What amazes me about this book is not just the premise, the whole "Lex vs. Superman" thing from Lex's point of view, but the lucidity and rhetoric that the creators use to make good old Luthor look sympathetic, logical, like the good guy.
The art's fascinating. As we all learned from Unbreakable, villains usually have over-sized heads, denoting intellect, while heroes usually have unusually small heads, denoting phyiscal power. Lex, especially, always has his trade-mark bald head, and various artists have used various means to emphasise it. Often, it's a bit out of proportion, or it's the only part of the body that's flesh-toned, or it's the only skin exposed. I mean, why he wore that gian suit of purple and green body armour for years but exposed his head is a mystery. Helmet! Hello? Anyway, in this book, his head is totally in proportion. He wears a smart suit and chats amiably with a janitor cleaning his office. He seems utterly human, and humain.
Superman, on the other hand, appears in a series of surveilance videos playing in Lex's office. He's consistently in the shadows, making his face and body look darker, more sinister. His eyes glow red, consistently, and that's never good. Ever since Grendel, red glowing eyes spell "bad guy." His costume has seems and buckles, making it look more down-to-Earth, less grand, less 'super.' From what I can tell, making Lex and Superman both look more human results in us, the readers, reading the book from a more human point of view: there's a man flying around who can tear your arms off with his super-breath. Is Lex really so crazy to think he might be a threat?
And there's the writing. What gets me, most, is that half the book, at least, is a monologue in which Lex explains his feelings, as if Azzarello wanted to start the book off explicitly from Lex's point of view. He deconstructs Superman the way that, frankly, a critic would, the way that I have in more than one place. "...the world's greatest boy scout... fighting for Truth, Justice, and the American Way. As if they were some inseperable Holy Trinity" (1.17.1-2). Lex is, here, the voice of intellectual deconstruction, the mind that percieves the myth of comics, that superheroic values are natural, self-evident, and rejects them.
Ironically, his views on Superman's "Holy Trinity" are probably percieved as, literally, villainous by a lot of readers. "Truth? That's in the teller. Just calmly massaged words that very well may be nothing but carefully finessed lies" (1.17.3). Do we really believe in truth, though? Aren't we all suspicious of the car salesman, the politician, the lawyer, people who can seem to make anything sound like truth?
"Justice? Belongs to the judge, who sits above those who put him there because they can't trust themselves" (1.17.4). We get a hint of tyranny, here, an assumption that the masses are weak-minded and need the firm hand of a leader to keep them in line. The first few words, though, 'justice belongs to the judge,' point out that Justice isn't always an abstract, Platonic, capitalised entity, floating above us, concrete and certain in its universal and timeless precepts. Justice is always in the hands of people, people who are functional parts of an over-arching legal or governmental system. Justice isn't just a concept, it's a very real system with very real consequences.
"And the American Way? It constantly evolves out of something that proves to be true AND a lie" (1.17.4). This line almost requires no commentary. What hell is the American Way? Nobody knows. It's different all the time, depending on who uses the phrase, and what that person wants you to believe. Constantly evolving, always rooted in the present, but presenting itself as if it were timeless.
I can't wait to see how they back-peddle out of this. How does Superman stand up to that kind of lucid observation? Who ever thought Lex could be the voice of reason?
I am not ashamed to admit that by the time I reached the last page, I was weaping, a little.
There are authors who use darkness, depravity, and horror to inspire readers to something better, and there are those who use wonder and amazement to do the exact same thing. Warren Ellis can do both, though he's heavier on the horror. Joe does them both, too, but his stories are never short of wonder.
Rising Stars began six years ago, all but out of the blue. Joe had written a few successful Babylon 5 comics, and they were good. They had his creativity, his humour, and they genuinely added something to the enjoyment of B5, his great "novel for television." When he started writing under his own label, "Joe's Comics," I was first in line. I still remember reading the first few pages near the stairs on the second floor of the Comicshop in Vancouver, marveling at it. I could tell, immediately, that this was a kind of comicbook I hadn't read in a long time.
I had read good books by then. My friend Jay practically forced a copy of Watchmen into my hands, for which I will always be grateful. Peter David's Supergirl was a shockingly good read, and was still going at the time. Kingdom Come, Golden Age, Mark Waid's Flash, good books, all. Only Watchmen was in the same category of storytelling as Rising Stars, and though Joe took some time to get used to the unique writing demands of comics while Alan Moore is truly the Grand Master of the medium, at least in English, I knew that this book was something to remember, an experience that I would treasure. A story that would take me from awesome to the awful, and would leave me unsure of which was which.
Joe joined the ranks of writers like Moore, Gaiman, Ellis, Ennis, David, and others who, instead of feeling trapped by superheroes, use them for all that they're worth, take the tools of propaganda and power and turn them back at those in power. Unlike a lot of people, I like my heroes to be nice and political, to actually say something from inside the cacophonous emptiness of the mainstream. Instead of striving to say nothing, and ironically acting as the perfect mouth pieces for the status quo, Joe's comics, like Moore's and Ellis' and Gaiman's, speak their messages in clear voices, and become all at once more useful to the mass of readers and more personal to their creators.
Tonight, I have had, reading the end of Rising Stars, a moment of joy so pure that the critic in me is laughing while tears run down his face. He doesn't care about analysing for now. Neither do I.
Thank you, Joe.