The Fractal Hall Journal

Core Genre: Science Fiction. Space opera mainly though not always, and shading towards the Original Star Trek horrorish take, under Geoff Johns in particular.

As the architect of Jordan’s return from the dead, and the principle GL writer for a number of years, Johns is going to be the major influence on this post. He’s done more than pretty much any other writer to show us who Jordan is, and what makes him tick.

I’m not keen at all on the characterisation of Hal Jordan as, essentially, a thick ignorant prick. Hal Jordan Internet Joke is somewhat played out. Let’s accept he has a somewhat privileged, conservative mindset, evidenced by an alpha male jet jockey backstory and as originated during the Hard Travelling Heroes era. Is he small- or narrow-minded? Of course not. As Johns has gone to lengths to show, he’s focused. This is both a positive and a negative character trait. He’s as precise and instinctive and as you’d want in a test pilot or, indeed, a space cop, but this does lead to missing some of the surrounding detail of a given situation. It makes him stubborn, and single minded, but this is a world away from being narrow minded. Gardner, on the other hand…

There’s a recklessness about the character too. But a certain kind of recklessness, not the same as Oliver Queen’s, for example. He’s honest and fearless, as all Green Lanterns are, with the formidable will that goes along with that. Marry that to precision and focus, not to mention confidence, and you’re going to get a character who does rush in.

Funny, but some of the first posts at the Journal were about what makes a Green Lantern’s tick. At the time, I mentioned that I prefer GLs to simply not know fear, rather than to know fear but be able to overcome it. Johns has again made explicit that overcoming fear is the important thing, as seen in fearful new GL recruits who are still vulnerable to yellow. To be fair, I’ve been happy to change my viewpoint on this, as Johns has built some great work from this foundation, in particular as regards the different Corps he’s been creating.

I’m still fond of the idea that GLs are honest because they have no fear of the consequences of the truth. There’s been nothing to contradict this either. In fact, I think it makes a lot of sense, with Jordan in particular. Focused, willful. Damn straight he tells the truth, and he’s not scared to do it either. Not in the slightest.

Let’s take a second here to talk about the Guardians. They work best when portrayed as grumpy space-bureaucrats. Galactic police captains who want Jordan’s god-damned badge and gun because he’s gone too damn far this time. Unfortunately, they’ve been known to drift too far into big blue sky daddy territory. This doesn’t work as well, because then they become DC’s Odin to Hal Jordan’s Thor. A conflict between child and parent, an endless cycle of replacing the father. They leave the kids to fend for themselves, then they come back, then they die, then they come back, now it looks like they’re on the way out again. Wrong way of looking at it. They shouldn’t be nurturing their adoptive children to take over after they’re gone. They should be your cosmic boss, hypertensive and pissed off that you haven’t finished the monthly spreadsheet yet.

This post’s about Hal Jordan specifically rather than Green Lanterns generally. That’s because I think there are factors that are specific to getting his character right that don’t quite transer to other Lanterns, Kyle Rayner in particular. The first two factors, however, are the classics (and due to this there’s a lot in a GL’s character that will overlap with other members of the Corps):

A) Honest.
B) Fearless.
C) Power ring that creates things willed into existence. Is green. Obviously. Need recharging.
D) Blue cosmic bosses.

D) is the primary way in which a villain is located and put into context. Clunky kind of exposition via briefing, perhaps, but if it worked for Hill Street Blues then it can’t be completely inelegant. GLs aren’t really detectives, anyhow, and a GL story is different to a Batman story for this reason. There are, of course, exceptions, and this is when the power ring comes in. GL drinking game: everytime they “scan” something with the bugger. You’ll be plastered before DC Nation.

You know, having said they’re not really detectives, I have to admit I quite like the times where we’re reminded that the Corps isn’t so much a group of superheroes as it is a group of coppers. You know,w hen they make reports, or refer to sentencing procedures and breaches of intergalactic law. I like how it grounds the incredible. Jordan using the ring at one point as a CSI-style scene of crime scanner (for an autopsy, I think) was pretty cool. I like the way it suggests GL rookies are taught specific complicated construct patterns or designs that there’s no way they could come up with themselves.

