsty Amazon who wishes to wreak vengeance on a Man's World that responsible for aeons of oppression or a guy who dresses like an owl out of hatred for his parents' weakness in the face of a gunman. I can't see them wanting to join up either, let alone the tyrant that lives beneath the ocean or the intergalactic mercenary with a Power Ring.

Tarot Tuesdays: The Fool

So after a harrowing September-bleeding-into-October, I'm hoping to get things back on track by instituting a few regular features round here. One of them will be Tarot Tuesdays, where I doodle up a DC hero as Tarot card and talk a bit about why that character is a good fit. This feature was inspired by some of the discussions I've read regarding the cards featured on Justice League Dark covers.

We'll be starting with the Major Arcana and working our way through them. The Minor Arcana will probably be done in batches when I'm too lazy to draw. I'll be using Rider-Waite as my main inspiration, mainly because that's the deck I'm the most used to. I used to scam cupcakes in middle school with my strange psychic abilities and a tattered Rider-Waite deck (I also had a set of loaded dice I'd use to grift for chips, but that's a tale for another day), and since that was also the time when I first started reading comics, there's a sort of mental link there for me.


Let's get started with Card 0, The Fool.

0. The Fool. (Superboy)

Superboy stands on the roof of the Kent family's general store, bindle in hand, Krypto the Super-Dog nipping at his heels. The sun shines on his back as he prepares for adventure.

Vertigo did a tarot deck a few years back that cast John Constantine as The Fool, but I'm not so sure about that. To me, The Fool has always been about beginnings and John seems much more concerned with Endings (solving things, wrapping up loose ends, righting wrongs, etc). So I went with Superboy. And not just any Superboy, but the Silver Age version (as indicated by the presence of the Kent's General Store and Krypto).

Waite writes "With light step, as if earth and its trammels had little power to restrain him, a young man in gorgeous vestments pauses at the brink of a precipice among the great heights of the world" which covers young Clark pretty well, don't you think? His precipice is not a physical one, as falling is of no concern to him, but his future. About to leave Smallville for Metropolis, Superboy is about to step out of the innocent chaos of his small-town exploits and into a more world-defining role. Krypto wants him to stay and play, perhaps knowing in the more serious world of Superman, there wouldn't be much of a place for a super powered dog. He has a bindle because that's totally something that Silver Age Clark would have.

On the positive side, The Fool stands for new beginnings, new adventures, new opportunities, unlimited possibilities, pleasure, potential, and passion. Inverted, he represents rashness, plunging ahead without thinking, and thoughtlessness. If you've read some of Superboy's adventures, young Clark was not always the type to think things through (blow to put out a fire, make an enemy for life; make a crack about a how women are poor UFO drivers, get turned into a girl; etc.) and this brashness tended to backfire more often than not. He's clearly not thinking things through here, as protecting his secret identity is probably made harder by hanging out on the roof of his parents' store.


The Fool is a pretty potent card and I wanted it to be represented by a potent character. While Superman himself would be an obvious choice for the lead-off card of the deck, being the first superhero and all, he doesn't quite fit it anymore given the weight of popular culture that now hangs around him. Superman is confident, knowing. Though his arrival opened up worlds of possibilities, he gives the sense that he knows how to navigate through them. Superboy doesn't give that impression, so if we take him in his Young Clark form (as opposed to clone or worlds-adrift jerk versions) we get all the benefits of opening with Supes with none of the Big Blue drawbacks.

Visions of Superman

So last week, I wrote a confusing bit about the difference between a reboot and a reinvention, inspired by Dresden Codak's popular images. Since then, Aaron Diaz has done up a Legion of Doom and a Bat-Family version.

In discussing these renderings with fellow Internet Comic Nerds (Metafilter Local #108296, Go Fight'n Beans!), it's pretty evident that many of these reboots are entirely new characters. A reboot needs to happen from the same starting place as the original - turning Wonder Woman into literally a living statue (although DC is now doing away with that idea) or Superman into a shape-shifter, while neat, are not reboots. I'd totally read a comic based on those characters, mind you, and I do think that they can say something about the core themes presented by the originals, the same way Gruenwald's run Squadron Supreme is a meditation on the Justice League's role in the world.

