JohnLees
Monday, April 27, 2009, 10:51 PM
Hey Club! Two weeks have passed, and that means it’s time once more for us to gather up in a cosy circle and have a chat about comic books. And I’ll start this week’s chat with a quick question. Who picked up Flash: Rebirth #1 at the start of the month? I did, and overall I enjoyed it. Like, I imagine, many of the people who picked this up, I’m a Wally West fan. He’s been The Flash as long as I’ve been following the comic, he’s “my” Flash. Barry Allen was, to me, the dead Flash, important to the mythos, sure, but only in the way that Uncle Ben is important to the story of Peter Parker. As a result, Flash: Rebirth essentially served as my introduction to Barry Allen as The Flash. Which makes Flash: Rebirth an intriguing entity: a comic charged with “introducing” a character that is over 50 years old.
Many of the most popular superhero titles have been running, in one form or another, since the 60s, 50s, 40s or even the 30s. That’s a lot of history for one character to go through. But it is the nature of the iconic superhero comic, serialised storytelling spanning across generations, and through eras of the comic book industry. For a series to thrive for many decades, it needs to change with the times, adapt to remain relevant to its audience. Just look at Batman, and all the changes he’s been through over the past 70 years. Think of all the times Superman’s origins have been revisited and retold, from The Man of Steel, to Birthright, to the upcoming Secret Origins, all attempts to update the character and keep up with the tangled web of comic continuity.
Ah, continuity. There’s a word I’m sure we’ll be returning to often in this discussion. In comics, continuity can be a towering, intimidating force, a giant wall excluding new readers from a long-running comic. Some kid enjoys the Spider-Man trilogy, and now they want to read more about Spider-Man! Oh wait, where’s Mary-Jane? Um, you see, Spider-Man revealed his identity to the world, and Aunt May got shot, and then this demon called Mephisto came along…. oh, and Norman and Harry Osborn are alive again, because… wait, where are you going, come back! Similarly, filmgoers who became Batman converts after seeing The Dark Knight might be disappointed to discover Bruce Wayne is dead. But wait, he’s not really dead, he’s in a cave somewhere at the start of history, because if you pick up Grant Morrison’s seven-volume series, Seven Soldiers, you’ll see that Darkseid’s Omega Sanction… wait, where are you going, come back! And don’t even get me started on X-Men continuity – I think it’ll take a week of its own to try and untangle that hot mess.
The point is, it can all get very confusing, and often suffocating. For writers, it can be very difficult to just tell a great story with an iconic character when you’re buried under retcons, editorial mandates and continuity, continuity, continuity. Sometimes, it’s enough to make the right people at Marvel or DC throw their hands up in the air, and cry, “That’s it, we’re starting over!” And that’s where the franchise relaunch comes in.
For the record, I’m not talking about alternative universes like Marvel’s Ultimate line here. That’s kinda cheating, as you really are starting again. What I’m focusing on in this meeting is the practise of creating the sense of a fresh start in a long-running comic, while still largely preserving the history of what occurred before. This can be a tricky process, but the easiest, most direct way to relaunch a franchise is by ending the current series, and starting a new volume with a new issue #1. One is the loneliest number, the song tells us, but in the world of comics, one can be a very powerful number. It is short-hand for “the beginning”, telling new readers that this is their chance to jump onboard and be introduced to a character and his world. So when an established, long-running superhero property is repackaged with a new #1, what purpose does it serve?
In an attempt to further explore this question, I will be looking at three superhero properties that over the past few years have been successfully relaunched: Thor, Green Lantern and Iron Man. I believe the best place to start is with Thor, as in a lot of ways, this is the simplest of the three relaunches. Three years earlier, Thor’s comic series had finished, and quite definitively, too. As part of Marvel’s Disassembled event, The Mighty Thor ran a storyline entitled Ragnarok. For those of you up on your Norse mythology, you’ll know Ragnarok was their version of the end of the world. And for Thor and all the other familiar faces of Marvel’s Asgard, that’s what Ragnarok was to be: their final adventure. The story ended with the whole cast killed off, and Asgard destroyed. The End, if ever there was one.
A lot happened in Thor’s absence. House of M. Civil War. And as time passed and the Marvel Universe changed, fan demand for one of its oldest, greatest heroes steadily grew. Finally, the fans got what they wanted, and Thor was brought back in a brand new series (with a new, shortened title – from The Mighty Thor to just Thor) under the pen of J. Michael Straczynski, with art by Olivier Coipel. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, it would seem, as while Thor’s book was rarely the hottest of sellers before, now the book regularly hits near the top of the charts whenever it appears, with the latest issue even outselling the sales titan that is Jeph Loeb’s Hulk (another franchise relaunch, might I add). So what was the formula for success with the relaunch of Thor?
The accessibility helps a lot. Everything that happened before still happened, Thor’s history is still respected for the longtime readers. For them, the distance created between the previous volume and this one makes Straczynski’s run play out like a kind of sequel. The same characters, but a new story. But crucially, for new readers, Straczynski’s Thor is written in a way that it can be seen as totally self-contained – someone wanting to get into the world of Thor need only read this current volume to feel completely in the loop. As a result, someone who has never read a Thor comic before could pick up the graphic novel collecting issues 1-6 of Straczynski’s series – a graphic novel simply entitled Thor – and be satisfied that they are jumping on “from the beginning”. The first few pages of the book play out like a “Previously On…” sequence, condensing decades of Thor history – including the Ragnarok that brought it all to an apparent end - into a few panels. Let’s take a look at Thor’s voiceover, the lines that the story opens with:
I have dreamed such dreams. I was a man dreaming I was a god. I was a god dreaming I was a man.
Juxtaposed with two beautifully-drawn images by Coipel – showing, respectively, Thor at battle with the Warriors Three, and Dr. Donald Blake in the middle of surgery – this short, simple statement encapsulates the ever-changing, often convoluted history of Thor and his mortal alter egos into a concise, poetic statement. Straczynski is telling us that we don’t need to get out our Marvel encyclopaedia and immerse ourselves in the complex histories of Eric Masterson, Jake Olsen and the like. All we need to know going forward is that, at one point in his long life, Thor had a symbiotic relationship with a mortal man, Donald Blake, and so the god learned what it was to be human.
The Thor graphic novel operates on three levels. First, it is a book about reintroduction. Each chapter reintroduces an aspect of the Thor mythos into the Marvel Universe. Chapter 1 gives us Thor himself, Chapter 2 Asgard, Chapter 3 Heimdall, Chapter 4 the Warriors Three, Chapter 5 Balder, Loki and various other Thor villains, and Chapter 6 restores Asgard as a nation populated by a civilisation of gods. Second, the book serves as a showcase for Thor. In amidst the exposition and scene-setting, we are given a few single-issue standalone stories, designed to give us insight in Thor’s powers and personality. We see him righting wrongs in war-torn Africa, and battling old foe The Destroyer. But the best-known sequence in the graphic novel is surely Thor’s battle with Iron Man in Chapter 3. If it can even be called a battle; utterly one-sided beating might be the more appropriate definition.
