DCU Week 3 (and some others)
There’s so much to write about this month that I’m splitting the X-books off from the other titles. You’ll find them in yesterday’s post, and in this one I’m going to cover… well, the DC books I bought from week three, along with a couple of other new titles.
The DC relaunch has been pretty successful so far, but for my money this was a faintly underwhelming week. There’s a lot of books out this week of no interest to me – and other than some positive reviews for DC Universe Presents, I’ve seen little to suggest I’m missing out. Based on the cover alone, I wasn’t going within a mile of Catwoman, and it seems pretty clear that one was a smart call.
Batman #1 – We’ve already had Detective Comics back in week one, which would traditionally be regarded as the lead Batman title, but I’m happy enough to have sat that one out. This is the Scott Snyder/Greg Capullo book, and thankfully, it seems to be pretty much self-contained. Some of the sidekicks are wandering around, but there’s no apparent attempt to tie in with events in the other Bat-family titles.
What you do get is a first issue that’s mainly concerned with introducing the cast and the setting, and (towards the end) with setting up a mystery for Batman to deal with. Because he’s a detective, after all. And it’s a solid enough Batman plot, from the look of it.
Batman himself needs no introduction, and Snyder doesn’t waste our time with an origin recap – there’s a passing mention of the death of his parents, but that’s about it. The rest of the supporting cast are perhaps another matter, so the issue makes sure to set up his relationship with Nightwing, Red Robin and the current Robin, as well as the two major cops. But most of all, this issue is about establishing Gotham itself, which, after all, is not just another interchangeable fictional DC city; it’s the one where the particularly crazy and disturbed villains tend to pop up. And so much of Batman’s narration is based around the local newspaper’s voxpop responses to the question, what is Gotham?
Central to the issue is Bruce Wayne’s fundraising speech where he sets out his vision for Gotham. Of course, there’s always a bit of uncertainty about how much you can trust what Bruce says in this sort of speech. But broadly speaking, Snyder’s Batman, while remaining a decidedly austere figure, refuses to accept everyone else’s vision of Gotham as a bit of a psychotic dump. For him, Gotham has the potential to be great and he’s making a difference. This is not a version of Batman who’s fighting a futile or obsessive crusade; he claims, at least, to have a degree of optimism. In a character who can verge on emo, that’s a welcome slant.
The art is lovely. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Capullo working outside the style of Todd Macfarlane, but this moves into a nice blend of atmosphere and cartooning. His Batman is a suitably imposing and shadowy presence, and the double-page spread of the Batcave – which could easily have been a waste of space – turns out to be fabulous.
I confess to being a bit sceptical about trying to follow any individual Bat-title – I just know that they’ll be dragged into some sort of hideous crossover at some point – but this is a strong, back-to-basics Batman comic. It’s very well drawn, and it hits the right tone for the character without falling into overblown angst. I’ll give it a few more issues.
Blue Beetle #1 – This is a complete reboot of the Jaime Reyes version of Blue Beetle. Unlike most of the DCU titles, this is an outright origin story; the central elements of the series are the same as before, but Tony Bedard has taken the opportunity to jettison some clutter.
So the first four pages are a prologue explaining what the Scarabs actually are – something that the original series treated as a slow reveal. Then we get an explanation of how a lost Scarab ended up on Earth, before the story proper gets underway, by re-introducing Jaime and his establishing supporting character Brenda and Paco, re-introducing Brenda’s aunt as the villain, and having Jaime getting caught in the crossfire of some villains hunting for the Scarab, so that he can (of course) end up becoming the Blue Beetle.
When Jaime was originally created, he was spun out of one of DC’s line-wide crossovers, and his origin was awkwardly hitched to that. All that is apparently now out of the window, and a good thing too; Jaime now has an origin story which at least connects to his own cast.
Nonetheless, I have some mixed feelings about this. There are certainly other differences from the previous series. Paco’s gang connections are being played up much more strongly, for example. La Dama has some actual henchmen for Blue Beetle to fight. And some points are laid out in the first issue which the previous series took a while to reveal. But for all that, the general shape of the story seems very similar to the original series, and, well, I’ve read that before, and not so long ago either.
