Action #17

With next month’s Action #18, Grant Morrison’s run on Superman will come to an end, wrapping up the extended story that redefined DC’s flagship character.

Defining and redefining Superman has been a quagmire for DC over the last 15 years. This was true only three years ago when I expounded on the topic in my review of Geoff Johns’ Superman: Secret Origin #1. That series redefined Superman’s past in a way that summed up changes which had been in progress since Infinite Crisis. It was only to serve as the status quo for two years before being discarded for another, total, reboot. And in fact since then, we have also seen another heavily-sold out-of-continuity Superman origin in J. Michael Straczynski’s Earth One version of Superman, and a fleeting glimpse of a Superman who dies young in DC’s current Earth 2 title. If that’s not confusing enough for fans, the “2” and the “One” in those titles do not serve as part of a sequence, and they are piled on top of earlier Earth Ones and Twos (or 1s and 2s). The nomenclature alone produces vertigo if not nausea. Yet another out-of-continuity story called DC Universe Online (but it was not online) showed yet another Superman for 52 issues.

A new Superman in Grant Morrison’s hands had been long-anticipated. Morrison wrote Superman as part of his Justice League run starting in 1997, and shortly thereafter was part of a pitch called Superman 2000 which did not come to pass. In 2005, Morrison began a 12-issue run on All Star Superman, a fantastically popular mini-siries taking place in its own continuity, which in many ways was a prequel for the Superman we finally saw as part of the 2011 DCnU that is the main continuity of DC’s stories, for now.

With this series at the pause between the penult and ultimate issues, it stands as a single body of work which does not fail to reflect plotlines we’ve seen in all of those other Superman redefinitions mentioned above, a quilted kaleidoscope of stories and storylines which are rehashes of stores we had just seen. Brainiac double-crossing Luthor? Seen it in Online. General Lane directing a US Army plot against Superman and Superman’s tight association with the Legion of Super Heroes? Seen those in Secret Origin and other Geoff Johns stories in then-current continuity. Clark Kent beginning his journalistic career as a poor young man in the slums? Seen it in Earth One. Yet, it is hard to fault Morrison for reworking those almost-current stories: If he avoided every storyline in those several retreads, he would have had to write a story by negation, leaving holes in Superman’s DCnU history just to spite those other works. Morrison did not choose that path, and so we have a maxi-series from Morrison that looks like a blend of half a dozen other recent works.

And that includes Morrison’s own. Morrison’s Action employs elements from his All Star Superman title, including a key role for characters from Mxyzptlk’s Fifth Dimension, which provides the key villain in Action. Morrison has also used the Fifth Dimension in his JLA run and with his use of Bat-Mite in Batman.

Structurally, the run strongly resembles Morrison’s runs on Batman. In Morrison's first run on Batman, in issues #655–681, the hero faces a single dominant threat whose plot is at first hidden, from both the hero and the reader, surfacing in a series of smaller threats, calculated to test the hero without toppling him, before culminating in a final showdown between Doctor Hurt and Batman in Batman R.I.P. Morrison's Action run has a parallel structure, with the Little Man, who appears in the very first panel, proving to be the ultimate victim who confronts Superman directly only in the final issues. Both Doctor Hurt and Vyndktvx make pretensions to be the Devil, using the word "deal" like it's going out of style. Vyndktvx is often drawn three-faced, like Satan in Dante's Inferno. However, while the Batman story was fundamentally the story of a single plot by Doctor Hurt calculated to topple Batman, the Action story is a series of Superman adventures primarily featuring independent menaces, a few of whom Vyndktvx recruits for a single assault. Both stories are spread widely over time. Both wrap the events of much older stories into their telling. Both villains have identities held out as a mystery. Ultimately, The Little Man seen in the very first panel of Action #1 is given a complete backstory in terms of Fifth Dimension intrigue. There is no longer mystery regarding who he is, but we await the ending of a climactic battle, which began to crescendo in the final pages of Action #14.

The references to past Superman stories, both prominent and obscure, are more numerous than I will attempt to catalog here. Characters originating in Superman stories from every era from the Thirties through the Nineties have appeared in passing and in the foreground. I will mention, instead of the smaller facets, three larger stories that have impacted the narrative here in a very central way.

