Lost in Translation

Careful readers probably have picked up on this already, but I do not live in the United States at the moment. I currently reside in the Mediterranean country of Spain, which puts me in a rather awkward position regarding comics and other media. For the most part, I do not like to purchase or read translated material very much because even the best of translations lose something along the way, and in my mind it feels as I am reading or watching a different material altogether. I have had the chance to read some titles both in English and Spanish and there is a noticeable difference in them (at least to me). Luckily through the Internet and a local shop that carries material in English, I can keep up with my comic reading habit. I wanted to talk a little about some of the things that occur with translations, and one very special case that I have not decided what I am going to do about it.

The most obvious problem in translation is the names of superheroes, and the way they decide to translate them are rather uniform. Some characters have the same name as they do in English, such as Thor and Superman (even though this one could easily be translated into "Superhombre"). Of course, not all of them are as straightforward, for example Spider-Man is mostly called just that, but people pronounce it using a Spanish pronunciation (roughly, espeedher man) and Batman is also called by his rightful name, but his alias Bruce Wayne is instead called Bruno Diaz in some Spanish-speaking countries. There are some straightforward translations, such as "Mister Fantastico" instead of Mister Fantastic and "Linterna Verde" for Green Lantern. Some work and some don't, especially when the translation leads to multiple words like Nightwing being "Ala Nocturna" or Hawkeye being "Ojo de Halcón". Additionally, Captain America becomes Capitan America, which is also pretty straightforward, but his nickname instead of being "Cap" is "Capi" which sounds kind of diminutive to me. And finally, there are some cases where whoever translated the comic books took great liberties. Deadpool for example is known as "Masacre" in some countries, and Martian Manhunter is "Detective Marciano". To make matters worse, different countries have different translations. When I was younger I used to watch the 90's X-Men animated series in Argentina (where I'm originally from), Rogue was called "Titania" and Wolverine was "Guepardo" (the literal translation), but here in Spain, the former is known as "Picara" and the latter as "Lobezno" (which translates into Wolf Cub, I have no idea what they call Wolf Cub from New/Young X-Men). Team names also suffer from some of these same problems, like the X-Men called "Hombres X" or "Patrulla X" depending on the country and the Avengers are known as "Los Vengadores" (which makes me wonder what the catchphrase that replaces "Avengers Assemble!" is).

Another problem that I have with translations is the actual interpretation of the text. When you read titles like Spider-Man, Cable and Deadpool, or any other comic that has a big comedic portion to it, puns, jokes and one-liners are greatly lost in translation. I have not read any comics in Spanish featuring the Riddler, but a lot of his riddles are play on words, so I can't imagine those making a lot of sense either. Curses and insults are another problem altogether, where sometimes literal translations end up sounding not as threatening or just downright goofy (I can't imagine what reading a Garth Ennis comic in Spanish would be like). And I do not if it is just me on this one, but when I read a character speaking Spanish, it sounds completely different that the voice I hear in my head than I would if I was reading that comic in English instead.

Aside from also suffering from the above problems, voice translations when it comes to movies and TV series, have a whole new set of problems. First of all (and I have no idea why) apparently there isn't a whole lot of Spanish voice actors because sometimes you are watching a dubbed movie and you will notice it is the same voice actor as something else you have watched previously. Basically every little girl in any movie that is put on TV will have the same voice actor as Lisa from the Simpsons. Other times, actors are given voice overs that do not match the original voice, or a combination with the point I was making earlier, like Jim Carey and Bruce Willis getting the same person doing the voiceover in different movies. And this is where my problem comes in: I want to see the Watchmen movie, which opens next week (March 6th), and has the same name in Spanish. It's odd that it is not translated somehow, and I think the closest translation would be "Vigilantes", and in that case the tag line would be "Quien vigila a los vigilantes?". For some reason, movie theaters here do not show movies in the original languages with subtitles, I would not mind watching it like that. Instead, they opt for completely dubbed movies and as I have stated which I find to be detrimental to the movie. On one hand, I really want to see the movie (which looks absolutely gorgeous visually and appears that it will be very faithful to the original material) the week it opens, and on the other I want to wait for the DVD release, where I would be able to see the finished product as it was intended. Decisions, decisions. What do you, my faithful 15 readers, think I should do about this dilemma?

The Rise and Fall of Elseworlds

One of the first comics that my father ever bought me was called "Batman - Brotherhood of the Bat", back in the mid-90's. At the time, I did not know it, but this was my first exposure to the DC imprint Elseworlds, where "heroes are taken from their usual setting and put into strange times and places - some that have existed, others that can't, couldn't or shouldn't exist." In hindsight, I should have realized this wasn't a regular story (the fact that Batman is dead was a sure giveaway), but back then I was just getting started to read comics and I did not know about ongoing comics, or mini series, or elseworlds and it was all the same to me. This particular story stuck with me for a long time, because it is a cool concept (or at least it was to my pre-teen mind), Ra's Al Ghul comes back to Gotham 50 years after Batman died and uses a gang of people dressed in different bat-costumes, including some never seen before. In repeated readings, it has not stood to the test of time, with some of the dialogue being particularly cheesy, but back then I remember me and my friends discussing which Batman costume we wold wear if given the chance. Today I wanted to talk about the Elseworlds imprint, which is sadly no longer among us, and why I would like it to come back.