This, of course, is not a problem that generally plagues me with DC titles, and I entirely understand why they’re choosing to go with a completely fresh start on a relatively obscure character like this. I’m just not altogether sure it’s something I want to read again so soon. Then again, perhaps this is a case where the first issue has no choice but to set up a similar starting point, and there’ll be more divergence as it goes on. The fact that Bedard isn’t repeating the slow reveal from the previous series tends to support that – or maybe he just figures that there’s no point trying it again when everyone already knows the answer. I’ll give it another issue to see whether it develops more of its own identity, but the first issue left me feeling that the book was promising a cover version of a story I’ve read before.
Near Death #1 – This is an ongoing creator-owned series by Jay Faerber and Simone Guglielmini. Faerber’s best known for superhero books like Noble Causes, but this series marks a shift in crime stories.
It’s a high concept book if ever there was one: injured on an assignment, hitman Markham has a near death experience and is left convinced that he has to atone for his body count in order to avoid an eternity in somewhere not desperately pleasant. Rather than disappearing and starting a new life, however, he seems to be starting off by taking advantage of his underworld connections to try and screw up other people’s hits. It’s the sort of thing you can very easily see being pitched as a TV series.
In a world where first issues tend to be languidly paced, the opening of Near Death is extraordinarily abrupt – Faerber races straight into the titular experience by page 3, and is out of by page 7, leaving him plenty of space to drive into the first story. I can’t help thinking that the crucial scene which sets up the concept feels a bit rushed, and in an ideal world this would have been an extended first issue in order to give it more space. But then this is a creator-owned book from Image, so that may not be a realistic option.
The concept sounds like it could be a bit maudlin, but there turns out to be more of an angle on it. Markham may have a newfound conviction that he needs to turn around his cosmic balance sheet, but it’s not because he’s suddenly become a nicer person; it’s simply that the experience has (literally) put the fear of god into him. There’s an interesting theme in there; if this is the only reason you’re doing good, does it really count?
Artist Simone Guglielmini isn’t a familiar name to me; from the look of it, he’s worked mainly in his native Italy. The work here is strong, though – it wouldn’t be out of place on Criminal, he’s got a good sense of detail to establish a setting, and the crucial double-page spread that has to sell Markham’s epiphany is perfectly laid out.
I’m not sure how open-ended a concept this is – surely Markham can’t continue to string along his associates for long, not without them looking like idiots. But that doesn’t seem to be the direction Faerber’s taking with this. A potentially interesting idea, and worth a look.
Ultimate Comics X-Men #1 – Yes, I know, but I don’t count this as a proper X-book. It’s part of the Ultimate line, and those are the books it’ll be interacting with.
This is the second attempt to relaunch the Ultimate imprint. The first one was Ultimatum, which was nothing short of catastrophic, and pretty much killed a lot of the goodwill that the imprint had built up. This time, Marvel are taking a different tack, giving the line to Jonathan Hickman and Nick Spencer, and pushing it as a line where two upcoming writers get to do their thing. Which is fair enough, but where Ultimate X-Men is concerned, Nick Spencer still has the unenviable task of trying to raise my interest in these characters from the grave.
One of the challenges with these books is to justify the existence of a second version of the same characters. Too close to the original, and what’s the point? Too far removed, and how is it the same concept? Luckily for this book, the Ultimate Universe doesn’t have an equivalent of M-Day, so Nick Spencer is still writing a world that’s full of mutants. It’s also a world where (following a miniseries I didn’t read) everyone now knows that mutants were actually created by accident by a US government experiment. And, following Ultimatum, most of the mutants are in internment camps.
This… is where I start to have trouble. Yes, it’s superhero comics. Yes, it’s heightened reality. And yes, the internment policy does at least seem to be controversial. But still, it’s something I can’t quite buy from any vaguely recognisable version of the USA. It’s just too much to suspend my disbelief in. It’s an attempt to crank up the tension that actually takes it beyond credibility, so that it stops working. At any rate, it’s not a version of the concept that I have any particular interest in reading. Granted, it seems to be something that Spencer inherited from Jeph Loeb, but hey, a hereditary disease is still a disease, and there’s nothing here to suggest they’re moving away from it. On the contrary, it looks like this is going to be a book about an underground terrorist group consisting of Kitty Pryde, Iceman, the Human Torch (?), and some of the cast of Ultimate X (well, I’m guessing that’s who the unexplained guys in the motel room are).
