Comic Book Resources

I almost missed out on Villains United. Going into Countdown, I figured I might check out Rann/Thanager War (since I have a soft spot for DC’s space characters), but that was about it. After Countdown I was actually interested in OMAC Project (yes, I know). At that point I figured I’d pick up at least the first issue of each book. While I liked the first issues of OMAC and Rann/Thanagar, Villains United didn’t grab me at all. Fortunately I decided to grab #2, because by three issues in, my impressions had done a full reverse. RTW dissolved into chaos, OMAC dissolved into mud, DoV didn’t seem to be going much of anywhere… but Villains United had turned into a great read.

Have to agree, Villains United was great…and funny, too, which shouldn’t surprise me given that I still have a copy of Gail Simone’s commentary track to ‘The Phantom Menace’ lying around somewhere. (”Can I be in the next film, Mr. Lucas?” “No, Jake. In fact, I’m talking to people about having you digitally edited out of this one.”)

My one complaint, though, was the scene between Catman and Green Arrow, but not for the reasons you cite. Not because the heroes shouldn’t have to be told to be heroes by Catman, but because the villains honestly don’t have the right to complain when that kind of thing happens to them. I mean, how exactly did Doctor Light explain it to these guys? “Gee, I was just breaking into the Justice League satellite and raping one of their wives, and they went all ballistic on me! I tell ya, they’re nuts!” The villains of the DC Universe have been pushing harder, and harder, and harder, all to see if they can get the heroes to crack, and not once have they ever seemed to consider that the consequences of said “cracking” would be very bad for them.

Nobody forced Doctor Light to do what he did. Nobody’s forcing these guys to dress up in stupid costumes and rob banks and kill people. If they’re suddenly so worried that the heroes are “taking it too far”, they’ve got a simple option–they can stop being so freaking evil! The Society is composed of a bunch of guys who like hitting people who won’t hit back (metaphorically; heroes do hit back, but they never do anything that seems to really hurt or scare these guys), and now when someone’s finally hit them back, they’re whining that it’s “not fair”. You know what? After the first time you try to kill a guy and he doesn’t try to kill you back, anything he does to you is nicer than what you’re trying to do to him.

But all that’s a minor quibble with an excellent mini-series. (I’m also enjoying the current “Secret Six”, for similar reasons.)

I’ve never really found any Gail Simone comics as interesting as her old column at CBR.

I think one of the things that made VU awesome and non-sucky was that it was able to tell a complete story. Like you said, the Alexander Luthor/Society kidnapping people bit was a subplot instead of the main plot, and so the main plot was allowed to wrap itself up. In the other miniseries, the main plots were all resolved in Infinite Crisis itself, and so the miniseries were forced to settle for fake, unatisfying climaxes, or just end arbitrarily with “Psyche! You’ve got to buy seven issues of Infinite Crisis and a $5 special to get the ending, fanboy!”

I’ve been enjoying these posts a great deal, Greg, and I’m looking forward to the next two.

I’m really enjoying your series on Infinite Crisis, Greg, and I also thought that Villains United was the best of the four minis leading into it: an enjoyable story, over all.

I do believe, however, that you might be giving Gail Simone, as good a writer as she is, a little too much credit for this one. It appears to me that she did have a mandate from the higher-ups, specifically: “We want to launch a new Secret Six ongoing, so we need you to establish six villains as a ‘team’ in opposition to the Society, and turn them into people the audience can root for.” Thus, the suddenly “heroic” Catman, Deadshot, et. al. Their abrupt “heroic” streak seems to simply be a calculated move on the part of Simone and the DC higher-ups to turn them into the stars of their own book, stars that the reader can get behind as “heroes.”

This is not to say that the new Secret Six book is bad; I’m enjoying it, as well. I agree with you that Simone is a talented writer who has risen above the mandate given to her. I’m just saying that Villains United still has the same taint of editorial control and out-of-character portrayals (with regard to the Secret Six) as the other IC books; that taint is diluted, however, by the interesting concept and Simone’s skillful writing.

