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about_facesFirst off, know that this post is relevant to Harvey Dent. But during the course of my research in preparing for this review, I realized that there was a lot more worth discussing than just Harvey.
So if you'll indulge me... I'd like to talk about Jared Stevens.
I don't expect most of you to know that name. And if you recognize it, I imagine that the immediate reaction you likely feel is disdain, or to emit a shudder like a hyena hearing Mufasa. "Oh god," I can hear you say, "Do you mean the crappy, 90's-tactic X-TREEEME update of Dr. Fate?" Well, you'd be mostly right. I mean, he's Fate, all right...
Yes, that's you, you utter abomination of a character, you. Just "Fate," trading in his legacy character's doctorate and iconic costume for a sweet facial tat, a big honkin' knife, and Liefeldian pouches, pouches, POUCHES GALORE!
Okay, full disclosure: I haven't actually read Fate, Jared's first solo series from 1994. Heck, since I was a fan of its spin-off series Scare Tactics, I should probably judge it for more than just its reputation, not to mention the character's awful, awful design and grim-n-gritty post-Cable datedness. But... but just look at that costume, man! How? What kind of loving god and/or ethical editor could have let this happen?!
Well, you see, in the dark period known as the 90's, DC decided that the old Golden Age superheroes were outdated, old fogies who needed to go away and die. Did you know what the Justice Society of America's series--the one which featuring old-fogie Golden Age superheroes--was not cancelled due to bad sales? No, in truth, the sales were reportedly solid! But DC editor-in-chief Mike Carlin gave JSoA the axe because it didn't "fit" in their new ideas of what the DCU should be. Some of those ideas included driving Hal Jordan insane and replacing him with a younger, hipper version with stupid curtain hair, a crab-mask, and a propensity for creating manga robots because that's what the kids like today, right?
But despite my teenage H.E.A.T.-member disdain poking through, I cannot deny that out-with-the-old moves like Kyle Rayner (and also Starman, whom I vastly preferred) were successful for DC. The same cannot be said for other attempts at updating, such as turning Manhunter into this monstrosity, and Dr. Fate into what you see above there you. Both were cancelled before too long, with Fate getting canned after 22 issues. That's not so bad, considering how many titles don't make it past twelve, or even six, in some cases. Nonetheless, it was still a failure, doomed to gather dust in dollar bins.
So what the HELL possessed DC to redesign, reboot, and relaunch the series a year later as The Book of Fate?
Let's trade the spandex bodysuit for DAGGERS STUCK IN HIS FRAGGIN' ARM, WHAT THE HELL?!
Needless to say, the second time was not the charm. 1997's The Book of Fate lasted about half as long as 1994's Fate, and those few who remember it do so even less fondly than the first time around. Clearly, no fanboys nor fangirls were heeding Jared's almighty t-shirt.
But here's the crazy thing: The Book of Fate kinda wasn't a totally terrible series. No, seriously! Yes, the book with that horrible cover, it was... good! Better than acceptable! Worth a look-see! Maybe your first indication of quality was the name "Keith Giffen," the masterful comics journeyman behind such smartly hilarious fare such as Ambush Bug and Justice League International, plus a million other goddamn books. That's including series like Vext, which was offbeat, witty, and cancelled at six issues.
Now, do I think that The Book of Fate was a brilliant series cancelled before its time? Well, not exactly. But I do think it had a lot more going on than people would credit it, likely because most never touched the damn thing in the first place. And besides, I also think that it might have the single greatest final issue of a cancelled comic I have ever read.
So because no one else is gonna do it, I'd like to examine the high points of this unloved, willfully-forgotten series. And in case you're wondering why the hell it's relevant, there are two reasons. One is the thematic elements of being someone torn between literal Order and Chaos, themes which are very much in keeping with this blog. And the other reason is, well, it has Two-Face in it for a couple issues!
Oh yes. They're buddies! Kinda. What happens when the man who defines his life by order and chaos (well, depending on the writer) meets up with the man who refuses to ally with either? Not as much as I'd like, but hey, it's still fun, and features some of the best-drawn Harvey I've ever seen. And again, Keith Giffen. That alone warrants a skim at least, right? Right! Probably! Whee!
It's worth noting a second time that The Book of Fate was a reboot of the character, who got a new origin to go with the modified costume. While I'm not intimately familiar with the actual first Fate series, the character's DC wiki filled me in enough to see some marked differences. Read it if you'd like. Or don't, and just meet the second Jared as your first, you lucky people.
Here, Jared Stevens is a lowlife grave robber searching for the tomb of Nabu so he can steal the legendary artifacts that once supposedly belonged to the superhero known as Dr. Fate, not that Jared himself believes in that crap beyond how much it can fetch him. No, he's not especially likable, but that makes it all the more fun to watch him get his ass kicked on a regular basis:
After slamming into an invisible pyramid (like one does), he's welcomed by a grinning old man in Egyptian garments. From the old man's maliciously intense smiles, you might expect that this old man is a villain, but you soon learn that he is in fact Kent Nelson, the original Dr. Fate! In the first Fate, he and his wife Inza were actively trying to regain the power of the Fate artifacts for themselves, to become Dr. Fate once again. Here, Giffen tries for a radically-different route, showing them both as withered husks whose too-long lives have been ruined by the artifacts, and who are relieved to have finally found a replacement in Jared Stevens (the poor sap):
Inza, for those who don't know, was also Dr. Fate for a brief period, until she and Kent were merged together to both become Dr. Fate (don't ask, just go with it), after which their series was cancelled to make way for Jared. Whoops.
Come to think of it, the idea that becoming Fate is a CURSE makes The Book of Fate something subversive when it comes to the 90's trope of replacing the classic old heroes with edgy/gritty/hip young ones. In the first series, Kent and Inza were bumped off by minions of the new Arch Villain so that Jared could take up the mantle and surpass them by killing said Arch Villain himself, thus establishing himself as the new badass Fate. It's an inglorious way to go. At least in The Book of Fate, the trope is inverted by Kent voluntarily giving up the burden, all while sticking it on an asshole like Jared who's too much of an idiot to realize what he's getting himself into.