First of all, a little bit of history: "imaginary tales" have been around for a long time in comics ("Not a dream! Not a hoax!"), where writers could come up with the weirdest stories they wanted to and run with it without fear of repercussion from fans. It wasn't until 1989 that DC published the successful Gotham By Gaslight (by Brian Augustyn and Mike "Hellboy" Mignola) which led to the creation of the Elseworlds imprint and retroactively named that title the first official Elseworlds comic. Over the years, DC has published many Elseworlds of many different natures, while not all of them have been critical or commercial successes, some of them rank among the most favorite stories among fans. Superman - Speeding Bullets, JLA - The Nail, and Batman - In Darkest Night are all very popular among comic book fandom, but there's two Elseworlds that rank higher than all the others: Superman - Red Son and Kingdom Come. Red Son is the tale of what would have happened to the world if Superman's spaceship had crashed in Soviet Russia. Kingdom Come, on the other hand, is a tale of the latter days of DC superheroes, which must fight a new and more violent generation of superhumans. Both of these stories usually appear in "Best-Of" lists, or recommendations for new readers to the DC Universe, and both of them were popular enough to warrant their own set of action figures. Additionally, in the current JSA title, by Geoff Johns, a lot of events are inspired by what happens in Kingdom Come, to highly positive fan reaction.

According to Wikipedia DC stopped publishing Elseworlds title around 2005 because of low sales and lack of critical acclaim. The mini-series Batman - Year 100 is the last official Elseworlds published. That same year Infinite Crisis hit the stands and re-established the multiverse which was previously eliminated during Crisis on Infinite Earths, and many of the popular Elseworlds officially became one of the alternate 52 Earths that existed in the DC multiverse. Apparently, some of them were featured during Countdown, but I do not know to what extent as I did not read that title (a wise decision, I am told by many). Coincidentally, 2005 was also the year that saw the birth of the All-Star line of DC comics, where acclaimed writers and artists are allowed to work on more iconic versions of beloved characters without any restraints from regular continuity. Sadly, not much has been done with the All-Star imprint, only two titles: the critical darling All-Star Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely, and the commercial juggernaut All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder by Frank Miller and Jim Lee(as a side note, both titles are/were plagued by delays). Both titles could have easily worked as Elseworlds series, with the exception of the fact that they were ongoing series. To the best of my knowledge, however, all other planned All-Star titles will not be seeing the light of day anytime soon (I vaguely remember some announcement from NYCC, but I could not find it).

DC had a good idea with the All-Star line, in narrowing down the ideas and using the most popular stars of the comic book industry they achieved what they were aiming for. But since it is apparently no longer used, maybe it is time to bring back the Elseworlds imprint. What they could do is combine the best of both imprints, using popular creators to create these new worlds like All-Star did, and stick to mini series or one-shots like Elseworlds did. Furthermore, there is a lot of unpaved ground if DC decided to publish "What-If" titles, like Marvel does. While a lot of Elseworlds work in the same concept of disconvergent time lines like "What Ifs" do, most of them concentrate on the origin of the heroes, but rarely to past important storylines. I think there's room in the market for comics like "What if the Green Lanterns had lost the Sinestro Corps War?" or "What if Batman had not shot Darkseid?". Of course, the most difficult thing to do would probably be to come up with a new title, I think Marvel has the "What If" title copyrighted.

Marvel's New Noise

First of all, I would like to say that I am a bigger Marvel fan than a DC fan, both in the comics I prefer to read and in the quantity that I consume them. The whys and wherefores of this are a matter of discussion for another day, but I wanted to point out before I go about today's blog. It feels to me than Marvel is better at attracting and helping new writers develop a fan base than DC. I am obviously not saying that Marvel has better talent (not to mention that such a claim comes to down to a reader's preference), as DC has some great writers such as Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Gail Simone, Kurt Busiek, etc. These writers are all great professionals that have been in the industry for a long time, and that's where the "problem" comes about. It is important for a company to foster new or rarely heard voices in the industry in order to create new ideas and stay relevant. I believe that Marvel does a better job in this aspect of their company, "grabbing" and fostering new writers and giving them high profile jobs.

One of my favorite writers currently working at Marvel is the wonderful Jason Aaron. According to Wikipedia, Aaron's first work was for DC's Vertigo imprint with the The Other Side mini-series and the still ongoing Scalped series (which I highly recommend). Even though he is still working on Scalped, Aaron has moved on to writing for Marvel, getting exponentially bigger assignments over time: first a back-up Wolverine story, then a critically acclaimed four issue story on the same title (Get Mystique), the main writing duties of Ghost Rider and a fill-in for Black Panther's Secret Invasion tie-in which I have already mentioned. Finally, Marvel has given him a new title, featuring our favorite short Canadian superhero with metal claws, called Wolverine: Weapon X. In just a couple of years, Jason Aaron has gone from his Vertigo critical-darling creator owned work to writing one of Marvel's most profitable characters, earning plenty of praise from fans and critics along the way.

Five years ago, Matt Fraction was writing comics and graphic novels in indie presses. Much like Aaron, Fraction was given increasingly important writing jobs, first working alongside Ed Brubaker in the popular revival of the Immortal Iron Fist. A couple of years later, and he has under his belt a two year run on Punisher, a ten issue almost-creator-owned series in the form of The Order, and a group of very critically acclaimed Thor one-shots collectively known as the Ages of Thunder series. Fraction is currently writing two of Marvel's flagship titles, Invincible Iron Man and Uncanny X-Men. Even if Fraction is somewhat hit or miss for me, to the point where I either hate or love his work (and I will abstain from going into a full list of which titles fall under each category), I have to admire the man for getting so many promotions in such a short period of time so he must be doing something right.


I could go on for a very long time, but it's usually the same story over and over. Marvel has writers like Greg Pak (who in a few years single-handledly reinvigorated the Hulk franchise among other works), Fred Van Lente (writing one of the best ongoing series, Incredible Hercules, and other fun mini series), Jonathan Hickman (co-writer of Secret Warriors and who is set to take over Fantastic Four), Christos Gage (having written more awesome fill-ins and mini-series that I can count) and Duane Swierczynski (currently writing Cable, Immortal Iron Fist and Punisher: Frank Castle) to compliment their older veterans like DnA, Warren Ellis, Mike Carey and Peter David. Of course, DC also has some new or young writers, like John Rogers (Blue Beetle), Marc Andreyko (Manhunter), G. Willow Wilson (Vixen), Sterling Gates (Supergirl) and Peter Tomasi (who has been working in the industry for long time as an editor but only recently started writing comics), but it seems to me that other than Tomasi the new writers get stuck in the back alleys of the DC universe and it is a lot harder to get a spot in the flagship titles. DC has a lot of up and coming writers, but they are mostly under the Vertigo and Wildstorm imprints and only some of of them also write super hero comics for the main universe.

