The Terrible Destruction Plaguing Our Planet

The new Captain Planet and the Planeteers series...is bad.

I know it's only two issues in, and I'm going to give it a fair shake, at least until the end of the first arc here, but it's not looking good.

And look, let's not be unrealistic here. It's not entirely surprising that a reboot of Captain Planet would turn out bad. The original cartoon wasn't exactly Citizen Kane. It wasn't even Gargoyles. It was perhaps the most incredibly early-'90s series that could possibly have existed, down to a multicultural cast that looked like the Burger King Kids Club and an opening narration that had to be hastily redubbed after the fall of the Soviet Union. The series was Oops, All Very Special Episodes, which is honestly admirable to a degree, even if they approached every issue, from air pollution to The Troubles to AIDS with the exact same degree of didactic bluntness and simplistic liberal moralizing. If you'd asked me to lay money on which cartoons from this era were least likely to rate a revival in one form or another, Captain Planet, despite its popularity at the time and enduring legacy, would have landed somewhere between Wild West C.O.W. Boys of Moo Mesa and C.O.P.S. in my ranking.

Actually, it seems I was about right.

But also... now is precisely the right time for a Captain Planet revival. There's a lot about the show that didn't age well, but the core concept—that the world is in peril, and that the only real solution to that is for young people from around the world to band together and take on the polluters who are actively making things worse—is far more salient now than in 1990. At the time, the monstrous, one-dimensional villains clear-cutting forests for fun and polluting for profit seemed unrealistic, but now? 

Now there is an entire subculture dedicated to damaging your expensive truck so that it will produce more smoke in ways that make it less efficient, and blowing that smoke at electric cars and bicyclists. Now, the world's richest man built an artificial intelligence that he turned into a Nazi and wants his eugenic progeny to live on Mars while the rest of us die on the hollowed-out husk of Earth. Now, the President of the United States is a doddering germophobic rapist who appointed a Secretary of Health and Human Services who does not believe in germ theory and is actively dismantling the federal apparatus dedicated to tracking and fighting disease. The EPA just released an order to "make gas cans great again" reversing nearly 20 years of regulations designed to reduce emissions and danger to children. The entire tech industry is currently dedicated to replacing the entire working and creative class with a pathological liar machine that runs on drained aquifers and uses more power than entire countries. 

Verminous Skumm spreading panic about AIDS so he can take over the world seems entirely reasonable by comparison.

It would be so easy to do a new Captain Planet series, one that draws from the examples of Greta Thunberg, from the Water Protectors who stood against the Dakota Access Pipeline, from Little Miss Flint Mari Copeny who raised awareness about the Flint water crisis, and those are just the first three examples I could come up with off the top of my head. You could look to Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, Greenpeace, and other similar organizations; I may not always agree with the actions those groups take, but they would be easy fodder for stories about modern Planeteers. 

And that's without touching on issues of environmental justice, something any reasonable Captain Planet revival ought to be doing in the 21st century. One of the biggest problems with the original series is that its multicultural cast is a thin veneer pasted over a very white, liberal, America-centric view of the world. A Captain Planet who addresses how climate change hits the global south hardest, how communities that are already stressed by poverty and oppression become further marginalized as the temperatures and waters rise, how the capitalist drive for endless growth and cheap labor and resource extraction is ultimately the driving force behind all of this planetary degradation, is necessary to communicate concepts more complex than turning off the lights when you leave the room.

I take it back. It wouldn't be easy to do that Captain Planet series. It would require courage and research. It would likely require multiple writers and sensitivity readers. It would ruffle feathers. It would anger YouTubers. 

But it would at least be easy to tell a story there, one that meets the moment, one that has a solid foundation, one that feels timely and relevant. 

Instead, there's what David Pepose and Eman Casallos have chosen to do in Dynamite's Captain Planet and the Planeteers, which is to write a book that feels ashamed of every aspect of its source material. It's got all the hallmarks. Looten Plunder? That name's too silly, like "Victor Von Doom." Gotta change it, now he's "Lucian Plunder" and "Lootin'" is just what the protesters call him. While the original series was a goofy Saturday morning cartoon, this series is serious and grown-up and violent. The first issue kicks off with Plunder's paramilitary goons hunting Gaia with assault rifles from helicopters, and the second issue starts with her in restraints. Linka is a Pussy Riot-styled rocker who fights cops, and some fake cops kidnap Gi and Kwame when they arrive in New York City. 

