#len wein

Marvel Team-Up #11 (Wein/Mooney, July 1973). The Inhumans accompany Spidey back to the 23rd century on a mission to rescue the Avengers from Kang the Conqueror and Zarrko the Tomorrow Man. I’m trying to read these books in six-month chunks now, just to vary things up — it’s kinda working except the Inhumans’ appearance here spoiled/teased something in Fantastic Four comics I haven’t gotten to yet…

Who Watched The Watchmen?: Watchmen’s Legacy on… DC’s Legends - Comic Book Herald

My good friend - and as of now, dread nemesis - @deathchrist2000 is heading up the new Comic Book Herald series Who Watched The Watchmen? on the legacy of ‘the greatest comic of all time’, with tons of great pieces from excellent writers coming up. I was given the honor of kicking off the feature. I was given the agony of doing so by rereading, and thinking at length about, DC Comics’ Legends.

Phantom Stranger #26 cover. 1973. Art by Michael Kaluta.

It’s also confusing. And trite. And reads like a Watchmen fanficrather than a proper Watchmen sequel. Oh and did I mention that its a blatant slap in the face of creator’s rights and completely shits on the notion of respecting artists and their art?

Honestly, aside from some gorgeous artwork by the ever-talented Gary Frank, I don’t see what all the hype and praise towards Doomsday Clock is about. It’s just another shitty cash-in of an Alan Moore property and another mediocre piece of work by Geoff “How can I piss away all of the goodwill I garnered in the early stages of my career” Johns. It’s a shitty sequel to a book that’s already been beaten into the ground by a slew of shitty prequels and a shitty movie adaptation. If you looked up “beating a dead horse” on Google Images, Watchmen might as well be the first result.

There’s no reason for it to actually exist either. It’s literally just Johns shifting the responsibility of the past 6-odd years of shitty DC comics from The New 52 off of DC and onto Alan Moore, who literally had nothingto do with all of the problems DC has been facing the past couple of years. If Johns really wanted to be clever with the whole premise of “Superman essentially going against the forces that ruined DC”, then the book would’ve been Superman going up against Geoff Johns, Bob Harass, Zack Snyder and the various editors of the shittier New 52 books, all of whom have done muchmore damage to the DC Universe than Alan Moore and Watchmen have.

It’s ironic too. While Johns is now shifting the blame of the New 52 (a line of books hespearheaded and he contributed shitty books to) by using a cornerstone of contemporary American comics as a vessel for what amounts to an unoriginal fanfic, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo (you know, the guys who made arguably the bestNew 52 book) are publishing what is easilythe most fun and creative book DC has put out in recent memory with their excellent DC: Metal series. And guess what: they didn’t have to fuck the corpse of an older, better book and shit on the notion of creator’s rights to do it.

In a perfect world, if DC really wanted a cute, smart, meta way of undoing The New 52 and reconstructing the superhero genre from Watchmen (for the second time, since Kingdom Come already did it first 21 years ago), than Doomsday Clock would’ve been helmed by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely (both of whom built their entire contemporary careers on reconstructing superheros) and would’ve featured the Charleton characters of Earth 4 the duo reinvigorated to deliberately parody Watchmen for the excellent DC: Multiversity series. I can guaranteeto you weenies that in the alternate, better reality where that book exists, it would still be a better solution than the shit Johns is feeding us now.

But alas, we don’t live in a perfect world. We’re stuck in a world were the guy who wrote Flash: Rebirth, Superman: Secret Origin, Green Lantern: Rebirth, Blackest Night/Brightest Day, and so on, can phone it in to shift blame for his own shitty mistakes and jerk off the diamond-hard cocks of drooling fanboys who get off to watching yet another celebrated creator turn over the dead corpse of one of the most over saturated DC books and fuck it right in it’s gaping, crumbling asshole. 

Don’t read Doomsday Clock. Go pick up Mr. Miracle. Or Blue Beetle. Or DC: Metal. Or Cyborg. Or Doom Patrol. Or Future Quest. Literally any book DC is publishing right now that isn’t a cynical, insulting cash-grab.