In conclusion, it seems that either by design or by practice, Marvel has a younger set of writers than DC. I personally believe it is good that the company foments new talent, even if it is not always a commercial hit or critically acclaimed. I personally have been enjoying the current direction in the Marvel universe, and so have a lot more readers if the sale numbers are to be believed. Should DC start tapping into younger writers to help shape their universe? Or is it fine as it is, being handled by professionals that know what to do with the characters?

Whatever Happened to the Dream Weaver?

Out this week is the first part of Neil Gaiman's highly anticipated Batman storyline called "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?", which many expected to be a recap of the Dark Knight's whole story. What we got instead is something altogether different, but it's already earning comparisons to Gaiman's previous work in Sandman, specifically "The Wake" (it is a funeral too, after all) and "World's End" (both stories are a gathering of people that tell stories). To me, however, this story reminds and evokes some of the themes that Gaiman presented during "A Game of You", probably one of the least liked (although not exactly disliked) Sandman stories.

It is easy to see why some readers do not like "A Game of You", as I was one of them when I first read the story: on the surface, the plot is basically a fairy tale about a Princess coming back to her land after being gone for a long time, and much has changed. The dream land is filled with magical creatures and fantastical places, but Morpheus and the overreaching plot-line of Sandman plays a very small role for this story (other than the introduction of Thessaly). It feels that Gaiman was more interested in exploring the nature of dreams, how they are affected by our worldview and personality and vice versa, which is a theme that is touched upon many times during the entirety of Sandman. The main character in "A Game of You" is a woman called Barbie that was briefly introduced during the previous storyline as having very vivid and colorful dreams of a fantasy land, and a real life personality to match. After going through a separation with her husband (Ken), Barbie's life becomes exponentially weirder and her attitude and personality go through a drastic change. As a result of this, she no longer dreams and the land she used to visit on a nightly basis goes through unbelievable trials and tribulations. Once Barbie comes back to the dream world, she tries to fix matters with the aid of a handful of anthropomorphic animals, finally facing the adversary that had taken over the land. As the story reaches the end, we learn that while Barbie did not create this dream world (it was Orpheus who did) she did populate it with a mixture of her imagination and memories: the animals, for example, were all childhood toys and the enemy's base was her grandparents summer house.

As I mentioned above, I originally did not like this storyline, but upon a second reading I found it surprisingly more interesting. Some of the stuff that Gaiman describes, such as dreams being a mixture of our memories and completely original notions, rings very close to home for me. I happen to have very vivid (and at times fantastical or weird) dreams, sometimes with recurring themes and places, and I usually remember what happens in them. For example there is a mall or group of shops that I remember being more than once in my dreams but not really an actual memory, even though it has aspects of places I really have been in. Another time, although I do not recall specifics, I remembered in a dream something else that had happened in another dream but had never occurred to me in real life. A couple of years ago I visited Key West and saw a huge fossil jaw of a prehistoric shark, and days later in one of my dreams I was swallowed whole by a shark just like that (I was rescued and survived to tell the tale too). And there's a couple of dreams where I have super powers, I admit it is kind of embarrassing that a grown man has dreams where he finds himself web-slinging like Spider-Man through a city (one of my favorite dreams I've had). What I am trying to say is that Gaiman understands very well how dreams work, and because of that I find "A Game of You" to be very appealing. I understand, as well, that not everyone dreams in the same way and I probably expect that those people did not enjoy this particular story as much as I did.

How does this all relate to Batman again? Maybe this is Gaiman portraying Batman's dreams, which are at points based on reality but quickly evolve into something that we know is not true, to explore the character and all of his history. Dreams do not need to make sense, or abide by the laws of reality, which would explain the conflicting reports of Batman's demise. It is not a very explored aspect of Bruce Wayne's life, and one imagines his dreams to be dreary and painful, while at the same time he lives in a world full of colorful characters, maybe his dreams are equally vivid. I guess I will have to wait to see if this is a dream, but all signs point to "not bloody likely": Batman is talking to a woman, which means it is not Dream of the Endless. The woman, if she is one of Gaiman's Endless, could be either Death, Desire, or Delirium. My money, if it is not Dream somehow having gone through a sex change, is on Delirium. Hopefully we will find out next month when the second part of this story is slated to be released.

The Eternal Debate - Conclusion

And by eternal, I mean for the past 12 or so months. You could not go anywhere in the Internet (well, at least the sites I frequent) without finding a conversation about either Final Crisis or Secret Invasion. Or both. This year's events from the Big Two felt incredibly long, by design or by circumstances, but they are now officially over (Legion of 3 Worlds notwithstanding), which allows us to look at both events objectively, or at least as objectively as comic book readers can get.

That is where I come in. I want to look at the different aspects of both events, measure them up against each other and see who comes up on top. To do so, I have chosen several categories (or rounds) which will allow me to compare both sides of the 2008 Special Edition Event Coin. If you have not yet read both series in their entirety, there will be spoilers ahead. Oh, yeah, and the point system may or may not be arbitrary or what most people consider fair. You have been warned.

The Conclusion

The Eternal Debate, at least for this humble blogger, is officially over with the final score being Secret Invasion 4 - Final Crisis 3. I feel this represents my feelings about the events quite nicely. Secret Invasion worked better as an event: it was reader friendly and it will probably be a huge commercial success once the final sale numbers are posted, the repercussions of it were felt all across the Marvel Universe garnering interest from readers and creating new opportunities for writers, and presented an uniform look that came out in a timely and organized fashion. Final Crisis was the better story, rewarding and entertaining in it's own way, but I feel it would have worked better as a stand alone story, rather than a huge summer event.

