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.

Green Arrow #1

Inspired by the good folks over at DC Fifty Too, I figured I'd give my Green Arrow reboot another go. Given that I'm doing a bespoke, hipsterish take on Ollie, I figured it would be best to evoke one of the most loved indie rock albums of all time. Standard warnings about my inability to draw apply.

Green Arrow Reboot, Issue #1

Outrage Fatigue

"When fans are angry, we're selling comics."

Tom Brevoort, Executive VP, Marvel Comics

I don't think any of us expected the DC Reboot to be without controversy. The fundamental nature of a reboot means that amongst all the changes, there will be stuff that the fans don't like. Like the quote above says, that's a plus for the industry. Just think of all the free mainstream publicity Marvel got off of not only killing Ultimate Spider-Man, but rebooting the character as a minority. Pundits were flipping out, stories were printed in widely read newspapers, and sales prospered. Hell, even DC's pre-boot controversy of Superman renouncing his citizenship made the headlines. I bet that sold some comics as well.

Both these instances represent change causing controversy which in turn sells comics. Change To Sell is pretty much the mantra behind the New 52 - new costumes, new numbering, and new backstories abound. The poster girl for this philosophy is probably Batgirl as she's the character who has gone through the most change, casting off her chair and Oracle persona in favor of a return to her crime punching roots. I'm not a huge fan of the change, my librarian nature preferring the dedicated, behind the scenes hero Oracle to the building-swinging Batgirl, but I don't hate it. I can see why some people would want Barbara Gordon to walk and curiosity about the change (and controversy) caused me to buy Batgirl #1 upon release.

The anger over Barbara walking is the "good" sort of controversy that sells comics. However you may feel about the loss of a disabled superhero or trying to wipe away the stain of how Barbara was treated in the 80s, you could at least see some logic behind it. Even from a business perspective, having a walking, fighting Batgirl makes sense - it's only a matter of time before she gets her own movie, so the Idea Factory that is the modern comicbook best get to work now giving her her own identity and story engine.

There is a bad sort of controversy, though, one that goes against the quote above and actually does not sell comics, even though it makes fans plenty angry. This controversy may have aspects of change to it, it's not a change at its core - it's just more of the same.

I'm speaking, of course, of the treatment of female characters in the New DC. Changes abound here, but they are not core changes, just the logical extension of how female characters seem to be treated in comics. Harley Quinn to Juggalo, Amanda Waller to Tyra Banks, Starfire to fuck machine, all these "changes" represent a fundamental adherence to the idea that females in comicbooks are eye candy first, participants second, and characters a distant third. The anger felt by fans here isn't a "How dare they do THIS!" type outrage, it's a "Ungh, so they did THIS again?" type disappointment. The anger comes from the feeling that opportunity has been wasted, that there was a chance here for real change that was cast off in favor of more of the same, but somehow worse.

That anger is not the anger that sells comics. That's the anger that keeps comics on the shelf and makes potential customers roll their eyes as they walk by, tired of dealing with the pornification of the genre. I'm a guy and I don't want to buy these comics - I can only imagine how the Rule 63 Drew would feel.

Waller Redux

So in my previous post about Amanda Waller, the Second Most Powerful Human in the World, I mentioned nothing about her, er, size. See, in previous incarnations, Waller had always been presented as a stocky figure at best. Like many people who were introduced to her via Justice League's DCAU, I've sort of assumed that CCH Pounder is not only the voice of Waller, but a good representation of her physical appearance.

I guess DC thought differently as they rebooted Waller's figure from Pounder straight on through Angela Bassett (who played a version of Waller in Green Lantern) to a figure more in line with comicbook stereotypes: svelte-yet-curvey-with-a-bit-of-cleavage.

I'm not a fan of the change. Not because of what it means about sizism or whatever (I'm a white dude, so my backpack is pretty full I guess), but because what it means for the character. My Waller is someone who has worked for everything she has, who has played the system and won. SexyWaller is a different creature than that. Not because she wouldn't have worked hard or anything, but because instead of playing the system, it's much easier for her to play the individual. In my reboot, Waller totally manipulated the institutional mandate to have more people of color in middle management positions. That's how she got her start - she saw a need, filled the need, entrenched her position, then found another need ("Checkmate") and repeated the process.

New Waller could do all that too, I guess, but if she retains the same ambition as the Classic version, wouldn't she resort to using all her assets to obtain her goals? A top button undone could get you an extra five minutes with a department head. Accepting an invitation to an afterwork drink could get you even more. That definitely adds a sexual aspect to the character, one that wasn't really needed before.

I am reminded about the changes to the artwork in Greg Rucka's Queen & Country. The Tara Chace that started the series had this sort of tired strength to her, something that came through pretty clearly in Steve Rolston's art, something that was lost when Leandro Fernandez took over later and she became this exaggerated sexual caricature of a female. Big Tits Chace was not an agent who would have to slink through a checkpoint hoping for the best, or if she did slink, it would be in a form-fitting little black dress. It just killed the character (and the series!) for me.

Will this change to Amanda Waller do the same? It's too early to tell. I've read some wishful comments where people hope that she regains her stature throughout the course of Suicide Squad, but I don't think that would be in line with the character. Waller is not a person who lets go of what she has - if she has a good figure, she'll be on the exercise bike three hours a day to keep it. If DC chooses to address this, I bet we'll see a soliloquy along the lines of Power Girl's boob window defense ("I never found a symbol that fit me, so I left it blank!") where Waller talks about how she was a fat kid and worked every day yadda yadda yadda. Of course, this means that Waller actually gives a crap about what other people think of her, something that seems weird in a person who is totally okay with torturing captives, performing live human experimentation, and writing off thousands of people as "acceptable losses." I hope they don't do this as it means Waller would be admitting weakness to another person, something she just doesn't do.

As Classic Waller worked her way up the ranks, her figure probably didn't help much, but I think that once she got to the top, it certainly does. The resolute, matronly bearing of Amanda Waller would be a comfort to panicky presidents and a warning to other department heads who think they could cross her. In my mind's eye, Waller isn't obese or anything, she's strong, resolute, stubborn and her art should reflect such.

One of the strengths about the comics medium is how art can define characters in a way text never could. Changing the depiction of a character, even if nothing about that character's background is changed, changes who that person is. Care must be taken and artistic details have to be thought through just as much as backstories. "Shaking up the character" is just not enough reason to re-do the art. It's not like there's a shortage of only theoretically anatomically correct attractive women in comics, so recasting a character to join their ranks actually makes her stand out less.