It’s done competently enough, if you can live with the central premise, but there’s nothing here that interests me.
Wonder Woman #1 – Wonder Woman is a difficult character to make work. I’ve long been of the view that, at her core, she’s not a very good idea. As originally conceived, she’s a garbled pile-up of pseudo-mythology, wartime flagwaving, and dubious protofeminism. Much of which the general public is wholly unaware of, and plays little to no part in her iconic status, which depends simply on her being far and away the most recognisable female superhero. I honestly doubt that 99% of the public could tell you anything about Wonder Woman other than that she’s the generic superhero, female model.
To their credit, Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang are trying to do something very different with their take on the character. This is brave. Azzarello has described it as a horror comic, and he’s actually not far off. More precisely, he’s going back to the character’s links with Greek mythology, and doing a story about mythological figures – centaur assassins and such forth – in the real world. There’s no camp in this take; they’re more out-of-place and vaguely disturbing. The opening centaur-making sequence is, well, downright gory for something in a Wonder Woman comic, where graphic animal mutilation is not something you expect to see.
We have centaurs attacking a woman for reasons that aren’t explained until the end; Hermes gives her a magic key that teleports her to Wonder Woman for help. No attempt is made to introduce the character, presumably because the assumption is that everyone knows who she is – which is true, though how many casual readers will know about the mythological connection, I’m not so sure.
Nothing much seems to have changed in Wonder Woman herself (though since she’s not really introduced, we wouldn’t know); it’s just a very different sort of story to use her in. But it doesn’t work for me. I can see why this is getting good reviews purely in terms of the visual storytelling and the boldness of taking Wonder Woman in this direction. But it doesn’t work for me. It doesn’t give me any reason to care about the characters, who are all essentially stock figures; and I just can’t get over the tone clash of shoehorning Wonder Woman into such a dreadfully humourless and po-faced story. I’m clearly in the minority – and Al liked it a lot – but I just don’t get it at all.
Batman #1 was fantastic. I really liked that Morrison moved Bruce away from being a jerk but I thought his storytelling got a little tripped up over some the “big ideas” he wanted to throw in their, some of which didn’t seem like they worked in the Batman world. This seemed like the best of both worlds to me, as it features a fun Batman and a more accessible story. Capullo’s art seems like a mix of McFarlane and Bruce Timm and was really strong. What’s crazy is he gave an interview where he said that he and Snyder weren’t on the same page for the first issue, so his art is going to get better as the series goes on. If that’s the case, we’re in for some gorgeous comics in a month or two.
I flipped through Wonder Woman because my wife is a fan and I was thinking about picking it up for her, but the animal mutilation made me change my mind. A Wonder Woman comic just seems like the wrong place for that to me.
I’m going to have to join others in my feelings about Wonder Woman. I rather enjoyed this issue because it takes a different approach. And if you leave your expectations and vision of Wonder Woman at the door, you can’t shoehorn a character into a story – if this version of the character completely belongs in this type of story. Of course, we’ll see if that plays itself out over the next few months.
I was glad to see that Ultimate Comics X-Men didn’t totally bypass the Ultimate X (what turned out to be) mini-series. They spent several prolonged (running late) months setting up a new status quo – to immediately set up yet another status quo. I’m relieved that all the characters were seen here in the first issue.
As for Batman, I do hate to let you know, but the cliffhanger in Batman does seem to tie into what went on in Nightwing this month. Whether it’s a proper crossover or two independent stories referencing the same points, we’ll see. Perhaps it will turn out to be stories that have nothing to do with one another, simply the same premise – which would seem odd.
I’m pretty much in agreement with you concerning the three DC books. Although I think you’re being a bit too kind towards Blue Beetle. Tony Bedard’s teenage dialogue is just painful. But then, I’ve never understood why people think he’s a good writer.
And Wonder Woman… yeah, it just doesn’t work. It’s like Azzarello is aware that Wonder Woman is the most boring superhero in existence, and so didn’t even try making her interesting, but simply turned her into a plot device, essentially a supporting character in her own comic.
