[Not really, but I couldn't resist.]
Serial storytelling, like any medium, has its own rules and rhythms. When I watched daytime soap operas back in college, I got used to the B-stories being on Tuesdays and Thursdays, because the big movements in the A-stories happened in Friday cliffhangers and Monday resolutions. I stopped watching “Lost” because I felt like I only needed to see the last five minutes of the latest episode. Sweeps periods affect storytelling by heightening expectations. There’s also the notion that a story can’t end before it’s supposed to end. That creepy guy who’s just been accused might well be the killer, but if your watch says there’s too much time left, it’s probably right.
So it is with superhero crossover epics and their tie-in issues. Trying to live down the stigma of too many “red skies” tie-ins, DC often reminds us that we need not read every ancillary comic. Accordingly, that lowers expectations for things like the Sinestro Corps Specials and Countdown Presents miniseries. They’re Tuesday/Thursday comics, not yet “graduated” to part of the main plot.
However, that in turn makes me wonder about the precise nature of the particular story. “Sinestro Corps” is easier to analyze in this respect because it’s relatively discrete: a few months’ worth of the two Green Lantern titles, a few more Specials, and apparently an issue of Blue Beetle. It’s also pretty modular: Green Lantern follows Hal, John, and Guy; and GL Corps spotlights Arisia, Dr. Natu, Mogo, Sodam Yat, et al. I haven’t done it, but I suspect you could follow either “front” entirely in its own title. If you wanted to know what was going on in the other book, there’s always the Internet.
Still, depending on the extent to which a particular issue’s information is reproduced online, the Internet may be a poor substitute for reading the actual comics. I don’t watch “Lost” anymore, because I feel like I get enough from Television Without Pity. My imagination most likely doesn’t sync up with the actual episodes, but at this point I’m not curious about the show’s visuals. I just want to know what happened.
Likewise, I read these ancillary issues not expecting anything to happen on the larger scale; and was pleasantly surprised to find that the Sinestro Corps: Cyborg Superman Special did more than just recap a handful of ’90s Superman comics. As a result, over the weekend, I shot my mouth off about how the SC:CSS, unlike its Parallax-centered predecessor, actually advanced the larger plot of the Sinestro Corps War, by showing the SC’s initial attacks on Earth and the Justice League. By contrast, the Parallax Special seemed to be on the level of a Secret Files story in terms of its place in the big picture. Its most significant development was apparently the revelation that the real Kyle was still intact, active, and able to challenge Parallax. This was symbolized by Kyle’s connection to a painting from his mother. The Parallax Special ended with Parallax still in the driver’s seat, but Kyle maybe having moved up to shotgun. It wasn’t a bad issue, but to me it didn’t do much more than set up a plot point for a future issue of one of the main titles.
So then I read Green Lantern #24, and –
SPOILERS FOLLOW –
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– boy, was I off-base. Yes, it set up a plot point, but it pretty much had to, because very little in GL #24 itself explained the painting’s importance. As for the Cyborg Superman Special, sure, it led into GL #24, but in hindsight it doesn’t seem as necessary anymore.
See, here’s the thing: with open-ended serial storytelling, we’re never quite sure what’s necessary, what’s an appendix, and what’s researchable. Readers can skip the whale-biology parts of Moby-Dick without losing the narrative thread, just like they can skip The Iliad‘s roll calls. Crisis On Infinite Earths omitted almost all of the Green Lantern Corps’ subplot, even though the Monitors’ mythology was bound up in GL lore.
That’s where the Parallax Special actually becomes more necessary than the Cyborg’s. The Parallax Special uses Kyle Rayner’s history to tell a new story, whereas the Cyborg’s retells an old story as prelude to a few pages of action. Thus, the Parallax Special adds an insight into Kyle’s situation (and Parallax’s too) which couldn’t have been conveyed by reviewing old stories. Conversely, the Cyborg Special could have used reprints judiciously to bring new readers up to speed.
Questions of economics come in at this point: whether it would have been more cost-effective for DC either to create an entirely new Cyborg Supes comic book; or to have an editor assemble a Cyborg Superman Primer directly from those old comics, possibly paying royalties along the way. The answer depends on information to which I am not privy, but considering that DC is simply reprinting old comics for its Countdown primers on Jimmy Olsen and Ray Palmer, that doesn’t seem like an unrealistic analysis.
