I'm so close to catching up with the current issue, Charlie! Just finished "An End to the Age of Wonders," and this was a pretty sinister story! Ares, Circe, and Devastation are a tough opponent - twisted and violent. His attempt to defeat Batman was clever, and I'm glad Batman was unwilling to violate his principles while also suffering defeat (or almost). Your Batman, as usually, is perfectly calibrated.
Sinister is good! Sinister is one of the things I’m always going for! I always wanted to do a sequel to “
Dreams of War And Annihilation” from #51-52, because I set up so many threads there that needed picking up. With #75 approaching, and knowing what comes after, now seemed like the right time to do it!
I was torn with Ares. For 99% of his comics existence, he’s been evil. War = bad. It’s basically Wonder Woman’s mission statement. But in the Brian Azzarello run, where he was conflicted (no pun intended) and (**
SPOILERS FOR A STORY FROM FIVE YEARS AGO**) died heroically to stop the First Born from becoming the new God of War, that was a development of the character I
loved. Thing is, I couldn’t find a way to introduce that into the DC2 (yet), so he’s evil. He’s bad.
I always wanted to throw Batman into a situation he couldn’t Batman his way from. A fight to the death, with no shortcuts like we’ve seen elsewhere (when he “killed” Bane in
Arkham Origins or during
Knightquest when he did that fake-death-punch to appease Shiva), what could he do? Against a
child? Thankfully, because I knew what was coming back in #53, I introduced the concept of the Bow of Charon, and that bit of Chekhov’s archery from sixteen issues prior finally paid off in this arc!
I love writing Batman. I should probably focus on someone else…
Wonder Woman's plan was almost Batman-like in conception. The resulting trip to the underworld was intense. The visual of Batman's chest 'opening' like a trapdoor was surreal, I loved it. Great scene with Batman and Scott Free.
Wonder Woman kills, she has no problem with that, but I didn’t like her characterisation back in
Infinite Crisis when she was kill happy, willing to stab Mongul or put down any threat, regardless of its potency. I like her to be pragmatic, and I think we’re seeing Batman rub off on her a bit, and perhaps we’ll see Diana rub off on Bruce as we move forward.
Yes! I wanted it to be weird and visually trippy. Glad it came out like that.
I can't say I'm thrilled that Hippolyta returned; I'm torn on how death is just a revolving door for what feels like every character in mainstream comics, and that doens't need to be the case in fan works like yours. That said, I'll stick around (well, of course) to see how it plays out!
I always felt like Hippolyta was given a disservice in her death so early on in the site’s existence, and I wanted to bring her back so we can do something different with her. That said, I was considering doing something along the lines of Orpheus and Eurydice, with Diana perhaps looking back at Hippolyta on their way back to the land of the living, but with what’s coming up down the line, I settled on this approach. It also separates Bruce and Diana in a way… they once lost their parents, but not Diana has hers back… what implication does that have?
I liked the backup with Guardian and Bendix, but I feel oblidged to point out that's another villain under mind control! I hoped he was just a dick. Sometimes the best villains are honorable ideologues with an agenda that runs contrary to your own, rather than victims or psychopaths.
Was he under mind control? Or is this another one of Bendix’s schemes? Check out
Justice League Presents... The Guardian #2 from April for more on that.
Basically, it’s another case of having so much story I want to tell, and only so much ability to write content for the DC2, so I just put together whatever packages of story I can and throw it out into the wild! The stuff in
JLPTG2 does play a larger role in the current arc-- “
Breaking Up”—and implications for stories that are coming up in the pipeline (and will hit through to the end of 2018 and into 2019).
I am really aware of the repetition of plot sometimes, and I’m terrified of looking like a one-trick-pony, so you’ll see some stuff phased out of the book moving forward. Mind control, nanotechnology… it’s one of the reasons I wrote Blue Beetle out the book, because I always found myself centring stories around him, and I didn’t want to wear anybody out on him. Mark pointed that out in the course of editing "
Fire of Unknown Origin”, and while I had plans to take him off the board before then (leading into some stories in 2019, including the
Blue Beetles mini-series!) I was glad to be proven right… I had used him too much.
I enjoyed Ares' egostical attempt to seize power and how it, ultimately, backfired. I LOVE to good smackdown, and the interwoven speech (as they described how Ares' new power was a double-edged sword) and beating (delivered by Majestros and the New Gods) was very, very satisfying.
When Majestros came on board (and Superman was still about) I came to the realisation that I’d tipped the power levels of the team too high. As the title progressed, I also realised I wasn’t actually utilising that super-heavyweight prospect to accurate effect. With Barda and Majestros on the same team, and in the same unit for this adventure, it made sense to throw them at the newly-crowned God of Nothing!
I also loved Aquaman and Hawkman's B-Plot. That was some dark material, maybe worthy of an M-Rating for these issues. Poor Hawkman! Forgetting Hawkwoman's last name, yikes. I can't wait for Hawkman to smash Doctor Psycho's face in with his mace. "Pants! And my mace. In that order." Awesome!
I think this is endemic of the problem I always go on about, with there being too much story for one book, and this was one of the stories I could have dug into for a separate arc in itself! Hawkman is a bit of a punching bag in the title, especially since the second issue or so of this run, where he had to kill a child to save the day, and then exiled himself from the team (until his return during the final confrontation with Lord Naga). His cancer, this story, and with what’s coming later, he’s gone through the ringer, and it’s not done yet.
I was also hesitant to go where I went with the Doctor Psycho stuff, but he’s an unrepentant monster and that means he does unrepentant things. And his story isn't done yet. We're about to enter his final act...
Fantastic story, Charlie. I'll be up to date soon!
Thanks, O! Hope to see you caught up soon! It’d be nice to have someone reading the issues as they come out!
