This week iFanboy engaged in one of the oldest traditions in comic book culture: the unveiling of an All New, All Different revamp. As much as we all loved the old incarnation it was time for a fresh coat of paint, a wet bar, and a hot tub. Even though the guts are the same, it does put a creative jolt into the old noggin when some new accessories are available.
This happens in superhero comics all of the time. A solid book can get staid after a while of continuous storytelling. Characters are run down, and stories can be stuck in a rut. In the grind of periodical publishing, this can happen slowly over time, so slow that we do not even realize the rut at first. Then suddenly, a new wrinkle is thrown in the mix and the book is suddenly revitalized. For all the promise of All New, All Different, it is just an opportunity to highlight the strength of the core ideas behind the book. The same goes for the site. Ideally, the changes are simply meant to make it easier for us to get our ideas to you, and for you to tear them apart like the savages you are. All this change has me thinking about my favorite make overs in comics.
The Uncanny X-Men
The X-Men have to be the ultimate example of a successful make over. Originally, the X-men were a middling Lee and Kirby creation. The book hinted at interesting ideas but never seemed to reach its full potential. I never really bought the original X-men (Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Iceman, Beast, Angel) as being very freakish or tortured by their status as mutants. Cyclops was much more stressed out about getting Marvel Girl to like him than dealing with anti-mutant hysteria. Hell, they worked with the government. Prof. X was just gathering child soldiers to further American security interests during the Cold War. Even the classic symbol of the mutant angst, Magneto, was weak sauce at this point. He was your standard world domination obsessed, cackling villain. He was just another interchangeable Marvel villain. Being a mutant just seemed like a good excuse to avoid having to come up with an origin. There was some interesting Neal Adams art in the late period of the first run, but it was not enough to save the book from going to reprints in the early 70s.
Then along came Len Wein and Dave Cockrum to jump-start one of the most successful franchises in comic books with Giant Sized X-Men #1. They ditched the boring high school dramatics of old and mixed a cast of characters from all over the world and with extremely different perspectives. You could see the gentle and emotionally bruised Nightcrawler work with the very dickish Sunfire (for at least one story.) The characters were big and broad…and that was perfect. As Chris Claremont came aboard you could see the characters develop their own personal clichés and quirks. We were now dealing with a soap opera on the cosmic level. Magneto became a rounded villain, much harder to pin down than your standard archenemy. All the promise of the original ideas was finally being fulfilled. The franchise never looked back. (Well actually, it did. A lot. That is not what I meant.)
The Justice League of America
The Justice League has had two of my favorite makeovers in comics. The Justice League of America was born as a revitalization of the old Justice Society (ding!) concept.
Take your best characters, throw them together, and sell it to the kids. Under Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky, the original Justice League stories were simple puzzle stories. The heroes are in a jam, they split up, solve individual challenges, and come together in the end to solve the problem. Characterization was not valued, and therefore all the characters sounded the same. As time moved along and the audience became more sophisticated, the puzzles had less draw. Subsequent writers worked hard to give the various League members their own personalities. There were many excellent runs in the years following Fox, including Steve Englehart’s incredible run, but there was always a specter hanging over the book. Superheroes were becoming more serious and the Justice League worked better as a fun house attraction. As we rolled into the 80s, the fun house was taken for granted and the JLA moved to Detroit. There was more angst, stomach punches, and characters being strangled by robot hands, but less adventure. The concept was staid.
Crisis on Infinite Earths then arrived, destroying worlds and creating the perfect atmosphere for a makeover. Giffen, DeMatteis, and Maguire created a Justice League that would be ahead of its time if it came out TODAY. They plucked characters from every available corner. You had classic JLA characters like Batman, Martian Manhunter, and Black Canary mixing it up with new acquisitions like Blue Beetle. Mister Miracle represented Jack Kirby’s Fourth World. Not only was the mix interesting, but also the stories were an intoxicating mix of adventure and humor. The adventure part is the important part. Many people really focus on the humor of these stories, but the book really worked because there was real sophisticated adventure involved as well. Maquire’s characters truly acted out the humor and adventure. It was the Justice League, but rebuilt for a new era. The funhouse was back, but aimed towards a more mature audience.
