'the killing joke'

First published 25 years ago, "The Killing Joke" may be one of the three finest Batman stories ever told. It's certainly the finest ever written about the Joker.

Written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Brian Bolland, "The Killing Joker" has the Batman starting to boil over in his frustration with his green-haired foe. He knows how Harvey Dent became Two-Face, and that all his decisions come down to the flip of a coin. He knows that the Edward Nigma is the Riddler, and he understands the Riddler's compulsion to lead people on a chase.

Ra's al Ghul, the Royal Flush Gang, Poison Ivy, the Penguin -- Batman gets the entire Gotham City rogues gallery, and knows how they work and why. But the Joker remains a mystery to him, and Batman wants to change that before it becomes too late and one of them kills the other.

The Joker, of course, has other plans.

In one of the most iconic scenes from the comic, the Joker shoots Barbara Gordon at point-blank range and paralyzes her. This event, which sidelined Barbara Gordon from being Batgirl for the next 25 years of comics, wasn't even the main attraction as far as the Joker was concerned. His goal is simply to drive her father, the police commissioner, insane.

"The Killing Joke" is the comic that cemented the Joker in readers' minds as a nihilistic madman, and one of the central themes of the comic is how far one bad day can take a person past the edge. Without knowing the details, the Joker alludes to the events that drove Bruce Wayne to become Batman, and assumes that Commissioner Gordon also has been pushed over the edge by what the Joker has done.

But what makes the story worth reading is that Moore depicts the bad day that pushed the Joker himself over the edge, when all his hopes and dreams came crashing down, when the bottom fell out of his world, and he plunged into the void.

Around the same time that DC Comics published "The Killing Joke," it also published Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns" and "Batman: Year One," which showcased the endpoint and genesis of Bruce Wayne's career as the Caped Crusader, and that established him as an antihero with mental health issues of his own.

Add "The Killing Joke" to the mix, and there's nothing else DC has published that comes even close to their level.




Copyright © 2016 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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comic books as literary cycles

If you've read comic books for any length of time, then you know how awful they are for much of the time.

There's a never-ending parade of bad guys who want to rule the world, rob banks, and even nettle specific heroes. They're faced with, and invariably defeated by, a smaller but also never-ending parade of good guys dressed just as atrociously who got their powers in the same improbable ways (chemicals, radiation, genetic flukes or alterations, and aliens).

The stories fall into predictable routines. Maximus has retaken the throne of the Inhumans from his brother, Black Bolt, the rightful monarch, and sent the royal family into exile. Galactus is going to eat the Earth unless his cosmic hunger can be averted. A psychotic madman is terrorizing Gotham City, and Batman has to find him.

By the time you turn 16 or 17, you start to realize that even the comic books about interesting heroes usually aren't worth buying, and so you start to look for specific authors, who you realize can make a comic book about tomato soup interesting, authors like Mark Waid, Neil Gaiman, J. Michael Straczynski and Brian Michael Bendis. Sometimes you even hear about legendary and definitive runs from years past, like Frank Miller's "The Dark Knight Returns," "Batman: Year One" and "Daredevil: Born Again"; Walt Simonson's run on "The Mighty Thor," Tom DeFalco's stint on "Amazing Spider-man," or Alan Moore's legendary "The Saga of the Swamp Thing."

But if you keep reading the same title long enough, you're going to notice some recurring problems. For one thing, no one gets older. Franklin Richards has been 5 years old for more than 30 years, even though the Fantastic Four surely have celebrated his birthday a few times in there.

For a second thing, some storylines seem to keep repeating. How many times has Galactus threatened to eat the Earth after the immortal Lee-Kirby story where he was thwarted and pledged never to try again? How many times is Congress going to consider a superhero registry, or will mutants face the biggest threat to their existence ever?

And for another thing, the long-term storyline is about as clear as a pile of mud three feet deep.