In case you have missed it, here are the links for all six parts of The Eternal Debate:

Part I - The Death
Part II - The Return
Part III - The Spin-Offs
Part IV - The Tie-Ins
Part V - The Art
Part VI - The Story

The Eternal Debate - Part VI : Final Crisis vs. Secret Invasion (The Story)

And by eternal, I mean for the past 12 or so months. You could not go anywhere in the Internet (well, at least the sites I frequent) without finding a conversation about either Final Crisis or Secret Invasion. Or both. This year's events from the Big Two felt incredibly long, by design or by circumstances, but they are now officially over (Legion of 3 Worlds notwithstanding), which allows us to look at both events objectively, or at least as objectively as comic book readers can get.

That is where I come in. I want to look at the different aspects of both events, measure them up against each other and see who comes up on top. To do so, I have chosen several categories (or rounds) which will allow me to compare both sides of the 2008 Special Edition Event Coin. If you have not yet read both series in their entirety, there will be spoilers ahead. Oh, yeah, and the point system may or may not be arbitrary or what most people consider fair. You have been warned.

Secret Invasion is leading against Final Crisis 4 - 2 as we reach the final lap of the Eternal Debate.

The Story

Not to undermine the very talented people that contribute the art to the stories, but for many readers, the story is the deal breaker when it comes to purchasing a comic or not. I have heard from many people that they will put up with insulting art as long as the story is good enough. In this post, I will not be re-telling, summarizing or annotating the totality of what happens in either Secret Invasion or Final Crisis, and I will talk about spoilers freely, so I urge you to go read the stories first (and form your own opinion, hopefully). For the purpose of this review, I will only be talking mostly about the events and writing of the main mini series and none of the tie-ins. I understand that both events benefit from reading the tie-ins (more so for Final Crisis, something that I have mentioned in one of my previous posts), but I feel that to be more objective with my review I must judge this from the eye of a casual reader who will only pick up the main event and not shell out the extra money for the tie-ins that Marvel and DC put out.

Secret Invasion, a story apparently long in the making inside the mind of Brian Michael Bendis, was a very good idea but not properly thought or fleshed out. The main idea behind it is that the Skrulls, a shape-shifting race of aliens, want to take over the Earth because one of their religious books claims that it rightfully belongs to them. To do so, they came up with a new technology that allows them to clone the superpowers and appearances (that no earthly means could apparently reveal) of any superheroes that they could get their hands on, and used it to infiltrate various super-teams and organizations of Earth. The Skrulls' plan, which was planned for years, seemingly fails with ease once Reed Richards is freed and their Invasion only lasts one miserable day. The events of Secret Invasion effectively portray how worldwide the invasion is, we see plenty of places around the world face the alien invasion (albeit briefly), even if the majority of the forces and events happen in New York (the home of most super heroes in the Marvel Universe). The problem arises from the fact that this invasion force declared victory (and announced it to the whole world) way too early, before all the heroes were defeated or accounted for. Bendis did not properly evoke the feeling that the Skrull army was victorious, and the lack of the passage of time only made matters worse (as I said, the mini series took 8 months to come out, but only one or two days passed in the story). There were also problems with the power set of the skrulls: the camouflaging effect wasn't explained in the series (you had to read the tie-ins for that) and just how powerful they were (some supposedly had the power of Black Bolt, which even at a fraction of the original, is pretty damn powerful but they could be taken down by Wolverine or Hawkeye). Additionally, the whole skrull armada fell apart the moment the Queen died, which leads me to believe that every one of the skrulls was a foot soldier and there were no commanding officers (even though some were shown in the series). Finally, the series ends with the President of the United States disbanding SHIELD, a United Nations-sponsored organization that is not controlled by one single nation. The plot holes and mistakes range from rather subtle to obvious, but they are still there and they affect the story that Bendis wanted to tell.

Grant Morrison was at helm of writing Final Crisis and it is very easy to tell. The story picks up on a lot of themes that Morrison has written about in the past, such as the nature of stories and the fourth wall in comics (Animal Man), international heroes (New X-Men) and Superman as a symbol of hope (All-Star Superman). The story is dense and full of details to go over and over, as proved by all the sites that provide annotations for the whole event. To provide a summary of the events of Final Crisis would be beyond the scope of this blog and would take me way too long, so I would recommend reading it yourself at least twice. I originally read Final Crisis in the monthly format it came out in and found it extremely disappointing, but as preparations for this blog, I re-read it and found myself liking it more with each additional reading. To say that Final Crisis is without flaw, however, would be an outright lie. First of all, Final Crisis is as not-new-reader-friendly as events can be: to get a full understanding of all the events, characters, and themes you would need a very good knowledge of the DC universe and a good portion of Morrison's previous work (such as Seven Soldiers, which I have not read and lead to me not knowing what Frankestein was doing in the DC universe). Even long time readers claimed to have trouble following the story, even though events are usually used by the Big Two to attract new readers. The writing style, I've seen it referred as "channel-zapping", is supposed to portray how chaotic the events of this crisis are, but I found to it to be detrimental to the story because of how much information the reader is being bombarded. It just feels that there is too much information and too little space to show it all or expand on what we see (for example, Aquaman shows up for one panel and then we know nothing else about it). As previously discussed, the Morrison-penned tie-ins for Final Crisis are very important, so the events shown on the main mini-series seem disjointed or just missing information (like Superman stepping out on Lois and then showing back 3 issues later).

