Off-Topic Tuesday!

[icon_uk]

In the comments to these weekly posts (and only these posts), it's your chance to go as off topic as you like.

Talk about non-comics stuff, thread derail, and just generally chat amongst yourselves

Comments

[penguinzero]

I read through that, and... I can't say it's convinced me any. I mean, it points out that the issue is more or less saying 'oh, it totally wasn't Geoff Johns Flashpoint that was responsible for the New 52 era, it was Alan Moore Watchmen! Flashpoint/Barry/Geoff is totally blameless!

Which is just scapegoating. Certainly there's been a trend of people misinterpreting Watchmen and using it to justify dark, gritty stories ever since the late 80s/early 90s. But it wasn't Alan Moore writing the things in New 52 that people have complained about. The people responsible for the things people don't like about DC nowadays -- Johns, Didio, Lee, Berganza -- they're still going to be there, and I can't see any indication that they've actually learned anything. This is going to be one more momentary attempt to change that's just going to make things worse.

[laughing_tree]

I suspect I'll be saying this a lot in the coming days, but... there's no need to take a metaphor or a symbol so literally.

Watchmen functions as a symbol for the darkening of superheros for obvious reasons; I don't think it necessarily follows that anyone's genuinely casting a blaming finger at Moore.

[penguinzero]

It's not as if Johns is being particularly subtle in the writing here, though. He specifically calls out the big story event that kicked off the New 52 era by name ('I tell Barry about the Flashpoint. History changing.'). Barry asks if Wally's sure it wasn't his fault (as the creator of the Flashpoint -- a title we can also give to Johns), and Wally is quick to assure him that no, no, he's absolutely blameless. "It was something else. Someone else." Cue Dr. Manhattan.

This isn't symbolism analysis on the level of 'Moby Dick represents the struggles of the Republic of Ireland, and I have a 300-page thesis proving the subtle connections.' This is closer to the level of 'The character in Pilgrim's Progress named Sloth, who is very slothful, represents the sin of sloth.' The dialogue between Barry and Wally only makes any sense whatsoever if it's Johns trying to speak to the reader and say, 'Yeah, Flashpoint messed things up, but it's totally not my fault!'

[laughing_tree]

The dialogue between Barry and Wally only makes any sense whatsoever if it's Johns trying to speak to the reader and say, 'Yeah, Flashpoint messed things up, but it's totally not my fault!'

Or, alternately, they realize it's unwise to make one of their major heroic protagonists responsible for the corruption of the universe. There are obvious reasons to want to absolve Barry Allen outside of any metacommentary considerations.

[penguinzero]

But that's taking things to a meta level, too -- speaking to the readers in exactly the same way it would be if the message were 'Johns isn't responsible' instead of 'Barry isn't responsible.' In fact, it's the exact same message -- 'the creator of Flashpoint isn't responsible' -- but you're drawing the very fine line between the in-universe creator of Flashpoint and the out-of-universe creator of Flashpoint. Which is fair enough, I guess, but that hardly means other people are 'reading too much into it.'

Especially when the direct connection after that is a link to a storyline and universe that is being used outright for its out-of-universe meta connotations, as it has been constantly in the decades since its release. Watchmen stands for darkness and grittiness in comics, and the Watchmen universe having dominion over the DC universe is what all the problems the DC universe has been having are now attributed to. The symbolism here is absolutely clear and absolutely intentional, and to say we have to refrain from linking one element of the symbolism to its real-world elements while they're relying on us doing the opposite for the next is hardly defensible.

[laughing_tree]

Despite your using it in quotation marks, I never said anything about 'reading too much into it,' a phrase and concept that makes me bristle. Read into it as deeply as you care to. That's great. That's what's art is there for. I've just been putting forth a different interpretation than you and explaining a little of why. Or do you think the only reason I could possibly disagree is because I'm not reading into it enough?

Anyway, moving on... I don't see what you mean when you say my take is also on a meta level. I'm speaking of in-story culpability, like the identity of whodunnit in a whodunnit.

[penguinzero]

Sorry -- you said 'no need to take a symbol or metaphor so literally,' which, coupled with some of the other things you've said, sounded to me like trying to dismiss the notion that it was symbolic at all.

That said, what I mean by your interpretation also being meta is that you said it was to make 'one of their major heroic protagonists' not responsible for Flashpoint. That's meta -- DC trying to spin the image of one of the characters in their stories, not something that grows organically out of the narrative. Looked at purely from an in-universe perspective, the whole scene is terribly awkward and makes little sense. The event in question is repeatedly referred to as 'the Flashpoint,' which was its title as a marketing event, and not something you'd naturally use to refer to 'that time the whole universe got mucked up due to time travel.' Barry's first response to this isn't 'how do we fix it' or 'what can I do to help' or anything particularly heroic -- it's a nervous, self-conscious focus on whether or not anyone can blame him for this. And Wally's response is flatly definitive -- no, absolutely not, you had nothing to do with this (even though the bulk of the evidence would say he was at least involved), it was totally all someone else's fault. A more moderate response -- like 'even if you were involved, there was something bigger going on' or 'you might have contributed, but there was someone behind the scenes' -- would have left open room for Barry to be less than perfectly innocent (and, in my interpretation, Johns, too).

So, if the conversation is meant on a meta or symbolic level, then the only question is how deep to take it. And given the references to the real comics industry interwoven throughout (Watchmen as a symbol of comics going dark, the heroes robbed of 'ten years' -- which just happens to be how much time it's been since Identity Crisis, often cited as where DC dove headfirst into grim darkness), I think reading 'who's responsible for Flashpoint' as both an in-universe and out-of-universe question is entirely defensible. And when we're assured that Barry, a personal hero of Johns's, and one that he personally reintroduced into the DC universe, and the one he wrote as creating the new timelines in the first place, is totally and indisputably blameless for all this, well...

Anyway, I probably shouldn't get too deep into this. I've already pulled back pretty hard from DC due in part to things like the Berganza scandal, and this is pushing me the rest of the way. So I don't have all that much of a stake in it. But I just wanted to show why it's easily readable as Johns trying to absolve himself for something he was involved in.

[laughing_tree]

That said, what I mean by your interpretation also being meta is that you said it was to make 'one of their major heroic protagonists' not responsible for Flashpoint. That's meta -- DC trying to spin the image of one of the characters in their stories, not something that grows organically out of the narrative.

Call me dense, but I still don't see how that's meta. Because it has an out-of-story purpose, in the sense that it's included to impart something to the reader? Every scene in a story is designed to impart something to the reader. It's just that sometimes it's handled more organically than others. But when it's not handled organically, that's not meta, that's just bad writing.

I'll grant you calling it "the flashpoint," naming it after the book, is kind of meta, but DC has a long history of that sort of thing ("the crisis, "the day of judgment," "the blackest night") so it strikes me as just business as usual.