Great Expectations

I want a director's cut of DC Comics' The Mighty by Peter J. Tomasi, Keith Champagne and Chris Samnee. Well, OK, not a "director's cut" exactly -- I guess in comics we call them an Absolute edition. I want to get inside the creators' heads on this story.

First a little set-up: Tomasi sold me on this book, so I tend to credit/blame him solely for it, and for that, I apologize to co-creator Champagne and artist Samnee. I've seen both their names attatched to other projects I've liked, and feel they do solid work, as a rule. But I bought this book because Tomasi was one of the writers, and I was on a Tomasi high at the time of the book's debut last year.

Peter J. Tomasi was an editor on several DC books who decided he wanted to write and bring forth some of his own ideas first-hand. His first writing gig for me was when he took over the reigns of Green Lantern Corps. I don't hate Green Lanterns, but I also don't seek them out on a whim, but I was getting into the Corps book, as well as the main GL title, in the run-up to Blackest Night. And Tomasi was doing a good job; he had a huge cast of characters but was still telling interesting individual stories. He made me care about some of these alien GLs I'd never even heard about before. Then he blew me away taking over writing for Nightwing after Marv Wolfman. Tomasi got Nightwing, if not in EXACTLY the same way I do, at least in a way that felt right to me. Tomasi's Dick Grayson acted like he had spent a great deal of time learning under the Batman and leading the Titans but was still his own person, capable on his own and capable of being lighter in tone than Batman while still more serious than Changeling/Beast Boy. Tomasi's run on Nightwing was cut way too short by the companywide One Year Later event.

So along comes The Mighty. I don't recall if this is true or not, but when The Mighty was first solicited, I was under the impression that it would be an ongoing series, not the 12-issue limited series it became. Take a Superman-like character and introduce him to a world without superheroes of any kind -- been done before many, many times. But I was willing to give the book a try based on what I'd seen so far from this writer. The first couple issues introduce the main characters. They convey a sense of wonder at this being, Alpha One, with all these abilities and his fantastic origin, all seen through the eyes of the "point-of-view" character, Gabriel Cole, the person all of us kids who grew up reading comics want to be and can identify with.

When the book starts to take a somewhat darker turn, hinting that things may not be all that they seem, I again recognized a familiar plot twist that has been done to death. But even "supposed hero has a hidden, dark agenda" can be done well when handled by a writer (or writers) who really knows his craft. That was the case here. Hints were dropped, tidbits revealed, but in a way that you wanted to know more, you suspected where you were being led but became engrossed in the journey and the way the tale unraveled so that you were hooked for the full ride. I even began to suspect that Alpha One's "dark agenda" might ultimately have a perfectly normal explanation, something which would make all he had done seem perfectly rational in this new light, some knowledge he had that we, like Cole, weren't privy to.

Maybe that's where things got derailed a bit.

I became so invested in this story along the way, I began to project where I thought the story was headed. With each new "bad" action by Alpha One, I began to thrill more at the explanation I became certain was coming but couldn't see how it would make sense. I wanted this book to surprise me at the end with honest justifications for Alpha One's actions that would justify him as a hero once again, in not only my eyes, but Cole's, too. When that didn't come, the actual ending of the story, as nice as it was, left me feeling a little underwhelmed.

Don't get me wrong: this is a good story, and I recommend it as such. But I can't shake the feeling that the ending doesn't quite live up to the beginning and middle for me. Maybe that's just me because it didn't end how I thought it might. Maybe that's because it ended prematurely if this was intended to be an ongoing series that got canceled. The ending it has certainly could lend itself to sequels or continuation of some sort.

That's why I want an Absolute edition of The Mighty. I want to know what Tomasi and Champagne were intending, if they considered other directions and lengths for the story. I guess I'm still looking for that "more satisfying" ending somewhere in their notes, thoughts or musings. Of course, your mileage may vary.