Uber #2

[superboyprime]

'I've had many readers say as much as they find Uber interesting, it's definitely outside their comfort zone. I find myself thinking "me too". If it was inside any of our comfort zones, I'd be even more concerned.'

- Kieron Gillen










"Freya," the British spy who was undercover as a Nazi scientist, has just reached Allied lines, but her pursuers are right behind her:





The tank unit is slaughtered. Then Stephanie fires a bullet into the Ubermensch's right eye just as both eyes start glowing with energy. It disrupts the energy, causing his head to explode.

Comments

[damar148]

I like how despite the abnormality of super-powered soldiers in tight leather taking down tanks, the realistic consequences and the practical limits are emphasized.

[sean_613]

How do you get into the comic book industry? I want to be a comic book writer, but i lack in the art department. Got any tips?

[superboyprime]

Sorry, I don't work in the comics industry at all. The sentence at the beginning of my post was a quote from Kieron Gillen.

[silverhammerman]

That Allied soldier sure is taking Stephanie using his comrades as disposable bait well. Sure, he says a pretty nasty word, but you'd think he'd object to her just walking off afterward, with his gun no less. I guess he could be in shock, but it still annoys me.

This is all a bit too pitch black for my tastes, but as alternate history stories go it seems decent, though I must say that alternate histories stemming from WW2 are pretty tired at this point. But Gillen's a good writer, so I'm sure he'll make t all work.

[thanekos]

I like that the superhumans are classified in terms of weaponry- it makes me imagine one heck of a " Jane's.. " book, somewhere down the road.

[big_daddy_d]

Gonna give this series a look for sure.

[jlroberson]

The only thing that's out of my comfort zone about this is the exploitation of the Holocaust, frankly. Otherwise, I've been reading it all and so far all I still see is another story that inserts superheroes and villains into WW2. And a pretty ordinary one too.

I happen to really like Kieron Gillen and very much enjoyed both PHONOGRAM and JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY. But the high seriousness he claims in the hype for this reminds me of Joe Casey seeming not to realize sex has been in comics before with the stuff he's saying about his even more mediocre book. But I expect a bit more from Gillen. I realize he wants the book to sell but...really?

Gillen, you're not doing MAUS here. I really have no idea what he thinks he's "saying" about the Nazis, the Holocaust, or any of this except Nazis Really Bad. Well, yes, they were. And your point is? That if they'd had access to superpowered beings, they'd be REALLY REALLY bad, apparently. Well, no shit. Really?

The kinds of things Gillen has been saying about this fit the literal definition of the word "pretension," a word I don't like to just throw around because often it's just something flung at any work that tries to be ambitious, so one has to be careful. Here and with Casey, it fits.

I just don't really understand the point of this thing or why Gillen has such grand notions about what he's doing here. I won't go so far as Syberberg, who in his film OUR HITLER ventured to say that the mere act of dramatizing the Nazi period is itself inherently trivializing and exploitative. I don't think that's always true--it's not with MAUS. But an argument can be made that in many cases the only proper way to deal with it may be as you see in SHOAH.

But SUPER-POWERS? I'm sorry, but whatever the quality of your story is here, don't claim you're making some grand statement.

[superboyprime]

Have you been reading each issues' backmatter?

[jlroberson]

I have. This is where I'm getting this from. And Gillen's anticipation he'll make me uncomfortable: I don't like it when an author says that. Because once he says that, unless he REALLY DELIVERS, it will fall flat.

And I am sick to death of all these "pro indie" comics that are full of the dark side of superheroes and actually think that at this point there's something more to be done than simply pulling up the last dregs of a well that was drawn dry by Rick Veitch, Pat Mills and Kevin O'Neill A VERY LONG TIME AGO. I don't include WATCHMEN here because I feel its innovation is better appreciated as structural, not in terms of its subject; while those works those guys did are explicitly and utterly meant as nothing but savage critiques of the idea of superheroes itself. But I do include MIRACLEMAN.

And UBER is a very weak little pale shadow of MIRACLEMAN, with a bit of ZENITH and a dollop of Warren Ellis thrown in.

Look, do your dark superhero story. But don't try to pretend you're doing anything other than a piece of pop. Superheroes do not exist. So what you can use them for, to comment on serious things, is limited.

Unless the point is an underlying allegory in all this that superheroes are marauding fictional monsters, useless at best and commercially virulent at worst, destroying all of comics and therefore should be destroyed. I'm with that.

[joetuss]

I 100% agree...indies constantly force feed the idea that if superpowered people existed in the real they would all be rapist or serial killers. sometimes its like they're writing fanfic for some sick fantasy they had

[cainofdreaming]

Guderian worrying about war crimes kinda falls flat for me. The war against Soviets wasn't just land grab, the other side of it was the wholesale destruction of Slavic people. They'd wiped out dozens of whole towns by this point as reprisals. So, it just feels weird for him to start worrying just now.

[mola_ram]

I dunno.
I'd imagine every war criminal starts to worry about the consequences of his actions once he's on the losing side of the war, (seeing as they won't be the ones who are writing the history books) but when a man like Guderian himself is starting to worry about the consequences, I see it as a hint to how absurdly a toll this prolonged war is taking on everyone.

The Übermench aren't winning the war for the third reich as much as prolonging its death throes...

[cainofdreaming]

But why would he worry about this particular one, when they have many many others on their consciences already?

[mola_ram]

True, but here I think you have to look at it in historical context.
Guderian was the inventor of the Blitzkrieg strategy, overseeing tank strategies and rapid expansion tactics on the east front, and had as such no direct connection to the officers who were in charge of the nazi war crimes. He was busy leading tanks and armored infantry at the front that you could say "did the actual fighting"
He was releived of duty when he ignored Hitlers orders to stand and fight in Stalingrad and put on pasture for the latter part of the war, only to be dragged back in, when Hitler needed a general who actually knew what he was doing, when it came to tank strategy...
He surrendered to the americans, but no war crimes could be linked to him, and thus released (despite the russians protests) spending the remainder of his years being invited to U.S and British cocktail parties where he discussed military strategies and the tank battles he had fought during the war.

With the events in this comic, he's neck deep in war crimes...