Thanks to the outcome of Civil War, Iron Man was at this point arguably the top dog in the Marvel Universe, and thanks to Extremis (discussed later) he was seen as more powerful than ever before. Yet here, Thor smacks him around from pillar to post, gives him a swirlie and steals his lunch money. For a new Marvel reader – perhaps someone well-entrenched in the happenings of Civil War, but unfamiliar with Thor before they decided to give the title a go with the relaunch – this immediately establishes that Thor is a major heavy-hitter, and an incredibly powerful force to be reckoned with. But more than just showing us how strong Thor is, this confrontation also says a lot about Thor’s character. Some insight is given on his stance on Civil War:
Now that your war of brothers is done, I have no interest in becoming involved on either side of the disagreement. I am, for the moment, neutral. Do not give me cause to reconsider that position.
The shadow of Civil War hangs heavy over this chapter. The battle is set in New Orleans, where Thor contemplates his absence during Hurricane Katrina, a disaster he could have fought against, if he’d been around at the time. This reads like a metaphor for his absence during Civil War, an event he could have made a difference in, had he been there. Indeed, much of his fury against Tony Stark stems from his decision to use a clone of Thor during that conflict, which turned murderous and injured or even killed some of their fellow heroes. Yet the decision he ultimately makes at the end of this scene is to withdraw himself from the table, to not get involved in the politics and divisions of the wider Marvel Universe, a decision reflected by Straczynski himself, with the direction he has taken the book. The odd appearance or reference aside, Thor is a title that has largely been content to do its own thing, be its own self-contained story in its own little corner of the Marvel Universe, with Straczynski doing his own thing rather than tying into the latest event.
And that brings us to the third level on which Thor operates: the graphic novel is an expression of the vision of J. Michael Straczynski. While of course dealing with iconic, tenured characters from the Marvel domain, Straczynski crafts a tale that is distinctly individual. He reintroduces various key aspects of the mythos, reacquaints us with Thor as a protagonist, but at the same time puts his own creative spin on it all, creating something that feels unique. Take Loki, for example. The scheming and deception is present, true to form with Loki’s many appearances over the decades. But when Straczynski brings back Loki, it is in a female body. While she really doesn’t come into play until later in the series, beyond the confines of the graphic novel that made for this meeting’s recommended reading, what is notable about her portrayal is that it is classic Loki, through and through, but because that forked tongue now stems from a woman’s face, it creates a whole new dynamic. Straczynski is treading familiar ground, paying respect to what has come before, while at the same time doing something new.
But something that goes beyond a single character – and something quickly apparent in this particular graphic novel – is the tone of the book. When you think of Thor, you likely think of sweeping epic fantasy, and mythical landscapes. Straczynski gives us the fabled city of Asgard, but then he puts it in the middle of Oklahoma. And so we get a dichotomy between the fantastic and the everyday, often with humorous results. Rather than leaping forth into battle with Frost Giants, we see the Asgardians show up for a community meeting with the local folks, discussing issues with plumbing, or lack thereof. It is a lot more grounded and human than what you’d expect, particularly when compared to the staggering scale the previous volume of Thor finished on.
So what does this accomplish? J. Michael Straczynski had put his own authorial stamp on the world of Thor, making the title not only distinctive from the rest of Marvel’s mainstream output, but distinctive from the long history of The Mighty Thor that came before it. This first graphic novel collecting Thor establishes the title as a singular entity, not just through Straczynski’s story, but through Olivier Coipel’s art. Not only has he given Thor a new costume, but his whole style is just so expressive and individual, it’s not quite like anything else being drawn in comics at the moment. All this works together to create a kind of brand, giving the book it’s own identity unique to itself, making the relaunch of Thor truly feel like a new beginning.
Moving on, I began this meeting by talking briefly about Flash: Rebirth. But let’s not forget that Barry Allen was not the first character to be “reborn” in such a manner. Flash: Rebirth is very much a spiritual successor to Green Lantern: Rebirth, even in that it has the same creative team of writer Geoff Johns and artist Ethan Van Sciver. The talking of branding above makes a good transition here, as DC has already helped cultivate the “Rebirth brand”. Judging by Green Lantern: Rebirth and now Flash: Rebirth, a “rebirth” is a very specific permutation of the franchise relaunch, one of particular relevance to DC Comics.
More than Marvel, DC has been known for the emphasis it has placed on legacy characters over the years. Robin has changed from Dick Grayson to Jason Todd to Tim Drake. Through the 80s and 90s, DC properties such as Green Lantern, Green Arrow and The Flash were revamped by replacing the title hero with a younger model. That is a trend that has been somewhat reversed over the course of this decade. First, Oliver Queen reclaimed the mantle of Green Arrow. But next up was restoring his old partner, Hal Jordan, as DC’s flagship Green Lantern, a role Kyle Rayner had filled with great success. Easier said than done. Not only had Hal Jordan gone crazy and turned into the villain Parallax, wiping out most of the Green Lantern Corps in the process, he eventually died, and became the new host for The Spectre. Turning him back into a living, breathing, relevant Green Lantern again would require drastic action. Which is where Rebirth comes in.
The franchise relaunch that Green Lantern: Rebirth represented for the Green Lantern mythos is a little trickier than what happened with Thor. With Thor, it was clean-cut. We had a definitive end, then an extended break, followed by a definitive new beginning. But with Green Lantern: Rebirth, it gets a little murkier. By my definition, what sets a “rebirth” apart from a regular franchise relaunch, is that is involves “relaunching” an active franchise, but with a new character in the title role. Or, more particularly, an old character. Where Thor was about reintroduction, Green Lantern: Rebirth is about restoration. It is a relaunch heavily informed by nostalgia, as much about looking back as it is about looking forward, as Brad Meltzer demonstrates in his introduction at the opening of the Green Lantern: Rebirth graphic novel:
In lesser hands, Rebirth would have given us exactly what we wanted: Hal Jordan back in the costume. In Geoff’s able hands, we got the return of the lore that made Hal Jordan great.
Green Lantern is a series that never went away – it was moving along with Kyle Rayner at the helm, doing reasonable enough sales – but Meltzer’s words imply that still, something had been lost. He calls it “the lore”, and he tasks Green Lantern: Rebirth with returning it. Green Lantern was a title weighed down by continuity, and throughout the graphic novel Geoff Johns sets to work on unpacking it all, stripping it down to the basic, core appeal of the character that connected with readers back when he was first created, and building up from there.
In a lot of ways, Rebirth feels less like the new beginning you might expect from a relaunch, and more like the end of a previous volume, tying up loose ends and tidying up the mess the continuity was in at that time. Take Guy Gardner, who as a result of 90s gimmickry had acquired an alien lineage and been revamped as the superpowered Warrior. Johns is quick to undo all that, and get Guy back to his Green Lantern incarnation that earned him a fan following in the first place. Then Sinestro is brought back from the dead, his sudden resurrection simply explained in a single line of dialogue.
