{"id":2313,"date":"2009-07-15T15:40:09","date_gmt":"2009-07-15T22:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=2313"},"modified":"2009-07-15T15:40:09","modified_gmt":"2009-07-15T22:40:09","slug":"jeff-and-matt-bs-about-comics-blackest-night-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/?p=2313","title":{"rendered":"Jeff and Matt BS About Comics: Blackest Night #1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Blackest Night<\/em> #1 is in stores today. Ever since its announcement in 2007, we’ve watched the build up across the two main Green Lantern titles (and perhaps every other book writer Geoff Johns has handled). Was it even possible to meet expectations when you’ve had so long to build anticipation for a zombie superhero epic?<\/p>\n

Matt and I try to figure out the answer. I dug it (though I have some reservations). He didn’t. This is how it went down, and it’s safe to assume there are major SPOILERS below the picture:<\/p>\n

\"I<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Jeff:<\/strong> I like what I perceive to be the twist on the zombie genre, where they need to kill and consume to power themselves. I imagine they become higher functioning the more charged their rings become.<\/p>\n

Matt:<\/strong> I hope so, cause if not, the gimmick seems wasted; if they’re not like THEMSELVES when they resurrect, then what’s the point? They’re just shock troop monsters.<\/p>\n

Jeff:<\/strong> I think they’re a little themselves. Just also ravenous killbots, too.<\/p>\n

Matt:<\/strong> I got a very “scary monster” vibe from them all…and why would they not rebel against it? maybe they will and that’s how this will evolve?<\/p>\n

Jeff: <\/strong>It’s only issue #1. That’s certainly one way they can go with it. But I imagine that it’s also like the red ring or the violet ring where it controls you to some degree.<\/p>\n

Matt:<\/strong> I just…I know this makes me sound like a fuddy-duddy or one of those “comics were better when they were FUN, damnit” reactionaries, but the level of violence and the way these characters are treated just fundamentally bothers me. I think it’s possible to have adult complex comics without constantly depicting graphic acts of violence. And while it could be argued it’s appropriate to this story, it bothers me that it defines so much of Geoff Johns’ other work that it seems almost rote here.<\/p>\n

Maybe we should take a step back; did you LIKE the issue?<\/p>\n

Jeff: <\/strong> I did. But I’m a dyed-in-the-wool GL fan and I’ve been excited for this for two years. I think it hit all the buttons it promised to, it was well written and has good art. It feels like it’s going somewhere. It feels like it will have capital-c Consequences.<\/p>\n

Regarding the violence, though? I disagree with you and agree with you.<\/p>\n

Matt: <\/strong> This should be good.<\/p>\n

Jeff: <\/strong> I do think that it is appropriate to the subject matter. We’re dealing with shambling hordes of metapowered undead. They haven’t come back because Black Hand wants to have tea and cucumber sandwiches. And I do think it’s shocking to see Sue Dibny tear someone’s heart out.<\/p>\n

That said, I don’t think it makes the transition from shocking violence to horror very well. And I’m saying this as somebody who has a practically academic knowledge of slasher movies in specific and horror cinema in general. There’s shocking violence and there is horror, and the two rarely overlap.<\/p>\n

Matt: <\/strong> Explain more about this “shocking violence vs. horror” bit.<\/p>\n

Jeff:<\/strong> The former is what gets your adrenaline going. It’s about showing you something brutal and unflinching. I hate to say it’s fun, but there’s a reason why you watch, say, Freddy Vs. Jason<\/em> and you laugh at the kills and you cheer when Michael Bay makes things explode. Horror is the total opposite emotional response from what shock evokes, as odd as that might sound. Horror is more about what you don’t see\/what you don’t ever want to see than what you are shown explicitly. It capitalizes on your mind’s ability to mess with you to create an emotional response. J Horror, as played out as the genre is right now, has always done much more competently than the more recent domestic attempts at it.<\/p>\n

To translate that to comics, it’s a lot easier to depict shock violence on panel, especially if you have a top tier artist. Horror, on the other hand, deals with what happens after you cut away or in between the panels. In a lot of ways, that actually suits the comics work perfectly, but it’s a lot tougher to pull that off in a big event comic where people are flying around punching zombies.<\/p>\n

Matt:<\/strong> So Blackest Night isn’t really a horror comic as much as it’s a slasher comic?<\/p>\n

Jeff: <\/strong> Honestly, I don’t know yet. The first issue is very much a slasher comic. The disconnect is that, listening to Johns talk about his plans and goals for it, it certainly sounds like he wants it to be a horror comic. But it’s not Pixu<\/em>, for instance.<\/p>\n

