In the 1990s, DC published a comic called Justice League Quarterly, a big 80-page anthology starring the various characters and groups associated with all the JLA titles then being published. I wrote, among other things, a semi-regular character called General Glory, who was, in that continuity, supposed to have been a “real” character who had actually lived and functioned in the DC universe of characters as far back as World War II. He was supposedly a top secret agent of the government in the war and beyond, but as part of his cover, his adventures were published as comic books, as a radio show, a TV show, etc. That way, if anyone reported seeing a guy running around in that costume, it could be chalked up to a delusion or some nut in a General Glory Halloween costume.
My favorite of these, strictly from a script point-of-view, was my pastiche on The Dark Knight Returns, Frank Miller’s seminal Batman graphic novel from the 1980s, the granddaddy of the grim & gritty movement. I thought I caught the tone of Frank’s writing fairly accurately and wrote a couple of really dead-on metaphorical captions that could have come out of the original even with their sheer goofiness. I can be a half-way decent stylistic mimic when I try and on this one, I tried.
Alas, happy script, not completely happy result. I mean, not terrible, just…not all it could have been. The artist drew some nice pictures, but on many pages, he ignored–or more likely did not understand, as he was a South American artist, I believe, who’s handed a script translation by the studio he worked for–the instructions to do the layouts like Frank’s in The Dark Knight Returns. He didn’t, so what could have been a solid home run turned into a double and I promise never again to use another sports metaphor here.
The second half tomorrow. As ever, click on an image to see it in a readable size:
Tags: comic book, General Glory, Justice League Quarterly, The Dark Knight Returns