Thursday, January 31, 2013

Statue 3: Supergirl statue (Movie version)

The movie version of Supergirl's costume is generally considered the "classic" one, and DC Direct has put out a very nice statue of this Supergirl version.  I'm not sure whether it was intended to be modeled after Helen Slater (the actress who played Supergirl in the movie), or after the Matrix version of Supergirl (as drawn by either Gary Frank or Leonard Kirk, the two main artists of her 80-issue series in the late 90s/early 2000s).  It's difficult to differentiate these two Supergirls because the costume and look is basically the same.

Unlike the last two collectibles I have reviewed, this Supergirl was apparently made in a limited run of only 5,000 copies.  As a result, this statue has a "run number" on it, which is taped to the bottom of the original packaging, and also listed on the bottom of the statue's base.  For example, mine is number 2,887 out of 5,000 produced.  I'm honestly not sure what that means, and I suspect it is probably meaningless, unless perhaps you have the very first or last one of the series.

This Supergirl statue is by far the most expensive of the three collectibles I currently own, weighing in at $99.  I paid that price at the comic-book shop, because it was just as expensive online (and was even slightly more expensive on Amazon).  The statue is part of the "Cover Girls of the DC Universe" line.  All the statues of this series are similar in size and quality, as far as I can tell (from looking at them behind glass in the comic shop).  I will probably pick up several more like this in the future (the Black Canary one, for instance, is utterly magnificent).  The Supergirl statue comes in a large, sturdy box with photographs of the model and descriptions printed on each side.

The Supergirl statue, boxed, surrounded by reading material.
Once I opened the box, one surprise that confronted me immediately was that the base and the statue are separate.  There is a large pin underneath Supergirl's left foot that needs to be inserted into the base to assemble the model.  The assembly was not difficult, although it would have been nice, given that there were four different ways to insert the pin, if the manufacturer had provided some instruction as to the proper orientation for the model.  Additionally, because only the single pin, which is perhaps half an inch long and not very thick, holds the model in place, Supergirl is a little "wobbly" on her base.  This is not really a problem for a statue that just sits in place, but I would have preferred a sturdier fit.  If it weren't for the fact that the assembled model would not fit back into the box, I would be inclined to get out the Elmer's and glue her down.  (And to tell the truth I might just do it anyway.)



That said, the model is extremely beautiful.  They crafted Supergirl's body in a very heroic pose, meant to depict her crashing up through the pavement (perhaps from below the street, after fighting a supervillain).  She has burst through the ground and is flying upward, with one fist pointed ahead to the sky, and the other curled back by her torso.  This is a classic pose one can see frequently in any comic-book starring flying characters, and Supergirl looks great doing it.  They also did a good job molding the details to her body, such as the skirt, the cape, and the "S" shield.  Each of these looks like fabric, rather than porcelain, and they all "pull" slightly in very natural directions.


Overall, I am pleased with this statue.  It is over 11" tall once you place it onto the base, so it is quite large. The detailing is exquisite, and it looks fantastic.  I absolutely love the pose - she looks powerful and super.  And her face is the most beautiful of the three Supergirl statues I currently own.  This statue really looks like Supergirl.  The only negative is the slightly wobbly nature of the connection to the base. Again, since I won't be moving it around too much once I get my house (I plan to put her behind glass in a nice curio, surrounded, as in these pictures, by "biographical material"), this isn't a huge problem. But I would have liked it better if they had made the fit into the base a little more snugly.  This is a minor issue, so overall I still rate this statue a 9/10.  It's something I will keep for many years.

Finally, now that I have two high-quality statues, new and old Supergirl, I thought I would present them both here for comparison, so you can see the size and scale of each. I have each girl flanked by her, erm, "biographical periodicals."

Supergirls old and new. Classic (left) and New 52 (right).
Personally, I like the larger statue's look better. Not only is it her entire body instead of just from the hips up, but I also prefer Supergirl with the more classic, and frankly more demure, look of the skirt.  I also like the shape of the "S" shield better on this one.  However, I prefer that the New 52 Supergirl's bust and base are all of the same piece.

To wrap up, the "Cover Girls of the DC Universe" Supergirl statue is an outstanding sculpture, and is well worth it if you like Supergirl and like collecting statues and action figures.

Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Digital or Paper? What’s the best way to read comics?

When comic-books first started being published, they were produced on cheap, pulpy paper -- the same type of material used by newspaper companies.  In those days, it never occurred to anyone that comic-books would become a collector's item.  They were, like newspapers, something most people read once and tossed aside, usually making it into the trash or the stack of newspapers destined to be recycled. Therefore, companies continued, for many years, to print comics using the cheapest methods available.  Comic-books were mass produced, delivered in large volumes to news-stands, just the way newspapers were, and unsold books were returned to the distributor for destruction (a fact that has made many modern comic-book collectors weep whenever they think about it).  As time went by, and the cost of printing and distributing comic-books slowly increased, the price of comics went up. What started out costing 5 cents rose to 10 cents, then 20 cents, and beyond.  By the mid-70s, comics cost 35 cents.  By the early 80s they were 60 cents, then 75 cents, and by the early 1990s they were $1.00.

As the price increased past 60 cents, however, other things changed about comic-books.  The more expensive books were printed on higher-quality paper, which held colors better and lasted longer.  By now, comic-book companies and readers alike realized that these products were collectibles, and comics were no longer treated as throw-away items.  At the same time as better materials were being introduced, the comic-book companies shifted distribution methods to direct sales, eliminating the middle-man and selling their product directly through specialized "comic shops."  Gradually, comic-books became a high-quality specialty item.

Over the years, the quality of paper and the color fidelity of the printing process have increased, and along with those things, so has the price.  Today, a new comic-book costs $3.99 generally (though some are still offered at the lower $2.99 rate), four times what they cost in 1990, and 80 times what they cost originally. But along the way, something different and interesting began to happen:  comics started going digital.

For the last several years, major publishers have been offering most of their titles in two formats - the standard print format, and the digital format.  Digital comics are offered for sale directly from the company's website, and read using their app, or they can be purchased from a third-party vendor who offers products from many companies.  Probably the highest-volume third-party vendor is +comiXology , which offers comic-books for sale the same day as print availability for all the major companies, including +DC Comics , +Marvel Entertainment , Image, Valiant, Dynamite, IDW, and others.  Comic-books can be read through a web browser, or can be viewed using ComiXology's app on both Android and iOS systems.

There are many differences between print and digital comic-books, and like many people, I have vacillated back and forth between which one I prefer.  Each format offers both advantages and disadvantages.  So which one is right for you?  Below, I will discuss the different aspects of comic-book collecting and which format I think has the advantage in each category..


