While out on my walk today, I think I realized what has disappointed me about the way that IC has been playing out. I'll admit that this aspect probably has been played up to an extent in some of the titles that IC is spilling into (I'm only getting the books I normally do, and then a few of the specials that go with it, like Day of Vengance).
In many ways, the "run up" to IC was playing around with the idea of "trust." Think about the "psychology" of living in the DCU (or any superhero universe really). The ordinary people have to show a high level of trust in their heros. These are people who have the power to destroy them at the blink of an eye, and if they ever want to take control, the options of the "rest of us" will be very limited. This vunerability can easily lead to a sense of paranoia on the part of the people. This is hardly a new idea in comics. X-Men has practically lived in this margin, especially in the glory days of Claremont. Likewise, in the DCU, Kingdom Come got into this very heavily. That said, it's still a vibrant place to mine stories.
Now, in the last couple of years, the buildup of storylines in the DCU have begun to "erode" the trust that the common people would have in their heros.
1. Identity Crisis It's a bit unclear how much the man on the street know of the lobotomization of Dr. Light... but it's still an ongoing issue. The next two are clearer.
2. Black Reign(JSA)- When a "hero" goes rogue and takes over a nation by main force.
3. The killing of Max Lord by Wonder Woman.
These elements have come together and would have formed the backbone of a good storyline, of how the heros have to deal with a situation where the trust has begun to erode. In a way, it's the converse of the old X-Men situation, in that they were feared for no good reason, while the DCU heros are starting to give reason to fear them.
In a way, the Black Reign storyline in JSA is the key to my mind. You have two heros from the most "respected" of the teams (if not the most powerful) becoming the nightmare that everyone had to fear in the back of their heads. Now, this story does have some mitagating circumstances. Black Adam was a "reformed" villain, so people could just shake their heads and say "they never should have trusted him." Likewise, Atom Smasher "repented" and is doing his jail thing, so the people can breathe a sigh of relief. The others involved were "minor players" and didn't have the cachet of the JSA.
Still, that could serve as a "floodgate" for an expansion of this theme. It's not that the people are afraid of superpowered people doing bad things. Well, they are of course, but they also know that the heros are there to protect them. The nightmare is if the heros begin to abandon the side of good.
There are elements of all of this in the runup to IC, and some of the side stories. Sadly, IC has become tied up with rehashing COIE, and this focus has really been pulled to the side. Instead of dealing with the nightmare of falling heros, we are instead just treated to platitudes by Earth-2 Superman and Earth-Prime Superboy about how this world is the "wrong" one, that leads heros to fall. It doesn't carry the power or the impact.
To really have a "payoff" with the groundwork that we've seen, we've got to have something that I don't recall in the history of comics. We are going to have to have a major hero fall hard. There have been low and mid range heros fall (Hawk for instance), and there are times that major heros have been framed or misunderstood (Batman every 20 issues or so), but I don't recall a first or second tier hero in either the DCU or Marvel (the ones I know best) who truly fell. Even Black Adam was pretty enigmatic in his hero phase, so he doesn't fully count. I realize that DC would be afraid to have someone as iconic as Superman or Batman fall, but they could have one of the second tier characters fall all the way.
I hope that IC ends up doing just that... but I don't see it, the way the story is developing.
PS: Even if you say Hal Jordan fell, they then turned around and redeemed him... I want a story where a hero falls, and stays fallen)
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