Actually, the kiss kind of makes sense. I'm okay with it. But it will, of course, never work out between them.
Well, that's the most interesting Black Mask has ever been. Although certainly not the most comprehensible.
After what feels like ten years of trying, Geoff Johns finally make me like Hal Jordan, and in only two pages.
I now need more than two hands to count the number of times I've seen Aquaman make the "I'm going to kill Black Manta" speech. I'm thinking of turning them into a collage.
Okay, Mera lied to Aquaman for years about who she really was, so I thinks it's quite fine that he never told her about his old war buddies.
As Absorbascommenter Kevin Trudeau kindly pointed out in my previous post, the inevitable has, indeed, come to pass.
Vibe is part of the re-branding of the Justice League. More accurately, the diversification of the JL brand. There are a lot of comic book supergroups, but none has the power and Q rating of the Justice League, which ushered in the return of superheroes as a genre in the comic book medium, forged the Silver and Bronze Ages, and inspired the creation of the Marvel superhero line. In 1980s, DC experiment with the brand, diversifying with the Justice League International, Justice League Europe, television's Justice League Unlimited, and more regrettable experiments like Extreme Justice, Justice League Elite, and Justice League Antarctica.
The original Silver Age Justice League of America was, of course, an experiment to begin with. Let's put all our most popular heroes in one book and see what happens. It was (as I have said 100 times) the opposite of the editorial philosophy behind the Justice Society of America (which was, "let's put all our heroes together who CAN'T sustain titles on their own, have them operate in coordinated solo missions, and see if we can generate a breakout character). The experiment succeeded.
The next level of experimentation came with the Bronze Age Justice League of America, which widened membership beyond the traditional Seven Icons (sacrificing also-ran Martian Manhunter in the process) and introduced some occasional internal conflict in the formerly oh-so-chummy group. On the whole, that experiment succeeded and many readers still remember the Satellite Era fondly.
The next experiment, meant to modernize the Justice League when its icons were deemed to have grown musty, was the Detroit-based Justice League. That experiment, it is fair to say, did not succeed.
Vibe, as a character, certainly had some flaws-- he was just a bit too brash, too irascible, too obviously a cultural reach-out. In short, he was a tad too "Marvel'. That's what DC had been going for and what they thought their readers wanted; a Marvel-style group of troubled misfits on a Marvel-style group with lots of internal conflict. It's a valid editorial direction, sure...but it's not "the Justice League", and the readers rejected it rather strongly. DC tried to recover, but big ships turn slowly. By the time they started guest-starring the 'real' Leaguers to keep the boat afloat it had already run aground, and the Detroiters were done for.
Again, Vibe had his flaws, but his biggest sin was being part and parcel of the failed Detroit League. Of the three characters created specifically for the Detroit League, only one survived, no doubt by turning invisiblish and running away on her nearly-invulnerable feet.
Yet, as the linked article shows, Vibe will retain many of his core elements. The vibration power. The Detroit. The "Low-rent" hero, um, vibe. The connection with his brother.
But there are subtle changes calculated to make Vibe more viable. Old Vibe was held back by his elder brother. New Vibe is encouraged by him. Old Vibe was over-confident and disrespectful; new Vibe is
There's been some online chat about what DC has planned to the "Rise of the Seven Seas" storyline for the Justice League, so I'm certain I'm about to say anything new in this post. But it will help to crystallize my own thinking about it (and the many fantastic water-based Heroclix figures that such a story could at some point spawn).
If you don't already know, "Rise of the Seven Seas" is a Justice League arc that's been set up in the pages of Aquaman. Just like the "Throne of Atlantis" arc; Aquaman, with his globe-spanning domain of the sea, seems to be an easy first-choice nowadays when DC needs an arc big enough for the entire Justice League.
The story is not just 'something for the League to do'. It's pretty clear that DC editorial (i.e., former Aquaman-writer and Creator-in-Chief Geoff Johns) intends to use it to expand the mythology that centers around Aquaman. Just as he built the Seven Spectrum Corps around Hal "Rainbow Brite" Jordan, he (and the writers) are building 'the seven seas'--seven underwater races/communities/kingdoms--around Aquaman and his role as king of Atlantis.
Johns is quite capable of making up new stuff on his own (e.g., The Trench), but his specialty is taking abandoned or toxic piece of DC lore, cleaning it up and weaving it into a larger, more epic and coherent mythology. That's what he did with the Justice Society, with Green Lantern, and the Flash. And he's been doing it with Aquaman. Whether by artistic bent, fanboy devotion, or company shrewdness, he prefers making an ever-growing quilt than a new blanket of whole cloth. He views DC's past as a legacy of riches to be built upon, not a hampering embarrassment to be destroyed or a heavy yoke of continuity to be borne humbly.