Case in point: Jared picks up the artifacts, and soon as Kent can declare "Gotcha!" Jared is sucked into another dimension and plunked into the realm of Nabu, the ancient Lord of Order who forged the artifacts, and who has long served as the voice within Dr. Fate's helmet, among other roles. So it's up to Nabu to play the Wizard Shazam to Jared's oblivious Billy Batson:
Can you already tell why I can imagine Jared being played by Bruce Campbell at his jerkiest? This guy isn't a badass (or wannabe badass like Fate Jared), he's an jerk who's suckered into being the universe's cat toy.
So while Kent and Inza go off to their final reward, Jared finds himself being selected by the Lord of Order, as Nabu intended. Welp, time for Jared to embrace his destiny and battle for the side of Order, right?
"MINE!" "NO, MINE!" Jared Stevens: Cosmic Wishbone.
And when he comes to, he finds himself scarred with the ankh tattoo on his face (how that works, it's never explained), and covered in horrible burns. After wrapping his arm with Fate's cape as a makeshift bandage, he fully heals. At this point, he's the farthest thing from a superhero as you can get while not being actually evil, and his aggressive neutrality causes no end of frustration to Order and Chaos:
Thus, Order and Chaos assume human forms to wage their silent war until Jared can make up his damn mind. Cosmic forces are funny like that.
Meanwhile, our not-hero goes to visit his only friend, the schlubby computer expert Arnold (wait for it) Burnsteel. Yes, Burnsteel. Oh, the 90's! Fun fact: during this exact same point in DC Comics, Burnsteel from the first Fate series was off in the Fate spinoff book, Scare Tactics (which ran alongside The Book of Fate), where he was "managing" a rock band of monsters. I always liked that book, even if it was less "not very good" than even TBoF.
Burnsteel is clearly way more enthusiastic about embracing the superhero lifestyle, and even goes so far as to set up a web page for people to ask Fate for help. On one hand, it's adorable and kinda dated. On the other hand, he did it ten years before Greg Rucka did the same with Renee Montoya as the Question. Even still, he can't help but wonder... why? Why was Jared Stevens the chosen one? Jared himself has his own theory:
I think that's the moment I actually became kinda fond of Jared, as I could totally have seen that scene fitting into Giffen and DeMatteis' Justice League International. What's more, I like to read that as Giffen's sly commentary on what the original writers of Fate intended for the character, turning it on its head by having Jared himself sarcastically acknowledge and dismiss that as bullshit. It works so much better than him taking it seriously.
Jared encounters his old "friend" Sentinel, which was the stupid name that original Green Lantern Alan Scott had to go by since DC wanted their new GL, Kyle Rayner, to be a special, unique little pumpkin. Sentinel and Fate have history from the first series, where Scott has been trying to get his dead friend's artifacts out of the grave robber's hands and into the hands of the Conclave, a supernatural illuminati of magicians such as Zatanna and Felix Faust.
Fate, as you can imagine, doesn't play by your ruuuuuules, old maaaaan, so there's still some friction.
And so, like the worst earworm by the likes of Ke$ha, the Conclave's message loops in Jared's head for the next few hours.
Can I get a Nelson Muntz "HA-HA!" here? Really, the universe basically going all trollface on Jared is one of this series' greatest appeals. He's an asshole who doesn't deserve much in the way of sympathy, and it only gets worse when Chaos chooses his champion: none other than Alan Scott himself:
As we learn, every single person on Earth has subconsciously allied themselves to either Order or Chaos, and whether they realize it or not, they're all fighting the Lords' war on a dream plane of existence. Does that make even a lick of sense? Point is, even Alan Scott is subject to being their pawn, and I find it damn interesting that Scott--of all people--would be chaotic at heart.
Jared manages to subdue Chaos!Scott, at which point he realizes that he finally needs to heed the Conclave's head-message if he's to ever get a break:
I don't know why I have to keep apologizing for liking parts of this, but I just can't hate a series where the greatest magicians in the world dub their only hope a "nincompoop." It's like Berkeley Breathed is writing Steve Dallas as Dr. Fate.
Meanwhile, Order and Chaos' war stretches across the globe, pitting the essences of humanity against one another in a purely subconscious battle:
All but two. Can you guess who the other one is? Oh can you, can you, can you?
Jared is the only one who can actually see the battle lines, as reality shifts from Order to Chaosvision, which essentially looks like a Grant Morrison wet dream:
The "Cockroach" is actually a normal woman as Jared sees her through the filter of Chaos, although she herself is completely oblivious to But even when he tries to pull her out of the Chaos realm into Order, she resists, instinctively feeling pain without understanding what's going on besides the fact that Jared is a jerk. She runs off, leaving her book with Jared, who now realizes that he can literally straddle the line between Order and Chaos. And so, pushed to the edge, he finally makes a stand:
Yeah, so he's got a bit of a wannabe John Constantine thing going, where he'll literally twist the knife in both angel and demon the second he gets the chance.
Order and Chaos retaliate by siccing the forces of the entire world war on Fate, which results in the biggest dogpile in history, with poor Jared stuck on the bottom. However, because humanity instinctively recognizes Fate as their champion, they end up ignoring Jared and literally toss him aside. After landing on his ass, Jared realizes that Order and Chaos made a huge mistake by tipping their hand and revealing that they can't attack him directly, nor can their drones. What's more, his Big Honkin' Knife is now attuned to Chaos (it had a taste and now it wants more), so he follows its lead, which ends up taking Jared to--where else?--Gotham City.
In case you were wondering: yes, here's where it FINALLY becomes a relevant![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
about_faces post.