  • Space - Probably the largest advantage of digital comic-books is space:  electronic space is easy to come by; you never run out of it; and it takes up essentially no physical space in your house, apartment, or condominium. For those of us pressed for space, or even people with space who hate the idea of having stacks of ugly comic-book boxes in their house digital comics offer the ability to store hundreds or thousands of comic-books in a space no bigger than your Nexus 7 (or your laptop, or desktop computer, etc).  Winner: Digital.  (Score: Digital 1, Print 0)
  • Print quality/fidelity - With the ultra-high-resolution graphics available on most of today's tablet PCs, smartphones, and computers, the image quality can be extremely high, and is usually equal to or in some cases even superior to print resolution.  Misprints, smudges, color-bleed-through, and other errors that can occur on the printed page do not exist in a digital comic-book.  At this point, if you want to see the image exactly as the creators intended it to look, digital is your best bet.  Winner: Digital. (Score: Digital 2, Print 0).
  • Condition - Another great thing about digital comics is that they will forever be in mint condition. There is no fading, degrading, folding, tearing, bending, loosening of staples, or other damage possible to a digital book.  You can read a digital comic 1,000 times and it will still be in the same pristine condition as the first time you read it.  The same simply cannot be said for a physical comic-book.  Winner: Digital (Score: Digital 3, Print 0).
  • Single-panel reading - At some point or other, every comic-book fan has had the suspense ruined by turning a page and seeing something a few panels ahead that simply stands out too much not to notice it.  The eye can take in panels "out of order" on a printed page.  Reading apps for digital comic-books can be set to only show you one panel at a time. This allows you to zoom into the individual panel, magnifying it even past how large the printed size would have been (for small panels), and prevents you from accidentally seeing "spoilers."  Winner: Digital. (Score: Digital 4, Print 0).
  • Gap-free runs - Most comic-book collectors try to get "runs" of comic-books -- long sequences of consecutively numbered issues (for example, I have a run of 45 straight Thor issues from #337 - #382).  When you are collecting digital comic-books, it is not possible to miss any issues. You can buy them any time, and download them immediately.  Twenty issues behind on Detective Comics? No problem, just go to the Detective Comics series page and buy the missing ones.  With digital comics, you won't have any gaps in your runs.  With print comics, having long, gap-free runs becomes more difficult the longer the run lasts.  Winner: Digital. (Score: Digital 5, Print 0).
  • Sense of accomplishment - On the other hand, although the OCD in me likes having gap-free runs, I have to admit that the sense of accomplishment one gets from having physically located and purchased every single Thor from #337-#382, or every single one of the New 52 Supergirl issues does not exist in the digital format.  There's no challenge to collecting a comic-book digitally.  There is a certain "thrill of the hunt" feel to searching through racks of back-issues to find that last, missing copy that completes your run. For example, when I started physically collecting the new Supergirl, it was on issue #15.  My comic-book shop had most of the back-issues, but they did not have #7 or #14.  I was able to order #14 online, but not #7 (at the time).  I then went to three other comic-book shops nearby, and finally, after a month of searching, I found one last remaining copy of #7 at the last shop I visited.  It was like finding buried treasure, in a way.  That sense of accomplishment simply does not exist for digital comics. Want it? Download it. And I like the sense of accomplishment. Winner: Print. (Score: Digital 5, Print 1).
  • Lack of digital oldies - Although the comic-companies are slowly uploading digital versions of older titles (and +Marvel Entertainment is doing a much better job of this than DC), the fact remains that many older titles simply do not exist in digital format yet.  If you want to read The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl, for example (from 1982), you will not find it online.  And although many X-men issues have been uploaded, at the time of this writing, #70-#100 are all missing, as are many in the 100s, 200s, and 300s.  So if you are interested in older stories, many can only be found in print format (either original issues or, in some cases, reprinted as trade paperbacks or bound collections).  The fact remains that 100% of all published comics can at least theoretically be found in print (though of course, not always easily), whereas only a tiny percentage of the older books (and by "older," I mean anything more than about eight years old) have yet been digitized. Winner: Print (Score: Digital 5, Print 2).
  • Sense of layout - Although you can (and I do) set your comic-reading app to show you the entire page before going on to the next one, one of the disadvantages of single-panel reading is that it obstructs the sense of how an artist lays out the entire page, or the two facing pages, that you are reading.  Today's artists often do some very clever and innovative things with the panel layout to help the story along, but these are hard to appreciate on a tablet or even the computer screen.  One can avoid the single-panel reading method, but that loses one of the big advantages of the digital format.  Thus, the printed page still gives the best sense of the layout.  Winner: Print (Score: Digital 5, Print 3).
  • Splash pages - Splash pages (when the whole page is one panel) and double-splash pages (when two facing pages are combined to make a single panel) are impossible to appreciate fully on a tablet or a smartphone, and even on a computer screen are hard to truly appreciate.  Similar to getting a sense of the layout, it's much easier to appreciate a full-page spread on the printed page. Winner: Print. (Score: Digital 5, Print 4).
  • Cost - Digital comics have absolutely no value.  They cannot be loaned, borrowed, traded, swapped, or sold.  You own them forever.  Therefore, there is never any chance of your comics increasing in price and being worth enough to sell.  On the other hand, digital back-issues never cost any more either. You want that first issue of Uncanny X-men from 1961? The physical copy will probably cost you $1,000 or maybe even more (depending on its condition).  The digital copy costs $1.99.  Conversely, if you had a print version of X-men #1 you could sell it in the future and make some money, whereas the digital version is effectively unalienable. Winner: Draw.  (Score: Digital 5, Print 4).
  • Sharing/Loaning/Borrowing - Once again, at this time digital comics cannot be traded, swapped, borrowed, or shared.  This is a huge disadvantage relative to print, perhaps one of the biggest (and is bad policy by the companies).  I became a Thor collector in the 1980s because my friend +Stuart Johnson loaned me his Walt Simonson Thor issues, and after reading a few, I became an enthusiast.  Over the next few years, I haunted comic-book conventions, comic shops, and mail-order catalogs until I finally bought all 45 back-issues.  If Stuart had not loaned me his comics, I never would have become a Thor fan, and both Marvel and the back-issue dealers would have lost the chance to make money on me.  My hope is that digital comics will one day go the way of the Nook app and allow people to "Lend me." But until they do, print comics win this category.  Winner: Print. (Score: Digital 5, Print 5).
  • Displaying the collection - One thing some folks do (for example, Sheldon on the TV show The Big Bang Theory) is display or "show off" the books in their collections of which they are most proud (or just the ones the like the most).  Admittedly not many people actually do this -- most of us just keep our comic-books in an out-of-the-way place, stored as compactly as possible.  But if you happen to want your comic-books out on display, only print comics can do that.  Digital comics can't be displayed in any way -- not really even online (there's no easy way to share your digital collection online for people to see it and browse it).  Winner: Print.  (Score: Digital 5, Print 6).


There are probably other aspects of reading and collecting comic-books that I haven't mentioned, but I think I will stop there.

Hopefully, my list makes one thing clear: the digital/paper question has no easy answer.  Each format wins about half the categories.  Print seems to have a slight edge, but I would argue that the edge is illusory, because at least one category, "displaying the collection," only applies to a handful of people. For example, I have it in the back of my head to one day make a large display of Supergirl comic-books and paraphernalia, but how many people have both the space and the desire to do so? I suspect that the "display" category applies to so few people that it is not worth a full "point" in favor of the print format.  Therefore, the two formats are essentially tied.  Neither is clearly superior to the other.

So what does that mean for me?  Well, for the moment, I am a hybrid collector.  The majority my current collecting is done digitally, with only three exceptions right now - Supergirl, Batgirl, and Justice League (and of those, JL may not stay "print-worthy" for long; I'm on the fence about it).  All the other current books I'm collecting are digital.  For back issues, I am getting digital versions of some (those that exist), but I have no choice but to obtain hard copies of the older Supergirl volumes (1, 2, and 4).  Supergirl volume 5 exists digitally, but also can be found in relatively inexpensive trade paperbacks, and since I am going to make a Supergirl display, I will probably get that series in print (though 51-67 do not exist as trades, so those may end up being electronic purchases).  Therefore, I see strengths and weaknesses of both formats, and until one is a clear winner, I will continue to collect comic-books both ways.

I hope, gentle reader, that you found this article informative and useful, if you are trying to make up your mind about digital vs. print format for your comic-books. Feel free to leave comments if you would like to add your thoughts on the matter.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

Why Walt Simonson's 1980s THOR run still shines today

In 1983, Marvel Comics hired writer/artist Walter Simonson to take the reins of The Mighty Thor, one of their oldest and most venerated titles.  Simonson began his work on issue #337, titled simply "Doom," bringing to the title a unique style of art and story-telling that would revolutionize the way comic collectors looked at Thor.  Simonson went on to pen 43 of the next 44 issues of Thor (taking only one month off after a very long story arc concluded), creating a body of work that I argue is unparalleled in the history of comic-book storytelling.  This 45 issue run, which lasted from Thor #337 through #382, has remained at the top of my list of comic-book series runs, and the full 45-issue sequence remains the pride and joy of my comic-book collection (and probably will remain so for the rest of my comic-collecting days).  In this article, I would like to explore why this run represents the pinnacle of sequential-art storytelling, and perhaps highlight some elements that are missing from more modern comics.

Returning Thor to his roots

Thor has always been a bit different from the rest of the Marvel superheroes in that his powers derive from mythology, rather than mutation or a "radiation accident."  Thor hails from Asgard, the mythological realm of the Norse gods, where he resides along with all the other Norse gods of legend - Loki, Odin, and all the rest.  However, over the years, authors of Thor varied dramatically in how much they played up, or played down, this link to mythology.  Prior to Simonson taking the reins, Thor had, for many years, been treated more-or-less as a normal superhero, with a regular "secret identity" (Donald Blake), and had generally encountered "mortal" challenges.  He fought regular super-villains such as the Absorbing Man, similar to those battled by The Hulk or the other Avengers, far more often than he battled mythological beasts.

