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This may not be entirely relevant, but I think it also might be, and I'm too stupid, arrogant and opinionated to shut my cakehole in any case, so you're just going to have to listen to me for a second here. By listening, of course, I mean looking at words I've typed on a screen. But, well. You knew that. And if you didn't, and you thought I was actually going to log off, then phone each of you and shout at you in turn then, well, that's a bit silly, really, and you should probably stop taking the 'take everything literally' pills.
Seem to have gone off on a bit of a tangent, there.
Okay, so I'm rereading my copy of The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told, and there's this story at the end by this guy called Alan Brennert - 'The Autobiography of Bruce Wayne', basically a farewell to the pre-crisis Batman - and it occurred to me that this - although a mainstream superhero story - was the kind of story this Jess Lemon might like. It weaves a nicely constructed plot with a good sense of dramatic escalation around a theme - Batman's terror of being alone - which it's possible to identify with and which puts the events of the story in context. The dialogue is believable, the pacing is handled well, and the resolution of the story is satisfying whether you're a long-term fan or not. Come to think of it, all these points could be said to apply to Venom, which I also reread recently: theme you can empathise with, well-paced plot, etc etc.
Point of interest: neither of these stories require the reader to know loads of previous continuity in order to understand them. Brennert was a TV writer as well, IIRC, and so understood the importance of making sure the audience can 'get' the show after one episode - and preferably after a fraction of an episode - without needing tons of backstory (says the man who is of course off to watch the last episode of 24 in a minute...). Dennis O'Neil, who wrote Venom, cut his teeth writing Batman in the seventies, when the comics were generally considered throwaway entertainment and continuity wasn't a huge bugbear (though it was respected, and when used - as by Steve Englehart during his genius Batman run - was used well).
By way of comparison, I reread The Return of Superman recently as well. This, you'll recall, was the defining story from the super-books' 'triangle time' period, when each individual issue was merely one tiny episode in an endless soap opera about Superman and a bunch of other people in Metropolis. To get the references in Return you need to have at least picked up the previous several months' worth of Superman books to read the whole Death of Supes storyline, and even then, some of the references will escape you (who that Guardian bloke is exactly, for example...). Plus, for the sake of The Relentless March of Continuity, the story is chock full of needless, fake-drama cliffhangers to get you to read the next issue (which is of course pointless in a TP but they're in there anyway...).
The point is? Continuity itself does not make for a good story. I haven't read Outsiders #1 yet, but I do actually intend to - I want to see which of these two camps it falls into. I'll cut it every bit of slack I can (first issue, gathering of team, etc) but I still have a strong suspicion it'll have more in common with The Return of Superman than the other two stories...
Ben Affleck and his superhuman power to convert lesbians! Funny how they didn't make much of that in Daredevil...
Would have been a slightly better movie if they had. |
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If this thread is just about reviewing comics in general as an institution, then maybe the title & topic should be changed.