The ring, then, becomes both a tool of location and the primary means of interaction. Honesty is a mode of interacting with their world, either through action or communication. A lack of fear informs this too, as well as shaping the way a Lantern locates an antagonist.

Conclusion: There’s not much to sum up, in that the personality of a Green Lantern is clearly delineated already in the central concept, not to mention the job Geoff Johns has done in exploring what makes Jordan tick. The last thing I’ll say is that although the job requirement means a Lantern has to be a certain way, I’ve always liked the way the different characters are shown to be very different too each other. Honesty and fearlessness does not automatically make you a good person, after all. Gardner’s obnoxious as hell, and honesty and a lack of fear only exacerbates his worst tendencies. I may return to this later, as I suspect both Gardner and Kyle Rayner’s profiles would be fairly different to Jordan’s.

Click here for the Delineation Archive.

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I’ve avoided the psychology of superheroes up until now, for a couple of reasons. The biggest one is that different writers will have vastly different views regarding a character’s motivations, and it’s pretty unlikely that, with the exception of particularly radical interpretations, an editor will question differing psychological approaches. Which is fine, really, as every writer brings their own perspective to their work. I’ve concentrated instead on the elements that can, or should, be consistant across the board. We may argue about whether Batman is a Republican, Democrat, or utterly uninterested in politics, and back it up with an analysis of his personality, but whether or not he drives around in a black car with a fin on it somewhere isn’t really up for grabs.

In doing so, I have skipped over a few things, one of which occurred to me while reading Will Shetterly’s comments on the Batman delineation. His assertion that Batman is a “mystery” character gave me pause for thought.

Let’s me put it like this: Batman and Daredevil are not the same character. We can list the similarities between them (and there are many), and just as easily list the disparities (one has superpowers and a working-class origin, the other hasn’t, etc.) Sooner or later, we fixate on the psychological reasons why they’re different, and I think we’ve got to a point in comics writing where psychological reasons have become the single most important factor that writers think about. It’s only a small step to reason that Batman and Daredevil react to different situations because Batman’s outlook is shaped by an affluent upbringing and the loss of his parents at an early age, while Daredevil’s motivations are controlled by an inner conflict between different drives (how very Catholic; indeed, how very Frank Miller) set up by the contradictory things he learned from his father.

The psychology aside, we ask, are Batman and Daredevil that different? No, is the answer we’re given. Miller worked on Daredevil, therefore he’s the perfect writer for Batman. Brubaker broke through on Batman, let’s get him on Daredevil. Why oh why can’t Bendis get his hands on Gotham?

I think what causes the confusion is that there are two different types of “crime” story in play here. I don’t want to get too tied up in semantics, and forgive me if I’m using the incorrect terminology, but I’m essentially referring to “mystery” and “hard-boiled” fiction. The former tends towards an external intellectual challenge for the protagonist, while the latter is concerned with a character’s inner conflict as well as any conflict with other characters.

Miller’s stroke of genius was in realising that as a Catholic dressed as the Devil, as a man who’s father indirectly taught him to fight, while simultaneously teaching him that fighting was the one thing he should never do, Matt Murdock’s inner life would be a fucking battlefield. It made him the perfect character for Miller to use to explore hard-boiled pulp fiction in the Marvel U. It also created the situation where I could write a delineation for pre-Miller Daredevil and post-Miller Daredevil seperately. It’s a situation that may well be repeated over at DC, as I suspect “Green Lantern” and “Geoff Johns’ Green Lantern” are two separate entities.

The problem is, Batman isn’t conflicted, at least, not where his various identities are concerned. In fact, in order to conceive of a situation where Batman was conflicted about his identity, Miller had to go to two different extremes; the very beginning of his career, and the very end. The problem lies in the middle bit.

You see, all too often we’re led to believe that there’s a conflict between Bruce Wayne and Batman, a tension between what either identity desires. This just isn’t true. Playboy Wayne and Batman are just two different masks, two different sets of tools, that are utilised by a third personality; rather, the only personality. This Bruce Wayne doesn’t necessarily want to live in Batman’s world, but he doesn’t necessarily want to live in the playboy’s world either. He wants nothing more that to finally be able to hang up these different disguises. But that’s not going to happen until he can be sure that his city is safe, and that no child will ever have to go through what he had to. This is Bruce Wayne as the obsessive master strategist, but also an altruist who spends his fortune almost recklessly, not on wine and women but on his mission. This is the man who raised his sons to be heroes. That’s not Daredevil. That’s not anything like Daredevil.