The obvious allegory between Secret Invasion and Final Crisis is that between a good action movie and an ambitious art film. One is aimed to entertain, especially if you turn the suspension of disbelief all the way to eleven, while the other one is a study of certain topics, characters, or situations by the author, and your enjoyment of it is relatively tied to your interest of the topic. One will have you repeating awesome one-liners ("My God has a hammer" or "Nick Fury was right") with your friends and the other one makes you question the real meaning behind certain scenes (like Batman being hit by the Omega sanction or what Superman's wish for a happy ending really meant). Secret Invasion had a wider appeal and was entertaining for what it was, but Final Crisis is something completely different: Morrison told the story he wanted to tell, and it is not meant for everyone. Like I mentioned above, I disliked it at first but the story grew on me after repeated readings while Secret Invasion's repeated readings led to its misgivings becoming more apparent. Because of this, I feel that DC's Final Crisis, and Grant Morrison, wins this final round.

The Eternal Debate - Part V : Final Crisis vs. Secret Invasion (The Art)

And by eternal, I mean for the past 12 or so months. You could not go anywhere in the Internet (well, at least the sites I frequent) without finding a conversation about either Final Crisis or Secret Invasion. Or both. This year's events from the Big Two felt incredibly long, by design or by circumstances, but they are now officially over (Legion of 3 Worlds notwithstanding), which allows us to look at both events objectively, or at least as objectively as comic book readers can get.

That is where I come in. I want to look at the different aspects of both events, measure them up against each other and see who comes up on top. To do so, I have chosen several categories (or rounds) which will allow me to compare both sides of the 2008 Special Edition Event Coin. If you have not yet read both series in their entirety, there will be spoilers ahead. Oh, yeah, and the point system may or may not be arbitrary or what most people consider fair. You have been warned.

After yesterday's interlude, we now resume the Eternal Debate with the last round being a tie and Secret Invasion leading 3 - 2 against Final Crisis.

The Art

If I am completely honest, I have to admit that I am probably the farthest thing from an artist. Ask me to draw a person and you would probably get a stick figure out of it, I would have no idea how to ink the finished result, and I would also probably struggle to color inside the lines. I remember my wife once saw an old drawing I had to do for school and she pointed out how I have a good understanding of perspective but sadly, I do not have much of anything else in terms of artistic skill. Therefore I feel a bit hypocritical to point out flaws and misgivings in any art, and especially so for comic book artists who work under stressful deadlines and illustrating the ideas of someone else, which is no easy feat. Unless the art is completely distracting or harming the story, I do not feel the need to make a huge deal out of errors or mistakes in it. Luckily, the Big Two always save up the best artists for events like Secret Invasion and Final Crisis.

The art duties for Secret Invasion were handled by the team of Leinil Francis Yu (penciller), Mark Morales (inker), and Laura Martin (colorist). Additionally, Gabriele Dell’Otto provided gorgeous painted covers for the whole mini series. Yu's artwork is full of kinetic energy, the panels are very clear and easy to read, and his work on facial expressions conveys the right emotions (most of the time). The script by Bendis gives Yu plenty of exotic locales to draw, such as the Savage Land and outer space, and a great load of heroes to fill the pages with. There's plenty of huge group shots and double page spreads that Yu uses effectively, channeling the detailed work of George Perez at times. The only complain I have about Yu's artwork is that he has a tendency to make the chin of his male figures very protruding. For characters like Thor and Luke Cage, who have a bigger body type, it is not as noticeable but when he draws it the same way on Spider-Man and Iron Fist, who have a smaller frame, I can't help but notice it. The work of Morales and Martin is incredibly well done, complementing Yu's work greatly. The colors are sometimes a little too bright to the eye, giving a very shiny aspect to materials that shouldn't be so reflective. The ink lines and shadows are rather thick and noticeable, which I like, but might not be to every reader's liking or preference. Overall, the art of Secret Invasion is quite pleasing to the eye and only suffers from minor missteps.

Final Crisis' art was handled by what can only be described as an ensemble of creators (according to Wikipedia): J.G. Jones, Carlos Pacheco, Doug Mahnke (pencillers), Jesus Merino, Christian Alamy, Tom Nguyen, Drew Gerasi, Norm Rapmund, Rodney Ramos, Walden Wong, Dough Mahnke (inkers), Alex Sinclair, Pete Pantazis, Tony Aviña (colorists) and Marco Rudy (the Wikipedia page files him under "Artists" with J.G. Jones, but I am not sure what he did exactly). There is a reason behind this extraordinarily long list of artists: J.G. Jones was originally set to be the main and only penciller of the series, but circumstances caused him to be late and DC decided to bring Pacheco and Mahnke to help him and eventually take over him. By the final issue of the series, Doug Mahnke took over all of the penciller duties (even doing some of his own inks), but because the book was already late, DC did all within its powers (in this case, bringing a number of colorists and inkers) to get the book out on time. J.G. Jones, however, did provide some beautiful covers for the entirety of the series. As for the interior, Morrison's script gave the artists plenty to work with, filling the pages with strange characters and some very particular panel work (somewhat reminiscent of We3). In turn the artists delivered some very memorable scenes such as Superman holding Batman's corpse and Barry Allen making his return. Alex Sinclair, the colorist that worked on the greatest portion of the series, conveyed a world that is at times filled with bleakness and destruction and at times filled with hope and the incredible. There was, however, one very noticeable mishap on the pages of Final Crisis 06, Shilo Norman who was previously shown as being black skinned was colored in a way that made him look Asian. In the end, the biggest feat by the huge art team was to emulate the original artists properly and finish thsis series in a timely fashion.

Both Final Crisis and Secret Invasion featured top notch art by some of the best artists in the medium. There is no denying the fact that Jones, Pacheco, Mahnke and the rest ofthe team delivered some great pages for Final Crisis, but for me the deciding factor for me is the uniformity of the artwork in Secret Invasion. I understand that DC is not at fault here, J.G. Jones himself admitted that it was his fault, and I understand that you can't plan for the unexpected (unless you are Batman). The end result of this was that Final Crisis' ending pages look different than the ones at the begining and I think that harms the flow of the story, especially when you consider this is a mini-series. I feel that at the end of the day, I must reward this round to Marvel and Secret Invasion for the consistent look that was provided by their art team, even if both events had great artists.