Walt Simonson decided to change all that, and, beginning in Thor #337, he returned Thor to his mythological roots in dramatic fashion.  This "return to Thor's roots" began, somewhat strangely, with Thor being charged by his father, Odin, ruler of the Norse gods, to investigate an alien threat from across the galaxy.  Initially, no doubt most readers would not suspect that this story would lead into a multi-year romp through the Nine Worlds of ancient myth.  Indeed, at first, the story takes a very strange turn, as Thor encounters a horse-faced being called Beta-Ray Bill.  The two were nearly evenly matched in strength and fighting prowess, and fought to a standstill.  Then, in a surprise twist at the story's end that had readers talking for months afterwards, Beta-Ray Bill manages to grab hold of Thor's hammer, and, because he is worthy, obtains Thor's powers -- he becomes, essentially, "Beta-Ray Thor."


Simonson followed up this shocking turn of events by having Odin summon both Thor and Beta-Ray Bill to him.  Bill, it turned out, was protecting his people from an army of demons, and needs the power of that hammer to fend them off.  Thor, of course, wants his hammer back.  In Thor #338, Odin has Thor and Bill battle to the death, but again they stalemate.  Bill wakes up first, and drags Thor back to Odin's throne room, refusing to kill the noble warrior.  Bill is honorable, and is not willing to take the hammer from Thor after what is clearly a tied battle.  Odin solves the dilemma in Thor #339 by fashioning a second hammer, Stormbringer, with exactly the same powers as Thor's Mjolnir.  Beta-Ray Bill then leaves earth with the Norse goddess Sif, to protect his people.


The Surtur Saga

Throughout these stories, Simonson hinted at a larger tale being woven.  In each issue, the reader was given a glimpse of a "far off place" where a mysterious smith was slowly hammering out a giant greatsword, and a crowd of eager beings was watching.  "Doom!" echoed the hammer, with each blow.

Over the next several issues, the underlying story of this sword-forger slowly develops, as Thor begins to encounter more and more characters from Norse legend and the Nine Worlds, rather than earthly super-villains.  He encounters Fafnir the dragon, and is seduced by the goddess Lorelei, and meets an ancient Viking who longs for death.    Thor also battles Malekith, the Dark Elf, who unleashes the Great Hunt to find the Casket of Ancient Winters.  And, of course, Loki persistently tries to trip Thor up.

Eventually, however, we learn that the various one- and two-issue stories we've been reading about these mythological beings are all inter-related, as they are being unleashed by the greatest villain of them all -- Surtur, lord of the fire giants.  It is he who has been forging the greatsword "Twilight." According to the prophecies, when Surturu bathes his Twilight sword in the eternal flame of Asgard (a flame Odin had stolen from the fire giants in a past age), the Nine Worlds (i.e. the universe) will burn, and Ragnarok (the end of the world) will begin.

Simonson's "Surtur Saga," begun in Thor #337, reaches its climax in Thor #350-353.  So long, involved, and complex was this four-part story, called "Ragnarok and Roll," that Walt simply couldn't tell it all in the double-sized #350.  The Ragnarok stories guest-star many Marvel characters, including the Avengers and the Fantastic Four, and feature the return of Sif and Beta-Ray Bill to Thor's side. Together, Thor and the heroes battle Surtur's demons (the same ones who had threatened Beta-Ray Bill's people all the way back in Thor #337).  And finally, Thor, Odin, and even Loki combine to battle Surtur himself in the final show-down.  When Thor #353 concludes, Odin and Surtur fall into a great open chasm, which then closes above them.  The Nine Worlds are saved, but at the cost of Odin the All-father.


The Surtur Saga with which Simonson began his epic run of Thor stories, stands out as his greatest work, and perhaps the greatest storyline ever written in comic-books.  It lasted sixteen issues, slowly, gradually building bit by bit to a satisfying conclusion.  The aftermath of this story-line echoed down through the Thor comic for many issues following, as Thor first grieves, then searches for his missing father, and as the Asgardians go about selecting a new king.

Thor's adventures continue

For the next two years, Simonson continued to weave wonderful stories in the Thor comic.  Although Thor would often return to earth, he frequently met and battled enemies with their roots in Asgardian mythology. Additionally, Siimonson gave a great deal of "screen time" to the supporting characters of the Thor pantheon -- Balder the Brave (who eventually became king of Asgard), Loki, Lorelei, the Enchantress, Karnilla the Norn Queen, The Warriors Three (Volstagg, Hogun, and Fandral), and Volstagg's children (especially his feisty daughter Hildy).  It would have been easy for the human (if we can call Asgardians that) element to be lost among the mythological wars and battles being fought in each issue, but Simonson was careful to remember that comic-books are about characters, not about powers, and he ensured that those characters were always present.  Significantly, these wonderful "side characters" give Thor something important to fight for when he tangles with enemies like the Midgard Serpent.

After a while, Simonson clearly began to grow weary, and began running out of steam.  He called upon his friend and long-time comic-book artist Sal Buscema to take the reins as artist, while Simonson continued to write the stories.  The series hardly missed a step, as Buscema skilfully adjusted his own artistic style to be more like Simonson's.

The end of an epic run

As Simonson drew near the end of his run, he decided to give Thor a more classical look.  After a run-in with the goddess of the dead, Hela, Thor ended up with terrible facial scars, and brittle bones.  To cover up the scars, he grew a beard, and to protect himself, he donned a suit of armor. This gave Thor a look more in line with the Thor of ancient legend, which fit in quite well with the stories Simonson was crafting -- with the attempt to make Thor a comic-book more in line with mythology and fantasy than with the smash-em-up superheroing that went on in all the other titles.  The look received mixed reviews, with some fans liking it, and some fans hating it.


As Simonson's epic run on Thor approached its final conclusion, Uncle Walt (as readers used to call him) pulled one last, magnificent story out of the old myths.  In Thor #380, Walt had Thor clash with the Midgard Serpent.  Drawing from ancient Norse poetry and legend, Simonson and Buscema together crafted one of the great tales in the history of the Thor character, called "Mjolnir's Song." The titanic battle between Thor and the Midgard Serpent is depicted exclusively by splash pages -- each panel is the size of the entire page.  There are few dialog or word balloons. Instead, narration "boxes" written in psuedo-poetic verse describe the action, and the pictures tell most of the story.  When the tale ends, the Midgard Serpent is defeated, but Thor lies in a puddle, his bones having been turned to jelly by the curse of the death goddess.



Simonson's run was now about up, but he wouldn't be Walt Simonson if he didn't clean up the predicament in which he had left Thor. During the last two issues, Thor, whose mind still exists inside the gelatinous mass that was once his body, manages to control Odin's destroyer, and uses it to threaten Hela.  She finally relents, and undoes her curse, which allows Thor to once again be restored to his body.  With this final story, in Thor #382, Walt ended his run on Thor, and rode off into the sunset.


Reflections - Lessons learned from Simonson's Thor run

Walt Simonson wrote Thor for 45 issues, and drew the art for much of the run.  Almost single-handedly, with help from his friend Sal Buscema on the later issues, Walt transformed Thor from a generic superhero facing generic Marvel villains, into a mythological figure worthy of the name "Thor."  Along the way, he also transformed the Thor comic into what can almost be described as a "high fantasy" setting.  We don't just follow the exploits of Thor the thunder-god in this series. We follow the story of Balder the Brave, and of Hildy, and of Volstagg and the Warriors Three.  Simonson breathes life into Asgard, making it feel like a real place -- and significantly, a place that would fit on a shelf right along with Tolkien's Middle-Earth or Donaldson's Land.

But what made Simonson's Thor run first-rate wasn't the fantasy setting, or the return to Thor's roots (although those certainly didn't hurt).  What made his Thor run so fantastic was Simonson's strong and perpetual focus on character.  Walt Simonson understood that the most important aspect of any story is the characters. He know that to propel the story forward, and to propel the reader with it, he had to give us someone to root for.  And Simonson wisely did not limit himself to Thor, but included a whole pantheon of characters that were fleshed out, interesting, and developed.  Throughout Simonson's Thor run, we see Balder the Brave change from an overweight, out-of-shape has-been who wants to die, into a once-again great warrior who becomes so capable and honorable that he is entrusted with the throne of Asgard after Odin's demise.  We watch Gunnhild (Hildy), daughter of Volstagg, protect the queen from trolls and give her older brothers bloody noses when they dare make fun of her.  We cheer on the budding romance between Sif and Beta-Ray Bill, and we laugh nastily at Lorelei and Loki when they have their spells turned back against them in the end.