I think Frank Miller did a lot of good work at both companies, but while his take on Daredevil created a lot of potential for the character, it badly limited Batman by encouraging other writers to wander down the wrong path. They chose “hard-boiled” over “mystery”. What it comes down to, beyond the psychology of it all, is that the two characters interact with their respective villains in completely different ways, and if we accept that superhero stories are, when you get right down to it, based around these interactions then it follows that they must be two different kinds of stories. Batman is a mystery story. He finds his villains through detective work. Daredevil is a pulp adventurer, so he hits people in Josie’s Bar until they tell him where the Kingpin is. Think of any story where the Dark Knight does the same thing. Can you honestly tell me it wouldn’t have been a better Batman tale if he’d solved a puzzle or found a clue rather than duffing up a goon? Yes, Batman should duff up goons, but that should be how he deals with them, not how he puts them in context.

I haven’t done a good job of explaining what I mean when I say that. I need to do some posts where I back up some of these assertions. That’s something I’ll address shortly. In the meantime, thanks to all the new folks who’ve turned up recently, and to all the regulars who keep on coming round. It’s very much appreciated.

I think it’s time to switch companies, and have a closer look at Marvel’s take.

Click here for the Delineation Archive.

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Some (non-Alien/Predator for once) tat I really, really need to own, spotted at io9: An incredibly detailed Iron Man toy.

Other news has Kenneth Branagh in talks to direct Thor. This is a great idea. His Frankenstein film came up as a conversation topic the other day, and although I remember it having a lukewarm reception, it really was a decent film, with a great cast, and probably one of the steam-punkiest films to ever have a wide release. If Branagh brings that kind of atmosphere and imagination to the Asgard scenes, the film’s going to be amazing. On one hand, I’d love to have a crazy Kirby-fest, but until someone gets Pixar to make Michael Chabon’s 60s set Fantastic Four film it’s not going to happen, so I’ll settle for Oddly Gothic.

The Green Lantern film appears to be ramping up. I don’t see why they don’t just adapt the recent Secret Origin storyline, because I really love that story. I mean, I’m one of the (apparently few) people who quite liked Emerald Dawn, but I don’t really want a screen adaptation of it, and I’m glad the crippling-his-mate-while-drink-driving thing’s been retconned (ret-retconned?) away. I’d be interested to see who they tap for the aliens. I bet Weta’d do an awesome job, but I’d be happy with the Henson Creature Shop too. No news on Sinestro, but he’s got to be in it. Presumably as Hal’s mentor in the first one, and the antagonist in GL II.

Johns has been playing down Sinestro’s alien-ness in Secret Origin so far, in that when he turned up in Rebirth a big deal was made of his, well, sinister demeanor and alien unknowability. Which was really cool, playing up the idea that not every alien species in the Corps was just humanity with a funny skin colour. It gave a sense of original Star Trek-type mystery, the vibe that it’s cold and scary out in space, something that doesn’t always come through in space comics. Of course, that spin doesn’t quite fit with the other Korugans we’ve seen, or Sinestro back when he was a Lantern. Perhaps the cold freakishness isn’t an alien thing, but a symptom of his time spent exiled, either on Qward or inside the Battery. Which is quite cool, too.

Quite looking forward to Neil Gaiman’s new book. It looks a bit more up my street than some of his other work. I think Gaiman’s a great writer, and when he’s good, he’s brilliant. I love Neverwhere, and the original Books of Magic, Anansi Boys was a lot of fun and I’m making my way through his Sandman stuff in the Absolute editions. But I never really got American Gods, I found Eternals a bit lacking and 1602 was let down by a weak ending after a great start. I always meant to go back and read Gods again because I’d probably get more out of it second time round, but I can’t find much enthusiasm for it, really. I think I’d be too busy trying to figure out where all the different gods came from, and while a little bit of that can be fun, the sheer amount of them in the book makes the whole thing too much like hard work.

