It always bugs me when I see people shamelessly supporting and defending a favorite creator, actor, or other celebrated personality no matter what they do. For example, if an author writes an excellent book, does that mean that all of his or her other books or works are automatically good, as well? Of course not, yet far too many people subscribe to this dangerous belief. (This blind devotion completely explains the popularity of Joss Whedon.)

This is not to be confused with being excited for future projects by a favorite creator; the difference is recognizing loss of quality when it applies. No creator has a perfect track record; everybody’s human, after all.

I’m a fan of writer J. Michael Straczynski, especially his work on Babylon 5 and Rising Stars, so I was eager to check out his take on Spider-Man in the early 2000s. Well, it started out good…but then it went straight into the shitter. Some JMS fans still praised it as the best thing to the happen to the book; I wonder what was going through their heads, because diehard Spidey fans certainly didn’t agree.

Furthering the comic book example, let’s look at novelist Charlie Huston. He’s written quite a few popular novels; I read one of them (Already Dead), and while I didn’t find it to be awful, I didn’t find it to be great, either. It was just an average urban vampire novel. (And we know how that whole genre has been beaten to death.) Like many other comic book readers, however, I first discovered his work through the relaunch of Moon Knight a few years back. Well, Huston’s novels may be decent…but his comic book work was atrocious. The Moon Knight relaunch read like a crappy Grand Theft Auto clone, focusing on excessive violence and shock value rather than character development or adherence to the source material. Yet, fans of his Moon Knight work automatically praised his novels, and vice versa!

This kind of fanboy loyalism just doesn’t make any sense to me. You’re not bound by law to automatically defend your favorite properties, nor are you required to like the entire breadth of a creator’s work. If they go sour, so what? You gotta take the good with the bad. It happens to everyone and everything. Just ask any Star Wars fan.

Jeez, I even see people defending things they haven’t even seen yet!

So, the Flash is getting a series relaunch again this spring, with Geoff Johns at the helm. While he’s certainly being whored around to many a book these days (he’s like the Brian Michael Bendis of DC Comics), the fact that he’s working on the new Flash series is particularly noteworthy. Johns wrote the book in the early 2000s, and his run (no pun intended) on the series represents some of the best Flash stories ever published, and personally, I feel its his finest work to date. So, this new series must be good news all around, right?

Wrong. The new series is going to star the recently-returned-from-the-dead Barry Allen, who was the Flash from the late 1950s through the mid-1980s. (When Johns wrote the book years ago, it featured Allen’s successor, Wally West.) Allen is Johns’ favorite superhero, so it’s only natural that Johns would use his considerable clout in order to secure the writing gig. The problem is that Barry Allen as a character is fucking boring.

Barry Allen embodies the stereotypical “goody-goody” superhero. Originally, that was to his credit, as that’s what made a popular hero in the Silver Age. However, the comic book audience has grown up (well, somewhat) since then, and those types of characters just don’t fit well with modern storytelling. Every human being has his flaws…except for Barry Allen. He’s still a super-devoted forensic scientist and superhero who is portrayed as being the perfect moral compass, and that’s extremely limiting when it comes to modern stories. More seriously, it’s incredibly boring.

Johns has said that the first storyarc of the relaunched series is going to be a CSI-like tale. Well, as well all know, CSI has completely oversaturated the television market with the main show plus a number of spinoffs also airing. So, not only are we stuck with a Flash with a sterilized, one-dimensional personality, we’re also stuck with a setting that’s already been beaten to death. Plus, if we want to read a detective story…we have Batman!

It’s very possible that Johns’ writing may break Allen out his goody-goody rut, but I’m not betting on it. He’s publicly stated that Allen is the greatest superhero ever, so the book is practically a fanfic before it’s even begun! (I’m sure the powers-that-be don’t care, as the legions of Johns apologists will buy anything he writes and defend it to the death, no matter how contrived it is. They’re a very silly bunch.)

My gripes with the new series may be considerable, but I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. After all, Johns’ previous Flash work was excellent indeed, but more importantly…I can’t render final judgment on the new series until I’ve actually read it. After the hilariously bad The Flash: Rebirth, in which nearly seventy years of history were retconned to show that Barry Allen is the source of all Flash powers past, present, and future, I suppose it can’t get much worse…can it?

