They Came From Earth-K

Do Over

2009-11-30T13:49:00.001-06:00

Dear Pilgrims,
I accidentally fell through time and have become my younger self's stepfather. I honestly don't remember being such an immature, whiny, irresponsible asshat. Can you help teach the young me how to grow up a little?

First of what might be several posts in reference to Do, a game my friend Daniel is writing

2009-11-30T13:33:00.000-06:00

Dear Pilgrims,
Due to some sort of accidental time warp, an older version of myself has become my stepfather. Sadly, I'm kind of an asshat in the future. Can you help?

Personae Non Grata

2009-05-13T16:23:00.002-05:00

See, Josh? I can use Latin too!

Okay, folks, here's the deal. I've got a gaming group that's been going semi-strong for a few years now. Life intervenes, but that happens when you're old. We've been running, jumping, climbing trees and putting on makeup while we're up there for some time now. Problem is, we ran out of makeup. So, we just ran, jumped and climbed more trees. But the luster had gone. We needed more makeup and I was gonna provide it!

So, whilst lamenting with Josh the utter encroachment of hack-and-slash style gaming in my once story-driven group, I happened upon an article by WotC describing the White Lotus Academy. Poof! Instant makeup! Opportunities galore for bigger, better story elements and infinite flexibility!

I ran my idea by Josh. He goobered all over it, stole it from me (as I stole it from WotC) and now here you go. Same premise, different results!

Each of the characters are attending the Academy (yet to be named something cooler than that) for "Master's Level graduate studies". Each has achieved an undergraduate degree in their chosen discipline from their previous educational institutions (ie, Magician Master, Convent, Monastery, etc). Each has been granted admissions to the Academy for different reasons. The Academy has all three levels of degree, Bachelor's, Master's, & PhD.

My company consists of:

One, the Eladrin Wizard (High Elf), is the academic achievement student. He is the proverbial elven mage with nose in the air. Snooty patooty. Book smart, but zero street smarts. Just begging for a beating. Which is funny because he plans on playing a "super mean" practical joke on the "biggest baddest" student there with the intention of demonstrating "his power". I see EPIC FAILURE in his future. But then, I've always been a meany.

Another, the Elf Druid (Wild Elf), is the Legacy student. Her family has attended the Academy for generations back and even donated the Aboretum to the school. She's a bit of an outcast from the family though. She's a bunny rubbing, dolphin kissing, tree hugging elf. All her relatives were arcane caster types and rather disappointed she's so different from everyone before her. Except her great grandmother. The Hierophant Druid. You know? The one that donated the Arboretum? Lots of story to play with here.

Another, the Gnome Sorcerer, is an escaped slave from the Formorians. She's super skittish, jumps at her own shadow, fights back only if cornered in a very bad way. She was accepted to the school for "doing something really cool". She's a bit of a thief and survived after escaping by nicking small loaves of bread, loose apples, etc and was caught, harassed and threatened over and above what was necessary, so she electrified the entire market block in an attempt to escape. It took the combined efforts of every arcane person in the town to remove the lingering shocking spell. One of these was an Academy instructor who persuaded the town not to imprison someone of her capacity, allow her to attend school where she could learn how to control her power and what it meant to be a free individual. I'm waiting for the school bully to do something stupid (not to her) but to someone else that is "weak" and see what she does!

The last, the Deva Invoker, is the scholarship kid. A divine caster from the poorest of poor towns, with the one room church/school/town hall, with great potential was granted a scholarship by the church to attend the Academy. He's the hardest one to judge potential story arcs for. The player typically goes for power characters with attitude (not necessarily arrogant, just powerful) and wants to play this one as a humble servant of the gods. We don't think he can do it, but are encouraging him to stretch outside his comfort zone. Should be interesting to watch. And I can't wait for the bully to start a pissing contest to see if this "humble servant" takes part or turns the other cheek.

