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 (010311) Secret Origin: The Story of DC Comics is an
exhaustive documentary on how the multimedia giant came to exist. It’s a series
of new interviews with comic creators like Mark Waid, Gerard Jones, Dwayne
McDuffie, Neil Gaiman, Louise Simonson, Denny O’Neill, Marv Wolfman, Mike
Carlin, Neal Adams, Jim Lee, and more. There’s also tons of archive footage and
interviews that cover seven decades of comic books, including some wonderful
footage with legends like Julius Schwartz, Joe Kubert, Frank Miller, and Alan
Moore. It should go without saying that there’s tons of comic book art, much of
it being panned and scanned in that wonderful way the History Channel uses to
make oil paintings dynamic.
On one level, this is a fantastic and very informative piece of work. There’s
lots of historical stories about how DC Comics rose from a place for the “spicy
pulps” to be one of two giants of the superhero industry today. We hear the
story of Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster and how they created the character of the
last son of a doomed planet -- a character who was rejected by dozens of
publishers before finding a home at DC Comics. There’s also the business side of
the creation of characters like Batman, Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Plastic
Man, and so many more. It touches on why the superheroes stayed somewhat distant
from World War II, despite the heavy involvement of DC on so many levels, and
the repercussions the war had on the industry for the next two decades. It takes
us all the way into modern-age comics with The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen,
Kingdom Come, and the Vertigo line.
The documentary also features a huge amount of behind-the-scenes stories. I
never knew that Jerry Siegel had lost his father in a robbery, nor the
implications of how this shaped his greatest creation. Archive footage has Bob
Kane explaining how he created “The Bat-Man” over a weekend to mirror the
success of Superman -- mostly because he wanted to be making more money -- while
Jones explains how Kane recreated himself into a more glamorous identity once he
was successful. Did anyone know the Superman radio show thwarted the Klu Klux
Klan for months? That Len Wein started writing The Flash because he happened to
be standing in the DC office one day when Schwartz was on the warpath? Or that,
years later, when Wein-the-editor first called Alan Moore to offer him Swamp
Thing, Moore hung up thinking it was a practical joke?
There's a multi-media angle, too, of course. Starting with the Superman radio
shows and Max Fleischer cartoons, the film covers all the various ways DC
characters have been interpreted over the years. There are glimpses of tons of
cartoons, Adam West as Batman, Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, and of course
Christopher Reeve as Superman.
However...
There are a couple of ugly trends in documentaries lately. One is the unskilled
film that’s less documentary and more reality television. The other is the puff
piece, and that’s what’s going on here. It’s not like this film says nasty
things about the competition or talks about "what we’ve done vs. what they’ve
done." Actually, if I were to show this movie to my someone that is not a comic
book fan, they’d come to the pretty logical conclusion that DC is the only
company that’s printed comic books since some time in the late sixties.
Yes, that’s right. No one else exists, and it’s been pretty smooth sailing for
the past several decades, all things considered. You’d never guess they’ve been
running neck-and-neck with (sometimes even teaming up with) a certain other
company that’s the home of marvels like web-slingers, thunder gods, and
star-spangled WWII veterans. There’s no mention at all of the 30-odd-year
lawsuit between DC and the families of Siegel and Schuster over the rights to
Superman and certain spin-off characters. Heck, these days we’re all used to
groups trying to rewrite history, but it still takes some serious cajones to
cherry-pick interviews with Alan Moore and leave the impression that his time
with DC was something he looks back on with satisfaction and contentment.
I wasn’t expecting any of these comics legends to admit to killing hookers or
clubbing baby seals or anything like that. This film is so antiseptic
squeaky-clean, though, that it just rings fake. It’s tough to call something a
documentary when it completely ignores the competition, a decades-old legal
battle, and an angry spat over creator rights that’s spilled into the mainstream
on two major motion pictures now.
Really, this is just a few small steps above being a press kit, and not that far
from being a sampler for Warner Brothers’ DVD back catalog of cartoons and
movies. If you’re a big comics fan, it’s worth watching for the history, skewed
as it is, but it’s tough to recommend buying it.
As for any extras on the DVD, well it’s definitely a DVD. I checked both sides.
All things considered, I expected this disc to be loaded with previews for
everything from the Super Friends cartoon to the V for Vendetta movie. Alas,
there’s nothing but some optional subtitles. Ah, well. Superman can’t be there
to save the day every time.
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