Batman was excellent, though. I was actually surprised when I counted the pages and found that there were only 24, because Snyder managed to pack a lot into the issue, without ever making it feel crammed or rushed. And the art is wonderful.
Batman seems to be the “lead” title from the Bat-family in this relaunch, as at least two other series take their cues from it. First, Nightwing has exactly the same cliffhanger ending (insofar as Dick learns about it independently). Then, Batman & Robin strongly referenced Bruce’s big “urban improvement” project (I had wondered why it seemed to happen offscreen, but it makes more sense with Bruce’s big announcement happening in Batman).
And hey, I’m all for DC giving the keys to the Bat-Family books to Snyder, who’s by far their strongest writer there. I can understand Paul not being to keen on this level of title interconnections, although Batman seems to be able to stand on its own so far (and, well, it’s the kind of story that the Nightwing series should reference, really).
I had problems with Capullo’s artwork, with some characters looking a bit too similar at times (like all the Robins in tuxedoes, or the new mayor-candidate-dude looking a bit too much like Bruce in their scenes together).
@JD: The other thing that struck me about the Robins in tuxedos is that Dick is now a head shorter than Bruce. Which makes me wonder … if superheroes started “five years ago”, how old is Dick? Nineteen? (And let’s not even ask what the deal with Damian is meant to be…)
I didn’t like Wonder Woman either – is it really generally felt to be a good one? I did like Catwoman, and the internet seems to be hostile about that.
Why wasn’t Batman #1 released in the first week? It’s the one of the four Batman comics that sets up the character and the city, and it feels like the others are referencing it…
The high turnover of Robins over the last five-and-a-bit years really worries me. How long was Dick a Robin before striking out on his own? Likewise Jason, and Tim?
What I’ve heard people say is that even though the formation of Justice League was supposed to be five years ago, Batman was supposed to have been operating in Gotham for several years prior (I haven’t been keeping up on the new DC continuity that closely, though, so I could easily have that wrong).
Yes, the ‘five years’ idea has caught on, but there’s no mention in Justice League (or anywhere else) of how long Batman had been going by that point. Still, Dick does seem to still be quite a youthful ward, and so do the friends from his origin story circus who show up in Nightwing. He might be as old as 21 or so, but probably not more.
I think just by reading these books and some of last weeks books a lot of writers can’t be assed with DCs new continuity because there is no one point they are starting with and it doesn’t really wholly connect with each other. Which is a tad disappointing and really showing that DC didn’t really plan that well.
I kind of liked Wonder Woman, it does have issues in that at first i didn’t really know what was going on at first(they definitely didn’t make the whole the three girls turning into an oracle thing clear!) but it got me interested.
Batman was great but I did kind of get confused with the mayoral candidate and Bruce confused a lot of times definitely! Good opener though. Definitly Definitly much better then Detective Comics.
Also Green Lantern Corps did a pretty good job i thought with its number 1, it didn’t confuse me like GL proper did and it actually had some interesting characterisation I think.
Though one thing, are these comics supposed to get younger readers as well, because over the past three weeks of this thing there has been a definite push of darkness and gore and all that kind of stuff that definitly kind of seems uneccesary in some books, and I wouldn’t be to happy if I was a parent trying to get my kid into comics right now!
So not having followed ultimate x or the second series of ultimate spider-man (which I take was a play on amazing spider friends?) Ultimate comics x-men was a disaster. Is that really Jean?
I don’t get why people are stressing over the continuity. So far, everything makes sense, and I haven’t seen any continuity problems.
It’s not at all unreasonable, for instance, that there have been four Robins in five years, especially if you buy the notion that the editors have put forth, that it’s more like an internship (though there hasn’t been any indication of that in the actual comics). Is there a rule that says teenage superheroes have to maintain the same identity longer than 1.25 years?
I think most of the Robins can be fitted together in a limited time: Jason gets hurt and falls out with Bruce soon after becoming Robin, he doesn’t necessarily have Bruce’s approval to work solo. Tim starts training, but there’s nothing that says he had to ‘graduate’ before Damian shows up. Because Damian is Bruce’s kid, there’s an obligation to take him in whether or not Tim is ready to move on. I don’t think it would be difficult to fit all three of them together in under two years. The only difficult one is Dick, because Dick does need enough time out-grow the roll of Robin.