Oh, and don't you dare think about making all the old jokes about this Captain Planet series. Because Ma-Ti, he's not the useless kid who talks to animals anymore. No, he's a deadly eco-terrorist who threatens loggers with jaguars. And Captain Planet himself? Well, if you ever thought that his tight midriff top and briefs ensemble with a mullet was a threat to your masculinity, don't worry, this Captain Planet is butch as hell, with a beard and way more of that blue skin covered, so you can rest assured in your mostly unassaulted heterosexuality. 

Everything about the aesthetics and execution of this book feels twenty years out of date, like it was printed in the same "what, were you expecting yellow spandex?" swaggering, irony-poisoned era that gave us Transformers with testicles and sex slave ThunderCats. 

That feeling extends to the guiding politics of the series, which feel like some kind of Bush-era, South Park-tinted centrist cynicism. Kwame is a former soccer star whose career ended due to an injury, seeking to recapture his glory days. Linka is not just an anarchist punk rocker, but a child of immense privilege, whose activism is framed as petulant teenage rebellion against her wealthy father. Wheeler is a Union auto worker whose carelessness with his new power ring causes his plant to burn down, amidst layoffs and protests driven by green EV initiatives. And while they've added a smidge of additional diversity by making Gi textually queer, they've also turned Wheeler's womanizing dialogue up to eleven. The overall effect feels like sneering at the idea of people sincerely fighting for the environment; instead, they're mostly deeply flawed and compromised, much like the environmental protesters we're shown in a couple of occasions. Our villain doesn't provide much contrast. While Plunder is clearly bad, he's not bad in a realistic way. He wants Gaia's magic power for himself, and his goons have robotic exo-suits. The only time this comic feels genuine is when cops apprehend our two heroic immigrants for no reason at JFK International Airport, but even they turn out to be fake cops, presumably to give some plausible deniability to all those readers with blue line flags on their SUVs. 

I don't think this cynical approach can work for Captain Planet. The original series was earnest to a fault, and I think the only way you can make Captain Planet work for a more grown-up, sophisticated audience is to lean right into that earnestness by having him tackle all the same problems that the original series tackled, and then some, but with added complexity and nuance. Not to demean our heroes or to humanize our villains, but to illustrate the realities of the world around them. There's no need for Wheeler to be sexist or for Ma-Ti to be violent, any more than there's need for Looten Plunder to be driven by something other than greed and lust for power. What's needed is a story that explores how the Looten Plunders of the world operate, and what a team of idealists could do if they were given the power to take them down. We can roll our eyes and suspend some disbelief when Superman says that it's not his place to step in and reverse climate change or dismantle capitalism. Captain Planet doesn't have an excuse. 

Yesterday, a person with a high-powered rifle murdered an executive of Blackstone (among other people), an investment firm whose holdings have been involved in logging the Amazon rainforest, making children work in slaughterhouses, and collaborating with ICE, and that's just what's in the Wikipedia controversies section. Now, I'm not suggesting that Captain Planet and the Planeteers should be about five teens and a glittering Pride float dancer gleefully using elemental powers to Luigi their way through the Forbes billionaire list.

But that would be a better book than this one.

Evil is Relative

The Superman Family of comics is on a hot streak right now, and are better overall than they've been in a decade-plus. But right now the one that I'm cracking open as soon as I get home from the comic shop is Sophie Campbell's Supergirl, which is quite possibly the best series ever to feature a character with that name, Kryptonian or otherwise. 

I want to highlight just one detail in the most recent issue, Supergirl #3, because it shows a story trope we've seen a lot in the last several years, particularly with Supergirl, but gets it right in a way that few creators do. 

See, Supergirl gets hit with a beam powered by Black Kryptonite. As a result she turns into Satan Girl (and Krypto turns into a bad dog who sadly isn't given a name) and goes on a rampage through Midvale. This is a bit de rigueur for Supergirl; Satan Girl was an evil duplicate of her created by Red Kryptonite back in 1963, and Black Kryptonite made its first comic book appearance in 2006's Supergirl #5, where it created an evil duplicate of Supergirl. Since then, Supergirl's joined with H'el, become a Red Lantern, and been Jokerized, and I feel like I'm forgetting a couple of other "Supergirl goes bad" plotlines. It seems to be the go-to story for a character that comic writers often don't have any other ideas for. Which is a shame, because there's plenty of other drama to mine from Supergirl's core concept. 

Black Kryptonite is likely inspired by the synthetic Kryptonite in Superman III, where Gus Gorman substituted "tar" for the unknown ingredient. After exposure to the synthetic Kryptonite, Superman went bad, until eventually he split into two individuals and had a fight until they reintegrated.

