And Then It Turns Out ...

The death of Colossus was always an irking point for me in the Marvel history. After all, he was one of my favorite mutants, the huge Russian powerhouse with an even bigger heart. Not to mention he was an artist to boot.

Then Joss Whedon brought him back to life.

And he did it with heart.

One of the neat things about Peter's resurrection was that it was unspoiled. In fact, Whedon and Cassaday let it out that Jean Grey was going to be brought back to life. In fact, Cassaday let out a page with Jean as Phoenix rising with Cyclops watching her out on the 'Net.

When Issue Four came along we had Kitty Pryde going into the depths of that lab only to find Peter there. Kitty let him out and then was attacked by guards. Peter turned into his metal form and in turn attacked and almost killed the guards.

The next moment was priceless. There's four panels with just Kitty's stunned face into it. She's so stunned that Peter goes right through her body. When she is finally snapped out of it she gets him to stop before he kills the guards.

Then he turns and looks at her. Tears well up in his eyes as he asks if he's dead. She stares at him and he drops to his knees and buries his face into her stomach and cries as she holds him and cries as well.

The resurrection, most of the time a cheap ploy, was played beautifully and with heart here. More comic book writers could learn how to revive a character by reading this issue. The Lazarus ploy worked wonderfully here, as did all the emotional baggage and aftermath involved.

Scott Morse's many graphic novels (Barefoot Serpent, Spaghetti Western, Soulwind, to name a few) all contain "wow" moments; or, at the very least, "aw, cool!" moments. No, I won't give them away. You have to read Morse's work for yourself.

Past Lies (Oni) by Weir, DeFilippis and Mitten had a nice twist, too, as did Matt Kindt's 2 Sisters (Top Shelf). Oh, and Less Than Heroes (Top Shelf) by David Yurkovich. And the Elseworlds Superman: Last Stand on Krypton (DC) by Gerber and Wheatley; love that last page. And the first Young Avengers (Marvel) story arc by Heinberg and Cheung; so sad.

As for anti-climatic, contrived "wow" moments — Red Hood, anyone? Not to mention how Jason Todd was brought back in the first place. Working his resurrection into Infinite Crisis was the height of contrivance. It would have made a heck of a lot more sense if R'as al Ghul (or Talia) had simply dug up the body and kept Todd as a resurrected trophy — until setting him loose on his former mentor.

Yeesh.

Okay...

Captain Marvel Adventures #26: The all-time greatest anticlimax. For months, Captain Marvel battled the Monster Society of Evil, a massive organization of supremely powerful monsters and supervillains controlled by the unseen criminal genius Mister Mind. At the end of the battle, Mister Mind was revealed to be a tiny cartoon worm. But, you know, an EVIL worm.

Steve Canyon: In 1946, Milton Caniff ended his popular comic strip Terry and the Pirates to start a strip that he would own and control creatively (the Chicago Tribune syndicate claimed the rights to Terry). Steve Canyon began in January 1947, to huge anticipation. But the title character himself didn't appear for the entire first week. When Canyon finally made his appearance in the first Sunday strip, it was the payoff to a week of masterful buildup.

Amazing Spider-Man #42: One of the running jokes in the early years of Spider-Man was Peter Parker's ongoing effort to avoid meeting Mary Jane Watson, a nice girl his Aunt May kept trying to set him up with. After Peter spent countless issues dodging Mary Jane, she finally nabbed him in the doorway and turned out to be a bombshell. Original Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko didn't have much of a talent for drawing beautiful women,which may be why writer Stan Lee avoided showing Mary Jane. But Ditko's replacement, John Romita, had a background in romance comics and a gift for pinup art. Romita's first panel of Mary Jane, smugly informing Peter, "Face it, tiger — you hit the jackpot!", lived up to two years of buildup.

Watchmen: "'Do it'? Dan, I'm not a Republic Serial villain. Do you seriously think I'd explain my master-stroke if there remained the slightest chance of you affecting its outcome? I did it thirty-five minutes ago." Ozymandias shocks readers and reveals that he's smarter than uncounted generations of super-villains by carrying out his evil scheme BEFORE explaining it to the heroes. And just when they thought they could talk him down, too. Oops.

Maus: The panel near the end of Volume 2 in which we see an actual photo of Vladek, not his cartoon mouse avatar, chokes me up a little every time. One of the reasons Maus works is that Art Spiegelman knows when to step out of the comic-book conventions he's established for himself, and this is the most moving example.

Preacher: This series is one long string of hilarious shaggy-dog reveals. The first appearance of the descendants of
Christ, the meat-plant owner's secret sex life, the rejected astronaut who dedicates his life to dynamiting a special message to NASA ... there's just too many to choose.

Death Note, Vol. 7: For its first six volumes, Death Note is a game of strategic one-upmanship between two geniuses: Light Yagami, an aspiring young megalomaniac, and L, a detective who's 99% sure Light is guilty but can never quite force him into a corner. A little over halfway through the series, the balance suddenly and devastatingly shifts. Anyone who's read it knows what I'm talking about. In a way, it's a bit of a shark-jump for Death Note, which continues to be interesting but never quite recaptures the chemistry between Light and L. But my jaw was on the floor, people.

