Crossover #1

[history79]

"Geoff and I were sitting around in my house the day that God Country came out. We had just done two signings here in Austin and had finally gotten back home, and we were just kind of sitting around reading comics and talking about what we wanted to do next. In my stack of comics, I had the latest Big Two crossover comics, and Geoff and I got to talking about what we would do if we ever had a chance to do one of those. I think I off-handedly said that seeing one of these events from the perspective of a normal person on the street would be really cool.

Because, no matter what the heroes may be fighting for or about, it would be utterly terrifying for the average person on the street. I mean, how many times do we see Iron Man or Batman stop what they're doing and explain themselves to the people on the street? If you were in the middle of Civil War, you wouldn't care about the internal struggles or politics of it, you would just be scared shitless that the Hulk was going to smash through your house. So we started talking about that. A kind of Avengers meets Cloverfield story. Something that we could use to talk about, not just real-world events, but also the art form and the industry that we love. In that way, the book has really evolved into a kind of thesis statement on comics, and the culture as a whole. It's a kind of Anti-Event Event comic. Which...yeah, I know is ironic now that I tend to write so many events. [Laughs]"

- Donny Cates

Comments

[lordultimus]

"If it were a comic, it'd be the best-selling comic of all time."

And the most poorly reviewed.

[themajesticmoose]

"One does not APPLAUD oneself

It's vulgar"

[themajesticmoose]

Seeing these cross burning inbred nazi trash and their stupid little signs makes me think that the real problem on this world isn't how many people the superhumans killed, it's that they didn't kill enough of the people who actually deserved to die

And

I have to say while I haven't read the whole comic from these pages this doesn't appeal to me. Yet another "What if superheroes but with more death and misery" with some clumsy social commentary thrown in

Like

"God hates capes"?

Really?

Did they look at Detroit: Become Human and think to themselves "We can do worse than that"?

Can writers please stop finding ways to take real life oppression and persecution that Black, Gay, Jewish, Muslim, Trans, Lesbian and Bisexual people face and finding ways to make it all about How Hard Things Are for people who are absolutely none of those things while claiming they're a metaphor

In every country on the globe right now as I type these words hate crimes are happening against minorities on a daily basis. A DAILY basis. Black men being gunned down in the street. Trans women beaten to death for existing. Synagogues burned, mosques attacked, gay, bi and lesbian people tortured, murdered or raped. State sponsored hate crimes in the form of "Conversion therapy" torture and rape camps

Superhero stories can address these real world evils but if you want to address them don't do it through bullshit metaphors. You know how Supergirl addressed the issue of transphobia? They had a canon trans superhero actually address head on the fact that transphobia is a real and horrifying threat that plagues the world. They didn't make an alien race who were "Coded" as trans or a character who was a "Metaphor" for trans people. They said straight out "Transphobia is evil"

Batwoman addressed homophobia by having actual lesbian characters call out homophobia. THAT'S an example of a GOOD way to talk about real world issues using superheroes. By talking about real world issues with superheroes.

Metaphor and analogy is the tool of cowards. They're scared bigots won't spend money on their product if they actually talk about REAL issues and so they try and package them in a way that is soothing and pleasing to people who don't want to stop and consider their own privelege and bigotry.

Maybe I'm just a bitter old queer and I'm sorry if this comment is me pissing on the party for people who like this comic but this to me is a white writer who as far as I know isn't queer or trans or black or jewish or muslim, taking the real world struggles actual oppressed people face and finding a way to make it all about people like him with this bullshit superhero metaphor

[jlbarnett]

I find metaphors obnoxious because I think a lot of times they can be spun in multiple ways, but they're doing it to reach people who haven't been convinced by hearing "transphobia is bad in the real world"

[themajesticmoose]

Well if it works that's good

but personally I have my doubts it's all that effective. I think the kind of people who think that treating someone like they're less than human because of their skin color or who they love or what religion they are or just how they live their life is acceptable can't be swayed by a story that goes "Okay but imagine this but with a white straight guy in a cape"

I mean if metaphor was all that effective we should be living in a utopia right now after like seven decades of the X-men using mutantkind as a metaphor for literally every kind of bigotry we've ever thought of

[strejdaking]

I mean, we make a lot of fiction about real life racism as well.

Anyway, here's the thing: I don't think this IS meant to be a metaphor for the most part and if it is, it's backwards. Cates talked about this pitch when it was originally called Pray the Cpaes Away: https://bleedingcool.com/comics/donny-cates-pray-the-capes-away-geoff-cates-image-comics/

This isn't Cates using comics as a metaphor for current events, it's him comparing current events and bigotry to dislike of comics.

[themajesticmoose]

See that just makes this come across as even more tone deaf to me, personally...

[strejdaking]

Oh no, it absolutely is, Cates sucks and this shit is awful. I just thought seeing it as merely a bad metaphor for genuine opression is giving it too much credit.

[thanekos]

" I think I off-handedly said that seeing one of these events from the perspective of a normal person on the street would be really cool. "

" And then Geoff was like, that's Astro City's baliwick - and I remembered everyone's tacit agreement. So, you know, we're just doing these familiar broad strokes instead. "

[silicondream]

"What if all your favorite heroes were sent to an alternate reality for no apparent reason and then they all turned out to be bloodthirsty mindless psychopaths with wildly altered power-levels, also for no apparent reason?"

I can see that being the plot of a fighting game, but a comic book crossover? Not so much.

