Injury to Eye Motif

Justice League: War (2014): The second animated film in the just-completed DC Animated Movie Universe (the first was The Flashpoint Paradox) reimagines the origin of the Justice League. War mostly adapts the somewhat clunky, post-Flashpoint reboot in the DC Comics universe, though it substitutes Shazam (aka the original Captain Marvel) for Aquaman. It's actually better than its Geoff Johns/Jim Lee source, though it's still burdened with some of Lee's fussy, busy superhero costume re-designs, none worse than on Superman's high-collared, no-red-trunks look.

It's also better than the live-action Justice League movie, which also adapted that Johns/Lee graphic novel/first six issues of the new Justice League. That it also explains both the origins of the heroes who  need one (Cyborg) better than the movie AND deploys Darkseid rather than his lieutenant Steppenwolf in the invasion of Earth -- well, maybe the DC Movie Universe needs to hire more people from the animation wing to work on the live-action movies.

Two somewhat perverse elements may amuse or freak out the casual viewer. For one, Alan Tudyk voices Superman, one of the most baffling voice-casting choices ever (Tudyk voices the Joker in Adult Swim's Harley Quinn series, as a point of comparison). Of course, the voice-casting here, as in the Young Justice series, deliberately establishes this as a different universe than the DC Animated shared universe of Batman: The Animated Series, Superman, Batman Beyond, and Justice League [Unlimited].

The second involves a lengthy climactic battle in which the heroes' goal is to poke out Darkseid's eyes. I shit you not!!!! In any event, recommended.

Justice League (2017)

Justice League (2017): written by Joss Whedon, Chris Terrio, and Zack Snyder; directed by Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon; based story-wise on works by James Robinson, Gardner Fox, Nicola Scott, Mike Sekowsky, Geoff Johns, and Jim Lee; starring Ben Affleck (Batman), Gal Gadot (Wonder Woman), Amy Adams (Lois Lane), Ezra Miller (The Flash), Jason Momoa (Aquaman), Ray Fisher (Cyborg), Jeremy Irons (Alfred), Ciaran Hinds (Voice of Steppenwolf), Amber Heard (Mera), Diane Lane (Martha Kent), and Henry Cavill (Superman):

Saw Justice League at the 12:45 p.m. show in Galleria on opening day. The 'print' arrived late so they hadn't done a sound-check before showing it. Oops! 

The first ten minutes played without any noticeable treble in the mix (seriously!), which made for an interesting audio experience. I wondered if Christopher Nolan had done the sound mix until they stopped the movie, fixed the sound, and started again from the beginning.

Then for another ten minutes or so, the theatre made almost inaudible announcements that it was seeking out the source of the fire alarm (which we couldn't hear) and not to panic. Friday was a PA Day for kids. Damn kids going to a superhero movie in the afternoon and pulling fire alarms! Rascals!

Also they never quite got the movie framed properly. But then we all got free passes at the end of the show, so really, who's complaining? Though it did all make me wonder if Disney is paying people to sabotage the film.

As to the film -- well, the stitches between the fairly light-hearted, earnest or snarky Whedon scenes and the glum, occasionally straining-to-be-funny Snyder scenes are pretty obvious. Whedon also turned up the Brightness, which means Superman is actually dressed in bright blue and red for the first time in the DCEU movies, so that's good. 

Whedon clearly also had the job of hacking and slashing the movie down to two hours, and having it be basically 'stand-alone' rather than Part One. So Darkseid gets only one mention, though it's clear that the big bad works for him (the villain is Steppenwolf, who is a Kirby New Gods character whom writer James Robinson promoted to Darkseid's world-conquering general in the Earth-2 comic series from 2012). 

The hacking and slashing results in some pretty funny 'infodumps' which end up feeling like homages to the crazily fast-paced, Gardner-Fox-scripted Silver Age Justice League comics from the 1960's. The explanation of what a Mother Box is is especially... compact... as is an exchange between Aquaman and Atlantean Mera (Amber Heard) which condenses Aquaman's back story into about 45 seconds of dialogue.

The acting is pretty solid. The Flash is genuinely funny and charming. Jason Momoa's Aquaman seems to have been written as a surly underwater hillbilly Wolderine by Snyder and as a jolly underwater stand-up comedian by Snyder. Cyborg is, well, a cipher.

