A Preview of IDW Publishing's Star Trek / Legion of Super-Heroes Trade

The trade collection of IDW Publishing's cross-over between the Star Trek and Legion of Super-Heroes universes has come out in the collected edition, while you wait for my review of it, check out this 11 page preview from IDW Pubishing that gives a hint at how writer Chris Roberson managed to merge the two settings.

Justice League of America and Vibe First Issues

When I read the new first issues of Justice League of America and Justice League of America's Vibe from DC Comics, I have to say that I had low expectations. I have much of the run of the Justice League Detroit from the months in between J'onn J'onzz making his triumphant return to the Justice League to the lead-up to the Crisis on Infinite Earths that lead to the deaths of a good chunk of the Detroit-era League.

I will say right now that I thought that the Detroit-era of the Justice League was a great idea. On paper. Unfortunately, that idea hit some speedbumps on the way to getting to the final stories. One of those major speedbumps was Vibe. To be honest, the portrayal of the character had all of the subtlety of being hit in the head with a bowling ball. One thing that DC Comics had a hard time recovering from, after Marvel Comic's surge of popularity in the 60s and 70s, was that all of their characters were pretty much white middle class guys (except of course for the billionaire white guys), and there wasn't much for readers of color to grab on to with DC's books. I'm sure that was part of the reason for a multicultural approach to this run of the Justice League. It just wasn't very good and to prove that it wasn't very good, the final story arc lead to the death of a couple of the new characters and the ending of this version of the Justice League.

So, let's fast forward to 2013 (and ignore the "return" of the Detroit-era  Justice League in Darkest Night) and we see a return of some of the ideas of that team to the New 52. There's a new multicultural Justice League in town, and it is set in Detroit again. Michigan native Geoff Johns launches this new Justice League of America book (although he will be replaced by a permanent writer), probably in order to tie it more tightly into the next "Aquaman" of the New 52, the comic with the awkwardly long name of The Justice League of America's Vibe (hereafter known as Vibe). I'm sure that's to avoid "confusion" with the magazine of the same name, but who really knows.

The set-up of Justice League of America #1 and Vibe #1 are both the same: Darkseid's attempted invasion of Earth from the initial story arc of John's and Jim Lee's Justice League comic. Detroit was the first beachhead of Darkseid's invasion, and also the place where the first person died: the brother of Francisco "Cisco" Ramon, the man who will become the super-hero Vibe. Cisco was caught in the first Boom Tube opened onto Earth, and was saved by his brothers Armando and Dante. Armando was killed by a Parademon in the attempt, but did save his brother.Being caught in this Boom Tube is what has given Cisco his powers: the ability to sense beings from other dimensions (due to their differing vibrational rates) and a powerset of vibrational-oriented abilities.

Both of these comics set up the background of the formation of this new Justice League, and Vibe becoming a super-hero. I think the whole "the unlikeliest hero" is a bit too cute and self-aware on the part of Johns and DC Comics. Yes, we get that no one liked Vibe from the first time around but there were reasons for that. These comics do a much better job this time around, and I'm not the only one who thinks that. Vibe is a much less stereotypical character this time around, and I think that is what will potentially keep this book going, not any marketing ploys.

Another Detroit-era character, former mentor and support staff member James Gunn returns as a member of the secret government organization A.R.G.U.S. (no where near as cool or fun as S.H.A.D.E. but an attempt by the powers that be at DC Comics to make something like Marvel's S.H.I.E.L.D.) and mentor and support staff to the new Justice League of America. I'm not 100% sold on A.R.G.U.S. within the setting yet, it just seems too derivative even after a year. Throw in Steve Trevor as a super-spy and Suicide Squad/Team 7 member/leader Amanda Waller running the whole shebang and I'm still not entirely sold on the concept. Another thing that I didn't think that I would be saying, but Vibe definitely came out of the gate a lot stronger than Justice League of America, which makes sense since Vibe does have a much smaller cast to deal with.

However, these are both good comics. I'm not the biggest fan of Geoff Johns. He is a good writer, don't get me wrong, but he can be very uneven in his storytelling. His work on Green Lantern tended towards being overly long, and sometimes convoluted, and his work on Justice League is no where near as strong as what he had done with the Justice Society in the past. That said, Johns brings an incredible amount of enthusiasm to any book that he writes. Love or hate his work, but this is a man who is motivated by love for characters. Unfortunately, as I said, that doesn't always promise quality but it can bring good things to any book that the man works on.

Are these books worth buying? Yes. I would say that Vibe is definitely the "must have" book of the two. Johns has tied this new character deeply into the story of the New 52, and that means that there are going to be some big things happening in this book (as demonstrated by the reveal on the last page that I am not going to spoil), and they are going to be important to the advancement of the setting. Justice League of America is still a wildcard for me. I know that this is also supposed to be important to the advancement of the overall setting, but I'm just not feeling it as much as I did with Vibe. Probably because there is so much going on, and so many characters to introduce that there wasn't as much of a chance for storytelling.

