Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
("... the ER looks like the inside
of a charnel house; the patient is flatlining; and the priest is slouched against
the far wall, mumbling something about 'Extreme Unction'...
... but: never mind. Let's
call it a 'miracle,' anyway.")
On Watching a Train Wreck. In Slow
Motion.
(PART ONE)
This one is going to ramble to and fro a wee little bit, people...
... but, believe me: it will all end up being neatly tied together in a pretty pink rhetorical bow, by the time the cock crows thrice.
A special "guest columnist," here on the CHEEKS Silver Age Shrine and Memorial Tuna Cannery (a "first" for this site). A (former) self- confessed "Ultimate Fanboy," reaching public, online epiphany. A chilling, spine-tingling "Cheeks Cautionary Tale," detailing the horrors that await us all the day Homo Fanboyus gains evolutionary ascendancy...
... and: the once-in-a-generation-or-three sight of a major comics publisher or two willingly slitting their own fiscal wrists in the ol' corporate bathtub, to boot.
Let's close out 1998 with a bang, then, shall we...? 
The following column first appeared (a month or so ago, as of this writing) in the online comics fanzine GINCHY.
With the kind permission of fellow Silver Age enthusiast; comic book mega-retailer for the greater Chicagoland area; and unindicted online co-
conspirator Joe Linehan: said column is reprinted in its entirety, as follows:
TALES
FROM THE FRONT
by Joe Linehan
Some of you who are a bit older than me will remember the whole "Paul is dead" rumor that started circulating around school yards after the release of the Beatles' Abbey Road album, in which Paul McCartney was walking across the street barefoot. The following column is pretty much just as based on rumor and speculation rather than fact. This is merely an attempt to tie a bunch of disparate on-line rumors into one great conspiracy theory as food for thought. Many of the very premises that this column hinges upon, may well prove false and the whole thing will unravel like a cheap sweater.
This is a list of what I'm drawing my conclusions from:
1.) DC has bought Wildstorm.
2.) Mark Waid and Grant Morrison have been encouraging rumors that the result of DC's ONE MILLION and KINGDOM events will be a return to the [pre-CRISIS] multiverse.
3.) Denny O'Neil has stated that after "No Man's Land," Batman may be in need of a reboot.
4.) Superman is at a low point in both sales and creatively. Something must be done, but they've been "evented" to death, and there is no way to dissolve the marriage between Clark and Lois, which has removed some of the edge from the series.
5.) In the press release announcing the JSA lineup, it was also announced that some other obvious members would be joining the team after issue 12.
6.) DC and Marvel watch what works for each other, and Marvel has had tremendous success with their reboots.
7.) The one thing that has been working really well for DC has been nostalgia. JLA: Year One, the 80-page giants, and the return of Hal Jordan have been huge successes. DC could use a way to access popular characters like Hal Jordan and Barry Allen more easily.
8.) The 10-year "Zero Hour" timeline is just not going to work forever. Parts of it are already ridiculous.
9.) In the old days of less continuity-conscious fans, it used to be customary for DC to reboot characters every six years or so. We've gone almost 15 without a retooling since CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS.
10.) The millennium is approaching, and there is probably no better time to just toss out the old and bring in the new.
Adding this all together, I am inclined to believe that DC will not only launch a new Crisis-type event, but that the result will not only create the multi-verse, but will reboot their titles much as they did after Crisis. They will attempt to streamline things and use a much smaller multi-verse to accommodate the KINGDOM COME characters and Tangent characters; allow an Earth for Golden Age characters; and one for Silver Age characters. I could even see an Earth for the Wildstorm Studios characters. This would allow the inevitable Batman/ Grifter crossovers without making WildC.A.T.S. redundant in a world with the JLA.
I look at the signing of Jim Lee much like DC's signing of John Byrne in the 80s. They have acquired one of the biggest comic names, and he's going to want to play with their toys... and they would love to see him do it. If DC were to launch a BATMAN #1 by Jim Lee, I would expect sales larger than anything DC has approached in years. I could see them potentially turning over the four Bat books to Wildstorm Studios.
While I don't see a particularly big name creator for SUPERMAN yet, I think DC will also reboot that book. It has become very convoluted, and certain unfortunate turns (such as the marriage of Lois and Clark) can only be fixed by going back to the start.
Just like after CRISIS, not all the books have to be relaunched; but creating an Earth where Barry, Katar, and Hal are still important heroes might go a long way towards appeasing critics, while still keeping the current creative teams' directions for their particular books intact.
Now, I'm not advocating these changes. I'd love to see a Silver Age Earth and the return of the multiverse, though I don't know how thrilled I'd be at a Jim Lee BATMAN. Still, I could see it happen. The signs are all there, I just don't know if I'm reading them right. If I'm right, in two years I'll be bragging about it. If I'm wrong, nobody will remember. This is the way Jean Dixon got her start as a psychic, I believe.