What Walt Simonson so clearly understood, then, and what made his run so fantastic, was character.  Too often in comic-books today, the writers, and especially editors and marketing "experts," forget how important character really is.  They seem to think that a superhero is just a collection of powers and a costume.  To these people, "anyone" can be Batman as long as he wears the cowl, has gadgets, and calls himself "Batman" -- it doesn't have to be Bruce Wayne.  Simonson, however, knew differently.  And really, doesn't everyone, if you stop to think about it?  You can't separate Bruce Wayne from Batman, any more than you can separate Anakin Skywalker from Darth Vader.  But the fact that comic-book companies keep trying (for a recent example see Amazing Spider-Man #700 and following issues of the new series) shows that they don't understand what Walt knew in the 1980s.  It's the character that matters, not the powers or the fancy suit.

And this is why Walt Simonson's run on Thor stands so far above most other work in comic-book history.  Walt was crafting epic tales on a larger canvas than most other writers before or since.  It would have been easy for him to get "lost" in the clashes and the "bigness" of the tale.  But he didn't. Instead, he kept breaking away from the huge fights to show us the smaller tales -- the story of Frigga and the children fleeing Asgard during the Ragnarok saga, or the story of the small boys who were left fatherless, and were adopted by Volstagg to be raised on Asgard.  And because Simonson focused on characters, the bigness of his tale seemed that much more epic and sweeping, because those characters were exactly the people for whom Thor and the heroes were fighting.  Simonson made us love them, and care about what happened to them, and want them to be safe.  And that's what makes you keep turning pages, and keep plunking down your (at the time) 60 cents to read more next month.

Simonson's Thor run should be required reading for every comic-book writer and editor who is currently working in the industry today.  They need to be sat down, chained to an armchair with the stack of 45 Thors, and told "read these."  Then when they're done, they need to be told, "Now learn from that and make your comic-books like that." And no, by that, I don't mean high fantasy or mythological. I mean simply this: focus on characters, instead of superpowers.

Friday, January 25, 2013

The Many Faces of Supergirl - Part 1: The Original

Preface

Ever since I read about her exploits in the early 1980s version of the Legion of Super-Heroes, starting with her pivotal role defeating Darkseid in the "Great Darkness Saga" (LSH #294), I have been a fan of Superman's super-powered Kryptonian cousin, Supergirl.  I'm not sure exactly when she rose to the top of my list of favorite superheroes, but for many years, the original Supergirl, as she appeared in the 1970s and 1980s, has been up there, and today, she is without question my favorite character.

Since her first appearance, Supergirl has worn many costumes, and had many incarnations.  She's died and been brought back to life, and she's been "rebooted" and re-envisioned over and over again.  Over the next couple of months, I am going to write a series of articles, starting with this one, called "The Many Faces of Supergirl."  In these articles, I will review the different incarnations of Supergirl, and discuss the good and bad points of each.  I hope these articles will be informative to the reader, and that they will, perhaps, help a few comic-book fans come to appreciate this wonderful, and all-too-frequently under-appreciated, superhero.

Supergirl arrives on earth

Just about everyone knows Superman's origin.  He was born on the planet Krypton, which has a red sun and many times the gravity of Earth, to a scientist named Jor-El.  Jor-El discovers that Krypton is about to be destroyed by a cosmic event (sometimes the planet blows up, sometimes the sun and the planet -- the exact details vary with each re-telling), and he has a baby son he wants to save.  So Jor-El puts his son, Kal-El, into a rocket ship and sends him to our primitive planet.  Here, under our yellow sun and in our atmosphere, a Kryptonian such as Kal-El has astonishing powers, including super-strength, flight, invulnerability, heat vision, x-ray vision, and super-speed.  Kal-El is raised on earth by the Kents, taking the earthly name Clark Kent, but when he grows to adult-hood, he learns how to use his powers, and fights crime and protects the innocent as Superman.

That story was told in the late 1930s, and for two decades, so far as anyone knew, the one and only survivor of the planet Krypton was Kal-El... i.e., Superman.  Then in 1959, DC comics decided to add a second survivor.  In the feature story of Action Comics #252, a fifteen year old blond girl lands on earth in another rocket ship much like the one that brought Kal-El to earth, wearing a dress that looks an awful lot like Superman's costume, and having all his powers. She claims to be Kryptonian, and to be his cousin on top of that.
Supergirl's 1st appearance.

In Action Comics #252, the young woman tells her story as a flashback.  When Krypton exploded, her city, Argo City, survived intact, having been thrown out from the planet as a single chunk of rock.  The girl's father, Jor-El's brother Zor-El (also a scientist) quickly helped create a force-field around the planet to protect it.  Argo City thus survived the destruction of Krypton, and the people of Argo lived there for many years.  Zor-El and his wife Alura had a daughter, Kara, and she grew to the age of 15, never knowing any world but her home city of Argo.  Then when she was fifteen, a swarm of giant meteors destroyed the city.  To save her, Zor-El, like his brother before him, created a rocket, clothed Kara in a suit that would help Superman recognize her, and sent her to Earth to be with the only other surviving member of their race.

And so, Kara Zor-El arrived on earth at the age of fifteen, and in doing so, gained all the Kryptonian-derived powers that Superman had -- she could fly, bend steel, race airplanes through the sky, boil water with her gaze, and see through walls.  Because she was young, and he couldn't take care of a teenager, Superman placed Kara into an orphanage in the nearby town of Midvale, under the secret identity of Linda Lee.

Over the next ten years, Supergirl made many guest appearances in Action Comics.  At first, Superman employed her as a secret weapon -- the crooks might be ready for one Superman, but they had no way of knowing there were effectively two of him to fight (since she had all the powers Superman did).  Eventually, as Linda Lee, Kara was adopted by a middle-aged couple, Fred and Edna Danvers.  This couple decided to take a teenager into their home, rather than a baby, because they saw how vulnerable she was, and how much she needed a home.  Over time, Linda came to love them in return, and they helped her adjust to life on earth.  She eventually took the name Linda Danvers as her secret identity, which she kept until the day she died (see below).

Supergirl in Adventure Comics

By 1969, Supergirl had been in print for 10 years, but had not ever had her own full-length comic-book, one devoted just to her own adventures.  DC changed all that with Adventure Comics #381.  That month, and for several years following, Supergirl headlined Adventure Comics, much as Superman headlined Action Comics.  It was time for the Girl of Steel to fly solo, and she enjoyed many issues as lead character on this title.
The first full-length feature starring Supergirl
As with many comics in this time period (at the tail end of what would later be called the "Silver Age"), Supergirl's adventures in this series are not what one could describe as sophisticated.  The stories are perhaps best described by a modern reader as campy, perhaps corny or even silly.  This is not really a knock against Supergirl or her stories -- that's the way Silver Age comics were written.  Good and evil are black-and-white; the heroes always win; they usually win in a single issue; whatever the villain's plot, no innocents are usually harmed; blood, gore, death, grievous injury are never portrayed. As a typical example, in one issue of Adventure Comics, Kara, in her secret ID of Linda Danvers, signs up for a college course on Supergirl.  The class is taught in an auditorium-sized lecture hall to a packed house of students, all taking a class about their favorite local hero.

Supergirl enjoyed an impressive run in Adventure Comics, headlining the title for 43 issues (until #424).  Indeed, this run in the early 1970s would be the longest run Supergirl would have in this incarnation, and in fact the longest any version of Supergirl would have until the turn of the century.

I don't have most of those issues (just #381 and #393), so I can't really say for certain, but based on the fact that the very month after Supergirl stopped appearing in Adventure Comics, she got her own title, I suspect that this run was highly successful, and that it produced enough sales that +DC Comics must have thought Supergirl should be given her own title.  If that's what they thought, they were sadly mistaken.  It would later turn out that this 43-issue run of Adventure Comics was the only time the original Supergirl successfully headlined anything, in any medium, not just comics.

The first Supergirl series - a flop

Presumably based on the success of Adventure Comics (above), in late 1972, +DC Comics decided to give Kara Zor-El her own title, called, of course, Supergirl.  This title is now known as "volume 1" of Supergirl.
Issue #1 of Supergirl's first series
Unfortunately, the series was not very successful.    Written by Cary Bates, Supergirl (volume 1) ran for less than a year, and was canceled by issue #10.  Again, I don't have these titles (they were printed before I was old enough to read, and 10 years before I became a Supergirl fan), but the quick move to cancellation of the title was probably caused by a lack of sales.  This began an unfortunate pattern throughout the 1970s until the mid-1980s, which was that Supergirl worked great as a guest star or back-up character, could even headline something with another name (such as Adventure Comics), but DC couldn't sell products that just had her name on them.  This pattern ultimately cost Supergirl her life.