But a story about a kid raised by ghosts in a graveyard? Kind of thing you wish you’d thought of yourself, really. I’m a little underwhelmed by the McKean cover, but it’s ok because they’re also offering an alternate one by artist Chris Riddell. Riddell’s a fantastic cartoonist, one I remember really clearly from my time as a bookseller. He really stood out amongst the children’s illustrators, his “Rabbit and Hedgehog” books in particular. Even if they may skew a little young for the Journal’s readership.

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And you can expect a lot more cowboy metaphors over the coming weeks, because I’ve just watched A Fistful Of Dollars and I’ve got a whole Eastwood DVD set to get through that’s been on the backburner since Christmas due to the Great X-Files Project. And yes, I have now seen Chris Carter’s big screen debut. The verdict? All in good time. Still got S9 to write up, after all.

Looks like Geoff Johns is coming back on The Flash. Perhaps if this doesn’t work, they’ll give Baron or Messner-Loebs another spin.

Joking aside, I’m cautiously optimistic about this. After all, I loved GL: Rebirth. On the other hand, that’s because Hal Jordan is my Favouritest Character Ever n’Ever n’Ever, and, as I’ve mentioned here before, I’m brimming with indifference toward Barry Allen. Also, I always felt that Johns had more to say about the Rogues than Wally West, although I’ll concede that’s more to do with Mark Waid closing off the character’s arc and leaving not much left for another writer to say, at least with that particular iteration of the character. Barry Allen is, for all intents and purposes, a brand new character, insofar as the standard techniques of superhero storytelling have fundamentally changed since they killed him off, and God knows they’ve done wonders for the Lanterns. Ultimately, all I really want is for Wally West to still be knocking round.

Of course, the absolute victory condition would be an ongoing Jay Garrick title. But I’ve probably used up my lifetime allocation of unexpected wish-fulfillment with this Summer’s cape flicks.

The latest Batman film has really brought it home how much I’ve enjoyed the recent film adaptations more than the actual comics. And this strikes me as a little odd. Firstly, The Incredible Hulk. Planet Hulk was awesome, and I enjoyed it way more than I was expecting to. But it’s not what you’d call the “classic” incarnation of the character, which is something I think the film managed to capture really well. As for Iron Man and the crazy rich guy, both comic titles have never had writing teams as good as they’ve had over the past couple of years. Ellis and the Knaufs have written some really great Iron Man stuff, ditto Morrison and Dini at the competition, but I’ve found my enjoyment seriously marred by the unending crossover bollocks I really couldn’t care less about. I guess that once again I have to conclude that I just prefer it when writers are allowed to get on with doing their jobs without interference.

That said, I’m really looking forward to seeing more of the shared universe the Marvel movies take place in. Sometimes I can’t even keep my own continuity straight.

I would be completely happy if they never made a sequel to The Dark Knight. There is just too much scope for a cock-up. But there’s going to be one, of course, because it’s now made more than eleventy-squillion Euros across the globe. The Riddler gets my vote for a grim reimagining, but absolutely not Johnny Depp. When he’s on form, he’s brilliant, but isn’t he just going to treat the role like Captain Jack II? Or, Heavens forefend, another crack at Willy Wonka?

Speaking of which, I fucking loathe Tim Burton’s Chocolate Factory, more and more with the passing years. What an irredeemable load of self indulgent wank. Comic geeks think they’ve had the shitty end of the stick over the years with disrespectful versions of beloved franchises. No one’s ever had the balls to follow through with a really nasty adaptation of Roald Dahl’s stuff.

In fact, I’ll leave you with this idea: Christopher Nolan’s BFG. Live action, with Henson’s Creature Shop doing the giants.

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Writing about the Flash and the developments in DC and Marvel’s comics that I haven’t been too keen on last week got me thinking about what work I actually liked. I mean, there’s a reason I’m still buying some titles, right?

At the moment, the number of monthly issues I buy is dropping as the titles hit obvious trade collection points. The Superman titles have already been dropped, and I’ve promised dear friend Paul C that I’ll pick up Geoff Johns’ Legion story in trade, and I suspect the Morrison Batman run will be another one. Blue Beetle’s gone after #26 until John Rogers comes back on, and I may do the same with Daredevil. Eventually, the only stuff I’ll be getting month after month will be the two GL titles.

