DCU: Decisions

I just read issue 1 of DCU Decisions at lunch—and it was better than I expected. It's co-written by Bill Willingham, one of my favorite writers (and a conservative) and Judd Winick, a writer I used to like a lot but now tend to avoid like the plague (and a liberal). I expected Crossfire in comics form. What I got was very different.

There's actually very little discussion of real-world politics in this (although we learn that Green Arrow is voting Democratic—gasp! shock!—and can infer that one other longtime, well-known character is likely to vote Republican). But mostly, it seems to be focusing on the interpolitics of the superhuman community, and how Green Arrow's decision to endorse a (fictional) candidate in the Democratic primaries (which he initially does as a misstep during an interview, rather than intentionally) could change how heroes conduct themselves in public and relate to each other in private.

Plus there's a mystery, which is nice.

I kind of expected something that people on both sides of the political aisle would find something to hate in this book, but so far it seems a little to vague for that, and quite possibly better for it.

(Something of interest to me is that this cover seems to have gone through several iterations. The first one was saw—and maybe it was never intended as a cover, just promo art—was the Green Arrow endorsement poster. Next is this cover, which I took directly from DC's website a couple of minutes ago. But the cover I actually bought off the stands is this cover with one addition: "Heroes Don't Vote" is spraypainted over the poster. I wonder if this addition is the reason the comic was pulled from last week's shipment and delayed until this week? Maybe someone at DC or Warners thought the cover would be seen as an actual, unambiguous endorsement of a Dem?)

Rob