Also, somebody (probably Snyder) basically restages the opening battle against Sauron from Fellowship of the Ring as part of the backstory of Steppenwolf's previous invasion of Earth, and even frames it in terms of it being the last time the various races of Earth (Atlanteans, Amazons and Greek Gods, and what seems to be King Arthur and his knights) united against a common foe. I kid you not. Wonder Woman narrates, per Galadriel in LOTR: TFOTR...

Bonus points for including parademons and getting a mention of Kirby's New Gods into the dialogue. Fun fact: the movie's 'Unity' seems to pretty clearly Jack Kirby's Anti-Life Equation restated euphemistically.

Though the only two rational explanations for Superman's unintentionally funny, late-movie line to Bruce Wayne ("How did you get the farm back from the bank ?!?!?") are that Superman doesn't understand how money works or that Lex Luthor owned the bank that foreclosed on the Kent farm.

Also, maybe it's swim-suit season on Themyscira, Snyder-haters! Did you ever think of that?

There are two end credits sequences, one early and one right at the end. Plan accordingly.

Hey, the movie is only 2 hours and one minute long. Kudos! My butt thanks you!

Far better than a lot of superhero movies, a list that includes Whedon's studio-garbled Avengers: Age of Ultron, The Dark Knight Rises, Superman III, Superman IV: The Quest for Peace, Spider-man 3, Amazing Spider-mans 1 and 2, X-Men: The Last Stand, Guardians of the Galaxy 2, the first two Thor movies, Dr. Strange, the two Hulk movies, Wolverine: Origins and The Wolverine, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, X-Men: Apocalypse, Ant-man, Superman Returns, Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman, Suicide Squad, and many others. Recommended.

End of Night

Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Volume 4: written by Jack Kirby; illustrated by Jack Kirby, Mike Royer, Greg Theakston, and others (1974-1986; collected 2010): The last omnibus of Jack Kirby's Fourth World work, or at least of Fourth World work that he both wrote and drew, spans about a decade. Kirby was having major problems with his eyesight by the mid-1980's, and it shows a bit in some of the art, but the conclusion to the saga of Apokolips, New Genesis, and their far-reaching war is a fascinating and essential part of Kirby's body of work.

Of course, it's not really the end: DC Comics would use Kirby's creations again and again after this 'conclusion,' a couple of times with Kirby on-board writing and/or pencilling in the two Super Powers miniseries. The saga was never meant to be wrapped up in less than a hundred pages. So the final graphic novel of Kirby's Fourth World, The Hunger Dogs, is really more of an intermission than anything else, albeit an intermission without any more of the play after it.

The volume collects the last few issues of Mister Miracle from the early 1970's, Kirby's last Fourth World title to remain standing back then. That title concludes with a truly bizarre sequence involving the wedding of Mister Miracle and Big Barda, a wedding the evil god Darkseid decides to crash at the last minute. Groovy!

The concluding material from the 1980's goes places super-hero comics generally don't go -- into the futility of endless war and the possibility that conflict can sometimes simply be walked away from. It was never meant to be an ending, but the last scene between Darkseid and his warrior son/nemesis Orion is both poignant and celebratory. Orion has changed. Darkseid has not. There will be no last battle of prophecy. This time, anyway.

Perhaps thinking of President Nixon's squirmy final days, Kirby invests the previously nigh-omnipotent Darkseid with hitherto unseen characteristics of failure, impotence, and obsolescence. The dark god stands revealed as just another tyrant watching his empire crumble, shaking his fist impotently at the sky.

It's powerful stuff, capped by a terrific final one-page spread that could have stood as the final image of the Fourth World and the New Gods. Kirby was still teaching writers and artists where to go near the end of his colossal and unparalleled career. In all, highly recommended.

Man vs. The Gods: The Road to Victory

Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Volume 3: written and illustrated by Jack Kirby with Mike Royer, Roz Kirby, and Vince Colletta (1971-72; collected 2008): Jack Kirby's grand, ahead-of-its-time, multi-title epic moves towards its truncated conclusion with three of the strongest stories of Kirby's long and distinguished career.

Volume 3 also features a misguided two-parter in which DC foisted C-lister Deadman upon Kirby and The Forever People. It's interesting to see Jack try to figure out a new direction for the character, but the whole thing shows how DC didn't seem to have much of a clue in the early 1970's.

Marvel had finally passed DC in comic-book sales, which didn't stop DC from imposing its Superman house-style on Kirby and having other artists redraw the heads of the Man of Steel and his significant supporting characters whenever Kirby drew them. Kirby had co-created much of the Marvel universe that had surpassed DC in popularity. You'd think the heads he drew had at least a bit to do with that.