So who was the mysterious pregnant woman in Wonder Woman? Is it supposed to be Cassie Starsmore’s mother?
er, Sandsmark, rather.
Technically, because of the existence of Damian Wayne (who is ten years old), Batman would have to have been active in the DCnU for at least 11 years.
I’m pretty sure Damian was artificially aged in a tank by Talia, so his age doesn’t represent any sort of continuity issue.
I’m a bit surprised you find the internment camps in Ultimate Comics X-Men hard to swallow. They did it to Native Americans, they did it in WWII, they’re doing it in the “War on Terror”, so why wouldn’t they do it after mutants (well, Magneto) kill “millions”?
There’s a big difference between the internment of individual terrorist suspects and the wholesale internment of every Muslim in America, which is the equivalent of what’s going on in Ultimate X-Men. The very fact that that’s such a lunatic fringe opinion in the real world makes it impossible for me to buy it in a comic that’s supposed to be taking place in some recognisable version of the real world.
There’s no reason he had to have started wearing the cape before Damien was conceived.
Maybe they’ll go with the idea from Batman Begins that Bruce actually trained with Ra’s al Ghul before becoming Batman.
The timeline could easily be something like:
20+ years ago: Bruce Wayne’s parents are killed, inspiring him to travel the world training to fight crime.
12-15 years ago: Bruce trains in martial arts with Ra’s al Ghul’s League of Assassins, has a fling with Ra’s’s daughter Talia.
10 years ago: Bruce debuts as Batman.
9 years ago: Dick Grayson become Robin.
7 years ago: Dick Grayson leaves to become Nightwing
5 years ago: Batman co-founds the Justice League
4 years ago: Jason Todd becomes Robin
2 years ago: Jason Todd is killed
1 year ago: Jason Todd returns from the dead, becomes the Red Hood.
Less than 1 year ago: Bruce finds out that he has a son, Damien Wayne becomes Robin.
Oh yeah, forgot one. Change the last few to:
3 years ago: Jason Todd is killed
2 years ago: Tim Drake becomes Robin
1 year ago: Jason Todd returns from the dead, becomes the Red Hood.
Less than 1 year ago: Time Drake leaves to become Red Robin. Bruce finds out that he has a son, Damien Wayne becomes Robin.
“The timeline could easily be something like:”
Nice one. But if DC would take the “no continuity” approach seriously instead of deciding it per character, Jason Todd would have never been alive again because Superboy punched something. (Or even died, come to think of it.)
Either you start again from day 1 or you don´t. A lot of the more dubious changes would be more acceptable if they would have established line-wide that all the stuff pre-Flashpoint didn´t happen. But to do some books (JLA and Action) 5 years ago and the rest in the Now (like Red Hood) is accomplishing nothing except confusion.
The internment thing though: it is believable that parts of the government build robots like the Sentinals to kill mutants but not to put them in camps like they actually did with the Japanese in WWII? 🙂
At least in the Ultimate universe they have a large mutant population unlike in the MU where the whole persecution thing of mutants still doesn´t make any sense thnaks to M-Day. I browsed one of Fraction´s X-Men issue in the shop where they again had riots or politcal proposals against mutants and thought how utterly idiotic and unbelievable this idea is for a population which wouldn´t even fill one prison. That´s a major problem for any suspense of disbelief which still taints the whole line.
You know, I think the people who are complaining about continuity don’t really have anything to complain about yet – it’s just an assumption that DC won’t know what they’re doing.
I don’t think there has been anything contradictory or impossible referenced in any of the 39 comics so far. We can joke and speculate about the history of the Robins, but there’s been nothing even close to ‘one comic says one thing and another comic says another’ yet. Give them a chance to get it right!
I think “Red Hood and the Outlaws” comes pretty close by stating that Kori has a history with the Titans and Dick but she just doesn’t notice humans enough to remember. It also requires Vic to start on the JLA and still spend time with the Titans because he’s called out by name as someone Kori doesn’t care about enough to remember.
It seems a bit complicated and messy to try to both keep Kori’s past in the Titans as part of her backstory and to make it irrelevant to her post-reboot characterization.
Man, do people really care about continuity this much? Really? Are you really unable to enjoy Snyder’s Batman because you sit there wondering what age everyone is?
