MrOkay, so apparently, Tom King is writing an “imaginary story” where Jon Kent is a “Super-Robin” sidekick to his Dad. I suppose that this is meant to be a conciliatory gesture to those who were not keen on what Brian Michael Bendis did with Jon (i.e., put Jon through years of trauma, aged him up, and have him be Just Fine).
I have thoughts about this, but they’re going underneath a cut. I promise that I’ll try to keep from getting too salty.
Okay, first of all, why does Jon have to wear a mask? I mean, yes, it’s a nice image, but Clark never needed a mask. Superman never needed to hide his face. He got along just fine with glasses and a change of body language.
And here’s a quote from Tom King:
Now, I grant you that yes, Mr. King CAN write positive, uplifting and thoughtful stories. The “Superman: Up in the Sky” mini-series and the Clark/Lois and Bruce/Selina double-date in Batman # 37 are proof of that. But Mr. King has also taken knocks at Clark
In “Heroes in Crisis” (IMHO, one of his worst works), the counseling AI is supposedly a combination of the best traits of Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman. What we see is what they call a “drill sergeant nasty” where vulnerable patients are constantly berated by said AI. Also, there’s the infamous “Harley Quinn beats the Trinity” scene–one that I’m sure inspired many rolling of eyes.
In “Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow,” Kara takes a lot of shots at Clark. Clark’s trapped on a planet with a Kryptonite (or pseudo-Kryptonite) sun for 45 agonizing minutes? Well, Kara withstood 10 HOURS–and basically called him weak after she survived the ordeal. She says that she’s tired of the shield becoming basically a call to attack her, all because others associate the shield with all the meddling that Clark’s done–i.e., saving lives. Every alien with a grudge against Clark is eager to try to take her down because of the shield.
Mr. King is known for his tendency to deconstruct. Under his pen, heroes aren’t quite as, well, heroic. Adam Strange in Strange Adventures? Oh, he’s a war criminal. Michael Holt’s Mr. Terrific? He never wanted to be a father and felt relieved. Christopher Chance, the Human Target? Well, he’s a self-loathing alcoholic.
(There is also the character assassination of Wally West in “Heroes in Crisis” and Guy Gardner in “The Human Target.” His turning Wally into a murderer is understandable, giving Dan Didio’s dislike of the character. Turning Guy Gardner into a stereotypical stalker ex-boyfriend with testosterone poisoning who snivels at a Hal Jordan impersonator asking for his ring? Yeah, that was all Mr. King’s work.)
Honestly, Mr. King might as well have taken the reins of Jon Kent after Bendis got through with him. But then, he probably would have taken it in a much darker direction than what people are seeing in “Son of Kal-El”.
So, I guess I’m saying that despite the bright colors and smiles you see on the cover of this book, I have my doubts. If he manages to restrain himself from using one sadistic, edgy twist or a deconstruction of either Clark or Jon, I will be very surprised.
Then again, I’m not feeding DC any of that sweet, sweet “event book” money that the company seems so dependent on. There’s a reason why J. Michael Straczynski refused to have Thor participate in the “event books”–they twist a story arc into a pretzel. That good idea you had for a story? Well, it has to be a crossover with the “event book.” Why? Well, they want to get paid.
Okay, I’m done now. I may hope for the best, but given that this is 1) an imaginary story and 2) a one-shot, this isn’t so much of an olive branch as it is a distraction. And I think that Jon Kent deserved better.
WithDark Crisis approaching and my bitterness rising as it looks more and more like an off-ramp to the idea of a next-gen DCU than anything else - with titles like Son of Kal-ElandI Am Batman completely fizzling out in the meantime while Wonder Girl goes under entirely - I’ve gone back to thinking about the original 5G plan. Those who follow me on Twitter know I’ve gone over the last couple years from 'hmm, I’m interested in Jon as Superman, but gosh that timeline is dumb’ to a hardcore '5G WAS THE TRUTH AND THE WAY, THE MOMENT THE STOPPED CLOCK WAS RIGHT, DC WHAT IN GOD’S NAME HAVE YOU DONE’ partisan, even if the timeline’s still kinda dumb.