Peter Parker first became Spider-man in August 1962, when he was 15 years old. In the more than 40 years since then, he's aged only to his late 20s, with his story being told in as many as four separate titles at a time. It's just too much storytelling to pack into thirteen years of chronology.

But the lion's share of the blame for the confusion comes from something else: the change in creative teams, which usually comes every five years or so. Attempts to keep the chronology clear usually just make things more confusing. Take Thor for example.

When Thor debuted back in 1962 in "Journey into Mystery," he was pretty much just another guy in a cape with superpowers. He could control the weather, throw a hammer that returned to him like a boomerang, he was superhumanly strong, and he could fly.

Thor moped around for Jane Foster, a nurse who worked for his alter-ego, Donald Blake. Rather like Clark Kent's relationship with Lois Lane, Blake loved Foster, but she had no time for him, and instead preferred his alter-ego. As the comic continued, there were occasional nods to Thor's roots in Norse mythology, but it wasn't anything big, and it got mixed up in a big potpourri of other myth that included the Greek pantheon too.

Walt Simonson came onto the scene in the 1983 and gave the book a massive overhaul. On the first page of his first issue on the title, he began by having some unknown being destroy a star and begin forging a weapon from the core of the star. By the end of the issue, he also had introduced a new character, Beta Ray Bill, whose claim to the power of Thor was as strong as Thor's own.

As the story unfolded over the next several issues, Simonson drilled deep into the rich tapestry of Norse myth, firmly establishing Thor as a member of the Norse Aesir, giving his readers a crash course in that mythology and the stories the Vikings used to tell. As he did this, he gradually racheted up the tension until you realized that the weapon being forged from the core of that exploded star was the flaming sword that Surtur would use to set in motion Ragnarok, the Twilight of the Gods, and destroy the Nine Worlds.

By the time he had finished his story, some five years later, Simonson had revoked Thor's identity as Donald Blake and given him a new alter ego as a construction worker named Sigurd Jarlson. He got rid of Odin as head of the Norse gods and replaced him with Balder, destroyed the rainbow bridge Bifrost, and established a truly stunning cast of supporting characters.

It was tremendous, it was inspiring, and for me at least, it launched an abiding love for Norse myth. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby gave us a superhero named Thor. Walt Simonson reminded us that Thor was a Norse god, and gave us the definitive run on the title in the process. If the comic had ended there, it would have been enough.

It did not end there.

Tom DeFalco, who had done an excellent job on Spider-man in the 1980s, took Simonson's place, and turned it into ... I don't know what. In the few issues that I bought and read, Thor accidentally wandered into deep space, where he squared off against the Celestials. He started fighting with Irish and Egyptian deities, and became less interesting and distinctive a character.

Changes Simonson had made to the character -- having him grow a beard and wear armor, making him look more like the mythological Thor -- were dropped immediately. Odin came back not long after. Last I heard, Thor was back to being Donald Blake, too.

In other words, in terms of continuity, Simonson's run on Thor might as well not have happened. In fact, a later writer revisted the whole Ragnarok storyline, although he apparently wrapped it up by having Thor change history at the end of the story arc, so that it had never happened.

That sort of thing happens a lot in comic books, and if you're a serious fan of a character or even a particuarly well written story,  it can be frustrating to see it reduced to just another episode in the life of the character, with no lasting effects. If Norman Osborne impaled himself on his goblin glider in the 1970s, why is he bedeviling Spider-man again 25 years later?

If Mysterio died at the conclusion of Kevin Smith's Daredevil story, why is he tangling with Spider-man six months later? If the Outsiders knew Batman's secret identity five years ago , why are they so shocked when he reveals it to them now? And how many times does Peter Parker's Aunt May have to die? (Or Captain America, for that matter. Steve Rogers blew up at the end of WWII, he died when his body rejected the Super Soldier serum in the 1990s, he was killed by Onslaught in 1997, and most recently, a sniper shot and killed him.)