"Superman goes bad" is a pretty familiar story beat in recent years, too, whether it's his post-resurrection brawl in the Snyder Justice League film or the Injustice universe version of the character who jumped from video games to comics to a crossover with the main universe's Jon Kent, or the various evil alternate versions like Brightburn and Homelander. And I get the interest in exploring the horror inherent to someone truly sinister having the practically unlimited power that Superman has. We see variations of those stories even with characters like General Zod and Lex Luthor, remorseless villains driven by megalomania.

What I appreciate about Superman III and Supergirl #3 is what they tell us about Superman and Supergirl. When loosed from the bonds of their morality, what do we see them do? Not murder, not world domination, not horrific violence.

No, instead they just become jerks.

Superman straightens the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Supergirl pantses a bunch of people. They do pranks and acts of vandalism. They do the kind of "evil" that a villain in a Care Bears cartoon would do. 

And that tells us something interesting, something fundamental about the Cousins of Steel: That at their core, there's not some world-dominating villain just barely restrained by the bonds of their steadfast moral codes. Cruelty and domination aren't in their nature. The worst they can muster is mean.

To me, this rings a lot truer than the murdergod stories. I'm sure there are people who would, if given the power and the freedom from guilt, go on a rampage. The current political situation makes that abundantly clear. But I think a lot more of us would just be more lazy, petty, hedonistic, and immature.

Which means that even when they've been turned evil, Supergirl and Superman are better people than their villains. And I appreciate that.

Dawn happens every day

It is 2004. I am cautiously optimistic about the bold new direction for the Superman titles after a long period of floundering.

It is 2006. I am cautiously optimistic about the bold new direction for the Superman titles after a long period of floundering.

It is 2011. I am cautiously optimistic about the bold new direction for the Superman titles after a long period of floundering.

It is 2014. I am cautiously optimistic about the bold new direction for the Superman titles after a long period of floundering.

It is 2016. I am cautiously optimistic about the bold new direction for the Superman titles after a long period of floundering.

It is 2018. I am cautiously optimistic about the bold new direction for the Superman titles after a long period of floundering.

It is 2021. I am cautiously optimistic about the bold new direction for the Superman titles after a long period of floundering.

It is 2023. I am cautiously optimistic about the bold new direction for the Superman titles after a long period of floundering.

 

 

I'm just saying, I've been here before. 

 

I've actually generally enjoyed the Superman comics of the last couple of years. The Warworld Saga was quite good, even if it maybe dragged on a little longer than necessary and definitely needed a recap page, maybe with some character headshots, at the start of each issue. Son of Kal-El has been less good, mostly because Jon has yet to develop anything resembling a personality, but I've been vocal about my issues with that on worse sites.

On paper (which is how comics are printed), this is kind of exactly what I want. Action is now a Superman Family anthology book, and while a Power Girl spotlight and Danny J. rehashing the post-Convergence Lois & Clark status quo aren't exactly what I would have pegged for the initial backups, I'm happy that the former is getting a spotlight and that we're getting to spend more time with bearded Clark and young Jon. And I'm even happier that the Steels and Kong Kenan are in the main group. With Kon, Jon, and the adopted Phaelosians, it's probably hoping too much that we'll eventually see the return of Lor-Zod, but I can be optimistic. Phillip Kennedy Johnson has earned my trust for this run, and I hope he sticks it out for awhile. 

I was a lot more worried about Superman. I thought Williamson's Flash series went off the rails pretty quickly, and the entire Dark Crisis saga was bad even on a purely technical level, let alone as a satisfying story or crossover event. My experience with Williamson of late has felt like he's been reheating Geoff Johns' and Scott Snyder's leftovers, and that has not made for entertaining comics. So I was blown away by Superman #1, which managed to strike precisely the right balance of getting back to basics while introducing enough new story hooks and conflict points to make things feel fresh. The way Superman's secret got put back in the bottle was dumb (and also the second time Manchester Black has been used to do precisely that thing, two_nickels.gif) but they gloss past it nicely here to get to a situation where Lex Luthor is the sinister voice in the back of Superman's head, voicing all of his anxieties and doubts. Lois chafing under the restrictions of being the Planet's temporary Chief makes for some good character beats, and repurposing LexCorp into SuperCorp (which feels like a knowing nod to CW fans) puts Superman in a fascinating position. There's a lot of promise here, and it reminds me a lot of the Busiek/Johns "Up, Up, and Away" story from the post-Infinite Crisis era, which kicked off a pretty decent run of comics, all things considered. I hope Jamal Campbell is in it for the long haul; I'm not particularly familiar with his work prior to this, but this book looks fantastic. 