Aaaaaaand there's the other guy to resist being "culled!" How perfect! Now THAT'S a clever use for Harvey! And man, I have always loved that image of him. Love it, love it, love it. I'm not sure why. Here, as a bonus, I even found Ron Wagner's original artwork of that page:
Yep, still love it. And it all kicks off one of the odder, more interesting Two-Face appearances I've ever seen, even if I think they could have done WAY more with him considering all the thematic appropriateness so far. Hell, I'm not even sure if it was intentional that Harvey's two faces should resemble the faces of Order and Chaos, but there you go.
So yes, at this point, Chaos is essentially banking on the sure thought that Harvey would go nuts and kill Jared. Even Order is surprised by this "bold move," and salutes his opponent brother. And while there would be a good chance of that happening, Harvey nonetheless proves difficult for even Lords of Order and Chaos to predict. Disclaimer: I don't pretend to fully understand what the hell happens over the next couple of pages, but I'll do my best to posit my theories for you folks to debate in the comments.
I love Harvey's calm eloquence here. As for why Harvey handcuffed them, I'm glad that Jared understands, but I'm not so sure that I do. But let's see where Giffen is going with this.
"We need this... really." The look on Harvey's face is what sells that moment, although I'm not sure what his "need" refers to. At first, I thought that it was a need to serve his sentence, to atone, to get rehabilitated, which I liked an awful lot. But since that line about need follows his concern that "we'd be one again," that indicates that he "needs" to be handcuffed to Jared for some reason.
Why? Because Harvey can't stand to be alone (with himself), and that he needs the "two" of himself and the other other free person in the world? Does Jared provide some sort of counterbalance to Harvey imbalance, or it this just all about Harvey's obsession with two? In any case, this is Harvey in a particularly calm moment, possibly when he's in an unusually vulnerable state, so let's hope that Jared Stevens can approach his new ally here with some degree of delicacy and compassion.
Poor Harvey. Still, I get the impression that Jared at least feels a little bad for clocking a mentally ill guy who, for now, is one of the few people NOT trying to kill him.
And then we come to one of the greatest moments of the series: the part where Jared Stevens, carrying an unconscious Harvey Dent, literally crawls out of Arkham Asylum's butthole.
That just happened. God bless you, Keith Giffen.
It's such a shame that Fate has pretty darn well doomed this alliance, because I'd love to see the rest of this series turn into wacky buddy comedy between Jared and Harvey. Hey, it just occurred to me another big idea that Giffen seemed to neglect: Harvey is now literally shackled to Fate! Good gravy, the potential for neat Two-Face stories are all over the place here!
Sadly, before they can get any further, the universe starts to go nuts again as Chaos straightens out into Order, and our two heroes get tossed all over creation until said creation gets its act together. So everything's okay now, right?
Welp, guess not.
Harvey's strategy: RUN AWAY! Also, he calls Jared a "chowderhead," which is almost as wonderfully out-of-place as "nincompoop," so points there! Ah, the partnership of Harvey and Jared was nice while it lasted. Too bad the rest of the story kinda falls apart here.
Hate to say it, but the conclusion of this storyline is kind of anticlimatic, so I'll just hit you with the high points. The superhero is an original character named the Image, a naive teenage kid who, in the dream realm, has become the muscular masked man who calls himself the Image. He's good-hearted, but finds himself strangely repulsed by Fate, and Jared knows why: just like the cockroach lady couldn't stand being in the realm of Order, so too can an Order-aligned guy like Image stand to be near anything "impure."
Since Jared is living Kyryptonite, he bullies Image by threatening to give the superhero "the world's longest hug" until Image agrees to fly Jared to where Chaos is located. Naturally, it's goddamn Disneyland:
Finally, Chaos decides to make his move. Apparently forgetting or ignoring the whole "cannot attack Fate directly" point, Chaos decides to just go ahead and attack Fate directly, which goes about as well as you'd expect, only with more S&M imagery:
Order then shows up with Image--his own chosen champion, just as Alan Scott was for Chaos--in his trall. However, even mind-controlled, Image is too much of a goody-two-shoes superhero, whereas Jared is a self-proclaimed "scrapper":
Oh yeah, Jared just pulled a Heisenberg. Again, kinda anticlimactic, but it does the trick.
Thus ended Jared Stevens' first big storyline as the revamped, updated Fate. Notice that this storyline wasn't about a hero overcoming the forces of evil, but rather more about a jerk pushed into action by opposing forces. He wouldn't become a proper hero until his next story, as well as in a couple guest appearances he made in other books.
Oh yes, unlike Fate's first go-round where he was confined entirely within his own series, DC made some small effort to push the character on other titles, first by making a guest-appearance in Alan Grant's Shadow of the Bat, where he was far more of a cocky smartass:
Alan Grant wrote Jared as actually having a sense of humor, at least in comparison to Batman. In a rather Hellboy manner, Jared there was more of a blue-collar "reality repairman" than as asshole who found himself sucked and suckered into metaphysical wackiness. This smirking take on Fate showed the character's potential at his best.
On the other hand, over at the first Fate's spin-off book, Scare Tactics, Jared made a crossover appearance where he pretty much embodied everything bad and wrong about the character. Really, look at this page, and you'll understand every single reason why he was loathed:
I'll say this much about Giffen and Wagner's Jared: he never strikes a "look at what a badass I am" pose. But when I look at this, I can understand why people hated the character so fiercely, because THAT'S what they thought of when they thought of Jared.
The only reason he was in Scare Tactics in the first place was for a crossover between all four books of DC's "Weirdoverse": dark supernatural comics that were still too "superhero" to be Vertigo. The crossover, it should be mentioned, barely makes any sense, but I'm pretty sure that it had something to do with Gemworld and, thus, Amethyst as well. It's fitting, seeing as how she's a Lord of Order and all, and her involvement would prove important to Jared.
First, though, Jared's next major adventure in The Book of Fate was to prevent no less than the actual full-blown apocalypse, after the Four Horsemen each killed and possessed various influential and beloved philanthropists around the world. For example, Plague had taken over a thinly-veiled Mother Theresa, War had taken over a thinly-veiled Bob Dole (apparently, in the DCU, Bob Dole was considered lovable. Who knew?), Famine was... some blond woman, okay... and Pestilence has taken over E.G. Mashall's cockroach-hating character from Creepshow. No, seriously:
That reference makes me so happy. I love how Giffen made a reference that also gives the entire They're Creeping Up on You segment new meaning, as the coaches now meant the invasion by Pestilence.
