The Greatest Stories Never Told!

Here’s an irony for you, those of you who collect and trade ironies:

DC Comics‘ Elseworlds – what we older fans once knew at Imaginary Stories, although that apparently wasn’t as exciting to the marketing department – mostly suck. That’s not to say that all of them do, but as the concept wears on, and Bob in accounting gets his chance to write on, the quality level has dropped from the heights it started at (with either “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns” or “Batman: Gotham by Gaslight,” depending on where you begin counting from) to even lower than the average DC Comic. Why it’s dropped so low is open to discussion, but it’s hard to say that they’ve been knocking the ball out of the park every time at bat.

This problem has been particularly acute in the non-Prestige-Format-pay-five-bucks-or-more Elseworlds, like annuals or a particularly dreadful issue of the otherwise quite nice “Batman Chronicles.”

Additionally, DC’s 80 Page Giants also mostly suck. Sure, there’s always one or two good stories in each – Tom Peyer seems to be responsible for most of those, now that I think about it – but they never justify their $5 price tag. Mostly they seem to be ways to keep underemployed creators in work and … well, no, that seems to be about their purpose in life. They’re certainly not a celebration of the short story, since so few of the ones told in the Giants are any good.

So it was with zero anticipation that I awaited the arrival of the “Elseworlds” 80 Page Giant earlier this year.

And kept on waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting.

And then it was revealed that, lo and behold, publisher Paul Levitz had pulled the plug on the book after it had gone to the printers – and long after it had been through the editorial process and had been thoroughly looked at by all those in the loop, including, apparently, Levitz. Alas for Levitz, since Britain normally gets their books later than the U.S., some bright lad had chosen to print off roughly 1,500 copies early for Britain, and shipped them off before the “do not publish” edict was handed down.

One has to love the Internet. That one, of course, being me. In addition to all the rest it’s done for me – found me a wife, gotten me two jobs, let me geek out and talk to creators whose work I’ve loved for years – it also got me a wedding present of one of the 1,500 copies of “Elseworlds” 80 Page Giant.

Here’s the big irony, for those of you wondering what it is: “Elseworlds” 80 Page Giant, combining both the lackluster Elseworlds and the less than lackluster 80 Page Giant format, is a winner.

Since most people may never see it – DC has been apparently embarrassed about the whole situation and thus slow to remove the offending story and republish the thus 70 Page Giant – here’s a comprehensive review. (I’m not scanning the whole damn book in, no. DC’s lawyers should scare everyone and they certainly scare me.)

The first story, “The Reaching Hand,” by D. Curtis Johnson and Aaron Lopresti, is a Lovecraftian horror story set in Gotham, with detectives Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent investigating strange deaths in Arkham Asylum, with the help of their assistant, James Olsen. The story’s not any big surprise, given both the name and the fact that the first death is one Ralph Dibny. But it’s neat to see stretching powers viewed through the lens of “god, that’s kind of creepy.” The writing is appropriately overwrought, Dent’s descent into crazed obsession the same. There’s an in-joke I suspect I’m not getting – the chant “H’Ya Yag-F’Nagh!” – but it’s an enjoyable little story, and the Cthonic villain who rises from the depths below Gotham makes sense and wasn’t one I guessed. (The punchline at the end of the story was, however, telegraphed, but Lopresti does such a good job making stretching unpleasant that it hardly matters.)

Next up is Bronwyn Carter and Greg Luzniak’s “Rockumentary,” which tells the story of Lex Records. It’s probably the weakest story in the volume, but no stinker in the vein of so many other 80 Page Giants. Basically, toss in some Good Girl art, the All Stars and Blackhawks as swing and jazz bands, and the core Silver Age heroes as the Beatle-esque Heroes and you’ve got the idea. The story doesn’t take the imaginative leaps it ought to – Black Canary shows up as an interviewer, instead of in some singing role and why Ra’s Al Ghul is in the story at all is a little confusing – but there’s some other clever bits, with an Indigo Girls-like Harley and Ivy and the Teen Titans being a Menudo-like group with an ever-changing, always-young roster.

Then we come to the deal breaker, the story that kept the book from being published, “Letitia Lerner, Superman’s Babysitter!” by Kyle Baker, with Elizabeth Glass and David Gaddis. This is a cute little story about the Kents getting a night in a hotel room by paying the aforementioned Letitia to stay and watch the infant Clark. Reading this – and it’s very cute – I have to assume that Levitz has never seen a Warner Brothers cartoon, which for years featured indestructible toddlers making their signature characters crazy trying to keep them safe. OK, so Baby Clark gets trapped under a boulder, swings on a ceiling fan, sucks milk directly from a cow, wanders into traffic and eventually gets microwaved. Which one of those acts was Levitz thinking would result in copycat behavior? I watched Looney Tunes for years and never once did I drop an anvil on my little brother. Even when he deserved it. The worst thing about this story is that, in the end, it’s so damn good. This would have been the standout if fandom had gotten to see this 80 Page Giant. And knowing that it’ll probably be excised when/if the book is ever republished is just sad.