The first game session went very well. It was very much an introductory voice over by me, talking about the town nearest to the Academy, having them spend one night there before checking into the school so that they could get a feel for the area. Having them attend the Admissions Day with the other eight new master's students (8 + 4 players = 12 total). Giving them the introductory speech by the Headmaster and ending with them meeting with the Bursar (a devil who is also the Infernal Warlock instructor) for room assignments, fees, banking etc. The highlight of the game came right at the end when the Deva was getting his room assignment.

The conversation started thusly:

Deva: "What kind of demon are you?" (Demon <> Devil; it's like asking an Australian what part of England he's from....really bad idea). It was a complete brainfart and unintentional, but I had the Bursar throw a fit.

Devil Bursar: "Demon?!?! Boy, get the f--- out until you can tell me what I am!"

The Deva decided to apologize rather than leave quietly like a good mook.

Deva: "I am terribly sorry to have offended you, sir. I didn't mean anything by it."

Devil Bursar: "Harrumph"

Deva: "I've never met a demon before, I was just making conversation."

Devil Busar: "OUT! GET THE F--- OUT!!!" Bamf! Small explosions. Sulphur smelling clouds. Mad dancing and jumping about! "OUT!!

Exit Deva like a good little mook.

It was priceless! My only wish was that the Deva was an Infernal Warlock. What a way to meet your major professor!

The next game is this Friday. And the fun continues.....

My cast of characters

2009-05-13T15:19:00.007-05:00

Before I get into the actual premise of the game or start scanning in maps I drew freehand on notebook paper (sometimes I think I never stopped being in 8th grade) I'd like to introduce my cast of characters. So in no particular order, I present the miscreants and scofflaws that make up my personae dramatis.

William Donovan - Crown Prince of Avalon, heir to the House of Donovan, Duke of Someplace, Earl of the Other and a bunch of other titles as well. Will is the All Avalonian Boy; handsome, witty, athletic, rich and little embarassed by all the attention he gets. Will has some big shoes to fill at home...and it's honestly starting to make him a little nervous. Grandpa was known as King Donovan the Good by everybody but the nobles who rebelled against him. Dad is known as Donovan the Cadet due to the young age at which he showed spectacular battlefield prowess when he defeated the rebellious nobles that murdered his father. William's barely known as anything but the Crown Prince. He wants to make his father proud, hold up the proud heritage of his family and be as good a king as his father and grandfather. But he also wants to go someplace where he won't be treated like the Crown Prince all the time; someplace where he can get to know some people who'll be Will's friends, not the friends of the Prince. To further both goals he's been sent to the Academy to study in the College of Intrigue. On the inside, Will's a boiling turmoil of self doubt about himself and his abilities. You'd never know it to look at him; a cool and collected 14 year old, his trademark smoked glasses hide more than the glare of the sun.

Bink Q. Nimblefingers - A Halfling knave (do NOT call him a thief) who hails from the most hustling and bustling city his people have to offer, Halflington. Bink is an inveterate gambler, liar and...liberator of other people's stuff. He's lived to the ripe old age of 13 based pretty much on his amazingly affable nature and his ability to befriend nearly anyone even if he was caught with his hand in his pocket. Not much is known about Bink except that he arrived at the Academy with a letter from Dr. Adalricus Eitentho, the Dean of Shadows, and that he would be studying in the College of Shadows. Bink's got some secrets that he's keeping even from his new friends at the Academy, so this is probably all I should say about him right now.

Cronk Crushbone - An Ork (think Pict but with a face like this) Obeah, the youngest of six brothers and something of a disappointment to his family, Cronk was surprised to find he was an honored guest at the Academy. Cronk's dad is the war chieftain of Clan Crushbone which as risen to great prominence amongst the other Ork clans but that isn't why he's so special (after all, four of his brothers beat him to that punch at the Academy). Cronk has been accepted into the Apocalyptic College so that the more traditional wizards can learn about the shamanistic ways the Orks use magic. Cronk is a little put upon at home. His brothers pick on him because he's small and cerebral and will never make a good warrior. Although he wields considerable power as an Obeah, the majority of Obeahs are women and so he has spent more time at the feet of Mothers than he has wrestling and getting into trouble with the other boys. A lot of students at the Academy think Orks are just a step above wild pigs and Cronk is content to hide behind the literal mask that is his badge of office as well as the figurative mask of monosyllabic grunts and wild behavior. He's already been adopted by Bink which means he'll have more friends, and trouble, than he knows what to do with.