New X-Men #147: Previously in Grant Morrison's and Frank Quitely's twisty X-Men saga, the saintly mutant teacher Xorn was unmasked as archnemesis Magneto — a hell of a reveal in itself, and one fans are still bickering over. But there's more. As the next issue opens, Magneto stares out over New York. "One day ..." he muses. Cut to a two-page spread of Magneto trashing the city with his fearsome magnetic powers. Then he finishes his thought: "I did it all in one day." In a nod to Ozymandias's fast one in Watchmen. Morrison reveals that Magneto isn't planning to take over the Eastern seaboard; he's already done it. Crafty old bugger.

Pluto, Vol. 1: This as-yet-untranslated manga by
suspense master Naoki Urasawa is an audacious piece of work: an "adult" retelling of a classic Osamu Tezuka Astro Boy story. It sounds ridiculous, but in Urasawa's skilled hands, it works. Astro Boy himself doesn't appear for chapter after chapter, but when he does, it's perfect. No big reveal, no bells and whistles, just a great moment.

At first I sat stupefied by this question. I had so many options, I had a logjam in my brain.

But, if I'm going to narrow myself down to just a few reveals ....

In Sleeper, the reveal that Tao knew all along, that Carver had him fooled for about .001 of a second, but that he played along because he wanted to see how far he could twist Carver.

Then there's the scene in V for Vendetta where we find out that it was V who has imprisoned Evey and tortured her (and showed her that wonderful letter on toilet paper). Not only is it an ohmygod scene, because it shows the lengths to which V will go — that he is in many ways as bad as the people he fights — but because Evey has learned such a powerful lesson about herself and the way of the world. (And we, since we were along for the ride, picked it up, too.)

My final favorite reveal is from Garth Ennis' run on Hellblazer. We know that Constantine is up to something when the First of the Fallen shows up and Constantine is so glib.

I don't know about you, but I sure as hell whooped when Constantine let go with that line about the changing spell.

Oh yeah. Revenge is a dish ....

One of my fave reveals was actually a rather subtle one: in the Chris Claremont-written X-Men #23, Sinister accidentally let slip to Cyclops, aka Scott Summers, that he had another brother besides Havok. Speculation has been hot over it for years; I personally fell in the "Gambit is the third brother" camp. Vulcan was revealed to be a Summers brother in the main timeline, but since a) Adam X was also believed to be the extra brother at one point, b) according to Wikipedia, Sinister had no reason to know of Vulcan, c) as was also pointed out on Wikipedia, Sinister never actually specified a number of brothers anyway, so there could be multiple unknowns, and d) Claremont himself wrote X-Men: The End, a future story where it was revealed that Sinister had created Gambit as a clone, with Cyke's DNA (as well as his own), I feel vindicated. Whatever those other writers wrote, I believe that Gambit's being the brother Sinister misspoke of is what Claremont intended all along, and his opinion, as the originator, should supercede all others.

Elfquest has had a lot of big, stunning reveals. I came into the series with the second graphic novel, so the discovery of elves in Sorrow's End and what had happened to the kingdom of the trolls weren't big shockers, but if I had started at the beginning, they might have been. Same with the discovery of kind humans who worshipped elves who lived in a mountain. As it was, the big reveals for me: that the Wolfriders were actually part wolf; that Winnowill was the elfin mother of Two-Edge which Picknose had spoken of; the elves that rescued the Wolfriders from the mountain trolls; that Rayek was still alive (that was huge); that one of the wolves that Cutter had rescued from the pit was none other than the High one, Timmain, mother of the Wolfriders; that the elves were really space aliens that got thrown back in time, the palace being their spaceship, and the trolls and preservers being their creations; that Yun is Skywise's daughter (and perhaps Jink is as well); that Khavi was actually a Wolfrider at one point; and that Ahdri was still alive after being buried beneath Sorrow's End.

Unfortunately, when it comes to modern comics, it's a lot easier to come up with alleged "big reveals" that are anticlimactic, contrived, unbelievable, or just plain repugnant than it is to think of ones which have been artistically successful or even minimally logically satisfying. In terms of the worst of the worst, Brad Meltzer's Justice League of America miniseries Identity Crisis (DC) takes the cake for what might be termed anti-wow moments. For starters, it features a supposed solution to the murder of Sue Dibny (among others) that is both wildly implausible and depends upon motivations that work only if we assume that the killer is both criminally insane and stupid.

As if that weren't enough, halfway through the series we get the appalling revelation that the luckless Sue Dibny was brutally raped by the villainous Dr. Light in the Justice League's very headquarters several years earlier. Then we learn that Sue's husband the Elongated Man and some of his JLA colleagues reacted to this attack — and Dr. Light's threats of further reprisals against the loved ones of superheroes — by having Zatanna essentially lobotomize Light to erase his memory of the incident and render him harmlessly inept. When Batman discovered what they were up to and attempted to foil their plans, they had Zatanna erase his memory, too. Various follow-up stories revealed that Zatanna went on to perform similar magical procedures on a number of supervillains whom readers had previously been under the impression had reformed of their own free will, such as Flash foe Pied Piper and, even more infuriatingly, the currently somewhat amoral but vaguely Robin Hoodish Catwoman.

