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comicbookuniversity · 3 years

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What Is a Single Issue Comic?

by Bunnypwn Gold

There are a lot of problems in the current comics industry, and it’s pretty hard to know where things are going. Right now, with DC partnered with Lunar for distribution and Marvel jumping to Penguin for distribution by the end of the year, it’s hard to imagine how Diamond Distributors, the former monopoly of single issue distribution in the industry for the past few decades, will survive, and how losing a monopoly like them will affect smaller publishers. Penguin and Lunar could and likely would be interested in picking up new clients, but that doesn’t guarantee the survival of all publishers or a stable future for retailers. All of this, of course, is about the ability of publishers to get their single issue comic magazines to specialty store shelves, the only place they’re sold, with the financial health of everyone involved almost entirely dependent on the sale of these units. And that brings me to a question I’ve been wondering for a long time: What is a single issue comic? Because as a product they are fundamentally unsuited for their apparent purpose, which affects the entire structure of the industry.

First off, let’s give the literal and straightforward answer to my question: A single issue comic is a magazine-style book containing a single chapter of a serialized comic narrative, or one or more episodes in an episodic comic narrative. They are also literally $4 on average for a single floppy. That’s a lot of money to spend on a single chapter of a series, and a comics reader will be following multiple series a week. There are a lot of reasons for this cost, and I’m not going to quibble with making sure creators and such are compensated appropriately. One of the costs, though, is the premium low-pulp, high-heat paper used for printing a single. It’s glossy and smooth, holding onto high-quality ink (another cost) for glorious colors and inks, contributing to the aesthetic improvements in comics in recent times. Though there are benefits to this, it raises the monetary and environmental cost of making comics quite a bit. The modern single issue is still relatively floppy, as a magazine, and clearly not meant for long term storage, but it’s also more likely to keep over the long term than past singles and is much more durable than, say, a newspaper, as an example of something clearly meant to be temporary. The average readers is reading multiple series a week, each series is looking to last tens or hundreds of issues, and each series will also be collected into a trade paperback or a hardback edition. Trades are far more suited to long term storage and rereading than a single, mostly as it relates to quantity of narrative and binding methods, since the single issue uses the same paper as trades and other collections.

That gets into the main problem I have with single issue comics. What purpose are they meant to serve the narrative? If they are a temporary format to facilitate serialized storytelling and are meant to be resold or recycled in some fashion once a collected volume comes out, then they serve that purpose very poorly. They’re so expensive that buying all the issues that will be collected in the next trade would cost more than that trade; not only would buying the trade be paying more money for something you already have, but you also actually pay less money to get it in the format you wanted in the first place. That is, if your goal is to read comics as a hobby and you want to collect the stories you like on a bookshelf, like I do. If you’re just reading them as they come and don’t want to shelve them, then it’s worth noting that $4 a pop is far more than “reading them as they come” money. It doesn’t seem like the industry is all that concerned with selling trades, at least not to the extent they logically should be, and the format of singles isn’t one you’d associate with a temporary unit. While some people do resell their singles to comic shops, not every reader can do that, and they’re such an upfront investment that recycling them would be throwing away a massive amount of money. Not everyone wants a ton of boxes holding all the singles they’ve bought over the decades or has children to give them to; not that most comics these days are actually appropriate to give to children, which is actually another issue with the cost. Children should be a bigger part of the comics readership, to ensure that there are new readers for the future. Children can’t afford $4 an issue, and it’s hard to imagine most parents buying their kid multiple series a week, on top of other kid costs (I hear they’re pretty expensive). For adults, it’s also a very expensive hobby in general; it’s like $1040/year if you’re buying five issues a week (a small number for serious readers), without considering any trades, OGNs, or manga you want to buy, too.

Singles are also literally at the center of the comics business model. The success of a series is almost entirely dependent on the sale of its singles, with most publishers unable (and in Marvel and DC’s case, unwilling) to step in and support a critically well-received book until sales pick up. If too few people decide they want to try the first issue or to stick with it the next week, which adds to the burden on their wallets, then the book will fail. There’s no waiting for trades to come out and buoy the financial footing of a series. This puts readers in the position of either (maybe guiltily) buying singles they don’t necessarily want to own to support a series they love, or trade wait, essentially abdicating an arbitrary consumer responsibility in the hopes that enough others don’t for a good series to make it to trades. Of course, publishers don’t succeed unless a majority of their books succeed, so they are also almost entirely dependent on singles. Publishers probably get more benefit than creators from trade sales, but their business model isn’t set up to get much benefit from it. This subsequently trickles down to retailers, who can’t make enough of their money on trades if their publishers aren’t focused on selling them. Singles are incentivized and centralized at every level, meaning that this overpriced product that fails to serve its seeming narrative and commercial purpose holds all the weight of a dying industry.

The first single issue that ever came out was, famously, a collection of newspaper comic strips, a collected format. After seeing how well it sold, people quickly began making original stories for this format, first as anthology comics that contained multiple stories in the same genre per issue. The success of Superman and Batman pushed publishers to put out individual stories as an entire single issue, and for a long time that was fine; the single issue was the only format comics came in, and being printed on newsprint with four-color printing, it was cheap. Then people started publishing trades and collections of single issues. Instead of the industry evolving over time around the trade paperback as the primary unit of comics, as it did before around singles, they stuck with singles, and changed single issues into a higher-prestige product, like a miniature trade paperback, leaving collected editions as a secondary concern. This was a huge and pretty obvious mistake, and is directly connected to several problems in the industry, most obviously the fact that the Diamond monopoly formed in the first place and how its collapse could spell doom for most publishers. Since everyone is so tied up in the success of singles, and Diamond is the only one delivering them to comics shops for most publishers, most can’t exist without Diamond.