It was always going to alienate the existing fanbase: it’s an approach that besides the face-value shakeup itself puts slow-burn soap development on the backburner in favor of moving fast and breaking things, and potentially results in your faves not graduating to the 'right’ positions or ending up in the 'right’ relationships to boot, plus a new generation of heroes composed in large part of original characters rather than those who 'earned it’ via decades of mostly clinging to life in team books or guest appearances. My being way more interested in the potential of the vast revision of the archetypes and a proper injection of mythic sweep and enduring legacy into a shared universe ostensibly built on those is at the end of a day a difference of taste, but as for my arguments beyond that:
I don’t think it can be reasonably argued that The Son of Superman and The Next Batman treated with seriousness wouldn’t have been far more attention-getting to broader audiences (and a richer template for that sweet sweet IP farming DC publication now explicitly exists in service of) than rebooting the classic bunch for the 5th or 6th time.
The classic folks still would’ve been in Black Label and the like forever; yes, for the most part their classic-mold ongoing adventures would be over, but being extremely real most Batman stories would work pretty much the same with someone else under the cowl, and if there’s something ala Tom King’s Batman that’s character-driven and demands space to breathe, it’s been shown there’s space for that outside of continuity with the likes of…sigh. White Knight.
DC having to ride or die by the new names as their headliners would have meant those characters wouldn’t have had the opportunity to immediately languish in genuinely crappy books the way they have - they would have had to immediately sell at least their new Justice League on the strength of their immediate quality with little pertinent backlog to lean on and basically no fallback option.
The loglines of characters built for those gigs tend to be a lot more straightforward than the baggage of folks who’ve been around for decades having been created to fulfill different functions.
Let’s again be real, the significant majority of the existing readership would’ve sighed and still bought everything with the big names on the covers if not been actively hyped.
Anyway, with all that in mind and the likely-forsaken potential of the concept being a frequent topic of discussion with some friends of mine, I felt the urge to once again revive the Tumblr and put together a rough outline of what we know about the '5G’ setup. From assorted scoops (mostly from Bleeding Cool, which I won’t be linking to but demonstrated they knew at least the broad strokes of what was happening here), interviews, and indicators in comics that actually have been published, I wanted to see the shape of the baby thrown out with DiDio’s bathwater. Starting someplace unexpected:
When I was first getting into comics, my dad informed me of a rumor he’d heard about that at the end of the new event comic Final Crisis, the Justice League was going to die and would become the NEW New Gods, with their sidekicks and children stepping up in their place, making it a truly 'final’ crisis for the DCU as we knew it. While that didn’t play out, apparently there was something to it: according to BC, this was in fact the big idea at one point, reportedly under the banner of 'The Fifth World’ paying off some notions from Grant Morrison’s JLA that were being revived in Final Crisis. This seems shocking given Dan DiDio’s notorious antipathy towards the likes of Dick Grayson and Wally West, but his primary complaints about them - that Dick was forever stuck between his iconic past as Robin and grand future as Batman, he and Wally both breaking the DCU by their very existences in aging while their predecessors remain eternal - would have been solved by this shift. His old declaration that Nightwing could only survive Infinite Crisis if something was done to justify him makes a lot more sense if the gears had immediately started turning to make him Batman.
Along with Dick, and likely Cassie Sandsmark as Wonder Woman since Donna Troy had just filled that spot, with the benefit of hindsight it’s clear the stage was being set for a new generation lineup: Bart Allen had become The Flash and even after his death was set up for an immediate resurrection, Kurt Busiek was establishing a new Aquaman, Roy Harper had taken a seat in the JLA as Red Arrow, and Freddie Freeman was the new Captain Marvel, with Hal presumably sticking around as rep for the old guard given Johns had just returned him to glory. And right around the corner was Blackest Night to give the kids a trial by fire in the face of their zombie predecessors, with the get out of jail free card of the white rings to bring all the originals back at the end if this whole experiment immediately flopped.
Conner Kent as Superman was presumably going to be a crown jewel, with Chris Kent perhaps being set up as his Superboy with a background conceptually near-identical to Damian Wayne as the new Robin (scion of a major villain taken in by a Superdad, they’re separated, by the time the kid makes it back dad is gone and a big brother has to step up). You’ve even got a big easy passing-of-the-torch moment at the end of Final Crisis with Clark giving up everything he has to activate the Miracle Machine - an odd non-sequitur with no consequences in the story as-is - and a final declaration 'look up in the sky’ at an army of approaching Supermen Conner could well have been leading as his grand debut.