The opinion in the comics blogosphere seems to be that Vibe will be the book that won't last, but comparing these two first issues I am going to say that it has much longer legs (so far) than Justice League of America. I'm not saying that I expect the book to be cancelled, I am just saying that of the two, Vibe was the stronger comic. You should buy both Justice League of America and Vibe, but you should buy the hell out of Vibe.

Howard Chaykin and Shadowmania

1986 was a heady year for comics. Two stories that have since come to be regarded as modern classics were released by DC Comics: Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons Watchmen and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns. Both of these books have left their marks on comic books. Moore and Gibbons' Watchmen has become for many the highwater mark for comic book storytelling, while Miller's Dark Knight single-handedly altered the course of The Batman forever. Somewhere in the middle of all of this was released a four-issue miniseries that has every bit of the same right to be considered a masterpiece of comics as those other two series: Howard Chaykin's The Shadow.

Since Dynamite Comics is publishing a new trade edition of this mini-series, I will try to avoid spoilers in the story itself for those who have not yet experienced this masterful comic.

Howard Chaykin is a comic artist and writer, sometimes doing on or the other on a book and sometimes doing both. With The Shadow Chaykin wrote and drew the book, infusing it with his characteristic fusion of 1940s period dress with a modern sensibility. Previous to doing The Shadow, Chaykin was known most for having done some well-regarded fantasy series for DC Comics and the early run of the blockbuster Star Wars comic from Marvel Comics. Chaykin has the rare distinction of being one of the first people outside of Lucas' production company to create original material for the Star Wars Universe, helping to usher in what we now know as the Expanded Universe. Chaykin also adapted Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination and worked with British fantasist Michael Moorcock for Heavy Metal magazine. He also found the time to create one of the earliest independent comics in 1976 with Star Reach, and his seminal character Cody Starbuck.

Each of Chaykin's works informs the next, and it was with characters like Cody Starbuck, Dominic Fortune, and of course Han Solo that he became known for his roguish male lead characters. In The Shadow, this disposition towards the roguish lead was married to an old school social conservative to make his interpretation of Kent Allard/Lamont Cranston/The Shadow. Chaykin's Shadow is probably one of the more fleshed out interpretations of the character too, leagues away from the cipher of a character that plagued the radio shows and some of the more poorly-written instances of the pulp magazines.

In this mini-series Chaykin made a ballsy move that upset a lot of pulp purists...he moved The Shadow into the modern day of 1986. Before this pulp characters adapted to comics either existed still in their original eras or were "updated" to a hazy setting that could be the contemporary world, or it could still be the past. A lot of people did not like that Chaykin moved the story to a contemporary setting. However, the strength of this idea is that it pitted the character of The Shadow, who was still very much rooted in a pre-World War II social and psychological mindset, against the contemporary world of 1986. As with any Chaykin work, this play of the vintage against the contemporary is a method of showing that change is both good and bad, and the past should not always be viewed through rose-colored glasses. The Shadow's attitude towards women is compared to that of his contemporaries, like Harry Vincent (an important supporting character from the original pulp stories), who have been exposed to the changes for forty years and have been able to adapt to those changes. The Shadow is still very much the force of nature that he was in the pre-War days, and still he has to come to grips with the societal changes around him as well as the physical changes to New York City.

The plot of this mini-series is launched by having a number of The Shadow's operatives from his early exploits, now old, being targeted and killed by an unknown villain. This serves to bring The Shadow out of his lengthy retirement in the Himalayas. The Shadow himself is unchanged and unaged in the near forty years since he was last in New York City, and now establishes himself as the son of his original cover identity of Lamont Cranston. Assembling a team of his remaining operatives from the 1940s and new contemporary operatives (including two sons that he had while retired), The Shadow moves against this new villain. The balance of these issues deals with The Shadow and his operatives uncovering the villains of the piece and finally moving against him.

Despite the opinions of those who felt (and those who probably still feel this way) that the adventures of The Shadow should have remained in their original historical period, I think that a great deal of the success of this story came because Chaykin decided to update the time period to the contemporary. Much of the tension of the story comes from the interplay between The Shadow and his "unenlightened" (according to other characters in the story) attitudes. The Shadow as a man out of time is as much of a driving factor to the story as the actions of the villain of the piece. The story is an engaging one, although ironic because now the setting of 1986 is a historical one as well. For some current readers, the 1980s can be just as foreign as the 1930s of the original pulp stories.

I do think that the story holds up well, regardless. The characters (new and old) hold up well and Chaykin demonstrates that he can write a Shadow story in the vein of the original pulps and update it at the same time. This mini-series was the launching point for a long-running on-going series featuring the characters which would lead to some of The Shadow's strangest adventures. Fans of the pulps should enjoy this story because of the loyalty to the characters and concepts of the original pulp stories (despite the time period updating). Fans of Chaykin's current work should enjoy this story because of how it shows the development of some of his now standard storytelling tropes. If you would be bothered by a lot of people in 1930s-era clothing in the 1980s, this might not be the comic for you.

I am glad to see that this story is getting a new lease on life, and a printing up to modern standards. I never picked up the first trade collection of these comics and have had to rely on my original comics over the years. At least now I can get a good trade collection and I can put away the comics.