This is an interesting moment for the comic book industry as it struggles with its future. For those who prefer the print version, the argument between the serial story-telling of a four-to-six issue run remains an issue with those who want to have the whole story in one place and just wait for the trade paperback. For brick-and-mortar stores this presents an interesting challenge as they gamble with space and value concerns. Do you keep the whole run in shop and the trade paperback, just the series, just the trade paperback? Then there is the digital aspect: if the content goes all digital, they put thousands of small businesses out of the current titles and relegate them to storage of back issues. Let’s talk about the Absolute Power run.
DC and Marvel have, over the years, approached this by using the crossover. In the past, about once a year all the heroes would come together to take on one of their primary heroes or team’s big bad. In the last decade, the crossover has become more prevalent, and it seems there is almost no space between a whole cast of heroes. Focusing on DC, the latest event arises out of one of Kal-El’s nemeses Brainiac. In the House of Brainiac, the Superfamily with the assistance of the Luthors and Lobo, take on Brainiac and the Brainiac Queen. The outcome merged with the recent liberation of Batman from his own Failsafe, set up the stage this July for the Absolute Power crossover. Here the new Trinity of Evil is formed from Failsafe, a Batman originated construct to keep him in check that goes awry, the Brainiac Queen, who almost beat the Superfamily and friends, and then of course Amanda Waller.
Yeah, I know! Amanda Waller?
For those who are not real familiar, Amanda Waller is a government employee who is routinely linked with leading various clandestine governmental agencies. Now, logically you ask yourself: if she is associated with the government, why is she in the Trinity of Evil? Well, there you have it. Since her inception in the mid-1980s, it seems like Waller has been used as a foil by the government. She is generally portrayed with a very Machiavellian ends-justify-the-means approach to any situation, which why she I seemingly placed or seeks the oversight and management of the Suicide Squad on and off between stints with Checkmate and A.R.G.U.S. She controls this group of generally immoral individuals with abilities, with explosive implants in their brains, and/or by threatening the welfare of their loved-ones.
Waller has always seen superheroes as a means to an end, but starting with Absolute Power: Ground Zero #1, she begins the framework to just end them. Mark Waid (Kingdom Come, Strange Fruit, 52) has down what he is good at and weaved disparate stories of the main heroes in the DC Universe into a plausible comic book situation for the heroes, but what is sort of just accepted as cannon for Waller is why she hold such animus for them. It’s not like her family was killed by super heroes. Her family was murdered by street criminals back in Legends #1. From there John Ostrander, John Byrne, and Len Wein seems to have mashed the strong, thick, large features of Mammy and the domineering angry black woman Sapphire stereotypes in the physical embodiment of Waller and a career of villainy.
Waid takes some of the best elements of some of the most recent storylines for Batman, Superman, and Wonder, where each of them either die or lose themselves and use that to usher in the new Absolute Power Universe for DC. So, the question is, where are the women of color in this new universe? If you don’t know, you are not alone. Outside of the perpetual villainy of Waller, one of the most powerful entities, Naomi, is interestingly absent. Natasha Irons is running along behind Kal-El and his family. Nubia remains the spare heir and runs Thymscira while Diana saves the universe, and N.K. Jemisin and Jamal Campbell’s Green Lantern, Sojourner “Jo” Mullein is on the rolls somewhere of the Green Lantern Corps.
Waller has blocked off the planet from any kind of rescue from off-world, and Superman finds himself with two bullets in him falling out of the sky. As Batman and Wonder Woman suffer similar fates, the heroes struggle to know who to trust as some of their former allies have joined forces or have been forced to join with Waller. It’s not clear the real reason for what is happening, but if things follow the pattern, we will find out that she is being manipulated by someone else and ends up aligning with whomever she needs to to triumph.
In the end, it turns out that it doesn’t really matter whether Amanda Waller is a villain or a hero. Because just like the rest of us, she will be used by those who can as an instrument of storytelling; with no real purpose, but to be a fixture in a grand story that will change the universe. Enjoy the ride.
