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Opinion

Bendis’ Justice League & The Hierarchy Of Power In DC- Part I

October 31, 2022 by Ritesh Babu 1 Comment

The date was November 7th of 2017.

It was another day. Just like any other.

Until it wasn’t.

This is real. I love you all. Change is good. Change is healthy. I am bursting with ideas and inspirations. Details to come! Stay tuned! https://t.co/S1x5JDmGTt

— BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS (@BRIANMBENDIS) November 7, 2017

Everyone began shrieking, whether it was in delight or terror.

You had every variation of ‘No way’ ‘Is this a prank?’ ‘OH MY GOD’ ‘Holy shit’ to people screaming ‘YESSSSSSS’ or ‘NOOOOOOO.’ The reaction was instant, massive. And the end result? Absolute chaos. People had joked about it for years. ‘Imagine Bendis writing for DC,’ which was usually followed by ‘Well he did do that one short-story called Citizen Wayne at one point, but yeah.’ It seemed about as likely as Christiano Ronaldo playing for Manchester City. It was but a dream. A fantasy. A What-If that you joked and laughed about as absurdity.

And then it happened.

[Read more…] about Bendis’ Justice League & The Hierarchy Of Power In DC- Part I

Filed Under: DC Reviews, Featured, Opinion Tagged With: bendis, justice league

Severed Limbs and Soiled Capes: The Place of the Super-Macabre in Comics

October 29, 2022 by David Mann Leave a Comment

As anyone who knows me learns sooner or later, my first ever fresh-off-the-stands new comic was 2000’s The Amazing Spider-Man (Vol. 2) #17 by Howard Mackie, John Byrne, Dan Green, Joe Rosas, Richard Starkings, and Troy Peteri when I was 4 or 5 years old. Aside from getting me to think Venom was the coolest supervillain ever (not entirely borne out) and that Mysterio also ruled (ENTIRELY borne out), the issue was mostly notable for Peter Parker getting arrested because unlikely circumstances caused a pair of cops to think he was a cokehead yuppie, and then losing out on a job interview. The centerpiece though was the lingering death by slushification of the Sandman, and a bit involving what I as a small child thought was a bottle of ketchup that lingered in my mind for decades:

Looking back, the actual panel of the booze falling through him isn’t that severe, but in my young mind it was a gut-churning visual metaphor for blood as Flint Marko’s body grotesquely failed him. It didn’t have an immediate impact on me; I didn’t get into slasher films and in fact tend to be a big weenie regarding cinematic horror, I didn’t dig up EC backlogs, and this was soon followed by the far more age-appropriate Superman & Bugs Bunny and the Essential Spider-Man TPBs. Still, it established a trend: my third grade teacher Mrs. Reed got an Amazing trade for the class’s book-nook for me without paging through and realizing this was JMS and Romita Jr.’s initial Morlun arc where Spider-Man’s hunted down and beaten to a semi-sensate lump of gristle and pulp, and I ate it up.

Years later my introduction to weekly comics was Batman R.I.P., a comic featuring an amnesiac heroin-addicted Batman wandering the streets of Gotham in a stupor (despite its triumphant climax), a Joker with carved cheeks and a split tongue, and a threatened lobotomy upon the former Robin the Boy Wonder, rooted in the drug and sex-fueled fetishistic casual cruelities of the untouchable monstrously wealthy. It all took Gotham to a tonal limit I hadn’t previously imagined and made the climax all the more triumphant. Not long after came Irredeemable, a comic that would make me interrogate my love of the Superman archetype in ways that would eventually lead to my future in comics criticism, with its tales of a hero’s desperate need for validation giving way to finding bliss in the unthinkable horrors he can rain down upon the defenseless populace that once loved him.

[Read more…] about Severed Limbs and Soiled Capes: The Place of the Super-Macabre in Comics

Filed Under: Featured, Opinion Tagged With: marvel zombies

Black Adam and Geoff Johns’ Bastards- Part IV

October 20, 2022 by Ritesh Babu 1 Comment

Picking up where we left off, we now come to the one and only time Geoff Johns ever wrote a proper Shazam/Fawcett solo ongoing, the work that would reshape Black Adam once again.

It would prove to be his final farewell to the character and the mythology he’d worked with for so long. Or…would it?

[Read more…] about Black Adam and Geoff Johns’ Bastards- Part IV

Filed Under: DC Reviews, Featured, Opinion Tagged With: black adam

Black Adam and Geoff Johns’ Bastards- Part III

October 19, 2022 by Ritesh Babu 1 Comment

Picking up where we left off, we now come to one of the most important initiatives of modern DC comics, and the work that would reshape Black Adam for good once more.

The initiative that still informs what DC is, and which it has never truly been able to escape. We come to The New 52.

[Read more…] about Black Adam and Geoff Johns’ Bastards- Part III

Filed Under: DC Reviews, Featured, Opinion Tagged With: black adam

Black Adam and Geoff Johns’ Bastards- Part II

October 18, 2022 by Ritesh Babu Leave a Comment

Picking up where we left off, we now come to one of the most important books of modern DC comics, and the book that would reshape Black Adam for good.

The book that continues to inform and define much of the identity of DC even now. We come, of course, to 52.

[Content/Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault]

[Read more…] about Black Adam and Geoff Johns’ Bastards- Part II

Filed Under: DC Reviews, Featured, Opinion Tagged With: black adam

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