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I like the alternate takes that make a point, or have a point they spin upon, as opposed to those who have nothing to say but have a joke or swap-out to spin on, instead.
Elseworld's Finest, by Barbara Kesel and Matt Haley nicely illustrates how effective Supergirl and Batgirl could be, how to write a Bats/Supes relationship that is antagonistic without being sharp gritty hatred, and it detourns a lot of gender-based tropes in as gentle a way as possible.
Night on Earth explicates the Batman better than his proper DCU stories usually do, and smoothly integrates what would happen to Dick Grayson or the Joker without Bats. See also, Terra Occulta's extrapolations. Other than bittersweet moments involving old men, and brainpunching, this is what Ellis does best. And interesting things to say about 'saving' and 'exploitation', both for the characters/series in question and also for, well, us.
More Ellis: The Bleed storyline from Stormwatch was damn good comics, and it not only recontextualized a lot of the Wildstorm U. to show how it worked in-continuity, but how it could work, being a cohesive small-company universe. And it had a lot of integrity and optimism, with Hawksmoor's recovering something of himself by excising the alien junk in his body despite it crippling him physically, and the wish-fulfillment 'man on a cane walking arm in arm with a beautiful girl up a staircase into the sky' bit was an elegant way to have unspeakably bad things likely happen, but giving the surviving planet below, the real and surviving people a 'better world.'
I quite liked Jim Lee's Heroes Reborn FF, especially those first six issues as a very Bruckheimer Fantastic Four movie. Felt very fresh at the time, simply because those weren't the kinds of movies that were being tapped by mainstream comics creators, and now, well, it kinda presages the whole widescreen thing without actually being widescreen comics.
Another Fantastic Four story, James Sturm's Unstable Molecules addresses the dysfunctional family, look to the stars and trip and fall in the gutter, hope/horror of the earliest FF issues quite well.
Catwoman: Guardian of Gotham is successfully filled to the brim with every sexist trope you think they could manage, including decided that the female Two-Face couldn't be D.A., and so is repositioned as a model in half-a-skirt and the Bruce/Selina relationship respun into the made-for-TV psycho-stalker zone. I did like one line in it, but really, two issues of brain-crippling material like being smacked in the face by a board with a rat-poison-laced nail in it, and one line don't cut it.
And I didn't get the point of nine tenths of that month where all the annuals were Elsworlds. The Bat-ninja story tried to kill me, I think. It wouldn't be the only thing Chuck Dixon ever wrote that had, though. On the other hand, I did like the Warren Teen Titans and the Waid Flash turns from that gimmick, as they - see a theme developing here? - had actual things to say, about the characters and about real life/people.
I enjoyed parts of the Earth/Universe/Paradise X stuff, but it was weighed down by the annoying Alex Ross ethnicity-explains-all habit, and also, well, it was just annoyingly editorialized and the madness of simplifying the entire MU totally pointless from any perspective not addicted to preserving/manifesting true continuity.
Special bonus points awarded to Savage Dragon's complete and total jump to a new reality. Old faces, sure, were all over the place, but it was well-done, well-preserved, and y'know, couldn't be done if the book had a whole publishing line to toe to.
Anybody remember a web-comic called Kiss the Girls? Stand-alone series that went about fourteen light, goofy strips and then altered its continuity to tell the story darkly and seriously... and lost itself before going away. From boob-jokes and feather-fetishes to emo misery between panels. |
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