A lot of it's because these characters are so old, and so loved by such a number of people. Each time a new writer comes in, she has a choice: keep her predecessor's supporting cast in place, leave the hero in the same general situation as for the last 30 issues or so, or return a more familiar starting place.

Most writers prefer the second choice. So you get some really convoluted stuff, like "That wasn't Aunt May who died; it was a genetically altered actress impersonating her!" Or "The Iron Man you've known has always been in the service of Kang. Now we'll bring in another one from a different timeline!" Not surprisingly, fans do get sick of it and stop reading.

In the past several years, straightforward storytelling has taken a beating at both DC and Marvel as heroes long dead have returned to life. The new Captain America is none other than James "Bucky" Buchanan, Rogers' partner in WWII. Oliver Queen, the original Green Arrow, came back from the dead, as did Hal Jordan and the entire Green Lantern Corps. DC Comics even restored its entire multiverse in "Infinite Crisis," ending nearly 20 years of a single, straightforward continuity with one DCU.

This sort of thing aggravates me, because I liked it better the way it had been. DC's continuity, prior to "Crisis on Infinite Earths" was a bewildering mess, with storylines taking place on parallel earths, and even crossing over annually as the company lurched from one crisis to another.

The new continuity under Jeanette Kahn eliminated that confusion and gave the impression of history, with one generation of heroes making way for the next generation, so that by the present time, Wally West was the third hero to bear the name Flash, Kyle Rainer was the third to be Green Lantern, and so on. The history made the DCU more realistic, and more entertaing to visit.

But of course, other people liked it the other way. And because opinions run so strong on these things, it's not surprising that the policy should change as one group gains dominance and the other loses it. Is Lex Luthor a mad scientist, or a corrupt businessman? Did he know Clark Kent as a boy in Smallville, or did they meet for the first time in Metropolis? It depends who owns the story.

The same is true of Marvel's treatment of with Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson. The two of them were married about 20 years ago, and ever since then, fandom has been evenly split on whether it's a good idea or not. In the time that they've been married, Mary Jane was killed in a terrorist attack (it turned out she was kidnapped before the attack), and she's left Peter. (They reconciled.) Most recently, their marriage was retconned out of existence via a deal with Mephisto to save Aunt May.

I'm firmly on the side of the marriage, and I'm not alone. It keeps boiling down to a question of whose vision of Spider-man prevails at any given time.

There is a simple way to deal with this mess. View it as a cycle of literature, handed down from one storyteller to another. Never mind questions of continuity, and how the stories hang together. Consider each storyteller's take on the character as a separate contribution and interpretation of the character.

Most of them suck, but some are incredible -- Mark Waid's "Birthright," for instance, in which he depicts Superman as an outsider who must earn the trust of Metropolis, or JMS' first several issues on "Amazing Spider-man," where he reinterprets the hero around totemistic lines and makes Peter a teacher instead of a photographer, or Bendis' stellar run on "Daredevil."

It doesn't even matter if they conflict with one another. "Birthright" differs widely from John Byrne's "Man of Steel," but they're both excellent reinterpretations of Superman's origin. They're part of a cycle of literature, not a continuing story. That's much easier to stomach, and sometimes, the storytellers even surpass themselves.

And that's what makes them worth reading.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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Mark Millar's 'Red Son'

How differently might things have gone had Superman landed in the Soviet Union instead of Kansas?

That's the question explored in Mark Millar's "Red Son," a comic that reimagines Superman as a Soviet superhero rather than an American icon. Elseworlds comics like this one take place outside regular DC continuity and reimagine the characters in a new setting. Precisely because of this changed background, Elseworlds comics can be a lot of fun.

"Red Son" is an interesting take on Superman because he's still an essentially good guy who doesn't want anyone to be hurt, and has unimpeachable moral character. He's still Superman. But because he grew up in communist Russia, he's not the Superman we remember. He still defends truth and justice, but it's no longer the American way he upholds. And in the DC Universe, that's quite a game changer.