Really?
But it doesn’t work for me. It doesn’t give me any reason to care about the characters, who are all essentially stock figures;
This is the sense I get from most of Azzarello’s work, barring the excellent Lex Luthor miniseries (and the rather less excellent Joker one-shot). He tends to write stock figures from modern noir and/or dark fantasy genres. He writes them very well, admittedly, but never in such a way that they become more than stock figures.
For some readers, the process of trying to make all stories fit into continuity is the point. It’s part of the fun of reading a bunch of comics in a shared universe.
For others, a good story is all that matters.
It is possible to create comics that service both desires, but more often a story leans harder on one than the other. But if you’re wondering why people get hung up on what age everyone is, it’s because you can get genuine enjoyment from trying to hold the entire history of a fictional universe in your head.
Mutants as a metaphor for minority groups doesn’t really work if you think about it too hard. Being afraid of somebody because of the colour of their skin is irrational, but being afraid of somebody who can wipe out an entire city with a thought is rational.
It would also be pretty reasonable for people to being held without trial and without having done anything wrong to resist.
After Ultimatum, it would be evident to any government, that mutanity was out of control and that a quarantine of sorts might be required, at least until they could find some sort of way of sorting out good living weapons from the bad living weapons.
I’m interested in this, but not sure if it’s going to work.
And oh yeah, the human torch is with Kitty and Bobby as a result of events in Ultimate X-Men.
“the internment policy does at least seem to be controversial. But still, it’s something I can’t quite buy from any vaguely recognisable version of the USA.”
Oh, Paul, Paul, Paul. This is what the actual, real-world USA did to over a hundred thousand of its citizens just a few decades ago – and they didn’t even have menacing super-powers!
I’m well aware of that, but it’s a very different time. It takes a lot of heavy lifting to make it plausible in the context of a modern America.
Not to fan the flames, but Japanese Internment, while unfortunate, ended over sixty years ago. The modern United States bears little resemblance to the one seen during the thirties and forties, as is the case with the vast majority of the world.
A tragedy Japanese internment may have been, but the “have been” is probably the most important part of the statement so far as Ultimate X Men goes. It pushes the metaphor (mutants as minority) too far for it to reflect the actual world, which in turn limits its power as a story telling device.
I don’t think mutant imprisonment worked terribly well the first time they did it the original Ultimate X Men, and I don’t think that it will work this time either.
Either way, the first issue wasn’t enough to overcome the full scare war that Ultimatum made upon my interest in the Ultimate universe.
we have all this talk about politics from Ultimate X-men and we haven’t even started the storyline about Pietro selling mutants as slaves with the consent of the government.
We can’t buy into the camps thing in our modern America, but I don’t think it’s a big ask from the audience when you’re talking about (a) Marvel universe, particularly when you have storylines like Days of Future Past or the original Genosha storyline kicking around
Is it any more likely than in modern UK? It was only during the 1980s that widescale internment was brought in, and not without considerable support. It was at the same time that some esablishment figures urged the same policy for homosexuals in order to stop aids. Australia’s policy on illegal immigrants isn’t exactly something human rights activists really like either.
If some major attack frightened Americans, and the government told them that the internment of vast sections of say Korean, Indian or Chinese people was necessary and had already saved the lives of thousands of Americans, I would say that a significant portion of the American public would support that policy. All it would need, is the right marketing.
What Britain had (and effectively still has) was internment of individual terrorist suspects, and I would have no trouble believing that the Americans would go for that, not least because they already do. But there’s a massive gap between that, which at least CLAIMS to be targeted, and the wholesale internment of entire segments of the population, which doesn’t even make the pretence.
Days of Future Past is different because it’s set in a borderline apocalyptic future. Genosha is a fictional society intended as a crude metaphor for apartheid-era South Africa. You can get away with anything if you set it in a completely different society.
Niall says:
If some major attack frightened Americans, and the government told them that the internment of vast sections of say Korean, Indian or Chinese people was necessary and had already saved the lives of thousands of Americans, I would say that a significant portion of the American public would support that policy. All it would need, is the right marketing.