I don’t really want to drop Daredevil for, and believe me it sounds odd just thinking about a product this way, sentimental reasons. It was the first American-sized comic my Dad got me when I was a kid, for a start, and I kind of regret the last time I dropped the title. I loved the Kevin Smith/Marvel Knights reboot and kept on getting it up until I’d overdosed on Bendisism around the “Golden Age” story arc and dropped it. Problem is that on re-reading the issues were so much better when put together (probably the worst written-for-trade offender I’ve ever come across) that I ended up picking up the gap issues as paperbacks when I started picking up Brubaker’s run. And speaking of Brubaker, even though I only have a casual interest in the X-Men, his recent writing has been so good I’m tempted to get his Deadly Genesis/Shi’ar collections, and the Captain America hardcover.

Superman’s a good example of why trades make more sense to me, actually. As much as I loved the One Year Later story, my enjoyment was seriously impaired by delays, crap Countdown tie-ins and rushed fill-ins dropped on poor old Kurt Busiek (same complaints with both Batman titles, actually). Trades would have at least given me a whole story in one.

The other big one to get the boot is Ultimate Spider-Man. With the exception of the Flash (now that they’ve gone back to the Waid-run numbering) it’s the title that’s got the most big number momentum, by which I mean I’ve been getting it from the first issue right up to #118, making it a hell of a habit to break. But like I’ve repeated many times, habit ain’t a good enough reason to carry on shelling out the dough. Besides, I think the title’s lost a lot of its mojo recently, and not only due to Mark Bagley’s exit. There just doesn’t seem to be much forward going on with it.

Of course, that’s the thing with Bendis. Occasionally, it’s not clear what he’s getting at until you read everything together, so I’d be surprised if I don’t start getting this in a shelf-friendly format. Which is yet another significant advantage to trade paperbacks. I’m damn near out of longbox room, but there’s always space for another bookshelf.

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I grew up reading The Flash. The comic is the only one I’ve bought consistantly for, what, fifteen years? It even edges Green Lantern out as being the title I’ve got the most issues of. There’s little in comics that would excite me more than for the Flash to undergo a spectacular return.

Of course, the Flash I’m writing about is Wally West.

West’s been the Flash for twenty-odd years. Long enough that he’s the Flash to a whole generation (and let’s face it, probably the last generation) of comic book readers. And I understand why people like J. Michael Straczynski want to see Barry Allen return, really I do. Hal Jordan’s return was brilliant, and I’d like Tony Stark back too. But again, like the Legion of Super-heroes, I’ve got no sentimental connection to poor old Barry.

From recent hints, I wouldn’t bet against JMS being the one to bring him back, presumably in yet another relaunch. Regardless of anyone’s opinion of his writing (and even though I dropped the title around Civil War his run on Amazing is the longest I’ve ever bought a Spider-Man title for because as much as I like Spider-Man, I’ve rarely found the comics to be any good), the man is high-profile enough to shift a heck of a lot of comics, which is something the Flash really needs at the minute from looking at the sales figures.

The question is where did DC go wrong with what used to be one of the most consistantly good titles of all time? I think part of the problem may actually be down to the very thing that made the comic so good for so long: Mark Waid.

If it wasn’t for Waid, I doubt I’d still be reading comics. His and Mike Wieringo’s run was so far above what anyone else at the Big Two were doing in the 90s it wasn’t funny. He foreshadowed Grant Morrison’s legendary JLA run, and it was a shitty, shitty decision on DC editorial’s part that the four Superman titles weren’t passed to him, Morrison, Mark Millar and Tom Peyer to do whatever the hell they wanted to do. In fact, I’d go as far to say that the ramifications of that decision are without doubt the foundation of DC’s current troubles. Grant Morrison’s New X-Men and Millar’s Ultimates fundamentally altered Marvel’s approach to their comics (for better or worse), inspiring the current Big Events that are making the company so much money.

Going back to Waid, what made his Flash so engaging was the long-form story that he told over a hundred issues or so, of how Wally West grew up. He took the work started by Mike Barron in the very first issue of the series and progressed it to it’s logical conclusion. And that was the problem: West’s story arc was essentially complete. There was nowhere really for the next writer to go.

