What the internet is for:

I once said that an internet comic nerd loves nothing more than a new excuse to bitch. I usually try to avoid this sort of stuff, but lately it's seemed like the crap has been flying with alarming speed and abandon. I've found myself more frustrated than usual of late; this isn't really that amazing . . .I'm usually pretty unfrustrated with comics. I think, overall, we're in a good time here and there's LOTS of great stuff being done.

THAT BEING SAID . . .there's something I really have to get off my chest. This is me at my most fanboyish, my most . . .negative (?) I suppose. But what the fuck is going on with the mainstream DCU? Holy shit! Now, people that have read me before know that I don't care for the middling journeyman work that has dominated that company for years now. The work of guys like Johns, Loeb, and Winnick is about as interesting to me as the medical history of the crazy guard at my school, which is to say, not at all. I guess I understand why they've been given so many assignments: they turn in their work on time and they use certain devices that blow fan minds for no apparent reason (extraneous mentions of continuity, linking everything together compulsively, retelling the same old stories). But lately . . .I dunno.

First Identity Crisis comes out. And in issue two we have an on-panel graphic rape scene. In an unlabeled comic. I find that, frankly, to be indefensible. It's gross. The rest of the book is pretty shitty in my mind, too, but that I was used to from DC. It's as if someone rediscovered Watchmen and DKR and MISSED THE POINT AGAIN! So now we have a new crop of "dark" and "adult" capes and tights books that read like adolescent anti-fantasies. "Dude, supervillains would totally be much eviller! They'd, like, rape girls and kill people and shit!" Whatever. That's not mature. It's just a different kind of immature.

So, this new post-IC DCU, supposedly centered around that awful crossover, has this GL: Rebirth piece of crap. Total fanboy pandering junk. Does the world need expository dialogue explaining who Mia is? Or a reminder of Guy Guardner: WARRIOR? Or Crazy Spectre Hal crippling villains? It's just so . . .gratuitous. It's everything I hate about recent DC: superheroes simultaneously made "mature" and being sucked off by the writer and the cast; anal retentive OCD continuity mentions and "fixes;" stiff, uninteresting art; and, despite all the pretenses, just a big old "status quo."

And now Judd Winnick is going to write a Captain Marvel miniseries. I loves me some Captain Marvel, I really do. My students loves them some Captain Marvel. But now the guy who made wacky Sivana a cold-blooded murderer and brought Sabbacc and Cap, Jr. into his dark, "mature" Outsiders is getting a major shot with the Big Red Cheese. It's almost enough to make a man give up.

But I refuse to give up. Plastic Man is too good. Adam Strange is firing on all cylinders. Wildstorm and ABC and Vertigo have some great stuff, as per usual. They'll keep me hanging on.

And there's always Grant Morrison. He's coming back to the DCU and it's going to make my weiner get all hard. In the meantime, excuse me while I dry hump my issues of We3.