For any fan of the Uncanny X-Men, it is no stretch that nearly every character in the monthly series is somehow related to some other character… even if that is in another dimension, alternate time-line or realm of existence.
Judging by the family tree below, the holidays must be madness.
Via Wired by artist Joe Stone. <-click on his site to see the amazing Avengers family tree as well.
If the X-Men seem convoluted, the Avengers tree is simply baffling. The multiple Hulks and Thors are especially confusing.
After last year’s successful ongoing run on Detective Comics, Scott Snyder is the current favorite in the house of the Bat. His recent storyline exposing a secret organization that has existed in Gotham City for generations (without Batman’s knowledge) was chilling and exciting all at once. But the story is about to spill over into the other Bat titles as a self-contained idea branches into the beast called a ‘crossover.’
The bright side is that “Night of the Owls” is devised by Scott Snyder (Batman: The Black Mirror, a ComicsAlliance pick for Best Comics of 2011), and will expand upon the Court of Owls, the wicked Gotham City secret society that’s driving events in the writer’s Batman title. Additionally, the backups in Batman and Detective will be drawn by Rafael Albuquerque, whose work with Snyder on Vertigo’s American Vampire has made that series one of our favorites. James Tynion IV will co-write the backups with Snyder.
Snyder spoke about the project at DC’s The Source blog:
The first backup, in issue eight will give a sense of the terrifying scope of the Court of Owls’ attack on Gotham. This really will be the first shot in a war for the soul of Gotham City,” said Snyder. “And then, starting in issue nine, we’ll begin a three part story called ‘The Fall of the House of Wayne’ that will investigate the secret history of the Court of Owls and its relationship to the Wayne family – particularly to Thomas and Martha Wayne, Bruce’s parents. The story will be told from the point of view of Jarvis Pennyworth, Alfred’s father, and offer some big surprises and shocks about the forces that shaped the bat-mythology as we know it. Can’t wait for you all to see these stories!
“I’m also excited to be co-writing with my friend, James Tynion IV, a young writer I’m extremely excited about. Especially in the spirit of the New 52, it’s a real thrill to get to give someone new and talented a chance to get his foot in the door, and James is a writer to watch and expect great things from!”
“And of course, I’m over the moon about getting to work with my good friend and AMERICAN VAMPIRE co-creator Rafael Albuquerque on the some of the very first ones!”
Naturally, extra story pages means a price hike. As confirmed by Newsarama last week, Batman will increase from 32 pages (including ads) to 40 with April’s issues #8 to facilite the additional content, and Detective Comics #8 will also introduce its own supplemental feature that we can expect to be announced very soon.
Newsarama: Scott, when was the decision made to increase the page count and price on Batman, and what was the motivation for the change?
Scott Snyder: I know fans are nervous and excited, but also some of them have reached out to me. I have a lot of story I want to tell that involves the Court of Owls, and I had artists that I really wanted to work with.
I had the option, because I have a lot on my plate, of having another writer do a back-up or doing something completely unrelated to Batman in the back-ups, the way they did in some books, but I had so much fun doing the back-ups on Detective with Francesco [Francavilla] in those early issues, that gave added content and added story and secret storylines to the main story and the main feature, that I figured, look, if they’re going to do extra pages of the book, I want to do them myself.
So I signed on to do the back-ups. So I’ll be doing them for the future, indefinitely.
Nrama: So who are you going to be working with on the back-ups?
Snyder:I thought is would be a really fun chance to bring in new blood, both artistically for the art, and writers who people haven’t seen before also on Batman or on major comics at all.
So two things I’m really excited about with the back-ups are that I’m going to be writing the first batch with a writer I’ve known for a long time, whom I actually met when I was teaching fiction in comic writing and who is a very young, up-and-coming writer whose stuff I really, really like. I’ve read a lot of his prose, and I know he’s just a huge talent. And so I thought it would be a lot of fun to co-write the same way I was able to do that on Gates of Gotham with Kyle [Higgins] when he was starting out. I feel like co-writing on the Batman back-up would give someone new a chance to begin to find their voice, and at the same time, I can have a very heavy hand for what happens in Batman.
We thought that would be a great balance, so I’m writing it with a guy named James Tynion IV. And I think he’s a real rising star, and I’m excited for people to see what we’re doing in the back-ups.
And the other thing I’m super excited about is that we’re going to be launching it with Rafael from American Vampire. I was so thrilled when that came together.
The back-up really gives you the sense of the scope. Issue #8 is very much about Batman at war with the court in a way that’s going to be super-intense and fun.