That and it's just plain fun to reinvent and reboot iconic characters like Superman. By doing so, we get a better understanding of the main character and discover, contrary to popular opinion, that some of the old warhorses of superhero comics are not boring at all. One recent twist we've seen on Superman is in Action Comics. Morrison wants to bring Superman back to his social justice roots, so we start to see Superman as a sort of socialist, maybe even communist (Marx, not Stalin) figure.

Thing is, when it comes to Superman-as-Communist, most re-imaginings are much more hammer than sickle, which doesn't make sense to me. Sure, Superman in his workboots lifting heavy things, lending his union brothers a hand, is a cool image, but shouldn't Superman, who was raised on a farm, who is powered by sunlight, be much closer to the agrarian end of things?

Superman does not make stuff. He is not industry. He does not create new societies or build things in his image. No, Superman tends to things. He makes sure that humanity has what it needs to grow of its own accord. He removes blight and vermin when he sees it, but he does not reshape society to completely prevent it.

Superman is a farmer and humanity is his crop. For the most part, he stays out of the way to let us do the growing. If he were a more industrial figure, he'd be building and reshaping society, smelting a more efficient order by the sweat of his brow and the heat of his laser vision. He could end hunger and crime and mass-produce a sort of utopia, but he does not, just like the farmer in the field does not kill an under-performing plant. Instead, he tends to the crop and tries to see what is causing the poor yield. He has faith that the plant, humanity, will grow the best it can given the opportunity.

A traditional farm is a vast ecology, one complete with crops and animals, just as the Earth is. For a chilling Fortean twist, pause for a moment to consider whose farm the Earth is. "The Earth is a farm. We are someone else's property," wrote Charles Fort. Does that mean, at some point, Superman will harvest us? Will humanity be lead to the slaughter? That certainly puts Lex Luthor's feelings on the man in perspective. Maybe that explains why Luthor is kept around - he's about as close to a talking pig as Superman-as-Farmer would get. Certainly, he'd be worth more at market than the rest of us.

But who is buying?

Reboot vs Reinterpretation

So big thanks to Don who last week in the comments pointed out that Aaron Diaz of Dresden Codak fame took a shot at rebooting some DC characters and has completed a version of the Justice League. It's pretty neat stuff and you should check it out (Cyborg as Moss from IT Crowd is a huge plus).

But is it a reboot? I'm not sure it is. This is not a bad thing, mind you. But it did set my brain a'whirlin. I've been mulling this over for the past week, trying to suss out exactly what constitutes a reboot of a character as opposed to a reinterpretation or reinvention or reimagining or reimaging. Party time at Casa De Drew, believe you me.

I'm still coming to grips with how best to explain this, so please bear with my extremely tortured golf analogy.

So let's start with the Platonic Ideal of a character. That's the Core Concept. The Core Concept should be simple, pretty much a sentence long description. Superman would be something along the lines of "A heroic outsider who lives among us and protects us with his marvelous powers." Batman would be "A wealthy scion who has dedicated his life to avenging a past tragedy."

Now, around this Core Concept we build a shell. This shell is the Presentation, basically how the Core Concept is shown to the world. In comics, this manifests itself in art and backstory and powers and so on. It is why Superman and Martian Manhunter, who share the same Core Concept, are different characters. Both are heroic outsiders living among us protecting us with their powers, but one is from Krypton and the other Mars.

We now have the golf ball that is our character. In order to get any use out of the ball, we take it to a golf course, put it on a tee, and take a swing. The hole, whether it's a par 4, whether it has a water feature or a sand trap or whatever, is the setting we've placed the character/ball in to. Of course, this being a golf course based on an ongoing series, the hole is a troubling Par Infinity, as if the ball makes it to the hole, the game is over and the character ends. (Like the last hole in minigolf.)

So what is a reboot? It's picking up the ball and walking back towards the tee. The ball stays the same, but how it interacts with the course changes. So while you may hit the ball towards the same spot it landed previously, you'll never get it exactly there, and pretty soon, you're experiencing an entirely different hole. This time round, you might end up in the rough or miss the sandtrap entirely.

A reinterpretation? Changing the Presentation Shell around the Core Concept. So in a way, Martian Manhunter is a reinterpretation of Superman. Which, I think, makes sense given the character's history.