And there’s a VERY interesting context if you consider what ultimately happened in place of The Fifth World in the form of the New 52 - a younger, cockier Superman who ends up dating a Wonder Woman who’s now Zeus’s kid. It seems some of the big ideas were still carried over, especially considering under Grant Morrison that new Superman in a t-shirt and jeans fights Luthor who considers him a lab specimen (alongside Brainiac, as Conner would in Johns and Manapul’s brief Adventure Comics run in place of all this, and who Morrison reconceptualizes as a preservationist dedicated to holding a newly-changed world in amber), and then new equivalents and 'successors’ to the likes of Mxyzptlk, the classic Phantom Zoners, Terra-Man, and the Kryptonite Man, culminating in a battle with a combination of Bizarro - the ultimate Superman clone - and Doomsday - the franchise-killer whose existence roundabout birthed Conner - for the right to the Superman brand. Was Morrison going to do Conner as Superman alongside Batman and Robin, and they repurposed those 'Superman 2’ ideas along with that one All-Starspinoff to create their Action Comics run? Did they just hear that was the plan and kick around some ideas of how they’d handle it that were reused later? Or do those pieces mostly just fit because 'new era’ ideas can make near-equal sense whether applied a reboot or a new guy in the cape?
(Perhaps a strike against coincidence: All-Star Superman ends with the conception of a test-tube child of Superman via what was once Cadmus, essentially Conner’s origin. Morrison’s gone on the record that Batman R.I.P. ends the way it does to provide an iconic 'death’ for Bruce setting up Dick as the new guy for those who weren’t reading Final Crisis; it seems at least a little bit possible that All-Star at the same time had a similar idea at the back of its mind if it wasn’t outright geared to serve that purpose.)
An interesting bunch of notions, but let’s go from the Fifth World to the Fifth Generation:
Between all the stuff I mentioned earlier there’s actually a pretty clear picture of how 5G would’ve looked, at least concerning the big names.
Kal-El lands on Earth in 1938 as the kickoff to this world’s history, though Wonder Woman emerges in 1939 as the first public superhero (shown by Snyder and Hitch in Wonder Woman #750); she leads the Justice Society of America until leaving man’s world after the atomic bomb’s dropped. Clark operates quietly in Smallville as Superboy, but he stops when the JSA disbands in 1955 in protest of HUAC wanting them to disclose their identities (though according to the solicit for the cancelled Generation One: Age of Mysteries there was a secret 'real’ reason they disassembled; apparently a Golden Age hero would also become a great villain, and a secret deal of some sort would be struck to “keep the Wayne family dynasty alive” after Thomas and Martha’s murders).
Clark is operating in secret as Superman by 1963 and meets Kennedy who encourages him to gather other heroes in service of a finer world (as seen in the opening of Superman and The Authority; as published after 5G was scrapped this was recontextualized as a time-travel adventure), with him and Batman both publicly debuting in 1965 and the Justice League of America forming soon after with a returned Wonder Woman. The events of 1965-1985 were meant to be depicted one year per issue in a 20-part series by Mark Russell which would later be heavily reimagined as Superman: Space Age.
Crisis on Infinite Earths occurs in 1985, and everything from then to Death Metal is largely the same, just over an elongated expanse of time and with a few irreconcilable continuity-specific bits like Superman/Wonder Woman excised. Apparently the assorted Crisis events cause years to be 'skipped’, allowing key characters to retain some relative youth.
(The Other History of the DC Universe while not a 1:1 appears to have been constructed to roughly fit with this given John Ridley was a 5G architect, with the JLA emerging in the 70s or possibly 60s if you fudge the narration a bit and still going strong in 2010.)
By the present day, the bulk of the JLA have passed, retired, or otherwise stepped back; the Titans now fill the traditional 'old guard’ slot.
The initial prompt offered by DiDio to creators was notoriously for an aged Clark to pursue a totalitarian path and assemble a new version of The Authority as his vanguard. Apparently that wasn’t a hard-and-fast direction, as it was radically reconfigured by Grant Morrison into Superman and The Authority, which in the original 5G version would have ended with the revelation that Clark had somehow secretly been split into 'Red’ and 'Blue’ versions increasingly representing his dueling conservative and revolutionary instincts, with leftie Blue forming the team we currently see, and rightwing Red reforming the classic lineup swapping out Midnighter and Apollo with a likely unwitting Damian Wayne and Jon Kent. When the dust settled and presumably a reconstituted Clark pursued his own adventures, a 23 year old Jonathan would become the new main Superman, likely written by Matt Fraction according to a Word Balloon podcast and reportedly dating Jenny Sparks. Between being duped into following Red and under unknown circumstances bottling Metropolis he would likely be starting on the backfoot and needing to prove himself to the world as a worthy inheritor, with Smallville acting as his 'Fortress’ with the citizens working to maintain his privacy when visiting.
