With the final, Big-Reveal-laden issue of Jeph Loeb & Jim Lee’s Batman storyline, “Hush,” due in stores this week, and with the sales of Kurt Busiek & George Perez’s JLA/Avengers generating much discussion of the degree to which it is or is not a huge hit and does or does not proscribe the limits of the Direct Market audience, I thought I’d weigh in on these two books, the supercomics equivalent of big summer tentpole popcorn movies.
I’m trying very, very hard not to have the ending of “Hush” spoiled for me. (For those who don’t know, “Hush” chronicles Batman’s attempt to survive unusually sophisticated and dangerous attacks from about half of his Rogue’s Gallery, instigated, it would seem, by a mysterious villain in a trenchcoat and invisible-man face bandages. The mystery villain appears to be acting with inside information, leading Batman to question his relationships with the various vigilantes and helper-monkeys with which he makes common cause). To be honest, getting that big payoff of the surprise ending is close to the sole reason why I’m buying the book. It’s not that I actively dislike “Hush”–It’s… entertaining. In a way. A lot less entertaining than a lot of books that I buy strictly for entertainment value, but entertaining nonetheless. Unlike what seems to be the case for most people who buy-but-don’t-really-dig “Hush,” I don’t particularly care for Jim Lee’s–but then I never did, not even back when I first started buying comics and Image, the company he co-founded with a slew of other then-popular flashy artists, was King Shit of Turd Mountain (I was a Spawn/Maxx guy). In this current case, I remember seeing the cover for his first Batman issue, being told by my boss “Isn’t it awesome?” and saying “Well, it certainly is an awe-inspiring view of the sole of Batman’s foot.” Yuck, in other words. Lee’s a solid craftsman, but for me at least, that’s as far as it goes. The story, meanwhile, has all the trappings of a big shake-up without actually changing anything about the book’s status quo. Sure, Batman and Catwoman are now an item, and one of Batman’s most redundant and irritating sidekicks is no more, but so what? The Loeb/Lee Batman, while superficially similar to the New-Marvel approach in that it took a pretty big-name writer, paired him with a big-name artist, and put them on an imporant character, really is just an excuse for Batman to run around bumping into his Rogues Gallery and chatting with his comically large posse of S&M-dressed vigilante buddies and assorted other characters who know this intense, near-psychotic loaner’s secret identity, address, and social security number, written by a man who’s made a career out of doing change-free continuity rehashes and drawn by maybe THE fanboy-fave artist in the industry. Compare it to the big books that define New Marvel, like New X-Men, Daredevil, The Incredible Hulk, even (to a lesser extent, but still) Amazing Spider-Man–these writers were trying to redefine what these books could be about, how stories about these characters could be told, what kind of audience could read and enjoy them. But the reason I keep buying, and yes, even enjoying “Hush” is mainly because, despite all its flaws, it has managed to make itself into A Big Event by sheer force of will. This is a book that will matter in the long term for the character, which to me is an important criterion for superhero comics. I love the character, so even though I think this kind of storytelling and artistic model is a very bad one for the industry to start following–it’s basically a streamlined, souped-up method of Preaching To The Converted–I’m buying this book. I realize I couldn’t have thought up a reason to buy this book less relevant to a real critic’s way of thinking if I sat around and tried, but that’s the way it is.
Regarding JLA/Avengers, I bought it out of willingness to give a Busiek-scripted book the benefit of the doubt: Though I didn’t like Marvels, I do like Astro City and really enjoy Arrowsmith, which I picked up solely on a whim. I’ve also got a bizarre weak spot for George Perez’s art–again odd, considering I wasn’t weaned on his Teen Titans or anything like that. I think it’s weird that he gives every woman giant Dolly Parton hairdos (didn’t think I was gonna say “hairdos,” didja?), and weirder still that CrossGen thought it was a good idea to base their entire female-character aesthetic on this, but there’s something about his manically overdrawn pages that has this weird pop appeal to me. The hardcover collection of Crisis on Infinite Earths that my wife gave me a few years back is one of my prized possessions–what’s done in that book, and also in JLA/Avengers, can really only be done in comics, and moreover is inherently comics, if that makes sense. In the first JLA/A issue, there’s a two-page spread of an alien-parasite invasion of Manhattan that is genuinely breathtaking. Also, I actually think Busiek did a pretty nice job with characterization and dialogue in this one, much better than he usually does. My two major complaints? 1) Why in God’s name is he sticking to the official Avenger’s roster? Half–actually, let’s face it, all of the appeal of this book comes from seeing the biggest characters from Marvel and DC punch each other. I suppose there are fanboys who are genuinely interested in finding out whether the Avengers team proper would win in a fight against the self-evidently more powerful Justice League–but is anyone else? I can’t imagine anyone being really excited about a matchup between also-ran Avengers like Jack of Hearts and, well, anyone. Ditto Yellowjacket and all those other dorks. Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, fine–throw in Hulk and Spider-Man and Doc Strange and Namor and Wolverine and the Fantastic Four and make it fun, for Pete’s sake. (I guess he’ll be doing this later on, but I’m impatient.) 2) As many people have pointed out, the video-game-style hunt-for-magical-objects structuring device couldn’t be lamer. Busiek really hit on something in the fascist-overlords vs. dereliction-of-duty ideological conflict between Captain America and Superman in this first issue; it’s that rare thing in supercomics–an battle of ideas in which both sides actually make some good points. If he had slowly built this conflict up and let it explode at the series’ climax, he’d have had a really good book. Instead he seems to be implying that Cap and Supes are only arguing because of some hazy cosmic jive (the other team members seem stunned at their leaders’ belligerence), and he’s sure to abandon the battle in favor of having the teams join together to fight the Anti-Monitor or Thanos or whatever. Boring. But again, this is A Big Event. That’s part of the attraction of superhero comics to me.
I just wish that a summer blockbuster comic would come along that’s not just a story well told, but a story worth telling.