Cleansing The Palate Of A Disappointing Climax: Forever Evil #1 Review

Editor’s Note: Today is the second anniversary of the launch of Crisis On Infinite Midlives, and as such, I am going to give myself the gift of one review where I don’t try to be clever and / or funny to warn you that spoilers will follow. Plus, cocks.

It is the roughly second anniversary of the launch of DC’s New 52, and DC is celebrating by releasing the first issue of their crossover Forever Evil, also known as the seventh issue of their crossover The Trinity War. And DC is celebrating the complete and utter dismissal of their entire 1986 through 2011 continuity and the subsequent triumphant relaunch of the Justice League by bringing back a part of that 1986 through 2011 continuity and implying that the triumphantly relaunched Justice League is dead.

Well, that’s one way of celebrating your anniversary, I guess. Some of us like champagne and… well, champagne. Other people like leather, rails of drugs and savage whippings. This story features the Crime Syndicate. So I’m gonna let you guess which column this one falls into.

Look, I’m not gonna lie to you: I wasn’t particularly psyched to see this issue when I walked into my local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to stop offering to show the paying clientele “something else that’s Forever Evil, and also in 3D, and it’ll only cost you three bucks!” The whole way that The Trinity War ended by not ending, implying that the readers of that series would need to tune back in this week to see what seemed to be the inevitable Justice League / Crime Syndicate battle that should have concluded that miniseries, was really a bummer for me to read, and it shaded my anticipation of Forever Evil. It’s hard to get excited about an event when the last one really had no climax. An anniversary with no climax is nothing but a champagne drunk. And is usually followed by divorce proceedings. Or at least an angry, furtive yank in the morning.

Well, we don’t get that fight in Forever Evil #1. We don’t find out what really happened after the last panel of The Trinity War beyond the word of a pack of degenerate liars. But what we do get in its stead is a pretty decent little mystery of what exactly happened to the Justice League after the Crime Syndicate broke through Pandora’s Box, the implication that a couple of members of the Secret Society are gonna wind up being unpredictable flies in the ointment, the foreshadowing of involvement by the Teen Titans and Amanda Waller… and one fuck of a bad day for Nightwing.

Lex Luthor is simultaneously intimidating a member of the Kord family into selling Kord Industries and reminiscing about killing a cat when the lights go out in Metropolis, causing Luthor’s helicopter to crash land on the roof of Lexcorp. It’s because Grid, a.k.a. Cyborg’s sentient mechanical implants, a.k.a. DC’s Ultron, is powering down all the major cities in the DC Universe so that the members of the Crime Syndicate can perform jailbreaks of all the major supervillains in the world. This includes Arkham Asylum, where Nightwing is dropping off Mr. Zsasz just as Superwoman is tearing open the giant iron gates. Upon seeing this show of superhuman strength, Nightwing engages with his billy club, which goes exactly as well for Nightwing as one might expect.

The Crime Syndicate gathers all the villains at the downed and destroyed remnants of the Justice League Watchtower – yanked out of orbit somewhere in the gutters between the end of The Trinity War and now – with some villains concerned that Joker is skulking around wearing someone else’s face, and Flash’s Rogue’s Gallery agreeing only to hear the pitch before making their own decisions. The Crime Syndicate demands fealty from the villains, claiming that they have killed the Justice League and providing trophies to prove it. And as an added bonus, they drag Nightwing out, and, well, yeah. Bad day.

So one of the cool things that Geoff Johns has done, at least with a couple of the members of the Crime Syndicate, is to play up the notion that they are the opposites of their Earth One counterparts in the Justice League. So far, we’ve only seen it in two of the characters: Power Ring is shown, contrary to his counterpart in Hal Jordan, as being completely unable to overcome fear. He is a complete and total pussy, firing off his power ring in abject terror and only calmed down by Deathstorm (ironically, a zombie Black Lantern version of Firestorm who would make me shit my pants if I met him in the street).

And then there’s Ultraman, who Johns gives just about the opposite power hookup from Superman. In Johns’s hands, Ultraman is hurt by the yellow sun, and Kryptonite, well… let’s just say that it doesn’t hurt Ultraman. In fact, let’s say more and say that Ultraman loves that shit, crushing, cooking and snorting it like Jesse Pinkman after an unkind word from Walter White. Clearly, Johns is a Breaking Bad fan. Or maybe just a simple fan of methamphetamine. But I digress.

