Sweet Sweet Anticipation

If you are a DC fan, then you know of course, that August is the month where all of our beloved...and not so beloved books...wind up their plot lines, some of them to be cancelled, some of them to be revamped, and some of them to continue in September's vaunted Relaunch of the entire DC Line. No fewer than 52 books are going to be coming out, and all of this has obviously been covered ad nauseum for quite a few weeks now.

And as sad as I am to see some books ending, not to mention my dismay at the way that some of them ARE ending...I cannot help but admit to a tiny feeling of...anticipation.

Anticipation is one of the things that Comics do so well. The cliffhanger ending. The wait of four weeks until NEXT months book, so that we can find out what happened. The gentle sweat of desire that fills our bosoms. And at the same time, the dread that perhaps it isn't going to be as GOOD as it should be...that somehow things will get screwed up, because let's face it, that happens. A LOT. But sometimes it doesn't, and there is always the hope that this month...yes, THIS month, we are going to read the Best Comic Book Ever.

I'm reminded of one of the single greatest sentences in the English language, written by William Faulkner of all people, in "Intruder in the Dust". Faulkner usually drives me insane, but this phrase about the Battle of Gettysburg is sheer genius.

"For evry Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1865, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are loaded and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances...yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year old boy to think 'this time. maybe this time' with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago: or to anyone who ever sailed even a skiff under a quilt sail, the moment in 1492 when somebody thought 'This is it:' the absolute edge of no return, to turn back now and make home or sail irrevocably on and either find land or plunge over the world's soaring rim."

Whew!

I'm not quite sure that this is exactly what Dan Dideo and the rest of DC actually thinks, but it comes close, in my estimation. It hasn't happened yet, and perhaps it WILL be the greatest thing ever, or else it will all crash and burn...but burn magnificently.

Or maybe, it is just Friday afternoon, and I'm feeling a bit punchy because the blessed weekend is before me. Or because I really really want this Relaunch to work. I Want My Comics To Be...Good. I want everyone to buy them and read them, and pass them along to their children or their younger siblings, or to whomever, so that THEY become comic fans, and so that the whole tottering edifice continues to exist.

Please, God, don't let it suck.