But the biggest piece of continuity repair work would be the titular “rebirth” of Hal Jordan. And restoring Hal as Green Lantern was always going to be more complex than simply bringing him back to life. It isn’t as simple as with Thor, where it was simply a matter of the character dying, being brought back, and moving forward from there. The nature of Hal’s death means that the first half of the graphic novel is dominated by an intricate retcon, changing Parallax from Hal Jordan’s villainous alter ego to a demonic parasite of sentient fear that possessed him and poisoned his mind. The problems readers may have had with accepting Hal Jordan as a credible Green Lantern again must be addressed within the story, often with Batman representing that voice of dissent. And in amidst this rewriting of Green Lantern history, Geoff Johns must find a way to tie in his depiction of Hal with what came before, streamline it all into a coherent timeline. An example of him doing this comes four pages into Chapter 5: Rings, in the voiceover or a newly-reborn Hal Jordan:
I don’t hear any voices. Nothing inside screaming you cannot do this. Or telling me to go “find” myself. No more soul searching road trips. I’m Hal Jordan. Man. Pilot. Green Lantern.
Here, Johns is taking Hal Jordan back to the basics – the man with no fear, a hero of unmatched willpower – and casting aside the deconstruction of more recent years. But in doing so, this narration reads as an outright rejection of all the attempts of character progression for Hal during Volume 3 of Green Lantern. This shows how sometimes a relaunch can have a damaging effect, with the strongest future only possible by trampling on elements of the past.
But I do not want to sound like I’m being negative about Green Lantern: Rebirth – it’s a great story, and took the Green Lantern mythos in a fresh, exciting new direction. Any destructive outcome of the retcons is surely compensated by the fact that Geoff Johns is creating too, enhancing Green Lantern history by contributing new dimensions to this world. Take this piece of exposition spoken by Kyle Rayner on page 13 of Chapter 3: Yellow:
It’s not just light, Oliver. The Central Battery the Guardians made. It collects willpower from every living being in the universe, raw emotional willpower converted into energy. Amplified by our own a million times over. There’s an emotional electromagnetic spectrum out there that can be harnessed and used. Green willpower is the most pure…
For current readers of Green Lantern, this is a concept we take for granted as an integral part of the Green Lantern mythology. So it’s easy to forget that this concept of the emotional spectrum was introduced right here in Green Lantern: Rebirth. From this addition to the Green Lantern mythology, we got the concept that just as the Green Lantern Corps’ green rings tapped into willpower, Sinestro’s yellow ring tapped into fear, that the fabled (and often ridiculed) “yellow impurity” of Green Lantern lore was in fact a vulnerability to fear itself. This in turn started the build to 2007’s highly successful Sinestro Corps War event, which itself set the stage for the current “War of Light” in the pages of Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps, with representatives of all 7 colors of the emotional spectrum vying for dominance. In Green Lantern: Rebirth, we can find the first steps leading towards this summer’s highly anticipated event, The Blackest Night. A unified direction for the Green Lantern franchise spanning years, all from a new spin on the familiar mythos introduced by Geoff Johns.
So once again, we are presented with a relaunch that works as an expression of a writer’s vision. Geoff Johns took the Green Lantern mythos, and made it his own, branding his run on Green Lantern as a singular entity, distinct from even the decades of Green Lantern comics that came before. This saga of the emotional spectrum, of the rise of the Sinestro Corps and the approach of the Blackest Night, is a story that has been growing for several years, since the beginning of this volume of Green Lantern. Every graphic novel collecting Johns’ run therefore becomes an important part of his wider Green Lantern tapestry. But at the same time, the story is crafted in a way that to get a full understanding and appreciation of this universe, readers do not need to read any more than Johns’ run on Green Lantern, and maybe the Green Lantern Corps sister title that launched as a post-Rebirth spin-off. With Secret Origins, Johns even produced his own version of Hal Jordan’s origin, so you don’t need to go beyond his current run even to get that story. With Rebirth, Johns didn’t just pay respect to Green Lantern tradition – he broke from it, too. With the dynamics established in Rebirth, Geoff Johns was able to make the subsequent relaunch of the Green Lantern monthly comic (with a new #1!) feel self-contained, and separate from all Green Lantern stories that came before. It’s the ultimate welcome mat to draw in new readers. Not only did Rebirth reintroduce Hal Jordan to a new generation of fans, it told them that Rebirth was all they needed to read before moving onto the new series.
If I’d had more room on the reading list, I would have popped Green Lantern: No Fear on there too, as that was what really marked the start of the new volume proper. You could argue that since that featured the true #1 of the new ongoing series, that No Fear was the true relaunch. Green Lantern: Rebirth is more of a bridging point between eras, simultaneously a closing on the books of one chapter of Green Lantern history, while another is opened. Geoff Johns himself sums it up well in his original pitch for Rebirth, included at the back of the graphic novel:
We want to keep all this as simple and connected as possible, we want to reach a strong status quo of Hal Jordan as a Green Lantern after this series. His journey will not be one of redemption or guilt, but one of rebuilding.
Rebuilding Hal’s life, rebuilding Coast City, rebuilding the Corps, rebuilding a hero. Our theme for the monthly book.
Even in pitching Rebirth, Geoff Johns has an eye on what the book must accomplish to “reach a strong status quo” for a new volume of Green Lantern as a monthly ongoing title. Perhaps this is what a “rebirth” could be defined as, then. Rather than being an outright relaunch, it is a story that sets the stage for a relaunch, clearing up issues with continuity, and crafting a mythos that is both classic and says something new. Green Lantern: Rebirth laid the foundations that allowed the relaunch of Green Lantern to be a fresh start, a clean slate, a new beginning.
In the case of both Thor and Green Lantern, we have examples of comic book franchises relaunched under the guiding hand of a single writer’s vision. And in each case, the outcome was a comic with a distinct identity, unshackled from the dense continuity of what came before, and readily accessible to new readers. It is now fairly easy, through collecting graphic novels or even single issues, for a new reader to quickly catch up and have “the whole story” of Thor or Green Lantern. That’s the benefit of these relaunches insulating their respective franchises from their own histories. When I read Green Lantern: Rebirth, or the Thor graphic novel, I’m being told enough about the character’s history to feel like I know their world. But by cutting it down to the broad strokes, I’m not being bogged down by the various deaths, resurrections, hiatuses, and other shifts in the status quo that are par for the course in serialised superhero adventures. When you gloss over all that, you’re left with what’s at the core of the character, what’s crucial for moving forward. And that really should be all that you need. A relaunch makes continuity less cumbersome and intimidating. It makes comics welcoming again. That’s the power of #1.
I really could have ended this meeting there, but I don’t think this particular avenue of discussion would be complete without discussing a significant repercussion of the power of #1 in ongoing comics. Marvel and DC are well aware of the power of #1, and Marvel in particular has been keen to exploit it. The Punisher, for example, is in the middle of his 7th volume, and I sorely doubt you could say every “relaunch” The Punisher has gone through has dramatically altered the status quo and set out a bold new direction the way the relaunch of Thor or Green Lantern did. There is a danger that a franchise will be relaunched, not for a fresh start, not because it needs to be relaunched, but simply because a #1 on the cover will sell more.
I’d be spoilt for choice trying to choose a cynical, pointless relaunch that achieved nothing from Marvel’s back catalogue, but I decided to go with an interesting example of the trend instead: Iron Man: Extremis. Because why torture you by making you read a bad book, when I can treat you by letting you read a good one? I’m nice like that. It’s like All-Star Batman and Robin never happened!