The Eternal Debate - Part IV : Final Crisis vs. Secret Invasion (The Tie-Ins)

And by eternal, I mean for the past 12 or so months. You could not go anywhere in the Internet (well, at least the sites I frequent) without finding a conversation about either Final Crisis or Secret Invasion. Or both. This year's events from the Big Two felt incredibly long, by design or by circumstances, but they are now officially over (Legion of 3 Worlds notwithstanding), which allows us to look at both events objectively, or at least as objectively as comic book readers can get.

That is where I come in. I want to look at the different aspects of both events, measure them up against each other and see who comes up on top. To do so, I have chosen several categories (or rounds) which will allow me to compare both sides of the 2008 Special Edition Event Coin. If you have not yet read both series in their entirety, there will be spoilers ahead. Oh, yeah, and the point system may or may not be arbitrary or what most people consider fair. You have been warned.

This is day four of the Eternal Debate, with Secret Invasion taking a lead of 2-1 against Final Crisis.

The Tie-ins

Ask any comic book fan what three aspects of their hobby frustrates him or her more than anything and they will probably tell you the following: continuity (and the disregard for it), volumes (deciding what volume a given comic book is part of) and useless tie-ins, almost always stemming from big events such as Secret Invasion and Final Crisis. Depending on who you ask, and how cynical that person happens to be, tie-ins are either a shameless money grab by the Big Two trying to cash in on the popularity of big events or just a chance for other writers to explore themes from said big events. The truth is that they are probably a bit of both, but there is no denying that some tie-ins are actually very good while others are almost completely useless and only partially related to the main event. The amount of tie-ins in the past year for the two events I'm reviewing is incredible, according to my hand count on Wikipedia, there were more than twenty Final Crisis and around one hundred or so (holy $#!&) Secret Invasion tie-ins.

Final Crisis had a smaller set of tie-ins that were for the most part released as mini-series and one-shots, the most notable exception being the tie-in in Batman's title that were also part of the highly publicized R.I.P. storyline. One of the most exceptional aspects of the Final Crisis tie-ins was that Grant Morrison wrote five of them, and these issues played a very big part to understanding the events of Final Crisis (Morrison himself has released a reading order , and his tie-ins are indeed there). Of course, this is a double edged sword because there is a huge amount of comic readers that did/do not purchase all of the tie-ins, either because of event fatigue or the dwindling economy and shrinking wallets. According to the sales numbers, only about one out of two people that bought Final Crisis 03 also bought the Superman Beyond 01 tie-in, meaning that there's a good portion of the readership that is missing a chapter in their Final Crisis storyline. To make matters worse, the hardcover and paperback collections of Final Crisis are being released as two parts (the main event and a companion book), it almost seems that they are purposely trying to do the opposite of what Morrison says. While the Morrison-written tie-ins are almost essential to understanding the story, the rest have been only tangentially related to the main event but at the same time overall enjoyable (most of them by Geoff Johns and Greg Rucka). As I mention in the introductory paragraph, there is still one tie-in that has not ended, Legion of 3 Worlds, which is kind of ridiculous when you consider the events in this mini-series happen before the events of Final Crisis.

Marvel opted for a different approach for their Secret Invasion tie-ins: they seemed to have thrown everything at the wall and hoped that it would stick. Almost every Marvel ongoing series felt the repercussions of the Skrull invasion in their pages, while the ones that were in the middle of an important story arc were given a special mini-series (such as Fantastic Four, Thor and Spider-Man). Looking at this from a marketing point-of view, this is a genius move from Marvel's side because it forces almost every one of their readers into reading a part of the event. The problem with dealing with such a huge amount of tie-ins is that the end-result is a mixed bag of stories ranging from good, such as Guardians of the Galaxy, to bad, like X-Factor (a title that has only suffered every time it gets dragged into an event). In addition to the above-mentioned tie-ins, there were also several one-shots and special mini-series to further showcase just how global this invasion was. The Secret Invasion tie-ins took place in several locales around the world: Washington (Thunderbolts), San Francisco (X-Men), United Kingdom (Captain Britain and MI13), Wakanda (Black Panther), and even the moon (Secret Invasion - Inhumans). The Black Panther's Secret Invasion tie-in is my personal favorite of the whole bunch; written by Jason Aaron, we not only see the Skrulls in very different light (as soldiers who are just caught in a war and want to head home), we also see the Black Panther deal with the heavy burdens of being a ruler of a land while at the same time battling the Skrulls in a way that would make The God of Prep-Time proud.

DC and Marvel took different approaches to their big event's tie-ins this year. I (obviously) have not read them all, but in sheer terms of quantity Marvel would have won this round. Even if the results weren't that good, the Secret Invasion tie-ins really did help to convey the global (and universal) scale of the Skrull invasion in the Marvel Universe. On the other hand, some tie-ins felt very forced or useless and just harmed the ongoing storyline of some titles. The Final Crisis titles aimed for quality over quantity, with each tie-in focusing on very specific parts of the DC Universe such as the LEGION, Flash, Batman and Checkmate. The only fault (and sadly, it's a big one) that I can find with them is what I mentioned above: if the tie-ins are fundamental to understanding the main story, then they should have been part of the event. I feel that both of the Big Two, while having vastly different approaches, handled the tie-ins in a successful manner with only minor missteps. Therefore, this round is declared a draw and each company adds a point to the scoreboard.

PS: I realize I should have done the post about the tie-ins before the post about the spin-offs, just because it would have flowed better thematically. It's only my fourth day in the blogosphere, I'm allowed to make mistakes.

The Eternal Debate - Part III : Final Crisis vs. Secret Invasion (The Spin-Offs)

And by eternal, I mean for the past 12 or so months. You could not go anywhere in the Internet (well, at least the sites I frequent) without finding a conversation about either Final Crisis or Secret Invasion. Or both. This year's events from the Big Two felt incredibly long, by design or by circumstances, but they are now officially over (Legion of 3 Worlds notwithstanding), which allows us to look at both events objectively, or at least as objectively as comic book readers can get.