Admit it or not, we all know comic book continuity is a mess. Characters from the big two publishing houses, Marvel and DC, have been around for so many decades that trying to make sense of the mess is next to impossible. Both companies have published many universe-spanning events to rectify the bigger problems, while introducing smaller retcons into books to solve the smaller ones. For example, a few years back, Tony Stark’s origin was changed so that he received his original injuries and became Iron Man during Operation Desert Storm, not the Vietnam War. That at least makes sense; otherwise, Iron Man would be a senior citizen!

Continuity decisions are completely at the whim of the editors, and writers have to pass any changes by them. It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it! Fans don’t always agree, but unfortunately for us, it’s not our decision to make.

Sometimes, though, continuity decisions aren’t as cut and dry as you’d think. Today’s focus is on one of the many changes implemented by 2007′s Infinite Crisis event from DC Comics:

• Dream of the Endless never told Kyle Rayner that he was superior to Hal Jordan.

This was revealed in one of editor-in-chief Dan DiDio’s “DC Nation” columns, back in October of 2007. The event he’s referencing, though, happened back in 1998, in JLA #22-23. Grant Morrison was writing the comic at the time, and he got permission from Dream’s creator, Neil Gaiman, to use the character in the story. The original exchange was as follows:

Dream: “Why do you hesitate each time? This man Jordan, the one who wore the magic ring before you…why does he overshadow all of your thoughts and actions?”

Kyle: “What? What does this have to do with anything? I was just thinking about…what is this about Hal?”

Dream: “You will surpass him. You already know what he could never learn.”

Kyle: “Sh’yeah! Hal Jordan was the best. Everybody knows that. Everybody keeps telling me that, no matter what I do. I met him; the guy was a star. What could I possibly know that he didn’t know?”

Dream:

It’s completely within DiDio’s power to decide what proper continuity is, but I have a problem with this particular instance for three reasons.

One, as I’ve mentioned before on this blog, we know that both DiDio and Green Lantern writer Geoff Johns harbor a strong distaste for Kyle; ever since Green Lantern: Rebirth, just about everything that happened to Kyle in the past has either been severely lessened, or retconned out of continuity entirely. The retcon dealing with Dream was specifically designed to be a dig against Kyle in favor of Hal, and that kind of fanboy bullshit bugs the hell out of me. It’s considerably worse that such fanboyism is coming from professionals at the top of the ladder, so to speak. They should know better. (To be fair, other characters are getting shafted, too; DC Comics has been seemingly hellbent on retconning or “deleting” most of their mid- to late-1990s tales as of late. It’s a shame, as that era had many of the publisher’s best stories.)

Two, to the best of my knowledge, Dream is technically the property of Neil Gaiman, not DC Comics. Creator-owned characters are a rare occurrence in the DC and Marvel comics houses, but regardless, Dream and other characters Gaiman created for The Sandman are his. Furthermore, the realm of the Endless exists outside of the regular DC Universe and Multiverse. So, no matter how hard Superboy-Prime punched the walls of reality in Infinite Crisis in a fit of teen angst (I’m not making that part up, by the way)…Dream and the Endless would not have been affected. Most importantly, though, it technically wouldn’t be within DiDio’s power to make continuity decisions when it comes to the Endless. Gaiman would have to do that, and there’s no evidence whatsoever that he was consulted.

What does all of this mean? DiDio’s column nonwithstanding, does Dream’s original conversation with Kyle still stand? Based on the evidence, it sure seems that way. If that’s not good enough for you, then consider this: if you ignore the legalese, then instead go by the Golden Rule of Canon used by film and television. Since DiDio’s comment was in an editorial column, and not in the story itself, it doesn’t apply. (This is how properties like Star Trek and Star Wars handle canon.) Of course, the fact that I’m just finding out about this whole thing now, over two years later, proves that DiDio’s comment couldn’t have been that important to canon anyway.