The second Supergirl series - another flop

Throughout the 1970s, Supergirl continued to appear regularly in many titles as a backup character, a guest-star, even a temporary headliner.  She would appear frequently alongside her cousin in the pages of titles like Action Comics.  She guest-starred often with the Legion of Super-Heroes.  And she appeared regularly in the title Superman Family.  As usual, Supergirl was quite popular with the fans when she appeared in these titles, and so, eventually, +DC Comics decided to give her another chance at a series.  In late 1982, almost exactly 10 years after the last time she was given a series, Supergirl again debuted in her own title, this time called The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl (aka. Supergirl volume 2).  This title was written by longtime Superman Family scribe Paul Kupperberg, and drawn by Carmine Infantino.
The first issue of Supergirl's second series
Unfortunately, the pattern I can only call, at this point, "the curse of Supergirl" once again occurred, and this series flopped. For once, I have every issue of this title, so I can venture some guesses as to why.

I collected this series as it was being published, and although it was a long time ago, I recall that my impression of it was mixed.  I never was a fan of Infantino's art, and that always harms one's enjoyment of a series.  But for me the story is always paramount, and here I had (and still have) mixed feelings about this title.  On the one hand, Paul Kupperberg's characterization of Kara is perhaps the best ever written (to this day).  He portrays her as strong, confident, reasonably cheerful, and generally well-adjusted to Earth (at the age of 19).  It is his personality of Supergirl that I fell in love with in the early 80s.  Additionally, the supporting characters (Joanie, Mrs. Berkowitz, Dr. Metzner, etc.) are excellent and given plenty of "air time" to flesh out the stories.

On the other hand, the plots of this title leave a lot to be desired. Most of the villains are, to put it bluntly, silly, and some of the things he has Supergirl do, like flying from California to Chicago in 10 seconds, are simply ridiculous -- she'd have to fly over 620,000 miles per hour in the atmosphere to get there. That's Mach 815, folks. I won't even get into the silliness of having Supergirl fly from "the center of the universe" back to Earth in 1 day (a trip that would traverse, presuming you could even find such a point in space, billions of light years, meaning that Supergirl can travel something like a trillion times the speed of light).  I doubt I did these calculations in 1982, but I do know that I thought the stories were far lower in quality than, say, the work Paul Levitz was doing over in LSH.

I really can't say, for sure, exactly what caused Supergirl volume 2 to crater, but clearly the stories and the art had something to do with it.  Unfortunately, Kupperberg was writing classic Silver Age material, stuff that would have worked just fine in the late 1960s, for a more sophisticated Bronze Age comic audience, and perhaps that is why Paul's stories couldn't get any traction.  Similarly, Infantino was part of the "old guard," and with artists like George Perez, Kieth Giffen, John Byrne, and Paul Smith coming to prominence at the same time, Infantino's flat, angular art was no longer satisfying to the fans.

I will say, the creative team certainly tried. They even gave Supergirl her first new costume in years, and had a special issue commemorating her 25th anniversary in print.  But none of these things seemed capable of boosting sales enough to keep the series going.
Supergirl's 25th anniversary
In the end,because most fans would have summed this title up by saying "the series wasn't very good," this second Supergirl series was canceled.  In addition, although fans didn't know it yet, this also put the Supergirl character on the chopping block for the next big thing from +DC Comics .  After just under two years, this second Supergirl title was once again canceled due to lack of sales, on issue #23.

Supergirl - the movie

Following the popularity of the Superman movies, +DC Comics and the Salkinds (who produced Superman I, II, and III), decided to try and capitalize on the franchise by creating a movie about Supergirl.  The movie starred a pretty young blond named Helen Slater, and included some big-name stars, such as Peter O'Toole.  Given the cast and the production team, one would expect good things from such a movie, and I went to the theater eagerly with my friend +Stuart Johnson the week it came out.  By now, after a couple of years collecting her title and reading about her in LSH, Supergirl was probably my favorite female comic-book character (although there were lots of male characters, like Batman, whom I still liked better).

Unfortunately, the Supergirl movie was a disaster.  The only two good things that can be said about it are (1) that Jerry Goldsmith's score was excellent, making the music sound enough like John Williams' Superman score to recall it, while still making it sound somehow "feminine"; and (2) that Helen Slater perfectly looked the part of Supergirl, and played her creditably well.  The rest of the movie, however, was a train wreck.  Apparently they could not get Christopher Reeve to reprise his role as Superman, so that character never appeared (except in a poster hanging on the wall of Linda's school).  Supergirl starts out in Argo City, but the nature of that city is never explained.  When she arrives on Earth, she explains to her new friends that she is Superman's cousin, but the audience is not told how Kara even knows who he is.  She magically speaks English, and knows human traditions without having to be taught.  But worse than all that, the villains and their goals are just silly.  Once again we have a plot like something out of the campy 1960s Batman TV show.

There have been a lot of superhero movies over the years, and far more of them have been bad than good.  Among this morass of creative sewage, the Supergirl movie sadly bears the distinction of being just about the absolute worst superhero film ever made.  And therefore, unsurprisingly, just like the first two comic-book series bearing her name, the Supergirl movie was a complete flop.

The death of Supergirl

Our story has now reached the middle of the 1980s, and probably the single most significant comic-book series ever printed by +DC Comics -- the Crisis on Infinite Earths.  This was a story in which DC decided to "clean up" its nearly 50-year-long continuity.  Before the Crisis series, there were "infinite" alternative realities.  Whenever a story happened that DC didn't like or wanted to "edit," they would declare it had happened on "Earth-17" or something, and wipe it out of their continuity.  But then the writers would go back and farm that content, and eventually characters started crossing over from one Earth into another, and the stories became very messy.  As part of the Crisis, the editorial decision was made to "reboot" most characters, and to kill off some of the most important characters in the DC universe.  Among the characters +DC Comics decided to execute, the most prominent, and the one they thought would most shock the readers, was Supergirl.

And so, in the now-famous (or infamous) Crisis #7, as all the supeheroes from a dozen different earths battle against the negative-energy monsters of the "anti-earth" universe -- monsters powerful enough to hurt even Kryptonians -- Supergirl meets her untimely demise.  The event was, at least, done well. Penned by Marv Wolfman and drawn by George Perez, two of DC's best creative minds at the time, Supergirl hears the Anti-Monitor, the most powerful uber-villain ever to grace the pages of any DC comic, killing Superman.  She knows if he can kill Superman, the Anti-Monitor could kill her too, but she doesn't hesitate, because, as Wolfman narrates, "Supergirl is a hero."  She flies to Superman's side and starts pounding the Jim-dandy out of the Anti-Monitor. In fact, she gets him onto the ropes, almost has him beaten. But then she turns and yells at the other heroes to get Superman out of there. And in that moment, when her back is turned, the Anti-Monitor strikes with a killing blow, and slays her.

The death of Supergirl is one of the better-done death scenes in the history of comics.  Her death is meaningful and heroic, rather than simply tragic.  She dies as she lived -- a hero, a young woman who sacrificed her own safety time and time again to help others, usually people she didn't even know, from a planet that was utterly alien to her.  Make no mistake about it -- I hated that they killed her off.  But I've never been able to find any fault with how they did it.  Supergirl's death scene was worthy of her in a way few comic-book death scenes are (sadly, they are usually blatant sales ploys).  And so after 26 years and hundreds of stories, including two short-lived comic series and a movie, the tale of Kara Zor-El, the original Supergirl, came to an end.

Why Supergirl was killed

At this point in the story, we have come to the end of the first chapter of the Supergirl saga.  This character, the original Supergirl, Kara Zor-El of Argo City, daughter of Zor-El and Alura, niece of Jor-El, cousin of Kal-El/Superman, who first appeared in Action Comics #252, made her final appearance in Crisis #7.  Before concluding, it's valuable to ask ourselves just exactly why she was killed. What made the creative team on Crisis decide to kill her off, and why did the editorial staff at +DC Comics agree to it?

There are really two factors that contributed to the death of Supergirl: all the flops with her name on them, and her Kryptonian origins.   Of these two, I maintain that it was the repeated nose-dives taken by anything with Kara's name on it that really did her in.  If she'd been a popular character who out-sold Superman and Batman combined, +DC Comics would have kept her around. But because her titles (and even movie) always flopped, that lack of success made her vulnerable to the second (much more arbitrary) argument about her Kryptonian heritage.  Let's look at these two arguments separately.

As we've seen above, since 1972, anything with the name "Supergirl" in the title turned out to be a lead balloon in terms of sales.  The original Supergirl series sold so poorly that they canceled it after 10 issues, and never let her headline anything again for nearly 10 years.  Then, when DC gave her a second chance, the second Supergirl series flopped in just a few months longer (after 23 issues).  Kara now had two strikes against her. The third strike came the same year in which her second title was canceled, in the form of the Supergirl movie.  Here was a title created by the same people who made block-buster successes out of Superman, and they couldn't give away tickets to Supergirl.  Two comic series and a movie with Supergirl's name on them, and three straight bombs. The conclusion DC comics reached seems to have been that Supergirl isn't very well liked by the fans. After all, if people liked her, these things would have sold.

The flops, and the conclusion that Supergirl was unpopular, left her vulnerable a few months later when Marv Wolfman suggested killing her off.  Surely the editors at DC must have said to each other, "Well, she's not that popular anyway, since anything with her name on it bombs, so it's probably safe to kill her off." Indeed, I bet DC thought they had in her the perfect kill-off character -- one so "big" and important to the DC Universe that no fan would ever believe they could kill her, yet unpopular enough that they didn't have to worry about a huge fan backlash when she died.

But there was also another reason -- the very aspects that gave her powers, that made Kara into Supergirl, had become a problem for DC.  The editorial thinking at the time had shifted.  Rather than having a Superman "family" (Supergirl, Superboy, Superman, Krypto the Wonder Dog, and so forth), DC decided that Superman must be the one and only survivor, the true last son of Krypton (and no last daughters). DC often stated that Superman was the "most powerful" of all heroes in the DC Universe, but this was not true after 1959, because Supergirl was identical to him in power in every single way.  Superman and Supergirl were tied as equally powerful, and DC didn't want that status to continue.  There was no (believable) way for them to make her weaker than Superman, so they needed to get rid of her -- to erase her from the universe.

The Crisis proved to be the perfect venue at the perfect time.  DC wanted Superman to be the last and only survivor of Krypton, so they needed to get rid of Supergirl.  The Crisis writer wanted to kill her off. And as an added bonus, the conclusion of the Crisis was a time-traveling event that ended up rebooting the entire continuity, and letting DC re-tell every single origin.  Not only did Supergirl die in the Crisis, but by the time it was over, in the DC universe, she had never existed.

DC must have thought this was the perfect solution. They killed off an important but (as far as they knew) unpopular character, one that had been troublesome for their continuity for years, and then erased her from the continuity, and made the (at the time "permanent") editorial decision that there would never, ever, be any other survivors of Krypton besides Superman. Thus, not only was she gone, but she would never be brought back to the DC Universe.

Aftermath and reader backlash

DC's "perfect solution" turned out not to be so perfect, however.  In a turn of events that completely shocked +DC Comics and caused a backlash that went on for almost 20 years, of all the characters DC killed or erased during their Crisis event, the one who received the largest groundswell of support and the loudest protest of anger was the one DC had thought was the most unpopular: Supergirl.  To be sure, lots of people were unhappy with the death of Barry Allen, and his replacement as the Flash by Wally West.  And plenty of folks were displeased with the disappearance of whole alternate realities from the DC continuity.  But the backlash against all these things paled in comparison to the vitriolic response to not just the death of Supergirl, but her complete and (at the time) permanent erasure from the continuity.  From almost the moment Crisis #7 was published, and for two decades thereafter, DC kept hearing from a large, determined group of fans in letters, at conventions, and eventually by e-mail: Bring back Kara.

To say that this backlash surprised the editors at DC is probably a wild understatement.  I'm guessing they were flabbergasted.  Surely they looked at each other in confusion and said, "Where were all these Supergirl fans when her comics were being published? Where were they when the movie came out?"  Unfortunately, DC had made the understandable, but gargantuan, mistake of equating the sales of products titled "Supergirl" with the popularity of the character.  It's a reasonable conclusion to draw -- that her books and movie tanked because people didn't like her.  After all, the constant among all of them is the character - Supergirl.

What DC missed, however, was the other constant -- that the quality of the products they were putting out under Supergirl's name was inferior.  The Supergirl comics were below average compared to other titles being published at the time (see, for comparison, Supergirl vol, 2, no. 1-5, and LSH #290-294, which were published more or less concurrently).  Similarly, by any standard, the Supergirl movie was vastly inferior to the first two Superman movies, and somewhat inferior to the third.  Thus, the one constant that was driving all things Supergirl to flop wasn't Kara -- it was the fact that the products weren't any good. (And I say this as one of the character Supergirl's biggest fans).  I mean think about it. I adored Supergirl (and I had the hots for Helen Slater on top of it) , and I could barely bring myself to sit in the theater for the entire movie.

In the end, it was DC's abuse of Supergirl that finally did her in.  By slapping her name on garbage and seeing that it didn't sell, DC got the mistaken impression that Supergirl didn't have very many fans, that it would be relatively "safe" to kill her off. Oh, sure, they knew some fans would get angry and complain. But they had no idea of the scale with which the backlash would occur. When it did, they were caught rather flat-footed.

And so the cry went up: "Bring back Kara!"  Every week, in their letter office. Every time they went to comic conventions. Every time the fans had any chance to say it, they said it loudly and clearly. We loved Supergirl, and we wanted her back.

For several years, DC resisted. Then, finally, in the 1990s, they tried to have their cake and eat it too. The strangest and most convoluted chapter of the Supergirl story was about to begin.

Next Article - Part 2  >>

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

New Comic-book Night - 1/23/13

It's Wednesday, which means it's "New Comic-Book Night" (a phrase I picked up from +The Big Bang Theory ). Most weeks of the month, since I buy comics digitally and I am still working on issues from 10+ months ago, "New Comic-Book Night" is not very important to me.  But I am collecting three titles in hardcopy form right now -- Supergirl, Batgirl, and Justice League.  Last week, Batgirl #16 came out, so I had to stop by the shop last Wednesday to make sure I got a copy.  This week, both Supergirl and Justice League #16 came out, so again, it was time to make a stop by the shop.  It'll be a few weeks before I need to go on a Wednesday again, because nothing else that I'm collecting comes out in print for about three weeks.

In addition to picking up the two new comics, I also wandered into the back-issue section to look through the Volume 4 (Matrix) Supergirl back-issues.  Before today I had #1-35, and #37-45 (I'm still missing #36, which is apparently very rare for some unknown reason).  Acme Comics (the shop in Greensboro that I have been patronizing) had #46-48, so I picked up those three back-issues, bringing my total number of Matrix Supergirl issues to 48 out of 81 (if you count #1,000,000, which I sort of don't).  All in all, it was a decent haul for under $20:


Next week, I will probably pick up a few more Matrix Supergirl issues (at least to #50, and perhaps beyond).  But I don't know if I will bother to go on "New Comic-Book Night," since I can get those any old time, and I'm not aware of any physical copies coming out next week that I will need to buy (it's too soon for Batgirl to cycle around again -- her book just came out last week).

I have to admit I'm having somewhat mixed feelings about the print copies.  On the one hand, I really do prefer reading comics on the printed page, the way they were "meant" to be viewed.  I still feel I get a better sense of the layout and panel dimensions that way than I do electronically.  And I do enjoy the feel of going into the shop for "New Comic-Book Night" and seeing the next issue of my favorite title there in a nice, crisp, mint-condition form, waiting for me to pick it up.  There is a sense of satisfaction one gets from getting there "in time" to pick up your copies before the book sells out (this is mostly fictional, since most books never sell out, but the thing is, you never know if one will or not ahead of time, so there's always that little bit of adrenaline rush when you walk into the store, wondering if your favorite mag will be there for you).

On the other hand, I can live without the hassle of the crowded shopping mall parking lot, and the crowded store full of people who want to stand around and talk about comics instead of moving the line forward so they can buy them.  I don't mind talking comics on a Saturday morning, but on Wednesday evening after a long day of work, I just want to buy my stuff and get out of there so I can come home and make dinner.  And I also appreciate the fact that digital titles can be bought "whenever." There may be less sense of "accomplishment" in amassing a digital collection (all it takes is money, assuming the digital versions of your title exist), but there's also no chance of annoying gaps, or having to read things out of order. It's all there fore you, whenever you want it.  A part of me likes that.

This is why, right now, I am hyrbridizing my print vs. digital copy purchases.  I definitely want to keep getting Batgirl and Supergirl in hardcopy form, because I have plans for those series, involving a nice curio display cabinet, a bunch of statues and action figures, and a "Steve's favorite heroines of the DC universe" type of display.  I have been toying with the idea of a Justice League display as well (it would give me an excuse, as if I need one, to buy statues or figures of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman), so that is why I am buying those physically.  For everything else, though, I think that just reading the stories (not necessarily having the issues) is sufficient, and I am sticking with digital for everything else.  Hopefully I won't end up changing my mind and wanting to re-buy everything in hard copy like I did with Supergirl!

Monday, January 21, 2013

New 52 Supergirl... Year 1

Having gotten back into collecting and reading comics only recently (just under 2 months ago), I am still playing catch-up with the latest incarnation of the +DC Comics universe, "The New 52." When I decided to start reading comic-books again, it went without saying that I would have to check out the latest series devoted to my all-time favorite superhero -- Supergirl.  This young lady has had at least four different incarnations over the years, each slightly different in powers and personality (more than that if you count Power Girl, who is basically Supergirl from an alternate dimension, and has had three or four of her own versions).

I'll talk about the different faces of Supergirl in a future post. Today, I'm going to concentrate on just the current "New 52" series Supergirl, in its first year (or slightly more than that) of existence.  My comments will cover issues #1-13 as well as #0 (which was not published first, as you might expect, but was published in between #12 and #13).  I currently have all the individual issues except for #7, but I also have the TPB covering issues #1-7 as well (I bought that first, then decided I wanted physical copies of every single issue), so I have read all 14 stories.
The first 14 months worth of Supergirl
In her present version, Supergirl's chronicles are written by Michael Green and Mike Johnson, and drawn (except for issue #8) by Mahmud Asrar.  I have to say, that I was concerned about this series from the beginning, because the hype on DC's website and other pre-launch materials I had read indicated that the authors had a vision of Supergirl behaving like what can only be described as a "bratty teenager."  Now, I realize Supergirl is a young lady and as such, she can and probably should often display the brashness of youth. But there's no reason to turn her into an obnoxious brat, and I was afraid they might do that, based on what the authors said in press releases and blog posts.

However, the way the story unfolds doesn't really give you the impression that Supergirl is a brat.  She wakes up having crashed to earth, with no memory of how she got here, and it takes her the entire first story arc (Supergirl issues #1-7, collected in the TPB "Last Daughter of Krypton") to even begin to get a handle on what is going on.  Confused and disoriented, unable to speak the language, and last having seen her cousin Kal-El when he was a baby, Supergirl does lash out (at Superman, among others), but she doesn't do so in a nasty way.  She's confused; she's scared; she has no idea how powerful she is, or how her powers even work.  Most of the time, because she can't understand the language, she is just trying to defend herself. And it doesn't help that one of the very first humans she encounters, wealthy Lex-Luthor-esque villain Simon Tycho, captures her and tries to use her as an experiment.

Over the first year-plus of the comic, Supergirl slowly starts to figure things out.  In issue #0, we see her origin, fully told for the first time, and the pieces start to fit together.  And in issue #13, Supergirl finds a "Sanctuary" created by a part of her spacecraft -- her own version of a "Fortress of Solitude" hidden at the bottom of the ocean.  The computer there helps her finally recover most of her memories (so that what we read in #0, she finally remembers in #13, which came out the very next month).  She's even called "Supergirl" for the first time (by Tycho, who says that is what the press has named her).

The individual stories in each issue of Supergirl have been very good so far.  The writing is first-rate, and the two Mikes have done a good job with character, dialogue, using Kara's narration like a "voice-over," and with the villains she has faced.  However, up until #13, I felt like I was, in an odd way, reading the story of Kara Zor-El but not Supergirl.  This Kara was nice and all, and she looked and had powers like the old Supergirl, but she didn't act anything like the original.

But that all changed in #13.  Perhaps because the Sanctuary reminded her of home, because it brought back her memories, or because it somehow "grounded" her, the Supergirl we see in #13 reminded me very much of my original favorite character, especially the way she tricked and outsmarted her enemy in that issue, rather than just beating him silly.  In fact when I got to that scene, I smiled and said, "Now that's my Supergirl."  I could easily have pictured the "old" Kara, right from the pages of The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl, written by Paul Kupperberg, beating her enemy in exactly the same way, and even saying the same words this new one said.  My immediate reaction after I closed #13 was "More please." Not just in the sense that I want to read more issues of the Supergirl title, but more issues like that -- more issues where Kara acts like that, like the old, original Supergirl I remember and love so much as a character.

Therefore, in terms of story and character, I have to say that as a dyed-in-the-wool, and extremely traditionalist, "original-Kara-Zor-El" fan, and an ornery one at that, I have been pleasantly surprised by the New 52 Supergirl series, and I declare myself (so far) to be satisfied with how they are treating this character.

I still think they have made some mistakes with Kara, such as making her take so long to learn even a word of English (I don't care how realistic it is, having her constantly misunderstand what people around her are doing is getting old).  And I think she should have spent more time with Superman earlier on (though she did meet up with him in Superman #6 and again in Supergirl #12).  And I think they have to be very careful about how much she pines for Krypton or they're going to make her seem like a whiner.  And that is not the Kara I know and love -- the original Kara was not a whiner. She was made of sterner stuff than that (indeed, I would argue she was made of sterner stuff than Superman ever was).  However, these mistakes are not insurmountable, and they seem to have a good foundation with the character up to issue #13.

All of the above is about character, and story, and primarily falls on the shoulders of the two Mikes (Green and Johnson).  Now I would like to say a word about the art.

I have mixed feelings about the art, because the art is a mixed bag.  The overall look of the comic's art is very angular and rough. I absolutely detest the way Asrar does cloth, such as Supergirl's cape, which he insists on having float about her in ways that defy the laws of physics and gravity (Supergirl may defy those laws with her powers, but her cape shouldn't).  Indeed, in many panels, the cape looks like it's made out of wood rather than cloth, giving the impression that the thing is just hanging there in a fixed position rather than billowing behind Supergirl in the breeze.

Asrar frequently seems to have trouble with her hair as well, making it appear that her hair is of different lengths from one page to the next.  Everything about the way Asrar draws seems to be all hard planes and angles, including the "S" shield on her chest, which is too angular and does not look enough like the traditional "S" symbol of the House of El. In many panels the art looks, well... sloppy. And I'm not a fan of that style.

On the other hand, Asrar frequently does a fantastic job with Kara's face, especially on close-ups.  With a few lines he can convey a wide range of expressions on Kara, which has the effect of humanizing her.  The close-ups of her face not only make her look beautiful (pretty much a requirement for drawing Supergirl over the years), but convey a certain level of sweet innocence in the character.

Asrar gives Kara an expressive face, and when he draws her close-up, he really does something special with the features, especially the eyes, that I rarely see from other comic-book artists (George Perez being a notable exception).

Asrar's drawings also seem to look a good deal better when he inks his own work (which is unusual for me to say when I don't like an artist's basic style, because a good inker can often correct that). In the few issues where someone else has inked Asrar, I think the result has been decidedly worse. So as long as he continues working on Supergirl, I guess I'd like to see him do both the pencils and the inks.

Therefore, I have mixed feelings about Asrar's art.  The "distant" shots, where the frame of view is zoomed out, frequently look sloppy, and the full-body shots of most characters are too angular and straight-edged, making them look too "flat" for my taste.  But his close-ups of Kara's face are excellent, and I would probably miss those if someone else took over the art.  Thus, I'm not sure what to think about Asrar. A part of me wants to see +DC Comics  put a new artist onto the book, but a part worries that if they do, I'll lose all those great shots of Kara's face.

And so, the New 52 Supergirl title is a bit of a mixed bag, although generally pretty good.  The stories have been excellent, and the characters have been interesting, although I think the authors are going to need to be careful not to make this new Supergirl seem like a bratty teenager, because a few times they've been walking the line with that.  They seem to have started to slowly transition her to the Kara I remember from years ago, so I encourage them to continue that, and hopefully they will slowly move her more and more in that direction.  I have mixed feelings about the art (except for #8, which was drawn by my favorite artist, George Perez, and left me wanting more like that). It's decent, I suppose, and it certainly could be worse, but it's nothing to write home about.  Overall, the total package is not bad, and Supergirl is currently behind Batgirl on my list of favorite series, weighing in at my second favorite.

Now, a series getting to the second-highest spot on my list sounds very strong, but remember... Supergirl is my favorite character in comics, ever.  That means any comic-book starring Supergirl starts with a couple of "free points" -- basically, the Mikes and Asrar are graded on a curve, and a pretty large one at that.  If this were any other character, it would probably drop a few notches just from that.  Of course, having a series about my favorite character is a bit of a double-edged sword.  The creators can also, perhaps more easily than with almost any other character, lose my loyalty, by having her do things that are too far out of character for Supergirl as I remember her (i.e., doing things the original Kara would never have done).

In the end, though, this series, up to #13, has been pretty good, and I can recommend it to both people who have been reading comics for a while (as a very good, complete reboot of a famous character) and to people who have never read any comics (it will confuse you at first, but it's supposed to, and by #7 you will start to figure things out). It's worth a read, at least.

Sunday, January 20, 2013

Why comic-books need a real letter column

When I returned to comic-books about a month and a half ago, I began with some #1 issues of +DC Comics The New 52, and with digital versions to boot.  Therefore, it was unsurprising to me that there were no letter columns appearing in those titles.  Historically, because it takes about 4 months from the time a comic is being created until the time it ships, due to the length of the composition and printing process, letter columns in the back of the comic (usually called simply the "lettercol") have always lagged behind.  At least up through 1999, and probably much later, new series generally didn't have a lettercol until issue #4 or #5 came out, and those letters would be about the very first issue.

And so, when I began reading The New 52 with the first issues, digitally, I didn't look for a lettercol, nor did it surprise me that they didn't have any. These were, after all, new titles, and there's usually a lag.  Eventually I got to issue #5 and #6, and still, at least in the digital version, there were no lettercols in any of the DC titles I was reading.  But there are no ads in the digital titles either, so I thought perhaps that the lettercols were appearing in print only.  However, as I've mentioned elsewhere, although I have gone mostly digital with my collection, I am still collecting Supergirl in hardcopy (becaues it's Supergirl, my favorite character of all time in comics) and also Batgirl (because it's the best damn comic on the market today, at least of the ones I've tried).  I now have most of these issues in print (Batgirl #7-16, and Supergirl #1-6, 8-15, as first-print single issues), and I am up to #13 reading both titles. And although the print versions do have ads, and they have a "New 52" column which is basically just more advertisement/hype about the company, there has yet to be a lettercol in either of these titles.

So I started doing some digging, and it seems like the lettercol, at least in +DC Comics , has gone the way of the dinosaur.  Reaction to this has been mixed, from the fans. Those who approve the loss of the lettercol point out that nobody mails paper letters anymore, and that even message boards (which DC had, but which they closed down early in 2012) are becoming "antiquated." Sources like Google+, Facebook, and Twitter are all the rage now.  If fans like something, they tweet the author about it. Instant access, instant feedback. No need to wait for the 4-month print cycle of an old-fashioned communication method like the lettercol.  And some of those are valid points. Facebook, Twitter, etc., are faster and reach more people -- you don't have to read the comic-book to see the comments (you can just look on the DC Facebook page).

However, there are huge limitations to +DC Comics  using the current social media framework as its only means of feedback (other than sales).  Twitter has very tight limits on message length, and even Facebook and Google+, though they allow longer text messages, are not conducive to the lengthier form of communication we used to call "the letter" -- page-long, essay-style missives.  Additionally, by design, Facebook and Google+ give the poster (in this case, DC) a hyper-inflated sense of approval, because, unlike YouTube (which allows both thumbs-up and thumbs-down ratings), a Facebook user can only "like" (but never "dislike") something, and a Google+ user can only "+1" (but never "-1") something. Therefore, if DC posts content about the latest issue of Action Comics, and 1,000 people see it, but only 300 like it, and 700 dislike it, all DC will see is "+300" likes.  They will think the audience loves their product, when in fact the vast majority do not.  And even if someone who dislikes Action Comics wants to bother to tell DC why, the only mechanism is the comment box, which does not allow lengthy, thoughtful discussion (just read any chain of comments on any topic to see what I mean).

The end result of +DC Comics  going "Social Media only" for feedback thus has a two-pronged negative effect. First, it over-estimates the number of positive responses by readers (because the only way to respond at all is to say you "like" it), which provides DC with a wildly inaccurate (albeit ego-stroking) impression of how readers like what they are doing.  Thus the company is unable to detect reader dissatisfaction early enough to head it off at the pass (which comics companies used to be able to do years ago when they got a slew of hate-mail over something going on in their titles).  Second, it prevents them from receiving thoughtful, meaningful feedback from their most intelligent readers.  Gone are the days when a reader could send in a 2-page letter that not only pointed out a potential plot hole, but also proposed a workable solution.  Instead, DC receives inane, useless negative feedback on Twitter like, "U screwed up @DC, plz fix #supergirl b4 it's 2 late."  And although such a tweet might let them know someone is unhappy, it's unable to tell them why, or explain how to fix it.  The end result almost certainly has to be a dramatic loss in sales, as DC prevents itself from receiving feedback that would allow them to make mid-course corrections in time to avert disaster.

The ultimate impression +DC Comics  leaves the reader -- when you look on their site for any way to provide feedback and find only Facebook and Twitter; when you look in their books and see no letter column; when you look for a way to "contact us" and find no real method of getting in touch with editors the way we could in the days of the lettercol -- the ultimate impression we are left with, the unavoidable conclusion, is that DC Comics doesn't care to hear from its readers. They don't seem to want to know whether we like what they are doing or not, and they certainly don't want to know why.  This leaves readers with only one way to express dissatisfaction with a title they're reading: the almighty dollar.

And make no mistake about it: money is one form of feedback to which DC is wildly responsive. For evidence, just note the number of "New 52" series that have been canceled, some so fast it was almost immediate (Hawk and Dove ended after only 8 issues).  And more are probably headed that way.  DC's "talk to the hand" attitude toward its readers (at least toward those who are unhappy) leaves those readers no choice but to vote with their wallets.

I know some people would say that this is how it's supposed to work. You like it? Buy it. Don't like it? Don't buy it.  But that's a really coarse-grained way to run a comic-book company.  Starting and ending comic-book series are huge undertakings, much more difficult to manage than just changing an unpopular creative team or altering a story arc.

Significantly, comic-book fans tend to be loyal to their titles and are loathe to give them up if there is any hope of a turn-around.  Canceling a subscription or stopping a "run" of comics that's 20 issues (or more) long used to be the option of last resort.  We only did something so drastic after writing letter upon letter to the company (knowing back then that they read them all, even if they couldn't print most of them) and trying to effect a change that way.  We communicated with the creative team, and they with us.  If they got many letters upset about a given thing, they might change it. If they couldn't (or wouldn't), they would at least address the topic in the letter column, and the editor would explain why the unhappy fans could not be satisfied.  Maybe people still didn't like it, and quit the title anyway. But they only did so as a last resort.

Today, unfortunately, because there's only a "+1" or "like" button, no way to contact +DC Comics  outside of social media, and no way to be heard otherwise, quitting a title and halting purchases is the only resort we have as readers -- it's the first, middle, and last resort.  And that is why you are seeing these "waves" of series cancellations followed by new title launches. The only way +DC Comics  can keep 52 titles going a month is to do this -- cancel 5 old titles and start 5 new ones.  And why? Because they don't have any way of knowing early on that people don't like what they are doing. They especially don't have any way to know why people don't like what they are doing.  And this means that not only do series capable of being fixed and made more popular end up being canceled prematurely, but that DC is going to keep making the same stupid mistakes over and over again. Because all they know about Hawk and Dove is that it didn't sell -- they don't know why it didn't sell, because they provided us with no way to tell them.

Now, I don't want to leave the impression that I think a "lettercol" could solve all problems, or that no book would need to be canceled if DC still had lettercols.  But I think that DC, as a company, would be far better off to encourage long, thoughtful missives from readers inclined to write them, and to print some of those (if not in the issue, post them online). They'd do well to understand, to really get, what readers like and don't like, and why.  DC's staff may feel good getting 248 +1s on Google... but if they don't know that there are 2,480 who would like to "-1" the same thing if only we could, then they are missing vital information.  They are sacrificing knowing the truth for "feeling and looking good," and as we all know, in the long run, that's a bad play.

And so, if anyone out there at +DC Comics is bothering to read this, I suggest the company reconsiders its unwillingness to accept thoughtful, and potentially negative, feedback from its readers (such as, by the by, this very article).  Your ego might not feel quite so good after you do, but I bet your comics will get better, and you won't have to cancel so many titles.