What may very well be happening in "Rise of the Seven Seas' is that Johns will use the story to reintroduce disparate aspects of DC's underwater mythology and tie it all together in a way never done (well) before. The DCU will wind up with seven different undersea kingdoms of different cultures and races. Atlantis is the First Kingdom, Xebel (where Mera is from) is the Second, and The Trench (the chompy creatures of the black deep) is the Third, and the statues in the pic above gives us hints as to what the Fourth through Seventh will be. All of them will be in Aquaman's province, of course (he's 'the King of the Seven Seas'), but several of them will likely have historical associations with other characters as well.
For example, as many longtime readers will remember, part of the Silver Age Superman mythos was his relationship with the merfolk, specifically Lori Lemaris. Strange how many of the important people in Superman's life have the initials "LL".
So one of the underseas races will probably be Merfolk Kingdom. There's no statue of a mer-person among the Seven Seas picture, but if you look closely you can see that there's a seventh statue obscured from our view, probably so as not to give away the return of merfolk to the DCU. And, for the historical reasons mentioned, I assume Superman will probably be the member dealing with them in the Justice League Rise of the Seven Seas story arc..
Wonder Woman also had dealings with merfolk, particularly during her adolescence as Wonder Girl, when Ronno the Mer-Boy was a contender for her affections (even in adulthood, in fact).
How sad is USAF officer Steve Trevor that his major rivals are a guy with no human genitalia and a giant amoeba.
But I'll wager the undersea world we will revived for Wonder Woman won't be the merfolk. It will be the forgotten Atlantean colony of Venturia, ruled by her Golden Age foe, Queen Clea the Imperious.
Queen Clea was a real piece of work, even among Wonder Woman's wacky foes. One time she teamed up with the Penguin, Ibac, the Joker, the Weeper, the Shade, Dr. Light, Brainiac, et al., to fight the JLA and JSA, and enslaved Superman with a mind-controlling "Venus Girdle". We need Clea back; once Wonder Woman comes back from her all-Olympian vacation of Mazzuchelli's run, she's going to need some substantial opponents. A warmongering, slave-owning leader of a queendom of underwater anti-Amazons would fit the bill nicely, and I expect to see her going toe-to-toe with WW in "Rise of the Seven Seas." Take a look at the second statue in the picture; sure looks a lot like Clea to me.
Golden Age Batman, contrary to what many modern readers think, wasn't all about the grim and gritty. He and Robin did LOTS of weird, trippy stuff, including visiting an Atlantis all their own. They fought Nazis there. I guess it was closer than going to Europe.
I don't imagine we'll see a Nazi-infested underwater kingdom just for Batman's sake (cool though that might be). But Geoff Johns could certainly choose to reintroduce, say, Aurania (rival city-state to Clea's Venturia) and give it any characteristics he wanted. The first status in the "Seven Seas" pic is pretty clearly a set up for classic Aquaman foe The Fisherman--the unique headgear is a dead giveaway.
And, even if you include Kurt Busiek's fun idea of his headgear being a alien symbiote, the Fisherman is basically a thematic villain who would seem perfectly at home fighting Batman (or the Flash). So I'm guess that one of the kingdoms will be the source of a modern version of the Fisherman, who will be dealt with by Batman or the Flash during the "Rise of the Seven Seas".
The statue farthest to the right, the insectoid-looking one, is a bit of a mystery. It doesn't seem to correspond to any undersea society from DCU history. I suspect that it, like the Trench, is a new creation by Johns, one to give trouble to Cyborg (who, remember, can now breath underwater) or possibly Green Lantern, because we know how GL fans love their weird alien creatures.
The Shark was reintroduced when Johns brought Hal Jordan back to life, but hasn't been seen since the New52 (during which time Hal's been mostly off-planet). The DCU isn't quite right without him, and that weak knock-off DC keeps trying to foist on us successfully ("King Shark") is certainly no substitute.
Perhaps we will see Name-Or again and his fantastic undersea world of Lemuria, who so memorably but irrelevantly participating in the Attack of Jean Loring's Brain?
I will say this, though, for Grant Morrison. Even as he veers toward the nonsensical, he tends toward the poetical.
What haiku do YOU have to discuss Multiversity, the concept of the multiverse, or Grant Morrison/Lex Luthor's drug use?
Grant Morrison's Multiversity #1, which I was looking forward to, is (of course) a disappointing, muddled mess.
It's another rehash of the pet themes he's been slinging around ever since his days on Animal Man (transquartomuralism, writer as god, reader and the reader's world as part of the story, realities beyond and alongside other realities, the music of the spheres, etc.).
In other words, exactly the same hodgepodge of the same concepts Morrison so spectacularly failed to make word in Final Crisis.