By changing the starting tee and course, you get your What Ifs, your Red Sons and Gothams by Gaslight. If we need to stick to the 're' theme, let's call it a re-imaging. 

You can change both the shell and the course and still have an iteration of the same character, but this would be a reinvention. For example, Hyperion of Marvel's Squadron Supreme is a reinvention of Superman. Different presentation, different experiences, but same Core Concept.

You can't up and change the Core Concept without ending up with a different character entirely, but the Core can change/evolve over time. Sometimes, though, you can't even change the presentation of the character without changing the character as a whole - popular culture simply has made the shell too thick to crack. Superman can fly. Period. Everyone knows that. A Superman incapable of flight is not really Superman. Even though Clark has had his feet on the ground at least three times in recent memory (Smallville, the Grounded arc, and most recently Action Comics #1), it was made clear to the reader/viewer that he'd be able to fly again eventually. Permanently dialing Superman back to his original, leaping incarnation simply would not (pun intended) fly nowadays, no matter how many supercars you give him. Right, Nic?

RIGHT!

This hard shell only really applies to Big Name characters. You can change all you want about minor characters and get away with it. Well, usually, right Halle?

RIGHT!

Looking over not only Aaron's reboots, but many of my own, I see a lot of reinterpretations and reinventions. Again, this isn't good or bad. On my part we have an Aquaman who is not the King of Atlantis, a Batwoman who is not a bat, and an Adam Strange who hosts his own reality TV show. Aaron has a Flash who views his powers as a curse, a Superman who has a third secret identity, and Wonder Woman as a living statue.

But I hesitate now to call them reboots.

The More You Type 'Crisis' The Weirder It Looks

While we are starting aprx five years into our heroes' lives, we are focused on the characters present and future, and past histories will be revealed as the stories dictate. Yes, there have been "crisis" in our characters lives, but they aren't exactly the Crisis you read before, they can't be.

- Dan DiDio

Good! Finally, DC commits to something concrete about their "new" universe. I'm not sure anyone can really be surprised by this - if the point of the New DC was to streamline the continuity, ditching the broad, often more confusing than clarifying, Crises (Crisises?) is exactly what is needed. Reboots require commitment and in this one instance, it looks like DC is not trying to have its cake and eat it too.

Except, of course, this causes problems. Because DC was wishy-washy over the recent events of Batman, a large part of which was based on Bat's "death" at the eyes of Darkseid during Final Crisis, we're left with a compact and confusing backstory. So why did Dick take over the Batsuit, then? Where the hell did Jason Todd come back from if he wasn't punched back to life by Superboy Prime in Infinite Crisis? These are not the sorts of questions you want to spend time on if you are a forward looking writer, but they're ones you're going to have to answer as they were recent events that have impacted the current story. (Proposed Solution: Batman banged Catwoman so hard it shook the walls of reality and brought Jason Todd back to life. Not only does it fit with the depressing turn Outsiders has taken, but it explains why you could see his wang on that one cover - as a mystically reborn child of Batman, he's got a fair bit o'Pan in him, he is now the Mystical Penis Driving Itself Into The Core Of The DC Univ... i'll stop.)

You can't shut the door on past history while leaving the window open. If you want to revisit or allude to great past events in your comic's history, that's fine. The Ultimate line in Marvel did this a lot with mixed results, usually good. Sometimes it was a nod to the fans, sometimes it was a fake-out built on fans' expectations of history repeating itself. In either event, it was often enough to get new readers on board with characters' backstories.

We get our round of #2s tomorrow. I'll probably download Action Comics, Animal Man, Swamp Thing, and OMAC. I'm wondering what it says about my masculinity that there's nary a heaving bosom to be found there. Of course, if you want to weigh in on what's going on with the New 52, you can do so here with a Nielson Survey.

Deadgirl #1

Following up yesterday's art attempt, here's another. Keeping with my pattern of revisiting similar subjects, it's a re-vamped version of Deadgirl, the Deadman reboot I proposed awhile back. With all the recent controversy around DC's treatment of women in comics, I admit I'm a bit hesitant to champion a female character who is killed in the first page of the first issue, but given that the series' main storyline is about her trying to discover the identity and motive for her murder, I'm hoping that can slide.

Madison Malloy, Dead and Not Loving It.