2005 Comic Book News Archives

Wonder Woman #219

July 27, 2005: Greg Rucka Talks “Sacrifice” in Superman Books

Newsarama caught up with Greg Rucka to talk about the 4-part "Sacrifice" storyline currently playing out within the 3 main Superman books and finishing up in Wonder Woman #219 this week. Here's part of the article...

    The story the three writers came up with was sparked by Max Lord, in OMAC #3 starting his plans to control Superman's mind - something he'd been working on for years.

    "I want to point out that, as J'onn said, the work that needed to be done in Kal's mind took Max years to do, it's not even a direct control - what Max has done is he's built scenarios that are just the ultimate virtual reality - Superman is 99% convinced of what is going on is, in fact, real," Rucka said. "But the effort Max had to put into this was tremendous - and unique. It's not as if he left a little door in Superman's head saying, 'Enter' so that the telepath du jour can jump behind the wheel and play the DCU's version of Being John Malkovich."

    Throughout the crossover, Superman has believed himself to be battling Brainaic, Darkseid, and Ruin in the three consecutive issues of the Superman books. And, as Superman tragically learned in Adventures #642, he wasn't fighting any of his enemies at all - he was fighting, and nearly killing Batman in the JLA Watchtower.

    "Max created a paranoid delusion in Superman's mind that recast him as the voice of trust and reason in the scenarios, i.e., the priest or Pa Kent," Rucka said. "Then, the incident is always based on the same thing, which is his inability to save someone that he loves, and the primary person in each, of course, being Lois. The goal of Max's operation is ultimately to break the Trinity, but specifically, to motivate Superman to kill Batman, which is not an easy thing to do. You have to get Superman to such an emotionally distraught and temporarily deranged state that he's willing to pull off all of the governors that he lives with every second of every day, to get him to the point where he's going after someone with everything that he's got.

    "But in point of fact, even then, Max's control doesn't work fully - if he had gone after Batman with everything he had, Batman would have been a puddle. In Adventures #642, when you see the reveal of what really happened, it's somewhat subtextual - during the fight, you see the discordant images in his memories of the fight when Diana and J'onn are in his head - he sees Batman, so there's some little bit of him holding back."

    By the end of Adventures #642 though, Max's control is in full sway again, Superman is a paranoiac again, and escapes, setting the stage for Wonder Woman #219 - where he finds his final challenge.

Read the entire article at the Newsarama website.



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