The Twelve

The history of super hero comics is divided into ages — The Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age and today’s Modern Age. The Golden Age encompassed the comics made during the ’30s and ’40s. During this time there were hundreds of pulp heroes churned out, many lasting a few years and then replaced, seldom copyrighted by their creators. Today, specifically in the last few months, the Golden Age public domain characters have made a comeback — but they’re not the same.

Superpowers Project (Dynamite Entertainment) — This series focuses on the old character, Fighting Yank, a WWII hero who gets his powers from his fallen ancestor. During the war, he betrayed his friends (other random public domain characters) and now in his old age, where robots police the world and America makes war with zombie soldiers, he must seek out the Buddhist hero Green Lama to return his world to the Golden Age.

The Next Issue Project (Image) — This hasn’t come out yet. It was set for release in December 2007, but hasn’t come out yet. Basically this series will be the “next issue” of an old series, so if #36 was in 1943, issue #37 will be in 2007. Same characters, same time period, just new writers.

The Twelve (Marvel) — The golden age heroes of this series are owned by Marvel from its Golden Age days as Timely Comics. Set in WWII, these twelve heroes are captured by Nazis and put into cryogenic storage until they are freed and released into the modern world. Now these wartime costumed fighters have to find a new purpose in a world that no longer needs them.

And we care because…? The writing is solid on Superpowers and The Twelve. The only problem is with the series themselves. The problem inherent with each is using characters we know nothing about. Outside of comic fans that research old pulp heroes from the ’30s and ’40s (which is a small few even in the comic community), no one knows these heroes. There is no context for them. I see a wide panel shot of a bunch of these heroes and I have no idea who any of them are. I’m supposed to think they are important because of a manufactured legacy. Bringing them back in a new series can have only three plots: 1) The heroes reawaken now and have to find who they are in a new time, 2) They Golden Age heroes are now old and hate how super heroes have changed, or 3) The heroes still live in the past, but their adventures are modernized WWII stories. As comics go, these are very cliché plots. And this is of course forgetting that Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, From Hell, Watchmen) did this same idea years ago in Tom Strong and Terra Obscura, using many of the same characters Image and Dynamite are now using. Instead of coming up with something new, they are rehashing old characters with tired plots.