“It’s the Dance of Shiva, it’s the Debutantes ball, and everyone will be there who’s anyone at all.” From Monkey Wash Donkey Rinse, written by Warren Zevon and Duncan Aldrich.
When it comes to springboards for all those mega-super-battle-crossover things, a.k.a. event comics, it’s hard to imagine a more overused and hackneyed plot device than the Tournament. Everybody fights everybody, more or less one-on-one, until there is only one survivor who then must go on to vanquish the threat that started it all at least half-year previously, and then figure out a way to bring everybody back.
If I had a buck for every time this breathtakingly original stratagem has been deployed, I could afford to buy DC’s KO, the latest deforestation…, but I still wouldn’t have the time, energy, desire or wherewithal to sit down and read the whole thing.
When one of these events sounds interesting — and KO does not (to me; your mileage may vary) — I usually check out the enveloping miniseries and read whichever tie-ins I would have read anyway. Normally, I do not miss anything important when I pass over half of these issues and, in fact, like every other reader I maintain the right to bail when it becomes pathetically redundant.
KO began its journey with one of the longest set-ups in event comics history. DC shuffled its deck once again and told us all about the comings and goings of such important elements as Darkseid, Kirby’s Fourth World, Booster Gold, Doomsday, The Question, The Legion of Super-Heroes (remember them?) and of course Batman and his brooding brood.
They even relaunched still another new Justice League to use as its story wheelhouse, but this particular relaunch has a twist: everybody is in the League whether they want to be or not. All the heroes take their orders from the JL elite, including Mr. Terrific and Red Tornado, the latter having been integrated into the Justice League’s computers.
You know, after all these years reading the sundry Leagues Justice, the one thing that never occurred to me was “what these superheroes really need is a lot more bureaucracy.”
But KO has a rather significant twist. The tournament happens in the KO miniseries itself, but the tie-ins cover much of the character development. In other words, the tie-in issues actually have the innovation and developmental work, while the tournament hero-on-hero bullshit happens in the overarching miniseries. Thus far they’ve shown us some interesting growth and rectitude, with the promise of more as the event progresses.
Well, at least that’s different, and when it comes to event comics “different” is a rare commodity.
Thus far the most interesting work is being carried out in the sundry tales of Batman The Darkhearted Detective. Batman has become DC’s more competent version of Gilbert Shelton’s Norbert the Narc, and even his ever-expanding family of children mostly named Robin have started to demand the guy lighten up. Superman’s been tired of it ever since he found out Batman carried a piece of Kryptonite around in case Supes has to be put down.
KO has another amusing twist, this time in the highly overused “everything you know is wrong” trope. Instead of killing off characters (temporarily) and futzing around with some of the others, the trick to KO is in its changing several significant backstories. Remember when we used to call that sort of thing “continuity implants” and “retconning?” This type of workaround can be cute but will be overused to the point where it becomes annoying… and then becomes just another worn-down crutch on the rack.
Marvel’s recent event stunts have been more limited in their scope, affecting portions of their super-hero line but not the whole magilla at any one time. Except now they’ve got this “Age of Revelation” thing which seems to affect Marvel across-the-board, right down to their variant staples.
This is why, for the past couple decades, the majority of my new comic book reading pleasures come from other publishers.
And don’t get me started on the current DC/Marvel mash-ups. As the man said, “you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry.”
