I really wanted to enjoy this series. I've always been a Luke Fox fan, I've enjoyed most of Batwoman's runs and I liked Planetary. But from issue 1 all the main characters had a 'Suphero comics are dumb and I'm smarter than everyone else' vibe.
This inspires me to go back and reread the original Planetary again.
This series was… certainly something which happened, and it seems to be threatening us with another attempt to do The Authority in mainstream DCU despite the last few tries falling flat.
I just feel like this didn’t entirely succeed at whatever it was going for.
Between this and the new Jenny Sparks series, it’s like people are trying to rewrite Ellis’ work while missing the essence of what made it work at the time. It’s like trying to evoke Morrison, Moore, Milligan or Gaiman without understanding certain nuances.
It’s hard to describe, I guess. But the creators here fell short of the mark, and left me feeling “meh.”
There's no point in trying to recapture the effect of Ellis' work - it can boiled down to the novelty of unapologetically gonzo and vulgar high-concept sci-fi/fantasy.
As it's much less easy now to believe that only one writer can purvey that sort of thing than it was then..
Here're my thoughts: Ellis, for all that he's a despicable person, is, like the others I mentioned, a hell of a writer who's good at collaborating with, and playing to, artists' strengths. This led to a lot of really catchy, memorable work over the years. But he's also lightning in a bottle, a hard act to follow, and I think that for the most part, anyone who tries to follow up on his work tends to fall short. This is especially true after he's had his way with shared properties from the big companies. (And perhaps this is why so much of his Marvel and DC work is left alone afterwards--a combination of scorched Earth and recognizing when it's best to leave alone. Nate Grey as shaman? Abandoned once he was brought back. Pete Wisdom? Eh, he's just sort of a background character these days. Anyway.)
So as far as following his work, I think Mark Millar had perhaps the most success in continuing The Authority in the same manner, but very few writers since then have come anywhere close. Nextwave felt like another outlier in that the changes to some of the characters actually stuck when they were reincorporated into the mainstream.
But come to Planetary, and it had a good ending, and didn't need to be revisited, and especially not in this fashion, utilizing Ellis' assets. Just like with most Wildstorm elements, they don't add all that much value to the mainstream DCU.
So on to Kelly and Lanzing, a creative team with big ideas, plenty of skill, and an interesting track record. On the one hand, I absolutely get what they were going for in focusing upon Bat-characters and the gun/bullet theme-- Batman is one of the building blocks of the DCU, and his parents being murdered with a gun will always be a fundamental element of his story. And instead of saying "Superman is the original basis for the universe" like other crossovers have done, this made an argument for Batman as one as well. That's cool. Even though I don't think Luke and Kate were necessarily the right characters for this story, I guess they were the Bats most available for the job. (According to an interview, that's true: they were available and no one else knew what to do with them!)
But this fell apart when it directly pulled in those Planetary assets. This Jakita was absolutely nothing like the original, in appearance, manners, powers, you name it. This story spent a lot of time nudging us about Planetary and related concepts, but to what end?
On one end of the mainstream pop metafiction spectrum, you've got stuff like the original Gwenpool and Ambush Bug, series that wrestled with some of the same questions but did it with a lot of charming silliness and a grounded, likable central character. On the other end, you've got this, which seems to resolve itself by admitting that it's a crappy story and someone should really write a better one. Invoking the excitement of Warren Ellis's work, and the potential of characters like Luke Fox and Batwoman, just threw the poverty of its own ideas into sharp relief.
I'm finding that the Lanzing/Kelly team has ambitious ideas, but mixed results. Guardians of the Galaxy: an interesting deviation from the previous run but off-kilter. There was just something in the way the characters were handled. NYX: So far, really good. I'm wary but optimistic. Outsiders: A metafictional mess with high hopes but a muddled execution. Thunderbolts: Strong start but ended far too quickly just when it felt like they were getting started. Captain America: again, high hopes but I'm not sure how well it really panned out in the end. Star Trek: see above?
It's turning out that almost everything I've read from this team has an interesting high concept, and often starts strong, but has trouble sticking the landing or else gets a little too far up its own ... nose, so to speak, in terms of navel-gazing and philosophy. (And yeah, as a writer and professional reviewer of things in real life, I try not to make snap judgments about this, but put thought into -why- things do and don't work for me. Rather than hate for hate's sake. And I've put a lot of thought into Outsiders to try and figure out what went wrong here...)