Long story short: Fate manages defy their global conspiracy to have him silenced and bring about the apocalypse, and then Jared manages to slaughter them all. Publically. On live TV. So good news, he saved the world! But bad news, for all the world knew, Jared had now gone and murdered four beloved heroes, and was now considered one of the worst terrorists in history. He saved the world, and crushed the hopes and dreams of mankind in the process. Hooray!
Ultimately, he's busted out of his Swiss prison cell by a bikini-clad Amethyst (wait, wasn't her series for younger readers? Isn't that kinda like having naked She-Ra show up?), in a scene with hints at future plans and... um, stuff... between the Gemworld Princess and the jerkwad Fate:
"The time will come." Remember that line for the irony that's about to come.
So Fate is free, but still hated by all of humanity, and hunted down by the entire superhero communtiy. Knowing the truth, Alan Scott shows up and suggests that Jared should lay low and go into exile, just for a little while until the Conclave can clear his name. With little choice, Jared is shipped off to a backwater planet to sulk and drink, which is where he encounters a new drinking buddy, as befitting a comic written (and now also drawn) by Keith Giffen:
Go figure, Jared and Lobo hit it off and proceed to go bar-hopping across the galaxy, leaving a path of drunken destruction in their wake. The news of Jared's wasted antics spreads quickly, and over in Gemworld, Amethyst reactions with disappointed resignation as she knows what this all REALLY entails:
In case you were wondering: why yes, this IS the final issue of The Book of Fate. Giffen knows it's the last, and so he's deciding to take Jared out on an ingloriously meta note. He's decided to show that Jared, after accomplishing two massive world-saving feats, ultimately was undone because he got wasted. Somehow, that's just so brilliantly fitting, much more so than him perishing heroically in some great battle.
Hell, at this rate, not even Order and Chaos give a shit about him, as they explain in their own meta manner:
"... And so shall we."
I like that. You can be neutral, sure, but the price you'll pay is the universe passing you by. In the end, Jared Stevens--the amoral, self-serving asshole who actually became a true hero and saved the world--is disgraced, abandoned, and left to an ignominious end, with nothing left to do but to get drunk with Lobo, which in turn seals his own fate as being cosmically worthless. There's something kinda wonderful about that.
Lobo talks Jared into heading back to Earth, arguing that "If they don't want you there, that's all the more reason to BE there! HAW HAW HAW!" I get the impresson that Lobo learned that kinda mentality from his old "buddy" Guy Gardner, which is fitting considering where they decide to hit as their final watering hole together:
Cameos galore! How many characters can you name? And how many have been written and/or drawn by Giffen in the past?
The ass-kicking seems to beat some sober humility (or at least, a drunken epiphany, and aren't they the same thing when you've been drinking?) into Jared:
Struggling to gain his bearings and retain his stomach contents, Jared pulls together what little dignity he has left as he makes his exit back into obscurity:
For a series that was clearly canceled before its time, Giffen wrapped it up in a way that seems to be entirely fitting for Jared. In the hands of someone like Mark Millar, this would be far more mean-spirited, but I think Giffen--appropriately enough--achieved a nice sense of balance and irony by the end. It would have been the perfect finale for for Jared Stevens...
... except that fate (hurr) had other plans. And by fate, I mean James (Starman) Robinson and David (Batman Begins/Blade: Trinity) Goyer. While Robinson's book was also centered around a younger, hipper, spandex-less take on a old legacy hero in keeping with the 90's, Starman was a clever trojan horse for all manner of nostalgia for the old-fogie heroes that DC and Mike Carlin did everything they could to make fans forget. One year after The Book of Fate's cancellation, Robinson and Goyer brought 90's full circle by launching JSA, a new ongoing title featuring the Justice Society! You know, the series that Carlin canceled at the start of all this!
As a sign of true progress, the new JSA was comprised of both original Golden Age heroes and their younger legacy counterparts, making this a multi-generational team. So, in this bold mix of classic and legacy heroes--with the likes of Alan Scott, Jay Garrick, and Ted Grant fighting alongside new kids like Jack Knight and Courtney Whitmore--would there be a place for poor, neglected, misunderstood Jared Stevens?
Guess not.
He was killed off in the first issue, mortally-wounded off-panel and uttering just one line (in bland dialogue that sounds nothing like Jared) before falling over dead. Hell, insult to injury, the costume he's wearing is his horrible original outfit from Fate rather than his slightly-less-horrible redesign from The Book of Fate. I guess either no one remembered TBoF anyway, or else Robinson and Goyer wanted to knock off the worst version of the character to make way for the new, classic-style Dr. Fate. Jared was canon fodder, as is the standard fate for most C-lister heroes.
But hey, according to Stargirl, Jared apparently got a hero's funeral, so I guess he was exonerated. And as we later learned, Jared's spirit still exists alongside all the other Fate-bearers inside Nabu's amulet, where he gets to spent all of eternity having a barbeque in Kent Nelson's backyard, all of which you can read at the link. So I guess there are worse fates for a Fate, even if he's the least-loved of all time.
Y'know what? Maybe it's just because I've honestly never given a damn about any Dr. Fate comics (if there's a great story I haven't read, please hit me with recommendations!) but Jared is quite honestly the only Fate who ever interested me. At his best, he had a fun Bruce Campbell flair. At his worst, he was a glorious disaster. On ether end of the balance, he was at least interesting, and that's not so bad in the long run.
Still, a shame that there wasn't more done with Jared and Harvey. Sure, maybe a new Dr. Fate might run into Harvey, and maybe some writer will properly use Two-Face to explore themes of Order and Chaos... but without Jared, it just wouldn't be the same.