Adventures of Superman: Jon Kent...remains probably the weakest link in the bunch. Giving Jon a secret identity is a good idea, and something that should have been done back at the start of Son of Kal-El (or, more accurately, should have been done for more than a few pages). Giving him the electric blue suit and powers is an even better idea (even if they keep dragging it out for no clear reason), I've been on the "give someone else in the Superman family that costume" bandwagon longer than anyone. And the series sets up some good drama in Jon's changing powers, his ability to be a civilian for the first time, and how that affects his relationship with Jay, who is publicly recognized as Superman's boyfriend. 

Except that it's ditching all of that to send Jon on a multiversal trip to battle Ultraman because they finally remembered what his backstory was, and have decided that Ultraman is just Gog now. And it's all leading up to a crossover with the Tryhard Injustice universe, and I cannot roll my eyes hard enough. It's honestly nice to see Val-Zod, a character I missed out on but who has a nice design, but Jon's current problem has a lot to do with the fact that he has no clear anchor and few connections to the regular universe, and removing him from it yet again isn't going to fix that problem. Doing it so that Tom Taylor can take a little victory lap around Superman characters he's written just feels like a major disservice to a character who's already being effectively demoted and sidelined. It's a good looking book, and I welcome the chance to see my second-favorite Superman costume on somebody again, but I kind of hope this is Tom Taylor's swan song on the Son of Steel so that someone else can give the kid a real chance at being a star.

Where does that leave us in the long run? It's hard to say. I was just musing recently about what an amazing accomplishment it was that the post-Crisis brain trust managed to churn out a weekly comic of pretty consistently high quality for the better part of a decade, and how unique that is in the history of comics as a medium. We're unlikely to ever see anything like that again, but that doesn't mean we can't have a few years of the Superman comics being Good, Actually. You could say I'm cautiously optimistic, but [calculates average] I guess we'll check back in 2.375 years and see whether or not we're onto another bold new direction.

Good Riddance to 2021

Let's do a year-end roundup! Every year, I feel like I remember less and less of what media I consumed, and the fact that I haven't set foot in a movie theater since January of 2020 doesn't help. So consider this list less a "best of" and more a "most memorable of the stuff I got around to." 

Best Comics

• The Immortal Hulk by Al Ewing, Joe Bennett, Ruy José, Belardino Brabo, Paul Mounts, Cory Petit, and others: with the caveat about the artist being a gross bigot, this series really went out with a bang this year. 
• Power Pack: Outlawed by Ryan North, Nico Leon, Rachelle Rosenberg, and Travis Lanham: a really fun and smart comic about my favorite young super-team, which deals with the "why don't superheroes use their powers to solve real-world problems?" question in a more innovative way than Bruce Wayne cutting checks or Superman going to a climate protest.
• Kent State by Derf Backderf, technically released in 2020 but I read it this summer. An absolutely infuriating exploration of a tragic injustice, the causes of which have not been addressed in any way whatsoever. 
• The Nice House on the Lake by James Tynion IV, Álvaro Martínez Bueno, Jordie Bellaire, & Andworld Design: Between this, Batman, DC vs. Vampires, and Something is Killing the Children, Tynion has kind of had the best year ever. 
• The Avengers by Jason Aaron, Javier Garrón, Ed McGuinness, Aaron Kuder, Carlos Pacheco, Alex Sinclair, David Curiel, Matt Hollingsworth, Rachelle Rosenberg, Cory Petit, and others: I know this series is somewhat controversial, but month in and month out it's the kind of wild, over-the-top action I want from a team like the Avengers. 
• The 6 Sidekicks of Trigger Keaton by Kyle Starks & Chris Schweizer: Shocking, I know, but Starks and Schweizer, individually and as a team, have yet to miss in my experience. This series was fantastic. Read it if you haven't. 
• Superman and the Authority by Grant Morrison, Mikel Janin, Jordie Bellaire, Tom Napolitano, and others: Morrison somehow manages to cram more good ideas into four issues than most writers manage in three times that. One of the few comics this year that consistently left me wanting more. 
• Eat the Rich by Sarah Gailey, Pius Bak, Roman Titov, & Cardinal Rae: Gailey is rapidly becoming one of my favorite authors, and this series helps to illustrate why. When most novelists turn to comics, they have a tendency to struggle with the medium a little, over-narrating or failing to remember it's a visual medium. Gailey and Bak, however, do some seriously innovative things, in service of a story that's interesting, relevant, and breezing right along. 
• Captain America Infinity Comic by Jay Edidin and Nico Leon: Jay shows that he isn't just an X-pert on the X-Men with this X-cellent turn on a timely Captain America story. 
• Witch Hat Atelier by Kamome Shirahama: Continues to be the most gorgeous book I read on a regular basis, with a more interesting and original take on the "kids at magic school" concept than certain other popular series I could name. Over the last few volumes, the centering of disability in the narrative has become significant and fascinating. 
• It's Jeff Infinity Comic by Kelly Thompson & Gurihiru: Best comic of the year, finpaws down.

