On a Tangent

It’s been 10 years since DC launched the alterna-verse Tangent Comics, and using the same logic that brought the execrable Onslaught Reborn, that means it’s time for a good dusting off, right?

And that’s how I came to read Tangent Comics: Vol. 1, which came out recently, collecting the first issues of The Atom, The Flash, Green Lantern, Metal Men and Sea Devils. I had missed these issues the first time around, during my late-1990s sabbatical from comics, so it was a good chance to catch up.

Here’s the grist: Dan Jurgens wanted to imitate Julius Schwartz and reimagine DC’s premier heroes in a totally different way, retaining only their names. The Atom became a guy with amazing atomic powers (like Firestorm, but less stupid-looking and annoying), The Flash became a sassy young woman with light powers, Green Lantern became a sassy young woman with supernatural powers, The Joker became a sassy young woman with unknown powers. Huh, see a pattern?

I figured I wouldn’t much care for the issues, and some of them were pretty awful. Jurgens’ attempt to write young woman dialogue seemed to be based entirely on Clueless and the like. It’s painful, and drags down an otherwise fun story that seems like a precursor of Dan Slott’s run on She-Hulk.

Everything else is entertaining if fairly predictable. These comics do have a very nice quality, however, in that they’re very age-appropriate for younger readers, something you can’t say about many books out there. And younger readers probably won’t be so concerned about script quality and clarity as a grizzled old bum like myself.

The real draw here, though, is the same thing that makes old crap like Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Omnibus worth a read. With DC’s recent devotion to the company’s past, we’re seeing this historic flotsam and jetsom become crucial to ongoing continuity. Look no further than the return of Granny Goodness, for Pete’s sake.

It was only after I read this book that I realized the Tangent U showed up in Infinite Crisis (and apparently also in the is-anybody-reading-this Ion). I still wonder why the heck the editorial staff went that route, but at least I’m no longer confused. I guess.

The Tangent heroes are also rumored to take a part in Final Crisis, which should coincide with the release of the second Tangent collection in early spring.

The last thing I should mention is how surprised I was to read Sea Devils, which has the adventure group as literal fish people, the result of an atomic explosion over the Gulf of Mexico. All the sea-bottom characters are dead ringers for the cast of Aquaman post-Infinite Crisis. I started to wonder if maybe the new Aquaman was actually taking place in the Tangent Universe, or maybe had been transported from there. Of course, both those series were written by Kurt Busiek, so maybe he just wanted to bring back some old ideas from a failed enterprise…