Hröthgar sone of Hrödegeir - For Hröthgar you need to picture Conan as a teenager and then try and picture that kid sitting in a classroom. Hröthgar is a true child of the Geats, a group of people who live in the frozen north and make their living as marauders and vikings. Hrödegeir has seen Avalon and Montaigne rise to prominence as true nations and wants that for his people. He's decided that a good first step is taking over some of the wilder country in the eastern reaches of Montaigne and a better second step is an economy fueled by something other than booty. Hrödegeir chose several of the most promising young Geats and sent them to the Academy to study in the Court of Intrigue in hopes that they'd come home and explain to the rest of their people how to be a nation. He also sent Hröthgar but that's mainly in hopes that the boy can learn a type of diplomacy that doesn't involve spitting and a two handed axe. Hrothgar is a mountain of a man and he's barely 13 winters. Lean and lanky, his height has so far outstripped his people's typical brawny physique. While not exactly stupid, Hrothgar is definitely more cunning than intelligent and about as simple as a sack of rocks. Hrothgar is a fish out of water that hasn't stopped flopping around long enough to figure out the environment's changed. For years he's been lauded as the next great chieftain of his people...right up until his dad decided to completely change the rules on him. He hasn't quite figured out what that means for his future, but getting sent to the Court of Intrigue is starting to make it obvious even to him.

Drem Bloodforge - A gifted dwarf and one of many sons born to the head of Clan Bloodforge, Drem hails from the Iron Heel Mountains just north of the Academy. Drem has a gift for engineering although, after blowing off half his face and causing several cave-ins, his father calls it "Gnome Shenanigans." And he only calls it that when he takes a break from swearing at the top of his lungs. On the suggestion of the Nigglewrench Head Mechanic, the leader of the Gnomish family that has been living and working with the Bloodforge for centuries, Drem is being sent to the Academy to hone his skills at forge and anvil. When it comes to his worldview, Drem can be as simple as Hröthgar, but Hröthgar would never figure out how to manufacture Gnomish Boom Powder and then use it to power a tunnel sled. Drem combines the bloody mindedness of every true Dwarf with a Gnome's willingness to strap himself to high powered machinery to stress test it before the ink on the blueprints has even dried.

The Flip Side

2009-05-13T14:31:00.001-05:00

So anybody who ever visited this blog might see that we haven't updated in over two years. Speaking for myself that's because a little over two years ago I love 99% of comics and 99% of comics loved me. Flash forward a bit and the blush had definitely come off the rose. The way of the comics world is totally flipped and now the much larger percentage of comics don't love me so I don't love them back.

This isn't necessarily a reflection on their actual quality. That's a subjective standard that I won't even begin to fight about (although I'm always happy to discuss the merits of one or another specific runs, graphic novels or titles). But my perceived quality of the VAST majority of DC and Marvel is that it's all varying levels of crap. And for a variety of reasons, I want superheroes from my comics. There's good stuff out there but I'm taking the lazy infielder's approach to finding it.

In the meantime, I started writing for a roleplaying game publisher, Precis Intermedia the makers of many fine games including Two Fisted Tales. I haven't done much roleplaying in the last few years and some of that void had been filled by World of Warcraft. Well WoW started to feel like a job and the job I had writing for Precis started to feel like a bunch of fun I was making for everybody but me and my closest pals. So I first got in on a game, moved some atrophied muscles, blew the dust off my dice, that kind of thing. Then I offered to give the GM a break so I could run some stuff and it has been an amazing amount of fun.

