[Trade Winds] Millennium tpb

Posted by Graig on August 14, 2008

(DC)

I have a lot of nostalgia for comics of 1980’s, particularly the 1980’s post-Crisis DC Universe, a time where everything was new again, where the rules weren’t yet defined and anything could happen. The 1980’s also brought us the “Event Comic” building the idea of team-ups but on a mass scale to tackle one massive problem. Secret Wars was the first big “Event Comic”, although self-contained, and it was Crisis on Infinite Earths which we have to thank/blame for the “Epic Crossover” which have pretty much been inescapable since 1985. Every company that’s done superheroes in the past 20 years has done them… from Milestone to Valiant to Wildstorm to Continuity, they’re inescapable. Though each one of them promises some “earth shaking” or “ground breaking” or “internet cracking-in-halfing” changes to their universe, but rarely do they deliver anything of lasting value (sub-plots and spin-offs tend to last a few years at most before they too disappear or return to status-quo). These days, once you get through all the hype, most Epic Crossovers aren’t doing much other than baiting the fans into buying more comics. That hint of cynicism you read there is as a result of what they call “Event Fatigue”. After almost 25 years of these epic smash-’em-ups, they’ve lost purpose, meaning, distinction and individuality, they’ve started to blur together into a mass of crises that, in their center have very little heart.

Obviously, things weren’t always this way. In the mid-to-late ’80’s these events were intriguing, fresh, and exciting, especially for DC. Over their then-50-year publishing history, DC had amassed numerous characters from different eras and different publishers, each inhabiting a separate “Earth”, and post-Crisis most were reborn on one sole Earth. Now, not only were there ongoing stories to be told but also stories of the past to be revised, revised, retconned, what have you. For the first time all of DC’s pantheon could meet with one another without having to detail “dimensional rifts” or explain away the hows of the meet-ups, instead focusing on the whys. After Crisis, they had a success in Legends which launched a new Flash title, Giffen’s Justice League and the Suicide Squad amongst it’s notable accomplishments. DC wanted to make these events an annual tradition, and they wanted to go bigger the following year, to weave together their new universe even more tightly, so what they delivered was a 45-part, 8-week crossover bridging together 21 different ongoing series with an 8-part mini-series. It was an incredible endeavor, still unsurpassed even by the likes of Infinite Crisis or 52, but the annals of time have rendered it’s an abysmal failure (surpassed only by, presumably, Countdown) for one main reason: it’s bloody boring.

20 years on and most DC fans from that time (which, were I a cynic, I’d say still comprise the bulk of DC’s loyal fanbase today) will recall Millennium as an atrocity, which, if it had one blessing, was over and done with in a two month span. Quickly overshadowed the following year by the tremendous Invasion (which DC is publishing a collected edition of within the next month), Millennium sprang forth from the Green Lantern Corps series, at the time operating on their own volition, as their Oan overseers had paired off and departed with their female opposites, the Zamarons, “to do it”, as Millennium’s first issue so eloquently puts it. One pair has returned to Earth, to the Green Lantern’s Earth-based citadel/spa-and-resort, to request the help of the Earth-based heroes. The dawn of man’s new evolution is upon them, their destiny must be thrust forth, and the Oan and Zamaron are going to be the ones to do it (heh). Contacting 10 humans from around the globe, the pair give them a choice to join them and evolve. The most interesting element of the series is the people that are selected as “The Chosen”: an Australian Aboriginal; a Jamaican transplant to “fascist England”(!?); a South African politician and bigot; a Communist Chinese party member; a man from Communist Russia; a South American homosexual (though he’s never OUTRIGHT identified as such, it’s fairly obvious); a Japanese businessman; Hal Jordan’s Eskimo ex-sidekick, Thomas “Pieface” Kalmaku; and the Floronic Man (a last minute sub for Terra). Unfortunately, little of the era-specific hot-button issues percolating underneath Gerber’s character selection were dealt with in the series outside of anything but superficial terms, and there would have been plenty of meat to pursue had he been free to.