In the comic, the adult Superman emerges into the public consciousness during the presidencies of Stalin and Eisenhower. The fear and paranoia of the Red Scare are further inflamed by this superhuman champion of communism and Soviet values. In a compelling section on the reaction in America, the comic shows people in the street terrified at the thought that a superpowered Soviet can him to watch their every move from orbit.

Superman's chief nemesis has always been Lex Luthor, and Millar sticks with the classic characterization of Luthor as a scientist, but not as a mad scientist. This Luthor is in the employ of the U.S. government, giving as a rare scenario where Luthor comes off at least as sympathetically as Superman.

The conflict between the two men continues over the next 40 years or so moves along standard Superman lines, however abridged, as Luthor gets Braniac to put Stalingrad in a bottle, and creates one superpowered patriot after another, like Bizarro and the Parasite, in attempts to destroy his foe.

Other D.C. heroes and world history get reimagined along the way. Wonder Woman arrives on the scene, and declares her support for the Soviet Union rather than for capitalist America, With Superan on the scene, nation after nation joins the Warsaw Pact, and America's fortunes ebb lower and lower. Soon states start to secede, and the U.S. government is unable to stop them.

The most interesing aspect of the story, thematically, is when Superman succeeds Stalin as president of the Soviet Union, and makes the nation run like clockwork. Everyone has absolute security, and everything they need. There is no crime, no hunger, and no freedom. Dissidents are rounded up and given brain surgery to make them compliant with Superman's regime. (There are shades of Doc Savage here, but it also reminds me of Mark Gruenwald's "Squadrom Supreme," a comic where a pastiche of the Justice League assumed total control of society to build a utopia.)

The story breaks down for me in the final act. Batman in this world was left an orphan when the KGB shot his parents for publishing subversive anti-Superman material. When we finally see him as an adult, Batman's absolute obsession is to bring down Superman and his Soviet system. As it continues, the comic fails to maintain the energy it had in its opening pages.

In a rare twist, Luthor does win in the end, and outsmarts not only Braniac but Superman as well. Except Superan survives as well, and manages to live long enough to see the earth's sun grow red, and hear reports from one Lex Luthor's descendants that the Earth is going to blow up because of pressure building beneath the planet's crust.

The comic was all right, but none what I would want to buy. But that's why I didn't buy it. Gotta love library cards.

man of steel

If you've ever wondered it would be like to see Superman through the eyes of his worst enemy, this could be your chance.

Written by Brian Azzarello and with illustrations by Lee Bermejo, "Lex Luthor" provides a rare look at Superman from the perspective of his greatest enemy. It gives us an even rarer, sympathetic look at Lex himself. For characters as storied as these two, anything that looks at them in a fresh light is going to be worth looking at. This particular look cost $13 when I bought it.

Let's be fair. Superman is not exactly the most interesting superhero to read. He's invincible, he can fly, he can lift mountains, he can freeze you with his breath, hear clouds scrape together, watch cells divide, see things thousands of miles away, burn things with his heat ray vision, and see through solid objects.

His only vulnerabilities are to magic, kryptonite and fatigue poisons. That means any time he's fighting a supervillain, the fight is going to end quickly or destructively, and the action sequences in his comics are going to be melodramatic and juvenile. I recently borrowed a collection of the regular Superman titles from the library and never finished. It was awful.

By the same token, Lex Luthor usually isn't a compelling villain. He gets solid treatment from Neil Gaiman in "Black Orchid," and from time to time elsewhere as well, but he's usually little more than Richard III on Machiavellian steroids. He schemes and plots, and he avoids getting caught, because that's what he does. It's his function. Lex Luthor just enjoys power and wants to crush everybody beneath his feet because he can.

The best treatment I've ever seen of the Superman legend technically wasn't even Superman but Hyperion, a pastiche published by Marvel Comics. The second probably would be Mark Waid's treatment in "Kingdom Come." In both cases, what made the Superman character compelling was the writer's exploration of his interactions with the rest of the world, either the superpowered community in "Kingdom Come," or the nonpowered humans of "Supreme Power."