That is where I come in. I want to look at the different aspects of both events, measure them up against each other and see who comes up on top. To do so, I have chosen several categories (or rounds) which will allow me to compare both sides of the 2008 Special Edition Event Coin. If you have not yet read both series in their entirety, there will be spoilers ahead. Oh, yeah, and the point system may or may not be arbitrary or what most people consider fair. You have been warned.

Following the last two posts, it's a tie between Final Crisis and Secret Invasion with each having won one round.

The Spin-Offs

Big events are usually among the most sold comics year after year, and the Big Two know this. After the end of each event, there's usually a couple of titles that come out of the events, often dealing with the aftermath or to explore a new aspect of character(s) that played a prominent role. The past few years we have seen quite a few quality titles spin out of big events, titles such as: Blue Beetle (from Infinite Crisis), Booster Gold (from 52), Avengers - The Initiative (from Civil War) and Incredible Hercules (from World War Hulk). While not every spin-off is a critical or commercial success (New Warriors, I'm looking at you), the bar is set pretty high for events to deliver on new or fresh titles.

Spinning out from the aftermath of Marvel's Secret Invasion, we have the Secret Warriors (with the first issue hitting stores this week, coincidentally), a group of novice, new characters being led by Nick Fury, former leader of SHIELD. Fury purposely wanted super-powered people that were not in the public eye, as he feared that any known heroes could be compromised by the Skrull invasion. While they first appeared in the pages of Mighty Avengers, the team showed up together during Secret Invasion in the streets of New York to aid the heroes of the city. Other than that, they did not do a whole lot during the event, other than joining the brawl and surprising the other Marvel heroes. The team is mostly a carte blanche for future creators to explore and expand, and Marvel's character department could certainly use some new blood to pump into their veins. In addition to this title, Secret Invasion has led into the new status quo called Dark Reign (of which there have been a couple of one-shots and tie-ins in several ongoing series) where Norman Osborn is in charge of the security of the United States. Osborn put together a new team, in the pages of the ominously named Dark Avengers, to be his personal right-hand propaganda tool. The team is mostly made up of amoral characters posing as iconic heroes that the general public of the Marvel Universe would recognize.

On the other side of the comic universe, Final Crisis hasn't actually led to any spin-offs. DC announced a couple of one-shots and the participation of four one-shots under the "Faces of Evil" banner, a quasi-event that has been described as "inspirationally tied to Final Crisis". The idea behind these is to showcase villains and the consequences of what happens when evil wins (one of the tag-lines for Final Crisis was "The Day Evil Won"), but the execution has been very uneven. On the other hand, The Super Young Team (the Japanese heroes that seemed to idolize the members of the Justice League) looked like they were bound to get a series out of Final Crisis, and I remember Morrison stating that he wanted to do one in an interview. Why the higher-ups decided not to is a mystery: Morrison has very ardent fans and the Super Young Team seemed to have been very liked and received by the readers, even if they played a very minimal part in Final Crisis (the team aided Mister Miracle, but they could have been easily replaced by any other young team). Wait a minute, a parody team made up of superficial heroes with their own series written by a British author? That sounds somewhat familiar, maybe they are afraid of similar sale numbers. All kidding aside, it seems that at the moment the DC universe has not caught up to the events of Final Crisis yet, and maybe that is why we have not seen any spin-offs that deal with the aftermath.

It would have been interesting to see the Big Two have two young teams spin off from their big events, the more serious-minded Secret Warriors and the caricaturesque Super Young Team, as it would have created an interesting symmetry. In my humble opinion, the decision from DC to not give Grant Morrison the chance to flesh out these Japanese heroes appears like a mistake, unless there are bigger plans in the works that we have not heard yet. At the end of the day, this round has to go out to Marvel by default. DC has not done anything with the events of Final Crisis, which seem to be happening in a bubble while Marvel has gone headfirst into the status quo after the events of Secret Invasion.

The Eternal Debate - Part II : Final Crisis vs. Secret Invasion (The Return)

And by eternal, I mean for the past 12 or so months. You could not go anywhere in the Internet (well, at least the sites I frequent) without finding a conversation about either Final Crisis or Secret Invasion. Or both. This year's events from the Big Two felt incredibly long, by design or by circumstances, but they are now officially over (Legion of 3 Worlds notwithstanding), which allows us to look at both events objectively, or at least as objectively as comic book readers can get.

That is where I come in. I want to look at the different aspects of both events, measure them up against each other and see who comes up on top. To do so, I have chosen several categories (or rounds) which will allow me to compare both sides of the 2008 Special Edition Event Coin. If you have not yet read both series in their entirety, there will be spoilers ahead. Oh, yeah, and the point system may or may not be arbitrary or what most people consider fair. You have been warned.

After yesterday's post, Secret Invasion leads 1-0 against Final Crisis.

The Return

While almost every comic book event features a shocking death, there is also a trend of returning popular characters during said events. This year saw the return of Barry Allen, in the pages of Final Crisis, and Mockingbird, in the pages of Secret Invasion. The return of these particular characters speaks a lot about the current trends that the Big Two (or at least their writers) are following at the moment.

Mockingbird, while having been around ever since the 1970's, reached the height of popularity during the late 80's and early 90's when she became part of the West Coast Avengers and for being married to Hawkeye (as a matter of fact, she originally "died" trying to save him). During Secret Invasion, it is revealed that the Mockingbird that died all the way back in 1993 was actually just a skrull (and had been one for who knows how long). To make matters more confusing, Mockingbird's soul and body have actually been seen a couple of times after her untimely death at the hands of Mephisto, at times aiding her friends or being manipulated by villains. I hate to nitpick on continuity, but this is one of the times that the writer (or whoever decided that this should happen) really messed things up by bringing back a character from the dead. I also find it hard to believe that any fans were clamoring for her return from the nether regions of the Marvel Universe. It does, however, go in hand with Marvel's direction as of late, where the events and character of the early 90's (a scary time to be a comic fan, as most people know) are being revisited or revamped. Characters like Darkhawk and the alternate timeline of 2099 are getting the revamp treatment, so why not Mockingbird too, right?