Instead, the series focuses more upon the Manhunters, robotic policemen that were predecessors to the Green Lantern Corps. They’ve since become a cult of some kind, determined to stop man’s evolution, and thus conveniently surfacing to stop the Guardians of the Universe’s plan. The trick is that the Manhunters have stolen the secrets of the DC Universe (don’t ask) and know its entire history, and in preparation have seeded the earth with sleeper agents, one conveniently placed in the life of each of the superheroes with ongoing titles at the time. Lana Lang, the Greek God Pan, Wally West’s dad, amongst others, surface to vex the heroes, but naturally each threats is overcome and the heroes move on to either blow up the Manhunter’s home planet or destroy their secret base in the core of the earth.

The Chosen, meanwhile, are trained by the Oan and Zamaronian, readied to receive their new abilities. Their training, most taking place in the fifth chapter, consists of horrible, plodding, new-age mumbo jumbo masquerading as some kind of philosophical doctrine. It’s an inane and nonsensical (especially when given in the context of the series) philosophy centering around the power of the numbers one through ten, but given the group’s constantly fluctuating size (as people are killed or decide not to join or are substituted for at the last minute, truly diminishing the whole “Chosen” bit), it doesn’t hold water. The end result finds the Chosen renamed “the New Guardians”… their raison d’etre, or what exactly they’re supposed to guard, barely defined.

The story was built for one primary purpose, to unify like never before DC’s line of superhero titles for this singular event, no matter how ill-suited various heroes or teams were to dealing with the problems they posed. The biggest problem remains that the main 8-part mini-series collected here isn’t a whole story. It’s 8/45ths of a story. At the end of each chapter, cliffhangers and storylines are set-up which then carried forth into the tie-in books. By the time you return to the next chapter of the main Millennium series, most of the threads have been resolved and the story is moving forward in the wake of whatever happened elsewhere. As a collected edition, there’s likely no read more disjointed than this.

Even if I could forgive it’s compulsory tie-in reading, it’s tedious pace (which, for something that was a weekly series is saying a lot) and it’s pointlessness, the book’s script, written by Steve Englehart, is abominable. Englehart seriously tries to give his Chosen distinctive personalities and not play into cultural stereotypes, but he doesn’t do the same with all the other characters he’s given to write. There’s no distinctive voice between Superman, Green Lantern, Blue Beetle or Harbinger. They’re all privy to the same mood swings, the same contrived thoughts, and the way out-of-character sentiments. Englehart writes them as he needs them to act, not as they would act. He’s also in the unfortunate position of having to dole out copious amounts of exposition. Given the nature of the beast he’s written, the exposition not only relates to what had happened in the tie-in titles, but also past stories in many of the character’s histories. It’s a compounding mess of bad dialog, overwrought narration and cheesy thought balloons festering atop spoiled execution.

On art chores is Joe Staton, a veteran illustrator even at the time. A curious choice for an Event Comic, Staton has never been a fan favorite illustrator, not on the level of George Perez or John Byrne before him anyway. Even though he’s praised by the editor for his ability to draw distinctive figures, I find his work contradicts that, that his figures more often than not have a uniform look to them (although in a style uniquely his own) distinguishable only by costume or haircut. He tends to draw his characters lean (near emaciated), with long limbs and necks, thin (gaunt, even) faces, totally lacking any physical presence or power. His scene compositions range from decent to downright ugly, storytelling generally flowing okay, but breaks in panels often getting in the way. His figures are routinely stiff, losing the dynamics from the action, and consistency is also a problem. I noticed in the supermarket check out recently that Staton is now drawing Jughead comics, bringing to them a more “realistic” style. His work seems to have improved, and is well suited to the new Archie aesthetic, though still not something I find appealing.

Fan reaction for Millennium, in my experience, has never been positive, making this collection a curiosity. What’s the purpose of reissuing it? Most trades that come out reprinting older material play off nostalgia or lingering good will, neither of which Millennium has. It’s doesn’t work as a complete story, its script is painful, the art is unappealing, and it had no lasting effect on the DC Universe at all (The New Guardians series that spun out from it lasted 12 issues, and most of its characters never used again with any real meaning). Is it trying to bank off it’s tenuous conceptual connections to Final Crisis (the evolution of the human race into new gods) or Secret Invasion (the idea of dopplegangers or sleeper agents awakening to cause some angst)? Given the “Trust No One” subtitle, I’m guessing the latter.