The funny thing is that the remake was so successful that it led to the complete saturation of DC universe with copycats. There were spin offs galore and eventually the jokes started to go a bit thin and the adventures started to get a bit boring. There were four Justice League books and they all seemed to be circling the same boring storylines. The 90s led the books down a trail of using B-list characters and diminishing returns.This led to the next big makeover of Grant Morrison and Howard Porter tossing aside that B-list trap (why do publishers get obsessed with using B-list characters in A-list books?) and just going straight for the jugular by using the big seven characters of the DC universe. By the late nineties, it had been almost two decades since the Justice League was populated by the biggest names in the DC universe. There was no more worrying about trying to ground the JLA to make the adventures relatable. Morrison was going to go nuts and create adventures worthy of the seven most powerful beings on earth. They were full throttle adventure stories that returned the JLA to Cosmic adventures with a big C. Who needed event comics when every issue of JLAwas an event? There was one Justice League book and that was all you needed. It is funny how a return to the basics can sometimes be the best makeover of all.Maybe we should do an iFanboy newsletter. On paper.
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Tom Katers needs some new clothes. He is ripped. Listen to his fitness podcast here.
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I love the JLA makeover. The first hardcover collection of Mr. Morrison’s run on that book is fantastic.
I couldn’t agree more. Although it was a little confusing with all of it’s strange cosmic concepts it was still amazing to read.
What about the Thunderbolts “Fight Club” makeover…? I’m kidding! Great piece Tom!
I’d buy a iFanboy zine.
And even though it wasn’t great for just the reasons you mentioned, Tom, I’m still looking to complete my run of Justice League Task Force because, y’know, why not?
Didn’t Thor kinda get a make over in the past few years? The Chris Samnee version seems more light hearted then i remember.
Sunfire was a total bag of douche. He chose not to stay with the team because….why? They were too “idealistic”? He though the team dynamic was too touchy-feely? Hey, Sunfire, take it easy chief. You’re mask looks like you raided Ocean Master’s closet and the biggest threat your ass has to worry about is a samurai with silver armor. Fuckin Sunfire. I hate that guy.
I always hated how Sunfire left. It was like they WANTED to say “We have way too many characters and don’t have the patience to write a team this big, so half the team is just going to walk away with no real reason.”
Ha! the classic JLA Sunday special!
If Justice League International came out today, exactly as it was in the 80s, it would STILL be the best comic on the market. it has held up amazingly well over the years.
The X-Men make-over has to be the best one ever. I dislike the X-Men so much today that sometimes I forget how much i LOVE those X-Men stories from the 70s and 80s.
I love reading the recent JLI reprints as much as I did the originals back in the day. It’s funny that the creators saw it as an antidote to the grim, gritty and realistic heroes of the mid to late 80s, and yet the characterisation and banter between the JLI was in many ways more real than the tough guys of Miller, Moore et al. Let’s be honest, if the Justice League really existed, that’s how that many egos and powers in a room would behave.
Thanks to my comic store’s gigantic “sidekick store” comprised of $1 books, I recently read most of that classic JLI/JLA run for the first time. I agree that it holds up remarkably well. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I am retroactively outraged at DC for killing Blue Beetle! I shake my fist at DC for killing off such a great character!
By the way, have we heard anything about Blue Beetle and the new DC reboot, or is he still just dead?
In a marginally related question, whatever happened to Mr. Miracle? Of course, I mean Scott Free. My brief internet research found that he died in the Death of the New Gods mini-series, but that the New Gods were supposedly resurrected in Final Crisis. I confess that I read Final Crisis when it came out, and liked it quite a bit, but that I don’t recall much of what happened other then Dan Turpin turning into Darkseid (awesome!) and then killing Batman for a while. Are there any Scott Free aficionados out there (Tom?) that can catch me up to speed? If he’s still out there somewhere, what about Barda?
All the New Gods were resurrected on Earth 51 after Final Crisis; they’re back to being outside the mainstream DCU unless the September reboot changes that.
“weak sauce”
Should do one on character make overs. I’d certainly put Lobo in that one. He went from a god-awful purple and orange body suit to a pretty sweet ass biker look.
What no Frank Miller Daredevil 🙁