At the end of the pre-COIE era, two stories were published the same month wrapping up the pre-Byrne Superman. Both of these stories, on the surface unrelated, depicted a suddenly evil Mr. Mxyzptlk as the villain. By far the more famous of the two, Alan Moore's Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow? also had the structure of a larger villain (Mxyzptlk) throwing secondary menaces (as great as Luthor and Brainiac) at Superman before the hero and villain took each other down in a battle that undid them both, in different ways. A less well-known story by Steve Gerber in DC Comics Presents #97 showed a Mxyzptlk who had been punished by his own kind and who merged with the Phantom Zone and its villains before attacking Superman one last time. In this story, Mxyzptlk achieves a tactical and strategic victory, apparently poisoning the Earth with kryptonite (with the added horror of Argo City's dead bodies showering out of the sky), then leaving a defeated Superman behind in what was, technically, the last moments we saw of the pre-Byrne continuity. Morrison has based his run, thematically, where pre-Crisis continuity ended, with a new Fifth Dimensional villain posing the ultimate threat to Superman, so that Mxyzptlk's inherently benevolent nature can be preserved for future stories. By utilizing the same thematic menace as that of Moore's story, Morrison may be giving Superman a chance to face that threat that ended "him" before, and overcome it, just as he is with the Doomsday threat from yet another continuity. It will be interesting to see if the final issue makes more explicit reference to WHTTMOT?

A subsequent work, mending the pre- and post- Crisis worlds from the other side of the divide, Keith Giffen's run on the Legion of Superheroes dealt with the gaping hole in continuity that the LSH had been inspired by Superboy, but in the Byrne run, there had never been a Superboy. We promptly saw the emergence of another "Earth", the Pocket Universe, which led to Byrne's Superman going through a spiritual ordeal after killing that Universe's Phantom Zone villains. More germane to the present run, Giffen rebooted the LSH not once but several times in rapid succession, with the Legionnaires deliberately rebooting their own timeline to undo histories where one of their villains had triumphed as the undisputed master of the 30th Century. The Time Trapper, Mordru, and Glorith all have the capacity to become dictators of the Legion's universe, and so they reboot the universe until they create a timeline where a "Balance of Powers" leaves a free universe in which the LSH battles these villains, neutralizing them. In Action #17, Morrison seems to utilize the very same idea when the Legionnaires plan to "wipe out [their] entire history" and thus save Superman's life as well as "stop the rise of Universo." Morrison puts the LSH here in the same predicament they faced in Giffen's multiple timelines; this is, incidentally, a device he also used in his JLA story Rock of Ages where heroes overcome a despot villain's rule not by defeating him per se but by rebooting the timeline so that the victory by Darkseid never happened.

Another story serving as the template for this one is Morrison's own Final Crisis and its related crossover, Superman Beyond. The title page of Action #17, like the last page of Action #16, shows the Super-Doomsday creature poised to kill Superman just as the first page of Superman Beyond shows a flash-forward to the fateful battle between Superman and Mandrakk. Like the Bane Batman from Batman #664-665, it shows a meld of the hero with the Nineties villain who broke him. The creature incorporates elements of Mandrakk, the Nineties Doomsday with the armor Superman of Superman Beyond, the evil Superman from Morrison's Animal Man, and more generally every anti-Superman we've seen over the decades. Picking up the theme of Final Crisis as a story about story, the Super-Doomsday creature refers to itself as a "franchise", in a fourth-wall reference to itself as an alternate character that strives to defeat the DCnU Superman. It is a "thought" that we first saw in Action #9, where the Lois Lane of its parallel universe defines to it as the product of selling out, of a Superman "brand" designed by experts to have "maximum cross-spectrum, wide-platform appeal, a violent, troubled, faceless anti-hero... a global marketing icon." It sounds like Morrison has a very specific villain in mind, something that Warner Brothers might be creating and incorporating into video games right now.

In every aspect of this run, we see a Morrison trademark: postmodernism rendered in the terms of the comic genre. In his Batman run, Morrison delivered unconventional narratives that were explained in the story with Batman-appropriate devices such as hallucinogens and brainwashing. Here, as in JLA, All Star Superman and Superman Beyond, Morrison accomplishes the same postmodernist storytelling through Superman-appropriate devices such as time travel and multiple dimensions. The reader's experience, either way, is one of unreliable narration and dramatic irony. The vehicle for creating this is specific to the hero, and ties in with a heritage from past decades when postmodernism was not the aim.

As with Final Crisis and Batman: RIP, the jump-cuts in narration may detract from many readers' enjoyment. In what now makes four consecutive issues, we have seen a cliffhanger with the first two simply put aside as the story picks up in the next issue. As the structure is so heavily borrowed from other Morrison stories, and the conventional payoffs blunted by his sleight of hand, the story is not likely to be remembered as a fan favorite nor as one of his milestones. What is most admirable here is that he worked his tricks, in many ways familiar and well-worn, in ways so specific to this particular character.

