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Nerd Alert! May 13, 2006
Good Question The first issue of 52, DC Comics' new weekly series that will explain the events of the missing year between the end of Infinite Crisis and the current continuity One Year Later, is out. I read it, it's not bad. It centers on a few second tier heroes such as Booster Gold, Steel, and Elongated Man but the most interesting aspect of 52 to me is the prominence of The Question. With Bruce Wayne overseas for a year retracing the steps he took to become Batman with his studly young former wards in tow, The Question is the self-proclaimed current guardian of Gotham City. (Which is funny to me since from what I know of their past relationship, Batman wouldn't like that idea at all.) The Question has received a boost of popularity recently. After years of sitting on the shelf, he had a spotlighted role in the Justice League Unlimited series and an all-new miniseries in 2005. I didn't see or read any of that. Don't want to, don't need to. I think it's pretty cool that a new generation of comic book fans has become interested in Ol' No-Face, but according to his Wikipedia page, The Question has undergone a reinterpretation in JLU and had some new powers added in the comics. Whatever, I'm not interested in any of that. As far as I'm concerned, whether it's still canon or not, The Question begins and ends with the 36 issues and annuals written by Dennis O'Neil and primarily drawn by Denys Cowan in the late 1980's. To me, liking The Question but not knowing anything about this run of his comics is like claiming to be a Batman fan without ever reading The Dark Knight Returns. Not that DC makes it easy to find those 36 issues and annuals. They're currently not collected in any format. However, they certainly exist and they're going to be relatively inexpensive if you take the time to track them down. This series is worth the effort. There has been nothing else like it to my knowledge before or since. The O'Neil/Cowan run of The Question was a cult favorite, one of the hallmarks of DC's run of serious, gritty comics aimed squarely at older, more thoughtful and mature readers in the 1980's. This series followed the path trailblazed by Alan Moore's Swamp Thing in the days before the Vertigo line, which The Question would not be a part of since it wasn't linked to DC's pantheon of magic-based characters. The Question series was a unique hybrid of martial arts action, street-level violence, and tales of redemption steeped in eastern philosophy, primarily Taoism. Througout the series, The Question undergoes a continuing journey of self-discovery and attempts at becoming a better person. His personal and spiritual rehabilitation was mirrored by his lone attempts to save his hometown, a cesspool of corruption known as Hub City, as its lone champion and defender. When we first meet Charles Victor Szasz, a television news reporter with the professional name of Vic Sage, he is not a kind, pleasant, or particularly heroic man. Curiosity drives him, but nobility and high-mindedness is sorely lacking in his personality. He lives a double life as The Question, a brawling thug, and bites off more than he can chew in uncovering the corruption in Hub City's government. In the first issue, the best thing that ever could have happened to him did: he was killed. But not really. Broken physically and mentally, his would-be murderer Lady Shiva brings Sage to a man named Richard Dragon. Initially resisting Dragon's aid, Vic Sage gradually accepts and embraces Dragon's teachings of eastern philosophy and becomes a new man. When The Question returns to Hub City, he finds things are even worse than before and redoubles his efforts to save Hub City with the aid of his mentor Professor Aristotle Rodor, his ex-girlfriend and new Mayor of Hub City Myra Fermin, and Isadore O'Toole, the only honest cop in the city whose life was saved and completely changed by The Question. The entire run was packed with martial arts action that was street-level and plausible and centered around explorations into heady philosophical issues.(So prominent where these themes and philosophies that O'Neil included books like Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and The Art of War as recommended reading in each month's letter columns.) Highlights of The Question included a fantastic issue where he is captured by rouge American soldiers and has to find a way to cope with being buried alive with only his head sticking out of the ground, battling an operatic serial killer called The Mikado, a team up with Green Arrow during that character's dark run of comics in the 1980's, and one particular issue with perhaps the most memorable appearance of The Riddler in the last two or three decades. Lady Shiva returns more than once to challenge The Question and test his abilities, progress and enlightenment as a martial artist. The final story arc involving the redemption of Hub City and its inhabitants is properly gripping and brings the story to a close of sorts. Also, Batman popped in for a cameo early in the series. I implore DC to get off their asses and collect the 36 issues and annuals of the O'Neil/Cowan run so that this new generation interested in Ol' No-Face can read about his past exploits. It would be great to have these stories collected together. The series was followed by I believe four issues of The Question Quarterly, which descended in quality until it was discontinued, but those aren't important so much to the original 36 issue run. The Question is a pretty great character and this was one of the finest little-known runs of comics produced in that golden age of the 1980's, when comics were both cheap and good, the latter being arguable today but certainly not the former.
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