* * * * * * * * *
Okay. Unca Cheeks, again.
First off, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the sainted Joe Linehan (whose name -- in the ancient tongue of the gentle, nomadic HungaDunga peoples -- translates, loosely, as: "Touches Self") for graciously granting permission for that particular installment of his Tales From the Front column to take up residence here, on the CHEEKS site.
Second: Joe's e-mail address -- assuming you look just exactly like Catharine Zeta-Jones, and aren't doing much of anything next weekend, anyway -- is: [email protected].
Third: I think Joe is dead-on accurate, in every particular.
It's no secret to anyone who's given even the briefest, most cursory of musings to this medium's ongoing fiscal malaise that the mainstream American comics industry -- on the whole -- is rapidly reaching The Point of No Return, sales- and viability-wise.
Every time one turns around, it seems as if one of the deadly dualities inherent in the present-day Mexican stand-off between Fans and Pros (or Fans and "Casual" Readers; or Fans and Retailers; or Retailers and The Big Two Publishers; or even -- God alone knows -- Simple, Common Sense and The Fanboy Mind-Set) crashes its single-minded way into the self- defined orbit of the other one, sending white-hot planetary fragments careening in all directions and laying waste to a good-sized civilization or two.
[EXAMPLE: the fans (or -- rather - what pitiably few "fans" remain, in these shriveled, stunted times for the industry) clamor continually for more and more titles conceived; written; and marketed exclusively to their select storytelling "needs," and none other. Increasingly, said "needs" revolve around a progressively more and more incestuous and dizzyingly self- referential latticework of "continuity"; characterizations and story arcs and even series directions so rigidly (if not masochistically) body-strapped into the unshatterable dictums of their respective "shared universes" that they become (demonstrably) all but impenetrable to those not already weaned upon (and obsessed with) same.
[COUNTER-EXAMPLE: the pros, on the other hand -- those writers and artists and editors who craft the fictions in question; and those publishers whose primary responsibility it (rightfully) is to guarantee that there will still be an economically hale, hearty and viable comics industry five, ten years from now -- are undergoing an attitudinal "sea change," in this regard.
[Increasingly, the industry's best and brightest (not to mention most commercial) artisans -- Mike W. Barr; Kurt Busiek; John Byrne; Chuck Dixon; Garth Ennis; Mark Evanier; Neil Gaiman; Tony Isabella; Alan Moore; Grant Morrison; John Ostrander; Mark Waid; etc., etc. -- have drifted, by ones and by twos, towards the realization that the "shared universe" lockstep has developed into a particularly nasty-looking case of storytelling sterility: a medium which was (at one time) both fiscally and creatively fecund now plainly unable to birth four-color offspring that are both pleasing to the eye and capable of making it through their first year of life, sans feeding tubes and respirators.
[... and: they've "come out" of the auctorial "closet," publicly... and stated so.
[Bizarrely: even though it is these very same writers who are responsible for something along the order of (oh, say) ninety, maybe ninety-five percent of the worthwhile (or even readable) mainstream comics published within the past decade or so -- with six of these (Busiek; Ennis; Gaiman; Moore; Morrison; and Waid) having pretty much hogged the lion's share of sales; industry awards; and fannish acclaim all to themselves, over the last five years -- whenever they so much as dare to point out the obviousness of the "Stockholm Syndrome"-like relationship between the non-negotiable demands of the fannish hoi poloi and the leprous fiscal state of the industry, entire...
[... then, they simply become Big Ol' Spoilsport Dummyheads Who Don't Understand How Comics Are Really S'posed To Work. Even as their most venomous and vociferous nay-sayers champion the auctorial works of these very same creators who (it says here) "don't understand how comics are really s'posed to work" in the first place (!!).
And here I'd always thought that DC Comics had wiped out the Bizarro-World,
during the CRISIS.
Ah... but: I'm getting ahead of myself, again.
We'll be tying Joe's Tales From the Front observations into this essay's thematic "whole," in the pages to follow...
... but, first: we'll be taking a look at that aforementioned "epiphany" undergone by a (self-confessed) "King of the Fanboys."
Settle back in them there reclining bucket seats, kiddies. Prop your feet up on the dashboard. Find something good and rockin' on the car radio.
We're on the Highway to Hell.
"The Operation Was a Miracle of Modern Science...": PAGE TWO
"The Operation Was a Miracle of Modern Science...": PAGE THREE
"The Operation Was a Miracle of Modern Science...": PAGE FOUR
"The Operation Was a Miracle of Modern Science...": PAGE FIVE
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