Matt:<\/strong> I think that speaks to why this level of violence and gore and shock is ultimately a failure; these events aren’t built toward or used to punctuate an atmosphere of terror and dread; they just pile up on top of one another. Did we need Black Hand licking Bruce Wayne’s skull, THEN Scar ripping out a Guardian’s heart, THEN Zombie Dibnys massacring the Hawks? Take one of those, and build an issue around it, and you have something; stack them up and it just feels crass.<\/p>\n

Jeff:<\/strong> If you take only one of those and build an issue around it, especially the first issue, how would that read from a pacing perspective? Just to play devil’s advocate here, one of the complaints we hear so much about modern comics is that nothing happens from issue to issue. Now the complaint is that too much happens?<\/p>\n

Matt:<\/strong> It feels crass because with a slasher movie, you are usually taking characters that have no real history\/attachment to the viewer and killing them indiscriminately using fun shock techniques. Here, it’s like Friday the 13th<\/em> where the campers are all your friends and Jason Voorhes is a teacher you really liked in high school. I don’t think it’s as much about pacing as it is about how you use the space you have. I don’t think any of those events really advanced the story, honestly. Maybe we’ll learn they have in future issues. They were just there to shock.<\/p>\n

Jeff:<\/strong> I think that Scar turning on the Guardians definitely moves that plotline forward. We know she’s been acting covertly against them since the end of the Sinestro Corps War. As for Black Hand and the skull…I think that’s setting up something down the line, as well as just letting William Hand be disgusting and disturbing. That’s a matter of the characters taking on a life of their own, maybe. I can appreciate what happened to the Hawks if it goes somewhere, even if the closure it puts on the Carter\/Kendra relationship is a bit rushed.<\/p>\n

Matt:<\/strong> Right…but did these things that happened have to be depicted in the most gory, violent way possible? That’s my ultimate problem. Scar can betray the Guardians without ripping out their hearts. Black Hand can be a creep and not fetishize corpses. Instead, these things happen with this over-the-top level of gore and violence, and I think it actually diminishes the story, at least for me, because there’s no recognition of these awful events as Awful Events, just as ticks on a plot chart that for some reason have to be depicted in the most Horrifying Way Possible.<\/p>\n

Jeff: <\/strong>Like Ultimatum<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Matt: <\/strong>Yes, like that. What’s frustrating is that Loeb usually can’t write characters as anything but one-liners and violence, but Johns has the ability to write good characters and dialogue; his ability as a writer is constantly being tripped up by his desire to incorporate gory violence into his books. I feel so old and out of it. “Get off my lawn Geoff Johns!”<\/p>\n

Jeff:<\/strong> We are old, Matt.<\/p>\n

Matt:<\/strong> I know.<\/p>\n

Jeff: <\/strong> I think that the way Johns has embraced megaviolence is unfortunate. At the same time, it doesn’t alienate me from his work. That tends to be Alex Ross that does that.<\/p>\n

Matt:<\/strong> For me, the megaviolence has<\/em> alienated me from his work, I guess. Other than that, if I really detach, this is a strong first issue that sets up a number of plot threads while squeezing in a little bit of solid character work. He is really good at short scenes or interactions that reveal a great deal, like the moments with Dr. Stein or the one-panel graveside scenes.<\/p>\n

Jeff: <\/strong>Devil’s advocate again: How much of that is good writing and how much of it is simply triggering responses based on our reading history? If you’re a new reader, do you care about the Dr. Stein scene?<\/p>\n

Matt: <\/strong> Good point, but man, we’re so far down that rabbit hole that I can’t even imagine what a new reader would think of any of this. High level, this is all really just fanboy masturbation, right?<\/p>\n

What a cliffhanger, huh? That’s a question that we’re going to tackle later this week. If I were sadistic, we would do this DC Challenge<\/em> style and pass it off to Sarah and Chris to finish discussing it.<\/p>\n

What did you gals and guys think of Blackest Night<\/em>? What external factors affect your enjoyment of it? What do you think of the brutal violence in the book? Which Black Lantern has the best hair?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blackest Night #1 is in stores today. Ever since its announcement in 2007, we’ve watched the build up across the two main Green Lantern titles (and perhaps every other book writer Geoff Johns has handled). Was it even possible to meet expectations when you’ve had so long to build anticipation for a zombie superhero epic? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,6,69],"tags":[206,39,207,77,208],"class_list":["post-2313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bitching","category-comics","category-fandom","tag-blackest-night","tag-dc","tag-event-comics","tag-green-lantern","tag-horror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2313"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2313\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.alertnerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}