I was going to run a superheroes game, naturally, but in speaking with my friend Rob he told me about a basic idea for a fantasy game. I vibed on it, we kept chatting and the more I thought about it the more clever it seemed. The group got sold on the idea and for the last few weeks I've been setting the stage for what we jokingly call Adventure Academy. In the meantime, Rob started with his group using the same basic concept but going in a wildly different direction.

I've been meaning to blog about the process a little bit to help flex those unused GM muscles even more and this seemed like a good opportunity to do so. Plus Rob will be joining me so that we can show how the same basic premise can end up in wildly different territory depending on players and GM. We hope you enjoy it!

Someone...

2007-02-22T15:54:00.000-06:00

...must die for THIS!

If we had a Civil War on Earth-K, at least it wouldn't be this lame.

2007-02-22T06:32:00.000-06:00

I think the company-specific proclivities of this site are a little obvious sometimes, but that's why I want to make this clear up front. Civil War, as a whole and issue seven in particular, sucked in a way black holes would envy. This isn't Marvel bashing, its a simple statement of fact. I can believe people enjoyed it up until the end, but now that issue seven is out, anyone who is still claiming they enjoyed it is either one of three things.

1. A Liar. Simple as that.

2. Does not, in fact, actually like comics (you can change comics to super-heroes if you think this is too confrontational).

3. A drooling moron.

You can tell, BTW, that it isn't Marvel bashing because I read SEVERAL Marvel books and so does the Cap'n. In my case, every one of them is a fringe book. She-Hulk is wonderful (although Civil War hasn't helped it), Immortal Iron Fist is the Sensational Comic Book Find of 2007 (I know the first issue came out in '06, but just barely), everyone knows how we feel about Daughters of the Dragon, X-Factor is brilliant, etc. We even still like the Ultimate Universe more often than not (after all, 616 FF has NEVER worked for me, but UFF did even under Ellis' sad handling). Also, while I enjoyed the ride a lot, I will freely tell you that Infinite Crisis doesn't hold together all that well when you're not swept up in the momentum of it. In fact, it really doesn't work at all and is not a fun second read.

All that being said, I don't have the emotional resonance with the MU that I do with the DCU. With that in mind, I can understand and sympathize with the people that were upset about CW (pre issue seven), but I couldn't really get upset with them. I understood the feelings, but objectively, like an anthropologist might understand a tribe's disappointment when their magic rock fails to glow.

Issue 7 changed all that, though. Now I'm upset, not because of the content but because of the total LACK of content. This is what we got excited for? This hollow excuse for a denouement? Again, IC wasn't very good once you got on the back end of it, but at least there really were some status quo changes. Heck, real and true fallout is STILL happening and not just in that boring excuse for a rag called 52. My erudite and good friend Zac says it this way:

Civil War somehow managed to break the fourth wall and show us a world where the government runs superheroes. When the government runs superheroes there will be lots of talking about things and principals, and then some really bland stuff will happen; and nobody will get too worked up or disappointed. Just like every other government program.

I just reread it and it's hard to even form a coherent thought about why I hate this book. It's just so wrong. And I honestly feel that the things that are wrong with this book are in most ways the reasons I don't like Joe Quesada. Lots of wishy-washy flim flammery, empty promises and hollow deliveries of non-ideas, seasoned with the occasional load of crap and unwarranted hype. At this point I would actually like a Clor book.

These are the words of a man betrayed by his love, and her name is the Marvel Universe. That vile temptress.

Here, just for fun, are my honest to goodness, page by page reactions to Civil War #7. The internet could break in thirds.

Page 3. Oh SNAP, Bishop! Take that, 90s!

Page 4. Black Panther = Deus Ex Panther (see: Morrison’s JLA, Batman = Deus Ex Batman)

Oh SNAP, Tony! Spidey is gonna getcha!

Page 5. It must be an Elseworlds story or something…Iron Man is scared of Cloak.

Page 6. Somebody just TRY and tell me Reed isn’t bitch slapping Sue!