In the wake of 2004’s crossover event, Disassembled, Marvel decided to turn back the counter and start again from #1 with their “big three” of Captain America, Iron Man and Thor. Delaying Thor’s new series for 3 years helped that relaunch feel something more than arbitrary. Captain America is an interesting example in that this particular volume featured a kind of “relaunch within a relaunch” about two years into Ed Brubaker’s run, with Steve Rogers being killed off and replaced as Captain America by his former sidekick, Bucky Barnes. Then there was Iron Man’s relaunch, a task assigned to writer Warren Ellis and artist Ari Granov. The story they came up with was Extremis.
Of our three case studies, I’d say that it’s with Iron Man: Extremis that identifying the tangible value as a relaunch is most difficult. Unlike Thor or Hal Jordan, Tony Stark wasn’t dead, removing the most obvious use for a fresh start. There was not much in the way of a hiatus to create demand, either. One month we had Iron Man #89, then the next we had Iron Man #1. So, what does Extremis bring to the table that justifies the relaunch? The blurb on the back of the graphic novel tells us that Extremis will “redefine the armored Avenger’s world for the 21st century”. So if Thor revolved around reintroduction, and Green Lantern: Rebirth was based on restoration, is Iron Man: Extremis a story about redefinition?
While not so obvious a choice for a relaunch as our other featured examples, Iron Man was certainly a character in a position to benefit from some redefinition. This was a character, over the past few years, had been brainwashed into becoming a sleeper agent for Kang, killed off, replaced by a teenage version of himself from the past, sucked into a pocket dimension along with other major heroes as part of the Heroes Reborn event, returned into the main Marvel Universe in his adult body with his teenage mind in Heroes Return, had his true identity revealed, been appointed as America’s Secretary of Defense, lost this position after the reality-bending intervention of the Scarlet Witch, and had his secret identity flimsily restored by having him claim he was retiring as Iron Man while finding a different individual to replace him, when he was actually remaining in the role himself… wait, where are you going, come back! In light of all this, a chance to take a step back and start afresh could certainly be considered welcome. And that’s what Extremis is, with Warren Ellis stepping in to tell a story which is pleasantly self-contained and accessible.
Extremis is a graphic novel that seems designed as an ideal jumping-on point for a new reader. His origin is retold and updated, with Vietnam being replaced by Afghanistan as the site of Stark’s life-changing injury and creation of the Iron Man armor. But origins aside, there is very little reference to any of Tony Stark’s storied history as Iron Man. Decades’ worth of Iron Man stories, and all that Warren Ellis carries forward here is a few offhand remarks about how the armor has evolved (“Hard to believe I used to be able to fit this into a briefcase.”), about how he no longer has a need for a magnetic chestplate to protect his heart, and about his past battle with alcoholism. Ellis avoids getting tangled up in the various status quo changes of Iron Man, instead preferring to draw in his focus more tightly on Tony Stark as a character, and get a handle on the core, constant elements of Stark that haven’t changed.
Note how little Iron Man appears during the first couple of chapters. Most of our time here is spent with Tony Stark, and the pivotal confrontation of the first chapter isn’t with a supervillain, but a documentary filmmaker in the vein of Michael Moore. Tony gets a verbal pummelling, getting dragged over the coals for his past as an arms dealer, and the relevance of his various technological advancements. The always-articulate Tony Stark has no witty retort, and can only respond with a panel of silence when documentarian John Pillinger poses this question on page 17 of Chapter 1:
Do they have your painkilling drug pumps in Iraq? Do you think an Afghan kid with his arms blown off by a landmine is remotely impressed by an Iron Man suit?
This crisis of conscience is a driving force of the narrative, with a recurring motif being Stark’s struggle to look at himself in the mirror. He questions is own early ideals (“Iron Man used to represent the future”) and contemplates whether he’ll ever really be able to escape his arms dealer roots, if the Iron Man suit can ever truly be anything more than a weapon, a killing machine. These are difficult questions, and Ellis doesn’t offer up an easy answer to them. In the end, Iron Man is forced to use his suit’s weaponry to kill Mallen – the main antagonist of Extremis – in surprisingly gory fashion.
After glossing over Iron Man’s multitude of status quo changes, Extremis proceeds to change Iron Man’s status quo itself. His armor is given a major upgrade through the Extremis serum that gives the book its title. The new powers this grants him are clearly defined, the differences from his previous armor made clear. Another attempt to solidify this relaunch as the beginning of a new era for the character.
Unfortunately, the new era wouldn’t last long. Within a few short years, Iron Man was once again bogged down with continuity. This time around, the events of Civil War had made Iron Man’s identity public once more, and had repackaged Tony Stark as the new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., and as Marvel’s premiere bastard. But it was the summer of 2008, and the success of the Iron Man movie meant new readers may be approaching Marvel, looking for an accessible entry point into the Armored Avenger’s comic book adventures. How was Marvel going to cater to these new fans? That’s right, another relaunch. And so we got The Invincible Iron Man, written by Matt Fraction and drawn by Salvador Larroca, and yet another #1.
Now I won’t go into The Invincible Iron Man (God knows this column is long enough already), but overall it’s a strong book, which does its job in rehabilitating Tony Stark as a likeable hero. But it highlights a problem with Marvel. It’s becoming all too easy to just hit the restart button every time they write themselves into a corner, or every time they want a spike in sales. When used in moderation, a relaunch can be a valuable tool in making potentially obscure comic book continuity accessible, as seen with Thor and Green Lantern: Rebirth. But too many relaunches of a title in too short a space of time can result in a fractured history for that character. When a status quo is changed around too frequently, readers are left with no status quo at all to relate to. A franchise relaunch can be a great thing, but it’s even greater when that relaunch is the foundation to something substantial, something which connects with readers, and grows, and continues to build on those foundations.
It would seem Marvel is starting to acknowledge once more that tenure has its benefits also. Recently, the relaunched Thor went through a slight alteration. When totalling up all of the issues of Journey into Mystery (where Thor debuted, in #83, so they’re kinda cheating) and all the issues of the three volumes of The Mighty Thor and now Thor, it turned out that issue #13 of the current volume was actually #600 in their accumulated total. And so Thor #13 was renumbered as Thor #600. In the coming months, Marvel will be doing the same renumbering with Captain America #600, Hulk #600 and Daredevil #500, and Amazing Spider-Man #600 hits in July too. As Marvel celebrates its 70th Anniversary this year, perhaps they realise that a sense of history, of each character having a legacy, is in its own way every bit as powerful as #1.
There are a lot of positive things that can come from a franchise relaunch. Thor, Green Lantern: Rebirth, and Iron Man: Extremis are all examples of that. When done well, and used in moderation, a relaunch can unburden a title from complex, alienating continuity, and get back to the basic appeal of a character, drawing in new readers in the process. The comic companies just need to be responsible in how they use this creative tool. First issues cease to be special if they become a semi-regular occurrence, and so #1 loses its power. Relaunch too often, and #1 just becomes another number.
Meeting #5
We open up the history books next meeting, as we take a look at the birth of Vertigo Comics. We’ll take a look at some of the highly influential DC titles that introduced a new wave of British writing talent to American audiences, and would eventually form part of Vertigo’s starting lineup. What sets apart these books from the mainstream comics of the time? What are the qualities that would come to define a Vertigo comic?