These repulsive retroactive revelations turned yet another female character into cannon fodder to be gratuitously abused as a mere means to the end of launching the latest angst-ridden crossover event. They also implicitly sullied the reputations of multiple superheroes and allegedly reformed villains, and tainted dozens, if not hundreds, of older, pre-grim and gritty comic book stories featuring the more lighthearted Silver Age versions of the Justice League characters involved.

On the other hand, a more recent storyline featuring a shocking disclosure which started out as a somewhat less extreme anti-wow moment surprised me by eventually evolving in the opposite direction. I was less than thrilled by the initial rather muddled revelation that the latest incarnation of Supergirl/Kara Zor-El had merely been brainwashed into seeming sweet and harmless as a cover for her true mission to kill her cousin Kal-El, whose far more successful escape from the destruction of Krypton had literally driven her father Zor-El mad with bitterness. It didn't help that this jaw-dropping news was first spitefully announced in mid-battle by Supergirl's evil self, who had been temporarily split off from her nicer "normal" self by Darkseid and didn't strike me as the most trustworthy of informants. These circumstances left me in doubt for the next few issues over whether the current Kara's backstabbing backstory was true or just some scam cooked up by Darkseid and the now-reabsorbed evil Kara to mess with the good guys' heads.

Unfortunately, evil Kara's claims eventually proved to be essentially the truth. But more recently, scripter Joe Kelly managed to more or less salvage this rather unappetizing storyline, at least as far as I was concerned. In Supergirl #14, Kelly used flashbacks to (somewhat) clarify what had been hinted at for some time — that, despite her evil self's claims to the contrary, Kara had not been a born juvenile delinquent who had to be hypnotized in order to convincingly simulate goodness and trustworthiness. Instead, she started out as a normal Kryptonian child who from an early age was subjected by her father to various experimental procedures designed to equip and condition her to murder her more fortunate cousin. "Oh, I get it — she's like a flighty teenage girl version of Heero Yuy in Gundam Wing!" I exclaimed.

For those who are unfamiliar with this anime, Heero Yuy is one of five heroic teenage pilots who use high-tech giant robots to battle an oppressive futuristic Earth government on behalf of the beleaguered space colonies. Each of the pilots was chosen and trained for his task by one of the five scientists who developed the super-sophisticated robots, or gundams. Heero, who had been the kid sidekick of a professional assassin before becoming the protege of the distinctly coldblooded Dr. J, seems to have been somehow either genetically or nanoengineered to have superhuman strength and endurance. He can bend steel in his bare hands, survives several twelve-story falls relatively unscathed, and at one point sets his own broken leg — without anesthetic. Heero has been trained to be an emotionless "perfect soldier" and singlemindedly use these abilities to further Dr. J's political goals, even if this means self-destructing his
gundam while he is still in it in order to prevent it from falling into enemy hands.

However, Heero's traumatized reaction on the two occasions when he discovers that he has inadvertently killed innocent civilians in the course of one of his missions, along with his last-minute decision to defy orders by rescuing a fellow pilot who has been captured by opposing forces, rather than killing him to prevent his talking under torture, reveal him to be far more conventionally good at heart than the end-justifies-the-means automaton his ruthless mentor had been attempting to create. According to DC's latest spin on Supergirl, it now appears that she is also basically a naturally benign, if not overwhelmingly altruistic, person whose past tendency to prematurely resort to violence when frustrated may be as much a product of her mad scientist father's abusive training as her occasional lingering conditioning-inspired impulses to kill Superman.

Once it became obvious in issue #14 just how extensively the obsessively Superman-hating Zor-El had been experimenting on his daughter to turn her into a living weapon to carry out his will, a lot of the messier and more unsympathetic aspects of the character's erratic history so far began to make a certain amount of sense. Of course, whether this particular "aha" moment will also work for readers not in a position to draw the analogy with Heero Yuy remains an open question.

Since I compile this column, I write my answer last after the other Tarts have turned theirs in, and some months (like this one) it means that anything I intended to write about has already been amply and beautifully covered by my sister Tarts!

So I will merely mention the awful, awkward, and ill-advised Onslaught storyline in X-Men where it was revealed that Professor Xavier was the villainous Onslaught. The storyline had been convoluted and confusing enough up until that point, and then became unbearable — so much so that I stopped reading the X-Titles altogether!

Without a doubt, the lamest comic reveal ever had to be that Penance and M from Generation X were sisters. Not only sisters, but that the girl Gen X had come to know as M was in fact Monet's twin sisters joined together in her body, and that Monet was actually Penance. And their brother Marius was the first villain Gen X had fought, Empath. Just ... what?