The Forever People meet Bat-Cow

Nah-nah nah-nah nah-nah nah-nah… Bat-Cow!  Bif!  Bam!  Pow!  Moo?!?

Infinity Man and the Forever People #4 sees the team of Keith Giffen & Scott Koblish once again on art duties. No offense to all of the fill-in artists, but a little stability is certainly appreciated.  Giffen, with co-writer Dan DiDio, picks up right where the previous issue ended (not counting last month’s Futures End detour) with the Forever People’s Boom Tube going, um, boom.  The quintet from New Genesis fall just a bit short of their home base of Venice Beach, crashing into a Wayne Enterprises dairy & agriculture center in Ventura CA.  It is there that they encounter this issue’s extra special guest star, from the pages of Batman Incorporated, the one and only Bat-Cow.

I like how Giffen & DiDio script the Forever People. On the one hand, they are New Gods, deities from an ultra-advanced alien civilization.  On the other, they are newcomers to Earth with little knowledge of the planet’s cultures.  Thus they are depicted as possessing a distinctive blend of sophistication and naiveté.  That certainly lends itself to comedy, such as Big Bear & Serafina asking Bat-Cow for advice.

There is a quality to Keith Giffen’s writing that I have often observed. His stories either are bizarrely farcical and ultra-comedic, or they are extremely dark and intensely somber.  Well, there is also the third option, where Giffen chooses to work with both extremes simultaneously.  That is clearly the case with Infinity Man and the Forever People.

So throughout issue #4 there are several allusions to the war Highfather and New Genesis have launched against the Lantern Corps in the current “Godhead” crossover, the quarrel between Infinity Man and Himon, and a dark winged woman stalking Mark Moonrider. Yet you also have Bat-Cow, and the Forever People being forced to take public transportation home, and Serafina’s encounter with the off-kilter Doctor Skuba, who proudly declares “While I am a pool cleaner by profession, I earned my doctorate in the hydrological sciences.”

It appears Giffen & DiDio have a definite destination in mind for this series, as hinted at in the Futures End special, with artwork by Philip Tan & Jason Paz. Half a decade in the future Beautiful Dreamer references such occurrences as “Lord Aagog’s assault on Earth, and Himon’s planetary quarantine.”  We also get a glimpse of Infinity Man in battle with OMAC.  I was wondering if these were events that Giffen & DiDio would actually be building up to once the series returned to the present.  Considering the “Femme Fatale” who was spying on Mark Moonrider is apparently an agent of the aforementioned Lord Aagog, yes, it appears so.

I appreciate the fact that Giffen & DiDio have long-term plans, but that they are also leaving room for some humorous asides and oddball tangents. I wonder if they could manage to fit in an appearance by Giffen’s irreverent creation Ambush Bug.

The covers for both issue #4 and Futures End are illustrated by Howard Porter. His style has changed since his days on JLA.  Porter unfortunately suffered a severe hand injury several years ago and had to re-train himself to draw.  While I do find his current work a bit sketchy compared to his older art, he is still very good.  And I am certainly happy that he was eventually able to resume his career as a professional artist.  His two contributions to this series are well done.  The Futures End piece is moody and ominous, while the cover for #4 is quite humorous.  It appears that Porter is going to be the regular cover artist for this book going forward. I’ve seen images of a couple of his upcoming covers posted online, and they look good.

Anyway, it’s nice to find a New 52 series from DC Comics that doesn’t take itself so damn seriously. After all, it’s certainly possible to tell dramatic, emotionally riveting stories that are also fun.  Hopefully Infinity Man and the Forever People is finding an audience, because I’d like to see this series continue on.  It has quite a bit of potential.

The return of the Forever People

I was a bit surprised when DC Comics announced that one of their latest New 52 titles would be Infinity Man and the Forever People, a revival / revamp of the characters created by Jack Kirby.  Although I think the Forever People are cool, I will be the first to admit that they are probably among the lesser-known “Fourth World” characters devised by Kirby.  After their initial eleven issue run in the early 1970s, they were not seen again until a six issue miniseries published in 1988.  Subsequently they have not been featured in any other starring roles, only making guest appearances here and there.

However it is not entirely unexpected for the Forever People to receive a revival.  It is true that DC has actually attempted to launch a number of offbeat and experimental titles in the last three years.  The problem faced by many of those fringe books has been that DC put them out there with little in the way of promotion.  Most of them ended up falling below the radar, drowning in a sea of Batman related titles.  Based on that pattern, I honestly did not know how long Infinity Man and the Forever People would last.  But I figured I had might as well give the book a try while it was here.  After all, I am a fan of the characters, as witnessed by the Beautiful Dreamer tattoo on my left leg.