Another effect, perhaps less obviously, is the shift in the focus of publishers away from publishing good books and towards IP farming for movies and TV shows. Though, so far, people have still been buying enough singles to keep the industry alive, the fact that publishers’ entire business models aren’t very well focused on selling books means that they have to find something else to stabilize their finances, in light of the fickle spending decisions of consumers faced with overpriced choices. So instead of selling comics as a way to sell a good story, they sell comics as a way to attain the licensing rights to that story to sell to a TV or film studio, basically treating the amazing and unique creative industry they are a part of as a fancy elevator pitch for movie, TV, and streaming executives. I’m not arguing that adaptation from comics into other mediums is bad; I actually think it’s pretty cool that movies and TV shows want to use comics stories, as a kind of recognition that comics have and have always had some amazing stories, and film, a sister medium to comics, is a natural place to adapt comics stories. But it’s unhealthy to publish stories in one medium primarily as a pitch to another, especially since it’s meant to enrich publishers at the expense of creators and is a huge disservice to fans and, ultimately, retailers.

And like, how can you have any pride as a publisher if one of your major goals isn’t to publish good stories in the medium you (presumably) love and deeply care for, but to sell the idea of that story to someone else who will make a different thing based on that pitch? Like, have some integrity. Let the studios come to you after you amass a huge and enviable catalog, and form deals that put you and your creators’ needs first, instead of becoming a subservient IP farm for a “dominant” industry. Comics should be the dominant industry! Maybe I’m just too passionate about this, but if you don’t believe that comics should be equal to or dominant over movies and TV in our pop culture landscape, then why are you publishing comics? There’s no money in it at the moment, and an IP farming mindset actually means there won’t be in the future, either.

Now that we’ve talked about their failures from a narrative standpoint and how that affects the industry, we get into another argument about what singles are: Collectibles. So, is the single issue good at being a collectible? Maybe? It’s certainly true that a collector would want their collectible to stay in good condition for as long as possible to improve its value, so there’s something to a higher quality collectible item, like the single has become. At the same time, however, a major factor in the high price tag for old issues of comics is their fragility and scarcity. Old comics printed on newsprint before comics were seen as collectibles are more likely to be damaged, lost, thrown away, etc., making any surviving issue of worthwhile quality that much more valuable. If everyone is keeping their copy of the big twist issue of Spider-Man, printed on comparatively durable paper to its forbearers, sealed carefully in a safe for decades, then scarcity and fragility won’t drive up the value. Making collection a widespread practice only hurts the future value that anything you do collect could accrue. It’s not like paintings, where there’s only the one painting; comics are printed en masse. Collection as a monetary investment is tricky, is my main point.

With the collectibles argument, though, I have to ask a follow-up question: Is that what a single issue should be? No, obviously not. In theory, a book publisher’s job is to sell as many books as possible, publish the best books they can, and push for the success of all the books they publish. They’re not in the business of selling collectible items. Marvel, DC, and Image aren’t Funko Pops; they’re not selling cutesy plastic crap meant only to look good and potentially see value in trade or collection. Comics publishers sell stories, and their business model should reflect that. Instead of commissioning hundreds of variant covers over the course of a year and “accidentally” leaking the amazing, collection-worthy exploits of a book so that people preorder, they should spend money on recruiting new creators and advertising in media outside the comics bubble to pull in new readers. The Big Two are especially guilty of this, pumping out dozens of variant covers for their biggest issues, to increase the need for collectors to buy dozens of copies of a single issue in case only one variant cover is actually valuable in the future. It looks a lot like a grift and a sugar high of sales that distorts spending choices for consumers and negatively impacts the sale of other comics, just to feel like they’re selling enough of something.

We’ve seen how collection as a financial investment has impacted other fields negatively, like the fine arts. I recently watched a Wisecrack video that talked about how the rise of NFTs highlights a growing problem in the art world. Over the course of the last few decades, collectors and buyers went from curating aesthetically pleasing collections for rich patrons’ homes and museums to storing pricey artwork in warehouses to protect their monetary investments. Which, I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain too much, is counter to the point of making art. Painters paint stuff so people will look at and appreciate it, not so some newly rich tech guy who doesn’t understand portraiture can stow it in a crate and brag about how much their old-timey selfie is worth. The video discussed how art collectors mainly interested in money and their advisors who choose what to buy end up chasing trends and going after the same hot items, homogenizing their apparent tastes and distorting an already highly subjective creative field.

The market dominance of the Big Two, who exclusively sell superhero comics, has had a similar effect on the comics market; on top of that, selling comics as collectibles has primarily benefitted the Big Two, who seem to be pushing it as part of a strategy to maintain their dominance, since it’s mostly their comics that anyone expects to have collectible value. If you look in comics shops, you’ll find that most of the non-superhero comics on the shelves are either action-adventure or sci-fi/fantasy, i.e., the kinds of stories that appeal to superhero comics readers. All the issues that are considered most collectible are also very similar: New number ones, the death or birth of a character, super hyped up twists, and finales. The collectible mindset helps entrench a homogenous mindset among publishers and, by extension, creators to appeal to a small and shrinking fan base. Comics are a storytelling medium, and publishers should be focused on telling all kinds of stories for everyone, not selling collectibles with, at best, questionable value to progressively fewer buyers. Comics are meant to be read, any marketing strategy for them should be based on that fact, and the collectible item strategy runs directly counter to that fact, since the collectible comic will drop in value if you actually read it. If you want to collect your single issues and some of them end up becoming significantly more valuable, that should be an organic side effect of publishers doing their proper jobs to put out good stories, not the primary goal and purpose of comics publishing or buying.

So, what is the single issue comic? It’s too flimsy for long term shelving and reading, but too durable and expensive to be a temporary and disposable format. It’s potentially decent quality as a collectible item, but an inappropriate item for a business to sell as a collectible (not that it stops them). It’s literally just one chapter of one series on a shelf full of series chapters demanding your attention and wallet. It’s a product that acts as the backbone of the entire comics industry that poorly serves its intended function and shouldn’t even be this central to the industry. And because it is, it helps drive smaller publishers that can barely stay afloat on singles to become IP farms in an attempt to gain relevance. The answer, then, is the single issue comic is outdated and performing a disservice to everyone at every level.

