DC Comics and The new 52

The new 52 is yet another DC relaunch, somewhat like the 80’s great Crisis on Infinite Earths, but without the set-up and durm and strang of that multiversal gangbang. What seems to be going on is updating 52 of the companies’ titles to the world we live in now (all fucked up). In the 60’s and much of the 70’s comics seemed to be time-locked into a sort of 1940’s/early 50’s vibe. That is mostly because the creators where all older dudes who were not adept at change. Even in the late 70’s many female side characters (Daredevil’s Karen Page, Fantastic Four’s Invisible Girl, Iron Man’s Pepper Potts, etc) still seemed to have hairstyles and often even clothing from over a decade prior. At least Archie Comics were on the cutting edge of women’s fashion.

But today the young creators in comics seem to be busy trying to make up for the old fogies conservative values. The men are more angsty and assholish, and the women are super-sexualized (apparently one of the controversies is the whoring-up of characters like Starfire, previously sort of frigid characters, to complete and utter hoochie momma status), or relegated to “girlfriend of male hero” status. From what I can tell, Catwoman has been turned into a total neo-Goth hose monster.

OK, so I don’t really buy comics anymore. At around 5 bucks a pop now, I can’t afford to buy a pile of comics every month and keep them next to the bed or in the bathroom magazine rack, and eventually into a big white box in the garage. So I can only really muse from afar at what is going on in comics. The true life story is usually more interesting than what is happening on those gaudy pages anyway.

These re-launches are often cool. Crisis back in the 80’s blew me away. The Anti-Monitor was a truly scary villain. A whole passel of various-age Supermen were running around, and even obscure characters like Jonah Hex and Sgt. Rock were right there in the mix. I could not believe what they were doing.

But the aftermath of that was not good. DC writers struggled for years with the conundrums that came out of that particular re-launch. Things that happened in the comics of the 1950’s and 60’s were important canon to many characters. Some writers even had characters that no longer knew each other act towards each other as if they had adventured together for decades. Turns out it was not as simple as just Killing Supergirl, erasing Supermen from Earths Two through Two Million, or Wonder Woman from the Justice Society of the 40’s.

And let’s face it, much of the talent brought on board to reboot characters back then, like Marvels big fat paycheck man John Byrne, fell flatter than Mr. Fantastic stuck in a Baxter Building elevator with one of The Thing’s farts (man, I should be writing for comics). The new DC’s first team-up of Superman and Batman had them facing a punk rock chick in big glasses and a Mohawk named “Magpie.” She liked birds and stealing stuff. She was nothing special, pretty much a Penguin rip-off. This was the new DC universe of the rest of the 80’s? Man, this millionaire was really phoning it in. Those John Byrne issues of Superman were some of the last comics I bought new in the store (I really only pick up the occasional used copy at swap meets since the 90’s). Yes, they turned me off that much.

So here we go, another massive re-launch. A bunch of 1st issues will be sold. But what then? Will writers encounter a maze of problems created by renewing the universe? I already see some. In this new universe Bruce Wayne has only been Batman around 5 years. But appearing in his new ish is an older Robin (Dick Grayson) who is now long since become Nightwing, the current young Robin, and at least a couple of the other previous Robin’s of various ages from the last 30 years. They can be hammered into new continuity I guess, but really, Grayson has gone from a little kid joining Batman in his early adventures, to a cynical and seasoned Nightwing in less than 5 years?

OK, like I said, I don’t really put any money into the pockets of comic book companies and creators anymore. I have no real stake in what they do with this. But as an old school comic book fanboy from back in better times, I guess I’m rooting for this to be a success for the sake of comic goodness to come. Monthly comic magazines are already an endangered species. No sense in helping them limp into the history books.

Basing NPC villains on characters from other media

Comments in one of Grognardia James posts this week had me pondering my “rip-offs” of personalities for use in my own games. Having grown up as a comic freak, it was only natural that colorful villains would be an important part of many of my D&D games. Characters who gained arch-enemies would often get the rare treat of battling it out with bad guys in a tavern, back alley, temple, or city street instead of the usual forest or dungeon chamber.

I created a multitude of unique NPC’s, but for bad guys I would occasionally base them around other personalities from other media.

In the 80’s I based an entire group of baddies on an 80’s X-Men assassin group called “The Marauders.” The Marauders in the comic had attacked NYC’s sewer mutants, pretty much wiping them out. So my homage to this was “The Children of Trouble,” a group of powerful high level, magic-item wielding bad guys who were created by an evil rival kingdom in response to the good kingdom’s access to the services of the player character party and to generally be engines of chaos in foreign lands. There was a high level monk, assassin, gladiator, and cleric in the “Children,” and most memorably also a +5 iron spear-wielding ogre who wore gauntlets of giant strength. When the ogre fought characters in the crowded streets, his weapon would slay bystanders and knock bricks from buildings when it missed the players. The player party and the bad guy group had several memorable combat encounters over that campaign, including one on the city streets when The Children of Trouble were instructed to massacre elves that lived in the city.

One of my regular players, Alan, had read those X-Men comics and was fairly snarky about the fact that I had based something on it (even though, in fact, it was the idea of the group more than the characters that I used). But what the hell, the other players loved having combats that came off like something out of a comic book, rather than the usual sword and shield dungeon slug fests.

One of my favorite baddy groups, also of the 80s’ got based on the three villains from Superman 2. I turned general Zod and his two cronies into a small party of evil adventurer’s who were hired to steal a magical portrait, headquartering in a dungeon that the party had to go into to fight them. “Zod” was a high level thief, a kinky lady sorceress with a magical, mind-controlled length of rope that could attack, and a big dumb, mute fighter with a 18/00 strength. All had variations of black leather armor. The female, Desmadonna, actually managed to escape getting killed and showed up for many years from time to time. Eventually she even became queen (in a memorable early 90’s game) of a small, evil-controlled pleasure town known as the “Pleasure Dome” out in the desert. I still have the great, sexy figure I used for her, and hope to have her show up again some day soon.

This evil bad guy homage was actually very well received by the players, and they especially loved Desmadonna (maybe that was how she escaped alive).

I can’t think of any such homages from the later 90’s, or from my recent return to gaming, but you never know what I might have subconsciously done. I think it is just fine to base ideas on the ideas of others (The American Way?), as long as it makes for colorful, memorable characters and fun gaming, why the hell not?