RECOMMENDED READING:
Animal Man, Volume 1
Grant Morrison and Chas Truog, Tom Grummett
Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits
Garth Ennis and William Simpson
The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes
Neil Gaiman and Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Malcolm Jones III
Meeting #6
New Avengers: Breakout
Civil War
Captain America: The Death of Captain America Volume 1 – The Death of the Dream
Many of the most popular superhero titles have been running, in one form or another, since the 60s, 50s, 40s or even the 30s. That’s a lot of history for one character to go through. But it is the nature of the iconic superhero comic, serialised storytelling spanning across generations, and through eras of the comic book industry. For a series to thrive for many decades, it needs to change with the times, adapt to remain relevant to its audience. Just look at Batman, and all the changes he’s been through over the past 70 years. Think of all the times Superman’s origins have been revisited and retold, from The Man of Steel, to Birthright, to the upcoming Secret Origins, all attempts to update the character and keep up with the tangled web of comic continuity.
Ah, continuity. There’s a word I’m sure we’ll be returning to often in this discussion. In comics, continuity can be a towering, intimidating force, a giant wall excluding new readers from a long-running comic. Some kid enjoys the Spider-Man trilogy, and now they want to read more about Spider-Man! Oh wait, where’s Mary-Jane? Um, you see, Spider-Man revealed his identity to the world, and Aunt May got shot, and then this demon called Mephisto came along…. oh, and Norman and Harry Osborn are alive again, because… wait, where are you going, come back! Similarly, filmgoers who became Batman converts after seeing The Dark Knight might be disappointed to discover Bruce Wayne is dead. But wait, he’s not really dead, he’s in a cave somewhere at the start of history, because if you pick up Grant Morrison’s seven-volume series, Seven Soldiers, you’ll see that Darkseid’s Omega Sanction… wait, where are you going, come back! And don’t even get me started on X-Men continuity – I think it’ll take a week of its own to try and untangle that hot mess.
The point is, it can all get very confusing, and often suffocating. For writers, it can be very difficult to just tell a great story with an iconic character when you’re buried under retcons, editorial mandates and continuity, continuity, continuity. Sometimes, it’s enough to make the right people at Marvel or DC throw their hands up in the air, and cry, “That’s it, we’re starting over!” And that’s where the franchise relaunch comes in.
For the record, I’m not talking about alternative universes like Marvel’s Ultimate line here. That’s kinda cheating, as you really are starting again. What I’m focusing on in this meeting is the practise of creating the sense of a fresh start in a long-running comic, while still largely preserving the history of what occurred before. This can be a tricky process, but the easiest, most direct way to relaunch a franchise is by ending the current series, and starting a new volume with a new issue #1. One is the loneliest number, the song tells us, but in the world of comics, one can be a very powerful number. It is short-hand for “the beginning”, telling new readers that this is their chance to jump onboard and be introduced to a character and his world. So when an established, long-running superhero property is repackaged with a new #1, what purpose does it serve?
In an attempt to further explore this question, I will be looking at three superhero properties that over the past few years have been successfully relaunched: Thor, Green Lantern and Iron Man. I believe the best place to start is with Thor, as in a lot of ways, this is the simplest of the three relaunches. Three years earlier, Thor’s comic series had finished, and quite definitively, too. As part of Marvel’s Disassembled event, The Mighty Thor ran a storyline entitled Ragnarok. For those of you up on your Norse mythology, you’ll know Ragnarok was their version of the end of the world. And for Thor and all the other familiar faces of Marvel’s Asgard, that’s what Ragnarok was to be: their final adventure. The story ended with the whole cast killed off, and Asgard destroyed. The End, if ever there was one.
A lot happened in Thor’s absence. House of M. Civil War. And as time passed and the Marvel Universe changed, fan demand for one of its oldest, greatest heroes steadily grew. Finally, the fans got what they wanted, and Thor was brought back in a brand new series (with a new, shortened title – from The Mighty Thor to just Thor) under the pen of J. Michael Straczynski, with art by Olivier Coipel. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, it would seem, as while Thor’s book was rarely the hottest of sellers before, now the book regularly hits near the top of the charts whenever it appears, with the latest issue even outselling the sales titan that is Jeph Loeb’s Hulk (another franchise relaunch, might I add). So what was the formula for success with the relaunch of Thor?
The accessibility helps a lot. Everything that happened before still happened, Thor’s history is still respected for the longtime readers. For them, the distance created between the previous volume and this one makes Straczynski’s run play out like a kind of sequel. The same characters, but a new story. But crucially, for new readers, Straczynski’s Thor is written in a way that it can be seen as totally self-contained – someone wanting to get into the world of Thor need only read this current volume to feel completely in the loop. As a result, someone who has never read a Thor comic before could pick up the graphic novel collecting issues 1-6 of Straczynski’s series – a graphic novel simply entitled Thor – and be satisfied that they are jumping on “from the beginning”. The first few pages of the book play out like a “Previously On…” sequence, condensing decades of Thor history – including the Ragnarok that brought it all to an apparent end - into a few panels. Let’s take a look at Thor’s voiceover, the lines that the story opens with:
I have dreamed such dreams. I was a man dreaming I was a god. I was a god dreaming I was a man.
Juxtaposed with two beautifully-drawn images by Coipel – showing, respectively, Thor at battle with the Warriors Three, and Dr. Donald Blake in the middle of surgery – this short, simple statement encapsulates the ever-changing, often convoluted history of Thor and his mortal alter egos into a concise, poetic statement. Straczynski is telling us that we don’t need to get out our Marvel encyclopaedia and immerse ourselves in the complex histories of Eric Masterson, Jake Olsen and the like. All we need to know going forward is that, at one point in his long life, Thor had a symbiotic relationship with a mortal man, Donald Blake, and so the god learned what it was to be human.
The Thor graphic novel operates on three levels. First, it is a book about reintroduction. Each chapter reintroduces an aspect of the Thor mythos into the Marvel Universe. Chapter 1 gives us Thor himself, Chapter 2 Asgard, Chapter 3 Heimdall, Chapter 4 the Warriors Three, Chapter 5 Balder, Loki and various other Thor villains, and Chapter 6 restores Asgard as a nation populated by a civilisation of gods. Second, the book serves as a showcase for Thor. In amidst the exposition and scene-setting, we are given a few single-issue standalone stories, designed to give us insight in Thor’s powers and personality. We see him righting wrongs in war-torn Africa, and battling old foe The Destroyer. But the best-known sequence in the graphic novel is surely Thor’s battle with Iron Man in Chapter 3. If it can even be called a battle; utterly one-sided beating might be the more appropriate definition.
Thanks to the outcome of Civil War, Iron Man was at this point arguably the top dog in the Marvel Universe, and thanks to Extremis (discussed later) he was seen as more powerful than ever before. Yet here, Thor smacks him around from pillar to post, gives him a swirlie and steals his lunch money. For a new Marvel reader – perhaps someone well-entrenched in the happenings of Civil War, but unfamiliar with Thor before they decided to give the title a go with the relaunch – this immediately establishes that Thor is a major heavy-hitter, and an incredibly powerful force to be reckoned with. But more than just showing us how strong Thor is, this confrontation also says a lot about Thor’s character. Some insight is given on his stance on Civil War:
Now that your war of brothers is done, I have no interest in becoming involved on either side of the disagreement. I am, for the moment, neutral. Do not give me cause to reconsider that position.