As originally pitched by Tynion when his run was meant to lead into 5G, at the climax of Joker War the Clown Prince of Crime is shot and left in a permanent comatose state by Selina Kyle, ending her relationship with Bruce. Left with no resources, no Alfred, no Gordon, no arch-nemesis, and a Gotham being radically rebuilt in a new image, Bruce concludes the time of Batman is over and that he should find other ways to help the world with his remaining years, leaving Gotham (presumably this period was pitched for by Tom Taylor and later became The Detective with Andy Kubert) and asking his allies not to pick up his mantle. Damian would take his place at the throne of Leviathan in his own move to remake the world and become the 'Magneto’ to Jon’s 'Professor X’ per internal DC opinion on the subject. Jace - in early rumors Luke, but John Ridley has said it was Jace for as long as he was onboard - becomes the next Batman. Tynion also had an idea for a 5G Joker title about a teenager radicalized by Joker’s legacy that instead became Punchline.
Regarding several of the other books: Green Lantern was to be written by Jeff Lemire, spearheading a 'horror line’ for 5G and presumably starring Jo Mullein. Tim Sheridan would write a Nightwing/Oracle title and the new Flash book; the latter was reportedly the child of Captain Boomerang, so his ideas there were likely recycled into Bolt for his Titans Academy, the daughter of Australian criminals. Phillip Kennedy Johnson was doing something for a 'space line’.
Matt Fraction, Warren Ellis, and Chip Zdarsky were collectively working on a project involving the new Superman and Batman that ultimately fell through, whether as soon as Warren Ellis’s involvement in any of DC’s affairs was taken off the table, or if it would have proceeded without him but collapsed with the line. Presumably Zdarsky’s end of it morphed in some fashion into Justice League: Last Ride, showing the sundowning days of the now-disbanded League.
(Pure personal speculation: the roughly contemporaneous The Batman’s Grave when Ellis was part of the 5G braintrust may have been intended to provide a non-continuity perennial 'ending’ to Bruce which would still leave him alive in accordance with his upcoming setup, same as All-Star would’ve provided a clean continuity-free transition point from Clark to Conner.)
So your mileage will vary tremendously here, because even aside from the seismic nature of the shift everybody would find themselves pissed off by something or another in here, myself included ('everything counts’ except Golden Age Superman? At least Clark’d be doing that kind of stuff in the present, but. Plus that’s kind of a shame of a fate for Damian pending his inevitable face turn, though I haven’t liked much else with him since he was brought back and this could still at least be interesting. And, again, an exact timeline’s pretty dopey and fruitlessly doomed to near-immediate expiration) - that’s the nature of a big swing. But there’s also stuff for everybody here: Superman gets a huge thematic tip of the hat to his nature as the first superhero while Wonder Woman is the public first to line up with the movies, the JSA have their role to make those fans happy, the Titans fulfill their promise as the inheritors, and again between the likes of that proto-Space Age book and Black Label miniseries there were still regularly going to be titles about the classic heroes at their peaks alongside their new adventures as elder statesmen. You have that deep history for the longtime fans, and a completely clean slate jumping-on point for anyone curious about headlines of NEW SUPERMAN NEW BATMAN THIS IS PROBABLY WHAT THE MOVIES ARE GONNA BE IN 10 YEARS, with easy-in loglines like “Just as the crown is passed the legacy of Superman is perhaps irreparably tarnished, can Lois and Clark’s son Jon Kent overcome his initial stumbles and prove himself worthy of the greatest mantle of all?”, “Even Bruce Wayne has given up on Batman…but one man hasn’t, and his ultimate rival is the seemingly destined Blood Heir”, “The new Green Lantern found her footing patrolling a single world, but now she’s thrown headlong into the most terrifying depths of the cosmos”, “Can the ultimate Legacy Hero Dynasty be lived up to by the 'legacy’ of one of its oldest enemies?” etc.