Geoff Johns, after a seriously poor first arc, solved the problem by making his story arc all about the Flash’s Rogues Gallery. He extrapolated on events and themes Waid had explored, at first addressing the Rogues individually and then as a group in the Rogues War. It’s in these issues we see the blueprints of greater plans for DC’s current Crises (once again, for better or worse). Sure, the magical recreation of West’s secret ID and his wife’s pregnancy moved his story forward, but ultimately incrementally, and not on the scale of Waid’s work or indeed the focus Johns’ reserved for the villains.

It all went to crap after Infinite Crisis and the elevation of Bart Allen to main character. Despite the promise of Issue 1’s awesome cover, the Fastest Man Alive was just rubbish. The plot didn’t make a huge amount of sense, and Allen’s character was both boring and at odds with what had gone before. Twelve issues later and it all ground to a halt with his death, the only tragedy that the event was so inconsequential.

Impulse was always a bit of a wasted character. Oh, he was good enough in his own title and in Young Justice, and I’m sure Johns did a decent job with him in Teen Titans (though I’ve never read it). But he was never Wally West’s sidekick, and that really should have been his purpose. Instead of shuffling him off into a different book after his introduction, Waid really should have made him an integral part of the parent title. In fact, I suspect that some of the less effective later Waid issues would have been improved by using Bart as a dramatic device: Wally West’s next challenge should have been as a father.

Which is exactly what Waid tried to do on his return to the title after Fastest Man Alive got the boot. Unfortunately the damage has already been done momentum-wise, and besides, I get the feeling that Waid didn’t really want to come back. The first six issues have been lacklustre and have finally convinced me to drop the title. Like I’ve said before, buying things just because I always have isn’t a good enough reason anymore.

But not to end on a down note, you know what I think would work? The Flash as a team book. If we have to have Barry Allen back, let’s bring his grandson back too. Let’s do a Green Lantern: if there’s no reason to get rid of Kyle, there’s no reason to boot Wally. And depite my ambivalence about JSAers, Jay Garrick’s awesome, so get him in too (in fact, I still believe the best solution following Infinite Crisis wasn’t giving the teenager his own series, but rather the old guy). If the conclusion of one character arc ultimately crippled the old series, let’s start again with many.

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Expect very little coherence today, as it’s time for something the WuhWuhWuh was designed for that isn’t cat pictures or nekkidness; a List.

• Thanks to the folks over at the BOOM! Studios blog for linking to the other week’s review of Fall of Cthulhu (their link is linked here for added intertron recursiveness). My recommendation may be undermined by surrounding posts that include similar enthusiastic scrawls in favour of, for example, Predator 2.

• I’ve noticed some excitement around the place for a revival of a takeoff of the Ninja Turtles, this time starring Hamsters. What the fucking fuck is that all about?

• Although speaking of TMNT, I really really enjoyed the CGI movie that came out last year. The Leo/Raphael rooftop fight was awesome. Someone tell Pixar that they need more weaponry in their movies.

• You know what makes me a little uncomfortable in some comic shops that I otherwise quite like? When the Japanese porno-action figures get plonked in a line all along the sales desk. I’m not saying they should be banned or banished to a faraway shelf, I’m not making any judgement whatsoever about them, and frankly if that’s where a shopkeeper wants to keep them then by God, he (and I do mean he) can knock himself out. I’m saying that in simple consumer marketing terms it doesn’t matter how much of a free-speechin’ non-prudish liberal any given individual may be, I suspect that most people would be just a little put off by the comic shop equivalent of having a copy of “Great Big Wobbly Jugs” waved in their faces while they’re trying to pay at the tills in Tesco.

• When I was a kid, I always wanted the Iron Man armour. Obsessed, even. More than a Green Lantern ring. So much, in fact, that it’s scaring me just a little bit as I think back. But that’s beside the point. My point is, I wonder who was the first person to come up with robotic armour? Not mythologically powered magic super-armour, but a metal and circuitry robo-suit? I assume it’s one of the Golden Age SF writers.

• From the It Shouldn’t Surprise Me But It Does folder: Considering even ten years ago you could easily place most music to the era, sometimes even the year, it was released in, it’s amazing how few of those barriers exist today. Used to be you’d have the piss taken out of you for liking something from whatever the non-cool era was in any given week, how on earth are The Kids going to manage that in the iPod Epoch? Take Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. Could have been released on iTunes yesterday by any number of current bands.

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Don’t know about you, but I’d certainly pay to see the film.