The shadow of Civil War hangs heavy over this chapter. The battle is set in New Orleans, where Thor contemplates his absence during Hurricane Katrina, a disaster he could have fought against, if he’d been around at the time. This reads like a metaphor for his absence during Civil War, an event he could have made a difference in, had he been there. Indeed, much of his fury against Tony Stark stems from his decision to use a clone of Thor during that conflict, which turned murderous and injured or even killed some of their fellow heroes. Yet the decision he ultimately makes at the end of this scene is to withdraw himself from the table, to not get involved in the politics and divisions of the wider Marvel Universe, a decision reflected by Straczynski himself, with the direction he has taken the book. The odd appearance or reference aside, Thor is a title that has largely been content to do its own thing, be its own self-contained story in its own little corner of the Marvel Universe, with Straczynski doing his own thing rather than tying into the latest event.
And that brings us to the third level on which Thor operates: the graphic novel is an expression of the vision of J. Michael Straczynski. While of course dealing with iconic, tenured characters from the Marvel domain, Straczynski crafts a tale that is distinctly individual. He reintroduces various key aspects of the mythos, reacquaints us with Thor as a protagonist, but at the same time puts his own creative spin on it all, creating something that feels unique. Take Loki, for example. The scheming and deception is present, true to form with Loki’s many appearances over the decades. But when Straczynski brings back Loki, it is in a female body. While she really doesn’t come into play until later in the series, beyond the confines of the graphic novel that made for this meeting’s recommended reading, what is notable about her portrayal is that it is classic Loki, through and through, but because that forked tongue now stems from a woman’s face, it creates a whole new dynamic. Straczynski is treading familiar ground, paying respect to what has come before, while at the same time doing something new.
But something that goes beyond a single character – and something quickly apparent in this particular graphic novel – is the tone of the book. When you think of Thor, you likely think of sweeping epic fantasy, and mythical landscapes. Straczynski gives us the fabled city of Asgard, but then he puts it in the middle of Oklahoma. And so we get a dichotomy between the fantastic and the everyday, often with humorous results. Rather than leaping forth into battle with Frost Giants, we see the Asgardians show up for a community meeting with the local folks, discussing issues with plumbing, or lack thereof. It is a lot more grounded and human than what you’d expect, particularly when compared to the staggering scale the previous volume of Thor finished on.
So what does this accomplish? J. Michael Straczynski had put his own authorial stamp on the world of Thor, making the title not only distinctive from the rest of Marvel’s mainstream output, but distinctive from the long history of The Mighty Thor that came before it. This first graphic novel collecting Thor establishes the title as a singular entity, not just through Straczynski’s story, but through Olivier Coipel’s art. Not only has he given Thor a new costume, but his whole style is just so expressive and individual, it’s not quite like anything else being drawn in comics at the moment. All this works together to create a kind of brand, giving the book it’s own identity unique to itself, making the relaunch of Thor truly feel like a new beginning.
Moving on, I began this meeting by talking briefly about Flash: Rebirth. But let’s not forget that Barry Allen was not the first character to be “reborn” in such a manner. Flash: Rebirth is very much a spiritual successor to Green Lantern: Rebirth, even in that it has the same creative team of writer Geoff Johns and artist Ethan Van Sciver. The talking of branding above makes a good transition here, as DC has already helped cultivate the “Rebirth brand”. Judging by Green Lantern: Rebirth and now Flash: Rebirth, a “rebirth” is a very specific permutation of the franchise relaunch, one of particular relevance to DC Comics.
More than Marvel, DC has been known for the emphasis it has placed on legacy characters over the years. Robin has changed from Dick Grayson to Jason Todd to Tim Drake. Through the 80s and 90s, DC properties such as Green Lantern, Green Arrow and The Flash were revamped by replacing the title hero with a younger model. That is a trend that has been somewhat reversed over the course of this decade. First, Oliver Queen reclaimed the mantle of Green Arrow. But next up was restoring his old partner, Hal Jordan, as DC’s flagship Green Lantern, a role Kyle Rayner had filled with great success. Easier said than done. Not only had Hal Jordan gone crazy and turned into the villain Parallax, wiping out most of the Green Lantern Corps in the process, he eventually died, and became the new host for The Spectre. Turning him back into a living, breathing, relevant Green Lantern again would require drastic action. Which is where Rebirth comes in.
The franchise relaunch that Green Lantern: Rebirth represented for the Green Lantern mythos is a little trickier than what happened with Thor. With Thor, it was clean-cut. We had a definitive end, then an extended break, followed by a definitive new beginning. But with Green Lantern: Rebirth, it gets a little murkier. By my definition, what sets a “rebirth” apart from a regular franchise relaunch, is that is involves “relaunching” an active franchise, but with a new character in the title role. Or, more particularly, an old character. Where Thor was about reintroduction, Green Lantern: Rebirth is about restoration. It is a relaunch heavily informed by nostalgia, as much about looking back as it is about looking forward, as Brad Meltzer demonstrates in his introduction at the opening of the Green Lantern: Rebirth graphic novel:
In lesser hands, Rebirth would have given us exactly what we wanted: Hal Jordan back in the costume. In Geoff’s able hands, we got the return of the lore that made Hal Jordan great.
Green Lantern is a series that never went away – it was moving along with Kyle Rayner at the helm, doing reasonable enough sales – but Meltzer’s words imply that still, something had been lost. He calls it “the lore”, and he tasks Green Lantern: Rebirth with returning it. Green Lantern was a title weighed down by continuity, and throughout the graphic novel Geoff Johns sets to work on unpacking it all, stripping it down to the basic, core appeal of the character that connected with readers back when he was first created, and building up from there.
In a lot of ways, Rebirth feels less like the new beginning you might expect from a relaunch, and more like the end of a previous volume, tying up loose ends and tidying up the mess the continuity was in at that time. Take Guy Gardner, who as a result of 90s gimmickry had acquired an alien lineage and been revamped as the superpowered Warrior. Johns is quick to undo all that, and get Guy back to his Green Lantern incarnation that earned him a fan following in the first place. Then Sinestro is brought back from the dead, his sudden resurrection simply explained in a single line of dialogue.
But the biggest piece of continuity repair work would be the titular “rebirth” of Hal Jordan. And restoring Hal as Green Lantern was always going to be more complex than simply bringing him back to life. It isn’t as simple as with Thor, where it was simply a matter of the character dying, being brought back, and moving forward from there. The nature of Hal’s death means that the first half of the graphic novel is dominated by an intricate retcon, changing Parallax from Hal Jordan’s villainous alter ego to a demonic parasite of sentient fear that possessed him and poisoned his mind. The problems readers may have had with accepting Hal Jordan as a credible Green Lantern again must be addressed within the story, often with Batman representing that voice of dissent. And in amidst this rewriting of Green Lantern history, Geoff Johns must find a way to tie in his depiction of Hal with what came before, streamline it all into a coherent timeline. An example of him doing this comes four pages into Chapter 5: Rings, in the voiceover or a newly-reborn Hal Jordan:
I don’t hear any voices. Nothing inside screaming you cannot do this. Or telling me to go “find” myself. No more soul searching road trips. I’m Hal Jordan. Man. Pilot. Green Lantern.