I think this is far from the truth. Yes I’m sure ten years ago there were pockets of people that wanted this to happen to muslims in the U.S. and that is all it ever was small pockets. The thought that the people of the United States would blindly buy this policy with the right PR is slightly insulting.
Honestly, is the kind of thing this chap saying all that different from what was used to justify torture, internment and the transfer of prisoners to foreign prisons etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OiPldKsM5w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGQkEQjFCkc&feature=related
UXM is basically set in the early stages of the kind of world that Days of Future Past was set in, though – these things have to start somewhere.
If I’m going to buy into a world where the government sics Sentinels on mutants and terrorists try to execute the President on the White House lawn, then the conceit of putting mutants in camps isn’t too much of a stretch. If anything, the comic’s a little behind the curve, given that the idea has turned up in multiple iterations of the X-Men animated series.
Thomas, I’m not claiming that the US is any different from any other country in this respect, so don’t feel offended on account of nationality.
15 years ago, I would never have dreamed that the US would openly support torture and aggression but I was wrong. As a result of this (and a better knowledge of propaganda and behaviour modification), I now realise that we are all a new situation away from not only endorsing human rights violations, but engaging in them. While many feel that they would not do such things, feeling that way does not predict one’s actions.
A good book to read on this subject is Philip Zimbardo’s The Lucifer Effect. Zimbardo is the former president of American Psychological Association and the author of the famous Stanford Prison Experiments. He was a high profile expert witness during the trial of some of those prosecuted following the abuse of prisoners by US soldiers in Iraq.
Al: Yes, but I thought it was stupid when Mark Millar did it too – particularly since it was supposed to be sharing a universe with the more or less normal world seen in Ultimate Spider-Man.
There was far more potential in Millar’s idea of mutants as fad celebrities. It’s a pity that idea never really caught on.
Genosha’s Got Talent anyone?
Taking into account I haven’t read the comic, I can buy internment because of the scale. I’m guessing we have far more than the (supposed) 200 of the MU, but no more in America than…. what, a few thousand?
Guantanamo Bay had had a couple hundred. Throw in the logical hysteria of your neighbor suddenly nuking the city and yeah, I could see it. Especially when millions have already died. I mean, the American response to the death of a few thousand, however wrongheaded, was the invasion of two countries.
Not only that, but I could see the revelation that mutants are a secret project gone awry (loved that twist when it was done, by the way) undercutting Mutant Rights, making them seem more in the public mind like a mess that the government SHOULD be cleaning up. Not only that, but the diminishment of their “other” status by not being a different “Race” could, pervertedly, reduce their support by the activists whose thing is helping The Different.
ULTIMATE X-MEN’s cynical world being the same as ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN doesn’t strike me as crazy, either. So long as our govts don’t make us look at what they’re doing too much, we tend to prefer to just go on living normally.
All that said, it’s still not a world I really have any more interest in seeing. I thought the more down-to-Earth depiction of mutants being numerous enough to be a subculture and even a little country of their own (Genosha) was far more interesting.
“idea of mutants as fad celebrities”
Wasn´t this explored in Milligan´s X-Force/X-Statix first?
The current US administration – considered moderate-to-liberal in the American context! – has claimed the right to imprison anyone in the world without evidence of wrongdoing, for as long as the government wishes, and is currently imprisoning (at least) hundreds of prisoners in this manner; has claimed the right to keep imprisoning even those that the government itself has determined are innocent of any crime; has claimed the right to deny any material asked of it in legal proceedings on secrecy grounds, and then has invoked those same secrecy grounds to prevent claimants from determining what those grounds might be; has claimed the right to bomb any country it wishes to bomb with or without the approval of the U.S. legislature, legally the warmaking body in the United States; has claimed the right to assassinate anyone in the world, including U.S. citizens, without any due process or evidence of wrongdoing.
Soooo… really, what exactly makes internment camps for mutants so unbelievable? Is just the fact that we assume, despite overwhelming evidence, that the people in power in the United States are a wholesome, well-meaning bunch who would never do such a thing, despite the fact that they’ve done exactly that, and worse, in the past?
On the other hand, almost all of the post-1940s real world examples mentioned drew substantial and noticeable pushback from some of the public — not just members of affected groups, either.