That’s certainly a good point, but if it’s true, at least that is more vague than “Kill Shazam” or the editorial mandate in the Rann-Thanagar War (I’ll get to that). If what you’re saying is true, that, I don’t think, is not much more egregious than “By the way, Batman never kills anyone.” There has to be some editorial control, after all, and if DC wanted to launch a Secret Six series and told Simone to write it as she saw fit, that’s certainly better than dictating plot to the writer. Gail has to come here herself and set the record straight!

“(Dr. Light is strangely absent from the mini-series)”

Not so strange considering what he did in Identity Crisis.

“I’ve never really found any Gail Simone comics as interesting as her old column at CBR.”

Sadly seconded. Her comics work has just never clicked for me, and I’m not sure why, and it’s a shame.

I don’t know if I’d characterize Deadshot as having always been portrayed as a horrible man. His mini-series did flesh out the character nicely and painted him as actually having a human side. Pretty much everybody he killed or injured in that miniseries had it coming. He’ll never be a candidate for a Nobel Peace Prise, but I don’t think he’s completely horrible.

I suppose they all did have it coming in his mini-series, but he still treated them rather poorly. “Horrible” may have been an exaggeration. He’s certainly never been portrayed heroically.

This series suffered from an overwhelming surfeit of badassery, and not in a good way. Every character, from Deadshot to Luthor to Parademon to Cheshire to Scandal to Doctor Psycho to freaking Catman, absolutely HAD to be not just a badass, but a Super Ultra Mega-Ellis-Level Too-Cool-For-School Jim Lee Pose-Striking Look-How-Badass-I-Am Badass who just got off the bus from two weeks of summertime Badass Fantasy Camp. It’s okay to have one of that type running around in a book. Two is kind of pushing it. But when the entire cast is comprised of these characters, you end up with more empty threats and macho posturing in one issue than in a year’s worth of Wolverine appearances. It’s an overwhelming violation of the “show don’t tell” rule: I don’t want my villains to talk about being bad, I want to see them actually being bad.

Ah, that’s where you and I differ, Moose N Squirrel (if that is indeed your real name). Yes, there’s a lot of badass posing in this book, but I think the characters do enough to merit it. They each seemed to be posing in a different way, and the ones who didn’t do anything badass (Dr. Psycho comes to mind) were balanced out by the ones who did (Lawton, for instance, who kills the Fiddler and slaughters Blake’s pride).

In the later issues of Suicide Squad, Deadshot was portrayed as slightly more… I don’t want to say moral, but loyal to his compatriots. He helped rescue Flag’s son, for one thing, when he didn’t need to. He saved Flag from killing Cray because of his grudging respect for the man.

In Christos Gage’s recent mini, he wound up becoming a full fledged hero for a time to protect the little girl he didn’t even know he had and her mother. But seeing that his enemies would always be coming after him, he faked his own death and made sure Green Arrow would pay attention a little more to the Star City neighborhood Zoe and her mother live in.

While it wasn’t all posing, it was enough that it overpowered the legitimate action in the comic. The ratio was horribly skewed.

And I also have a problem with just cramming that many iterations of the Posing Badass archetype into a book I’m supposed to take seriously. When everyone in the book communicates in a language of hissed threats and macho posturing, I get sick of listening to them very quickly.

““We want to launch a new Secret Six ongoing, so we need you to establish six villains as a ‘team’ in opposition to the Society, and turn them into people the audience can root for.””

Wow, this is SO not true. There was NO thought of a Secret Six ongoing, and in fact, Dan was actively against it, because he felt, understandably, that we just made the villains all bad again, and SS could dilute that a little bit.

But as the series went on, response was great, and eventually, after the book was over, Dan graciously allowed the mini.

Oh, and GREAT ARTICLE, Greg. Obviously, I’m biased, but I really love the thoughtful approach of your stuff here, and I’m delighted you guys came over to CBR.

Best wishes,

Gail

And there’s some debate as to whether or not they’re any more ‘heroic’ than previously, when all is said and done.

Gail

This was the only Infinite Crisis-related book I bought and it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable books I’ve read in a while. Lately it’s seemed like the Big Two companies are trying to do anything they can to get me to stop reading their comics, but I really enjoyed this mini. Great job, Ms. Simone! I suspect you made a lot of new fans with this one.