Yeah, that's right. I... kinda like Jared Stevens! Wanna fight about it?
So if you'll indulge me... I'd like to talk about Jared Stevens.
I don't expect most of you to know that name. And if you recognize it, I imagine that the immediate reaction you likely feel is disdain, or to emit a shudder like a hyena hearing Mufasa. "Oh god," I can hear you say, "Do you mean the crappy, 90's-tactic X-TREEEME update of Dr. Fate?" Well, you'd be mostly right. I mean, he's Fate, all right...
Yes, that's you, you utter abomination of a character, you. Just "Fate," trading in his legacy character's doctorate and iconic costume for a sweet facial tat, a big honkin' knife, and Liefeldian pouches, pouches, POUCHES GALORE!
Okay, full disclosure: I haven't actually read Fate, Jared's first solo series from 1994. Heck, since I was a fan of its spin-off series Scare Tactics, I should probably judge it for more than just its reputation, not to mention the character's awful, awful design and grim-n-gritty post-Cable datedness. But... but just look at that costume, man! How? What kind of loving god and/or ethical editor could have let this happen?!
Well, you see, in the dark period known as the 90's, DC decided that the old Golden Age superheroes were outdated, old fogies who needed to go away and die. Did you know what the Justice Society of America's series--the one which featuring old-fogie Golden Age superheroes--was not cancelled due to bad sales? No, in truth, the sales were reportedly solid! But DC editor-in-chief Mike Carlin gave JSoA the axe because it didn't "fit" in their new ideas of what the DCU should be. Some of those ideas included driving Hal Jordan insane and replacing him with a younger, hipper version with stupid curtain hair, a crab-mask, and a propensity for creating manga robots because that's what the kids like today, right?
But despite my teenage H.E.A.T.-member disdain poking through, I cannot deny that out-with-the-old moves like Kyle Rayner (and also Starman, whom I vastly preferred) were successful for DC. The same cannot be said for other attempts at updating, such as turning Manhunter into this monstrosity, and Dr. Fate into what you see above there you. Both were cancelled before too long, with Fate getting canned after 22 issues. That's not so bad, considering how many titles don't make it past twelve, or even six, in some cases. Nonetheless, it was still a failure, doomed to gather dust in dollar bins.
So what the HELL possessed DC to redesign, reboot, and relaunch the series a year later as The Book of Fate?
Let's trade the spandex bodysuit for DAGGERS STUCK IN HIS FRAGGIN' ARM, WHAT THE HELL?!
Needless to say, the second time was not the charm. 1997's The Book of Fate lasted about half as long as 1994's Fate, and those few who remember it do so even less fondly than the first time around. Clearly, no fanboys nor fangirls were heeding Jared's almighty t-shirt.
But here's the crazy thing: The Book of Fate kinda wasn't a totally terrible series. No, seriously! Yes, the book with that horrible cover, it was... good! Better than acceptable! Worth a look-see! Maybe your first indication of quality was the name "Keith Giffen," the masterful comics journeyman behind such smartly hilarious fare such as Ambush Bug and Justice League International, plus a million other goddamn books. That's including series like Vext, which was offbeat, witty, and cancelled at six issues.
Now, do I think that The Book of Fate was a brilliant series cancelled before its time? Well, not exactly. But I do think it had a lot more going on than people would credit it, likely because most never touched the damn thing in the first place. And besides, I also think that it might have the single greatest final issue of a cancelled comic I have ever read.
So because no one else is gonna do it, I'd like to examine the high points of this unloved, willfully-forgotten series. And in case you're wondering why the hell it's relevant, there are two reasons. One is the thematic elements of being someone torn between literal Order and Chaos, themes which are very much in keeping with this blog. And the other reason is, well, it has Two-Face in it for a couple issues!
Oh yes. They're buddies! Kinda. What happens when the man who defines his life by order and chaos (well, depending on the writer) meets up with the man who refuses to ally with either? Not as much as I'd like, but hey, it's still fun, and features some of the best-drawn Harvey I've ever seen. And again, Keith Giffen. That alone warrants a skim at least, right? Right! Probably! Whee!
It's worth noting a second time that The Book of Fate was a reboot of the character, who got a new origin to go with the modified costume. While I'm not intimately familiar with the actual first Fate series, the character's DC wiki filled me in enough to see some marked differences. Read it if you'd like. Or don't, and just meet the second Jared as your first, you lucky people.
Here, Jared Stevens is a lowlife grave robber searching for the tomb of Nabu so he can steal the legendary artifacts that once supposedly belonged to the superhero known as Dr. Fate, not that Jared himself believes in that crap beyond how much it can fetch him. No, he's not especially likable, but that makes it all the more fun to watch him get his ass kicked on a regular basis:
After slamming into an invisible pyramid (like one does), he's welcomed by a grinning old man in Egyptian garments. From the old man's maliciously intense smiles, you might expect that this old man is a villain, but you soon learn that he is in fact Kent Nelson, the original Dr. Fate! In the first Fate, he and his wife Inza were actively trying to regain the power of the Fate artifacts for themselves, to become Dr. Fate once again. Here, Giffen tries for a radically-different route, showing them both as withered husks whose too-long lives have been ruined by the artifacts, and who are relieved to have finally found a replacement in Jared Stevens (the poor sap):
Inza, for those who don't know, was also Dr. Fate for a brief period, until she and Kent were merged together to both become Dr. Fate (don't ask, just go with it), after which their series was cancelled to make way for Jared. Whoops.
Come to think of it, the idea that becoming Fate is a CURSE makes The Book of Fate something subversive when it comes to the 90's trope of replacing the classic old heroes with edgy/gritty/hip young ones. In the first series, Kent and Inza were bumped off by minions of the new Arch Villain so that Jared could take up the mantle and surpass them by killing said Arch Villain himself, thus establishing himself as the new badass Fate. It's an inglorious way to go. At least in The Book of Fate, the trope is inverted by Kent voluntarily giving up the burden, all while sticking it on an asshole like Jared who's too much of an idiot to realize what he's getting himself into.