Page 8. If any normal humans in the MU didn’t fear supers…they do now.

Page 9. Jokes about Spider-Man’s adjectives. And here I thought this was going to get silly. (side note: we get it, everyone underestimates Spider-Man…JEEZ!)

Page 11. Imperious Rex, indeed! This might be the only part of this whole mess that actually looked cool.

Page 12. Its Clor! And a bunch of nobodies! (yes, I’m aware Captain Marvel is in the picture. I stand by my statement)

Page 13 & 14. Well, Cap cheated…I guess. At least he’ll beat hell out of Iron Man for a while.

Page 15. Ben’s back from Paris! (who cares) Reed isn’t a total douche! (who cares)

Page 16 & 17. I knew Stan Lee, Mr. Millar. And you, sir, are no Stan Lee.

Also, Clor is a ROBOT? I call total bull$#!t! They did brain surgery on him and he BLED! BULL. $#!T.

Page 18. Oh bull$#!t AGAIN! Cap was never going to kill Tony, that’s just crap.

Page 19. Bull$#!t trifecta! The common man LOVES Cap and has for decades.

Page 20-22. What comes after trifecta? Cap CRIES? That’s the big finale? WTF? “We’re just fighting”??? I had no emotional connection to this story until now. My new emotion: revulsion.

Page 23. Even Frank thinks this is bull$#!t.

Hey, whaddya know, Reed is still a prick. “General hero amnesty” my a$$. God, what a mess.

Page 24. A FULL 93 minutes might not be enough crying for everyone who once loved the Marvel Universe.

Also, just what the hell is the Justice League Oklahoma going to do all day? Ugh.

Page 25. How will there be any super battles if the prisons actually hold the super villains? Maybe the fabric of reality HAS been altered somehow.

Page 26. Painful things we did on the way to respectability. Hey, Millar! Pull up your pants, your politics is showing!

Page 27. Well, at least Tony isn’t just a dick to his friends.

Page 28. So that’s what 42 means. Can he GET more sanctimonious?

Page 29. And condescending. I hate this book more than cancer.

That's honestly way more than I meant to say, but I got a little help from my friends AND a play by play of the crap. I don't even have a clever ending.

2007-01-12T16:19:00.000-06:00

People who know me probably don’t think I can do it, but here it is! The All Positive Post coming directly from the Mothership, top of the Earth-K Galaxy! 500,000 keelowatts of four-color power! Giving it to you in your eye-hole!

· 100 Bullets continues on to its thrilling conclusion. I’m a trade-reader of the Bullets (so I’m exactly ¾ of the way through the story), but I can tell you that this book never does anything BUT fire on all cylinders. It has mutated from a morality/revenge tale into a noir conspiracy theory with roots in Colonial American history that guarantees a skyrocketing body count reached in unmatched style. Twists and turns abound in every arc, and even the arcs that don’t immediately make sense as part of the greater story are brought home eventually. The art is dark, dangerous and sexy as hell. The books are so gritty that even the toilet paper DC prints the trades on comes together with the art and story to be part of the experience. I’m still trying to figure out how I can need a shower after every story and yet continue to think it’s a world I wouldn’t mind living in… as long as I had a couple high-powered handguns to keep me company. Highest honors.

· My buddy and favorite cat to ring me up at my LCS, Rob Vollmar, is having some roaring success with the Bluesman Trilogy. It is sad, poignant, historical, the art (brought to you by Pablo Callejo) is beautiful and the whole reading experience should probably come with a soundtrack CD. In fact, I’m going to suggest that Rob have a playlist available to listen to while reading. Lastly, it’s been optioned for a film. Run and read the books before Hollywood spoils it with crass commercialism!

· Godland (no, I don’t know how to make that little crosshatch through the O), is like Kirby with none of the introspection or deeper themes. Or Kirby if he’d had a couple bad hits of acid. Wild ideas, crazy villains, cosmic beings; it sort of reads like early Marvel if they’d been more aware of what they were up to. Meta-Marvel you might say. I have no idea where it’s headed or what the story is really about, and when I can usually see a lot of the story beats telegraphed from six issues away, that shoots it to the head of the class for me.