Long-term cross-continuity between four different titles hadn't been attempted in comic books before. Volume 3 sees DC dialing down the links among New Gods, Forever People, Mister Miracle, and Jimmy Olsen. The galactic war between the planets of New Genesis and Apokolips, fought in part by proxy on Earth, would cool down; decades later, it would become the mythopoeic backbone of the DC Universe, but for now, Kirby's New Gods would move towards cancellation.

Of those three stories, though. In New Gods, "The Pact" explains the history of the war between New Genesis and Apokolips; more importantly, it explains the forging of the fragile peace that is only now coming apart. It's one of Kirby's most consciously mythic tales, like something out of The Silmarillion as filtered through Kirby's superheroic, day-glo, New-Deal-liberal sensibilities.

Kirby also mythologizes in Mister Miracle's "Himon." But while telling the story of the leader of the Resistance on Apokolips with more than a nod to The Scarlet Pimpernel, Kirby also shines a light on the day-to-day realities of life on the Hell-world of Apokolips. Most of the citizenry have been ground down to a cowed philosophical masochism by the endless oppression and lies of Darkseid, Kirby's fascistic overlord of darkness. But hope endures: Himon refuses to leave, but he inspires the future Mister Miracle to escape Darkseid and flee to Earth.

Darkseid's redeemed son, Orion, may be foretold by prophecy to kill Darkseid, but Mister Miracle represents the direct counter to Darkseid's obsession with control. In Kirby's cosmology, the Anti-Life Equation that Darkseid seeks to complete, that will give him control over every sentient being, is countered by Freedom -- the Life-Equation represented by the being who will become the super-powered escape artist known as Mister Miracle.

The third giant would be "The Death Wish of 'Terrible' Turpin," one of the rare superhero stories of the first 30 years of superhero stories to portray the terrible, humanity-destroying effect that the mere existence of superheroes would have on ordinary humanity. Turpin, a human police officer caught between the warring factions of god-like beings on Earth in the New Gods, vows to take down one of these beings using whatever resources the police department can muster.

Kirby makes Turpin's quest into a cry of resistance from humanity itself -- resistance to the dehumanization that gods and superheroes, light or dark, bring to the world of the normative. The story, just a bit over 20 pages, supplies the sort of ending that an enlightened Hollywood movie about superheroes could really use: human beings, kicking ass, while the gods themselves stand down. In all, for all the stories (even the wonky Deadman story), highly recommended.

War in the Deep

Jack Kirby's Fourth World Omnibus Volume 2: written and illustrated by Jack Kirby, Roz Kirby, Vince Colletta, Mike Royer, Al Plastino, and Neal Adams (1970-71; collected 2009): The second omnibus volume of Jack Kirby's early 1970's work for DC Comics sees Kirby rapidly fleshing out the war of the New Gods while also tap-dancing his way through Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen with some of the weirdest comic-book work of his life.

Vampires had been absent from all mainstream comic books approved by the industry watchdog Comics Code Authority since the mid-1950's. So of course, when DC decided to bring vampires back, they got Jack Kirby to do it, in what could only be described as the strangest vampire story ever told. I'm not sure I can do justice to it by describing it.

Suffice to say the vampires are teeny-tiny lab experiments living on a teeny-tiny globe. They face destruction, along with a variety of other micro-races that all look like various horror icons such as the Wolf Man and the Mummy, at the hands of their scientist-creator Dabney Donovan. And then comes...the musical Oklahoma!

Besides the weirdness, the volume also offers an expansion of the war of the New Gods, as Darkseid's forces continue to land on Earth, to be confronted by Orion, Superman, the Forever People, and Mister Miracle on different fronts.

What Kirby does here with a multiple-level conflict hadn't been done before in superhero comics, and really hasn't been done since: four partially integrated books focusing on different aspects and fronts of the same battle, all four of them written and illustrated by the same person. The breadth and depth of it make most superhero comic books before and since look imaginatively impoverished by comparison.

Amidst all this comes one of Kirby's greatest single issues, the New Gods story entitled "The Glory Boat." The second half of a story dealing with the underwater invasion of the Deep Six, super-powered terrorists from Darkseid's Apokolips who are destroying Earth's shipping lanes, "The Glory Boat" plays off a small-scale human conflict between a conscientious objector of a son and his hawkish, patriotic-gibberish-spouting father against the final battle between Orion, Lightray, and the Deep Six. A moment of hard-nosed poignance is achieved, magnified by the mercy and the vengeance of the New Gods against their enemies. Don't ask -- just buy it! Highly recommended.