Case in point: Jared picks up the artifacts, and soon as Kent can declare "Gotcha!" Jared is sucked into another dimension and plunked into the realm of Nabu, the ancient Lord of Order who forged the artifacts, and who has long served as the voice within Dr. Fate's helmet, among other roles. So it's up to Nabu to play the Wizard Shazam to Jared's oblivious Billy Batson:
Can you already tell why I can imagine Jared being played by Bruce Campbell at his jerkiest? This guy isn't a badass (or wannabe badass like Fate Jared), he's an jerk who's suckered into being the universe's cat toy.
So while Kent and Inza go off to their final reward, Jared finds himself being selected by the Lord of Order, as Nabu intended. Welp, time for Jared to embrace his destiny and battle for the side of Order, right?
"MINE!" "NO, MINE!" Jared Stevens: Cosmic Wishbone.
And when he comes to, he finds himself scarred with the ankh tattoo on his face (how that works, it's never explained), and covered in horrible burns. After wrapping his arm with Fate's cape as a makeshift bandage, he fully heals. At this point, he's the farthest thing from a superhero as you can get while not being actually evil, and his aggressive neutrality causes no end of frustration to Order and Chaos:
Thus, Order and Chaos assume human forms to wage their silent war until Jared can make up his damn mind. Cosmic forces are funny like that.
Meanwhile, our not-hero goes to visit his only friend, the schlubby computer expert Arnold (wait for it) Burnsteel. Yes, Burnsteel. Oh, the 90's! Fun fact: during this exact same point in DC Comics, Burnsteel from the first Fate series was off in the Fate spinoff book, Scare Tactics (which ran alongside The Book of Fate), where he was "managing" a rock band of monsters. I always liked that book, even if it was less "not very good" than even TBoF.
Burnsteel is clearly way more enthusiastic about embracing the superhero lifestyle, and even goes so far as to set up a web page for people to ask Fate for help. On one hand, it's adorable and kinda dated. On the other hand, he did it ten years before Greg Rucka did the same with Renee Montoya as the Question. Even still, he can't help but wonder... why? Why was Jared Stevens the chosen one? Jared himself has his own theory:
I think that's the moment I actually became kinda fond of Jared, as I could totally have seen that scene fitting into Giffen and DeMatteis' Justice League International. What's more, I like to read that as Giffen's sly commentary on what the original writers of Fate intended for the character, turning it on its head by having Jared himself sarcastically acknowledge and dismiss that as bullshit. It works so much better than him taking it seriously.
Jared encounters his old "friend" Sentinel, which was the stupid name that original Green Lantern Alan Scott had to go by since DC wanted their new GL, Kyle Rayner, to be a special, unique little pumpkin. Sentinel and Fate have history from the first series, where Scott has been trying to get his dead friend's artifacts out of the grave robber's hands and into the hands of the Conclave, a supernatural illuminati of magicians such as Zatanna and Felix Faust.
Fate, as you can imagine, doesn't play by your ruuuuuules, old maaaaan, so there's still some friction.
And so, like the worst earworm by the likes of Ke$ha, the Conclave's message loops in Jared's head for the next few hours.
Can I get a Nelson Muntz "HA-HA!" here? Really, the universe basically going all trollface on Jared is one of this series' greatest appeals. He's an asshole who doesn't deserve much in the way of sympathy, and it only gets worse when Chaos chooses his champion: none other than Alan Scott himself:
As we learn, every single person on Earth has subconsciously allied themselves to either Order or Chaos, and whether they realize it or not, they're all fighting the Lords' war on a dream plane of existence. Does that make even a lick of sense? Point is, even Alan Scott is subject to being their pawn, and I find it damn interesting that Scott--of all people--would be chaotic at heart.
Jared manages to subdue Chaos!Scott, at which point he realizes that he finally needs to heed the Conclave's head-message if he's to ever get a break:
I don't know why I have to keep apologizing for liking parts of this, but I just can't hate a series where the greatest magicians in the world dub their only hope a "nincompoop." It's like Berkeley Breathed is writing Steve Dallas as Dr. Fate.
Meanwhile, Order and Chaos' war stretches across the globe, pitting the essences of humanity against one another in a purely subconscious battle:
All but two. Can you guess who the other one is? Oh can you, can you, can you?
Jared is the only one who can actually see the battle lines, as reality shifts from Order to Chaosvision, which essentially looks like a Grant Morrison wet dream:
The "Cockroach" is actually a normal woman as Jared sees her through the filter of Chaos, although she herself is completely oblivious to But even when he tries to pull her out of the Chaos realm into Order, she resists, instinctively feeling pain without understanding what's going on besides the fact that Jared is a jerk. She runs off, leaving her book with Jared, who now realizes that he can literally straddle the line between Order and Chaos. And so, pushed to the edge, he finally makes a stand:
Yeah, so he's got a bit of a wannabe John Constantine thing going, where he'll literally twist the knife in both angel and demon the second he gets the chance.
Order and Chaos retaliate by siccing the forces of the entire world war on Fate, which results in the biggest dogpile in history, with poor Jared stuck on the bottom. However, because humanity instinctively recognizes Fate as their champion, they end up ignoring Jared and literally toss him aside. After landing on his ass, Jared realizes that Order and Chaos made a huge mistake by tipping their hand and revealing that they can't attack him directly, nor can their drones. What's more, his Big Honkin' Knife is now attuned to Chaos (it had a taste and now it wants more), so he follows its lead, which ends up taking Jared to--where else?--Gotham City.
In case you were wondering: yes, here's where it FINALLY becomes a relevant
about_faces post.Aaaaaaand there's the other guy to resist being "culled!" How perfect! Now THAT'S a clever use for Harvey! And man, I have always loved that image of him. Love it, love it, love it. I'm not sure why. Here, as a bonus, I even found Ron Wagner's original artwork of that page:
Yep, still love it. And it all kicks off one of the odder, more interesting Two-Face appearances I've ever seen, even if I think they could have done WAY more with him considering all the thematic appropriateness so far. Hell, I'm not even sure if it was intentional that Harvey's two faces should resemble the faces of Order and Chaos, but there you go.