Indeed, why not do more Countdown-style reprints? A Sinestro Corps Primer could include the original Empire of Tears story (already reprinted in the Alan Moore-centered Across The Universe book, but that shouldn’t make a difference); maybe some more excerpts from the early-‘90s Superman titles; and maybe even the Green Lantern tie-ins to Crisis On Infinite Earths. The latter might be a stretch, but the arc does pit the GL Corps against forces aligned with the Anti-Monitor; and it’s just fun regardless. Again, royalties may be part of the equation, because many of these comics fall within that late ‘70s-to-late ‘80s period which still gives DC’s reprint program headaches.
Talk of reprints must of course involve the inevitable repackaging of the Sinestro Corps issues into their own hardcover and paperback volumes. Sinestro Corps War Vol. 1 has already been solicited, with Vol. 2 a certainty, and probably a third volume collecting the Specials and the “Tales of the Sinestro Corps” shorts. The question for those books, though, is how one reads them.
The shorter “Tales” stories, whether 8 pages or 22, are by and large ancillary to the Sinestro Corps War, appearing in the larger context either as teasers or interstitials. Their volume would work best as an anthology. What’s more, DC and Marvel both tend to keep their crossover collections segregated into the main event and the undercards; and nothing suggests this practice will change anytime soon. Of course, this reinforces the idea that a crossover is relatively discrete, even if in practice (I’m looking at you, Infinite Crisis) it might read better if all or part of the specials were incorporated into the collection. In the context of GL #24, the Parallax Special should be part of Sinestro Corps Vol. 2, while the Cyborg Special‘s cliffhanger ending may not read as well if separated from the main story.
The problem is not so much one of “accessibility” as it is narrative cohesion. The painting is the focus of the Parallax Special, and its mention in GL #24 hints at its probable effects on Kyle/Parallax, but the way GL #24 plays out, the painting doesn’t appear to make much of a difference. Parallax merges with Hal again, and Hal’s consciousness helps Kyle break free. Guy’s search for the painting does justify showing the Corps’ arrival on Earth, though. In any event, the larger story requires that the painting be explained, and so the Parallax Special should be integrated into the eventual collection.
Of course, we read what we want; and if DC puts all the Sinestro Corps short stories and Specials in their own volume, that’s the way future readers will experience them. After all, there are few second drafts of these kinds of stories; just creative approaches to editing their collections. We who read crossovers week to week come to them from a different perspective than the collected-editions’ readers, but the same stories have to serve both audiences comparably.
For better or worse, upon first read I filed away the Parallax Special as more of a character study, and thus less essential than the fightin’ and carnage which closed out the Cyborg Special. Shared-universe considerations sometimes reduce each week’s issues to those kinds of bullet points – either something happened, or it didn’t. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the more shared-universe titles one reads each week, the more bullet-pointing one does; and, most likely, the less time one has to reflect. Time enough for reflection when the collections come out, right?
I tend to resist crossovers which seem too concerned with rule-making and bullet points, because I think they are the kinds of stories one can follow on Wikipedia. Therefore, it’s always nice to see a story like “The Sinestro Corps War” play with my expectations in such a good way. If only Green Lantern #24 had done more with that painting….
October 11th, 2007 at 12:11 pm
It strikes me that the author doesn’t read (or watch) as much for story as for facts.
Is there no appreciation for artistry in the writing, for character moments, for dialogue, for all the things that lead up to “what happened.”
Even if the Parallax one-shot didn’t advance the SC story, there was still something in there to be enjoyed (if you’re into Ron Marz, me…not so much).
October 11th, 2007 at 1:48 pm
m, that’s a pretty common problem with fans these days, at least the ones on the internet. It’s a large part of why crossovers have become so huge. The only books that people get excited about are the ones that have big consequences outside of their own books. If a book just tells a good story, then it isn’t considered important.
October 11th, 2007 at 2:10 pm
I like to think I can appreciate craft. I thought the Parallax special told its particular story effectively; and I enjoyed it more than I did the Cyborg Superman special. However, the question of “what constitutes the story” seems to me to be on a different, more superficial level.
October 12th, 2007 at 7:32 am
The way in which Marvel are packaging their Civil War Chronicles seems a good way of telling a story: in order, with the side issues that contribute to the main story being slotted in at the appropriate point.
October 12th, 2007 at 8:19 am
Not knowing his history I was surprised with how cohesive the writer made his back story in the Cyborg Superman book. When you step back you can clearly tell what a complete mishash of story lines and aborted ‘new’ directions, but I think it was, somehow, brought all together in one cohesive, and somewhat logical history.
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