Rock of Ages

JLA Deluxe Edition Volume 2, written by Grant Morrison, illustrated by Howard Porter, Val Semeiks, John Dell and others (1997-98; collected 2010): DC's repackaging of previously reprinted works can sometimes seem almost comic (the repackaging of Alan Moore material is a whole side industry).

Here, though, it makes sense. Grant Morrison's late-1990's run on DC flagship super-group title JLA (for Justice League of America) was first reprinted in arc-specific books, leading to trade paperbacks which were in some cases barely 100 pages long. The deluxe editions pop the page count close to 300 pages, present the stories in a slightly oversized format, and include material that hadn't been reprinted before (in this volume, a JLA/WildCATS crossover). So it's a good deal.

Morrison's JLA first took the Justice League back to its early 1960's roots by reuniting as close an approximation of the original seven members as could be reunited in the mid-1990's when the original Green Lantern and Flash were dead, their legacies carried on by another Flash and another GL. And Morrison ramped up the cosmic, time-bending action with world-wide and even galaxy-wide threats. Penciller Howard Porter, who could be weak with the wrong scripter, delivered the best art of his career. The result was a JLA that sold well and got critical raves.

In this second collected volume, the JLA finds itself in the twisty labyrinth of the "Rock of Ages" storyline, which begins with a new Legion of Doom before veering off into a future dystopia in which evil has conquered almost everything. The JLA has to save the universe. Or maybe destroy it.

The second arc features new villain Prometheus, who's planned for years how to kill the entire Justice League and invades their lunar Watchtower to fulfill the plan. New members begin to fill out the roster, most notably Plastic Man (whom Morrison makes an incredibly useful addition), Steel and Zauriel, the last an actual angel of the Hawk Host of Heaven.

The collection ends with the aforementioned JLA/WildCATS crossover between DC's and Wildstorm's super-groups as they face upgraded Silver Age JLA villain the Lord of Time. Morrison's love of twisty plots and comic-book minutiae isn't for everyone -- a lot of readers will probably need to Google J'emm, Son of Saturn prior to giving themselves a refresher course on what the Philosopher's Stone actually is in the "Rock of Ages" arc and where this particular version comes from (Jack Kirby's New Gods comics of the 1970's, btw). But I love it. Highly recommended.

Batman Beyond Forever

Batman R.I.P., written by Grant Morrison, illustrated by Tony Daniel and Lee Garbett (2008): Batman finally faces the Ultimate Enemy he never knew he had...and then, as the last two issues tie into megacrossover event Final Crisis (also scripted by Morrison), he also has to face Darkseid, the DC Universe's amalgam of Satan and Dick Cheney. Seriously, though Darkseid was created in the early 1970's. Tony Daniel and Garbett provide some dandy artwork in the hyperrealistic tradition of great Batman artists that include Neal Adams and Jim Aparo.

But it's the story, bringing to at least partial fruition Morrison's first two years on Batman, that shines -- though it shines a lot more if you read everything over again. Morrison's made himself into the master of zippy high-density superhero comics. Almost everything he does rewards a second reading, indeed, almost demands it at points.

Old Batman stories and characters once cast out of continuity are hereby returned to continuity, often with odd spins. Fifth-dimensional prankster Bat-Mite returns as what appears to be a figment of Batman's imagination, there to warn him about what's coming -- but as Bat-Mite notes when Batman asks him if he really comes from the Fifth Dimension or if he's imaginary, "Imagination is the Fifth Dimension! Geez, some world's greatest detective you turned out to be!"

A bizarre old Batman story about an extraterrestrial Batman holds part of the key to Batman winning now against The Black Glove and its malign, possibly immortal leader Dr. Hurt. So does the Joker. And the Club of Heroes. And Batman's son, Damian. And Nightwing, the original Robin, and the current Robin. But Batman, poisoned, buried, mind under attack, has to carry a lot of the weight himself. And then, if he succeeds, he has to face the origin of all evil -- Darkseid himself -- with the fate of all universes depending on the outcome. And there this story ends, at the moment before Batman faces Darkseid, though later revelations would allow for Batman R.I.P.: The Missing Chapter about two years later, also by Morrison and Daniel, once certain things had been revealed in the due course of other stories. Highly recommended.