Of course, this all begs the question: What should the single issue be replaced by? I don’t want to be like, “Manga has all the answers,” but like, they do, in this case. And a few others, actually. In Japan, whose comics industry is far stronger and more financially viable than the US’s despite having half the population, they serialize in anthology magazines containing several series and make decisions about which books to move forward with based on a combination of reader polls and, if the book lasts long enough, tankoban sales. Instead of publishing each series as its own magazine and then letting it sink or swim based on its individual sales, leading to higher prices and fractured attention from readers, they bundle chapters together to reduce cost and ensure that everyone who’s series is published in that magazine gets compensated for their work with that magazine at a similar level. They also center their business model on selling lots of all their books, not just the anthologies, meaning that both publishers and creators do better when they sell more tankoban volumes. You know, because they’re book publishers, who want to sell as many books as possible, like our comics publishers should.

The manga industry also prints in black and white as an industry standard, meaning they can get away with cheaper papers, further reducing costs; since color is so central to the American comics aesthetic, I’m not sure if we can copy everything about the manga anthology magazine or wider business model. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find success borrowing from the model. Like, it just makes sense that Marvel and DC could publish monthly anthologies containing all of a particular franchise, like Monthly Spider-Gang, the X-Verse, Gotham Nights, or People of Tomorrow; Image could publish a Shadowline anthology; etc. By bundling them up together, readers are more likely to try out books they ordinarily wouldn’t read and publishers can sell you five or so books for, say, $10 instead of the $20 they’d cost you as singles. This format would also phase out variant covers and dramatically tamp down the collectible mindset, meaning that Marvel and DC can’t sell a ton of variants of a single issue to individual collectors to boost the sales of an already popular franchise over others of their own books and indie comics. Or maybe they’d do variant covers of trades, but since a trade is better suited for that sort of thing, I don’t see that as an immediate problem. This transition away from singles is a natural and obvious step away from an outdated and unhealthy business model and towards one that serves the primary goal of a publisher and the needs of readers, retailers, and creators.

What is a single issue comic? It’s the source of or a notable element in a surprisingly large number of problems in the comics industry that needs to be done away with. It’s an outdated format of sale and distribution that no longer serves the industry, creators, retailers, or readers the way it used to, and it’s being propped up because it serves the interests of the Big Two and their market dominance in the current landscape. It’s something that needs to be gotten rid of so that it can be replaced by other, obviously superior methods of delivering serialized stories to readers, so that the industry can reprioritize around selling books, the things they ostensibly make. It’s a poorly designed product that, unfortunately, sits at the center of a dying industry that’s trying to reclaim relevance by becoming IP farms for more financially and culturally influential media. It’s bad.

#comics #comics industry #dc #dc comics #marvel #marvel comics

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comicbookuniversity · 3 years

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I'm hoping PKJ gets just one book and at least for a time Mark Russell takes over the other title. I personally have no reference for PKJ's talent, so part of me also hopes it turns out better than my low expectations.

A lot of Future State creative teams are being given the ongoings afterward, from the looks of things

I’ve resigned myself to PKJ getting the Superman books; not disastrous, I might pick them up if they look promising, but definitely speaks to me that DC’s thought is “welp, everybody seems to think Bendis fucked up Superman, so I guess Superman is fucked up! Probably should move several rungs down the talent ladder then. It’s 2016 all over again, baby!” My thoughts on that are contingent on Bleeding Cool being right and one writer handling both Superman and Action, I’d be delighted if they’re wrong and Johnson gets one while Waid gets another, I’d probably even check out both. My thoughts on all the actual DC pseudo-relaunch announcements thus far, updated as they continue:

* Swamp Thing by Ram V and Mike Perkins: Extremely good! Moore, Snyder, King, Russell - all great talents, none of whom could crack making me like Swampy even though I could recognize those were objectively quality comics. Maybe V’ll be the success story? I’ll at least try the Future State two-parter now.

* Suicide Squad by Robbie Thompson and Eduardo Pansica: I decided to try the Future State two-parter, but I can’t imagine not passing on this.

* Green Lantern by Geoffrey Thorne and Tom Raney: Probably gonna skip this unless I hear great things.

* Justice League Dark by Ram V and Xermanico: Overjoyed that Ram V’s going to stay on the book and get to do fully his own thing with it now that he’s finished the story he picked up from Tynion, and Xermanico should be a fine fit.

* Teen Titans Academy by Tim Sheridan and Rafa Sandoval: That this probably bad comic is apparently going to have Red X, Crush the daughter of Lobo, and an H-Dial in it, and be about a school, is basically an arrow aimed straight at Justin Martin’s heart.

* Wonder Woman by Becky Cloonan, Mike W. Conrad, and Travis Moore: Oh shit. I’m sure there’ll be shenanigans of some sort to derail this, but for a hot minute at least Wonder Woman’s gonna be good!

* Harley Quinn by Stephanie Phillips and Riley Rossmo: Not checking this out, but very interesting that they’re putting Rossmo here, as that indicates pivoting away even on a broad marketing level from ‘she’s Deadpool but hot’.

* Batman/Superman by Gene Yang and Ivan Reis: HOT DAMN. Maybe gonna be the best thing coming out of DC?

* Detective Comics by Mariko Tamaki and Dan Mora: I’m hot and cold on Tamaki and her #1027 showing was on the latter end but I’ll definitely give her a chance here, and Mora on Batman is an event unto itself even if I’m sure he’ll just kick it off with the initial arc at most given his ongoing commitment to Once & Future.

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comicbookuniversity · 3 years

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My Problems With X of Swords So Far....

SPOILERS!!!!!

As of this post, we are 16 of 22 chapters into this crossover event, the first of the Krakoa Era. I want to start off by saying that I have largely been enjoying this era of X-Men overall; I came for Jonathan Hickman taking over the franchise, but spent some of my quaruntine time catching up on the other titles and mostly enjoyed them. I am by no means an X-Men expert or superfan, but I know my lore pretty well and am a fan. That being said, let’s dive into this mess.

