Heydi-hey, folks! Sorry I’m late with this week’s edition of I’M JUST SAYIN’… Sunday I had a late comedy show at THERAPY in Hell’s Kitchen; Monday, I was pretty much hungover – my kind of therapy, to be frank! – and then there was a little something on Tuesday, involving this guy…
…maybe you’ve heard of him. 
I think now that the inauguration has passed, I will have a new image for you at the close of each column…more on that further down.
And between all that, I’ve become hopelessly addicted to this game. And unless I miss my guess, if you just clicked there, now you are too. Heh.
So while I had a few things I wanted to get into this week, mostly Spider-Man related, but I’m going to have to breeze through them so I can get to the main course of discussion.
First, for those of you who are like me, and cannot wait for Season Two of THE SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN, I’ve got some spoiler synopses to whet your appetite. Click on this highlighted text if you just gotta get the goods on what’ll be coming up from Marvel’s best animated series to date…
Meanwhile, it appears that, as of January 1, the Spider-Man newspaper strip has turned back the clock on our friendly neighborhood web-slinger as well!
Quoting January 5th’s edition of BLOG at NEWSARAMA : It’s been a weird new year for your friendly neighborhood web-slinger.
As we reported last week, Spider-Man’s status quo made a sudden left turn on New Year’s Eve, as Peter Parker and Mary Jane were watching television…
…And on January 1st, Peter wakes up at Aunt May’s house. No MJ in sight.
The next day, things got even more complicated, as Stan Lee and company confirmed the news: Peter Parker was now a single college student.
What happened? As we’ve learned this weekend: it’s a flashback. In Sunday’s strip, we begin the story with, “In the days long before Peter and MJ were married…”
Now this has been done before in Marvel’s regular books, going back to John Byrne’s SPIDER-MAN: CHAPTER ONE as well as Kurt Busiek’s UNTOLD TALES of SPIDER-MAN. But in this case, the main point of interest is that Stan Lee, while adhering to Peter Parker’s current status, completely bypassed the path taken by the Marvel mothership.
I was surprised that the newspaper strip was still going on, myself! But it really does strike as interesting that Stan Lee chose to re-single Peter Parker this way, although being the newspaper strip does allow him a little more flexibility. This certainly wouldn’t have worked in the actual comic, unless they were told as supplementary back-ups…hey, why didn’t Marvel do it that way? Tell your main story, and then give us an 8-10 page quickie from the days when Peter was a 20-something bachelor?
Ohh, right – that would’ve made everybody happy! Silly me…
As it is, I think we already know where the Christmas bonus went over at Marvel’s offices anyway:
Yep, whether it was editor or intern, I’m betting whoever figured out how to get Wolverine on yet another team book probably had a VERY merry Christmas in 2008!
Okay, now on to the two big events of last Shipment Week…first up was FINAL CRISIS #6 - an excellent breakdown of which can be found here - where, after defeating the Black Glove and escaping captivity from the evil New Gods from Issue #2, Batman, Bruce Wayne, the Dark Knight, our Caped Crusader, fell victim to Darkseid’s vaunted “Omega Sanction”…
…but what does that mean, exactly? I mean, it looks pretty damn fatal here…
…and we all know, it ain’t a Crisis if Superman’s not holding a corpse at some point. But this is a DC comic being written by Grant Morrison, and as we all know, Grant’s got the good peyote, so not all is as it seems. Especially if you consider that, as it turns out, the Omega Sanction doesn’t necessarily kill. Instead, it forces the victim to be forcibly reincarnated into increasingly desperate lives. So there you have it, the means by which Bruce Wayne will eventually return to the DC Universe, because as we’ve established…
…that is correct, sir!
So a great many readers discussing this comic over at NEWSARAMA.com are convinced that this all amounts to a case of BATMAN: BRB instead of BATMAN: RIP. Pause a moment, because I really wish I thought of that myself…
…
…and we’re back.
But I think my favorite comments about this issue have to be from the following two readers over at NEWSARAMA.com – first was ShadowBoxing, who said the following:
I feel like many here don’t “get” Final Crisis #6.
I’m seeing a number of the same complaints. Batman used a gun, Batman spoke in exposition, he killed someone, and went out like a punk…honestly though, I don’t see it that way, nor do I see why others feel that way.
My first reaction was disgust, because it did not seem as epic and grand as his comeback in R.I.P., but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. R.I.P ends with the curse upon the cowl, and reminds us that “Batman thinks of everything” and oh, man, he did.
When young Bruce Wayne left the theater playing Mark of Zorro, his parents were murdered by a mugger named Joe Chill, and like “Last Rites” outlined, this sent him on a seemingly unended quest to stamp out evil. That can’t be right. It has to have an end, Batman is smarter than to not have a final goal and final solution in mind, and this was it.
The scene begins with Batman slinking in the shadows of an alleyway, much like Joe Chill did many years prior. Darkseid, who is now the father of all evil, the bringer of Anti-life, finds himself on the receiving end of Batman. This time something is different though. He’s not engaging in fist-a-cuffs, or calling on GCPD backup, or using his wits, no…he’s mugging him with a gun. The beautiful irony.
The father of Evil gets shot by a madman, much like Batman’s father got shot by one of it’s byproducts. “Hh…Gotcha”. This is Batman’s ultimate “pwn” if you will. Evil gets to feel what it’s like to lose a parent, evil gets to know how Batman felt when he was a child, evil gets to experience the exact same thing Bruce did. Batman has a funny sense of humor, and this is it.
And then there’s CreatorPwned, who lent a real interesting bit of perspective:
The real crux of the story will be when we find out Darkseid had been brainwashed into killing Batman, only to realize he not only loved him, but was carrying his child.