There’s a really simple way out of this particular retcon, if you want to be purely literal about it. In this case, DiDio’s comment is accurate, because Dream never claimed Kyle was “superior” in the first place! He said Kyle would surpass Hal at some point, and he never said exactly when this would happen. Going by this literal route, the retcon technically does not exist, as they’re trying to alter an event that never took place to begin with.

I realize this post may make me come off as a disgruntled Kyle Rayner fan, desperate to undo the post-Rebirth changes to the character. I can assure you, however, that this is not the case. I roll my eyes at any retarded and fanboyish attempt at retconning, regardless of the character. This was just an example I’m much more familiar with.

Spoiler alert for the ending of Blackest Night: the good guys win! I bet you never saw that coming.

Seriously, though, we’re at the halfway point of DC Comics’ company-wide crossover Blackest Night, and so far, so good. “But wait,” I can hear you say, “your blog is about ranting and complaining! Why are you being so positive?!” Very true, intrepid reader! While I’m certainly enjoying Blackest Night thus far, I do have some issues to raise. Get it? “Raise”? Like the Black Lanterns? Look, if you don’t like my bad jokes, you’d better buckle up, because I’ve got more.

Anyway, the idea of the DC Universe heroes and villains facing resurrected friends and enemies is pretty cool. (Even though it’s not really the dead, of course; just simulacra of them. Nekron’s Black Lantern rings find a dead body or spirit, “download” its memories, and create a physical construct to attack the living.) We’ve seen the whole “hero fights the dead” before, but this is on a massive scale on par with the mayhem seen in Marvel Zombies, which most certainly influenced Blackest Night.

My first nit to pick is some of the incredibly silly speech and actions by some of the characters. For example, let’s look at Hal Jordan himself; at one point, he bitches and moans about how he’s not a “pawn of the Guardians.” Well, that’s a bunch of horseshit for two reasons: one, if you’re a Green Lantern, then you’re the Guardians’ lackey. Period. Two, the last time Hal made a statement like that…he went off his rocker and destroyed the Corps he was possessed by a giant space bug. No matter what he says…he’ll toe the line, because that’s what Rebirth-era Hal Jordan does. Don’t try to make him seem more badass, when you know it’s a crock.

Larfleeze, the holder of the Orange Lantern, has been acting very much out of character lately, as well. When introduced in the Agent Orange storyline earlier this year, he was shown to be an incredibly arrogant and greedy enemy, with ridiculous levels of power to back it up. He’s currently being hunted by Black Lanterns…and acting like a complete wuss in the process. This dude’s killed Guardians, fer crissake, as well as their cousins the Controllers. Not only that, his Orange Lantern Corps was kicking the living snot out of the Blue Lanterns on their base planet of Odym. Recalling his constructs back and smashing some zombies should be a walk in the park, but Larfleeze sees fit to act and speak like he never has before instead. I can understand that a massive horde of superpowered zombies could frighten anyone, but this is a very abrupt shift for the character, and it doesn’t mesh with his previous appearances at all. (Of course, now Red Lantern leader Atrocitus wants to kill Larfleeze and take his lantern, so we’ll see how that turns out. I have a feeling Larfleeze may not survive the crossover in general, and someone else will take his place to possess the Orange Lantern.)

My next problem of note has less to do with the story, and more to do with DC Comics’ business model: there’s a ridiculous amount of tie-in miniseries that really don’t add much to the overall plot. There might be a seemingly important bit on a page in Blackest Night: Titans, and another piece in a panel in Blackest Night: Batman, and maybe another in Blackest Night: The Flash…but why not put that shit in Green Lantern or the main Blackest Night miniseries, where all of the really critical stuff is happening, anyway? Obviously, we know that DC’s just trying to squeeze more money out of the consumer. (Marvel Comics does this with their crossovers, too; look at all of the pointless Dark Reign nonsense that they’ve shit out.) From a story perspective, though, it just dilutes the whole saga. Stories work much better when they’re more tightly woven.