Similarly, John Byrne gave Lex Luthor probably the most compelling characterization during his run on "Man of Steel" in the 1980s. At one point in that run, Luthor's detectives and agents have assured him with almost total certainty that Superman is none other than Clark Kent, a reporter for the Daily Planet. Luthor, rather than using this discovery to crush his adversary, fires everybody from the project because it's so idiotic to assume that a man as powerful as Superman would be content to work as a newspaper reporter.

Azzarello builds on the foundation Byrne laid, by showing us exactly how Luthor views himself and Superman. In this reading, Luthor sees Superman not as a savior, hero or inspiration to the people, but as übermensch -- an alien of incalculable power, who is posing as a hero but who in fact limits human potential and who could at any point decide to rule humanity openly.

This isn't exactly new material. Writers established years ago that Luthor considers Superman a danger, believes himself to be the only person to see the danger clearly, and even imagines that he'll be hailed as a hero after he has bested Superman once and for all. The difference is that every time we see Luthor expostulate on this position, we see him driven by jealousy and fear.

Here Azzarello shows us Luthor as he sees himself: a decent man who offers humanity hope, who treats his janitor as an equal, with respect; a man who takes interest in his employees' children and their welfare; and who is welcome to sacrifice whatever it takes to show the world what a menace Superman really is.

And when he casually ruins lives, threatens a labor representative with death, and manipulates other people into committing atrocities, we see hints that it bothers him.

I enjoyed the nice touches that round out Luthor, who insists on calling his janitor by his first name, the feeling guilt and grief over the consequences of his actions, and the evident respect he has for Alfred Pennyworth and his commitment to Bruce Wayne. And I appreciated that we never got Superman's perspective on the story, but for one sentence.

But at the same time, I couldn't help but feel there were a few unexplained and needless additions to the story. Sure, it's nice to see Lex Luthor matching wits with Bruce Wayne as one businessman to another, but there's what appears to be a fight between Batman and Superman that's never explained, a decision Wayne makes to share Wayne Technologies research with Lexcorp, and an entire fifth of the comic that goes in what I presume is supposed be thematic rather than chronological order, with the result that I've read it five times and still don't quite understand the order of events or its relevance.

Despite its shortcoming, the scope of this sympathetic portrayal of Luthor is unprecedented in my experience. For that reason alone, this comic is worth reading and it deserves to be included in any Luthor bible that D.C. compiles.



Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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'half a life'

I have found a hero in Gotham City, but it's not Batman. It's Renee Montoya.

Montoya has been a detective in the Gotham City Police Department since 1992. The daughter of Dominican immigrants, she works in the department's major crimes unit, where she helps to investigate crimes by Gotham's costumed criminals like the Joker and Mr. Freeze. And she's the central character to "Half a Life," a collection I just read twice after borrowing it from the local library.

I love my library.

"Gotham Central" is part of that relatively new genre of comic books set in the world of superheroes, but with superheroes and their colorful sparring partners used as backdrops rather than as the star attraction. The main story is the human drama of the people who inhabit the same world as the capes.

The art is incredible. For the bulk of "Half a Life," which incorporates relevant single issues from other Batman titles, the art makes good use of light and shadow, smooth lines, rugged lines, and color. It's got a gritty feel to it, which is appropriate, since it's about Gotham City, the seedy underside of DC's urban world.

But good as the art is, it's the story itself is what makes the collection a must-have. It starts out with an issue printed just after "Cataclysm," the Batman-event earthquake that rocked Gotham City in 1999. Montoya is out working with emergency crews trying to locate and rescue quake survivors trapped beneath rubble, and finds herself working with Two-Face.

Two-Face is former District Attorney Harvey Dent, horribly scarred on half his face and given to a pathology that leads him to cede major decisions to the flip of a coin, one side of which is defaced. If the coin comes up heads, he's your friend; if the defaced side comes up, he probably will kill you. Whatever he does do, it won't be pleasant.

