Heraclea

You must sing the Bandito song.

I've traditionally been a DC person in the DC vs. Marvel rivalry.

Traditionally, Marvel was the superhero heir to the monster and horror books. It had characters that were on the verge of losing their humanity to uncontrollable forces. It had heroes that were gripped by angst over the fact that they had powers. This angstiness gave rise to long term, soap opera plots (I quit the Fantastic Four!) and "real world" issues melodrama. Its greatest heroes were viewed with suspicion by ordinary people.

DC was based instead on classic 50s science fiction, with square jawed space explorers zapping bug eyed monsters. It had places Metropolis, the shining City of Tomorrow, and Themyscira, the earthly paradise. The virtues of the heroes engendered trust with the ordinary people, who admired and liked the heroes. The heroes shared similar goals and got along well with each other.

(I never was a heavy reader of the Batman family books, which skews my perceptions.)

The bottom line was that I perceived DC as bright and optimistic, Marvel as dark and pessimistic, and I choose bright and optimistic for my escapist entertainments.

This is partially why I feel the nu52 and the whole permacrisis period at DC have been a letdown, and especially since the nu52 I've been falling out of fandom with DC. The Xtreeem! violence was already ramping up before the reboot. The importation of Wildstorm and Vertigo elements has not helped; the gratuitous weirdness, grim moods, and decompressed writing styles from former Vertigo writers have made several books unpleasant to read.

Over yonder at AvX, Marvel is showing that it can still do huge slugfests between essentially random teams of characters the way they've always done it, and make it reasonably entertaining. DC apparently .... plans to do the same thing. What they lack is the years of practice they have over yonder. And DC takes itself too seriously. I don't see DC's version as having even half of the potential.

Metal Hurlant, the original Heavy Metal.

Superior is indeed the Great Lake known as Gitchee Gumee.

Oh joy. Just what the world needs, another "darker take" from somebody who didn't bother watching the original cartoons until they were hired, and thinks they're stupid.

Come at the task with this attitude, and it's guaranteed to suck. Guaranteed.

Still, a dragoon is by definition a cavalier.

But Smaug was a dragoon.

Eat. Totally.

Menudo with warm tortillas and sour cream.

Where there's smoke, there's smog.

Madder, a plant from which a red dye was extracted.

Wonder Woman v. 4 no. 7
Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang

Ever since I moved from being a comic book fan to a comic book fan on the Internet, I've been aware of a substantial body of opinion out there that either simply doesn't like, or at best is deeply ambivalent about, superheroes. These people find the dominance of the industry by DC and Marvel, and by the dominance of superheroes in the books they publish, something to regret. They point to the European and Japanese industries and their rosters of non-superhero titles.

You can sort of see their point. If they want to develop the field with non-superhero books more power to them.

On the other hand, their tastes are not mine. I've tried to read the books they recommend. I usually end up putting them down, dismayed by the trowelled-on darkity-darkness, or by oblique, vague, and inconclusive storytelling. I've tried to read the books they recommend, and watched Element Girl tormented to death. I've learned not to trust their recommendations.

And human social dynamics get in the way. Differences in taste have a tendency to turn into tribal totems. It becomes not enough to prefer other books to superhero books; the superheroes are dismissed, say, as "juvenile power fantasies," and their fans are dismissed for simplistic tastes. If this is a bad thing then I am guilty of it. I view superhero books as a classical art form: the higher form of creativity comes from working within the restraints set by the classical forms, rather than disregarding them.

Problems arise when a writer influenced by this belief system tries to write a superhero title. They will come to the task with the idée fixe that superheroes are simplistic, lightweight entertainment, and think it's their mission to "fix" them somehow. They want to add moral depth, ambivalence, and complexity, even if this isn't what the readers came for. Superhero comics are not a good fit to complex, greyscale moralities or pithering about the indeterminacy of narrative. When you try to smoosh that stuff into them, the result is usually unreadable.

Then you come to the Wonder Woman title itself, where historically the largest problem is that every new writer that comes along the pipe tries to "fix" the title with a Bold New Direction, and as such the character had no firm supporting cast, consistent body of lore, or well developed rogue's gallery. Few of the writers have been able to step up to the plate and embrace a character who is simultaneously an Amazon warrior and a magical princess; this is a complicated and interesting character, but definitely challenging to write, a whole lot harder than a generic Vengeful Woman and Last Daughter of Themiscyra. There does seem to have been a perverse and consistent will, from the Rucka run if not before, to darken the character and turn her into a tragic figure.

Vertigo is a problem. From the foundation, the Vertigo imprint was supposed to be for creators who were, in Karen Berger’s words, “different, smarter, and edgier” than the makers of mainstream comics. In other words, we’re so much cleverer, hipper, and more sophisticated than the trogs who wrote all those four-color stories about stalwart patriotic superheroes.

When you have an entire imprint dedicated to this mentality, my impression is there’s always been a mood of scorn and condescension towards classic characters. My earliest diststeful Vertigo memories all revolved around the mistreatment of Silver Age characters in Vertigo books. I’ve learned to view the entire line with suspicion; if it isn’t soaked in violence or adolescent darkity-darkness, it will feature oblique and inconclusive storytelling.

So when Vertigo writers end up on DC universe titles, the containment field is breached. To accept the Vertigo mindset is to believe that traditional superheroes are simplistic and silly. They need complexity. (And in that view of things, this means, “it’s gotta be dark.")

Of course they’ll be flinging poo at an American icon. It’s how they show they’re more sophisticated than the people who created them.

So take up the cross and join the Crusades.

Torus: a doughnut-shaped mathematical construct.

Doe. A deer. A female deer.

Wrought

Eat.

Purnell's old style dinner franks.

And so is shire in compounds like Worcestershire, Lancashire, and Gloucestershire.

A shirred egg is an egg that has been baked in a small cup.

Chub - another fish from the mackerel family.

Hart - the older and original name for deer.

Rouge - I'm getting used to seeing it spelled that way any more.

But Fionn Mac Cumhaill was an Irish hero.

Yet, the Vanes, aka the Vanir were one of the two groups of Norse gods.

Dial - most meters have one.