Best Books

• Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire: This might be the only book I read this year that was actually published in 2021, but when a new Wayward Children book drops, it moves to the top of the TBR pile. This one was fantastic because they're all fantastic. 
  
• Ever Cursed by Corey Ann Haydu: A fairy tale for the #MeToo era that frequently drops lines which feel like they should be on the poster for the movie. The one real drawback to this one is that we don't spend enough time on the protagonist's sisters. 
• The Escape Room by Megan Goldin: A bunch of rich jerkwads get put in a deathtrap for revenge (and class war) reasons. It's not exactly what I wanted it to be (moar deathtraps pls) but it's solid.
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: Hot take: this book is great. Just a bunch of people who are so rich and sheltered that they have no idea how not to be awkward and overdramatic, and it was shockingly relatable. 

Best Movies

One of my goals for 2022 is to actually keep track of the things I watch (on Letterboxd) the way I do for books & comics. Since I don't actually remember everything I watched this year, I'm restricting this list to the stuff that actually did come out in 2021. So, uh, it's going to be short, because unless it came out on streaming or home video, I didn't see it. 

• Mortal Kombat: A lot of people complained that this movie didn't have a fighting tournament, and I guess that's legitimate, but it found multiple opportunities to force two people to fight like they were limited to two dimensions of motion, and that's kind of amazing? This was exactly the level of stupid fun and special effects that I wanted from a Mortal Kombat movie. All it was missing for me was the "toasty" guy.
• Gunpowder Milkshake: The second film I've watched that could be dismissively called "John Wick but with a woman," and the better of the two (sorry, Peppermint). It's a good, fun action movie that never takes itself too seriously. 
• The Suicide Squad: Speaking of not taking itself too seriously. I'll never quite manage to accept characters from Detective Comics Comics dropping f-bombs, and there was an unnecessary amount of gore in this one for me, but I enjoyed it otherwise. If nothing else, it captured a lot of what I feel like the Suicide Squad should be: bad people doing bad things for bad reasons, but it all kind of comes out okay and the real villain is imperialism?
• Black Widow: Better than I expected! Kind of a shame we won't be seeing any more of Natasha.
• Dune: I also read Dune this year and enjoyed both the book and the movie reasonably well. But I found them both, if you'll excuse the accidental pun, kind of dry. Gorgeous, though. 

Best Songs

If I'm bad at keeping track of the new movies I've watched, I'm terrible about music. I don't know what came out this year, pretty much all I know is what I bought ("Book" by They Might Be Giants, have not listened to it yet) and what came up on Spotify. As far as I can tell, there's no way to sort my Liked Songs by release date. 

• "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" by Brian David Gilbert: It's probably a shame that, in a year where ABBA dropped their first new album in decades, I spent a lot more time listening to Brian David Gilbert covering ABBA songs from the perspective of horror movie characters. This may be the only adaptation of Frankenstein I've ever encountered that acknowledges the creepy sister-wife dynamic. 
• "Big Big Friend" by Cheekface: I discovered Cheekface this year, and while "Big Big Friend" isn't quite as fun a jam as "I Only Say I'm Sorry When I'm Wrong Now," it's still pretty great. I don't know how to describe Cheekface; the best I've got is "halfway between Cake and The Presidents of the United States of America" but that just feels really incomplete. 
• "Build a B*tch" by Bella Poarch: Somehow this didn't make it into my Spotify wrapped playlist, despite the fact that I listened to it like three dozen times this year. I just love the nonchalant attitude Poarch has here, and I'm very interested to hear her next single. 
• "Haunted Mansion" by Demi Adejuyigbe as Ray Parker, Jr.: Not just the best song I heard this year, but a song that practically became a belief system for me. I have never been so happy to have a song stuck in my head for weeks on end.
• Other things I listened to and liked but didn't listen to enough to have a take on: the new Halsey album, the new ABBA album, some of Lil Nas X, Doja Cat, Dua Lipa, & Ariana Grande's new stuff, Orville Peck's "Fancy," Lizzo & Cardi B's "Rumors," and apparently a ton of stuff that came out in 2016-2018 but is totally new to me. 

And that's the end of 2021, and the start of 2022. Coming Soon: My thoughts on "Masters of the Universe: Revelation."