Every time someone asks for help, Two-Face flips the coin. To Batman, the risk of the coin landing wrong would be too high, and he would take Two-Face down rather than face that risk. But Montaya is not Batman. She is a cop who finds needs Two-Face to help with the rescue effort. She has one bullet in her gun, and she is prepared to use it, but every time Two-Face flips the coin, it comes up heads and he helps. It's impossible but it keeps happening.

Montoya realizes that she understands the coin, and when Batman appears and tries to stop Two Face, she uses that understanding to keep Two-Face focused on the rescue effort and to keep Batman from interfering. That understanding reaches Two-Face in a way I don't think I've ever seen him reached before, and he wants to reach back.

Unfortunately, the only way he knows how to do that is through his coin, and the law of averages dictates that it has to come up tails the same number of times it comes up heads.

As "Half a Life" progresses, the story becomes about Montoya's own personal duality, an identity that she keeps secret, and the way that Two Face's reliance on the coin forces the two halves of her life out in the open and utterly destroys them both. It's a brutal process, and you can see the toll it exacts on Montoya's family, her friends, and her partners at the department, but especially on her. It hurt to read this comic, it was that well written.

I'm not going to reveal the nature of Montoya's secret, except to say that it's handled well. The only complaints I have are that the secret is a little stereotypical, given her career; and that I think Batman, while he makes a great part of the background, makes a lousy deux ex machina. But the story is handled extremely well and honestly.

It's no wonder this received the 2004 Eisner Award for Best Story. It is fantastic.

My library has saved us a small fortune in books and videos over the past year, and trips like this one have let me read about $60 worth of graphic novels and determine that I'd really like to own only $15 worth of them. The comic shop isn't nearly that understanding.

The other comics I borrowed from the library this trip include a collection from Mark Waid's run on "Fantastic Four" where they visit God, best skipped; and his series "JLA: Year One." That one at least is a decent, fast-paced comic with some real character development of the classic Silver Age characters and team, but it's worth reading only once, and will go back to the library today.

"Half a Life" stays until its due date, and then it goes on my list of must-haves.



Copyright © 2006 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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kevin smith's 'quiver'

You know, I've never been a tremendous fan of Green Arrow.

As superheroes go, he's not particularly remarkable. Oliver Queen is another billionaire playboy industrialist -- like Tony Stark, like Bruce Wayne, like Daniel Rand and like Marc Specter, to name a few -- who uses his fortune to finance a career of vigilantism. His schtick is that he's a peerless archer, a modern-day Robin Hood.

Queen has no superpowers, but because of his money he can buy trick arrows, like Hawkeye. Because he's in the DC Universe, Green Arrow usually associates with the Justice League, although I have vague memories from when I was younger of a title that he headlined specifically with Green Lantern.

I've been reading the collection of  Kevin Smith's "Quiver," and it's enough to spark my interest in the character.

For starters, he is easily the most radically liberal superhero I can think of. He is the only superhero whom I can picture actually calling the police fascists, chewing out the City Council for closing a youth center, and even telling off Aquaman for having elitist royal attitudes.

But beyond that, this comic is just a solid introduction to the character and his history.

Oliver Queen died after the events of "Zero Hour," a 1994 DC companywide event that grew out of the death of Superman two years earlier. Superman's death was followed within a year by the appearance of four separate heroes each of whom might be a resurrected Superman. One turned out to be Kon El, his clone; the second, John Henry Irons, the superhero Steel; the third, Superman with a mullet; and the fourth, the supervillain Cyborg.

During this period of four Supermen, Cyborg destroyed Coast City, where Green Lantern lived in his civilian capacity as Hal Jordan. Driven insane with grief, Jordan tried to use his power ring to remake the universe so that Coast City was restored. In the end, it was Oliver Queen who killed his friend.