Here, Johns is taking Hal Jordan back to the basics – the man with no fear, a hero of unmatched willpower – and casting aside the deconstruction of more recent years. But in doing so, this narration reads as an outright rejection of all the attempts of character progression for Hal during Volume 3 of Green Lantern. This shows how sometimes a relaunch can have a damaging effect, with the strongest future only possible by trampling on elements of the past.
But I do not want to sound like I’m being negative about Green Lantern: Rebirth – it’s a great story, and took the Green Lantern mythos in a fresh, exciting new direction. Any destructive outcome of the retcons is surely compensated by the fact that Geoff Johns is creating too, enhancing Green Lantern history by contributing new dimensions to this world. Take this piece of exposition spoken by Kyle Rayner on page 13 of Chapter 3: Yellow:
It’s not just light, Oliver. The Central Battery the Guardians made. It collects willpower from every living being in the universe, raw emotional willpower converted into energy. Amplified by our own a million times over. There’s an emotional electromagnetic spectrum out there that can be harnessed and used. Green willpower is the most pure…
For current readers of Green Lantern, this is a concept we take for granted as an integral part of the Green Lantern mythology. So it’s easy to forget that this concept of the emotional spectrum was introduced right here in Green Lantern: Rebirth. From this addition to the Green Lantern mythology, we got the concept that just as the Green Lantern Corps’ green rings tapped into willpower, Sinestro’s yellow ring tapped into fear, that the fabled (and often ridiculed) “yellow impurity” of Green Lantern lore was in fact a vulnerability to fear itself. This in turn started the build to 2007’s highly successful Sinestro Corps War event, which itself set the stage for the current “War of Light” in the pages of Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps, with representatives of all 7 colors of the emotional spectrum vying for dominance. In Green Lantern: Rebirth, we can find the first steps leading towards this summer’s highly anticipated event, The Blackest Night. A unified direction for the Green Lantern franchise spanning years, all from a new spin on the familiar mythos introduced by Geoff Johns.
So once again, we are presented with a relaunch that works as an expression of a writer’s vision. Geoff Johns took the Green Lantern mythos, and made it his own, branding his run on Green Lantern as a singular entity, distinct from even the decades of Green Lantern comics that came before. This saga of the emotional spectrum, of the rise of the Sinestro Corps and the approach of the Blackest Night, is a story that has been growing for several years, since the beginning of this volume of Green Lantern. Every graphic novel collecting Johns’ run therefore becomes an important part of his wider Green Lantern tapestry. But at the same time, the story is crafted in a way that to get a full understanding and appreciation of this universe, readers do not need to read any more than Johns’ run on Green Lantern, and maybe the Green Lantern Corps sister title that launched as a post-Rebirth spin-off. With Secret Origins, Johns even produced his own version of Hal Jordan’s origin, so you don’t need to go beyond his current run even to get that story. With Rebirth, Johns didn’t just pay respect to Green Lantern tradition – he broke from it, too. With the dynamics established in Rebirth, Geoff Johns was able to make the subsequent relaunch of the Green Lantern monthly comic (with a new #1!) feel self-contained, and separate from all Green Lantern stories that came before. It’s the ultimate welcome mat to draw in new readers. Not only did Rebirth reintroduce Hal Jordan to a new generation of fans, it told them that Rebirth was all they needed to read before moving onto the new series.
If I’d had more room on the reading list, I would have popped Green Lantern: No Fear on there too, as that was what really marked the start of the new volume proper. You could argue that since that featured the true #1 of the new ongoing series, that No Fear was the true relaunch. Green Lantern: Rebirth is more of a bridging point between eras, simultaneously a closing on the books of one chapter of Green Lantern history, while another is opened. Geoff Johns himself sums it up well in his original pitch for Rebirth, included at the back of the graphic novel:
We want to keep all this as simple and connected as possible, we want to reach a strong status quo of Hal Jordan as a Green Lantern after this series. His journey will not be one of redemption or guilt, but one of rebuilding.
Rebuilding Hal’s life, rebuilding Coast City, rebuilding the Corps, rebuilding a hero. Our theme for the monthly book.
Even in pitching Rebirth, Geoff Johns has an eye on what the book must accomplish to “reach a strong status quo” for a new volume of Green Lantern as a monthly ongoing title. Perhaps this is what a “rebirth” could be defined as, then. Rather than being an outright relaunch, it is a story that sets the stage for a relaunch, clearing up issues with continuity, and crafting a mythos that is both classic and says something new. Green Lantern: Rebirth laid the foundations that allowed the relaunch of Green Lantern to be a fresh start, a clean slate, a new beginning.
In the case of both Thor and Green Lantern, we have examples of comic book franchises relaunched under the guiding hand of a single writer’s vision. And in each case, the outcome was a comic with a distinct identity, unshackled from the dense continuity of what came before, and readily accessible to new readers. It is now fairly easy, through collecting graphic novels or even single issues, for a new reader to quickly catch up and have “the whole story” of Thor or Green Lantern. That’s the benefit of these relaunches insulating their respective franchises from their own histories. When I read Green Lantern: Rebirth, or the Thor graphic novel, I’m being told enough about the character’s history to feel like I know their world. But by cutting it down to the broad strokes, I’m not being bogged down by the various deaths, resurrections, hiatuses, and other shifts in the status quo that are par for the course in serialised superhero adventures. When you gloss over all that, you’re left with what’s at the core of the character, what’s crucial for moving forward. And that really should be all that you need. A relaunch makes continuity less cumbersome and intimidating. It makes comics welcoming again. That’s the power of #1.
I really could have ended this meeting there, but I don’t think this particular avenue of discussion would be complete without discussing a significant repercussion of the power of #1 in ongoing comics. Marvel and DC are well aware of the power of #1, and Marvel in particular has been keen to exploit it. The Punisher, for example, is in the middle of his 7th volume, and I sorely doubt you could say every “relaunch” The Punisher has gone through has dramatically altered the status quo and set out a bold new direction the way the relaunch of Thor or Green Lantern did. There is a danger that a franchise will be relaunched, not for a fresh start, not because it needs to be relaunched, but simply because a #1 on the cover will sell more.
I’d be spoilt for choice trying to choose a cynical, pointless relaunch that achieved nothing from Marvel’s back catalogue, but I decided to go with an interesting example of the trend instead: Iron Man: Extremis. Because why torture you by making you read a bad book, when I can treat you by letting you read a good one? I’m nice like that. It’s like All-Star Batman and Robin never happened!
In the wake of 2004’s crossover event, Disassembled, Marvel decided to turn back the counter and start again from #1 with their “big three” of Captain America, Iron Man and Thor. Delaying Thor’s new series for 3 years helped that relaunch feel something more than arbitrary. Captain America is an interesting example in that this particular volume featured a kind of “relaunch within a relaunch” about two years into Ed Brubaker’s run, with Steve Rogers being killed off and replaced as Captain America by his former sidekick, Bucky Barnes. Then there was Iron Man’s relaunch, a task assigned to writer Warren Ellis and artist Ari Granov. The story they came up with was Extremis.