Last Christmas, the highstreet record shops all decided to clear out the Bowie back catalogue at less than a fiver a pop. I binged like a politician at a half-priced cocaine festival. At one point I had five discs queued up in the car, and brothers and sisters, that is far too much Starman for any one human mind to cope with.

A David Bowie hangover is brutal.

Listening to these albums (these many, many albums) makes me realise how they really are complete works, in the sense that every track fits together as part of a whole. The major songs stand out of course, Changes, Sound and Vision, Golden Years and so on, but while these tracks have a seperate existence outside of the album they also take on a different significance when played as part of a larger piece of work. Not even necessarily in terms of an ongoing narrative, like the story thread that runs through The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust, but also as thematically complete albums, like Station to Station or “Heroes”.

Even accepting that Bowie is a one-off, it’s difficult not to descend into old-fartery and moan about the lack of consistency over modern albums. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve heard plenty of brilliant singles over the past couple of years , but they rarely come from an album worth listening to in its entirety.

It isn’t surprising. We’re in the iPod era now. It won’t be long before the album concept will be the exception rather than the norm, when the need to buy physical objects to gain access to music becomes irrelevant. Entertainment becomes fragmentary, bite-sized downloads making up what Warren Ellis described as ‘burst culture’.

Blogs, mp3s and webcomics are all part of this culture, but monthly comic books and collections are not. Individual issues may have been the forerunner of this type of culture, but with a few exceptions the days of standalone issues are long gone. I don’t mean it as a criticism as I far prefer multi-part stories myself, but God knows the increasingly convoluted continuity and never ending multi-part crossover have long outstayed their welcome.

My biggest problem with these swollen and bloated stories is their lack of coherence. There are too many broken links and inconsistencies, and the more titles that crossover, the less you feel you know or understand. The more information you’re given, the more information you feel you lack.

Every issue should act like a track that builds to a complete album. They shouldn’t all be attempts at a barnstorming single, because that gets old quickly too. All the seperate parts should fit. There’s no doubt this approach works, inevitably in titles that are either completely seperated from an external continuity (like All-Star Superman, or Y: The Last Man), or at best only minimally affected by endless crossover (Green Lantern or Blue Beetle, while not completely divorced from the DCU, to date have had very little interference in the main run, i.e. we haven’t been expected to pick up seperate titles to get a full story, and even when we have the issue’s remained relatively self-contained. The exception of course being the recent Sinestro Corps, but even that stays pretty much within the GL titles).

Which brings me to Tomb of Dracula.

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In the previously mentioned Story, Robert McKee’s book on (amongst other things) script writing, he notes that it’s easier to write experimental and challenging structures in ‘realistic’ settings than it is in ‘fantastical’ ones. The example he uses is The Usual Suspects, which structurally is all over the place. Fantasy and SF films are more conservatively structured because the audience needs some kind of grounding in order to identify and relate to the film, and you’ve got to do enough work as it is to suspend disbelief in your nuclear-powered gorilla robots without throwing in an arse-backwards narrative.

I think there’s a similar glitch with cosmic comic book stories (or SF generally). There’s a tension between making something relatable and going completely crazy. Also, I think many writers, given the chance to write absolutely anything at all with no limits find themselves pushed to write something either coherent or interesting. Jack Kirby was able to do it because, after all, he had an incredible amount of imagination to spare. But even then, his most successful stories (in my opinion, of course) were ones where Stan Lee was able to tether them, if only a little, to human considerations.

The original Star Trek was fortunate in that it was breaking new ground. It had pro skiffy writers on-staff, and the Enterprise was able to whip around alien worlds and concepts that had never been succesfully portreyed in that way on telly before. Even then, the ship herself was the constant, the establishing hook between scenes. The series was not able to maintain its quality further than the first two seasons.

Move forward to The Next Generation, and the patchy early series are the ones with the original-series style exploration. As TNG improved, it became more about an exploration of the familiar characters, and their interactions within the boundaries of the known, rather than with the strange new worlds of the famous intro monologue.