And let me just follow up on what I wrote about Deadshot for a bit- I think part of Lawton’s problem is that he’s just too set in his ways to truly change, or he doesn’t feel that that’s enough, or maybe he feels he’s just not worthy, or maybe it’s good old fashioned fear. As he said in the first miniseries, “Let ‘em lie” in response to the “cards” of his life. That’s how I see it anyway.

Ms. Simone was very consistent, IMO, with that characterization in Villains United.

I’m not sure I’d call the Secret Six “heroic” after VU either; they’re just trying to survive at this point.

I thought Deadshot was portrayed as being amoral in Suicide Squad. Not immoral, but lacking any moral center. Mostly, he did not care if he lived or died, and did things for the sake of expediency or kicks. As pointed out above, he developed a bit of loyalty towards his comrades, but was still ready to execute Count Vertigo on his say so.

Gage’s Deadshot mini-series gave him a family, and thus a reason to care about life. I feel like the Deadshot we see in VU went a step further, and actually considered the morality of his actions (especially in regards to killing his friend’s surrogate family). Although lacking a center of greater morality (e.g. he kills, he commits other crimes), Deadshot developed a center of personal morality.

If I misused “morality” when I meant “ethics,” feel free to substitute as needed.

Thank you for the response to my post, Gail; I stand corrected. Let me reiterate that I did enjoy VU, and that I am enjoying Secret Six.

No problemat all, hope I didn’t come off as a jerk, just hate to see Dan get blamed for stuff that didn’t happen!

Gail

For that matter, Cat-Man wasn’t a thorough jerk in all of his prior appearances either. He was one of the less psychopathic Batmna villains in more recent years, and a variety of writers have treated him as a fairly humane character.

Alan Grant wrote him as refusing to kill civilians and abiding by his word in Legends of the Dark Knight #7-9, and Dough Moench — who’d previously written an out-of-continuity version of Tom Blake as a woman-hating serial murderer — wrote the older version into a heroic scene in Blackgate: Isle of Men, one of the No Man’s Land crossover specials.

Considering that his original motivation was simple boredom, and that he’d briefly considered superheroing as a lark before deciding that Batman had that sewn up and thus presented a challenge for the “villain” side of the role-play, his turn in VU wasn’t entirely alien to the character.

Man, Cat-Man is a sore subject for me, as I really was irritated by Meltzer’s take on him in Green Arrow.

So Gail making him cool again was nice.

I know I’m coming late to the party here, but I have to throw in my vote: VU was definitely the best thing to come out of Infinite Crisis. The art was head and shoulders above most of what’s in comics today, but what really sold me was the writing.

A couple responses:

“Every character, from Deadshot to Luthor to Parademon to Cheshire to Scandal to Doctor Psycho to freaking Catman, absolutely HAD to be not just a badass, but a Super Ultra Mega-Ellis-Level Too-Cool-For-School Jim Lee Pose-Striking Look-How-Badass-I-Am Badass who just got off the bus from two weeks of summertime Badass Fantasy Camp.”

Okay, while that is a freaking hilarious line, it’s not how I found the characters. Catman actually has to psyche himself up when he takes on all the Society baddies. Ragdoll proves to be a kid trying to live up to his daddy. Parademon is the ultimate abused child, a product of Granny Goodness’ orphanage. (Which may explain the clown fixation.) Maybe I’m reading too much into it here, but I got the feeling that villainy, for these guys, was an extension of that posing that bullies and other young psychopaths do — trying to make the world as scared of them as they are of it.

And then, in contrast, you have the genuinely vicious psychopaths, like the Crime Doctor, who really love their work. And the Society is scarier for having them on board.

“It’s a nice sentiment expressed well, but it feels like meta-commentary. Would Blake really say something like that? Why does he care if the Justice League “plays fair”? He never does.”

Actually, this fit perfectly for me, and it was because of the characterization. Blake admired the heroes even more because he knew he could never equal them. And when they sunk to his level, I can see it being painful to him.

Of course, it works as a pretty nice meta-commentary, too…