I've very much been enjoying Joshua Williamson's House of Brainiac. We're just two issues in and I am already clamoring for more. So I was pretty excited to see the Superman House of Brainiac Special solicited for a dreaded 5th Wednesday.
Now the first two issues sizzled. This one has three stories, two directly linked to the Brainiac arc and one catching up on Perry White's mayoral run.
Joshua Williamson writes the two Brainiac stories. The first one covers how Brainiac got a hold of the Czarian city he controls. It also gives us another link to the uncertain thinking we have seen Brainiac suffer from in this arc. The second Brainiac story has a much better reveal, something that I really liked. Unfortunately it also involves the now ever-present Amanda Waller, a character I could do without. Edwin Galmon provides a sterile futuristic art style to the Czarnia story. Fico Ossio brings a much muddier, grittier art style to the last story.
But it is the middle story that I found lacking. Writer Mark Russell does two things which sat wrong with me. One, he puts forward a rough and rumpled version of Perry White. That's not my Perry. And Russell is known for the political leanings in his stories and this one is no different. This one is a bit heavy handed and rather simplistic in its approach to a real problem. Steve Pugh remains rock solid on art.
We start with a Brainiac pondering how Krypton and Czarnia are similar. Both worlds destroyed; both world claiming a final son.
But then we learn that once the inhabitants became immortal, the world didn't veer towards peace and improving itself. Instead it leaned into cruelty and depravity. This is where General Chacal comes in. He and his followers invade a city, taking over and traumatizing the city's inhabitants.
It gets to the point where a police officer named Tribb comes up with a radical solution.
But remember this whole Chacal thing ...
Tribb can't defeat Chacal so she makes a deal with the devil.
She call Brainiac to Czarnia and tells him to bottle the city Chacal has taken over. In return, she'll give Brainiac Czarian DNA so the android can discover immortality.
A Czarian craving peace is unusual. Thinking you can deal with Brainiac? Insanity.
Brainiac goes ahead and bottles the city, explaining how he has Chacal under control.
But in typical fashion, Brainiac decides to destroy the rest of life on Czarnia. But when he witnesses a Czarian father trying to protect his children from the Brainiac drone, the Coluan is perplexed. Why fight against the inevitable? Witnessing this 'creates a break' in Brainiac's system.
We have seen him nearly short circuit. We have seen him creating something. Does Brainiac feel like he is missing a family? Is that why he kidnapped Lena? To reclaim a 'daughter'? Is that why he is making a Queen?
It's interesting.
The Perry White story focuses on Bibbo helping Mr. White with the campaign.
But as I said, Perry is gruff but also portrayed almost like a slob. He is running against Garon Blake, a button-downed zealot, fueling fear about the aliens living in A-Town. We see how Blake is able to whip a portion of Metropolis into a frenzy.
Then Perry comes in and says that the aliens make life better by working in the city.
Of course, this being a Russell story, these issues are portrayed as simply as they can. Blake's followers are all quick to anger, quick to intimidate, quick to lash out. And Perry thinks all the aliens are peaceful laborers.
It's clearly an allegory for illegal immigration, not a subtle one. But there are layers to the real world problem.
And then to hammer home the simplistic approach Russell takes, we see one of Blake's followers try to beat up an alien kid.
No one can defend someone assaulting a child.
When you are trying to hammer home a viewpoint about a complicated political issue, you need to make sure to portray the people you disagree with in the most odious way. This is ridiculous.
But here is the thing that really hurt this story.
The first tale in this issue is one where an outside group of people invade a city and terrorize it. So it isn't a simple problem. On another world in another city, a group could come into a city and act like criminals and harm the people. Should people be wary? Cautious?
Would Russell be so quick to defend Chacal? After all, his group were outsiders looking to go to a new land? Is there a chance that some of the aliens in A-Town aren't saints?
Plus, if you are going to do allegory, be subtle.
Thankfully, the last story recovered.