Barry Allen, most commonly known as the second Flash, has been dead for the past 23 years after sacrificing himself to stop the Anti-Monitor in the original Crisis on Infinite Earths. His death, one of the most famous and iconic ones in all comicdom, and possible return has been a hot issue for comic fans for years (I am one of those that believes he should have stayed dead). The pages of Final Crisis saw the return of the Silver Age legend, exclaiming "Run!" as he was being chased by the DCU's avatar of Death. Just by the nature of his powers, it is not incredibly hard to believe his comeback to the living world. Speedsters are shown travelling back and forth in time with relative ease in the DCU, so if a future writer wanted to reverse Barry Allen's death, there was already a built-in loophole to bringing him back. Barry Allen is almost synonymous with the Silver Age of comic books, with many people considering his first appearance as the beginning of said era, and this fits with the current output of many DC titles in recent years. While not exactly aiming for the Silver Age, DC seems to be consistently trying to return their universe to the era before Crisis on Infinite Earths: the return of the Multiverse, Hal Jordan becoming a hero again, and the Justice Society of America often teaming up with the Justice League of America in times of crisis.

To be honest, neither of the characters really did a whole lot in their respective events, but both companies have promised to further explore the ramifications of their return. Both events would not have lost much from having the characters stay dead, and the decision to bring back Mockingbird and Barry Allen only reinforces the revolving-door policy that the Big Two have on death (something which I mentioned in yesterday's post). At the end of the day, the return of Barry Allen has been requested from some fans for years while I have never heard of anyone wanting to see Mockingbird back. Add in the continuity-headache factor that the return of Mockingbird causes and I wonder why anyone would bother to bring her back at all. Even though I mentioned I would not have liked to see Barry Allen's return (and I am concerned if having 3 Flashes around is a bit redundant, too) I think that Final Crisis, for giving the fans what they want and a more easily understood (as far as comic books go) return, wins this round.

The Eternal Debate - Part I : Final Crisis vs. Secret Invasion (The Death)

And by eternal, I mean for the past 12 or so months. You could not go anywhere in the Internet (well, at least the sites I frequent) without finding a conversation about either Final Crisis or Secret Invasion. Or both. This year's events from the Big Two felt incredibly long, by design or by circumstances, but they are now officially over (Legion of 3 Worlds notwithstanding), which allows us to look at both events objectively, or at least as objectively as comic book readers can get.

That is where I come in. I want to look at the different aspects of both events, measure them up against each other and see who comes up on top. To do so, I have chosen several categories (or rounds) which will allow me to compare both sides of the 2008 Special Edition Event Coin in a series of posts. If you have not yet read both series in their entirety, there will be spoilers ahead. Oh, yeah, and the point system may or may not be arbitrary or what most people consider fair. You have been warned.

The Death

Ever since the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, no comic book big event is really an event without a big profile death. This year's casualties: MartianManhunter and The Wasp. The coincidences that these two share are rather obvious: both of them are founding members of each company's premiere team (theJLA and Avengers, respectively), both of them are known for being good at handling teams or group dynamics, while at the same time neither of the characters are really that popular. Yes, MartianManhunter has had his own solo series, but he's hardly known to the non-comic reading world. The Wasp, to my knowledge, has never had an ongoing series and she wasn't even particularly liked to a lot of people. So both events killed "safe" characters, neither one would cause too much of an outrage or garner the attention of the mainstream public (like Batman's eventual "death" later would). MartianManhunter's death was particularly disappointing, as he only appeared for two panels, drugged out of his mind by villains before dying by spear-on-fire-through-the-chest (the number one cause of death for Martians of that age and sex group). The Wasp, on the other hand, died in the heat of a battle between the heroes andSkrulls: having been tricked by a skrull impersonating Hank Pym, Wasp inadvertently became the Skrull's secret weapon (some sort of exploding biological bomb) until Thor put her out her misery by Kirby-crackling her into another dimension or something.

Both characters received a "Requiem" special issue, that dealt with the repercussions of their demise and, the reaction of those close to the departed and to recap the lives of the heroes. "Secret Invasion: Requiem" was mostly made up of reprints, with very little new insight on the life of Wasp and more to do with Hank Pym's life after the events of Secret Invasion. "Final Crisis: Requiem" expands on the death of MartianManhunter while at the same time showing us in detail his last moments and the arrangements he had for his funeral, it was an incredibly done and moving issue (and one of the best things to come out of Final Crisis if you ask me).

In the end, both Wasp and Martian Manhunter were tricked into oblivion by the antagonists. Martian Manhunter went down early in the event, as a means to establish how evil/resourceful/hardcore Libra was. With his dying breath, however, he not only gave the bad guys the biggest scare of their lives, he also sent one last telepathic message to his friends who would become his caretakers. The Wasp, however, almost killed all of her friends and someone else had to come to the rescue. I guess this round goes to MartianManhunter and Final Crisis. But...

DC, in an incredibly stupid marketing move, revealed the figures for the upcoming Blackest Night event. The event is going to feature the Black Lanterns, formerly dead people brought back to life, and guess who is there? That's right, everyone's favorite Martian is back mere months after his death, in the company's next big event. Comics already get a bad reputation for their revolving door policy on the death of characters, and DC has just affirmed it even more so. Wasp's death was also suspiciously ambiguous: with no body to be recovered, a future writer could very easily turn back her death in the future, I have to respect Marvel a bit more for not immediately returning one of their characters back to life. So this round goes to Secret Invasion, because DC shoot their own foot with Martian Manhunter's return.