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Scraping The Crates: Static Shock (2011)


People keep begging for more Static but the thing is, they might not get what they want. For example, the 2011 Static Shock, comic series. It was not what you wanted. It was not what I wanted. It is part of the reason I switched to digital comics. I didn't see the point of having physicals take up space when in reality, I don't need them. Since this series was cancelled after 6 issues, I went back and read through it again, so you don't have to.

So the story starts with Static out in Harlem. He's got a new job at STAR Labs thanks to Hardware, he goes to a school for the gifted, and he has two sisters. That's right, he has two sisters, because Sharon has a clone and they don't know which one is which. It's never explained why, I'll get to that later. So Static starts to clash with Virule, a living virus man and his squad. I don't know what they want other than Static dead, despite the fact he doesn't know them and he JUST got to Harlem. Static gains information on the gang by walking up to a random guy in his school for the gifted, who just happened to have a tattoo of the gangs logo on display and saying "Nice mark bruh, you banging." That's all he needed and he knew everything. Also, he got his arm cut off, but I forgot to mention it because his healing factor is so good he just Wolverine's the arm and sticks it back on, it heals.

While Static clashes with them classic Milestone villain Dr. Nemo sells Big Bang Q Juice to Piranha who makes an army of bang babies and challenges Virule's gang. Virule gets killed and his gang kidnaps both Sharon clones as payback. Virule's gang fights to the death with Piranha's gang over a reality warping pit. Only then do we learn Piranha's top goon is an alternate universe Static. Hardware and Technique show up yell "this is some bullshit," and fix everything.

The series was cancelled and the last two issues are a wash. Static takes Sharon 1 and Sharon 2 to find out who is the real Sharon because a black scientist at STAR Labs likes him and will run the test. While there he stops a guy who can phase through things attempting to steal one of Hardware's inventions. (Hardware is in Dakota, he showed up for one issue, but talks to Static via holograms). Turns out it creates water and the guy was paid by a 3rd world country to steal it so they could survive. Static lets him have it and we don't figure out which Sharon is real.

I will say this, the last issue, is what Static should have been. Static is on his way to school and comes across a girl in a scorpion robot. He fights with her and realizes she has been cyber bullying people to commit suicide because they bullied her relentlessly in school. He doesn't beat her up, there's no clones or alternate dimensions. He talks to her, she surrenders and he gets help because Virgil knows what it's like to be bullied. When he arrives to the school he never goes to he has to speak with the guidance counselor. She thinks he's being abused and he swears that isn't true as his friend Quinton (gang boy) starts a fire to get him out of there.

I think the art was great, except his hair looked strange. I don't have anything bad to say about the art and it actually gave that classic Milestone feel in some parts. It's the writing that pisses me off. It's so bad and it's clear they had no idea what Static is about. I always felt Static was a combination of Black Lightning and Peter Parker. He's got all the street sense of Black Lightning and cares about all the injustice, racism and so on. But, he's also Peter in the sense that he knows every bad guy doesn't need a beating, some bad guys need a hug. Take for instance Virus, an autistic villain who had been abused by his mother and exploited by a gang. Static didn't beat him senseless, he took him to St. Peter's where he could get help he had needed for 18 years. There was none of that until the last issue.

There's a few writers credited for this but one is John Rozum, best known for writing the original Xombi. I know he could write good stuff. I loved his previous work. Then I read his blog and learned the real story, John actually quit, here's a few excerpts as to why:
From the first issue on, I was essentially benched by Harvey Richards and artist/writer Scott McDaniel. All of my ideas and suggestions were met with disdain, and Scott McDaniel lectured me on how my method for writing was wrong because it wasn't what the Robert McKee screenwriting book he read told him was the way to do things. The man who'd never written anything was suddenly more expert than me and the editor was agreeing with him. Scott had also never read a Static comic book, nor seen the cartoon series, yet was telling me that my dialogue didn't sound true to the character and would "fix it."
This makes sense. Clearly Static was way out of character for this. Virgil could be super selfish and problematic in the original. But, he always did the right thing in the end and made sacrifices for other people. There was none of that here, he was selfish from the jump. The two shining moments of his character where issue eight and when he rushed out the house looking for Sharon. That's it, the rest of it he was some weird kid pretending to be Virgil. The dialogue was horrible, the over usage of 'bruh' makes me want to remove it from my vocabulary. It was basically what old white guys thought young black guys sounded like.
There was more concern about seeing that the title sold and didn't get cancelled than there was in telling good stories and having something coherent to bring readers in. This is what led Harvey to insist on the stuff with the two Sharon's and cutting off Static's arm. He had no answers for how to resolve these things, but thought it would keep reader's wowed enough to stick with the series.
Again, this is true. There's so much action for the sake of there being action. Quinton is a big part of the last issue, but we don't even know they're really friends or he's out the gang because Virgil goes to school a total of three times in the whole series. He rarely goes to work at STAR either. There's no Virgil in this and that's a big selling point. Like I said, the two Sharons thing was not acknowledged as being an issue until the last two issues and even then we didn't get an explanation. What was the point of cutting his arm off if the big pay off was a bruise?

There you have it from John Rozum's mouth. There's way more about all the problems with the series behind the scenes. It was bad, he knows it and that's why he quit. No matter what he did to fix it, his work was tossed aside because a few white guys who had never read issues of Static thought they knew Static better than anyone else. They thought it they knew what was cool and happening with the black kids. It was bad, issue 8 was the only one I enjoyed because it was equal parts Static and Virgil. Both are key to the character and they just didn't get that. The bastardization of the character was far worse than all the bad writing, and that's the real tragedy of this series.

You should buy Darrell's Book, watch him on the Blerds Online YouTube Channel or The CP Time and Powerbomb Jutsu podcasts. 
Darrell S.

Hey, I write stuff, a lot of different stuff, that's all.

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