I want to give credit where credit is due, the first half of this event has been well crafted. The writers, as apparently led by Hickman and Tini Howard, have worked to create a consistent tone across all of the books and it shows. This is clearly an event crafted with care and skill. And aside from the error on Bogdanovic’s part, the art teams have been on point delivering great looking books. Considering this, the pedigree of the teams, and again, Jonathan Hickam, the guy who Marvel trusted to end Stan and Jack’s creation in Secret Wars, leading this event- this is should by all measures be much better than it is. Even if it didn’t live up to the aforementioned event, it should still be better than what we’ve got because of the ideas we’ve got on the page. I think these are all interrelated problems with the event, but I’m going to list them individually as I see them.

The Problems

1. Pacing- This largely effects the first half of the event, considering how the backhalf has changed, but we spent nearly 10 issues of the X-Men simply gathering their prophosized swords as ruled by the host of the tournament between the two sides, Saturynye. During this time, we did not get a lot of ideas of strategy or spycraft to learn more about a largely unknown enemy. We got a lot of decompressed character introspection, and even a set up to Al Ewing’s upcoming SWORD book (looking majorly forward to that book). This meant that we didn’t learn a lot about these characters that we did not already know to try to drive up the emotional tension that I don’t believe worked as the internal stakes did not match the scale of the external threats- the end of a utopia. This might have worked more if there were less of it and thus getting right to the heart of the matter. But the event spent so much space on spinning it’s wheels for.....what reason? Why was it necessary to give so much time this aspect compared to other possibilities? This brings me to my next problem.

2. The Promise of the New- One of the great things about this event is how it rewrites what we know about Apocalypse to make him more interesting while giving us a huge new set of characters and lore to get to know and love with the revelation of a whole secret history of mutants on Earth and then the history of the exiled mutants to what basically amounts to a Hell after fending it off from taking over Earth. It’s genuinely a great addition to Apocalypse and the franchise as a whole. I am supremely excited about the future of the Arrako people, but we spent 10 issues of the X-Men gathering swords while learning very little about this new land and new people. We learned about Solem a little bit and how he relates to the rest of Arrako, but that’s basically it. We are 16 issues in and we don’t know a whole lot about this lands or even more specifically the histories of Swordbreakers of Arrako. We know a little, but in all that time where the characters of X-Men and Arrako could have been interacting and building relationships to actually have drama beyond one side is coming to dominate the Earth for ancient reasons, we got next to nothing. And even as the tournament has started, the information and drama between the new side is minimal; enough to make the move the narrative forward but that’s it. I’m not saying I need a whole history course, but I definitely feel like we should know more than we do know about Arrako. I think we’ve in fact learned more about Otherworld than Arrako, which brings me to my next problem.

3. Otherworld....Why?- Seriously, why? It’s pretty clear both before and after Secret Wars that it isn’t necessary to travel through Otherworld to travel the multiverse. So...why? Because they want to build up Otherworld as a new playground for future stories and to connect othe ongoing drama of what had been happening in Excalibur, which...ok. Look I get that it helps to develop long unused properties to breath new life into them, but what does Otherworld have to do with Arrako other than apparently you have to travel through it to get to it? That seems forced to me and it does nothing to heighten the drama of the battle between Krakoa and Arrako. It forces a war to become a tournament, but other than that....again, it really doesn’t add anything. Otherworld’s role in this story is completely unnecessary. It’s easy to imagine this story without Otherworld. If Otherworld played a less forced role and a role that made more sense to the conflict, I wouldn’t have a problem with it’s inclusion or learning as much as we have about it. But, we’ve been given more information about various parts of Otherworld that have not been important and we could have spent that time learning more about or developing the relationships of Arrako/Krakoa.

4. A Tournament of the Absurd- I know I complained about it taking ten issues just to get our two sides into the same room for conflict, but then it took another three before we got to our first conflict. We were over half way through the crossover and no one had drawn their sword against their would-be enemy in favor of an overly theatrical and long dinner where we finally got some relationship building but were still not at the main draw of this attraction- the duels or whatever type of conflict it would really turn out to be. Literrally anything that involved the swords being used for combat got pushed back until like 60% through this story, which is squandering the promise of the premise. But finally, this week get got the to the action, and it was nothing like anticipated. Our first match lasts less 3 pages, which could be exciting if we understood what was going on with how the nature of the loss, but then it ‘s undercut by a plot point that makes very little sense and does not give the characters involved any real agency. An unexpected romance or marriage is always a nice surprise in a story like this, but this crossover doesn’t earn it. The characters are literally whisked away against their wills and told to marry each other without knowing a thing about each other, nor can they communicate with each other. If the marriage was a solution because of the two sides coming to an arrangement by the two sides talking it over or if it had been the two newlyweds plan based on their own insights and choices, then this idea would have been wonderful. But again, literally taken against their wills without warning and forced to marriage for the sake of two societies without it even being clear that this really advanced the cause of or guarnteed the safety of either side. Then we move forward to a fight that has promise only to be immediately stopped from fighting to participate in a childish contest between two obviously mismatched opponents that makes the contest one sided. Like, What The Actual Fuck? Why avoid the fight in favor of that contest? One clearly has more entertainment value than the other. Fuck it, fine, let’s see if Wolverine is given a fun fight. His first match (yeah, we’re getting too much Logan here) has potential, but the creative team decides to make the fight more psychedlic to the detriment of clarity of choreography and thus removes tension. It’s a style choice that pulls away from the fight and then the victory is undermined by a bullshit twist of the rules that compounds the lack of clarity into greater frustration. Then Wolverine is transported to a drinking contest against a teammate? Like, why? What does this do for the story? There’s a brief line used to justify it and the next thing it sets up, but it’s weak. It’s fucking frustrating, because developing the relationship of these two characters could have easily been handled differently rather than wasting one of the spots in the tournament for a point that is given instead of earned. I will give the third match a pass as that was actually what the story promised; intrigue and violence between the players.