So yes, at this point, Chaos is essentially banking on the sure thought that Harvey would go nuts and kill Jared. Even Order is surprised by this "bold move," and salutes his opponent brother. And while there would be a good chance of that happening, Harvey nonetheless proves difficult for even Lords of Order and Chaos to predict. Disclaimer: I don't pretend to fully understand what the hell happens over the next couple of pages, but I'll do my best to posit my theories for you folks to debate in the comments.
I love Harvey's calm eloquence here. As for why Harvey handcuffed them, I'm glad that Jared understands, but I'm not so sure that I do. But let's see where Giffen is going with this.
"We need this... really." The look on Harvey's face is what sells that moment, although I'm not sure what his "need" refers to. At first, I thought that it was a need to serve his sentence, to atone, to get rehabilitated, which I liked an awful lot. But since that line about need follows his concern that "we'd be one again," that indicates that he "needs" to be handcuffed to Jared for some reason.
Why? Because Harvey can't stand to be alone (with himself), and that he needs the "two" of himself and the other other free person in the world? Does Jared provide some sort of counterbalance to Harvey imbalance, or it this just all about Harvey's obsession with two? In any case, this is Harvey in a particularly calm moment, possibly when he's in an unusually vulnerable state, so let's hope that Jared Stevens can approach his new ally here with some degree of delicacy and compassion.
Poor Harvey. Still, I get the impression that Jared at least feels a little bad for clocking a mentally ill guy who, for now, is one of the few people NOT trying to kill him.
And then we come to one of the greatest moments of the series: the part where Jared Stevens, carrying an unconscious Harvey Dent, literally crawls out of Arkham Asylum's butthole.
That just happened. God bless you, Keith Giffen.
It's such a shame that Fate has pretty darn well doomed this alliance, because I'd love to see the rest of this series turn into wacky buddy comedy between Jared and Harvey. Hey, it just occurred to me another big idea that Giffen seemed to neglect: Harvey is now literally shackled to Fate! Good gravy, the potential for neat Two-Face stories are all over the place here!
Sadly, before they can get any further, the universe starts to go nuts again as Chaos straightens out into Order, and our two heroes get tossed all over creation until said creation gets its act together. So everything's okay now, right?
Welp, guess not.
Harvey's strategy: RUN AWAY! Also, he calls Jared a "chowderhead," which is almost as wonderfully out-of-place as "nincompoop," so points there! Ah, the partnership of Harvey and Jared was nice while it lasted. Too bad the rest of the story kinda falls apart here.
Hate to say it, but the conclusion of this storyline is kind of anticlimatic, so I'll just hit you with the high points. The superhero is an original character named the Image, a naive teenage kid who, in the dream realm, has become the muscular masked man who calls himself the Image. He's good-hearted, but finds himself strangely repulsed by Fate, and Jared knows why: just like the cockroach lady couldn't stand being in the realm of Order, so too can an Order-aligned guy like Image stand to be near anything "impure."
Since Jared is living Kyryptonite, he bullies Image by threatening to give the superhero "the world's longest hug" until Image agrees to fly Jared to where Chaos is located. Naturally, it's goddamn Disneyland:
Finally, Chaos decides to make his move. Apparently forgetting or ignoring the whole "cannot attack Fate directly" point, Chaos decides to just go ahead and attack Fate directly, which goes about as well as you'd expect, only with more S&M imagery:
Order then shows up with Image--his own chosen champion, just as Alan Scott was for Chaos--in his trall. However, even mind-controlled, Image is too much of a goody-two-shoes superhero, whereas Jared is a self-proclaimed "scrapper":
Oh yeah, Jared just pulled a Heisenberg. Again, kinda anticlimactic, but it does the trick.
Thus ended Jared Stevens' first big storyline as the revamped, updated Fate. Notice that this storyline wasn't about a hero overcoming the forces of evil, but rather more about a jerk pushed into action by opposing forces. He wouldn't become a proper hero until his next story, as well as in a couple guest appearances he made in other books.
Oh yes, unlike Fate's first go-round where he was confined entirely within his own series, DC made some small effort to push the character on other titles, first by making a guest-appearance in Alan Grant's Shadow of the Bat, where he was far more of a cocky smartass:
Alan Grant wrote Jared as actually having a sense of humor, at least in comparison to Batman. In a rather Hellboy manner, Jared there was more of a blue-collar "reality repairman" than as asshole who found himself sucked and suckered into metaphysical wackiness. This smirking take on Fate showed the character's potential at his best.
On the other hand, over at the first Fate's spin-off book, Scare Tactics, Jared made a crossover appearance where he pretty much embodied everything bad and wrong about the character. Really, look at this page, and you'll understand every single reason why he was loathed:
I'll say this much about Giffen and Wagner's Jared: he never strikes a "look at what a badass I am" pose. But when I look at this, I can understand why people hated the character so fiercely, because THAT'S what they thought of when they thought of Jared.
The only reason he was in Scare Tactics in the first place was for a crossover between all four books of DC's "Weirdoverse": dark supernatural comics that were still too "superhero" to be Vertigo. The crossover, it should be mentioned, barely makes any sense, but I'm pretty sure that it had something to do with Gemworld and, thus, Amethyst as well. It's fitting, seeing as how she's a Lord of Order and all, and her involvement would prove important to Jared.
First, though, Jared's next major adventure in The Book of Fate was to prevent no less than the actual full-blown apocalypse, after the Four Horsemen each killed and possessed various influential and beloved philanthropists around the world. For example, Plague had taken over a thinly-veiled Mother Theresa, War had taken over a thinly-veiled Bob Dole (apparently, in the DCU, Bob Dole was considered lovable. Who knew?), Famine was... some blond woman, okay... and Pestilence has taken over E.G. Mashall's cockroach-hating character from Creepshow. No, seriously:
That reference makes me so happy. I love how Giffen made a reference that also gives the entire They're Creeping Up on You segment new meaning, as the coaches now meant the invasion by Pestilence.