Queen himself died not long after on another adventure, and into his shoes stepped his son Connor Hawke, himself a skilled archer but one who did not use gimmicks like boxing glove arrows.

The mystery of "Quiver" is why Oliver Queen is alive again, and to an extent whether he even really is Oliver Queen. He has no memory of Coast City's destruction, cannot believe that Hal Jordan is dead, and is stumped when he first sees a cell phone. "What, do you think you're Batman?" is essentially his reponse.

It's this search for an explanation that drives the comic, and the reactions other members of the Justice League have to his unexpected return that make it interesting. Batman not only is suspicious of Queen's apparent resurrection, he provides some of the most cutting commentary about how derivative a character Green Arrow is, down to the Arrowcave and Arrowmobile, and even Arrowmobile.

The comic's momentum falters as the explanation for Queen's return begins to emerge, though it recovers as the story works toward its conclusion. It's a fun read, but it does beg the question: Is it really necessary to bring a hero back from the dead?

One of the things I've liked about D.C. Comics is that they haven't been pulling these penny-a-piece resurrections, except with Superman. The roster of dead superheroes, and the succession of their sidekicks and namesakes, has given the DC Universe a sense of history that Marvel lacks. Not only was Oliver Queen dead and someone else assuming the mantle of Green Arrow, there was a new Green Lantern in the Justice League after Hal Jordan's death, and a new Flash as well.

No one seriously expects members of the Fantastic Four to perish in the line of duty, or the Avengers; and if a hero does die, you know they'll be back soon enough. Even the villains recover from death. The Green Goblin had been dead for more than 20 years before he came back at the end of Marvel's ill-advised Clone Saga. That makes the menace of death much lower and the theatrics of superheroics much cheaper. There's no risk to what they do.

But in DC Comics, the death of Oliver Queen until now meant that there were real stakes for Connor Hawke's efforts with the Justice League. The fact that Kyle Rainer was the most recent and last of the Green Lanterns told him that he had reason to be afraid. Jay Garrick was still alive and powered as the Flash, but he was also in his 60s or early 70s. Wally West knows not only that Barry Allen died saving the universe, but that as the Flash he's responsible for a legacy that goes back before he was born.

Bringing heroes back from the dead cheapens their sacrifice, and erodes that sense of a grand and proud history. Kevin Smith has taught me to appreciate Queen as a character, but not that he was worth bringing back from the dead.




Copyright © 2005 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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DC's 'The Adventures of Clark Kent'

I've often wondered what sort of story DC Comics could get if it focused just on mild-mannered reporter Clark Kent.

The normal course of events is that when there is trouble Clark changes immediately into his Superman outfit and rushes off to save the day. But imagine if Clark didn't do this for some reason. In this world he is just a reporter. It has never occurred to him to wear his underpants on the outside or to draw attention to himself. He just goes about fighting crime and corruption as the world's mightiest journalist.

Think of the story leads he'd get, for starters. He'd still have uncannily good eyesight, though it would never occur to him that he could set things on fire by staring at them, and he would be able to hear things no one else could. Maybe he'd put it down to hunches or intuition, but he'd get the goods on every corrupt business or political deal that he set his mind to cracking.

Imagine him doing a piece on organized crime, and the power bosses ordering a hit on him. He'd be absolutely fearless.

They actually did something like this in "Elseworld's Finest," an Elseworlds comic featuring a Depression-era Kent and a penniless Bruce Wayne as they raced Lex Luthor for the Argo Codex, but they abandoned that conceit fairly quickly for the traditional outlandish superhero morality tale. I'm talking about something where he's just a reporter, and that's the whole point of it.

I also recall an issue of Action Comics set on Earth-2 where Clark forgot he had the Superman identity because of some sort of ensorcelment. In that story he married Lois and became a crusading reporter, but I don't recall much of that either.

Come on, DC: "The Adventures of Clark Kent." How about it?



Copyright © 2001 by David Learn. Used with permission.


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