· Casanova absolutely freakin’ rocks. The vibe is sort of a bizarre mix between Starlin and Steranko, a cosmic spy story with daddy issues. Gabriel Ba takes ridiculous scripts from Matt Fraction, a VERY limited palette and churns out art that seems simple at first, but then you start to notice how many details the guy CRAMS into every panel. The prose stuff in the back that explains what was going on in Fraction’s life, world and head when he wrote the book is even good. Normally that stuff bores me to absolute tears or ends up being like knowing a little too much about sausage manufacturing techniques, but here it is a bow on the special gift that is Casanova. And the whole damn thing costs two measly greenbacks. Buy it, you ingrates.

· The Black Coat: Call To Arms is the first in what I hope to be a long string of limited series. I thought it was going to be a Scarlet Pimpernel-esque thing set in the Revolutionary War…and it was. But then pirates showed up. And zombies. And Ben “The Original American Pimp” Franklin! This thing is like historical fiction by the guys responsible for Doc Savage and the Shadow. The book has so much pulp, it gets stuck in my teeth when I read it.

· Gail Simone is a Geek Goddess. All-New Atom, Secret Six and Birds of Prey are or were (Six is lamentably over) at the top of my reading stack every time they come out. Each of these is super-heroes done right, even when the book is about super-villains. BoP is in the midst of an internal shake-up and, usually, that would worry me. Status quo changes are rarely good news if the book was successful and a great read already, but Gail has earned the benefit of the doubt. More than that, she’s earned my complete trust. I have no doubt that, despite the sea change, BoP will continue to kick ass. At a DC where several of the OYL new launches have been abandoned (Sword of Atlantis) or are so crap they’re soon to be abandoned (Hawkgirl), I don’t doubt for a second that Atom will stick the longest. Lastly, while this may mean nothing to many, Gail has actually made me excited that there will be a Catman fig in the next Heroclix release; no mean feat.

· Justice Society of America is only two issues in so I can’t gush very much. I’ll be honest, though. Based on the Donner/Johns debacle and the mess Titans has become, I was worried that Johns couldn’t bring the heat anymore. I loved JSA LOTS and didn’t want to see it messed up. Well, I needn’t have worried. With two issues under its belt it is probably the best OYL launch DC has had (even though it isn’t technically an OYL launch) and it is kicking the crap out of Justice League of America. I mention the second only because of the handicap. The Justice League has all the cards in this game, but JSofA balls it out with pure chutzpah and makes the JLofA look even more boring and amateurish than it normally would.

· All Star Superman. What should I say here? If you’re reading it, you know how awesome it is. If you aren’t, you’re some kind of communist robot zombie from a totalitarian future who has been programmed not to like comics that contain too much awesome. This is a book that manages to take stuff we should all be sick of hearing about (Lois discovering Superman’s secret identity, Lex as criminal genius, Krypto) and manages to not just make them readable, but causes you to fall in love with them. Literally FALL IN LOVE between page 1 and page 22.

All that stuff from yesterday is really stupid and really pisses me off and makes me want to shake some editors/writers/Dan Didios until their necks snap, but this stuff is the reason I hang in there. This stuff, and the promise of more stuff like it, is the reason I show up every Wednesday and why I get all excited when the negative stuff happens (especially if it happens to something I was previously very positive about).

Talk back, our tiny audience! What examples of Radness and Awesomeitude would be in your All Positive Post?

I return from Earth-K!

2007-01-11T11:17:00.000-06:00

Well, it has been a WHILE, hasn’t it? I don’t think we had any readers anyway, but if we did, we’ve absolutely killed them off one by one with inactivity. Still with several of our fave blogs going the way of the dodo, I felt I needed to get back on ship.

