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Midnighter: Armageddon (Christos Gage/Simon Coleby; Wildstorm)
Welcome to Tranquility: Armageddon (Christos Gage/Neil Googe; Wildstorm)
Armageddon is really not the best hook on which to hang a crossover. Although, it has to be said, if you're going to at least try to make a really big change, then ending the world should count.
The base concept of "Wildstorm: Armageddon" is very simple. Void comes to selected heroes, takes them into the future to see a particular aspect of a perfectly dreadful future, then they revert to the past. Lather, rinse, repeat. SIX TIMES. Thing is, in the first issue of each title, judging from the two that we've had to date, you have essentially an issue-long fight in which nothing happens. The heroes find out the outlines of their particular aspect of the crisis, which is the only thing of import that takes place, and then Void takes them back to their proper time. Oh, that, and the Rapture.
Yes, THE Rapture.
But let us consider each of these stories to date in turn. In Midnighter: Armageddon, our favorite black-clad murderous gayboy pseudo-dictator discovers that he needs to prevent the Carrier from crashing into London. This happens because Some Unknown Catastrophic Event happens and somehow, containment on the Carrier's primary power source is breeched, and it has to be taken out by Jenny Quantum before it destroys the universe. Unpowered, the Carrier crashes into London and pretty much takes it out. (Midnighter: Armageddon contains a paraphrase of Dirty Dancing. No, really. No ... REALLY. "Nobody puts Swift into a corner.") Metahumans/posthumans are attacking each other worldwide to ... well, it's not at all clear why. Because they can, apparently; most seem to have gone completely mad. The few regular humans left are getting slaughtered. In Welcome to Tranquility: Armageddon, Maximum Man, having rediscovered his word of power, has been using it to become magically heroic, youthful and slutty. Void takes him into the future, where he discovers that Tranquility itself is intact, thanks to some magic, but the world around it is being destroyed. Moreover, the magic that protected Tranquility eventually failed, so renegade superheroes attacked -- including, peculiarly, Soviet superheroes trying to take Tranquility's resources for the proletariat. An allegedly religious superhero asks Maximum Man to do nothing to stop what's happening, because clearly this is the end of days, and allowing billions of people to be killed by Armageddon and rampaging superheroes is God's will. Maximum Man gets sent back to the future, transforms back into his 84-year-old, Alzeimer's inflicted alter ego, and promptly forgets what he was sent back to do. Here's the odd part: in Midnighter's case, he goes back, tells everyone about what he's seen -- but that's exactly what he did before; the future Apollo remembers Midnighter telling them about this. In Tranquility's case, it's not at all clear what Maximum Man could possibly do, even if he remembered. (There's the interesting side issue that they started the crossover event before concluding the regular Tranquility arc that it leads out of. At least one character we saw seemingly being killed at the end of the last issue is hale and hearty, and the town looks surprisingly undestroyed in the pre-Armageddon segment, so it looks like there's going to be some mystical mumbo-jumbo and rebooting in the next regular issue.)
I suspect Void herself is going to be A Clew of some sort. In Tranquility's Armageddon, she's silvery and strong and confident; in Midnighter's Armageddon, she's pink and weak and can't hang on for long. Gage himself has hinted, on the DC bulletin boards, that Void is being limited in what she can do and say by some other person. It's also clear that whatever "The Rapture" is, (1) it's NOT actually The Rapture, and (2) stopping it will probably fix most of whatever's going on, or at least will defuse the intense religious opposition. (There are many demonstrably good people left behind who apparently feel that things should be allowed to proceed.)
The problem is, as set up, you're going to essentially get the same story six times. Instead of doing one interlocking set of stories, 52-style, they separated the threads and made it repeat. There will be six stories in which, basically, nothing whatsoever happens, in which nothing whatsoever can happen. Moreover, because the "Revelations" set is going to have to deal with the beginnings of crises and preventing them, there's going to be a certain amount of recap anyway. The Armageddon set may wind up being entirely unneccessary to understanding what happens -- except, I think, maybe for Tranquility. It's looking very much as if there's going to be only one of these six Armageddon stories that's important -- whichever one deals directly with The Rapture and the triggering event. I also vaguely suspect that Maximum Man may fail to remember in time, but with everyone else remembering and preventing ... whatever it is they're supposed to prevent, what will happen is that Tranquility goes through with its self preservation plan, which removes it from its universe.