Co-writing Infinity Man and the Forever People are Dan DiDio & Keith Giffen.  They’ve made revisions to the original set-up by Kirby, altering some of the characters.  I generally am not too keen on that, and was underwhelmed by the New 52 re-conception of both Darkseid and Highfather’s origins in Justice League #23.1 last year.  That said, I have to acknowledge that the Forever People were never developed in too much detail by Kirby during their all-too-short original series, and their sporadic appearances since then has left them somewhat blank slates.  So it is not as if DiDio & Giffen are upending decades of storylines & characterizations.

Mark Moonrider and Beautiful Dreamer so far appear to be pretty close to their original incarnations.  Vykin the Black has been renamed Vykin Baldaur and made into a more cynical figure (as much as I love Kirby, I really thought it was unfortunate that the only two non-Caucasian members of the Fourth World mythos were named Vykin the Black and the Black Racer).  Serifan has been given a change in gender & ethnicity, becoming Serafina, the younger sister of Vykin.  Big Bear is now the oldest member of the Forever People, as well as secretly from Apokolips, apparently having been given elements of Orion’s backstory.

Mark, Dreamer and Serafina are shown to be students on New Genesis who are about to embark on a study abroad type of assignment on the planet Earth, but they are unable to activate their Mother Box.  Vykin, who dislikes Mark and doesn’t want his sister going off-world with him, arrives to object, only to find that he is the only one Mother Box will respond to.  Reluctantly he accompanies the other three to Earth.  They are greeted by Big Bear, who has been on Earth for some time, working with human scientists in an attempt to advance the planet’s technology and bring about greater prosperity.

DiDio & Giffen appear to be focusing on the “rebellious youth” aspect of the Forever People.  Back in 1970, when he devised the characters, Kirby was inspired by the hippy / flower children counterculture.  Truthfully I do not know how much of that came through in his stories, though.  After their devastating cosmic war with Apokolips, the people of New Genesis mostly turned their backs on conflict, and the planet became close to a spiritual paradise.  Because of this, I never really understood precisely what the Forever People were rebelling against.  They merely seemed to be more impulsive and hotheaded, rushing off to Earth to fight the forces of Darkseid.

In contrast, in the New 52 (both in this title and in the pages of Wonder Woman by Azzarello & Chiang) it is shown that New Genesis is a highly organized, regimented society.  Highfather is now a more militant figure, closer to his Izaya the Inheritor days from the Kirby continuity.  The Forever People generally, and Mark Moonrider in particular, are rebelling against their world’s “control.”

When the Infinity Man finally makes himself known to the Forever People, he positions himself as an agent of chaos.  “The universe relies on chaos. It needs to expand, to grow, to learn. There is a corruption, a corruption brought on by a need for order that prevents the natural course of non-prescribed evolution. Both New Genesis and Apokolips are guilty of imposing their forms of order on the universe. This must stop. That is why I chose you.”

One can discern a state of affairs set up by DiDio & Giffen inspired by Cold War geopolitics.  Apokolips, with Darkseid at its helm, is a force of totalitarian order akin to the Soviet Union.  It brutally oppresses its citizens, forcing blind obedience & uniformity from them, and it seeks to expand its empire via conquest.  New Genesis is cast in the role of the United States, ostensibly working to preserve freedom & democracy.  But in the name of preserving its security and opposing Darkseid’s machinations, New Genesis interferes in the affairs of lesser worlds, resulting in unfortunate side effects for those planets and their inhabitants.  And while not an identity-crushing police state like Apokolips, the government of New Genesis encourages conformity and obedience lest individuality and the questioning of authority weaken the planet’s strength & resolve.

While I am a bit hesitant to embrace a version of New Genesis that appears to have such common ground with Apokolips, I have to acknowledge that this actually provides the Forever People a very clear-cut political system to rebel against, an ideology to oppose.  They are rejecting both Highfather and Darkseid’s paths.  They are seeking the freedom to guide their own destinies, and to enable other beings to do the same thing.

In addition to co-writing Infinity Man and the Forever People, Giffen is also penciling the series, paired with the talented Scott Koblish on inking.  I very much enjoyed their work on the first issue.  Giffen has often had a rather Kirby-esque element to his art, and that very much suits this series.  This especially comes into play in a scene where Big Bear reveals his technology and explains “Kirby is my communal reconstruction bio engine. He’s responsible for building and maintaining this environment. Without him, none of this would be possible.”  That was a nice tip of the hat to the King of Comics.