I didn’t acquire or even read the physical Millenium trade paperback, instead dipping into my back issue boxes and pulling out the crumpled and ignored 8-issue miniseries to reread. I did look at the trade in my LCS this week and noticed that, sadly, the back-matter from the original 8-issues were missing. Each book had a page-long essay or interview with the creative team by Mark Waid and/or Andy Helfer. These garner some curious insight into the burgeoning Event Comics concept, and DC’s interest in them, as well as providing historical context for them. The interviews, which offer a look at the creation process and Englehart’s intent behind the series, would have been a really good addition to the collection (as would DVD-esque special features like a “writer’s commentary” or at least an essay or two from the writer/editors about their feelings on the book two decades later. If you’re going to republish crap at least give it some context).

1 out of 5 Vikings

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Filed Under: Trade Winds

Tags: 1/5, dc, Event, green lantern, superhero

[Raided] Green Lantern/Sinestro Corps Secret Files and Origins #1

Posted by Graig on December 30, 2007

(DC)

It doesn’t get much nerdier than this: a 54-page book filled with over two hundred one-paragraph biographies of the various Green Lantern Corps and Sinestro Corps members, also noting their first appearance and arranged in order of what space sector they patrol. To be honest, there’s very little reason why anyone except the most hardcore of Green Lantern fans should read this cover-to-cover, and even then it’s not really providing all that much useful information aside from presenting all these characters in one place, but at the same time, even though I’m not that big a GL fan, well… I loved it. I grew up back when Who’s Who and The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe were being released in the mid-1980’s, which was probably the heyday of both comic book realities when people invested immeasurable amounts of energy to understand and defining who was who, what was what, and what was really important about them all. These days, the universes of the big two are trying to achieve the best of both worlds, being incredibly editorially driven, but still trying to hold onto top talent by letting them tell their own stories freely. With Green Lantern (and more specifically, “the Sinestro Corps War”) Geoff Johns has managed to nicely compartmentalize the intergalactic police force into its own DC Universe niche, just like the Annihilation series or the mutant/”X-titles” has done over at Marvel, in both cases while still remaining within the confines of the Universe. Something like this Secret Files and Origins only further allows the Lanterns to be their own thing while not ruling out the possibility of interacting with the rest of the company. More titles should seek to do the same. Plus, you gotta admire the effort it must have taken to put this together, digging through decades of Green Lantern books, and deciding who’s still around, who’s dead and confirming the first appearances and space sectors of the characters. Reading it brings out the inner nerd, something I’m sure any once or current RPG fan or old-school comics geek will understand.

4 out of 5 Vikings

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Filed Under: Rack Raids

Tags: 4/5, dc, geoff johns, green lantern, secret files, superhero

Green Lantern #25

Posted by Graig on December 22, 2007

(DC)

After many, many years of decent, if underwhelming crossovers and events — Civil War and Infinite Crisis most notably — it’s good to finally have something epic in size, but doesn’t buckle under the weight of having to change, well, everything. Both of the Big Two have found success with smaller, tighter, more character-centric storylines: Marvel with World War Hulk, and DC here with “The Sinestro Corps War”, and that is the way it should be.

Event comics that change the universe demand a lot of investment, both from a reader and creator perspective. The fan has to start recontextualizing what they know about a superhero universe in total and how the changes affect each of the characters they enjoy, putting the pressure on the creative staff to guide them. If an event, put bluntly, sucks, then the writers, artists and editors either have to admit their mistake and restore status quo, or hold fast to their botch job and strive to make the best of it (see Countdown). These Earth-shattering crises can be a lot to manage and after a while, exhausting enough for a fan (or creator) to give up on altogether (dubbed “event fatigue”).