Weird thing is, the stories actually aren't badly written at all. Viewed in isolation, neither of them would necessarily be a bad start to a story arc. Viewed together, the idea that you're going to get six different takes on something where nothing happens in any of the stories is just a bit odd. Sort of Rashomon-like, yes, but in each of the different versions of the story in Rashomon, something happened; that was the entire point, the dispute over what happened.
And apart from all that, there's the religious issue. I'm not a vaguely religious person, and somehow, I think I'd hesitate to not only have a series in which The Rapture is being faked, but two of the people preventing The Rapture are your big gay murderous pseudodictator and your big straight Alzheimer's inflicted slutty superhero. It's just ... it seems almost specifically designed for people to take offense, you know? Not designed to offend, but desperately easy to misinterpret. Then again, I suppose most of the people likely to be really offended already think that comics are improper entertainment, and don't read nonreligious comics anyway.
It's going to be interesting to see how this comes out. But I do think I'll let the rest of the Armageddon set go, and wait for the "Revelations" set. I may even look at Midnighter:Revelations, just for the hell of it. (...well, what can I say? there's sometimes a certain appeal to big, gay, spandex-clad murderous pseudodicatators with a penchant for kicking people's heads off.)
Welcome to Tranquility: Armageddon (Christos Gage/Neil Googe; Wildstorm)
Armageddon is really not the best hook on which to hang a crossover. Although, it has to be said, if you're going to at least try to make a really big change, then ending the world should count.
The base concept of "Wildstorm: Armageddon" is very simple. Void comes to selected heroes, takes them into the future to see a particular aspect of a perfectly dreadful future, then they revert to the past. Lather, rinse, repeat. SIX TIMES. Thing is, in the first issue of each title, judging from the two that we've had to date, you have essentially an issue-long fight in which nothing happens. The heroes find out the outlines of their particular aspect of the crisis, which is the only thing of import that takes place, and then Void takes them back to their proper time. Oh, that, and the Rapture.
Yes, THE Rapture.
But let us consider each of these stories to date in turn. In Midnighter: Armageddon, our favorite black-clad murderous gayboy pseudo-dictator discovers that he needs to prevent the Carrier from crashing into London. This happens because Some Unknown Catastrophic Event happens and somehow, containment on the Carrier's primary power source is breeched, and it has to be taken out by Jenny Quantum before it destroys the universe. Unpowered, the Carrier crashes into London and pretty much takes it out. (Midnighter: Armageddon contains a paraphrase of Dirty Dancing. No, really. No ... REALLY. "Nobody puts Swift into a corner.") Metahumans/posthumans are attacking each other worldwide to ... well, it's not at all clear why. Because they can, apparently; most seem to have gone completely mad. The few regular humans left are getting slaughtered. In Welcome to Tranquility: Armageddon, Maximum Man, having rediscovered his word of power, has been using it to become magically heroic, youthful and slutty. Void takes him into the future, where he discovers that Tranquility itself is intact, thanks to some magic, but the world around it is being destroyed. Moreover, the magic that protected Tranquility eventually failed, so renegade superheroes attacked -- including, peculiarly, Soviet superheroes trying to take Tranquility's resources for the proletariat. An allegedly religious superhero asks Maximum Man to do nothing to stop what's happening, because clearly this is the end of days, and allowing billions of people to be killed by Armageddon and rampaging superheroes is God's will. Maximum Man gets sent back to the future, transforms back into his 84-year-old, Alzeimer's inflicted alter ego, and promptly forgets what he was sent back to do. Here's the odd part: in Midnighter's case, he goes back, tells everyone about what he's seen -- but that's exactly what he did before; the future Apollo remembers Midnighter telling them about this. In Tranquility's case, it's not at all clear what Maximum Man could possibly do, even if he remembered. (There's the interesting side issue that they started the crossover event before concluding the regular Tranquility arc that it leads out of. At least one character we saw seemingly being killed at the end of the last issue is hale and hearty, and the town looks surprisingly undestroyed in the pre-Armageddon segment, so it looks like there's going to be some mystical mumbo-jumbo and rebooting in the next regular issue.)
