Just when you thought you were getting comfortable with the DC universe, and just when you finally decided that Crisis on Infinite Earths was either a bad memory or a much needed purge (and, for that matter, did Brad Metlzer’s Identity Crisis happen or not happen), word on the street is that another major continuity overhaul is going down. Infinite Crisis plans to rewrite the continuity, doing away with the goodie-goodie origins of its characters and making them…well, amoral sons of bitches. So does this mean that Superman will finally throw off his “truth, justice and the American way” ethos to get a little bit 0f hot action with Wonder Woman in her invisible jet? Possibly.
I honestly don’t know how I feel about this. On one hand, I really enjoy seeing the canon being given a solid dose of amorality (Frank Miller’s reinterpretation of Batman comes to mind). If you keep a superhero completely good, he will inevitably grow stagnant and boring. And yet, invariably, decency (and, by this, I don’t mean Moral Majority-style fundamentalism crammed down your throat, but basic ethical values common to all groups of humanity) does serve as a helpful reference point for maintaining an ongoing and interconnected battle between good and evil.
The proof, as they say, is in the pudding. I’m waiting for the results. This may prove to be either the best or the worst move that DC Comics has ever made.
I’ve been pretty satisfied with the Infinite Crisis preludes I’ve seen — VILLAINS UNITED and DAY OF VENGEANCE — but the real action from where I’m sitting is in Grant Morrison’s overhaul of the C-list characters under the SEVEN SOLDIERS OF VICTORY banner.
I don’t have a lot of faith that IC is going to turn out to be very satisfying–Geoff Johns is a bore of a writer–but I think (hope) the worry about DC turning in a “grittier” direction is misplaced, or at least incomplete. Mark Waid, for one, has been quoted on Newsarama and other suchlike sites as saying IC is going to mark the end of DC’s superheroes acting like assholes and jerks all the time. And I’m hopeful that, since DC is keeping Morrison around to help rebuild it’s universe post-this-Crisis, there will be a lot more insane over-the-top pop experimentation and less “let’s forget about the epic possibilities of the superhero genre and make this a forensics procedural but with gaudy spandex.”
And yeah–Grant Morrison’s 7 Soldiers is where it’s at. I wrote a post on it just last week: http://prettyfakes.com/?p=479 . It’s a thing of beauty–Morrison’s work, that is, not my post.
“This may prove to be either the best or the worst move that DC Comics has ever made.”
Or it’s gonna be another hyped up “event” where nothing happens and nothing really changes.
Pardon if you’ve seen this already, but in the meantime.