Of our three case studies, I’d say that it’s with Iron Man: Extremis that identifying the tangible value as a relaunch is most difficult. Unlike Thor or Hal Jordan, Tony Stark wasn’t dead, removing the most obvious use for a fresh start. There was not much in the way of a hiatus to create demand, either. One month we had Iron Man #89, then the next we had Iron Man #1. So, what does Extremis bring to the table that justifies the relaunch? The blurb on the back of the graphic novel tells us that Extremis will “redefine the armored Avenger’s world for the 21st century”. So if Thor revolved around reintroduction, and Green Lantern: Rebirth was based on restoration, is Iron Man: Extremis a story about redefinition?
While not so obvious a choice for a relaunch as our other featured examples, Iron Man was certainly a character in a position to benefit from some redefinition. This was a character, over the past few years, had been brainwashed into becoming a sleeper agent for Kang, killed off, replaced by a teenage version of himself from the past, sucked into a pocket dimension along with other major heroes as part of the Heroes Reborn event, returned into the main Marvel Universe in his adult body with his teenage mind in Heroes Return, had his true identity revealed, been appointed as America’s Secretary of Defense, lost this position after the reality-bending intervention of the Scarlet Witch, and had his secret identity flimsily restored by having him claim he was retiring as Iron Man while finding a different individual to replace him, when he was actually remaining in the role himself… wait, where are you going, come back! In light of all this, a chance to take a step back and start afresh could certainly be considered welcome. And that’s what Extremis is, with Warren Ellis stepping in to tell a story which is pleasantly self-contained and accessible.
Extremis is a graphic novel that seems designed as an ideal jumping-on point for a new reader. His origin is retold and updated, with Vietnam being replaced by Afghanistan as the site of Stark’s life-changing injury and creation of the Iron Man armor. But origins aside, there is very little reference to any of Tony Stark’s storied history as Iron Man. Decades’ worth of Iron Man stories, and all that Warren Ellis carries forward here is a few offhand remarks about how the armor has evolved (“Hard to believe I used to be able to fit this into a briefcase.”), about how he no longer has a need for a magnetic chestplate to protect his heart, and about his past battle with alcoholism. Ellis avoids getting tangled up in the various status quo changes of Iron Man, instead preferring to draw in his focus more tightly on Tony Stark as a character, and get a handle on the core, constant elements of Stark that haven’t changed.
Note how little Iron Man appears during the first couple of chapters. Most of our time here is spent with Tony Stark, and the pivotal confrontation of the first chapter isn’t with a supervillain, but a documentary filmmaker in the vein of Michael Moore. Tony gets a verbal pummelling, getting dragged over the coals for his past as an arms dealer, and the relevance of his various technological advancements. The always-articulate Tony Stark has no witty retort, and can only respond with a panel of silence when documentarian John Pillinger poses this question on page 17 of Chapter 1:
Do they have your painkilling drug pumps in Iraq? Do you think an Afghan kid with his arms blown off by a landmine is remotely impressed by an Iron Man suit?
This crisis of conscience is a driving force of the narrative, with a recurring motif being Stark’s struggle to look at himself in the mirror. He questions is own early ideals (“Iron Man used to represent the future”) and contemplates whether he’ll ever really be able to escape his arms dealer roots, if the Iron Man suit can ever truly be anything more than a weapon, a killing machine. These are difficult questions, and Ellis doesn’t offer up an easy answer to them. In the end, Iron Man is forced to use his suit’s weaponry to kill Mallen – the main antagonist of Extremis – in surprisingly gory fashion.
After glossing over Iron Man’s multitude of status quo changes, Extremis proceeds to change Iron Man’s status quo itself. His armor is given a major upgrade through the Extremis serum that gives the book its title. The new powers this grants him are clearly defined, the differences from his previous armor made clear. Another attempt to solidify this relaunch as the beginning of a new era for the character.
Unfortunately, the new era wouldn’t last long. Within a few short years, Iron Man was once again bogged down with continuity. This time around, the events of Civil War had made Iron Man’s identity public once more, and had repackaged Tony Stark as the new Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., and as Marvel’s premiere bastard. But it was the summer of 2008, and the success of the Iron Man movie meant new readers may be approaching Marvel, looking for an accessible entry point into the Armored Avenger’s comic book adventures. How was Marvel going to cater to these new fans? That’s right, another relaunch. And so we got The Invincible Iron Man, written by Matt Fraction and drawn by Salvador Larroca, and yet another #1.
Now I won’t go into The Invincible Iron Man (God knows this column is long enough already), but overall it’s a strong book, which does its job in rehabilitating Tony Stark as a likeable hero. But it highlights a problem with Marvel. It’s becoming all too easy to just hit the restart button every time they write themselves into a corner, or every time they want a spike in sales. When used in moderation, a relaunch can be a valuable tool in making potentially obscure comic book continuity accessible, as seen with Thor and Green Lantern: Rebirth. But too many relaunches of a title in too short a space of time can result in a fractured history for that character. When a status quo is changed around too frequently, readers are left with no status quo at all to relate to. A franchise relaunch can be a great thing, but it’s even greater when that relaunch is the foundation to something substantial, something which connects with readers, and grows, and continues to build on those foundations.
It would seem Marvel is starting to acknowledge once more that tenure has its benefits also. Recently, the relaunched Thor went through a slight alteration. When totalling up all of the issues of Journey into Mystery (where Thor debuted, in #83, so they’re kinda cheating) and all the issues of the three volumes of The Mighty Thor and now Thor, it turned out that issue #13 of the current volume was actually #600 in their accumulated total. And so Thor #13 was renumbered as Thor #600. In the coming months, Marvel will be doing the same renumbering with Captain America #600, Hulk #600 and Daredevil #500, and Amazing Spider-Man #600 hits in July too. As Marvel celebrates its 70th Anniversary this year, perhaps they realise that a sense of history, of each character having a legacy, is in its own way every bit as powerful as #1.
There are a lot of positive things that can come from a franchise relaunch. Thor, Green Lantern: Rebirth, and Iron Man: Extremis are all examples of that. When done well, and used in moderation, a relaunch can unburden a title from complex, alienating continuity, and get back to the basic appeal of a character, drawing in new readers in the process. The comic companies just need to be responsible in how they use this creative tool. First issues cease to be special if they become a semi-regular occurrence, and so #1 loses its power. Relaunch too often, and #1 just becomes another number.
Meeting #5
We open up the history books next meeting, as we take a look at the birth of Vertigo Comics. We’ll take a look at some of the highly influential DC titles that introduced a new wave of British writing talent to American audiences, and would eventually form part of Vertigo’s starting lineup. What sets apart these books from the mainstream comics of the time? What are the qualities that would come to define a Vertigo comic?
RECOMMENDED READING:
Animal Man, Volume 1
Grant Morrison and Chas Truog, Tom Grummett
Hellblazer: Dangerous Habits
Garth Ennis and William Simpson
The Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes
Neil Gaiman and Sam Kieth, Mike Dringenberg, Malcolm Jones III
Meeting #6
New Avengers: Breakout
Civil War
Captain America: The Death of Captain America Volume 1 – The Death of the Dream