At this point, unless something major changes, I’m calling it here: X of Swords is bad. It wastes is promised premise, it wastes it’s time, and it wastes it’s potential. The problem is that this is clearly crafted by people who generally know what the hell they’re doing, but for some ungodly reason their talents are not being put to their fullest. We’ve seen all of them write better stories; heck, the ongoing stories before the crossover started were better. Even if something major happens to really hook me back into this story that will only change my opinion from bad to mediocre because we’re already 75-ish% done with story, and that means all these problems will always be true. I really hope the characters of Arrako stick around after this story, because I think they have immense potential, but this is just a bad start. I know there are people out there that are happy with this story, and I’m happy for them. But, I hope I am not alone in seeing these problems. Let me know if I am not alone.

#x-men #marvel comics #x of swords #spoilers #wolverine #storm #apocalypse

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comicbookuniversity · 3 years

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Not the OP and I should go back and finish that series, but what do think the one or two things needed to make him work?

Thoughts on Wraith from Superman Unchained?

Wraith SHOULD rule, he’s several different great ideas at once (“If Superman wasn’t around in 1938 in the currently operating continuity, who was?”/“What if the reason the military doesn’t totally flip its shit over Superman is because they already have their own?”/“What if Superman really was about The American Way first and foremost, even if he meant well?”/“What if Superman had a shonen anime mentor who might turn out to be a rival?”), but in practice he’s nothing.

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comicbookuniversity · 3 years

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The Secret Ingredient of Godzilla

by Bunnypwn Gold

Looking back at the original Gojira film, it's pretty clear why the recent American takes on Godzilla feel like they're missing something. The 2014 film tried to make the metaphor climate change, and you can see elements of this pop up in King of the Monsters, with Ghidorah being a huge, living hurricane released by hubris. Both those films miss a key ingredient that makes Gojira a classic film, worthy of such a renowned and prolific legacy, and an ingredient that is essential to any translation of the Big G in any other context: Recurrence.

The key to the original film was not Godzilla, no matter how central he was. Godzilla himself has a great design, and it's clear from the perspective of fun and spectacle why he's survived for so long. People often think of him as being a representation of the fear of nuclear bombs, and that that's why he worked so well. Maybe that's why he works in Japan, and certainly that's in his DNA and it was a very present concern for that country at that time. However, that on its own is not the power of that film or the real metaphor Godzilla represents.

The secret ingredient that makes it a great film, and not just a cult classic sci-fi flick, is the Oxygen Destroyer. Though King of the Monsters used this as just a big gun to throw out, it was centrally featured in Gojira. They introduced it early, and the film makes it clear that the Oxygen Destroyer is the real threat. Its inventor, Daisuke Serizawa, described it as the only weapon more terrible than a nuclear bomb. Despite recognizing what Godzilla could do, he adamantly refused to use it, saying that letting the world know a weapon like that existed outweighed anything Godzilla could do. That's when Godzilla destroyed Tokyo, and forced his hand. In order to prevent the release of this weapon into wars around the world, he burned his notes and killed himself along with Godzilla. Yes, Godzilla was the big monster, and he was the thing most people were afraid of in the movie, but the real villain was the Oxygen Destroyer and the continual ability for humans to make progressively more powerful and deadly weapons that it is tied to.

Godzilla came out in 1954. By that point, Japan had a few years to both reflect on the terrible things their armies had done across Asia and the horrible cost of being hit with multiple atomic bombs. Those bombs were developed as part of an arms race during WWII and the preceding years between Japan, Germany, the US, and others. Everyone wanted more powerful missiles, faster jets, and stronger tanks. The atom bomb was the pinnacle of all this, and Japan suffered their use. The war ended, public opinion started changing, and people saw what all this led to, what it really meant. Then Russia got their own nukes, and the Cold War kicked into high gear, with Japan literally wedged between the two nuclear powers, who were looking for the even stronger hydrogen bomb. Wars were being waged around the world, killing many thousands more, as engineers worked to further increase the lethality of the weapons used in these wars. Japan was also undergoing rapid modernization and Westernization, while the country they were asked to emulate, the US, was repeating all the same sins from the war on a greater scale. So when Godzilla, born in a hydrogen bomb test and still bearing charred, melted skin from radiation burns, marches on Tokyo with his atomic breath, he's asking a very direct question: Are you really gonna do that again? And there's this Japanese scientist, just studying chemistry as Einstein was just studying physics, who's made something even worse than the hydrogen bomb. First he said no, and then he died in the possibly vain hope that the world would answer the same.

It's that repeating cycle of death and destruction that makes the film work. You can see how this is such an important element by looking at other monster movies released in the same time, which lack this element. It's also prominently missing from American takes on Godzilla, which try to recreate the grandeur and spectacle but completely miss the point. Probably fitting, since America missed the whole point of the Cold War after it ended by continuing the same behaviors without a similar enemy as the USSR. You don't just make the same monster with the same origin and just say, "It's climate change," and call it an adaptation; everything has to be reimagined around that element, including the idea that we've done this before and are in danger of doing it again and again, perhaps inevitably as part of the human condition. If Godzilla represents climate change, then his birth has to be related to something terrible humans do the environment, something we've done before and keep doing. An oil spill, for instance; drilling for oil releases him from his slumber as the world's biggest oil spill erupts, a disaster caused by a company related to multiple other large spills that says it'll fix safety measures and doesn't. Maybe the movie features that same oil company opening an even bigger and supposedly safer drilling platform that is likely to have the same design flaws as previous models, and Godzilla's activities are related to this platform. That would be a start, though there would need to be more work to make sure his aesthetic and abilities match the new setting.

