That Took a Long Time.

Holy poo! We came back!

I'd love to tell an epic tale of how we fixed the problems that were keeping us down, maybe one involving another dimension where blog posts are used as currency and an evil cabal employed super-advanced malware in order to control the flow of incredibly valuable nonsense from this site. And then I had to go fight them and got a sidekick that was a sentient owl or something and I finally won once I learned the secret of caring and I had the chance to be king but came back here for some reason.

The reality is much more boring: stupid real-world malware and the wrong passwords and thinking one thing was wrong when in fact it was another. And then we got discouraged for a while and I got distracted by my puppy. But we fixed it in the end! And then it took like a month for Google to believe that we weren't still evil viruses pretending to be people who like comic books. Hooray!

So... how about them Batmans?

Flashpoint Ramblings

So I've been reading Flashpoint, and I while I've been enjoying some of the alternate timeline ideas, I haven't really been able to get into it as being consequential. This might be due to the upcoming reboot, or my disdain for Reverse Flash as a boilerplate EEEEVIL TORTURE VILLAIN, but the fact remains that I just can't bring myself to care all that much about the outcome of the whole thing.
Ironically, this has led me to think about it a lot. Specifically, I've been trying to work out what the theme of this alternate world is - every good alternate timeline story has a compelling theme, after all, like Red Son being all "what if Superman was a Commie?" or Justice Riders posing the compelling question "what if everybody was cowboys?". 

I know that the impetus of the whole thing was Reverse Flash evil torturing Barry Allen by messing with the past, but that's no kind of theme. Based on the differences that I've been able to glean so far, I reckon that the theme of this world might just be "what if The Nail was about the entire JLA instead of just Superman?" Consider:

[BIG SPOILERS IF YOU CARE ABOUT THAT SORT OF THING]

Superman - Kal-El's baby-rocket impacted in Metropolis instead of Kansas, leading to him spending his entire life in government custody. Also, his DNA was used to create a Super Sayan.

Batman - Lil' Bruce Wayne was shot while his parents survived. Thomas Wayne became a meaner version of the Batman as a result, while Martha Wayne became the Joker.

Green Lantern - Abin Sur never travelled to Earth and consequently never died. Hal Jordan still a test pilot.

Martian Manhunter - Captured by super-villain the Outsider, tortured, experimented on and then sold to the Russians. Became evil as a result of these torments.

Aquaman - Taken away from his human father at a young age and thus never given a gentler moral upbringing. Sinks Western Europe as a part of his war with the Amazons.

Wonder Woman - We'll come back to Wonder Woman.

So: DCU big guns removed = the world becoming a hellhole. But wait, now something else is bothering me: Reverse Flash went to great trouble to either kill (Batman) depower (Green Lantern, Flash) or scramble the morality of (Superman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman) all of the A-list super-heroes, but what about Wonder Woman? As far as I can tell, Evil Time-Travelling Apparently Space-Capable Possibly-Magic Reverse Flash didn't mess with her past at all.

Therefore, baseline Wonder Woman is capable of being manipulated into a devastating war, the invasion of a sovereign noncombatant nation and the subjugation of its people. She can be fooled into not noticing her people deploying death squads to other countries and starting concentration camps in her own. She's foolish enough to try negotiating with Aquaman while wearing the helmet that she took from his wife's severed head. Flashpoint Wonder Woman is, evidently, a moron.

Whether this means something big or cosmic or misogynistic or pants-phobic (Moron Wonder Woman does, after all, wear those very controversial garments) I cannot say. All that matters is that it is on the Internet and thus will no longer be rattling around in my head.

Never a Bat Around When You Need One

I'm sure that most of you are familiar with the part of Batman's origin in which he chooses his theme:

It's one of the iconic Batman moments, and even though it's been watered down over the years by such ideas as L'il Bruce Wayne falling down into what would someday become the Batcave and being traumatized by bats, or Thomas Wayne's bat-themed Halloween costume making a subconscious impression on his son, or every ancestor Wayne ever being a chiropterophile (and also all being the same dude, and that dude being him), there's still a rich vein of comedy there that people still occasionally mine. "Hey, what is Batman saw a dog instead of a bat? He'd be Dogman! Hilarious, right? Or if he saw some mail, he'd be Postman!"

The very best thing about this not-always-amazing joke, though, is that it's canonically accurate. DC has used the concept for "What if?" and alternate universe style stories several times over the years. My favourite of these, however, is this two-page bit of filler from Batman No. 256.

I like it best because it suggests a number of very interesting things about Bruce Wayne and his uncompromising hunt for vengeance on crime. Firstly, there is a hint that if he hadn't come up with a costume during WWII he might have to be having some serious talks with some serious men about his habit of dressing like other people's intellectual property. Or maybe there are only so many looks you can give a scorpion-themed outfit, I don't know.

Then there's the implication that Bruce would take his omen/totem beast so very seriously that he would not just dress up like it but stay exactly where he was when he saw it. See a bat? Gotham's streets now have a pointy-eared champion. Scorpion wander into your campsite? Look out, claim jumpers and other desert-type evildoers! "Hey Bruce, check out that stingray!" Time to start taking scuba lessons.

And of course that segues into my theory that these panels represent a series of branching possible timelines, that without the bat crashing through his window Bruce Wayne would have continued to stare at his table and grope for inspiration. And then he went camping and did or did not see a scorpion, and if he didn't he took a riverboat tour. And if he didn't see something eerie on that tour then Bruce Wayne would have abandoned his company and accepted a position as a forest ranger - anything to find that elusive spark that would catalyze the lifetime of face-punching that he so longed for.

Eventually, of course, Bruce starts to get desperate, as seen above. But he hasn't lost his vengeful spark! He takes what might be the least threatening astronomical object - or at least the object tied with Cloud of Interstellar Hydrogen for least threatening - and turns into what is actually kind of a creepy costume.

Now, this is the really telling one, the one that reveals just how long Bruce Wayne could have kept his anger focused without a totem to channel it through. Some of Wayne's careful honing of mind and body has come undone if his response to almost getting clobbered by a suit of armour is to put it on and employ it in a career of rooftop vigilanteism. The joke has come full circle here: we might as well be seeing the grim vigil of the Marble Statue or the Carelessly Hoisted Piano. It's all written there in that stock-upright, what-the-hell-am-I-doing-up-here stance. In this universe, Superman's best friend is the Flash.

Ah, What Might Have Been...

 I recently re-read the original West Coast Avengers miniseries from 1984, which, if you don't already know, is the book where Hawkeye headed to California to head up a new Avengers franchise. Obviously, the guy was a trailblazer, since Avengers franchises keep popping up all over the damn place to this day. The first issue's cover, an old favourite of mine, showed the Brash Bowman putting out the call to a bunch of heroes--some with previous Avengers affiliation on record, some who were already committed to other teams, and still others who came way out of left field--and urged the curious reader to try and figure out who would make the lineup.

Looking at the silhouettes in the corner box, it wasn't too tough to figure out who made the cut--Mockingbird, Iron Man, Wonder Man, and Tigra all signed on, and thus began an East Coast-West Coast Avengers rivalry that, instead of resulting in vicious disses and unsolved murders, played itself out in the form of an annual softball game. Fun!

But, looking at the collection of floating heads on that cover to the first issue of the initial WCA miniseries, I couldn't help but wonder what might have happened if a different team had resulted. Putting on my metaphorical bald cap and cosmic toga, I played the part of Uatu the Watcher and imagined an even more random collection of heroes than the Defenders, a team who safeguards the American West Coast in some alternate reality somewhere...

...wow. That would have been the poorest-selling issue of What If? ever.