Unfortunately, due to a ridiculous schedule (the downside of being a private investigator trying to catch scofflaws at nefarious deeds is that they don’t follow a schedule and might do said deeds at any moment, which necessitates you watching them morning, noon and night; Rockford never had to do stuff like this, that’s for certain) I haven’t had much time to ruminate on comics and due to starting the new business, I haven’t had much money for them either.

The other thing is, I kind of wanted to say some positive stuff about the comics I really like. Unfortunately, its hard to do anything interesting with “Birds of Prey is really great, if you’re not reading it you really ought to be” or “JSofA, although a needless relaunch, is only two issues in and already five thousand percent more interesting than JLofA.” See, even in the second one, I accidentally get some digs in on a stupid editorial decision and a book that SHOULD be the premier super-team book at DC but is, instead, lackluster, boring and stupid.

So, I’m going to say just a few negative things and not elaborate on them at all or back up my opinion in any way. It’s my blog, I can do that if I want. I suspect the good Cap’n might disagree with some of them and, if so, he can reply and a riotous debate will ensue! Also, if we haven’t bored any of our “readers” then I’ll expect comments. Again, unadulterated negativity coming at you…now!

· While I applaud the twin ideas of single issue stories and bringing Bruce Wayne back, Paul Dini’s issues of Detective Comics just aren’t that great. They aren’t bad, but he certainly isn’t God’s gift to Batman comics.

· Calling Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman the Holy Trinity of the DCU is insulting for two reasons. First, thanks for cheapening a core doctrine of my belief system. Second, and a lot more trivial but a lot closer to the heart of the matter, Wonder Woman isn’t very interesting and, I suspect, nobody really cares about her. Putting out her One Year Later book on a semi-annual basis isn’t helping this. From now on, all honest people will refer to them as the World’s Finest and Wonder Woman…when they bother to mention her at all.

· As lightly mentioned above, Meltzer’s JLofA is really boring and, I suspect, really stupid. I stopped reading after the nonsensical #0 and the plodding #1 & 2, so I’m guessing a little on the stupid part. Still, criminal mastermind Solomon Grundy and Not-Speedy being on the team certainly SEEM very stupid.

· Why isn’t Teen Titans good? It used to be VERY good and they certainly have potential. I’m very interested in all the junior versions of DCU heroes that have been mentioned. It takes a DCU staple to a logical extreme and maybe a little into the illogical (in a good way). Also, Kid Devil and Ravager are great!

· Bringing back Jason Todd didn’t have to be a bad idea, but it went ahead and became one anyway. A completely stupid re-origin based on a completely stupid plot point from a mostly stupid big event didn’t help this.

· Why is Jason’s costume still up in the Cave now that he’s a psycho killer? And why is Stephanie Brown completely forgotten? Out with the Todd outfit, in with the Steph outfit in the shrine. Two people live in that Cave and it’s about time they both get reminded of the person that actually had the potential of being a great Robin and how they both failed her miserably.

· In retrospect, Infinite Crisis wasn’t very good. I was carried through it, blind to most of its faults (until the rushed and terrible #7), through sheer momentum. The creation of a really expensive hardcover with the artwork actually finished and the tone and theme of the story more or less completely changed has NOT done much to make me feel like a valued monthly customer of DC either.

· 52 is boring and real-time comic book storytelling is possibly one of the least interesting ideas in comics right now.

· I was convinced on the strength of Daughters of the Dragon (Earth-K approved comic goodness!) to buy Heroes for Hire. Unfortunately, it isn’t what it ought to be. I think being mired in Civil War is a big reason for this, but losing Khari Evans on art is also a major factor.

· Astonishing X-Men is at best middling. Also, I suspect Whedon will be the death of Runaways for most of us that are currently fans. This upsets me as I am a big fan of most of Whedon’s tv work.

· Civil War is big and stupid, which actually apparently seems to be the point. So I guess that’s a win…ish.

· I love the new JSofA (see above and tomorrow), but DC’s current policy toward token lesbianism makes me VERY scared of where Stargirl and the underwear-less Maxine Hunkel are headed.