Godzilla is and always has been about larger cyclical problems, born from Cold War tensions. He's a uniquely modern monster, different than your vampire or werewolf who exist as threats in themselves. He was made at a time when societies were getting accustomed to their readily available radio and television news and the explosion in literacy rates and publishing of books for easy, personal education; in other words, at a time when our ability to look back at history, both recent and ancient, was much stronger, and we could actually see the cycles and start resisting them. In this modern world, with 24 hour cable news that seems to have a goldfish's memory and crass leaders willing to lie to people's faces about basic reality, Godzilla is a monster for our times, able to march in and call bs on the real monsters. Basically, a variation on the Scooby-Doo Principle, that the only monsters are people and their lies. So for anyone looking to make their own giant monster stories, or if you happen to work at Legendary Pictures and read this, I think this is something you really need to keep in mind if you want some power behind your story.

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comicbookuniversity · 4 years

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Tai and Jo.

(If you see this and you’re like “who and who?” you should read Green Lantern: Legacy by Minh Le & Andie Tong AND Far Sector by N.K. Jemisin & Jamal Campbell! They’re both great and you’re missing out! You!)

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comicbookuniversity · 4 years

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Supermen

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comicbookuniversity · 4 years

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SUPERMAN: UNDER AN EVIL STAR_A PROPOSED DCEU SEQUEL

Technical delays got in the way of this going out sooner, but I am glad something has put Superman back trending at least a little bit. Where Superman goes next on screen is in the air, so I would like to propose how it could go. I know there’s no way that this could be used, but I thought it would be fun to share. And if the producers of the DCEU want to hire me to write something that they could use, then that wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen. I think @davidmann95 was right: the next Superman film doesn’t need to be a grand statement piece. It just needs to be a good time. There’s this weird thought that Superman is boring, so we need a film that shows he’s fun as all Superman fans know. Snyder had his turn and he has his fans, but it is time for a new direction after the,at best, mixed legacy to Snyder’s turn with Superman. This isn’t to be dismissive or disrespectful, but if Aquaman can make a billion dollars while getting well praised for a far more ‘comic book’ take after Snyder, then why not Superman?

The film opens with Superman saving a family from an apartment building, and across town a protest is happening, police are in riot gear ready for action, and at the front of the crowd is a single known metahuman: Hank Heywood. The protests have been going on for hours now over the death of several homeless vets who were being cleared out, because the city did not want the homeless encampment there any more. Between scenes of the protest being covered by the news, we will see Superman performing a variety of rescues with a smile and kind words. Flying from rescuing around the city, Superman stops a tear gas canister from hitting the crowd and a SWAT member from using advanced equipment to attack Heywood. The whole scene is changed by his presence as the police and protesters back up from their positions, but Superman encourages the protesters to keep peacefully as they were and he finds the commanding officer. They have a talk about the police being unfairly positioned to enforce a status quo that has little to do with serving and protecting, but what the officers did to those vets was wrong. It might be easier for Superman to act, but it does not mean that the officers have any less of a responsibility or that they are shielded from accountability. Superman mentions the need to avoid escalation and how he’s been responding to other emergencies across Metropolis while the police were occupied doing this. The protest continues as Superman marches with them. The goal of the scene is to show Superman trying to advocate other ways beyond force, encourage peace, and standing for justice. While I would like to move Superman pretty left politically to match the spirit of his origins, I can definitely understand hesitation for broader market appeal. But that being said, we still need to show Superman openly caring about more than emergencies. He knows he needs to be a shining example of compassion and strength of character.

We cut to Lois Lane sent abroad to continue being the world’s best reporter at finding new metahumans and identifying where they stand. She just got done with a major story on how quickly Asian nations are developing their own metahuman responses. She’s taking a boat out of northern Japan to try to investigate reports of a strange activity around a crash landing in the ocean in international waters. She’s able to identify several warships and accompanying aircraft from Russia, Japan, China, and the USA. Without much warning, the ships are attacked by unknown forces. She is able to get some photos that help her identify one of the forces as being American. She knows where she has to go, so she grabs her phone. The forces fly off.

We cut to a scene in a suburban neighborhood. There’s a celebration at a home, we see a family celebrating, and while the kids are having fun, some of the adults look uneasy. We follow as a woman carries two drinks; one for herself the other for her husband: Captain Atom. His adult nephew asks how he feels about the party- now with everything changed. He says he’s happy to see the family for any reason. A kid walks up to the nephew and pulls him away, so Angela, his wife, talks and asks him if he’s made a decision: will he push to retire as he was supposed to have by this point or will he continue to serve? He’s not sure in the moment, but there’s a yearning to stay. But then the call comes in: Captain Atom is needed. He kisses his wife, and flies off.

Atom arrives on the scene at a military facility under attack. It’s Manchester Black, telekinetic terrorist, and he’s looking to free his friends after being detained while unconscious after fighting Superman. He escaped, but he’s back to save his friends. Atom demands he stand down, and there’s a dialogue exchange to code Atom as a moderately conservative military type and Black as a punk egoist with a poor understanding of liberal politics. They fight, Coldcast is freed, but before the other members of the Elite can be freed, Atom beats both Black and Coldcast. The goal of these two scenes is to establish Atom as a formidable hero, but also a man who is not certain about his place in the future. How much more does he owe his country, how much longer will he have with his family, and is superhero work something he really wants?

Clark is in his apartment, lots of philosophy and ethics books scattered everywhere, and he’s writing in a journal in Kryptonese. We hear the narration of his writing: Clark loves Lois and asked her how she’s so good at everything, but particularly her writing. She said better is the horizon she’s always chasing so she never stops. He’s applied this to his time as Superman and has been reading up to try to learn in order to do better. He feels like he could be doing more, but must walk a fine line in order to be the hero he wants to be and not the monster the world fears he could be. This caused him to push his powers to the limits, and in that he saw beyond anything he had could have seen before and was profoundly moved by what he saw. This moment of clarity changed him. He does not want to repeat his past- no more Zods. Everyone deserves life. He needs to balance out pushing for peaceful action and his awesome might whenever possible. The question isn’t what does his power let him do, but how does he use this power to do the most good?

