DC Comics, 2014
Captain America: The Winter Soldier, a film produced by Marvel Studios and released by Disney, demolished North America's April opening-weekend record by generating $95 million. In the blustery month since, it's made over $500 million worldwide, and rates among comic book fans (and most movie critics) as another satisfyingly epic entry in Marvel's interlocking
The Avengers franchise, following 2013's
Iron Man 3 and
Thor: The Dark World.To the slavering glee of superhero fans—and the scorn of jaded film reviewers—the 2014 Summer Blockbuster season is wrapped in even more spandex:
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (Columbia Pictures),
X-Men: Days of Future Past (20th Century Fox), and
Guardians of the Galaxy (Marvel Studios). The first two movies, produced by studios that have licensed the world-famous characters from Marvel, will be attempting to strike nerd-gold by slotting the blockbusters into their own respective cinematic universes. True success, Marvel Studios has proven, involves: multiple connected films, humor, deep pulls from the rogues gallery, and lovingly-rendered comic minutia. In these categories, the scrappy little nobodies populating
Guardians of the Galaxy (said with a question mark in the film's own trailer by actor John C. Reilly) have the advantage; they star in the tenth Marvel Universe film, cosmically expanding the studio's
Phase Two storyline, which will lead viewers to 2015's
The Avengers: Age of Ultron.But where are the superhero films from Marvel's longtime print competition, DC Comics? Paddling against the green cataracts of capitalism, Warner Bros. has seen fit to plan exactly one film for 2016, tentatively titled
Batman vs. Superman, followed by 2018's
The Justice League. Prior to the latter's announcement, screenwriter David Goyer (who helped deliver 2013's militantly overcooked
Man of Steel) had said that “it's too early” to discuss a cohesive cinematic DC Universe. Sure. And people in Hell need our winter coat donations.For longtime comic book readers, DC's dumbfounding negligence should be no mystery. Marvel has been known as “The House of Ideas” since the early 1960s, the era that saw writer Stan Lee, and artists Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko create current Hollywood icons like Spider-Man and Thor. The company is aggressively creative, and likes packaging their products in an equally progressive idealism: Spider-Man began tackling racism and drug-dealers in the mid-60s, and Captain America questioned his own patriotism during the Reagan administration. DC, however, has been producing four color adventures since the late 1930s, and usually reacts to its audiences' evolving taste like a kryptonite-impaired Superman—with agonizing slowness.Take Marvel's Ultimate Universe, for example. In 2000, after narrowly avoiding bankruptcy (through a merger with Toybiz), Marvel realized that decades of convoluted plots were shrinking its readership. To reverse this, they began a fresh, separate line of comics, using flagship heroes like Spider-Man and the X-Men to woo new readers. These Ultimate Comics were youthfully hip and energetic (also, on occasion, desperately cynical), and they uniformly outsold Marvel's primary line well into the next decade.