We have seen Amanda Waller talking to The Light, a council of unseen villains. I assumed it would be some version of Legion of Doom or the Secret Society. Instead it turns out to be all the versions of Brainiac we saw earlier in the arc.
Brainiac was playing Amanda Waller!
I still don't quite like this Amanda Waller. I don't quite how she is able to be so threatening to the most powerful heroes and villains of the DCU. I don't like when Batman stares down Darkseid either.
So overall an okay issue. But I am looking forward getting back to the main arc.
Overall grade: C
Statistically crime among "illegal aliens" is lower than the general population. The logic for this is pretty obvious: they don't want to call attention to themselves and get sent back where they came from.
ReplyDeleteJust from the Suicide Squad movies, Amanda Waller seems pretty easy to fool. I'm not sure how she's supposed to be this awesome person who knows everything like Nick Fury in Marvel when she's almost constantly being duped.
I agree about the first comment. Just interesting for me as a reader that DC put two stories about outsiders going into a city with such two drastically different endings into the book. Especially when the purpose of the second story was to garner sympathy but the purpose of the first showed the opposite.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the Russell issue should have been a Perry White one-shot.
Hmm, two formidable women making deals woth Brainiac, only one of them knowingly, is Williamson up to something?
ReplyDeleteI really hope Brainiac doesn’t use Lena to finish off his queen, that would be awful; also, we’d all see how the story would end.
I’m with you on Perry White, as you may know by now!
One note ham fistedness is why I don't buy anything by Russel. He'd even have me rethink buying anything with Colleen Doran art.
ReplyDeleteSolid Review, and here's my defense of the second story. If taken as an isolate narrative, I would agree that it's weak. If taken as a building block for the wider DCU though, I think it's much stronger. The most interesting development in the DCU's depiction of its version of Earth over the past few years has arguably been the normalization of extra-terrestrials' presence in human society (particularly American society). If you think about it, this is a logical evolution for a universe where it's implied that there are dozens of other alien civilizations that have been in contact with each other long enough for inter species contact to seem banal to other alien races and for the development of a standardized universal trade language (Interlac). Despite that aspect of the DCU being standard for much of its existence, Earth has often remained a place where encounters with aliens are seen as exceptional, to the point that in the past the DCU was often portraying a version of Earth where humanity was just beginning to come to terms with the fact that the universe has other sentient, sapient species.
ReplyDeleteThe creation of A-Town along with the mass immigration of Warworld refugees to Earth and Earth's active involvement with the United Planets have all demonstrated that at last the DCU's version of reality, humanity has fully accepted the reality of sharing their universe with other sentient, sapient beings. That raises the question though of how humanity responds to that realization, at least within the framework of American society. Many of the best stories from DC in the past few years have dealt with this question, most notably in Action Comics' depiction of the rise and fall of the Blue Earth movement during PKJ's run on that title. In that context, I appreciated the Russell story. Is it heavy handed? Yes. Does it also contribute to the sense that the DCU's portrayal of Earth - or at least America - is one where extra-terrestrials' presence has been normalized so that we can think about the second and third order effects of having a permanent extra-terrestrial presence on Earth? Yes again. Given that, I would therefore say it's a success as world building narrative regardless of its deficiencies as a standalone short story. What I really want to see from DC going forward is a real willingness to fully explore the societal and cultural ramifications of this development within their narrative universe. In turn, what concerns me much more than any of the deficiencies in the Russell story from this issue is that I haven't seen a sustained will from DC's editorial and writing staff to consistently explore the issues raised by this development within their universe. That makes me think that this is going to be another potentially rich storytelling opportunity they'll squander due to a lack of imagination and aversion to narrative risk taking regarding their fictional universe.
This one just spun it's wheels in the mudpit for the most part, although I'll take Bibbo almost any way I can get him at this point. As for Amanda Waller, having one's metahuman powers destroyed by the credulous and easily duped likes to her, is vaguely embarrassing, you just know Brainiac will feed her to the nanite piranhas or some damn thing when the time comes.
ReplyDeleteJF