Willingham's Penal Colony

As anyone who's been reading comics for more then five minutes knows, super-villain prisons are an oxymoron. I must give credit to Marvel for coming up with the idea first though. If these guys keep escaping every time they're thrown up the river, what the hell is the point? Hence the 42, a prison in the Negative Zone. Now I guess they got to ignore the whole part about the Negative Zone already being the home to some pretty nasty individuals by having them all invade the Marvel U. in Annihilation Wave. Once the villains are there, where do they really have to break out to? I mean, who really wants to rule the Negative Zone? Even the guy who did thought it was crappy compared to the regular universe.

But DC is taking a bit of a different tact with the same basic idea. Sure, prisons (and Asylum's) in DC come with as much of a revolving door as they do in the Marvel U. How many times Joker broken out of Arkham? At least once for every time he's popped up in the DCU. And if you know how many times that is, well, I can't do 'nothing for ya man, Flava Flav's got problems of his own.

So let's get rid of them. Toss them somewhere where they'll never bother us again. Much like the JLA did with the General back in the day. Strand them somewhere with no hope of return. A penal colony. A penal planet. At least that's Bill Willingham's idea.

Salvation Run will be a seven issue miniseries launching in November. The basic idea is that the powers-that-be are tired of all the crap. Get them out of here. You want to rule the planet? Fine, here's a planet all of your own. Have fun. Don't come back. And we're talking the big guns of the DCU villain community too. Joker. The Rouges. Lex Luthor. And not to worry, there will D-listers aplenty too. But these three seem to at the core of it all. Joker needs to terrorize people. But people live in cities. And there are no cities here. What else to do but build one? Lex Luthor wants off. He doesn't want to rule a planet. He wants to kill Superman and have humanity recognize his genius. And that's not going to happen in a penal colony in deep space. Others see the potential in a world with heroes. Why go back and get beaten to a bloody pulp time after time, when there's no one HERE to stop us? Take the opportunity for what it is, and someday you might have your picture on the equivalent of a Twenty dollar bill.

Like I said previously, this is the book that I'm looking forward to the most this fall. It just sounds like it has so much potential. Shame that it's only limited series. Check out an interview with series writer Willingham over at Newsarama.

Dan