In November of 2011, DC launched the New 52—a more draconian version of Marvel's Ultimate line, featuring fifty-two titles, free of tangled history, which
replaced the previous universe instead of running alongside it. To be fair, DC performed this kind of (nearly) wholesale slaughter once before, after the epic 1985 storyline “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” But that move seemed like a genuine reach for modernization; this one looks like a shallow bow to Marvel's commercial superiority.Worse, reading these younger, supposedly fresher versions of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman can be a flat, underwhelming experience. In trying to please (and remain accessible to) everyone between the ages of ten and forty, the New 52's biggest challenge isn't a gigantic space starfish—it's filling the black hole where its personality should be.And yet, DC does employ some of the comic industry's most brilliant talents. Geoff Johns, a superhero auteur who's been writing for DC since 1999, has a galloping imagination leashed tightly to a keen emotional awareness of the characters. He's a true fan, whose work gives back to the world he loves, enlivening the DC Universe with subtlety and respect--which doesn't always happen when writers are simply paid to do it. Then there's Ivan Reis, whose penciling combines the muscular weight of Jack Kirby's figures with John Buscema's sinewy grace; he's been paired with Johns many times (
Green Lantern, Aquaman) to thunderous applause from readers and critics alike.Reis and Johns' current run on
Justice League is the thumping heart that keeps the New 52 upright. And since it's “too early” for a Justice League film (that would ostensibly star Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, etc.) the next best choice for fans is “Trinity War,” the first epic storyline of DC's retooled print universe. The “Trinity War” comics (released during last summer, emulating the blockbuster film season) have been collected in a sleek hardcover, and feature a crossover between
Justice League,
Justice League of America, and
Justice League Dark—three distinct superhero teams, each capitalizing on a fictional niche (and if that seems like excessive branding, try keeping track of Marvel's dozen Avengers titles).From the fluttering of the first cape, “Trinity War” is entrenched in the grim Realpolitik and dismal shades of gray that characterize Christopher Nolan's
Dark Knight trilogy. After a serviceable prelude that introduces the red-hooded Pandora—and her golden skull box, from which the world's evils have escaped—the story opens with the fortune teller Madame Xanadu giving a late night visitor a tarot card reading. Touching the distraught woman's hand, Xanadu sees a vision of Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman (DC's heroic trinity) watching Metropolis burn in the aftermath of some future war. Xanadu then flips a card and learns that a hero named Shazam is responsible.Intriguingly, Shazam's alter ego is a preteen named Billy Batson (who, after speaking the word “SHAZAM” transforms into a Superman-style colossus). The scene cuts to Batson in his foster home, where he decides to deliver the ashes of his nemesis, Black Adam, to the Middle Eastern country Kahndaq. “I'll spread his ashes across the Kahndaq desert,” Billy tells his protesting foster siblings, “Because even 'bad guys' deserve to be buried.”Next we meet Superman and Wonder Woman, who are an item, arguing about whether or not a villain will escape from a fortified cell and ruin their date night. Johns' laser-guided characterization gives us this exchange:
“There's a reason I don't have a list of villains as long as [Batman's], [the Flash's] or even yours, [Clark]. When I deal with them, I deal with them.”“I trust you're not talking about killing them, Diana.”“Only if it comes to that.”“There's no doubt innocent people have been put on death row.”“Not if you have a lasso of truth.”
As the conversation proceeds, Reis's panels zoom in on the steely glares that Superman and Wonder Woman trade. Pandora herself soon arrives and begins spooling the tension around her golden skull. She claims that only someone pure of heart can, by holding the box, return evil to its prison. But when Superman touches the golden skull, which has a third eye in its forehead, red energy crackles through him; he grimaces malevolently as a third eye opens on his own forehead.Johns compresses an incredible amount of set-up into these opening pages. Cutting between dramatic spreads of familiar heroes, readers meet the Justice League of America, a team formed by the government and comprised of superheroes who will, should the need arise, counter the globe-trotting Justice League. There's Martian Manhunter, a super-strong telepath who would handle Superman; Hawkman, an airborn bruiser meant to battle Aquaman; Catwoman, who might at the very least stall Batman; and, among several others, is someone named Dr. Light. Who he battles is beside the point. With his inclusion, Johns teases loyal readers who remember that, in the pre-New 52 Universe, Dr. Light was a rapist whom the Justice League decided to lobotomize. The very sight of him brings a shudder.These quick-shuffling events build to a commandingly executed showdown in Kahndaq. Once Pandora manages to halt Superman's corruption by the box, she enigmatically vanishes. Batman then informs his teammates that Shazam, whose strength nobody has tested, has breached Kahndaq's airspace and will eventually face the nation's military. What the Justice League doesn't know is that they have a mole on the team who's been relaying their movements to their government counterparts.