And somewhere between those two fine points…the truth lies.
I was actually all set to get into a spat that has developed between SAVAGE DRAGON creator Erik Larsen and Marvel comics for their “Obama variant” issue of THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #583* – but you know what, I’m just gonna say click here if you care, because I certainly don’t. There are no shortage of people taking sides – there’s your Larsen camp, there’s your Marvel camp, and frankly, if I were to take a side, it’d be the readers’. Why? Because it’s 2009, comic books are $3 to $5 bucks a pop and apparently they’re so absolutely certain that we’re getting our nanopenny’s worth, that our current generation of artists/creators can waste time quibbling over bullshit like THIS. It’s beyond absurd, and wasting text on it keeps me from moving on to my new signoff feature that I want to call:
AND NOW, JUST CUZ I FEEL LIKE IT…
‘Til next week, everybody – I’m Greg Manuel and I’m just sayin’, is all…
Last 5 posts by Greg Manuel
- I'm Just Sayin'...#78 - February 19th, 2010
- I'm Just Sayin'...#77 - January 12th, 2010
- HAPPY HOLIDAYS, NEXUS HEADS! - December 24th, 2009
- I'm Just Sayin'...#76 - December 11th, 2009
- I'm Just Sayin'...#75 - November 16th, 2009
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I predict a future scene in DC comics…
Superman: “Bruce? But… you’re suppose to be dead!”
Batman: “I’m Batman. I got better.”
;P
On that note, Dick Grayson is my pick to fill the cowl.
I’m pissed that Marvel is jacking their prices up. But notice DC hasn’t done it… yet. At least Dan has some kindness. Some.
btw, best rendition of a slacker Galactus has to be the animated short Heroes. It’s a parody on Clerks with Captain America and Daredevil playing the roles of Dante and Randel. With Galactus and Silver Surfer representing as Silent Bob and Jay.
I did see the inauguration of President Obama, a truly spectacular moment to watch on TV. =)
Mr. Q (I believe in Barack Obama)
dan didio is notorious for usually NOT extorting readers for their pocket money like Joe Q does with the price jacks and Secret Invasions million unnecessary contrived tie-ins… Remember Final Crisis has been completely self-contained and only had three-four auxiliary titles that pretty much stand on their own and are not necessary reading
My biggest problem with Final Crisis in general… and even with Shadowboxing’s analysis, is that Darkseid doesn’t reflect evil. He’s not ‘the father of evil’. The characters in Final Crisis aren’t the New Gods.
If anything, the only thing that makes Darkseid bad is the fact that he wants ORDER. He detests chaos, which we would generally term as an ‘evil’ force. Basically, all Darkseid wants to do is create the Bryne-era version of Krypton. By getting rid of free will, one stamps out chaos and by nature, evil. If Darkseid got power, his subordinates (like Desaad) would be screwed, because he’s deny them their pleasures because that would bring chaos. So far, the closest he can get to that is trampling people under his feet so they’re helpless and can’t fend for themselves… aka the lowlies.
The New Genesis gods on the other hand, embrace chaos because that is in and of itself a creative force. You can’t create or even innovate without a little bit of chaos thrown into the mix.
If Darkseid won, it would mean the death of creativity and even innovation. That’s why they fight… it’s really not a struggle of ‘good’ versus ‘evil’, it’s something far, far deeper than that. It’s why I love Kirby’s “New Gods” work… although his dialogue was often blunt and over-dramatic, the book has layers of thematic subtext that a lot of people miss in order to have Batman shoot Darkseid with a gun or Superman beat Darkseid up (which I detest both scenarios, as I also believe it defeats the point of Darkseid).
I just can’t see Darkseid in this role of being “The Father of Evil” because he’s not the father of evil. He wants to stamp out evil. That’s like having Doom making a deal with demons, when he has an ungodly amount of backstory that would make him not do so… or having Doom bow down or acknowledge that he has a ‘Master(s)’.
Grant is an extremely imaginative man, one of the few I believed might have been able to do justice to Kirby’s work… but he completely missed the bullseye here.
See, this is why I can’t debate DC with Ryan – Mathan! Come get in on this, Mr. DCU guy! LOL
I never even thought of it this way, because I must admit that I don’t even know the saga of the New Gods that well – although that sure sounds exactly like the kind of story Kirby would tell. And that’s exactly right about the chaotic nature of creativity…it just hits you. I could sit at my laptop every night from 11pm – 2am like clockwork…but that creative force will strike on Thursday; but that doesn’t guarantee a return visit on Friday. It isn’t up to me/i> whether or not I manage to write anything.
All the same, I still find myself enjoying FINAL CRISIS – makes me feel like the Commoner from RASHOMON: “I don’t mind, so long as it’s an entertaining story!”
And really, if I were Doom I’d much rather people recognize my Doctorate.
[...] Remember back in January when the news first broke that Spider-Man was being re-singled in the newspaper strip that I was stunned to learn was still in print in the first place? Well, looks like that experiment is over – Stan Lee decided to “bow to your letters” and reset Peter Parker and Mary Jane’s marriage! As much as I’d like to believe that people wrote to the strip in protest of this move, I’m gonna assume that Stan Lee woke up from a nap and remembered, “hey – I created these two!” But thank Stan for small favors all the same. I’d also like to believe that Marvel was paying attention to what happened here, but I’m guessing there’s only the slimmest of hopes that this move will have the same effect on Joe Quesada that it did on Jim Shooter twenty years ago. Ah well – the average Marvel editor-in-chief lasts about ten years, so at least there’s that to consider. *Checking watch* and wouldja look at that… [...]