Angel. This was all I got this week.
In Comics News, Lou Noble directed me to a great interview with Grant Morrison on Newsarama about Final Crisis in which he dismisses all the continuity DC has been building for a year:
"To reiterate, hopefully for the last time, when we started work on Final Crisis, J.G. and I had no idea what was going to happen in Countdown or Death Of The New Gods because neither of those books existed at that point. The Countdown writers were later asked to ‘seed’ material from Final Crisis and in some cases, probably due to the pressure of filling the pages of a weekly book, that seeding amounted to entire plotlines veering off in directions I had never envisaged, anticipated or planned for in Final Crisis.
The way I see it readers can choose to spend the rest of the year fixating on the plot quirks of a series which has ended, or they can breathe a sight of relief, settle back and enjoy the shiny new DC universe status quo we’re setting up in the pages of Final Crisis and its satellite books. I’m sure both of these paths to enlightenment will find adherents of different temperaments."
It surprises me to no end that Morrison can work for DC and say things like this. You would think DC would rather not have one of their major writers call like 60 issues a scam based on the idea that this was all leading up to Final Crisis. Surely some people bought Countdown -- at a hefty pricetag -- only because of Final Crisis.
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NOT A REVIEW, JUST ASSORTED COMPLAINTS ABOUT THE INCREDIBLE HULK. SPOILERS-A-GO-GO:
For a movie sold on being the hi-octane offering Ang Lee's film wasn't, the action scenes here edge out the original in two ways:
1)they're closer together
2)they're not as under-lit (which means they don't even beat Ang Lee's middle action scene)
And that's it.
For all of Hulk's soldiers emerging from helicopters unscathed, the creature in this movie seems far LESS a threat, to the point where you're not sure why Banner's transformation is such a terrifying prospect. He shouts sometimes, I guess?
The movie relies on previous portrayals for our knowledge that the Hulk is bad news, whilst simultaneously pretending it is the first onscreen Hulk ever (keeping him in shadow for the first encounter, doing the same old Banner vs. The Military plot, going out of its way to contradict Ang Lee's film etc. etc.).
There are no character arcs in this film.
As the film progresses, you can see the Ed Norton stuff (largely taking cues from the TV show) give way to the Zak Penn stuff ("comic book-y" bullshit). Penn clearly thinks the best way to serve fans is to include as many indiscriminate references to the source material as possible, without any consideration to adaptation, save for how you'll shoe-horn them into your crappy screenplay.
"Hulk smash!" is surely supposed to be a crowd-pleasing moment, but apparently no one told the composer/editor/cinematographer. (And to be a nit-picking nerd, Banner didn't see the kid on the news name him "Hulk", so why does he say it at all?)
In conclusion: Hulk bad!
This all makes me really excited to see Morrison's interview in The Comics Journal (whenever they get around to releasing it.) If he's going to slam-dunk his current company, what is he going to say about his Marvel experience?
Then again, since his X-Men run was a
"love letter" to Claremont/Byrne AND Claremont was the one who wasted no time bringing back Magneto, this thing may get positively Oedipal and make the Miller/Morrison Batman thing look like a whipped-cream pie fight.
Anxiety of influence, you are a motherfrakker.
I haven't been able to make the trip to my comic shop in several weeks to pick up any books which means I am still waiting on Casanova #14. This makes me nervous because I am going to try to interview Matt Fraction for a video cast next week at Heroes Convention.
If anyone has any good questions for me to relate to Matt - please post something here on Geoff's blog - or contact me through my own.
Thanks.
Thanks for the shout out!
I was also stunned that Morrison basically slammed DC for every pre-FC-related decision they made. It sounded like he was supremely upset about the whole thing, and barely containing himself.
But at the same time, I read FC having only lightly followed Death of the New Gods and Countdown, and my problems with the issue weren't really with the fact that he was eschewing the continuity laid down in the other books. He was, and I'm sure I read this on someone's blog somewhere, also ignoring continuity He'd established, having the JLA act as if the New Gods were total mysteries, even thought several New Gods had been members of the JLA in his book.
Stuff like that kind of chaps my hide.
I don't think what's in the issue invalidates his JLA continuity at all. Superman does speak like the New Gods are a mystery, but that's only in the context of describing them to new members of the team. Batman says "I've prepared a detailed dossier for those of you who haven't encountered these beings before," implying that he and the other old members know them.
In his JLA run, Metron talked about the JLA being part of the new world, the ambassadors who would help raise humanity to the next level of evolution. There was always a distance between Orion, Metron and other New Gods, and the regular heroes. I think Morrison has Superman and the other characters talk about the New Gods as a mystery because that's part of his goal with the story, to restore the power these characters once had before they became just regular superheroes.
In that respect, his JLA run is a bit contradictory, having Orion on the JLA doesn't exactly distinguish him from other heroes. But, that's also why Morrison wanted to put them on the shelf for a while, so the mystery could return. I haven't read Countdown or Death of the New Gods, but I imagine things happened like they were described in Mister Miracle, there was a war in heaven, good lost, and that's the world we're in now.
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