| |
|
I'm going to regret saying anything as I have before in a thread where everyone's made up their mind, but the series worked quite well (aside fron a few plotholes that don't hold up such as putting the killer with all the answers in Arkham, her knowing all the League's secrets with no real explanation unless the Atom left more than a spare costume in the junk room and I can't quite shake the image of Jean weilding a flame thrower as being just silly... "Just in case I screw up with scaring her, I'll bring along this weapon to utterly destroy the evidence' Uh... right).
But the central concept of the series as I see it was not touched upon here. The endless statements by Ollie that 'They say it was simpler then' and Jean's 'I just wanted things to go back to the way they were' are the key to this whole story. It's about looking at the late 70's/early 80's as being ideal when in fact it wasn't. It's also about how you cannot go back. The DCU has moved on and that's just the way it is.
The way I see it we got two key character journeys to the story, Green Arrow and the Flash. Ollie has been holding all these secrets in and sees that it's time to let them out, to Wally West who is the fan boy-like character who lives in adoration of his mentor Barry Allen. Ollie slowly lets out all these dark secrets, not quite knowing how Wally will receive them. I think he was hoping Wally would punch him out. Rags is an outstanding artist and he conveys such emotion in Oliver's face. Wally accepts all of the secrets and continues to accept the JLA, even inviting Oliver out to dinner afterwards. It's something they both want to be okay about but they know that things have changed. They just refuse to accept it.
The Arthur Miller quote was about the other part of the story, the Flash. Sitting in the JLA meeting room trying to act cool even though he now knows all these dark secrets (including the ones learned in the Flash crossover). The percieved innocence is over, has been for ages. All the heroes are just pretending to be pure when in fact no one can be.
Then there's the theme that these characters lead crazy double lives and their loved ones get left behind, as evidenced by Tim and his Dad and the numerous wives. Jean wanted her husbans back, wanted all the marriages and relationships to heal... which is a bizarre motivation for a killer, admittedly.
The series was not about bringing rape and murder into the DCU nor was it about shocking people by killing of Sue Dibney (why not kill of Doiby Dickles!... crap, maybe they'll do that next now).
Despite what you think of the mystery, Metzer did something that few of any writers can. He wrote nearly every DCU super hero into a story and kept them all in character throughout. That stunned me.
From the beginning of this series, I had some issues abd still do with it. I cannot figure out how this will affect the DCU and while I think it's a great story don't think it suited for all the publicity it got. I hate mysteries as a rule and was never concerned about who the killer was. By setting the ante so high you had everyone online trying to guess and it got so crazy which was obviously not the series intent. I mean, why make it be the Atom's wife?? The motivation is never even hinted at to the reader which is hardly the sign of a good mystery, is it? Especially when you've got all these guesses going on that tie into DC history, etc. I like the story but cannot figure out what the fuck DC or Metzer was thinking.
Also, the series had by far the worst covers I've ever seen, combined with the shittiest slogans. I felt like I was buying porn the way I hid the covers when leaving the store. Ugh.
I've been (for some reason) collecting or borrowing nearly every DC comic printed recently and this series makes perfect sense in the way the company is going now (aside from Superman who's a year on the future for some stupid reason). Characters have been developing in such a way that they've been questioning their origins, motivations and if they can trust their teammates, etc.
It's all in the pages of comics I don't think anyone here is reading: JSA, the Flash, Hawkman even Teen Titans (all Geoff Johns). But I understand just jumping into this is jarring. It would have worked better as a cross-comic even rather than a stand-alone actually.
But whatever. It's over. I'm looking forward to the Rann-Thanager conflict.
Oh and the bashing I'll get for posting my POV (not a dig at the board, I'm just being pessimistic). |
|
|