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scans_daily2024-09-26 09:44 am
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This series was… certainly something which happened, and it seems to be threatening us with another attempt to do The Authority in mainstream DCU despite the last few tries falling flat.
I just feel like this didn’t entirely succeed at whatever it was going for.
Between this and the new Jenny Sparks series, it’s like people are trying to rewrite Ellis’ work while missing the essence of what made it work at the time. It’s like trying to evoke Morrison, Moore, Milligan or Gaiman without understanding certain nuances.
It’s hard to describe, I guess. But the creators here fell short of the mark, and left me feeling “meh.”
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As it's much less easy now to believe that only one writer can purvey that sort of thing than it was then..
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Ellis, for all that he's a despicable person, is, like the others I mentioned, a hell of a writer who's good at collaborating with, and playing to, artists' strengths. This led to a lot of really catchy, memorable work over the years. But he's also lightning in a bottle, a hard act to follow, and I think that for the most part, anyone who tries to follow up on his work tends to fall short. This is especially true after he's had his way with shared properties from the big companies. (And perhaps this is why so much of his Marvel and DC work is left alone afterwards--a combination of scorched Earth and recognizing when it's best to leave alone. Nate Grey as shaman? Abandoned once he was brought back. Pete Wisdom? Eh, he's just sort of a background character these days. Anyway.)
So as far as following his work, I think Mark Millar had perhaps the most success in continuing The Authority in the same manner, but very few writers since then have come anywhere close. Nextwave felt like another outlier in that the changes to some of the characters actually stuck when they were reincorporated into the mainstream.
But come to Planetary, and it had a good ending, and didn't need to be revisited, and especially not in this fashion, utilizing Ellis' assets. Just like with most Wildstorm elements, they don't add all that much value to the mainstream DCU.
So on to Kelly and Lanzing, a creative team with big ideas, plenty of skill, and an interesting track record. On the one hand, I absolutely get what they were going for in focusing upon Bat-characters and the gun/bullet theme-- Batman is one of the building blocks of the DCU, and his parents being murdered with a gun will always be a fundamental element of his story. And instead of saying "Superman is the original basis for the universe" like other crossovers have done, this made an argument for Batman as one as well. That's cool. Even though I don't think Luke and Kate were necessarily the right characters for this story, I guess they were the Bats most available for the job. (According to an interview, that's true: they were available and no one else knew what to do with them!)
But this fell apart when it directly pulled in those Planetary assets. This Jakita was absolutely nothing like the original, in appearance, manners, powers, you name it. This story spent a lot of time nudging us about Planetary and related concepts, but to what end?
I'll go back and reread the full story now that it's completed, to see how it holds up from start to finish and see if I missed anything (especially in the context of that DC.com interview (https://www.dc.com/blog/2023/11/20/jackson-lanzing-and-collin-kelly-talk-life-the-dc-universe-and-that-outsiders-ending), but for the moment, I'm just underwhelmed.
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On one end of the mainstream pop metafiction spectrum, you've got stuff like the original Gwenpool and Ambush Bug, series that wrestled with some of the same questions but did it with a lot of charming silliness and a grounded, likable central character. On the other end, you've got this, which seems to resolve itself by admitting that it's a crappy story and someone should really write a better one. Invoking the excitement of Warren Ellis's work, and the potential of characters like Luke Fox and Batwoman, just threw the poverty of its own ideas into sharp relief.
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Guardians of the Galaxy: an interesting deviation from the previous run but off-kilter. There was just something in the way the characters were handled.
NYX: So far, really good. I'm wary but optimistic.
Outsiders: A metafictional mess with high hopes but a muddled execution.
Thunderbolts: Strong start but ended far too quickly just when it felt like they were getting started.
Captain America: again, high hopes but I'm not sure how well it really panned out in the end.
Star Trek: see above?
It's turning out that almost everything I've read from this team has an interesting high concept, and often starts strong, but has trouble sticking the landing or else gets a little too far up its own ... nose, so to speak, in terms of navel-gazing and philosophy.
(And yeah, as a writer and professional reviewer of things in real life, I try not to make snap judgments about this, but put thought into -why- things do and don't work for me. Rather than hate for hate's sake. And I've put a lot of thought into Outsiders to try and figure out what went wrong here...)