Regrettably Giffen involvement in DC’s big Futures End crossover prevented him from penciling the next two issues of Infinity Man and the Forever People.  So, yep, we already have fill-in art teams on this book.  I hope that does not kill any sales momentum or reader interest.  At least the guest artists were mostly good.

On issue #2, the art is courtesy of penciler Tom Grummett and inker Scott Hanna.  I’m certainly a fan of both gentlemen.  Grummett has always been good at rendering Kirby’s characters, including the New Gods.  For instance, Grummett penciled an appearance by the Forever People in the pages of Adventures of Superman about twenty or so years ago.  I enjoyed seeing him now having an opportunity to depict the New 52 versions of the characters.  Offhand I don’t recall if Hanna has ever inked Grummett before.  They definitely go together very well here, creating some lovely art.  I was especially taken by their rendition of Beautiful Dreamer.

Everyone’s favorite cosmic comic book creator Jim Starlin is the guest penciler on Infinity Man and the Forever People #3.  He is paired with inker Rob Hunter.  Truthfully, I was not especially fond of their collaboration.  Hunter’s inking is in the vein of the house style of Top Cow, with flourishes reminiscent of Silvestri and Turner.  I did not feel this fit Starlin’s penciling.   I would rather have seen him inking himself, or by longtime inking partner Al Milgrom, who always does a good job finishing Starlin’s pencils.

That said, the sequence towards the end of the issue, when Dreamer is inside her subconscious, conversing with Anti-Life, is very well done.  Perhaps for this surreal tableau Hunter’s inks were somewhat better suited, as they give Starlin’s nightmarish imagery an extra punch.  (It appears that DiDio & Giffen are drawing inspiration from the long-ago declaration by Kirby in the pages of Forever People #1 that Dreamer “is one of the few whose mind can fathom the Anti-Life Equation.”)

Nice coloring work on these issues by the gang at Hi-Fi.  I’ve always found it to be a good sign when that name pops up in the credits.  They are definitely one of the better groups of computer colorists in the biz.

On the whole I did enjoy the first three issues of Infinity Man and the Forever People.  DiDio & Giffen did a good job introducing the characters and establishing the premise.  I just wish that the comics were a little bit longer.  Twenty pages just did not seem like sufficient space.  The book really needs an extra two or three pages to enable the story to breath a bit.

I am very interested in seeing what happens with the Forever People next.  I know that this month’s installment is a special crossover with the aforementioned Futures End storyline.  And then there are going to be a couple of issues tying in with the “Godhead” storyline running through the various Green Lantern titles.  Perhaps that will inspire some GL fans to check out this series.  Oh, yes, from the pages of Batman Incorporated, there’s going to be an appearance by Bat-Cow!  That sounds like just the sort of delightfully offbeat, bizarre humor the Giffen specializes in, and I’m looking forward to it.

My thoughts on the whole “Before Watchmen” controversy

If you are a comic book fan, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last several months, you’ve undoubtedly heard all about DC Comics’ plans to publish Before Watchmen, a series of prequels to the critically acclaimed best-selling graphic novel Watchmen by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons.  Reaction to this announcement, both among readers and comic book creators, has generally fallen into two camps: it’s either a really brilliant idea, or it’s an absolutely terrible decision.

Some facts that need to be established: back when Moore & Gibbons first created the original Watchmen in 1986, they signed a contract with DC stating that the rights to the series would revert to them one year after it went out of print.  Moore & Gibbons signed this back before trade paperback collections were at all common, and on those rare occasions when a collected edition would be assembled, it might stay in print for a year or two at most.  But the Watchmen TPB proved to be an enormous bestseller, so much so that DC kept reprinting it over and over.  They had a major incentive to keep it in print, because it kept generating sales.  And they undoubtedly saw this as a loophole to hold on to the rights of the series.  Legally that decision was probably in the right, but a great many, Alan Moore among them, felt very strongly that DC was violating the ethical foundation of the agreement.  It was one of several decisions by DC that would lead Moore to vow to never again work for the company.

Watchmen trade paperback, by Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

Fast forward to 2012.  The Watchmen trade paperback is still in print, and has sold even more copies in the wake of the film adaptation.  DC has decided to begin exploiting the property with new material produced by different creators.  Now, you may ask “Why?”  The answer is very simple: money.  Despite all the hornet nests that DC knew they would be kicking over with this decision, they realized that Before Watchmen would bring in huge profits.