This extrapolation of the Crime Syndicate is interesting, and it takes them places I’ve never seen them (and I’m hoping we see more with other characters; maybe Superwoman’s lasso makes guys write bad checks and forget the courtesy tap)… but the Ultraman thing is a little problematic for me. I can kinda buy the sun hurting him… although his solution to stick the moon in geosynchronous orbit to cause an eclipse would kill all crops, cause global cooling and start a run on tampons that would make every pharmacy in the world a Road Warrior situation. But snorting Kryptonite? Sure, it’s an affecting visual, but taken to it’s extreme, that should mean that the Earth injures Ultraman, and that Superman is missing because he’s holed up in a shitty hotel room, gacking up giant rails of that sweet, sweet Earth dirt. But still: Johns is doing something different with these characters, and that’s cool and fun to read

Johns also does a good job showing us who the flies in the Crime Syndicate’s ointment are likely to be. He makes a point of showing us the Teen Titans getting ready to intervene (logical, but it would make more sense to me if any of the members of the Titans were actually sidekicks to members of the Justice League in the New 52 universe), we get a glimpse of Amanda Waller (meaning I’m guessing we’ll see some undercover double agents from the Suicide Squad in the Secret Society), and most exciting: we see Flash’s Rogues withholding judgment, after a scene reiterating that the Rogues always stick together. We haven’t seen Johns write the Rogues (as I recall) since the New 52 reboot, and he always did a damn good job with them back in the old days. Johns clearly has an affection for these characters, and there was enough setup here for me to look forward to seeing Johnny Quick suddenly realize that he’s in over his head. There’s also enough setup here that I do not want to see Johns writing Johnny Quick boning Atomica – readers of The Avengers in the 90s have already seen it. And it was horrible.

And frankly, the Nightwing reveal, where (spoiler!) the Syndicate reveals his identity as Dick Grayson to the world has me a little apprehensive. On one hand, it is a bold move, that could promise some interesting stories where Dick comes under enhanced danger due to his identity being revealed, and where Batman has to deal with his own identity being suspected and having to deny it while continuing to operate as a superhero. And those could be good stories. Or at least they were good stories when Marvel did them about Spider-Man and Daredevil, respectively. Don’t get me wrong, the reveal does have an impact in this issue, but I found it to be dulled by the similarites to those Marvel stories. I suppose when this is all over, Nightwing could sell his soul to The Phantom Stranger in exchange for his secret identity, but that sucked when Marvel did it, and it’s why I should never write comic books.

David Finch’s art is much as it ever is. His work is very detailed, with expressive faces, that tends toward cool poses as often as it does clear storytelling. For example, that is a killer panel of Nightwing swinging through Gotham skyline… with the next panel being Nightwing landing on the fence of Arkham with no buildings or even trees to swing from anywhere in sight. But still, Finch isn’t nearly as bad an offender as some artists (hi, Rob Liefeld!), and his storytelling and panel layouts are generally clear and well-paced… with the exception of that foldout in the center pages. Why, oh why, is DC insisting on putting weird foldouts in the middle of so many of their high-profile books? Sure, the foldouts might look cool, but figuring out how to navigate them stops the reader dead in the story! But that’s hardly Finch’s fault; in general, the art is pretty, it uses a cool opening and closing symmetric image to tie Luthor into things, and the inking by Richard Friend, while relying a bit too much on parallel detail lines for my taste, is strong enough to put things apart from other similar styles.

On the whole, there was a lot I liked about Forever Evil #1. The tweaks that Johns has made to some of the Syndicate are interesting (although I want to see how many issues it takes for Ultraman to get Krypt-Mouth), and enough groundwork has been laid that I’m looking forward to seeing the Titans come in and get their asses kicked before Captain Cold and the Rogues start chipping at things from the inside before Joker shows Power Ring the true meaning of fear. A lot of how well I follow this event will hinge on whether Johns does something different than Marvel with Spider-Man and Daredevil with Nightwing’s unmasking… and if there’s a Goddamned climax to the thing.

Speaking of which: gotta go. It is, after all, our anniversary.