Clark gets a call from Lois. She needs a ride and he needs to act quickly. He pulls his shirt open and there’s a gust of wind. We cut to Atom in an office with General Lucy Lane, having taken her father’s old post. They talk about how Black must have found the base, but Atom quickly pushes that aside. He wants to know where the Pentagon officially stands on his current situation. Lane tells him that his request has been postponed until further research on his new biology is complete. Atom is not happy with this as he was finally hoping to retire to civilian life. A call comes in, and Atom is needed again. He grumpily accepts the mission, and as Atom leaves the room, Lois enters.

Superman is seen flying around the Earth searching for the individuals Lois pictured, and he’s in luck when he sees them flying towards California. He stops them over the coast and tries to reason with them, but they are unresponsive. He sees something on them all that seems unnatural: starfish-looking creatures. They attack without warning, and at first their unusual powers working together have him at a disadvantage. The battle moves to land, and as Superman struggles against his attackers, the arrival of a peer changes the course of the battle. Captain Atom proves to be a great help, but before the battle can really change tides, the four leave. Atom is about to pursue, but Superman stops him to ask him what he knows. They stare down each, but Atom decides to tell the truth: they’re the Ultramarine Corps, the Pentagon’s best effort in the superhuman arms race and as a last resort against Superman himself. But they appear to have gone rogue, and it’s Atom’s job to stop them no matter what. Superman thinks the starfish creature is responsible for their behavior and he will help stop them, but he’s not happy about them. The two pursue at hypersonic speeds.

Meanwhile, Lois is trying to keep pace with Lucy as Lucy is trying to monitor the situation with the Corps and the crash site. Lois had already been researching the Pentagon’s efforts in metahuman biotech, but she wants to know two important things: what have been the deployments of the Corps and how many others are currently in development. Lucy asks Lois why she thinks Lucy will talk, because it’s been more than a year since their father passed and they haven’t spoken since then, so why would she start now. Lois is taken aback not having realized it had been that long. Lois says she’s sorry. A senior officer tries to make Lois leave as they enter a plane, but Lucy tells him that Lois is fine to travel. She still does not answer Lois and makes her stay behind as she enters a secure command section of the plane. A door closes in Lois’ face as she tries to get through to her little sister; she did not mean for it to be like this. The advanced plane takes off.

Approaching urban areas, Superman and Atom catch up to the Ultramarine Corps and knock them off course to more isolated areas. Atom is paired off with Pulse-8 and 4D, while Superman fights Glob and Warmaker-1. We cut back and forth between the fights as Atom and Superman struggle against their opponents. Superman takes the lead when Glob tries to crush him in his hyper-pressurized body, but Superman takes a deep breath-taking all of Glob inside his lungs- and blows him back out as an ice structure. This kills the starfish, and after a moment, Glob returns to normal stating that being blown out like that was one the grossest things that has happened to him. Warmaker-1 flies off, and Glob tells Superman to chase after him; he’ll be ok. We cut back to Atom who is struggling against 4D until he opens his perception beyond his limits, which allows him to track her atomic movements. He is able to pin her down long enough to destroy the starfish creature. With her down, Pulse-8 proves to be an easier opponent, or so it seems. Superman catches backup to Warmaker-1 in front of the White House. He knows he must be very careful, so he simply takes every blow Warmaker-1 can deliver to keep the collateral damage minimal as he pushes ever closer to his opponent. Superman eventually grabs and rips off the starfish creatures, which struggles to escape his grasp. Warmaker-1falls to the ground, but gets back up and shakes Superman’s hand and thanks him for ending the nightmare. Superman is visibly hurt, but seen healing in the sunlight.

Back on the plane and very near the crash site, General Lane gets word that the Corps has been defeated, but they’ve lost contact with Atom. Lucy calls Lois in. Before Lucy can say her piece, Lois apologizes again. Growing up in a military family wasn’t easy for her, and since Lucy always sided with their dad, it was hard for her to keep up family relationships when their father was so disappointed with Lois. She felt isolated and buried herself in her work. Lucy says she’s sorry too. She never meant for Lois to feel isolated. She wanted to make Dad proud by being the youngest general in history, but she let her career isolate her as well. They hug, but Lucy pulls away because she needs Lois to be Lois Lane. Lucy tells her the world is being invaded by an unknown alien force and that the Corps behavior is a direct result of this, which means a form of mind control is in play. Lucy needs Lois to be the independently trusted voice to the world before paranoia and misinformation spreads too quickly before the world can unite and act swiftly against a threat to the very autonomy of all people everywhere. Lois says she’s not letting her off the hook about the metahumans just because of an alien invasion, and starts a livestream the Daily Planet is trying to spread across the globe with their partners. The plane begins to move unexpectedly. Enemy combatants are on their way.

Superman sees Lois’ broadcast, and flies off to the Pacific Ocean. Flying down from a shortcut in low orbit, Superman is intercepted by possessed Captain Atom. The two struggle as Superman can see from a vast distance that foreign metahumans being controlled by the starfish aliens are after the plane Lois is on. Atom is raging against the control of the alien and telling Superman to get it off him, but Atom is generating K-radiation. Despite the pain, Superman acts quickly to throw Atom off balance to rip the alien away. Before being fully pulled off, the alien makes Atom release a concentrated blast of K-radiation, which knocks him out of the sky. Regaining his senses, Atom dives into the ocean to save a sinking Superman and carries him off above the clouds stating that Superman won’t die on his watch. At the very edges of the atmosphere Superman begins to wake up. He thanks Atom, and Atom says he owed him one after Superman caught him from falling from the moon. He tells Superman to heal up quickly, because his family and every other family on Earth is in danger and Atom can’t do this alone, so he flies off to General Lane. We see Superman push off fully into space to face the Sun.

