House of M (2005)
3/5 stars
I don’t follow comics. I used to, when I was a teenager, but that was more than a couple years ago now.
I have generally watched the movies, though, and have mostly enjoyed the MCU. Comics have a pretty big nostalgia factor for me, so I’ve frequently “tried” getting back into them, and have had varying degrees of success.
In light of that, I’ve always kind of wanted to read Civil War, and was aware of the story-line before the movies. Like so many people, though, I have absolutely no idea where to even start. Can I pick up the Civil War graphic novel and understand what’s going on? It seems like I should get a foundation, at least. And I haven’t read any of these comics in 25 years. As I always tend to do when I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing, I went to Wikipedia to get at least an overview. According to the Civil War page, House of M, Avengers Disassembled, and Decimation were all precursors to Civil War. I’ll take the Wikigod at its word.
So here is my initial foray into Marvel’s Civil War storyline.
The Scarlet Witch lost her shit, which led to the death of Hawkeye. The Avengers and X-men got together to figure out what to do with her. Ultimately, she (the Scarlet Witch) and Professor Xavier combined their powers to basically restart the universe, remolding it so that they are all able to live their lives the way they wanted. All the heroes have completely different lives (Steve Rogers – Captain America – is an aged war veteran, for instance), and no one remembers their “true” lives – until Wolverine figures out that something is odd because all of his memories have returned. He starts contacting members of the Avengers and X-men to try to find out a solution.
An interesting thing about this world is that – since everyone basically got what they wanted, mutants are now the dominant group of humans. Magneto has effectively gotten what he’s always wanted – his people to stop being persecuted.
Overall, I thought this was a pretty good story-line. But it seemed like such a massive change (it literally changed the entire world) that wasn’t explored enough. If that’s possible. I think this happens a lot in comics. Maybe the creators are getting a little worn out and want a fresh start, or maybe the readers are getting a little bored and the creators are trying to hold onto (or regain) their interest. So everything gets upended. This is a problem, I think, in books that need new issues every month for decades. So you know, as a reader, that there’s going to be a new major cross-over event every couple of years. But as someone who doesn’t really follow comics – it all kind of seems slapped together.
Which is precisely what prevents so many people from getting into the medium in the first place, and why the industry is always losing readers. It’s incredibly expensive following all these books, and doing it indefinitely.
From what I understand, most of the changes exhibited here are fairly temporary.
Batman: Knightfall
2/5 stars
This is the era in which I was getting into comics, but I never really liked DC Comics. I got into the Death of Superman story line, which was happening around the same time as Knightfall. I think it was an art thing; I never really liked the art of DC comics.
Almost 30 years later, this series definitely confirmed that old belief. I didn’t think the art in this book was at all appealing. The cover art by Kelley Jones is pretty good – but the interiors leaves a lot to be desired. Especially considering that this was the era in which artists had the greatest cache. Image Comics formed in 1992, when six of the biggest names in comics (led by Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, and Marc Silvestri) broke away from Marvel to form their own creator-owned publishing house. Since this era, it seems like writers have become more dominant than artists.
It was also a time of massive expansion for the industry, as speculation took over and people were trying to get rich by buying up special edition comics. We saw the introduction of variant covers, and holograms/foil covers, and special story lines (see the aforementioned Death of Superman). This, of course, inevitably led to a bust for the industry, which in turn led to Marvel selling off the movie rights to their biggest properties (like Fantastic Four, X-men, and Spider Man) – and act they’re still trying to recover from.
In short, this was a very interesting time for comics. And, looking back, this story line was central to the era. The cover of issue 497 has become iconic, and was always amongst the most sought after issues of the era.
Looking at this book now, however, it’s hard to imagine why we all gave a shit. It’s just not very good. Yeah, there’s the novelty of Batman’s back being broken, but so what? Like everything in comics, it gets fixed eventually. They don’t get rid of Bruce Wayne. And Bane was so cool at the time, but he’s yet another member of Batman’s rogues gallery at this point.
The story itself is pretty meh. Batman was raised in a prison, and he’s a genius alpha male. He hears about a Bat Man while imprisoned, and wants to escape to overthrow this powerful man he’s heard about. So he does. Then he makes his way to Gotham City and causes all of Batman’s greatest (and not so great) enemies to be released from Arkham Asylum, just to test the abilities of Batman. For his part, Batman comes into this story recovering from some earlier illness (I don’t really know what, it’s not delved into too much), and he whines the entire time about tired he is. Robin keeps trying to help, but Batman’s an asshole and has to do it all himself – even though he can’t.
At the end of it all, Batman loses and Bane breaks his back. Spoiler.
It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever read – but it’s not as good as I expected it to be considering all the attention it’s gotten over the last 30 years.