My Stupid Thoughts: The One Year Later Jump

Hi. My name is SDM. I have a lot of thoughts about comics. Some of them turn into rants, some of them remain stupid thoughts. Here, I will try to organize them into something that makes sense and accomplishes something. I will try to keep it real as much as humanly possible in the process.

Everyone and their mother seems to be raving about Detective Comics #817, in which Jim Gordon seems to be back as Acting Commissioner, Harvey Bullock is a cop again, Harvey Dent is showing up as something-or-other, and Batman and Robin are finally operating as a team again. Just like the good old days, right? What more could you ask for from a Batman story?

While everyone is enjoying their favorite Batman scenario, I am not as convinced. The One Year Later jump has mainly served as a way for writers to throw their characters into crazy, new, and different situations without any set-up. Why is Commissioner Gordon back? It doesn’t matter, we’ll get to it later. Why is Aquaman not Aquaman? It doesn’t matter, we’ll get to it later. Why is Hawkman missing? It doesn’t matter, we’ll get to it later. By jumping a year ahead, DC is able to avoid all the pesky set-up that’s needed for a story to make sense, and they have sold it to the reader as being innovative storytelling. What other company would jump a year ahead in their stories? A lazy one.

Part of the reason why Infinite Crisis has been so well accepted among comic fans is because of how meticulous the build-up was. Keep in mind, the first scene would tie into Infinite Crisis (Donna Troy’s death in Titans/Young Justice: Graduation Day) happened in the summer of 2003, over two years before Infinite Crisis #1 came out. In 2004, there were plethoras of plot threads created and dangled by DC that foreshadowed future happenings, such as the prominence of Checkmate and Brother Eye (Superman: Secret Files 2004), some Crisis happening in the future (Teen Titans #17-19), the darkening of the old JLA (Identity Crisis #1-7), and the formation of a cabal of super-villains (about every title ever). Each week, every shadowy connection got the fans talking, and when the story was finally revealed with March 2005’s Countdown to Infinite Crisis and the subsequent mini-series that followed (OMAC Project, Rann-Thanagar War, Day of Vengeance, and Villains United) felt organic and a result of good storytelling.

That’s why I find that the One Year Later jump is leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. Without the need to build up these big changes as slowly and meticulously as the build up to Infinite Crisis, DC writers have been free to do whatever they want without question. It’s sort of a reverse storytelling; by giving the fans what they want without explaining it at first, if the reasoning turns out to be lame (Ninja robots blackmailed Gordon into un-retiring!) then by that point no one will care. If my favorite character is Jack Knight, and all of a sudden Jack Knight is back in the DCU, I’m not going to care how he came back. Now, the sight of him might annoy me at first when I think, “Wait, but didn’t he swear off being a superhero? How can he possibly be back as Starman?” but those thoughts will be immediately placated by my following thoughts of, “YAY STARMAN!”

It’s working, too. The comic store I work at had completely sold out of Detective Comics two days after it came out, but there were still large amounts of Aquaman, JSA, and Outsiders on the shelves. I personally added no new titles, JSA being the only OYL book I got this week, and I was sorely disappointed. I hear that Aquaman was a stinker from my co-workers, and Outsiders’ new direction looked kind of cool (Captain Boomerang is on the team now, which could be interesting) but it wasn’t enough to make me buy it.
To DC’s credit, they haven’t been going in a radical new direction for everything. JSA was more of the same JSA stories, and I appreciated that more than “JAKEEM THUNDER IS DEAD! STARGIRL IS A LESBIAN! ALAN SCOTT IS OLD! WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE JSA!?” On the other hand, now the stories are being burdened by references to the “mysterious past year,” without any explanation. Want to find out what happened? Buy 52! Brilliant marketing. DC has released a preview of the first issue of 52, and it didn’t look bad. The only thing that would keep me from buying it is the weekly release at the price, but I’ll probably give into temptation and put it on my pull list. At the same time, 52 will probably just be a lot of plot, and I find it hard to believe that any introspective, character-driven storytelling will get done. I might be able to get by just on message board spoilers.

I’m adding more and more Marvel stuff as the weeks go by. It’s become nearly impossible to avoid One Year Later because almost every DC title is doing something with it; only the All-Star and Vertigo/Wildstorm titles seem to be free, with the occasional stray book like Jonah Hex. On the other side, there are a lot of Marvel titles that will not tie into Civil War that I will enjoy, like the Ultimate line, Moon Knight, Nextwave, and so forth. Hopefully Marvel will not do something akin to the One Year Later jump because until that happened, I was enjoying everything from DC; now, I just see One Year Later as a cheap marketing ploy that will be forgotten in a year unless 52 hits all of its deadlines (a giant task in itself) and the titles are not crushed under their new direction. There is some good stuff coming out from DC; Grant Morrison and one of the Kuberts on Batman, Kurt Busiek and Carlos’ Pacheco’s Superman, Allan Heinberg and Terry Dodson’s Wonder Woman, Gail Simone’s Secret Six mini-series, Ron Marz’s Ion, and so forth. Finally, DC seems to be allocating their A-list talent on the A-list books, which will be good for sales and keeping the readers happening. They just have to get me to believe that lazy storytelling can produce something good instead of just pandering to what the fans want most.