The issue #8 back-up is the place where you’ll learn about how broad the attacks are going to be on Gotham, and also, you’ll learn about how it’s going to affect other books in the Bat-family. You’ll see the scope of it as it impacts other members of the Bat-family in the back-up, which leads into the “Night of the Owls” story people have been hearing about, that we’re doing in the Batman Universe in 2012.-Via Newsarama
According to Newsarama, the crossover event will be touching on several titles such as Batman, Batgirl, Nightwing, Batman and Robin, Birds of Prey, Catwoman, Batwing and Red Hood and the Outlaws. In addition, the history of Gotham City will continue to unravel in the pages of All-Star Western with Jonah Hex and Amadeus Arkham delving deeper into the bowels of the city.
Snyder assures readers that they will not be required to read them all which is good news to yours truly as one issue of Batgirl was enough for me and Red Hood and the Outlaws looks dreadful. I am, however, tickled that Batwoman was not noted as one of the crossover books. Won’t that be peculiar when Kate Kane has absolutely no knowledge of this massive event shaking the pillars of Gotham City? Good on JH Williams for staying well out of it.
I trust Snyder as a Bat-scribe and will continue to happily read Batman, Batman and Robin and Detective Comics (and quietly read Dark Knight), but this kind of event can seriously put readers off. So I will hold Snyder to his word and stick to the mainstays and not stray into the loosely connected ones (though I do like Nightwing).
The mayhem begins this April with issue #8 where the page count and cover price will both jump.
This isn’t the only news regarding DC Comics’ line-up, though. As reported by USAToday, the publisher has just confirmed the cancellation of Men of War, Mister Terrific, O.M.A.C., Hawk and Dove, Blackhawks and Static Shock. In their place will be the long-awaited return of Grant Morrison’s Batman Incorporated, Earth 2 (by James Robinson featuring the JSA), G.I. Combat (by JT Krul and Ariel Olivetti with Unknown Soldier back-ups by Justin Gray, Jimmy Palmiotti and Dan Panosian as well as The Haunted Tank by John Arcudi and Scott Kolins) Worlds’ Finest (by Paul Levitz, George Perez and Kevin Maguire), and Dial H for Hero (by award-winning horror author China Miéville).
Story 40
Written by Robert Shearman Released January 2003 “History isn’t the past. It’s a version of the past that we choose to remember. It takes the past and tidies it up. Inexplicable horrors explained. The most obscene atrocities reduced to cause and effect. It isn’t fair. Putting the past into some perspective… making it safe.”
The Doctor and Evelyn encounter a disturbance in the temporal vortex. Arriving in London, 1903, the Doctor is somewhat relieved to see the Tower of London, a landmark that he and Evelyn had encountered before. Yet the moment is fleeting as the TARDIS dematerializes on its own and the Doctor experiences a fugue in time, witnessing an invasion happening all around him. When the fog clears, he is in the year 2003, but a different version, altered by a Dalek invasion that the Doctor thwarted. They are greeted by Nigel Rochester who is loonier than a tin if biscuits and his self-debasing wife who is angry that he does not hit her harder or insult her more.
The Doctor has become a folk hero, exaggerated into a muscle-bound absurdity. The Daleks have become part of English culture and appear in toy shops and are printed on soda cans. Midgets are physically hobbled into man-made Dalek shells to perform for their deranged ruler. Successfully conquering an invading Dalek fleet, the resultant British Empire encompasses much of the planet (using stolen Dalek technology). Their civilization is absolutely bonkers, obsessed as it is with grammar, to the point when Miriam slaps a guard for using a contraction; “I accept you into my bed, I accept you as my lover, but I will not allow you to contract.”
While the Doctor is taken far from the confines of the city, Evelyn discovers another version of the Doctor, but he is a shattered version of his former self. The alternate Doctor had halted an invasion in 1903 and was penalized for the effort. His legs amputated, he sits alone in a cell in the tower, his mind deranged after 100 years. The dialog is gruesome and disgustingly lurid, the Doctor explaining that he has no malice toward the humans that he saved. His actions in 1903 left a void, forcing the survivors to think for themselves. In the end, they decided that he no longer served a purpose and turned on him, torturing and surgically damaging him, announcing him dead to the general populace. Deranged, he mutters about the fate of humanity as a brief one, while his is a torturous existence without end: “Human beings can’t last a hundred years, you know… You humans are so fragile. Your lives so brief… a tiny splash of brilliant color against the time stream… then gone forever. Whereas I just go on and on… and on and on.”
