Take that, PETA!
{image source: mycomicshop.com}
My first comics came from the tale end of the 1970s. While I was born in 1973, I didn’t get into comics until the 1980s. So my taste in comics were formed by the so-called “Bronze Age“, a period between the super-goofy and the super-serious, where adventures were serious but not too serious. This is what I view as fun stories that new when to get “real”. The Justice League fighting giant animal hybirds? Sure! Batman teaming with eccentric homeless people to solve a murder? Up my alley. Firestorm’s entire concept? Sign me up! It may be darker than the Silver Age and more serious, but it was still fun and adventurous enough for younger readers, like I was at the time, and was accessible to almost any age group. It’s where shared continuity came to DC Comics but still remembered what made DC work for its fans. And when it started getting past the limitations it thought it had (or in some cases actually had) thanks to the Comics Code, and probably why I defend the Code in theory, but not always in practice or application.
That doesn’t mean I’m trapped in a Bronze Age mindset. The first comic I collected was The Transformers, starting at issue #6. The majority of my collection comes from the post-Crisis DC Universe and into the 90s, only in part because that’s when I had a job and spending money. A good story is where you find it and there are easily comics in my collection that would never have flown in the Bronze Age. However, those are the stories that I enjoyed as a kid and probably has the biggest influence on the stories in my head (although Captain Yuletide, by nature, would be closer to Silver Age, many stories from that period I also read as a kid thanks to oversized hardcover trades I used to get at the library long before trades became a big deal in comics).
So when I saw a Comic Book Resources interview with Dan DiDio on YouTube about Convergence I was going to pass it up. Seeing what today’s DC creators are doing with superheroes in general and the DCU in particular I worry that this event will be about updating the classics to something more modern, or like Turtles Forever, a lampooning of the old in favor of the new without realizing what made the old work. However, the interview also featured Len Wein, one of the top writers of the period, and the discussion of the 1970s, one of the timelines featured in Convergence, was actually quite good.
Whomever is responsible for the laughing DiDio animation at the beginning needs to never do that again!
One thing I disagree with DiDio on (and this will shock no one) is when he says event fatigue is the result of bad events and bad writing. The problem is that there are too many events, that are all about shaking up a status quo and redefining things to the point that’s there’s no status quo to redefine. Events used to be an annual thing and only shook up the universe when there was a story behind it. A status quo was set up and the events didn’t screw up the main books as much as they do now. (Remember Dwayne McDuffie’s problems when events kept ruining story ideas and character relationships he was trying to set up.) Events need to be scaled back so that when one occurs, the story matters. Instead there are so many events, sometimes company-wide and sometimes in a particular title group, that it doesn’t matter anymore. It isn’t special, it just keeps the DC Universe from finding an identity to shake up. The problem isn’t the event, it’s that events seem to be all there is.
Would I bother with Convergence if I had income? I’d consider it. As a concept it’s actually pretty interesting, but I come from a time when heroes had their individual adventures (with secret identities that help us connect to the heroes personally) and teamed up in groups like the Justice League, with the event being an annual event that didn’t ruin the individual stories. I don’t see that anymore and I’m still not convinced Convergence won’t become Turtles Forever until I see some reviews. Cynical? Possibly, but isn’t that how superhero universes run nowadays? I don’t want to see the Bronze Age ruined by that. They used to have more optimism to balance things out.
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