Long story short: Fate manages defy their global conspiracy to have him silenced and bring about the apocalypse, and then Jared manages to slaughter them all. Publically. On live TV. So good news, he saved the world! But bad news, for all the world knew, Jared had now gone and murdered four beloved heroes, and was now considered one of the worst terrorists in history. He saved the world, and crushed the hopes and dreams of mankind in the process. Hooray!
Ultimately, he's busted out of his Swiss prison cell by a bikini-clad Amethyst (wait, wasn't her series for younger readers? Isn't that kinda like having naked She-Ra show up?), in a scene with hints at future plans and... um, stuff... between the Gemworld Princess and the jerkwad Fate:
"The time will come." Remember that line for the irony that's about to come.
So Fate is free, but still hated by all of humanity, and hunted down by the entire superhero communtiy. Knowing the truth, Alan Scott shows up and suggests that Jared should lay low and go into exile, just for a little while until the Conclave can clear his name. With little choice, Jared is shipped off to a backwater planet to sulk and drink, which is where he encounters a new drinking buddy, as befitting a comic written (and now also drawn) by Keith Giffen:
Go figure, Jared and Lobo hit it off and proceed to go bar-hopping across the galaxy, leaving a path of drunken destruction in their wake. The news of Jared's wasted antics spreads quickly, and over in Gemworld, Amethyst reactions with disappointed resignation as she knows what this all REALLY entails:
In case you were wondering: why yes, this IS the final issue of The Book of Fate. Giffen knows it's the last, and so he's deciding to take Jared out on an ingloriously meta note. He's decided to show that Jared, after accomplishing two massive world-saving feats, ultimately was undone because he got wasted. Somehow, that's just so brilliantly fitting, much more so than him perishing heroically in some great battle.
Hell, at this rate, not even Order and Chaos give a shit about him, as they explain in their own meta manner:
"... And so shall we."
I like that. You can be neutral, sure, but the price you'll pay is the universe passing you by. In the end, Jared Stevens--the amoral, self-serving asshole who actually became a true hero and saved the world--is disgraced, abandoned, and left to an ignominious end, with nothing left to do but to get drunk with Lobo, which in turn seals his own fate as being cosmically worthless. There's something kinda wonderful about that.
Lobo talks Jared into heading back to Earth, arguing that "If they don't want you there, that's all the more reason to BE there! HAW HAW HAW!" I get the impresson that Lobo learned that kinda mentality from his old "buddy" Guy Gardner, which is fitting considering where they decide to hit as their final watering hole together:
Cameos galore! How many characters can you name? And how many have been written and/or drawn by Giffen in the past?
The ass-kicking seems to beat some sober humility (or at least, a drunken epiphany, and aren't they the same thing when you've been drinking?) into Jared:
Struggling to gain his bearings and retain his stomach contents, Jared pulls together what little dignity he has left as he makes his exit back into obscurity:
For a series that was clearly canceled before its time, Giffen wrapped it up in a way that seems to be entirely fitting for Jared. In the hands of someone like Mark Millar, this would be far more mean-spirited, but I think Giffen--appropriately enough--achieved a nice sense of balance and irony by the end. It would have been the perfect finale for for Jared Stevens...
... except that fate (hurr) had other plans. And by fate, I mean James (Starman) Robinson and David (Batman Begins/Blade: Trinity) Goyer. While Robinson's book was also centered around a younger, hipper, spandex-less take on a old legacy hero in keeping with the 90's, Starman was a clever trojan horse for all manner of nostalgia for the old-fogie heroes that DC and Mike Carlin did everything they could to make fans forget. One year after The Book of Fate's cancellation, Robinson and Goyer brought 90's full circle by launching JSA, a new ongoing title featuring the Justice Society! You know, the series that Carlin canceled at the start of all this!
As a sign of true progress, the new JSA was comprised of both original Golden Age heroes and their younger legacy counterparts, making this a multi-generational team. So, in this bold mix of classic and legacy heroes--with the likes of Alan Scott, Jay Garrick, and Ted Grant fighting alongside new kids like Jack Knight and Courtney Whitmore--would there be a place for poor, neglected, misunderstood Jared Stevens?
Guess not.
He was killed off in the first issue, mortally-wounded off-panel and uttering just one line (in bland dialogue that sounds nothing like Jared) before falling over dead. Hell, insult to injury, the costume he's wearing is his horrible original outfit from Fate rather than his slightly-less-horrible redesign from The Book of Fate. I guess either no one remembered TBoF anyway, or else Robinson and Goyer wanted to knock off the worst version of the character to make way for the new, classic-style Dr. Fate. Jared was canon fodder, as is the standard fate for most C-lister heroes.
But hey, according to Stargirl, Jared apparently got a hero's funeral, so I guess he was exonerated. And as we later learned, Jared's spirit still exists alongside all the other Fate-bearers inside Nabu's amulet, where he gets to spent all of eternity having a barbeque in Kent Nelson's backyard, all of which you can read at the link. So I guess there are worse fates for a Fate, even if he's the least-loved of all time.
Y'know what? Maybe it's just because I've honestly never given a damn about any Dr. Fate comics (if there's a great story I haven't read, please hit me with recommendations!) but Jared is quite honestly the only Fate who ever interested me. At his best, he had a fun Bruce Campbell flair. At his worst, he was a glorious disaster. On ether end of the balance, he was at least interesting, and that's not so bad in the long run.
Still, a shame that there wasn't more done with Jared and Harvey. Sure, maybe a new Dr. Fate might run into Harvey, and maybe some writer will properly use Two-Face to explore themes of Order and Chaos... but without Jared, it just wouldn't be the same.
Yeah, that's right. I... kinda like Jared Stevens! Wanna fight about it?