All-in-all: of course stuff was still gonna suck, his ultimate (good) brainstorm or not I’m sure DiDio was micromanaging it to hell and I imagine a lot of creators weren’t wild about the pitch “in a blitz of creative fervor unseen since the Silver Age create all our new headliners, who as directly derivative characters you won’t even collect royalties for”. But just in terms of what wound up on the stands each month I can’t imagine it wouldn’t have been so, so much better than Infinite Frontier’s weightless lack of commitment in either direction where we have a new Superman, Batman, Wonder (Girl), Aquaman, and Green Lantern, but they’re mostly in kind of subsidiary incidental roles while the classics still handle the big jobs until DC can decide for certain where it’s going - the closest being Jon, who’s basically holding down the fort while his dad’s out of town doing Regular Superman Stuff and fighting A Lex-Type Guy. I’m really, really hoping against hope that Dark Crisis is actually about letting the kids take center stage in a big way with a big push behind them and the old Justice League still sticking around but yielding at least a little bit of narrative authority, because the current neither fish nor fowl state of things can’t continue, and snuffing this out altogether would be such a shame given I truly believe 5G was for all its flaws evident and inevitable DC’s most interesting idea in years.
I watched an interview done by ComicPop about this with Joshua Williamson, and what Willaimson said boils down to that everything he and his team are doing in Justice League Incarnate and the new Dark Crisis is all based on things that other writers like Marv Wolfman, have laid the foundation for in the past.
I recommend checking out the interview, it got me excited for whats to come in DC.
Meet the guy who’ve lived through Leage members (and others) “dying” for decades.
Justice League: Road to Dark Crisis #1
Is anyone excited for Dark Crisis? I think I’ve only seen people who are payed to be excited being excited, but I could be wrong…
The rumour is that Dick and other Titans will lose the fight/get killed. No, I’m not excited over that either.
I’m not planning to pick it up, maybe when it’s finished if I hear/see very good things. Honestly - the only Crisis I would like to see is the one that shows that everything since Flashpoint has been a bad dream, à la Pamela Ewing (if you’re old enough, you’ll know…)
So, it looks like the big fight between Nightwing and Deathstroke will end with that Dick gives in because all his Titans friends are defeated/kept hostages?
Part of me is glad that Dick didn’t outright lose the fight, part of me thinks it’s a teeny bit unrealistic. I mean, I love Dick’s character to bits but isn’t Deathstroke augmented in some way? Not saying that Dick can’t ever win, by tricking him or getting away somehow, but is it reasonable that he can hold his own in a long fight, man to man?
Anyway. So will the baddies hold the Titans prisoners for the duration, or kill them on the spot? Since they don’t seem to play a part in the rest of the crisis?
I know I’ve said I’m not excited for this umpteenth crisis, and I’m not buying the books (maybe later, when it’s on sale…), but I can’t help being reluctantly curious about what’s going on. Sooner or later, it will either have to have consequences for Dick’s “solo” (hah!) book, or the things that happen during the crisis will be nullified somehow.
Quick cut over to Dark Crisis #1, where the very first thing that Deathstroke does in his role as King of the Supervillains? Swarm the Teen Titans Academy to kill the students because the Justice League isn’t there to stop him.
He then proceeds to… (spoilers)
Seemingly just shoot Garfield in the face, implictly to demonstrate how he’s going to once and for all beat his most frequent enemy… who are (mostly) a bunch of literal children.
[Editor’s Note: This review may contain spoilers] Writers: Joshua Williamson, Dennis Culver Artists: Daniel Sampere, Jim Cheung, Chris Burnham, Rafa Sandoval Colours: Alejandro Sanchez, Jay David Ramos, Hi-Fi, Matt Herms Letters: Tom Napolitano, Jodi Tong
Reviewed By: Derek McNeil
Summary Dark Crisis #0 FCBD Special Edition: Witness the rise and…
$3.99 US | 32 pages | 3 of 6 | Variant $4.99 US (card stock)
ON SALE 8/16/22
Sins of the old! In response to their lack of gratitude, the world holding Superboy, Impulse, and Tim Drake captive has brought back the three villains who have caused them the most pain to keep them in their place: Deathstroke, Captain Boomerang, and Lex Luthor. Old wounds will open. Wonder Girl and her search team will have to hurry up before there’s no Young Justice left to save!
$4.99 | 32 pages | 3 of 7 | Variant $5.99 US (card stock)
ON SALE 8/2/22
THE BATTLE OF THE EMERALD ARMY HAS BEGUN!
Hal Jordan has launched all-out war on Pariah and the Dark Army to avenge his fallen Justice League teammates—but how can one man stand in the way of the Great Darkness? Meanwhile back on Earth, Titans Tower has burned and Deathstroke’s army has continued its scorched-earth march across the planet. To stop Slade Wilson, the young heroes of the DCU might have no other choice than to turn to the brutal tactics of Black Adam…
