Comic Book Herald

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Opinion

Who Watched the Watchmen? Watchmen and The Darkness Within

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There is a great lie about Watchmen.

They repeat the lie over and over again, pretending it says a lot, when it says very little. It is not a lie of malice, but a lie of ignorance. It is a lie predicated on omission of truth. It is a lie that only emerges when one understands history. It is a meaningless statement presented as meaningful to those who don’t know better.

It is the first lie of American comics that every new reader is confronted with, when surveying the scene of the superhero.

And it is a lie that holds, despite everything else.

The lie is this: [Read more…] about Who Watched the Watchmen? Watchmen and The Darkness Within

DC and The Matter Of Crisis, Part V

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You’ve heard the word. You know the story.

Crisis.

The iconic, defining, definitive word of DC stories.

The word Crisis feels inseparable from the fabric of DC. It holds sway over its past, it informs its present, and it will certainly influence the future. You can’t think of DC and not think of Crisis at some point. The very idea of it has been bound to the very idea of DC that tightly.

And the response to the word and its invocation is intense as well. It comes with a lot of assumptions and baggage. Given that is the case, given it has become ubiquitous, inevitable, and all-pervading with DC itself, it’s worth discussing what has become of it. What has emerged from this focusing and this obsession over Crisis in DC? What has it led to?

The matter of Crisis must be unpacked, and that’s what we’re here to do.

Picking up where we left off…

[Read more…] about DC and The Matter Of Crisis, Part V

DC and The Matter Of Crisis, Part IV

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You’ve heard the word. You know the story.

Crisis.

The iconic, defining, definitive word of DC stories.

The word Crisis feels inseparable from the fabric of DC. It holds sway over its past, it informs its present, and it will certainly influence the future. You can’t think of DC and not think of Crisis at some point. The very idea of it has been bound to the very idea of DC that tightly.

And the response to the word and its invocation is intense as well. It comes with a lot of assumptions and baggage. Given that is the case, given it has become ubiquitous, inevitable, and all-pervading with DC itself, it’s worth discussing what has become of it. What has emerged from this focusing and this obsession over Crisis in DC? What has it led to?

The matter of Crisis must be unpacked, and that’s what we’re here to do.

Picking up where we left off…

[Read more…] about DC and The Matter Of Crisis, Part IV

DC and The Matter Of Crisis- Part III

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You’ve heard the word. You know the story.

Crisis.

The iconic, defining, definitive word of DC stories.

The word Crisis feels inseparable from the fabric of DC. It holds sway over its past, it informs its present, and it will certainly influence the future. You can’t think of DC and not think of Crisis at some point. The very idea of it has been bound to the very idea of DC that tightly.

And the response to the word and its invocation is intense as well. It comes with a lot of assumptions and baggage. Given that is the case, given it has become ubiquitous, inevitable, and all-pervading with DC itself, it’s worth discussing what has become of it. What has emerged from this focusing and this obsession over Crisis in DC? What has it led to?

The matter of Crisis must be unpacked, and that’s what we’re here to do.

Picking up where we left off…

[Read more…] about DC and The Matter Of Crisis- Part III

Who Watched The Watchmen? The Button

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It is often said that Watchmen is the most influential comic ever to be released. That comics wouldn’t be where they are without it, for good and for ill. But how did we get here, exactly? More to the point, just what influence did Watchmen provide to the larger world of comics? What, ultimately, is the legacy of Watchmen? Who watched the Watchmen?

Rebirth had succeeded. It had proved to be a juggernaut that everybody seemed to want more of. DC’s hopes and dreams of winning hearts and minds whilst exploiting the Watchmen IP had never risen higher. While nobody cared for Before Watchmen, they seemed to care about Watchmen crossing over with the DC Universe and its characters. They paid attention to that in which they did not with other attempts to cash in on Watchmen. If DC couldn’t make money off stories about what happened before the events of Watchmen, they were sure as hell going to make it off what happened after the events of Watchmen.

And so the enterprise of Watchmen exploitation had to keep going…for this was what DC had been waiting for. This was the culmination of years of trying. Their predatory impulses had finally borne fruit. The milk they were selling from their cash-cow was a hit. All they had to do was just keep milking it.

Enter: The Button by Joshua Williamson, Jason Fabok, and Tom King.

[Read more…] about Who Watched The Watchmen? The Button