Green Lantern scribe and Blackest Night showrunner Geoff Johns has done a decent job juggling all of the multicolored Lanterns he’s introduced over the past few years, even though the very concept seriously dilutes the premise of the Green Lanterns, and our favorite heroes therein. Of course, this isn’t going to stop anytime soon; more colors are sure to come. You will see at least one White Lantern, as I’ve mentioned before, and it’ll almost certainly be Hal in that role. The obvious choice for their symbol would be a blank white circle, but that’s already been used by the Green Lantern Corps; it’s what recruits have on their uniforms before they earn their badges. Since artist Ethan Van Sciver designed each of the other color Corps’ symbols to be opposites of one another, here’s my guess as to what a White Lantern badge ought to look like:

See, it’s white, and the arrow’s pointing up instead of down. Brilliant, huh?

…But I digress. While the use of a White Lantern to beat Nekron is an obvious choice, it’s also a cheesy one. Wow, white is the opposite of black: how incredibly original. (That was sarcasm, in case it didn’t come across well enough in text form.) The fact that the wielder of the white light will end up being Hal (or even Kyle Rayner, who “died” recently) is also very clichéd; I understand that he’s the hero of the Green Lantern series, but c’mon…we can rock the boat a little bit without sinking it. Since it’s a company-wide crossover, why not have a character who is not a Green Lantern do it, which would actually be a surprise? (Now that I’ve written extensively on this subject, watch Geoff Johns fuck with me and not use White Lanterns in Blackest Night. Just my luck!)

Overshadowing all of my other concerns, though, is this: I dread the idea that Blackest Night will have a largely formulaic ending: the various Corps team up, recreate the white light of creation, destroy the Black Lanterns, and send Nekron back to his own dimension or whatever, with very minor ramifications (if any). Unfortunately, this is likely unavoidable due to comic book fanboys’ extreme distaste for change in any form, and their preference for simple, predictable stories.

Well, half down, half to go. The only way to see how Blackest Night will turn out in the end is to keep reading it. I doubt any of my concerns will be addressed, but let’s make like a Blue Lantern and hope. They’d certainly help turn a good series into a great one.

It seems like alternate timelines and parallel universes are the “in thing” in all manner of science fiction entertainment lately. From the multiple timelines in the comic book world, to television programs like Fringe, and even the latest Star Trek film, these “what if” universes are seemingly everywhere. While they can certainly provide all manner of compelling stories (the Mirror Universe episodes of Star Trek alone are proof of this), I’ve been having reservations lately. The increasing use of these alternates is making writers lazy, and ultimately prove to be nothing more than excuses for bad writing.

For example, I loved this year’s Star Trek film, but I did have a few problems with it. I’ve heard some Trek zealots wave away any and all criticism of the new film, even the constructive kind, with a blanket statement of “it’s an alternate timeline.” Aside from the fact that this statement is complete and utter nonsense, it’s a crappy way to explain inconsistencies. Does the alternate timeline defense work for some of the plot problems? Absolutely, as that’s what the premise of the entire film is based on. But for the rest, you can’t just wash them away like that.

I have the same concerns about Fringe. The first season established that there’s parallel universes out there, some with minor differences (like the World Trade Center surviving 9/11), others with major ones (cities in flaming ruins). It’s been part of the series’ underlying mythos, but it’s starting to get out of hand. It’s not clear which of the alternate universes is the most “important” one (read: where the bad guys come from), and this is critically important, since it’s been made clear that a war between the primary universe and the alternate is coming. But which one?! Do the writers even know? This could very easily lead to plot holes, about which the writers could easily say, “oh, that was a different timeline/universe.” That’s not an explanation; that’s a shitty excuse!

When it comes to comic books, it’s far, far worse. Gaping plot holes and continuity problems have been written off with alternate timelines, retcons, and other nonsense for decades. It’s just been getting a lot more prevalent in the past few years, especially since DC Comics brought back the Multiverse, and Marvel Comics has been making excessive use of its own parallel universes (e.g., Marvel Zombies). It’s bad enough that anyone can guess the outcome of a large-scale story or crossover (hint: the good guys win, even when they don’t), but when major revelations are ditched later on because “Superhero A actually came from Universe B, so his actions don’t count,” that’s just poor writing.

The easy solution to these nagging problems is this: ditch the alternate nonsense, and just write a good story that’s self-contained. It’s not difficult.