Monday, March 19, 2018

 

The End of The Wildcat Strike


One of the greatest injustices of The New 52 is that it altogether erased the Justice Society of America from continuity.

Sure, we got a comics thing that was called Earth 2 out of it but in my very, very, VERY humble opinion, eff that comic.

One, because eff it and two, because it had ZERO Wildcat in it. None. Therefore, it was terrible.

Since 2011's cancellation of The DC Universe continuity, to my knowledge, there have been ZERO appearances of Ted Grant, Wildcat's gov't name, within the pages of a DC Comic, in-continuity or otherwise.

So, imagine my surprise while looking through the June 2018 DC Comics solicitations and lo AND behold, Scooby-Doo Team-Up, of all things is where we see a Wildcat of any sort, reappear on the comics page.

If you're not reading Scooby-Doo Team-Up, you should. It is simply a celebration of all things fun, Scooby, comics and Warner Bros properties. In short, it's good comics.

Now, I know this story won't be in any way, be a precursor of anything within DC Comics proper but seeing as how we've had no Wildcat sightings in seven years, I'll gladly take this.

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Comments:
Bah, nu52 JSA was the worst. DC really, really needs to stop hiring creative teams who think readers don't actually like the characters.

I can forgive a writer for wanting to explore characters from new angles, but please don't reject everything that readers liked about the characters in the first place. While of course that's a subjective matter, there's got to be at least a little consensus that, say, Superman shouldn't be Wolverine (barely any powers, gets beat up a lot, surly, rides motorcycle, hated and feared by the common man). And yet that's exactly what nu52 gave us. And with JSA, they gave us, among other things, an Earth-2 Superman who was killed and resurrected as a pawn of Darkseid.

Which gets us back to Apokolips and why it's such a problem for DC. If Apokolips really is in frequent physical conflict with earth (ANY earth), there are only two possible outcomes. Either Apokolips destroys earth -- as happened on Earth-2 -- or else the heroes keep beating Darkseid, in which case Darkseid is reduced to a big dumb pushover. A terrible use for the whole New Gods / Apokolips thing, which I have only recently started to appreciate as I have learned a little more about Kirby's intentions. (Turns out Glorious Godfrey was based on Billy Graham, which I absolutely love.) The forces of Apokolips are expressions of modern evils, not just a bunch of guys strong enough for Superman to have to punch multiple times.
 
If I had my way, The Fourth World would be another universe altogether. You're absolutely right, if Darkseid just sort of shrugs his shoulders again and decides to invade Earth and fails, how can we possibly perceive him as a threat.

Having him as part of another reality, should he turn an eye towards Earth, would make his coming something to be feared.
 
Indeed, they could just stick to the original concept: Darkseid probably could conquer earth through sheer force, but he wants to CORRUPT earth first. Thus, he pulls schemes to bring out the "dark side" of us.

That was Kirby's original concept anyway, and I have even read that, if Kirby's full plans had come to fruition, a final encounter with Darkseid would have revealed he is actually pretty weak and cowardly. Which would in no way contradict Darkseid's ability to conquer worlds: it's not so much that he is stronger than his conquests, so much as he makes them weaker.

Not to drag politics into your blog, but I think about Vladimir Putin: he runs a country that isn't really all that powerful or rich, but what they DO know how to do is exploit bigotry, authoritarian impulses, and divisiveness in other nations. If Putin "gave us Trump", he did so only by exploiting the weaknesses the American people gave him to work with. His little army of trolls had no effect, none, on anyone who refused to be exploited.
 
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