Jenny Sparks #1-2 - "Be Better"

[laughing_tree]

Literally, my thesis from college is like, "I will never go to war because the world is going to be great." That was a thing. And that was like, "Okay, the 20th Century is dead. Let it die. Let it die." And then 9-11 happened. And then fucking Iraq happened. And then the banks collapsed. And then fucking 2016 happened. And then the pandemic. And we weren't at all done with history. That was just fucking bullshit. We did not go straight ahead. -- Tom King












Issue 2 -

The past:

Comments

[cainofdreaming]

Ah, the next part in the ongoing character assassination of Captain Atom - the series.

Yeah, yeah. Black Label. But they could still have selected someone else for the part.

[laughing_tree]

His background *does* kind of make him the perfect choice in a series about how we're still haunted and trapped by the 20th century today.

[zachbeacon]

I am so confused as to how you can have a Jenny SPARKS (where's Quantum?) comic set after 1999 but that seems to be the point of this so I assume that will be explained.

[beyondthefringe]

She died.
Then 9/11 happened and she woke up and escaped her grave.
Yup.

[zachbeacon]

...
...
...really?

Well, good thing nothing bad happened in the 20th Century to wake up Jenny Steam.

[full_metal_ox]

However, I do seem to recall this early 21st-century fashion subculture (which had its origin in a late 20th-century literary subculture, occasioning an inevitable ongoing wank about the Dadgum Kids On The Lawn.)

[thanekos]

" Francis Fukuyama was wrong. " - Tom King, probably

[panthyr]

In the immortal words of Butt-head, "What the hell is this crap?"
Bad enough Captain Atom continues to get the characterization shaft. (I mean, really, if he broke like this it would make sense, but the whole thing that makes him worth reading when done well, is that he DIDN'T BREAK. Similar to what makes Superman worth reading when done well - he stays true to his values.)
And now we have Manchester Black, I mean Jenny Sparks, lecturing the Bat about grown-ups, while her %$^@$E%^ dialogue is mostly "Oi!" and @^&*#* because everyone knows grown-ups cuss a lot but never in the clear. Especially when they were raised rich.
Hard women making hard choices, I guess?

[thanekos]

As goes Jenny's lecturing, she does end up getting grabbed by the throat because she spent an entire page smugly giving one to " you heroes ".

[mastermahan]

Yeah, her bragging would have more credibility if she hadn't immediately gotten her ass kicked. That's less "hard woman making hard choices" and more "up their own ass".

[scorntx]

Hmm.
Tom King's general tone does seem to lend itself well to Wildstorm characters.

Not wild (no pun intended) about the usage of Captain Atom, but apart from that one detail, perfectly alright, I guess.


And... at this point, actually starting to wonder if King enjoys writing symbol swearing rather than just using actual swear words.
It's just... it's a Black Label comic. You can swear if you want to.

[beyondthefringe]

Between the Outsiders and this, it’s like someone declared open season on Warren Ellis projects. And not in the best way… come on, Jenny Sparks was the spirit of the 20th century and died appropriately. Why her, why now.
(And did we really need to learn she had a thing with Clark Kent?)

What’s next, Mark Russell doing a Transmetropolitan sequel?

[nyadnar17]

I don't get it. Like this book is not for me and thats find. A lot of Tom King's stuff isn't for me.

But I don't get spitting at superhero fans in a book about super heroes doing super hero shit.

[starwolf_oakley]

Hard Travelin' Heroes started with Green Arrow telling Green Lantern "Go chase as mad scientist." That *could* be seen as "spitting" at superhero fans.

[scorntx]

In fairness (well, I say "fairness"), that is in keeping with how some writers have done the Authority.

[laughing_tree]

There is no spitting at superhero fans here. There is spitting at superhero characters.

I don't understand this modern attitude -- which has come to exist across many fandoms -- where works need to be unfailing celebrations of the IP and self-criticism is unwelcome. Every month, DC already publishes countless books about how awesome and great its heroes are. Why is it necessary or indeed even desirable that *every* protagonist shares that perspective? What makes that more interesting than a multiplicity of viewpoints?

[lego_joker]

Two perspectives - maybe contradictory, but I've had both brewing in my head for a while now...

1.) The very fact that this is being published by DC give it an "Exxon staffers pretending to consider alternative fuels" vibe. No self-criticism from a corporate entity can, or should, ever take good faith for granted. Because if any of these things made an actually honest, coherent attack on superheroes, wouldn't every writer at DC be out of a job? (Honestly, I think even Watchmen wouldn't be nearly as celebrated today if its author hadn't quit DC almost immediately after and made "actually, superheroes are a cancer on fiction in general and maybe we would've been better off if they'd never existed" his Brand for decades after).

2.) One of the things that makes takedowns of superheroes feel so uniquely mean-spirited/unnecessary - no matter how many Unfailing Celebrations outnumber them in hard numbers - is the expectation that everyone "knows" superheroes and their trappings are 100% fictional. In other words, that they're literally only as flawed as an individual author wants them to be. Takedowns of teachers or cops or churchmen or hippies - ideally - expose problems with those groups that exist in real life no matter your opinion. Takedowns of superheroes pretty inevitably feel like the author patting themselves on the back for putting out (or just yelling about) a fire they set in the first place.

[laughing_tree]

I think these are both great points *if* we're talking criticism that's trying to have any real world weight, such as, say, Gillen's point about power level fixation's link to fascism, from a while back. But here the criticism is essentially, "Boy, you heroes are sure full of yourselves," which is more along the lines of when Wolverine criticizes Cyclops or whatever. A reader might agree or disagree with Wolverine, depending on their predisposition, but even for the ones who agree, the take-away is "Cyclops is an asshole," not "Cyclops fiction is bad and folks should feel bad for publishing it." The criticism is significant on an in-universe level but isn't even trying to say anything on the level of the real world.

Basically, the difference between "Batman comics promote a neoliberal status quo" criticism and "Batman is really a jerk to his family" criticism.

[huntleyhaverstock]

The art here's stupendous. But you can feel Tom King pulling several muscles to sound just like Warren Ellis. And while Ellis has some wonderful, indelible bits of dialogue in his oeuvre, 1) he's still a massive creep (though I hear he's quietly been trying to make amends?) and 2) even Warren Ellis often couldn't write Warren Ellis well.

[angelophile]

The latest was he was not able to accept accountability for his actions. https://www.somanyofus.com/updates

[huntleyhaverstock]

Well, that’s awful but sadly unsurprising. I appreciate the update.

[blueprintstyles]

I was worried this would be another 'Captain Atom becomes Dr, Manhattan' but seems to have gone another direction. Atom's backstory does fit in pretty well for this story but I hope Atom gets some redemption at some point, It's been a hard couple of decades for the character. There's been other century babies that lived past 100 years and it's not like Jenny Quantum's been a major character for a while so I'm on board for the series. Loved the Superman pages in issue 2!

[thezmage]

The idea that 9/11 proved that the 20th century wasn't dead instead of being the final death knell of the 20th century proves that Tom King has a different understanding of the nature of time than I do. Maybe it's me that's out of touch with everybody else (it happens pretty often) but in this situation I rather feel like it's him.

[shakalooloo]

What is she wearing? Half a vest over half a t-shirt, but the final panel of these scans shows some thick stitching up the back?

[super_fly]

The last panel is her burial dress which is different from her normal getup and why she's complaining about looking like a fairy princess.

Wish I knew if there was a term for the singlet thing she's got on.