EXCLUSIVE PREVIEWOn his best day, Peter Milligan can go round for round with Bob Dylan. And on his very best day, Milligan might even come out ahead.
“Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”
—Albert Einstein
If Albert Einstein were alive in today’s world and an avid reader of comicbooks—he may have very well been if it weren’t for the Manhattan Project devouring nearly all of his downtime—there is no doubt in my mind that he would have made an addendum to that statement, being sure to include Marvel’s propensity for releasing a new company-wide crossover event that kicks off in the spring of every new year since 2005.
Back When the waning Bronze Age was close to ushering in the arrival of this generation’s Modern Age of Comics, Marvel had released its first crossover in the form of 1982’s Contest of Champions, only to be followed—albeit sporadically—by the likes of Secret Wars (a promotional vehicle for the titular line of action figures) and The Infinity Gauntlet among others. Due to the infrequency of their respective releases, the concept of an eclectic who’s who of the Marvel Universe uniting against a common foe was novel and a real treat for readers, with the Marvel of today vying to capitalize on this nostalgic sense of fan fervor being a forgone conclusion. Though there are some detracting purists that aren’t coy to say otherwise, House of M and Civil War were momentous as the underlying circumstances behind the crossovers gave them plausible reasons for occurring and weren’t done for the sake of doing so. Additionally, they injected the then languid status quo with a sorely needed redefinition that reverberates even today.
“If I have to have a past, then I prefer it to be multiple choice.”
—Alan Moore The Killing Joke
“Because even when they aren’t talking about me, they are.”
—Neil Gaiman Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?
In the last three of “To Be Continued…” we have explored many chapters of The Batman’s history and many versions of the Dark Knight Detective from the dark, gunslinging vigilante to the campy pop-art experiment to the brilliant, but emotional crusader with the chilling smile to the grotesque gargoyle of the future. If DC has taught us anything with Zero Hour, “The New 52” and any series with the word “Crisis” in the title, it’s that the “real” version of Batman depends greatly on the zeitgeist and who happens to be writing him at the time.
“I love beauty. I don’t care about pretty.”
—Frank Miller on drawing comicbooks
Previously on To Be Continued… we discussed the full circle of Batman, starting with his debut in 1939 as a violent vigilante with no qualms about killing the bad guys (he was featured with a gun holster on the cover of 1939’s Detective Comics #33). It was not artist Bob Kane or writer Bill Finger who lightened Batman’s violent side or instilled the character with his now-trademark hatred of guns, but editor Whitney Ellsworth who mandated the change. The character devolved from the still very dark Dark Knight (now with a Doctor Watson to explain things to in his sidekick Robin) to a campy parody of himself, no longer inhabiting a bleak and menacing Gotham City, but a bright and colorful world at large. This culminated in the farcical TV show Batman (1966) and its feature film spinoff, but when Batmania wound down, DC Comics was free to re-darken the Detective.
The 1970s were a time of artistic experimentation. Bands like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin broke new ground in music and films The Godfather and Star Wars revamped old movie genres into critical and commercial successes. Comics were no exception to this innovation, especially at DC Comics where the cultural shifts were written all over every page. Wonder Woman had a wardrobe and attitude change, Superman munched on Kryptonite (while Clark Kent left the Daily Planet for a job on the TV news) and Green Lantern and Green Arrow addressed issues such as racism and drug addiction.
EXCLUSIVE PREVIEWI guess this is what it looks like when the wheel’s still in spin. Like pieces moving. Maybe one of the smoothest kinds of perpetual fictions were those tales of a certain group of mutants from the ‘90s. By the ‘90s, that team had grown so diverse that the form of storytelling was necessarily predicated on the micro-episodic. The story of each issue became the story of how each sub-group wove its way to its individual objective. Not at all unlike the storytelling in the now-mythic Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.
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