All of those examples are/were controversial, tot he point that even people here aren’t just neutrally citing them as ho-hum occurrences. If Hickman portrays these as divisive, perhaps it’ll work better. That’s been the big problemw ith Marvel’s X-Books in general, though: aside from the brief early San Francisco period, we never saw much in the way of pro-mutant-rights non-mutants. Where are the Flatscan Freedom Riders, the Marvel ACLU, or the Anti-Sentinel protesters?
AndyD, you may be right. The difference is that X-static was a fringe book whereas Ultimate X-Men was a defining book of the Ultimate line. In terms of defining mutants’ roles in the Marvel Universe, X-Static didn’t carry much weight.
Niall said:
“Mutants as a metaphor for minority groups doesn’t really work if you think about it too hard. Being afraid of somebody because of the colour of their skin is irrational, but being afraid of somebody who can wipe out an entire city with a thought is rational.”
The problem with this metaphor is that Marvel in general doesn’t care about the mutants that can’t wipe out an entire city with a thought.
Even when writers might hint at the idea of weaker mutants being around, the stories were almost always about people who could kill hundreds by accident.
And when Morrison showed a large population of mutants more akin to the Wild Cards novels than Marvel’s stock superhero/supervillain powers templates, Marvel recoiled in horror, officially removing every mutant except their favorite stock superhero/supervillains.
As for the whole internment camp stuff, I’m American and I don’t see it as far-fetched.
The most difficult part is establishing it. Once it is established, the government would only need ride out any public protest.
Americans are very “out of sight, out of mind” and also get tired of hearing the same news every day. We are tired of political arguments, because nothing ever really changes. We’ve given up on voting, because everyone in politics is at the core the same, no matter how widely far apart (or downright insane) their stances are on specific issues. That’s how Congress can just spin its wheels as the country falls apart, when it isn’t actively driving the country straight into the dumpster. The citizens know nothing can be done to stop it, and get tired of hearing about it being done.
The US government right now can detain pretty much whoever it wants. Some citizens even believe the stories that it is necessary for their protection.
And that is now. Go back to right after 9/11 and you’d see public cries for lynchings and destruction and driving out the Muslims. Living in the South at that point in time, I wouldn’t have been surprised to see people get away with murder as long as the victim was Muslim. This was the environment that birthed Guantanamo.
@Billy – I totally agree, but you forgot to mention our having the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world (suck it, Russia!). Locking people up is kind of our thing. Especially if they happen to be a minority.
Ok.
Wait.
You can suspend your disbelief for Sentinels – a government extermination program targeted towards a minority, that would kill anyone with an active x-gene (see, at least, Ultimate X-men 1, vol 1), but you can’t buy what is a comparatively BETTER program (ie: prison, not death)?
And, to put it in perspective: All the human rights violations from the U.S in the last decade (indefinite prison term, without conviction from a court of law? check. Torture? check. Kidnapping ‘suspects’ from their countries and taking them to ‘allied’ countries for ‘investigation’ – alas, more torture? check) was originated from ONE terrorist attack that destroyed TWO buildings and killed several thousando people.
Ultimatum destroyed the better part of new york city, almost trashed the world AND Magneto had a BIG following in the mutant community, arguably much bigger than the support that the muslim world has for Al-Qaeda.
Look up what Herman Cain, a presidential candidate from the Republican party with decent support (unless I’m mistaken, he’s the one behind Perry and Romney), has to say about muslims. Muslims are the jews of the 21st century.
And, getting back on topic, I find ultimate x-men’s new direction much more interesting than the usual 616 status quo – THIS looks like a world that hates and fear them. (also, in the regular universe, jean is dead. In this one, Scott and Logan are. I like the irony.)
Re: Sentinels vs Internment
The problem Paul’s having is that the Ultimate universe is supposed to be more “realistic” than 616.
That said, I believe Billy’s right, the main problem would only be to get the thing started. There was massive public outcry when Guantanamo Bay began to be used as a detainment facility for suspected “terrorists”, given that people can be “disappeared” there and held indefinitely without having charges pressed or access to attorneys. But after a while, it was not a “new” News item anymore, and people pretty much forgot about it, even though it’s still there, and nothing has changed. As always in our modern world, the news cycle moves on (often with a little help from FOX or CNN, and sometimes with a little help from government agencies as well).