Deep Space 9, from a dramatic standpoint perhaps the most successful of all Treks, doesn’t bother with an exploratory mission at all, and instead features one primary location and delves deeper still into the interactions between its characters. This evolution seems deliberate, moving away from the difficulties of maintaining audience engagement while showing something completely new every week. Voyager tried to do the exploration thing again, and proved to be absolutely pants. The Star Trek franchise has turned further inwards still, now only addressing events of its own continuity’s past.

Space opera comics have never been big favourites round my way, which is a little odd considering my interest in, well, every other kind of space opera. So it’s been good fun to find a number of excellent recent cosmic comic stories: better, in fact, than most of the stuff in the Earth-bound sections of the respective universes. From DC, I thought Adam Strange by Andy Diggle, Green Lantern and GL Corps, the space sections of 52 and then Starlin’s Mystery in Space have been brilliant (I didn’t read Rann-Thanagar War due to poor word of mouth, but I’ll probably read it at some point). The success of these comics have been due to a real feeling of structure to the DC’s off-earth universe, not to mention all have a secure grounding of some kind: either the quest to find Rann, and then return to Earth, or the development of Oa, Mogo, various minor planets and, in particular, Hardcore Station, as real functioning settings that feel both alien and familiar, that appear both functional and alive.

And the same can be said of the two main Marvel space stories: Annihilation and Planet Hulk. Like the DC stories, they have both been firmly grounded either on a single planet (in the latter case) or through a single overarching storyline. Both storylines have benefitted from a strongly consistent tone and continuity, and given a long time to really establish us in their alien environments. In fact, this kind of consistency isn’t only advisable in stories set in space; it really should be standard practice in any ‘event’ or longterm story arc.

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Hal Jordan, Green Lantern, is my all-time favourite superhero.

He’s my Dad’s favourite, so I guess that’s why I always liked him too. Fantastic costume, a superpower limited only by imagination, great space-police high concept, and let’s face it, what kid would choose to be a reporter, or a police scientist, over flying a jet fighter? Let’s leave the whole travelling toy salesman thing out of it for the moment.

And it’s not just Hal Jordan, either. With the exception of Alan Scott, I love every single one of the Lanterns. And I wouldn’t even say I disliked Alan Scott; with the exception of Jay Garrick, I’m pretty ambivalent towards all the JSA golden agers.

I like Kyle Rayner in particular (it took an artist to demonstrate the limitless possibilities of a wishing ring), although not so much when he’s written by his own creator. Grant Morrison defined the character perfectly.

Hal Jordan’s return has probably been the comic book highlight of the past few years. Not only because my favourite hero came back, but because of the way Geoff Johns has written him, the most engaging thing being the character’s lack of fear. Johns has mentioned in interviews (and in the title itself), a world that’s as irrationably, inescapably fearful as ours needs a fearless hero to lead by example.

In the past, much has been made of the idea that Jordan is not necessarily devoid of fear; instead, he feels fear and is able to overcome it. An ever-popular modern reading of the character, but something of a cheat on the writer’s part, an easy way to create internal conflict and to help us identify with the character. We too, could be a Green Lantern, if we could only conquer our gosh-darned fear! But to me, the whole point of the concept is not everyone can be a Green Lantern. You have to be honest and fearless. Who can claim to be one of these things, let alone both?

I call it a cheat because I think it is more difficult to write a character who isn’t really scared of anything and yet still make him or her engaging. Instead of opening up possibilities, we get stuck with the kind of self-doubting hero’s quest for self-realisation we’ve read a dozen times in Spider-man this week alone. That isn’t Hal Jordan, and it’s this interpretation that that caused the mid-90s stagnation of the character.

For example, to my mind Hal Jordan’s correct reaction to his ‘missing year’ ordeal, i.e. the kidnapping and torture of Jordan and his fellow pilots because he refused to wear his power ring while on a mission, is not to learn his lesson and start wearing the damn thing all the time. He still doesn’t wear the ring while piloting a jet because he just isn’t afraid of the consequences. He is arrogant and stubborn because he just cannot be scared. As a child, the thing he was most afraid of, the death of his father, happened in front of his eyes, and after that he just has nothing to be afraid of anymore.

It isn’t a positive character trait. It’s selfish, and refusing to wear the ring is absolutely an incorrect decision. But that is the very flaw that makes the character interesting, the thing that differentiates him from the other square jawed underwear types. His fearlessness is his weakness; not alcohol, not women, and not the colour yellow.

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