On two other levels, the story works assiduously and brilliantly to serve red meat to the fans: It does, after all, reboot Superman in ways that many fans yearned for. It overturns many aspects of the past continuity that overstayed their welcome. Perhaps to greater effect, it shows Morrison's gift for the flourish, the moment of perfection. When miniaturized Luthor looks out of shrunken Metropolis and sees Superman's symbol looming outside the jar, to the call "Look, up in the sky!" Morrison shows Superman winning every way at once. Inasmuch as Morrison has shown that he will let threads drop (or hang), we see Clark's vow to his father to wage a battle for justice.

In what is the final cliffhanger of Morrison's run, just as Super-Doomsday is about to kill Superman, Luthor arrives, saying "Nobody kills Superman but Lex Luthor!" If this seems familiar, it is not an accident. The very first monthly issue of John Byrne's run, in Superman Vol. 2 #1, ends with Metallo about to kill Superman when Metallo is suddenly teleported away. This is explained in #2 when Luthor says, "Of course I stopped you, Metallo. The killing of Superman is a pleasure reserved for myself."

The Morrison run in Action will have a lasting impact. It will serve as the definition of Superman's origin for untold years to come. And it is such an intricate story, it will be a work worth studying. It remains to be seen how much, in conventional terms as a comic, it will be enjoyed. While it is certain that Superman will, with help, triumph over Vyndktvx and Super-Doomsday, it is less clear that Morrison will triumph unconditionally over the commercial Superman that Super-Doomsday represents.

A Christmas Story

This story is not original. Credits at the end.

It came upon the midnight clear, a gloved hand traced over a computer screen, touching names and addresses, as the man who owned the hand made connections, saw patterns in police reports, and planned his nightly patrol so that Gotham City’s criminals would have the least chance of escaping justice. His route was determined, his car fueled, a warm cup of tea drunk, and Batman arose to go into the night, when suddenly he saw another figure, one who had somehow gotten close – here in the Batcave of all places! – without being heard. Batman instinctively ducked into a crouch and drew a batarang to throw at the red-suited man who was standing on a sleigh. It seemed to be Santa Claus, but obviously it could not, and whatever the explanation for this man’s presence was, it could as easily be dangerous as not. Until the man spoke in a calming voice.

“Bruce,” he said, “It’s good to see you. I know you’ve been a very good boy. Merry Christmas!”

Upon hearing the rich, deep voice, Batman lowered his guard. He knew this was no enemy. “Merry Christmas. It’s good to see you. But I can’t stay and visit. My patrol starts now.”

“Bruce,” Santa Claus said, “Gotham can always count on you. And I’ve been watching, all these years. All those thieves and muggers, the Joker, Mister Freeze and Penguin and Clayface. I’ve been watching people for a long time, and I don’t know anyone who’s better than you. So tonight, let me give you a present.”

“Leave it over there,” Batman said, striding towards his car.

But Santa Claus said, “I can’t leave the present here, Bruce. The present is that you get to stay. The present is that you get to have Christmas.”

“That’s very kind,” the man in the black cowl answered. “I would like to take a day off. But when I take a rest, crime goes on, and innocent people get hurt. So I have to go out.”

“Bruce,” Santa Claus said, beaming, “That’s what makes you so good, what makes you so deserving. Why you deserve Christmas more than anyone! So here’s your present: You get to stay home all day. And your work, your good work… you can return to it tomorrow.”

“It’s not that simple. I wish it were. But any time that I take off, any, that’s more crime that goes unchecked. This would be the worst day of all for me to stay home and leave the city unprotected.”

“Bruce,” Santa said, a little sadly. “When was the last time you had Christmas? A normal Christmas, opening presents, being with the people you love? Was it…?”

Touched, to the point it stung, Batman hesitated. “It was… then. Before they died.”

“Oh, Bruce. All of this, all you’ve done for everyone, and for them, too. Don’t you think they would want you to be happy? Don’t you think your parents would want you to have Christmas?”

Nothing else could make Batman feel so deeply as the subject of them, of the parents who had loved him, who gave him the only Christmases he’d known. Now, years later, it was hard for him to speak without showing more feeling than he could let himself show to the man in the red suit. “Of course…” Batman answered, and then he had to pause. “Yes. But my work.”

“Bruce,” Santa Claus said, “tonight your work will be done. Call Gordon.”

A moment later, with a red phone in his hand, Batman spoke with Commissioner Gordon. Santa watched with a knowing grin. When the call ended, Batman looked shocked. “He said there’s been no crime since earlier this evening. By this hour, there should have been eighteen crimes reported, but there’ve been… none. Not one.”

