BLACKEST NIGHT: More about tie-ins

Well, my rant about tie-ins got some gratifying reaction: Tom Spurgeon briefly mulls over some of the questions I pose, and J. Caleb Mozzocco actually suggests some answers. The only thing about the latter is, Mozzocco answers in terms of crossovers, whereas I was talking specifically about one aspect of crossovers--the tie-ins.

I didn't say, nor do I think, "no one ever expects crossovers to be good." I clearly recall the buzz about Blackest Night that eventually intrigued me enough to start looking into it. I remember how excited everyone seemed about the Free Comic Book Day issue, and how that excitement just kept ramping up to the first issue of the series proper. All those people really thought and hoped the crossover would be good. But that enthusiasm incongruously coexists with a widespread, jaundiced wariness toward everything beyond the main Blackest Night series and the "core titles" of Green Lantern and Green Lantern Corps. It's this latter attitude in particular I meant to address.

The gists of Mozzocco's answers may still be applicable, but only with some tweaking. "Maybe crossovers have gotten better," he suggests. Even if tie-ins have gotten better (more on that in a moment), I'm talking about the negative perceptions about them that remain quite strong. Here's someone else's rant about them from yesterday, with an expanding comment thread mainly echoing the writer's sentiment. As for a large enough remnant of hardcore completists who will just buy everything you emblazon with a crossover banner, DC apparently doesn't think it can count on them any longer without the further bribery of "collectible" bonus trinkets. Even so, someone's buying enough tie-ins, for whatever reasons, for DC to keep cranking them out.

For myself, I'm glad I've gone all-in on the tie-ins for Blackest Night. Contra the view that they're inevitably crappy cash-grabs, I've found a broad range of quality and an interesting variety of contributions to the event as a whole. I've explained what I liked about the Batman and Superman minis. I was pleased to see how relevant the Titans mini turned out to be for the main series (at least its latest issue).

Though the current slew of tie-in issues from ongoing series has been mostly disappointing, I have found a bright spot or two. The R.E.B.E.L.S. one stood out for me, and I think Rokk and Shawn do an excellent job of articulating what it does so right as a tie-in issue, contrasted with what the Booster Gold issue does so wrong, in this podcast.

I didn't care much for Adventure Comics #4, but Chris Sims notes a meta-thing or two it contributes to the event, for those who appreciate that sort of thing:

What it all comes down to is that there’s a self-awareness to this story that’s largely absent in Geoff Johns’s other work. Despite a few token attempts to be serious–which generally involve casting Prime as that kid from the Twilight Zone who sent people to the cornfield for listening to Perry Como, which is itself a concept that is goofy as all hell–this story is essentially functioning as a parody of Blackest Night by the guy who is actually writing it.

As for Titans #77, I've always dug Deathstroke. In the X-Men/New Teen Titans crossover, he was cool enough to make me want to start reading DC comics (as were Darkseid and the Titans themselves, of course). Though I doubt I'd have enjoyed this approach to a tie-in as much that featured any other character, I have to agree with Doug Zawisza at CBR and Ryan at Weekly Crisis that this issue makes excellent use of Blackest Night as an occasion to dig deeper into one of DC's most appealing and intriguing villains.

JLA #39 is frustrating. Inspired by the image at the top of this post, here's one metaphor I've used before, to explain my ideal conception of how tie-ins across monthly titles can give rise to interesting narrative structures:

Collectively, the various relevant titles are like a bank of screens, where a character who steps out of one steps into another. That's what I was hoping for, and so far that's what I feel I'm getting. We'll see how that holds up when the November wave of tie-ins hits.

In comments, Glen Davis suggests another good metaphor:

In theory, It should be somewhat like reading a history of something like WWII. The big story is the overview, and the crossovers would be like a book focussing on The Battle of Britain or the fighting in North Africa.

In any case, I love the idea of a big story-mosaic. JLA #39 could have been an interesting piece of Blackest Night. The Hall of Justice has been wrecked in BN 3-4. The main action has moved on, but I like the idea of, say, a camera still running, recording the new action that results when an already-injured and exhausted Justice League drags in to find the place haunted by lingering Black Lanterns. That's the effect this issue could have had. Ryan bullet-points the failures well enough, so I won't belabor them, except to add that it's a damn shame what a missed opportunity they make of this issue.

In short, I'm not going to shrug off bad tie-ins as a matter of course. I don't care how many "red skies" have conditioned some people to expect the worst; tie-ins can be done well and have a lot to offer, and I've pointed to examples.