[themajesticmoose]

"We're the first comic to answer the question: What if superheroes were bloodthirsty monsters?

Apart from The Boys

And Leaving Megaopolis

And DCeased

And Marvel Zombies

And Kick Ass and Injustice, if you want to be pedantic...

But if you ignore all of them this is a completely original idea no one has ever done before"

[lordultimus]

If we include YA books, then also the Reckoners trilogy.

[themajesticmoose]

I'm also pretty sure there were two low budget grimdark horror movies with the idea of "Superheroes but awful" a few years back as well

[silicondream]

All of your examples give the superheroes some motivation for being awful, though. Even if it's just "they caught a magic virus that makes you evil."

The proposed crossover here offers no explanation whatever, which would pretty much make it the worst story that could possibly be written in the "Superheroes but awful" genre. That's a kind of originality!

[starwolf_oakley]

You mean "All Superheroes Must Die" from 2013? I have not seen it, but it seems to be "Superheroes' powers are negated for budget reasons" mixed with "Saw" and maybe that last Doom Patrol story.

[jlbarnett]

I think there's one called Brightburn

[mazway_75]

That's as bad as when Ryan Murphy claimed Scream Queens 'inventing a new genre called horror-comedy."

Yes, he actually said that in seriousness.

[themajesticmoose]

I don't even know how to respond to someone saying that and actually meaning it seriously

It's like me walking into a laboratory with a circular object and saying "Guess what eggheads this bitch right here just invented the best thing ever and it's called the wheel"

[mazway_75]

Oh, Murphy got raked over the coals by websites on "so you've never heard of Young Frankenstein? Monster Squad? Beetlejuice? Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein? Shall we go on?"

[thezmage]

Yeah, that would be a bad plot for a comic book crossover, but it's not the plot to this comic book. We haven't seen much of the heroes from this one but we've already seen them do two things to protect the public: Set up the forcefield to keep the fight from spreading and at the end we're told that one is helping people get out of it to safety

[silicondream]

I have no particular objection to the overall plot of this comic; I'm just criticizing the in-universe claim that this Event would make for a popular crossover comic in itself.

And the heroes (or one hero) only set up the forcefield after literal months of nonstop combat, during which the footage shows zero attempts by any of them to shield or evacuate civilians. That is wildly out of character for most of the heroes that are supposed to be involved in this. We see references to Batman, Superman, the Flash, Thor, Spider-Man...you know that any of those guys would instantly break off a fight to rescue a civilian in danger. Hell, protecting the innocent is the single most cliche reason why superheroes lose fights.

20 minutes into this event, the JLA alone would have either evacuated the entire population of Colorado or died trying.

[themajesticmoose]

Well that's something I'm glad at least this isn't yet another story where the "heroes" are all jerks who are either outright evil or just don't care about human lives at all

[reveen]

I mean, how many times do we see Iron Man or Batman stop what they're doing and explain themselves to the people on the street?

Well like I mean... should they? Like if Ultron is attacking a city or Joker is threatening to gas public schools is it really reasonable to expect Iron Man or Batman to stop to explain the situation to randos on the street? As if that's not a time sensitive problem?

I see this idea a lot, where people act like the collateral damage of a super-fight is a problem with the superheroes. Which if it's like the DC movies where the superhero doesn't seem to give a shit, fine. But most of the time it's not like superheroes want cities to get destroyed.

It's not like we're talking about Dragonball Z where Superman can go "I know a good scenic battle environment with no people to get in the way, lets fight there." and Darkseid will just go with it. No, it's DARKSEID. He doesn't care.

And that's superheroes where the big really powerful bad guys are often threatening to wreck cities anyway. Cops and militaries are way, way more questionable in their attitude towards force and collateral damage. But I don't these writers writing comics about how much it would suck to be a guy on the street witnessing a police shooting or an American invasion.

It just seems like really facile critique that falls apart with only a little bit of scrutiny.

[silicondream]

Like if Ultron is attacking a city or Joker is threatening to gas public schools is it really reasonable to expect Iron Man or Batman to stop to explain the situation to randos on the street?

And don't we see established super-teams doing this all the time? The JLA, the Avengers, the X-teams, the Legion of Super-Heroes...they all send out emergency alerts to civilians in danger. That's pretty much expected of any hero with telepathy or technology powers.

Even the underdog heroes like Spidey dash around and desperately try to convince people to evacuate dangerous areas.

[thezmage]

I don't think they're stating it as a critique or a failure, just a commentary? I don't see where they're calling this a failure of the characters and not simply an observation

[mazway_75]

seeing one of these events from the perspective of a normal person on the street would be really cool.

Yeah, that would be cool, how does a normal person react to such battles when they don't know the full details of who's fighting or why? How do newspapers report this? How do folks, say, with powers but not wanting a costumed life, live?

A "man on the street" approach to comic books would be something, you could make a book that, with an on-off run, could go, oh, nearly 25 years. Say, is Kurt Busiek busy, this sounds like something right up his alley, some City with a fun planetary themed name to it, gee, it's right on the tip of my tongue. Ah, well, Busiek could easily ask these men for advice on how to handle such a bold and revolutionary idea no one has ever done before.

[donnblake]

Kurt Busiek write a man-on-the-street approach to all the colorful craziness of living in a world with superheroes? One MARVELS at the idea.

[malitia]

You know looking at how normal police would deal with living in a superhero universe town like GOTHAM (supervillains, crossover events whatnot) would be fun too... maybe we could ask Greg Rucka to write it.