Adam Graham's Blog: Christians and Superheroes - Posts Tagged "dc"

Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating the DC Universe, Vol. 1 by Stan Lee

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


In 2001-2002, DC Comics published a series of comics books imagining Stan Lee what the DC Universe would had been light had Stan Lee created it (or more aptly what it would have been like had Stan Lee created in the early 21st Century.)This collects the first four issues, imagining Stan Lee's version of Batman, Wonder Woman, Superman, and Green Lantern.

The key to enjoying this book is to remember what it is and what it isn't. The book does not set out to offer new and improved versions of DC's heroes. As Lee said on the back, "Please don't think for one minute that this is an attempt to improve on any of the truly great characters that have become legendary throughout the world." Rather, Lee creates a Staniverse, characters with the same name but entirely different origins that should be judged on their own merit.

Stan Lee's Batman is a black ex-con and pro-wrestler who fights to avenge his wrongful imprisonment the death of his parents. His father died at the hands of a local crime lord. His mother died while he was in prison for a crime he didn't committed. Wonder Woman is from Peru and receives her powers through Incan rather than Greek mythology and seeks to stop a man who killed her father. Superman is an intergalactic policeman who has to be extra tough because he's the only member of the force not genetically altered. However, when he lands on Earth, he finds himself the most powerful man on the planet. He seeks to avenge his wife's death and get home. Finally, Green Lantern is an archaeologist who finds the tree of life.

The stories occasionally pepper in the names of traditional DC characters. Steve Trevor appears in the Wonder Woman story with Diana Prince in the back up feature. Superman does adopt the identity of Clark Kent based on reading a couple signs (although, he could have just as easily adopted the identity of Peter Parker) and hires an aggressive agent named Lois Lane. It's worth noting that far more characters in this story became heroes through deaths than in the traditional DC universe. Of the four, only Batman became a hero that way in mainstream, but in the Staniverse only Green Lantern didn't, and even he lost someone he'd been interested in, though in a pretty shallow way.

Personal pain and tragedy is more often a motivator for Lee-created superheroes than for DC's traditional stable. Other Lee touches are present as well. The Batman story is evocative in some ways of Spider-man with Batman's wrestling and the Green Lantern looks a lot like a glowing green Silver Surfer.

The villain is Reverend Dominic Darrk, a classic Dr. Doomlike villain preaching hate and evil in his crossless church.

Overall, while none of the characters are going to replace the mainstream DC continuity, for a thought experiment, the book is fun and well-put together. I'll look forward to future volumes and see how the plot lines all resolve themselves.



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The Marvel/DC Collection - Crossover Classics, Vol. 3 by Scott Lobdell

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


This book collects seven inter-company crossovers:

1) Incredible Hulk v. Superman: This is the best story in the book, though its far from perfect. The story begins with a married Lois and Superman talking and goes back to the 1960s and an encounter between Superman and the Hulk as well as Clark Kent and David Banner. The story is a great classic potboiler that gets Thuderbolt Ross and a red haired Lex Luthor involved. There's less Hulk smashing Superman and vice versa, but that should be expected with legendary comic scribe Roger Stern at the helm as we get a far more character based story. The art by Steve Rude is gorgeous which makes it stand out from almost everything else in this book. There's shades of Dave Stephens in the art, which only has one unfortunate drawback which is Lois putting on a skimpy outfit for one scene for seemingly no other reason than to elicit information from Rick Jones. The framing scenes were nothing special either, but still this is a good story. Grade: B+

Daredevil and Batman: These were a natural duo to pair up. Both dark characters and both redefined by Frank Miller in the 1980s. I wonder if this story would have been better if Miller wrote it. Both writer and artist try to ape Frank Miller and the results are awful. The plot becomes a bunch of ego roller derby. The art is garish with the villains Two Face (and for some reason) Mister Hyde looking awful. Grade: D+

Spider-man and Batman: This was a good concept involving Batman and Spider-man being drawn together through a plot that involved two of their most deadly rogues, the Joker and Carnage and a plot to essentially lobotomize these mad killers society refused to execute. There was some great concepts involved particularly the idea of Spider-man and Batman both being orphans, and the similarities and contrasts between Carnage and the Joker as mad killers. The story has a lot of good concepts. What hurts is the length. Even a double length comic wasn't enough to do it justice. This would have worked far better as a 2-4 issue miniseries. As is, I'll give it a grade of C+.

Spider-man and Gen 13: I have to admit to knowing nothing coming into reading this other than that they were published by Wildstorm, an imprint of Image comics. I still don't know much. They're supposed to be a superhero team, although there overall dynamics seemed similar to MTV's The Real World. Beyond that, the comic doesn't do much. They face a villain whose in the middle of a child custody dispute which gets thrown in because but it's really hard to follow the plot. There are some very nice jokes and cute moments particularly when one of them quoted the theme to the 1960s Spider-man TV show. The art is second best in the book, so overall I'll give it a grade of C-.

The last two comics are Gen X/Gen 13 Team X/Team 7 and I also have to confess ignorance of these three other teams. If you enjoyed these titles when they first published, you may get more out of these stories. However, this is where production value comes in and the fact that Marvel and DC really put no work into the presentation of this book, simply slamming the stories and covers in with no introduction compared to the first Crossover Classic that had detailed information...on stories featuring Spider-man and Superman. Also, the inclusion of these one off Wildstorm stories is weird and doesn't really fit. Someone looking for Wildstorm crossovers with Marvel is hardly going to want to read a retro 1960s Superman/Hulk story but they're jammed in anyway.

What little I can get out of the stories: the Gen X and Gen 13 features an evil mad scientist plot luring our two teams of young superheroes to a beach. It's really lame. I'd give it a D-. The Team 7 and Team X story is a little bit more of an interesting black ops story with ill-defined objectives. Still, I'd give that one a D.

It's problematic to have two large team meetings in a story with 40 pages. And what is perhaps the most damning thing in both stories, the teams are so similar it really is hard to keep straight whose on what team which doesn't speak for the originality of the teams.

At any rate, there's one good story, one decent concept undone by page limitations and five other stories ranging from subpar to awful. Personally I'd recommend picking up a copy of Superman v. the Hulk as a standalone and skipping this trade.



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