The last surviving Dalek is endlessly tortured by a series of brutal guards, prompting it to talk. Breaking its outer shell, the torturer boils the creature in its case, bottling the resulting liquid as a valuable liqueur. Evelyn earns the trust of mad Miriam and finds that the simple-looking woman is actually plotting to overthrow the government and assassinate her husband. The Dalek takes a liking to Evelyn and talks to her at length about its confusion. It tells her how it is visited often with the same request, to teach others how to obtain power. It can understand this in a fellow Dalek, but it is shocked to see such behavior in human beings. Confused and alone, it ponders its fate but one is granted to it. It will be a weapon of revolution.
Farrow arms the Dalek, thinking that it will be an ideal tool to overthrow the President, but it all goes pear-shaped. The Dalek orders Farrow to kill the nearby Lamb, but he is reluctant to do so. Showing weakness, the Dalek offers up the same instruction to Lamb with better luck and he shoots the shocked Farrow point blank. Groveling in pain, Farrow begs for mercy but the Dalek has none of it. “I said I would teach you about power. Power is the strength to do what you would have others do.”
Paranoid without peer, President Rochester attempts to convince the Doctor that his evil dictator persona is a facade, put on to convince the Dalek watching his every move. The Doctor realizes that Rochester, like everyone in this reality, has lost his mind, but tries his best to earn the man’s trust, often bearing witness to unsavory deeds that the President insists is “all for show.” The part is played wonderfully by Martin Jarvis (from Vengeance on Varos) as the character swings the gamut of mad to feeble throughout the story.
The Doctor of course feels responsible. Once again his meddling has resulted in disastrous consequences. Even though he cannot remember starting the temporal paradox that created this alternate reality, it is his actions that have made it so. Unknown to him, the alternate Doctor is visited by the Dalek, now armed and increasingly unstable. Looking for direction, it demands that the Doctor provide new orders, which prompts the Time Lord into paroxysms of laughter. He of course refuses and is exterminated. The Doctor serves no purpose anymore.
Finally at the Jubilee celebration, the Dalek is trundled out as a kind of ceremonial relic. Cajoled into speech, it rants the battle cry of its race in a hollow weak fashion, met by appreciative applause. The Doctor is disgusted and delivers one of his finest and crestfallen speeches: “If you belittle evil… if you pretend it isn’t there, it will happen again. What you have become is Daleks! All my lifetimes I have protected you, maybe I made a mistake. Destroy the Dalek or let the Dalek kill you! I don’t know if I can tell the two of you apart to care!”
Her opportunity open, Miriam declares the end of her husband’s regime and orders the Dalek to kill the President. The mob joins in, shouting ‘Exterminate!’ as one. Unfortunately, the Dalek is through with taking orders and with exterminating. Distraught and confused, it refuses to perform. As Miriam begins her coup, the sky is blotted out by an invasion fleet of Daleks. In a fit of lunacy, she renounces her husband and asks the Dalek to marry her. The crowd goes mad and the Daleks attack. The temporal paradox has come full circle.
In the resulting confusion, the Doctor encounters the Dalek who begs him to remove its gun and kill it. To survive, it deduces, the Daleks must die. Taking no pleasure in the act, the Doctor fires and history heals its wound, erasing the events of a hundred years, but leaving behind the lingering notion that a dark nature lies beneath humanity’s psyche.
Jubilee is a magnificent, if sometimes garish and overly violent, adventure. It functions as a social statement and one on history as well, seen through the point of view of popular culture and propaganda. The Daleks on TV were obviously stand-ins for the Nazis, yet their images were soon printed into soap cakes and tea towels. They were harmless and embraced as child-friendly curiosities. The Doctor attempts to instruct Evelyn in the veil that history places over reality, but experiencing it is far more terrifying and troubling.
One of the reasons that Jubilee is so well known now is because Shearman adapted it for the 2005 series as ‘Dalek.’ It’s a shame because while the TV version is one of the finer efforts of the Davies era, it is garish and pitiful in comparison to Jubilee. Whereas the TV script fails to make a solid and meaningful statement on the Daleks and instead provides a rather sappy take on a monster, de-clawing the deadly Daleks by giving them feelings. As I have noticed when listening to other Big Finish productions, Davies has cherry-picked ideas from them without understanding them (for instance – the Dalek calling Evelyn Smyth a ‘soldier’ of the Doctors is reflective of its limited view, not a deep statement on the program as Davis made it). It’s a damned shame, but hopefully fans will seek out these audios and see where the inspiration came from.
I wouldn’t be making a controversial statement by saying that Jubilee is hardly subtle, as it hammers the same message throughout its four parts, but it is far more sophisticated and well-crafted, showing a deep understanding of the Daleks and our relationship to them as fans.