These are fine ideas (even if he's repeated them about 8000 times too often), but, once again, his fractured, kaleidoscopic viewpoint makes it impossible for him to tell a coherent story. At times, in fact, it seems composing a complete sentence escapes him.
And, sure, it makes a little more sense after a second reading. But doesn't EVERYTHING (with the exception of Identity Crisis)?!
In my hobby of choral shows, we call people like Grant Morrison "Concept Producers." They can produce concepts, but they can't produce actual SHOWS. They have fascinating, out of the box ideas... but THEY can't carry them out. Other more sensible, down-to-earth, coherent, logistically-oriented people have to be there to do that for them, or it all winds up a flaming mess. Like Multiversity.
Grant Morrison is such a person. He needs an editor--or a writer-- to put his ideas into action. Until then...
If we want to make GA distinct and culturally relevant in a more modern way, how do we do that if we aren't focused on "Green Arrow as Robin Hood" but rather "Green Arrow as Native American"...?
Our modern world is increasingly complex and diverse, and in a 'shrinking' world society the ability to manage that complexity with diverse people and approaches is key to progress and betterment.
Superman is the most humble and human of all superheroes, even though he's the most powerful Wonder Woman is/has been an ambassador of peace and goddess of war. Hal Jordan's an addled mess with a will of iron. Aquaman, king of the sea, was raised on land. Flash is the fastest man alive, and Barry Allen one of the most slow and methodical. Batman combats criminal violence by breaking the law and beating people up. At the core of most character that maintain our interest long-term, there is some inherent contradiction whose dynamic tension powers that interest.
But, what possible contradiction could fuel our interest in Ollie? He's a complex man, in a complex world--his wealth comes from its complexity--but he longs to be simple and to have a simple life. That's why a high-tech billionaire would become an expert on native American culture: a fascination with 'the simple life' it represents.
In fact, of course, tribal life isn't and never was 'simple'; almost by definition, native cultures have complex societies and systems of belief, ritual, hierarchy, skills, and crafts. But even full intellectual understanding of that wouldn't prevent an idealist like Ollie from romanticizing Native American culture. In one of his most recent incarnations (and perhaps his current one, who can tell?) Ollie's "Q Tech" is like the Apple company, priding itself n making high-tech devices that are simple and help regular people streamline their lines. Making things simple through increasingly complex technology. I'm sure the irony of that would pain a sensitive soul like Ollie's, making his romantic fascination with America's original 'simple life' even more understandable.
Green Arrow is the man who wants problems to be simple enough to be solved by shooting an arrow -- which is why he develops an arsenal of complex specialty arrows. Just as Oliver's love of simplicity lead him toward complexity in his armory
I appreciate DC's desire to diversify its cast of characters, both in their socioethnic origins and their styles. Why, then, not have a hero for whom it's not just an 'add-on' but an essential element? And why not have that be the logical choice: Green Arrow?
Ollie's a rich white guy fascinated with a group of minority cultures (Native Americans). His ward is a white kid RAISED by Indians on a reservation. As suggested by Absorbascommenter CobraMisfit, use Vigilante as his "rival" crimefighter (a laughing singing cowboy who takes very little seriously, compared to the serious CW-like Oliver King). And Vigilante's sidekick, Jimmy Leong, a.k.a. Stuff, who hails from (Star City's) Chinatown, would serve as a hook into stories about the local Asian communities.
Thom Kamalku, in Inuit mechanic, has nothing to do since Hal Jordan went away to space. Why wouldn't Ollie hire him to be his mechanic and tech guy? Ollie could use a "STAR Labs Cisco Ramone" of his own.
You want Green Arrow to have a friendship with Green Lantern? Of course you do. Well, as long as Hal is off playing space-rebel, while not start pairing Ollie up with ... with.... ugh, Simon Baz, I actually had to LOOK UP his name, because so little has been done with 'the Arab-American' Green Lantern, and what has been done has been... not ideal.
All would not be happy with whatever tribe Ollie gather around himself. That would be part of the point, I should think. Ollie wants to embrace diversity but....diversity is complex. It's not simple. Instead of being the all-streetwise liberal big-mouth of the 1970s, Ollie becomes the modern day liberal white guy: desperate to be 'inclusive' but not really having any idea what that actually means. A well-meaning guy who tends to romanticize other cultures than his own and, in the process, rob them of their own rich complexity. I can imagine some lively conversations around the Arrowcave, and a good writer can imagine many more.
DC; (once you are done with this new sure-to-be-cut-short attempt at rebooting GA as a horror title) instead of just tossing in a few Bat-wings, Alan Scotts, and Val-Zods in the corners of the DCU, consider building some of the very issues I think you're hoping to address into the best character you have for doing so: