Future State: Wonder Woman (comics)

Writers: Becky Cloonan, Joelle Jones, Dan Watters, L.L. McKinney

Artists: Jen Bartel, Joelle Jones, Alitha Martinez, Mark Morales, Leila Del Duca

Collects: Future State: Wonder Woman #1-2, Future State: Immortal Wonder Woman #1-2, Future State: Superman/Wonder Woman #1-2

I suppose it had to happen at some point. Didn't I say with Futures End I like alternate future stories? Today is my first foray into Future State, which was a two month "event" of sorts where the main line went on hiatus and were replaced with special two issue miniseries set in an alternate future. 

That's what it ended up being, at any rate. Originally, the idea was for this to just be the future of the DC Universe. Called 5G, it was essentially meant to move the DC Universe to the next generation by skipping five years, introducing new characters and letting some characters we knew take on familiar mantles. Bleeding Cool leaked a ton of information on it when it was still meant to be where DC Comics happened to be going. Ultimately, the idea of making it the new present of the DC Universe was scrapped, probably because it was a bridge too far, and the company ended up firing the long time editor in chief who spearheaded the move, Dan DiDio.

Credit given where credit is due, it was an incredibly ballsy idea. Dan DiDios time running DC was filled with moments like that for better or worse. Some worked out, some didn't. In my personal opinion, it's likely for the best this got canned. Merging the New 52, itself a ballsy initiative back when it happened, with the old pre-Flashpoint universe breathed a lot of new life into the line with the Rebirth initiative and there was no need to blow the whole thing up again with some radical change that shifted a bunch of characters around and forcibly changed the guard. Now, three years removed at the time of writing, a ton of books have had absolutely stellar runs in the continuing universe, proving it just wasn't necessary, and DC just announced an alternate line akin to Marvels Ultimate Universe, called the Absolute Universe, which will act as a fresh slate and new take.

But Future State was born from the ashes of 5G and I think it's worthwhile to look at them as their own books and ideas. Get a feel for what 5G might have been and see what might have been worth keeping. This volume collects everything on the Wonder Woman end of Future State with the idea seemingly that there were three Wonder Women, each with different mission statements.

The book starts by presenting the chapters involving Nubia, one of the new Wonder Women and the one who seems to still be active in the United States. Nubia is a character that's been around a long time, long enough I'd heard of her despite not being a Wonder Woman mark, but I'll be damned if I can remember much of anything that she's ever done before this. This seemed to do a lot for her, though; despite 5G's cancellation, Nubia's taken on a bit more spotlight in the years since, to the point she leads Themyscira now.

It's some meat and potatoes comics, probably the most familiar feeling sort of story in the book and it has its place as such. Grail, daughter of Darkseid, is gathering some artifacts for an unknown reason, and Nubis has to stop her. She looks to her family for help gathering artifacts, then ends up in another scrap with Grail that has Circe involved. A couple mysteries are teased that may or may not ever appear again in the main timeline, but it ends fairly tidily. Nothing super spectacular, nothing bad, I could see the character maybe holding something down for a bit, a miniseries at least if not an ongoing.

Diana Prince, Wonder Woman Classic, has something a bit more abstract, interesting and thematic. She's who the title Immortal Wonder Woman is referring to, now among the pantheon of gods, and her story takes place way past anything else in the entirety of Future State. In it, we're at the last moments of the universe, thousands of years into the future, as something called The Undoing is swallowing the stars and leaving emptiness in its wake. Earth is gone, what's left quickly follows and Diana is left alone struggling to hold on to hope and find some measure of life left, some reason to keep on fighting.

It's heavy stuff, with plenty of emotional moments. Everything is dying and even the amazons of Themyscira, mired in their ways, would rather fight and die rather than try and rebuild on some new planet in the universe. Swamp Thing is dying, itself the last hope if reviving something of life. Darkseid is in full nihilist mode, accepting the end coming and returning to Earth just hoping to find some challenge left worth fighting. Diana watches everything fall apart, wearing reminders of the people she loved, and has to find a reason to hope the universe can be saved.

The opening sequence is one of the most effective, as she returns to the long abandoned, decrepit, tomb quiet Batcave long, long after Batman is gone. She's looking for a memento of Bruce, something to take with her, and ends up conversing with what seems to be his spirit. She mourns him and obviously misses him, but he simply reminds her of who she is and what she meant to everyone. She was a light of hope. Batman and Wonder Woman have a great friendship, on rare occasion teased as something more, and the sequence leans into their connection as friends, comrades in arms and people who would trust the other with their lives. Of the many items she carries, Batmans utility belt is the one we directly see her acquire and gives us the mission statement of Immortal Wonder Woman.

She's hope. In the end, hope can save the universe, or at least leave it born anew. Two incredibly somber issues that end with her light shining. It's about as perfect a summation of the character as you could ask for.

Our last leading lady is probably the most interesting and, being a new character, has the most page space between her own two issue mini and the one she shares with Jon Kent, Superman in Future State. Yara Flor is immediately differentiated from the other two. Pigheaded but noble. Quick to lose herself in anger but not cruel. Enjoys the fight but not battle crazed. Mischievous but loyal enough to risk her very soul to dive into hell itself to attempt to rescue a departed sister Amazon. She seems to lean more into a modern fantasy sort of story. All in all, she makes a strong first impression, bouyed by some fantastic art, and I was immediately taken with the character. She has a nice friendship with Jon, too, being the voice of reason to his overworking himself. Even the place she seems to live, in the Amazon, gives her an interesting local of her own.

Unfortunately, it feels like she suffered the most for 5G being cancelled. Following this, she got a seven issue miniseries positioning her as DC's new Wonder Girl, but aside from appearing occasionally in Wonder Womans solo book she hasn't had any major spotlight that I've seen since a role in Dark Crisis on Infinite Earths. I'm not entirely sure why, but DC would do well to get on some kind of ongoing place for her adventures, because she's pretty great in what little I've seen of her so far.

Yara and Diana got the best of the art duties in this. Joelle Jones pulls double duty with Yara and she draws the hell out of everything Yara goes through to save her amazonian sister, from jungle dangers to Cerberus to the ferryman at the River Styx. I'll be reading the Wonder Girl miniseries to get more of the character and this art. Diana, meanwhile, has Jen Bartel on art. Shout out to the coloring here. The linework is clean and expressive, but the coloring does so much for setting mood, from the cold, dead, forgotten Batcave to the bright colors of Themyscira, reflected nowhere else in the world, to the glittering stars in the lonely void. It sets a hell of a mood. Plus, I love it when space is depicted with  gentle hues of color, rather than a simple void. Top shelf all around.

This is obviously only one piece of the overall Future State event. Is it an event? I guess it qualifies. It feels more akin to something like Age of Apocalypse, which did the "replace the ongoings for a couple months" trick too. Regardless of what you call it, this volume only handles the amazonian end of things, so the jury is out on anything else. But what is here is, I think, worth at least reading, if only for the first appearance of Yara Flor. Who knows, your local library might have it if you don't feel like dropping some cash.

Batman - One Bad Day: Bane (comics)

Writer: Joshua Williamson

Artist: Howard Porter

Original Graphic Novel

Bane has had quite a journey over the last thirty years of comics and in the process become a rather complex character. There's obviously the work done by co-creator Chuck Dixon. There's everything Gail Simone did with him in Secret Six. It's far from the worst thing Tom King did during his Batman run, might even be low on the list, but his time using the character didn't really reflect any of that.

One Bad Day was an initiative I rolled my eyes at. DC can harp on the Killing Joke too much as it is, making an entire initiative around the line of someone being one bad day away from snapping seemed a little too cute. The first I read, the one dedicated to the Riddler, only reinforced that feeling. But whereas the Riddler book did some dogshit things with the character on top of leaning in too hard on the "One Bad Day" tagline, Banes graphic novel suggests it might play as more of a theme with others. A focus on the things that made the characters who they are and how they shaped them.

In wrestling parlance, Bane is what we'd call a tweener, a character who sits between a good guy or a bad guy and can lean a bit either way depending on circumstances. They can have a grudge against a hero, a case where they're firmly the villain, or a grudge against a villain, which obviously puts them in the opposite position. He has a complex relationship with Batman, both foe and begrudging ally when circumstances are right for it. Tom Kings run nearly ruined this dynamic by having Bane kill Alfred, which is probably why it should just be undone already, because it's a cloud that hangs over the character*. Especially when we get stories like this, where the complexity seeps back in.

Banes story revolves around the substance that empowered him to break the Bat, once upon a time. Venom is a cloud over his life, an addictive substance that can, over time, absolutely wreck your mind and body. On numerous occasions, when he's slipped from its grasp, Bane has dedicated his time and effort to eradicating it so no one can suffer the fate he had. It's his thematic "One Bad Day", the thing that changed his life forever.

When we start, it's seemingly some time in the future. Bane kicked the habit of Venom once and for all and, as far as he is aware, has managed to eradicate the substance from the face of the Earth. He spends his time in Mexico reveling in past glory; he's a participant in a regular wrestling event where he recreates the "breaking of the bat" with whatever local wrestler takes up the role that night. He has a mansion on the outskirts and his life is rather lonely. Over his fireplace, a framed newspaper of the day he broke Batmans back. Sometimes, he will see apparitions of his mother, long gone from his life. 

The obvious parallels Bruce Wayne are stark, only Banes life is far lonelier. He seemingly has no connections, just money, his matches and dark nights in front of his mantle. It changes when a small time drug dealer shows up at his door.

Banes reputation precedes him. You don't get a solid victory over Batman like Bane did and just end up forgotten. Hell, you can argue no one else ever did on the level Bane did. Batman was out for months and even required a temporary replacement. Everyone knows his story and of the drug that gave him great strength. The drug dealer has brought a vial of venom, something he thinks Bane would want. Only Bane is enraged. He thought he'd destroyed the substance entirely. Demanding to know where it was found, he and the drug pusher leave to finish the job.

The story paints a complex picture of the character, one that adds the depth that some writers forget. Breaking Batmans back is Banes greatest triumph in life, but much like some athletes, it's also a great success that he has never been able to replicate in his life. It hangs over his life like a cloud, his one moment of glory in a life ravaged by the drug that gave him the power to do it. He sees a parallel of himself in the drug pusher, a kid who got forced into the life when he was left with the debts of his dead father, a life situation the son of King Snake knows all too well. Bane struggles at moments with the temptation, obvious on his face, of reclaiming that glory while realizing it's a Faustian bargain. He has a subtextual need for Venom to die so he can be free of that temptation.

For a graphic novel clocking in at just under seventy pages, it does everything it needs to, tying back through the history of Bane himself and the very substance of Venom. There are callbacks that go as far as the Legends of the Dark Knight arc that introduced Venom a year before Bane made his first appearance. It looks to paint a full portrait of the man and I'm pleased to say it largely succeeds. It even ends up a positive note, with Bane reflecting on advice from Batman to make a change in his life. It's the closest to a "happy ending" you can picture for Bane at this point in his life, suggesting a change in life direction that could take him to a better place.

Howard Porter holds up his end artistically with some of his best work in years. His depiction of Bane is at times grotesque, always ugly, a man ravaged by time and the obvious effects using a drug that suddenly bloats your musculature might have on your skin and body. Moody colors darken the page during contemplative moments, contrasted with brighter colors in the ring, in action. The storytelling is clear, Porter will even get inventive with layout at times. He does that trick I love, where a ton of tiny panels can depict a long fight in the span of two pages without wasting page space.

The story and art synergize to make something that genuinely does Bane right. I'm unsure if it is in continuity. After all, the Riddler graphic novel was decidedly not. This one also seems to take place after much time has passed, perhaps up to a decade beyond the present day of the DCU. As such, I lean pretty heavily toward it being its own thing. But while I like continuity, it's far from the end all and be all. A good story justifies itself and hell, even if it isn't canon, this story uses past continuity incredibly well to tell its story. Continuity is a tool, it doesn't need to be a shackle.

Of the two One Bad Day graphic novels I've read so far, Bane is the first outright success. Sharply written, well drawn and respectful of its main character, it's the best Bane story I've read in a minute. I'd personally recommend tracking it down and reading it in whatever way strikes your fancy. It's worth the time.

* Speaking of this cloud, the one reference to Alfreds death, in flashback, aptly illustrated my meaning. It's took me out of the story for a brief moment, because if that event happened in this stories internal continuity it makes it harder to believe Batman will work together with the man who killed his surrogate father figure. But it's a rock and a hard place situation. The bedrock of this story is in Banes life story, so can you just conveniently leave it out to make things easier? I don't know the answer. It doesn't wreck the book, but it does remind me of what a mistake that moment was and that, whatever your thoughts on comic death or characters coming back to life, the character of Bane would be far better served if it were undone. It's a moment of cruelty that does nothing for the character.

The New 52 - Futures End Vol. 2 (comics)

Writers: Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Dan Jurgens, Keith Giffen

Artists: Patrick Zircher, Jesus Merino, Aaron Lopresti and many more

Collects: The New 52 - Futures End #18-30

 Volume one was a decent start but felt too slow at times, which became a bit of an issue by the end. The first volume contained eighteen issues worth of material including the FCBD special that kicked it all off, inching close to half the overall weekly in one tome, a lot of ground to cover without speeding up. Thankfully, that's less of an issue with volume two. Containing a lighter thirteen issues, it also shifts out of first gear and actually starts to get some momentum going.

We do start to get some answers as to what exactly is going on and some threads start to converge. The Firestorm arc starts to bleed into Tim Drakes plot, while Terry is also starting to think that he needs Tims help, thereby tying that in. It's made plain who attacked Stormwatch, though if you have a clue about what symbol said enemy uses you'll see it coming. Grifters plotline dips into Brother Eye shenanigans, so we're getting closer to whatever the hell let him take wider control, while also dealing with the mystery of the missing Earth 2 refugees. Most importantly, back in the future Terry escaped, Brother Eye realizes that Terry has traveled through time, which means he has to do his best Skynet impersonation and send someone back to deal with the threat.

By the volumes close, we've got all the pieces in play for the last volume. Brother Eye has escaped to the wider world, we have a new Firestorm, Brainiac is coming, Tim Drake is starting to realize he can't really leave this life behind and Mr. Terrific barrels onward with his tech ambitions, despite warnings from friends. Also, Frankenstein and his team manage to escape the danger they were in, warping away, but we don't actually see where they end up in this volume. For some reason, it happens in the middle of the volume and the remaining four or five issues are dealing with other things. A strange breakdown, but might simply be the nature of how the divisions for the collection broke down.

It's hard to say a lot about the writing that wasn't said last time, because I'm not at the end yet, but as mentioned before this volume moves faster and that does it a lot of good. Unfortunately, my nitpick about Terry needing more page time holds over from the prior volume, but it is what it is. They really are juggling a lot more ongoing plots than I expected and they all need page time. Thankfully we start to see him more as the volume wears on and with plotlines intersecting I expect it will be less of an issue in the final volume. 

As for the art, it's the same deal as last volume. Hard to critique. Competent work that blends together well enough. Never horrid nor spectacular.

Obviously I'm going to hold any opinions on if the weekly is good overall until I finish the final volume, but the second is a bit of an improvement over the first, which I already thought was a decent read. So far, as long as it doesn't completely shit the bed with the ending, it'll probably hit somewhere in the middle as far as ranking DC's weeklies.

Bit of a short review, I know, but there isn't a lot of bad that sticks out and any good I could emphasize depends on how the series closes out.

The New 52 - Futures End Vol. 1 (comics)

Writers: Brian Azzarello, Jeff Lemire, Dan Jurgens, Kieth Giffen

Artists: Patrick Zircher, Jesus Merino, Aaron Lopresti and many more

Collects: The New 52 - Futures End #0-17

I was pretty excited about this back in the day. It's a time travel, avoid the bad future story and I often dig those. It's a weekly with Batman Beyond, one of the best variants of Batman ever put to paper, front and center. It has a bunch of writers I generally like. But reviews of it week to week were mid and money issues put me off from getting the trades in a timely manner. It became one of those "I'll read it when I get to it" projects, only who the hell knew when I'd get to it.

Well, I finally did. It's pretty decent? I want to say good, but this is only a third of the overall weekly so I don't know how it will shake out. It's not quite the slam dunk I expected from the talent involved, but I'll get into that. Still, I enjoyed it.

The series starts out hot with its zero issue, which is entirely set in the devastated future of thirty five years out from the then DC Universes present day. And when I say devastated, I mean it. Brother Eye has taken over everything its eye can see, assimilating heroes in frankly horrifying ways, and the whole thing is essentially the last stand of the remaining heroes. Seriously, there's some body horror going on, as much as they can get away with for a general audience. Circumstances leave them unable to pull it off, leading to Batmans backup plan; he's going to go back to the past and destroy Brother Eye before he and Mr. Terrific even build it. Unfortunately, he's injured in a standoff, so he sends his protege Terry McGuinnis in his place.

From there, the series is structured similarly to past weekly projects. 52 comes to mind. There are multiple running stories throughout that dip in and out when necessary. The duo that make up Firestorm are on the outs and we see what leads to the two agreeing never to merge again. Grifter is caught by agents of Cadmus for shadowy business. Frankenstein is lured into rejoining S.H.A.D.E. to investigate a sudden attack on Stormwatch. Mr. Terrific is completely up his own ass and marching the world toward the dark future without realizing it. Lois Lane is investigating the Green Arrows death. Tim Drake is in hiding and it's unclear why. Then there's the most important plotline, Terry McGuinnis working to avert the future entirely.

Well, it's the most important in theory, but one of the things that keep it going from decent-to-good all the way to great is that it feels like, at times, that plotline is the one that has the least focus. After we're past the zero issue, Terrys story is around, but as you can tell from the preceding paragraph, it's one of like eight narrative strands the weekly chooses to service. I don't think any of the narratives lost me, but it's a lot to juggle and none of them have fully merged by the end of the volume.

Which leads to the other issue that keeps the first volume from being a bit higher up on the quality chain. With so much to juggle, the book often feels like it's moving very slowly. We're jumping between a bunch of narratives, for a good chunk of the volume all of them are in setup mode and you can go a couple issues before you see a plotline return again. I imagine this is a very large part of why the weekly issues god middling reviews. If the pace feels slow to me in a collected volume, it must have been absolutely maddening to follow week to week.

Having yet to finish the overall story, I'm not a hundred percent sure which you cut, but maybe Lois Lanes plotline could have been folded into one of the others at the least. I'd have said Tim Drake just going off this volume, but that's the one plotline I DO know the destination of and yeah, can't really be cut. Maybe some pages could have stood to be trimmed from Grifter on Cadmus island. But whatever could have been decided, Terry needed more pages. He was the big draw of this weekly and he could have stood to be front and center more.

The art is about what you would expect for a weekly. There's a rotating cast of artists, some regular and a few pinch hitters. They all generally hit a baseline of quality so it looks consistent enough to carry the day, you just can't expect any standout artwork because that's not really what you see on these sort of projects. I kind of wish there was more to talk about, but the demands of a weekly schedule mean consistency of the whole mean more than any individual part. No shade from me, it's about the only way to hit a weekly schedule for a year. Wildly different art across one project almost never works out anyway.

It's difficult for me to pass judgement on a single volume of such a large series. A good chunk of the plotlines only just kick into gear by the end of the volume. I'll have more formed opinions by the time I'm finished. But for one volume, it's a pretty decent read with the caveat that you understand that it's a slow burn and there are a lot of plotlines being juggled. If that's not a turnoff for you, feel free to give the first volume a go.

Strange Adventures (comics)

Writer: Tom King

Artist: Mitch Gerards, Evan "Doc" Shaner

Collects: Strange Adventures (Vol. 5) #1-12

I think one of the things I like least about Tom Kings work is that I always feel like shit after I read one.

His writing often has a theme he goes back to, trauma, and he's admittedly good at it. It likely stems from his past experience in the CIA. He knows how trauma can fuck you up and most of his stories are about how it can break you down, lead you to do things you might never have without it, from self destruction all the way to war crimes. It's a good theme, but I wonder if he ever feels the need to write beyond that. I also wonder if he realizes any time he takes a comic character his approach doesn't do a lot more than ugly them up pretty bad.

Adam Strange as a character is very much in the vein of classic space adventurer serials like Buck Rogers or John Carter of Mars. He's one day teleported to a far off planet, falls in love with it and uses its technology to fight against anything that might threaten it. A lot of adventure and sci-fi, pulpy stuff. There's the occasional war, but it's much in the way that sort of stuff is depicted in comic books, without dwelling much on the horrors of it. Pretty clean cut Silver Age fare.

Tom Kings "Strange Adventures"* asks what it looks like when we stuff all the horrible stuff in.

We start after the war on Rann, the planet of which Strange has become an adopted son of sorts, is over. Strange and the Rannians had pushed back the Pykkt and saved their planet. Now, in the wake of the war, a retired Adam has returned to Earth with his wife. What awaits him is adulation and medals. He wrote a memoir about the war, which carries the same title as this comic, and spends his days at book signings. Until one day, one of the people who showed up for the signing turns hostile. He screams about knowing what Strange did, about the things he'd done to the Pykkt, and causes a scene. 

Under intense scrutiny, Strange turns to Batman, asking him to dig into Stranges past and life to absolve him of wrongdoing. Batman rightly decides that he cannot do this for Strange, that given their long history of fighting together and friendship Batman could not possibly be objective, but he promises to turn the case over to someone who could. Michael Holt, Mr. Terrific. A man who lives up to his name. Suddenly, Adam Strange is wary of the investigation he called for. Turns out it's for good reason, as when Terrific starts digging deeper, some things stop adding up. By the end, a lot more will be revealed than Adam Strange bargained for.

As always with Tom King, it's impeccably written. Even when I don't much care for the work in question, I can never deny he's a skilled writer. And he synergizes well with Mitch Gerards and Evan Shaner. The story, as it unfolds, switches between the present day on Earth and snapshots of moments of the war on Rann in the past, both with a different style. On Earth, it's more detailed, almost grimier, reflecting the uglier side of things slowly coming to light. On Rann, it's brighter, cleaner, with simple lines and bold colors, as if to reflect the inspiring story he told of the war, of the biggest moments. It's a neat trick and the contrast can be a gut punch when things start breaking down in the present while we see moments in the past of triumph and love.

Tom King is spoiled for great artists to work with. He's like Mark Miller in that way. Only, you know, actually good at the whole writing thing. Or at least he's a hell of a lot more consistently good than Mark Miller's ever been.

I think I just don't like his approach or what he does to characters or settings. Most of the time it just makes me roll my eyes. I think back to Murderin' Riddler for one example but he does it to almost anything he touches. There's Batman, obviously, which he positioned as a form a slow burn suicide. But he also did it to Mr. Miracle, who may or may not be trapped in an eternal purgatory after a suicide attempt he may or may not have escaped from. He's done it to the JLI, where Guy Gardner is seemingly murdered quite brutally** and Ice ends up essentially fitting the femme fatale role that's never once been even remotely hinted for her as a character. He takes interesting characters, often with depth, and utterly breaks them in ways you can't walk back from.

I cringe when a new Tom King comic is announced with some DC property I like, because there will be some new way in which characters I like are twisted in ugly ways.

That said, I should say that it's fine and despite my probably harsh words I'm not mad about it or anything. His Batman run aside most of his work is self contained and designated outside main continuity. It harms no one allowing him to do his take on these things because he doesn't have to worry about whether he breaks the proverbial toy or not. Adam Strange is as he always has been in the DC Universe proper. For this reason it's not like I'm even saying "why do they keep giving this guy work". They're often Black Label. He can go nuts. I'll either like it or I won't, and that's okay.

I just think, after numerous work, I just don't like the way he takes these bright characters and utterly breaks them. Even when it's not in continuity, it's not fun to see Adam Strange as a war criminal who has done some terrible things beyond that I won't talk about because it would spoil the whole third act. Part of me thinks that taking these bright, colorful characters and doing such utterly nasty things to them is about as childish as you could ever view these fictional entities once written for kids.

That's probably why I've turned on a fair bit of 80's comics. You know the ones, where everything had to grim and gritty it up. Maybe it's because I'm getting older, but it starts to feel so very edgelord, to me, to take things that are meant to be a positive escape from a frankly terrifying real world and drag them through the mud. That's probably why I've turned on a lot of Alan Moores work, long held as classics, including Watchmen. Some like Swamp Thing fit, because that's horror, but everything else? Geez, dude.

But outside my personal feelings about approach? Or content? Strange Adventures is a very, very well written and drawn comic book. And it may well work incredibly well for you. Maybe this approach is what some people are looking for and it's good it's there for them. I don't even regret reading it despite disliking its tone and I would encourage anyone to try it for themselves. It might be their new favorite. It's well written, well drawn, I'd even say that overall it's a good story. I almost never regret reading a great comic, even if it makes me feel like shit.

I simply never need to read it again.