I suspect Void herself is going to be A Clew of some sort. In Tranquility's Armageddon, she's silvery and strong and confident; in Midnighter's Armageddon, she's pink and weak and can't hang on for long. Gage himself has hinted, on the DC bulletin boards, that Void is being limited in what she can do and say by some other person. It's also clear that whatever "The Rapture" is, (1) it's NOT actually The Rapture, and (2) stopping it will probably fix most of whatever's going on, or at least will defuse the intense religious opposition. (There are many demonstrably good people left behind who apparently feel that things should be allowed to proceed.)
The problem is, as set up, you're going to essentially get the same story six times. Instead of doing one interlocking set of stories, 52-style, they separated the threads and made it repeat. There will be six stories in which, basically, nothing whatsoever happens, in which nothing whatsoever can happen. Moreover, because the "Revelations" set is going to have to deal with the beginnings of crises and preventing them, there's going to be a certain amount of recap anyway. The Armageddon set may wind up being entirely unneccessary to understanding what happens -- except, I think, maybe for Tranquility. It's looking very much as if there's going to be only one of these six Armageddon stories that's important -- whichever one deals directly with The Rapture and the triggering event. I also vaguely suspect that Maximum Man may fail to remember in time, but with everyone else remembering and preventing ... whatever it is they're supposed to prevent, what will happen is that Tranquility goes through with its self preservation plan, which removes it from its universe.
Weird thing is, the stories actually aren't badly written at all. Viewed in isolation, neither of them would necessarily be a bad start to a story arc. Viewed together, the idea that you're going to get six different takes on something where nothing happens in any of the stories is just a bit odd. Sort of Rashomon-like, yes, but in each of the different versions of the story in Rashomon, something happened; that was the entire point, the dispute over what happened.
And apart from all that, there's the religious issue. I'm not a vaguely religious person, and somehow, I think I'd hesitate to not only have a series in which The Rapture is being faked, but two of the people preventing The Rapture are your big gay murderous pseudodictator and your big straight Alzheimer's inflicted slutty superhero. It's just ... it seems almost specifically designed for people to take offense, you know? Not designed to offend, but desperately easy to misinterpret. Then again, I suppose most of the people likely to be really offended already think that comics are improper entertainment, and don't read nonreligious comics anyway.
As far as the future of Welcome to Tranquility is concerned -- nothing has been solicited for the title beyond next week's issue 12 -- on the DC/Wildstorm boards back in October, Gail Simone was bluntly stating that Tranquility was not going away. Armageddon/Revelations may be the means of detaching it from Wildstorm Universe -- whether it stays in DC/Wildstorm or not. After all, if the town is in another universe, then Simone has the freedom to do more with it. That said, she kept saying that she'd have news to report "next week" and then again after she coordinated something with Newsarama, but that was a month ago. I hope nothing's changed since then. I do wonder what's going to become of the series if it continues. I really really REALLY liked that first story arc, and I wasn't as fond of the second, but then, that's because I'm not terribly fond of zombie stories generally. What I like most is that Thomasina is really a perfectly ordinary person. A black woman, no superpowers, and yet she manages to somehow be the hero that Tranquility needs. (Simone also asked people who their favorite character was. Have to admit, it seems like an odd question for that series. Aside from Thomasina -- who actually is my favorite character -- nobody has gotten a whole hell of a lot of time to develop. The character who got the most page time in the first arc, aside from Thomasina, is dead. Several others seem to be dying in the second arc's zombie plague/demon attack. Aside from Thomasina and her sister, Maximum Man, Pink Bunny and one or two others, I'm not at all sure who's left to like.)(Also, I would like to say that DC missed an opportunity. There was one issue that did a section from Thomasina's past, when she and her sister were young teenagers, called "The Fabulous Lindo Sisters", and I kept thinking that it would have made a really great Minx title, or else a Jonny DC title. A series about growing up normal in a town not only full of superhero teens and adults, but famous superheroes? Using Minx to actually create a superhero series specifically aimed at girls and young women, after the justified slagging the big companies take for ignoring female fans? That could have been SO cool... but I digress from my digression's digression.)
It's going to be interesting to see how this comes out. But I do think I'll let the rest of the Armageddon set go, and wait for the "Revelations" set. I may even look at Midnighter:Revelations, just for the hell of it. (...well, what can I say? there's sometimes a certain appeal to big, gay, spandex-clad murderous pseudodicatators with a penchant for kicking people's heads off.)