Chuck Dixon isn’t known for being Mr. Funny, but “The Vigilantes in Apartment 3-B,” with art by Enrique Villagran might just change that. Babs and Dinah are a pair of sexy roommates in this set of seven newspaper strips, who just happen to be the crime fighters Black Canary and Batgirl as well. The strip includes their dating perils, a gratuitous shot of Babs in a half-open bathrobe and a romantic reversal for one of the girls. It’s a fun riff on the venerable cheesecake “Apartment 3-G” newspaper strip.

And then there’s the return of the Super-Sons from the 1970s “World’s Finest” title. Apparently, this story, by original Super-Sons writer Bob Haney and artist Kieron Dwyer, is set in the modern day, not the hipster 1970s the characters previously occupied. Personally, I liked Superman with sideburns, but maybe that was just me. The story is a little creaky – Haney’s dialogue isn’t exactly cutting-edge – but it’s a hoot to see the teenage Superman and Batman treating issues like “gee, my Dad Superman will be around forever, so I’ll always be in his shadow” seriously. And the sight of the original World’s Finest team together is also cheesy fun. (I happen to think making Superman and Batman something less than bosom buddies, as has been done since “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” is a realistic and appropriate characterization.) The one really nice part of this story is its method of (trust me, this isn’t a spoiler, but rather the point of the story) killing the senior Superman: Of course, this is also why he wouldn’t tow a giant sack with all the world’s nuclear warheads behind him through space.

Then comes the first of the obligatory very funny Tom Peyer pieces: “Scandalgate,” with art by Ty Templeton. President Superman is embattled with an unspecified crisis, and the supervillains are harrying him: Zod is the special prosecutor, Silver Banshee and Metallo are cable news commentators and all the assembled supervillain/journalists will ask press secretary Jimmy Olsen is “You young fool! Do you expect your hero to save you now?” Very funny, and to the point, with Lana Lang’s comment “I’m sick of the whole thing! I just want it to end!” Funny stuff, although it won’t be at all topical (one hopes) whenever the edited version of this special sees the light of day.

Chuck Dixon’s second story in the giant – and, yeah, there’s a lot of stories in this, and it’s impressive how many of them are entertaining – posits the rather icky scenario “what if the Waynes had died because Kal-El’s rocket had smashed into them on the way back from the movie theater?” It gets icky immediately, with the much-missed Trevor von Eeden having little Brucie’s face get blasted in the splash page. Lex Luthor steals the baby Kal-El and the story spirals off in a very dark direction from there, ending in the most bleak manner possible. Neat stuff, and more classically Elseworlds, for better or worse, than most of this comic.

Mark Waid and Ty Templeton visit the “DC’s Hall of Silver Age Elseworlds” next, unleashing the first pages of the very funny “President Abraham (Brainiac) Lincoln versus Clark Kent, Metallo,” “Luthor’s Daughter, Wonder Woman,” “Batman with Robin, the Squid Wonder,” “The Golden Age Teen Titans,” “A new tale of the Legion of Super-Heroes: The Revenge of Young Darkseid!,” “Menace of the Gorilla-Explorer” featuring Christopher Grodd Columbus, the Metal Men in “Liberte, Egalite, Metallica” and, my favorite, the hilarious “Batman with Eve” in “Garden of Evil!” which contains the classic line “I must be careful! I can’t let Eve know that her protector, Batman, is secretly her husband Adam!”

And the final story, “Dark Knight of the Golden Kingdom,” would seem mean to anyone who didn’t know that writer Tom Peyer is good friends with “Kingdom Come” writer Mark Waid, since this story mercilessly parodies it, as well as other dystopian Elseworlds. The editorial notes of “from the Bible!” are priceless by themselves, but it just gets better, with the melodrama of Jimmy Olsen having held down the signal watch for 20 years, hoping Superman will return, or the ridiculous children of the superheroes – including a half-Aquaman/half-Hawkman, a half-Fire/half-Black Canary, and the way way way over the top dialogue – which reaches its peak with Batman lecturing Superman with the incomprehensible “Tremble in your sunsplashed world, with its flying pets and bottle cities and x-ray eyes that see everything but the horrible truth! Ignore the bitter realities that lurk in the night, waiting, breathing, waiting. I can’t. I never could. Because hiding won’t bring back Billy, Ollie, Wally, Donna, Dinah and Diana!”

Is this worth paying the, what, $100+ for a copy of the comic on eBay? Probably not, but then, I don’t feel any comic is worth those prices. Is it worth nagging DC Comics about publishing this comic, ASAP? You betcha. ’cause at long last, they’ve got a winner of an 80 Page Giant. They just refuse to show it to you.

Special thanks to my good friend Daniel Merlin Goodbrey, whose wedding present of the “Elseworlds” 80 Page Giant marks him as a very cool guy indeed.