Superman arrives in time to stop Shazam from harming the soldiers firing at him in terror. Their jaw-smashing desert battle succeeds where the
Man of Steel film fails so egregiously—by giving fans the action they crave without a ghoulish body count. The only casualty, in a sadistic twist by Johns, is Dr. Light. Once the JLA shows up to confront the Justice League, Superman, with little provocation, uses his heat-vision to burn the doctor's face off. After that, the two Leagues begin a savage melee as only Reis can illustrate. Half a world away, Madame Xanadu's tarot parlor explodes, and a trim, well-dressed man not only smirks at everything on his monitor, but takes credit for framing Superman.Lost on absolutely no one is the sad fact that this double-barreled narrative would make a stunning film. But it's not so tragic that we can't enjoy the charged fallout, with Reis and Johns helped along by three more of DC's excellent creators, writer Jeff Lemire (
Animal Man), and artists Doug Mahnke (
Green Lantern) and Mikel Janin. They screw the many logistical nuts and bolts in place, from Superman's voluntary imprisonment to the investigation as to who might be manipulating him.Throughout, we learn that Pandora, along with characters the Question and the Phantom Stranger, form the Trinity of Sin. In this story, they're cursed immortals, forever walking the earth. In the pre-New 52 DC Universe, they were fan-favorite characters not quite dynamic enough for their own comics, and so frequently guest-starred across the DCU in various key capacities. Here, as with most adventure stories involving artifacts (magical or otherwise), the golden skull essentially becomes a football. The Trinity of Sin characters goad the heroes into scrambling after it, coaching with cosmic urgency from beyond the veil; the Phantom Stranger warns Batman, “You need to find Madame Xanadu. She's still alive. She knows the truth behind the box! She knows what it really can do and who is after it! We've all been tricked.”
Not all of the dialogue reads so thinly, but when it does it's because Johns and Lemire know how to keep out of their artists' way. Mahnke's chapters of “Trinity War” are packed with bold personalities clashing and heavenly bodies colliding; his dense line-work, aided by inkers Christian Alamy, Keith Champagne, and Tom Nguyen, renders all with a mammoth sense of drama. Your eyes move along so hungrily that the word balloons are nearly an afterthought.Mikel Janin is a different sort of illustrator. His best work delivers slower narrative moments, with beautiful poses and portraits reminiscent of carefully arranged dolls. During action sequences, his methodical lines remain at odds with the energy assumed by the panels. Surely Janin realizes this, because he often emphasizes his action with heavy motion lines. He nevertheless orchestrates a fine penultimate chapter, which ends with all three Leagues converging on the skull. After Xanadu reveals that it isn't a prison for the world's sins, but a doorway, the trim villain replies from the shadows, “She's right...and now it's time to open it.”
Reis draws the final “Trinity War” issue, with Johns offering him almost a dozen stunningly packed full-page panels in which to plow the story home. These hyper-detailed pages are just as thrilling in their own context as any few seconds of
Captain America: The Winter Soldier—especially those that crack open the story's secrets. We learn that Superman's strangely aggressive behavior is the result of Kryptonite poisoning (thanks to the same mole mentioned earlier), and that the trim man is someone we already know, albeit an evil version of him.Because “Trinity of Sin” is a self-contained mystery, I'll tell no more specifics. However, in another bow to Marvel, this time to their current strategy of following one gigantic event with another (and then another), this epic radically changes the New 52 landscape and leads directly into “Forever Evil.” There are dark new players and rules to contend with, and the heroes have been all but vanquished. Marvel's “Dark Reign” era did something similar in 2008-09, when Norman Osborn, the Green Goblin, ran S.H.I.E.L.D. and the Avengers. Marvel, though, had merely been doing their version of DC's “President Lex Luther” era (2000-04).To read and love superhero comics is to do so in an echo chamber. The strongest ideas are tempered by fiery geek judgment, and survive down the ages to be repeated in print, on screen, and in fond memories. Sadly,
Man of Steel director Zack Snyder recently responded to criticism of his brutal film by saying, “Everyone clings to the Christopher Reeve version of Superman.”Of course we do. The point of Reeve's Superman isn't to show that, if he were real, he couldn't save everyone. The point is to never forget that he would try. Today, the same charismatic idealism runs through Marvel's
The Avengers films. When DC eventually hears the echo, they'll catch up in a blue and red blur.____
Justin Hickey is a freelance writer, and editor here at
Open Letters Monthly.