I think a major reason why DC made this decision is that they realize that they have hit a wall when it comes to generating new intellectual properties.  The main reason for this is that they have burned so many bridges, not just with Moore, but with innumerable creators, going as far back as Superman’s creators Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster.  DC, like Marvel Comics, has exploited creators for so long that really no one in their right mind wants to give them the next big idea, only to see all of the financial rewards & creative control be torn away from them.  Nowadays, given the opportunity, I think most creators would rather go to Image, Dark Horse, IDW, or one of the other smaller companies, somewhere where they probably won’t make very much money, but at least they will retain ownership of their creations.

In this atmosphere, DC has but one choice: continually strip-mine their existing library of characters.  They’ve rebooted their entire universe yet again with the recent New 52 event.  And now they’ve finally decided to risk revisiting the characters from Watchmen.

Putting aside the ethical issues, from a creative standpoint, I really wonder if this is going to produce any books that are truly memorable or noteworthy.  The original Watchmen was a self-contained story that told you everything you needed to know about the characters.  Returning to the Watchmen universe would be like filming a prequel to a classic film such as Casablanca or Citizen Kane (both of which, coincidentally, are owned by DC’s parent company Warner Bros).  Sure, if you really wanted to, you could do a story about how Rick Blaine and Ilsa Lund met and fell in love, and how Ilsa found out her husband Victor Laszlo was still alive.  Likewise, you could write a close-up look at Charles Foster Kane’s early years, his friendship with Jed Leland, and how his various relationships with women over the years fell apart.  But what would be the point?

Does anybody really want to see a Before Casablanca prequel?

So, by that measure, what do we really need to find out about the early years of Adrian Veidt, the Comedian, Doctor Manhattan, and all the rest of the cast of Watchmen?  As I said, everything vital to understanding the characters, all of the significant developments, are already right there in the original book by Moore & Gibbons.

The term “graphic novel” gets bandied about a lot in the comic book biz.  But, in the case of Watchmen, it is just that: a novel, a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end.  It does not require anything else, any more than, to run with Alan Moore’s own example, Moby Dick needs a prequel to recount Captain Ahab’s first encounter with the infamous White Whale.

In a number of venues DC co-publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee have been promoting the hell out of the Before Watchmen project.  Lee has stated “I guarantee you that every single one of these creators that’s working on these books, think they can outdo — match or outdo — what was done in the original.”  Oh, dear.  That sounds like hubris.  It almost seems like they are setting themselves up to fail.  But, again, I’m sure as long as the books sell like hotcakes, the actual quality is secondary.  More troubling was Lee’s attitude towards Moore’s extreme displeasure over DC’s decisions.  Lee took the company line that Moore “signed an agreement.”  Odd words from one of the founders of Image Comics, which was established in response to creators being exploited by unfair contracts.  Yes, I realize Lee departed from Image years ago and is now in an important executive position at DC, so I’m not especially surprised.  But I cannot help but feel a bit disappointed in his stance.

A number of talented creators are working on Before Watchmen, among them Joe Kubert, Len Wein, Jae Lee, Darwyn Cooke, J.G. Jones, J. Michael Straczynski, Amanda Conner, and Adam Hughes.  I do not want to judge their motives, but I am going to assume that they are being well compensated for their efforts.  I really do not blame them for coming onboard this project.  The life of a freelance comic book creator is a very difficult one.  Often you do not know when or where your next paycheck is going to come from.  So I can understand them taking advantage of this opportunity.

Really, the fault lies with DC.  What I would like to see from them as a company is to offer these creators the same sort of money to develop brand-new characters and series, to give them an additional incentive to work on those original ideas by giving them a financial stake, and then promote these new titles with the same rabid enthusiasm with which they are pushing Before Watchmen.

In the end, Before Watchmen is just a temporary solution to increasing sales.  DC needs to re-examine its whole economic model (and so does Marvel, while I’m at it).  They need to stop thinking in terms of short-term sales spikes, and adopt policies that will not alienate creators like Alan Moore.  Imagine if DC had done right by Moore.  He might have gone on to create innumerable best-selling series for them over the past quarter century.  But they treated him as a disposable commodity, and now he wants absolutely nothing to do with them.

Watchmen tattoo

Watchmen is one of my all-time favorite graphic novels.  It is an intelligent, thought-provoking work of immense magnitude.  I like it so much, I even have a tattoo of the iconic Watchmen smiley face (yeah, I’m crazy like that).  Moore & Gibbons did absolutely brilliant work when they created Watchmen.  That is why I am so disappointed to see DC looking to exploit the property.  I feel that it devalues the original, and it is an insult to the creators who put so much of themselves into it.

At this point in time, I have zero interest in reading any of the Before Watchmen prequel series.  There is just nothing there for me.  If others choose to buy those books, so be it.  That’s their choice.  But for myself, I am just going to ignore the spin-offs, and stick with the original by Moore & Gibbons.