“And there will be none,” Santa said to Batman. “You have my word. At midnight tomorrow, you can go back out, go back to your good work. But tonight, and tomorrow, the city will be safe without you. That’s my present to you. Go to bed tonight. And in the morning, join the people you love. Call Dick. Call Tim. Call Alfred. Spend Christmas with them, spend it full of love. They can join you by the fire and together, you can celebrate Batman’s first Christmas.”

The caped crusader was unable to contain his emotion. Freed from his duties, for the first time in years, he was at a loss for how to speak or move, how to be Bruce Wayne, how to be himself, on Christmas. After a long pause, he answered, “I will.”

Santa Claus laughed his famous laugh. “I’m so glad, Bruce. Everyone deserves Christmas, but nobody…” he paused, and stretched out his hand “…nobody deserves Christmas more than you.”

His head down, Batman could not speak, not without showing more feeling than he could bear to let the other man see. He nodded, and while he was looking down, the other man and his sleigh disappeared.  When a minute had passed, Batman’s composure returned. Then Batman looked up in the direction of the faraway sky, and in a soft voice that only the man in the sleigh could hear, Batman whispered,

“Thanks, Clark.”

Acknowledgements

No idea in this story is mine. Most of the credit belongs to ItsJustSomeRandomGuy, who posted a video called Twas The Dark Knight Before Christmas in 2007. I saw the video and found it wonderful. It returned to my thoughts many times afterwards.

At some point, at least a year or two after my first viewing, I watched it again and found that one key idea that I had remembered from the story is not actually in the story at all. I was perplexed until I thought harder and realized that my foggy notion of Superman watching over Gotham City on Christmas was actually something about Supergirl, and then my memory lead me to the DC Universe Holiday Special with a cover date of February 2009. In that issue, a 5-page story by the great Joe Kelly contains the rest of the inspiration for my mis-remembered version of RandomGuy's video. Kelly's story has Gotham devoid of sirens on Christmas, an event largely narrated from Jim Gordon's perspective, with a cameo by Batman. At the end, we find out that the combined efforts of Barbara Gordon and Supergirl had kept Gotham crime-free for a single day. In Kelly's story, this gift was given anonymously, with no advance notice or explanation after the fact, to make Gotham's protectors believe that a miracle had given it a day without crime.

My memory had unconsciously worked that detail into my memory of the video, with Superman convincing Batman to take Christmas off, not merely with a "pep talk" but with the guarantee that Gotham would be safe during Batman's holiday. It seems more Batman-like to me that he would need that guarantee before canceling his Christmas patrol.

Almost all the rest of how I rendered the story here is from the video, particularly the twist ending. And part of what I found wonderful was imagining Superman's Christmas over Gotham, swooping down to stop crimes here and there, hustling back into the sky to watch for more crimes, beaming with the grandest smile, knowing that he was helping ordinary citizens, and doing something truly special for his friend.

What I find especially touching about this is the history of the Superman-Batman friendship, cemented in decades of comics, but later erased in stories by Frank Miller and John Byrne, before being revived in stories by Jeph Loeb and others. Because you don't know the continuity of a story like this one, you can't be sure what the status of the two superheroes' relationship is, but in a brilliant twist, you find out that they are friends in precisely the last word, which is the only place in the story that indicates that Superman is in the story at all.

Apologies to RandomGuy and Joe Kelly for co-opting their ideas. I felt that the mash-up of their stories was more powerful than either alone. I hope people enjoy.

Batman, Inc in the DCnU

Batman, Incorporated began on the final pages of Batman and Robin #16, a postscript to that story and a prologue to a new one. The publication history is torturous: Batman: The Return introduced the menace of Leviathan, then eight issues of Batman, Incorporated ran before plans were altered or postponed by the DC Universe's reboot in Flashpoint. Then what should have been two issues was run under the title "Leviathan Strikes." Since then, six other issues have been published, restarting the numbering of a series which had barely begun. So five numbers have been used twice, there were two one-shots, and we have an issue #0 which was, if this bit of confusion means anything, presented with a splash page saying it was "Before the new 52" although it was published in the middle of the other numbers and there are no identifiable glitches in continuity between then and now. To muddy the waters a bit more, Batman, Inc #5 (in the new numbering) hearkens back exactly or approximately to a timeline from 2007's Batman #666, published five and a half years ago and yet another look at that possible (and possibly same) future in Batman #700. Confused? You should be.