More contained epics, like Marvel’s Annihilation or the 11-part “Sinestro Corps War”, are exactly how these things should be done, on a character or sub-section of a shared universe basis. By isolating a big brew-ha-ha to one defined character (or group of characters) it allows the situation to have a much bigger impact on fewer characters, giving the book keener focus and providing the creative staff with much fewer headaches in creating, executing and moving forward from the event. “The Sinestro Corps War” does involve more than just the Green Lantern Corps: when Sinestro brings the fight to Earth — his crew of yellow-ring wearing villains including Superman-Prime, Cyborg Superman, and the Anti-Monitor (strange how characters who should be Superman’s rogues have been appropriated as Green Lantern’s) — the whole of Earth’s superheroes, from the Justice Society to Superman himself, join the fray, but the focus is never removed from the Green Lanterns, it always remains their story.

Cudos for DC for keeping “The Sinestro Corps War” contained to primarily the two Green Lantern titles (with a quartet of Tales Of The Sinestro Corps and a Secret Files the only peripherals) and not blowing this into something overblown in scope, as it could have easily infiltrated every DC Universe title on the stands. Also allowing the story to develop without confining itself to the Countdown-restricting continuity no doubt saved this story from a disappointing conclusion.

Issue number 25 of Green Lantern is the “super-sized finale” to what is, hands-down, the biggest epic in Green Lantern’s storied history. It successfully keeps the momentum from the previous ten chapters going right to the finish line, and with more than one big payoff, not only meeting but exceeding expectations. Geoff Johns, having orchestrated some good (and not-so-good) epic storylines in the past, has delivered his crowning achievement here, with such an immaculately tight focus, and a predefined outcome that will change the shape of the Green Lantern legend forever, and organically so. Impact and change are what every good epic should strive for, without making change just for the sake of change.

I’m not the biggest of Green Lantern Corps fans, as the concept of an intergalactic policing agency has never been executed to its fullest potential. But that potential is reaching closer and closer, with recognizable law enforcement procedures sneaking into the stories, as well as incorporating a galaxy wide military angle, it’s starting to examine on a much wider scope the impact the Corps has on the Galaxy. Not only that, but for the first time in a long time, there’s a healthy Star Wars or Star Trek-like familiarity to the universe the Lanterns police. Everything isn’t a new discovery, but the universe is still not without its wonder, and the Lanterns aren’t without opposition. I also enjoy the fact that there’s a sense of brotherhood in this title, that Green Lantern isn’t just about Hal Jordan or Kyle Raynor, but both, and John Stewart, and Guy Gardner. If you have a favorite Lantern well, they too are the Green Lantern.

Spoiler Alert (this paragraph)
The big reveal of “The Sinestro Corps War” is there is more than just one kind of power ring in the galaxies, but in fact seven, each drawing from their own strength and experiencing their own weaknesses. Johns has incorporated prophecies and potential future conflicts between these seven different agencies (?), and has set an intriguing foundation which he and other writers can build upon for years. He’s also set up a third major Green Lantern story arc (the first being Rebirth) which seems exciting enough (another spoiler, Black Lanterns, aka, Zombie Lanterns), but not as epic as this and, in part a little trite.
End Spoilers

While the Green Lantern Corps issues in this saga have been somewhat middling in both art and writing, the core-title issues have been fabulous, with this ultimate chapter the finest feather in the cap of the proceedings. Ivan Reis, throughout this series, has been incredible, constructing fight sequences and meaty drama with equal fervor. But here, in issue 25, he pulls out every stop, including a handful of two-page spreads and full-page splashes that are so packed with characters even George Perez would be impressed. This issue is balls-out action, with fists flying, rings slinging, and buildings collapsing seemingly every other panel. Reis has an undeniable Neal Adams-esque flair, equally comfortable with human and alien, Earth structures and those out of this world. Ethan Van Sciver also pitches in for ten pages, providing with hyper-detail the groundwork for things to come, but without stealing Reis’ thunder at all.

Though explosions and death abound, Johns never loses sight of what really represents heroism. Having unleashed the Green Lanterns from various restrictions, even throughout the mayhem, Johns still manages to address some of the weightier concepts that have emerged as well as dole out more than just a few poignant character-defining moments for some Lanterns and villains.

Really, even if you’re not much of a Green Lantern fan, this storyline does prove really exciting stuff: large enough in scope to have the right amount of intensity, but remaining small enough that the payoffs were satisfying while still leaving somewhere for the story to go in the ongoing title. This issue capitalizes off everything that it had built up to, and still manages to propel itself forward.

5 out of 5 Vikings