It’s my same complaint about JLA 83, an issue that’s just one big political cartoon. The whole thing falls apart because Joe Kelly (I think was the writer) used things drawn from the “real world” that didn’t work at all within the DCU.

For one thing, wouldn’t that rather endanger a lot of the underground forces? If the occupying power gets a hold of these papers, bam! they have a hardcopy evidence of the resistance and a possible method of tracking back to the cells.

Also, resistance fighters have a bit of a paradox in that you need to communicate with them (for morale and to coordinate large offensives) but you also need to keep the groups as separated as possible so when a fighter is captured, the location and information of other resistance cells can’t be tortured out of him/her. It makes you wonder why bother with a paper, just have the ray play messenger boy to everyone, maybe get Mr Terrific or someone to whip up a new communication device with a dedicated line (super walkie talkies!) to send to all the resistance cells. Maybe use some kyptonian tech laying around the fortress? (not like the bad guys will have updated drivers for it)

It wouldn’t surprise me if maybe Morrison is making some meta statement about old media vs new media, at which point we run into my rant about politics again, where the story is being hurt and wounded by efforts to make it “political” or “relevant”.

Rather than equating this with the delivery of newspapers during a zombie movie, the more obvious correlation would be to equate it with the power of an underground press among resistance forces during political and military occupations. Ray was delivering papers, but he was also crucial to spreading the word about the resistance from one location to the other.

I also loved that part of the resistance movement included printing and distributing a newspaper — I actually think that tiny element made this whole struggle seem that much bigger.

I disagree, and found that to undermine the whole effort.
Why bother with a newspaper? Isn’t there like… a war going on or something? Shouldn’t they be making an effort to fight?
You probably say “the newspaper is their fighting effort” and I have to ask, “How?” Isn’t the whole “anti-life equation” one that robs you of your free will whether you want it to or not? What good does the paper do then? What would you think about someone continuing to put out a newspaper during a zombie movie? What good does it do? Are the zombies suddenly going to start reading it and decide to stop eating brains? Hell, they’re even using the ray to deliver them when he could be… I don’t know, fighting the enemy???

That’s what bugs me about Morrison’s whole take on Darksied in both this and Rock of Ages. He shows Darksied with this whole propaganda machine of “Die for Darksied etc” but… why? If the big lug has the anti-life equation (hate that name too) then he doesn’t need propaganda, everyone’s going to die for him anyway.

It seems that Grant Morrison can’t make up his mind sometimes and throws in mutually exclusive plot points and threads then yells at us for “not getting it” when we point out that out.