We should presume that Morrison's telling the same story he was telling with or without the DCnU reboot, give or take minor glitches (such as, perhaps, Jason Todd being free from prison; Dick Grayson taking back the Nightwing identity; and Bruce using Damian as his Robin, despite an earlier pronouncement to the contrary). Perhaps the other Batman titles are navigating an altogether different course -- the Court of Owls is sufficiently similar to the Black Glove, how could they have coexisted without warring or merging? But Morrison's never had much coordination with the other writers on the bat-titles, and even if Inc is shunted to a tertiary position while Scott Snyder and others take the higher-profile titles, it appears that Morrison's tale continues on, with no sharp delineations from the time it began in Batman #655 over six years ago. To be sure, his plans have evolved along the way, considerably, but Morrison loops the story backwards with flashbacks to the John Mayhew plot, and his rendition of the night Bruce rang a bell to summon Alfred almost as seamlessly as though it had all been planned in advance.

We've known since February 2012's Leviathan Strikes that the villain of this extended story is Talia after Morrison's two previous long maxi-arcs (running in three different titles) both centered around Doctor Hurt.

Once we dispense with the confusion of reboots and how it fits with Snyder, et al's work, the story remains tangled in time. Batman, at the very end of time in Return of Bruce Wayne #6, saw backwards to the vastly earlier time (the mid 21st century, it may be safe to say) when Talia's putative plan played out, a look back first mentioned in The Return when Bruce says he has to protect his allies from "what's coming, what I saw." Apparently, we see that vision (or a slightly more detailed version of it than Batman himself saw) in Inc Vol. 2 #5. It is a vision which Bruce believes will not come to pass (and given its level of horror, we may be sure will not come to pass), which puts into play that the future is malleable: Bruce was at the end of time looking back, but for reasons contained within Morrison's story (and not, likely, within Flashpoint, which was driven by other forces), Bruce believes he can alter it, but not completely. It is also clear that his vision was not complete (in Inc Vol. 1 #1, he calls it "a glimpse of the big picture", and he was despite that glimpse surprised to learn that Talia is Leviathan). He also calls the upcoming struggle with Talia "the fight of my life." And as he says in Vol. 1 #6, "Something big, something bad is coming. And no. Not everyone is going to survive it." So while he believes some portion of the vision can be addressed, he believes that some deadly portion of it cannot.

After extensive foreshadowing that the death of Damian is at stake, we receive a vision of a future in which Damian is Batman, which has featured in three full stories: Batman #666, Batman #700, and Inc Vol. 2 #5. Add in a non-incidental similarity to a reference in Batman #665 when Bruce awakens from a stupor to imagine a grinning Damian telling him that the third Batman is the worst of them all, and remembers a previous dream in which a Batman "sold his soul to the Devil and destroyed Gotham." At the time that served as an elaboration on his first foggy meeting with Michael Lane (the third "Replacement Batman" trained by Doctor Hurt). It also seemed possibly prophetic in Batman and Robin #15, when Doctor Hurt tried to deal for Damian's soul. And it very obviously hearkened to a scenario seen in Batman #666, when Lane and Damian fought a showdown using devilishly-provided longevity. I've previously written up that issue here.

The story in Batman #700 seemed to tell a story (tied in with three others in that issue) of the real future with Damian as Batman, one less haunted by apocalyptic overtones, and no indication that Damian had gained longevity by dealing with the Devil. And yet, it has a striking similarity to Inc Vol. 2 #5 in a baby who is infected with Joker virus. In that telling, Damian obviously does have such powers (rising again after being mowed down by machine gun) and the panel showing him mourning the death of Batman (apparently Bruce, but again see my earlier write-up) indicates that we are back in the #666 timeline, one which was never assured to happen, but which shows what might. Morrison didn't plan this far ahead in 2007, but here we are, and that timeline with the ultimate grim outcome – the total destruction of Gotham suggested back in #665 – coming to play, with Doctor Hurt, as good as the Devil himself, standing by the shoulder of the President, whispering bad confidences to destroy what was once his home city when centuries earlier he was the 1760's Thomas Wayne. This seems to validate that Doctor Hurt remains in the wings for future use, living until he's freed from the coffin near Wayne Manor.

Now, the story in the present takes a strange turn. Damian is cast out from Bruce's shelter, seemingly left to a high risk of death without such protection. We still have a flash forward teaser from Inc Vol. 1 #1 showing Bruce, looking over graves, seeming to quit his Batman identity before being arrested by Commissioner Gordon. With Inc. agents set up around the world, it seems as though the fight of Bruce's life is to begin, and with Damian's death perhaps the tragic end of a story being written so far with the prophetic power of Greek tragedy.