Greek Paradox and Costume Changes

When I was a kid I used to enjoy reading comics in the summertime.  Because there would be one crossover event for the summer that was actually important.   They used to be interesting and have repercussion that lasted a long time.  Anyone remember Marvel’s first Secret Wars back in 1984?  The Avengers, the FF, the X-Men, Spider Man all go out to the Sheep Meadow in Central Park to investigate some weird alien device– and WHAM they’re spirited to a alien planet.

Imagine Enter The Dragon but with superheroes and the tournament is run by an omniscient alien named the Beyonder who is just curious about life on Earth.  The next issue they reappear but the Thing remained on the Battleworld, the She-Hulk took his place on the FF, and Spider Man brought home the symbiote that would become Venom years later.  From a narrative standpoint it was brilliant– we knew they got home, but the explanation of what actually happened on the Battleworld took 12 months to play itself out.

Now crossover events are a dime a dozen. Major characters get pulled from their usual titles and thrust into bit roles in multi-part series that don’t seem to have impacts lasting more than a year or so.  From DC, we got sequels to 1985′s landmark Crisis on Infinite Earths– Identity Crisis, Infinite Crisis, and Final Crisis.  Not to be outdone, Marvel in recent years has had Avengers Disassembled, House of M, Decimation, Civil War, Secret Invasion, and Dark Reign.

Currently Dark Reign is screwing up the Marvel Universe.  If the Federal Government got a dollar every time Norman Osborn’s name was mentioned in a book we could balance the deficit.  And don’t get me started on The Sentry.  The lamest retroactive continuity (retcon) character of all time.  First it was pitched in the press as a forgotten Lee and Kirby creation.  In the actual continuity of the Marvel Universe– somehow, a man of infinite power existed and then the universe got collective amnesia about his existence.  He was just rotting away in prison.  But now he’s back and everybody seems to be cool with it.   But wait– now he’s working for Norman Osborn.

Last month I complained about the proliferation of Avengers titles– in part because two of  the titles  revolve around Osborn and The Sentry story.  At the moment, the only Avengers title worth reading is The Mighty Avengers. We got a nice lesson in Greek philosophy in this month’s issue.  Reed Richards cops an attitude when Hank Pym wants to use a Dimensional Wave Inducer.  So the two eggheads fight in a room modeled on Zeno of Elea’s dichotomy paradox . Other nice touches include the battle of kid geniuses Valeria Richards and Amadaus Cho.  And a weird science moment between Hank and Jocasta.  Jocasta is a humanoid robot that just happens to have the brain patterns of Hank’s late ex-wife Janet Van Dyne.

Another book that’s fallen under the editorial grip of Dark Reign is the Uncanny X-Men.  Their crossover “event” has begun with the Dark Avengers.  Somehow, Norman Osborn has encouraged Emma Frost to drop her traditional white leather dominatrix gear and wear black while leading the Dark X-Men!?  Do we really need this?  I guess we’ll have a fight over keeping the citizens of San Francisco safe from anti-mutant demonstrators and the more militant mutants that are left.  This would put Scott and the non-government sanctioned X-Men in the middle to somehow save the day.

Up until now Captain America had escaped the Secret Invasion and Dark Reign.  The title was dealing with the fallout from the Civil War crossover, when the title character died.  Let me back up.  Two years ago to end the Civil War that raged in the Marvel Universe a serious world shattering event occurred.  An arrested Steve Rogers (the original Captain America) was shot and “killed” on the courthouse steps before he could testify.  It was shocking, it had repercussion, and the fallout was played to dramatic effect.

What I never understood was, if the point of Civil War was to get the masked heroes to register with the Federal government and drop secret identities– then why did they bother fighting with Steve Rogers?  The government created Captain America during WWII and gave Steve the mask and shield.  They already knew who he was.  Kind of a weird plot hole.

So Steve dies and America mourns.  Then we found out that Captain America’s WWII partner Bucky Barnes… was alive and well.  Previously, it had been accepted fact that Bucky died in 1945 in an aerial explosion on their last mission somewhere in the Arctic.   In a well written retcon, Bucky did not die but lost an arm and was found in the ocean by the Soviets.  They pulled a Six Million Dollar man on him, brainwashed him, and turned him into the Winter Solider.  So Bucky spends years working for the Soviets as an assassin.  In between gigs they stick him in cryogenic stasis to keep him from to much aging.  The Winter Solider eventually gets back to the West.  Yada-yada.

With his mentor dead, Bucky takes over as the new Captain America.  He is different from Steve.  He carries a gun, he changes the uniform, the Black Widow is his girlfriend– it was really compelling reading that was sheltered from the mess of recent crossover events.  But now comes word that they are bringing back Steve Rogers.  Luckily its not some hack writer bringing him back.  Its Ed Brubaker, who had a hand in killing Steve in 2007 and bringing Bucky along as the new Captain America.  The obvious question is what do you do with Bucky if Steve wants to be Captain America again?

And speaking of dead superheroes… over at DC.  The Dick Grayson as Batman era is in full swing.  Alfred is running the back office, which has been moved from the Batcave to the basement of Wayne Foundation Building.  And just to make the whole thing a bit more uncomfortable for a grieving Alfred and Dick, there is Damian as the new Robin.  Damain is the bastard son of Bruce Wayne.  He’s a pain in the ass, great at hand-to-hand combat, and a mechanical genius.

While we are on the subject of superheroes’ children… how is that Franklin Richards is somehow perpetually five to nine years old?  During the 1980s he had a speech impairment consistent with a kid learning to talk and had the occasional mutant power goes wild incident.  Now he’s treated like a kid with a learning disability, while his little sister Valeria is going for the Nobel prize in physics. Can we do that thing they do on soap operas and magically age him up without explanation?  Think about it– he was “born” in 1968, in the time that Franklin has been in short pants, Jean Grey has died at least two or three times.  Superman died once.  Every crossover event in the last 20 years has come and gone and Franklin can still eat off the Denny’s kids menu.

This goes to the reluctance that comic book publishers have about aging their characters in any meaningful way.  They resort to character reboots like Crisis on Infinite Earths or retcons like One More Day.   In the One More Day storyline, Peter Parker’s marriage to Mary Jane is nullified which pretty much wipes out 20 years of canonical Spider Man stories because the current crop of writers and editors couldn’t figure out what to do with a married superhero anymore.

That’s it for now.  Next month we’ll see how the Captain America thing turned out, see how Dark Reign limps along, and how long before Alfred tries to poison Damain.