The plane is rocked as Atom passes by to intercept the pursuing metahumans, and several sonic booms can be heard. On the plane, Lois narrates the battle. At this point we see Atom fighting several identifiable metahumans, but exactly who depends on budget and production limitations. I would personally like to see at least August General in Iron, a Rocket Red squad, and Cosmo Racer. I definitely would like to see more heroes to establish that the DCEU has really expanded when the camera was not looking, but I can understand not being able to have everyone. From the plane's view, we see a giant tentacle rise out of the water and seemingly millions of smaller starfish are flung in the direction of land. Atom is trying to play defensively to protect the plane, but this means taking a beating. Cosmo Racer proves the hardest to keep away, but right when Atom thinks he’s failed a red streak knocks him down.

We see Superman ripping the starfish away and burning it. The Racer, an alien themself, says they know this being. It is a Starro the Conqueror; no known planet has survived contact with a conqueror. Superman thinks it's time to do the impossible then. Another tentacle rises out the seas and sends millions more starros into the upper atmosphere to ride the jetstreams. Superman and the Racer nod and fly off from each other. The Racer joins Atom and the two aim to even the battlefield by removing the starros. Superman flies to the edge of the cloud of starros and begins to fly in circles around creating a wind tunnel he can lead them back to the sea with. Despite his efforts to keep away from him, the cloud of starros uses their psychic power collectively to interfere and they are able to land on him. The tunnel stops, but they fall back into the ocean. Several starros on Superman try to break his will and he has hallucinations. A satellite feed beamed to the plane shows this to Lucy and Lois. Lois starts to talk to Superman knowing he can still hear her. Her words help, and Superman is able to break free control of the starros. Atom and Racer are successful in removing all the starros from the metahumans. Atom’s containment suit looks damaged.

Superman joins the other heroes in the sky. The Conqueror Prime rises from the ocean floor. The heroes are ants in relation to its size, and it is teeming with millions of smaller starros of various sizes and colors. The heroes devise a strategy on how to defeat the Conqueror Prime. Racer stays behind thanks to his speed, while the Rockets and General flank Superman and Atom as they try to get beneath the alien to throw it back into space. Thousands of starros fly up at the group and they fight through this obstacle, but they have to be careful because if even one of them is taken, it could derail the entire plan. They get close, but one of the Rockets is taken and they are forced to retreat for a second pass. But even as they try to make a quick turn around, more and more Starros are being launched into the upper atmosphere and sent into the ocean. August General in Iron says that they must stop the spread or getting rid of the Prime will mean nothing. Even with their awesome powers, it seems to be far too much. Then sonic booms are heard and Superman can hear Warmaker-1 speaking on an ultrasonic frequency; Glob will break off the Corps to help Superman and Atom take care of the Prime while the Corps leads the other heroes in stopping the spread. Aerodynamically pointed, Glob meets Superman and Atom mid air to form an aquatic shell and they dive below the water. Warmaker-1 and the General take to the ocean as Pulse-8 and 4D work with the remaining Rockets to stop the ariel Starros. Cosmo Racer fights the possessed Rocket from reaching the plane with General Lane. We cut back and forth between the three groups as they fight the Starros.

As Superman and Atom push the Prime into space, Atom is struck and his suit breaks containment. Glob wraps around him to help contain him, but in the last bit of atmosphere, Glob can hear Superman say Atom should not be afraid, he will be fine. As Glob falls to Earth with Atom inside him freaking out about dooming the Earth with his suit breaking, Glob tells him to snap the hell out of it and that Superman says he will be fine. Atom cannot understand, but he takes a deep breath and uses his atomic vision. He sees and understands in a moment of clarity, and rips his suit off revealing a blue-hued man. This will transition the more traditional look towards a version of the Pax Americana look. Superman can hear the terrifying psychic words of Prime in his mind as it tells him to give up, but he smiles as he looks down to Earth. Every reason not to is in his sight and he pushes Prime into zero gravity, then circles the Earth at blinding speeds, and uses the gravity sllingshot to knock Prime into space at a velocity that will send it beyond the reach of Sun’s gravity.

The international heroes work to stop the spread of the Starros, but still are not able to stop all of them as they seek hosts. But then, a blue light grabs all the Starros simultaneously, and Atom can be seen manipulating them and sending them out into space. Cheers from across the world as Lois streams this amazing event and the heroes hug. Arriving back from space, Superman stops next to Atom and they shake hands.

Relieved, Lois ends her livestream, but does not turn off her camera. She asks Lucy how many more metahumans the Pentagon has. Lucy frowns, and not giving an exact number states a few. Note: in a post-credits scene, this could easily be used to introduce Wildstorm characters into the DCEU if desired. Lois points out that the world almost ended within several hours, and they’re lucky that there was a clear enemy. She asks her sister where this race ends, because next time the enemy may not be so clear. Lucy takes her point, but she says the world is getting stranger and more dangerous. Large scale response will be needed, but she understands what Lois is saying about escalation. It will not be easy to change course, but Lucy says she’ll do her best to ensure that the world won’t be consumed in this arms race. With that being the last word, Lois turns the camera off and then asks when they’re going out for drinks. It’s been too long.

We see Superman and Atom back at Atom’s place, and Angela is very excited to meet Superman. Superman is flattered, and he’s happy to see Atom have such a loving home. Atom asks Superman how he knew. He says he could see that Atom could see like him, but just had not reached that point yet. He knew as soon as Atom could see like him that everything would be fine. Atom asks if this is how he sees the world all the time, and Superman says not all the time, but he knows the feeling Atom is talking about. Atom cries. His wife and the world has never looked so beautiful before. Angela embraces Atom. After a moment, he says he is retiring no matter what his superiors say. He tells Superman that he won’t be fighting again, but if Superman ever needs help, he always has a friend. Superman says he’s happy to hear that and asks Atom that even if he does not plan on fighting to use his position to push for a better world. He understands why the Corps was made, but he hopes Atom will help push for ensuring they are deployed responsibly, held accountable, and used as a last resort. After all, we’re all we have and we need to trust each other. A scream in the distance can be heard, Atom nods and Superman flies off. The End.

#superman #dc comics #henry cavill #captain atom #dceu #lois lane #fan fic

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