· Three words for the DCU: TOO MUCH RAPE.

· NextWave being canceled is a travesty as it is very possibly the best book Marvel was putting out. Plus, it was Warren Ellis being funny. That doesn’t happen very often…at least not on purpose.

· DC convinced me to pick up several new books OYL, but only one is hanging on and that’s mainly on the strength of Gail Simone (I’m looking at you, All New Atom!). Hawkgirl was just embarrassingly bad. Sword of Atlantis looked to be going somewhere, but the driving force behind it is leaving it before it’ll have anything like the needed time to breathe. I am now very leery of trying new DC things, and that’s too bad.

· I feared this when I first read about it, but Richard Donner really doesn’t have a clue what to do with Superman. Also, a modicum of continuity might want to be observed just in case anybody who actually reads Superman comics decides to check it out.

· Killing the Question and (probably) making the most annoying character created in the last ten years the NEW Question is a really stupid idea. Possibly stupider than killing the beloved Blue Beetle and replacing him with a token minority in high school wearing Kirby-tech.

· As I have made mention of token lesbians and token minorities, it is incumbent to say that I have nothing against some racial diversity in comic book universes; in fact I think it’s a very good idea. But when you see the treatment of Super Chief and Black Goliath, it is difficult for my cynical internal monologue to not assume that the well of minority characters is being refilled in order to have somebody to kill in ten years.

· The new Supergirl is poorly conceived and brings so much baggage with her that I would likely still find her unreadable even if they managed to put somebody on their book that knew their word processor from a hole in the ground.

Okay, that’s all my negativity. Tomorrow…POSITIVE things! Comics I love! Comics you should be READING! Comics that are doing it RIGHT, whatever that means!

I Can't Wait to See What I Get Next Punishment Day!

2007-01-04T13:58:00.000-06:00

A few months back, the incomparable Chris Sims of the indescribably awesome Chris's Invincible Super-Blog held the a Q&A contest in which his loyal blog monkeys could post random and creative questions for him, all of which he would answer, with the best question being rewarded with free comic swag, an autographed issue of Cracked magazine featuring an article by Mr. Sims, and, the pièce de résistance, a badly drawn crayon picture of the super-hero of the winner's choice.

My question was this:

Question: is this page from Punisher 2099 funny because it's funny, or is it funny because it's not?

Imagine my surprise when, after three days of answering some truly innovative and entertaining questions, the generous Mr. Sims named yours truly the winner with the following response:

Answer: I don't know, but that might be the single greatest page in comics history, and I am going to insert those phrases into every single conversation I have from now on.

"Hey Chris, how many donuts do you want?"

"Thirty six... CALIBER."

Congratulations, Cap'n Neurotic! You've earned yourself:
A poorly-done crayon drawing of the comic book character of your choosing!
A signed copy of CRACKED Magazine #2, featuring two and a quarter pages of all-new Chris Sims "humor!"
Max Collins and Terry Beatty's Wild Dog #1-4, where a vigilante in a hockey jersey kicks a terrorist in the face so hard that it breaks his neck!
And my personal copies of The Punisher #22-23, where Frank Castle attends Ninja Training Camp, as seen in the ISB's One Year Awesomeversary!

Soon after posting the results, The Expert on All That Is Awesome contacted me to get my mailing address -- he initially inquired if he should just mail it to "the edge" -- and find out which comic book characer I would like him to draw poorly; after much soul-searching, I finally decided on the ultimate kung-fu super-hero, Iron Fist.

Not too long after that, I learned that The Great and Powerful Sims had a MySpace page. After being added to his friends list, I left him the following comment:

Many thanks for the add, sir, even if your horribly fabricated profile means you're a filthy, filthy liar. Why, I bet the crayon drawing you promised won't even be poorly, poorly drawn. Let me warn you now: if I get a well-drawn picture, I will be sorely disappointed.

Unless it's of Iron Fist kicking MODOK in the head, in which case, all is forgiven.

Lo and behold, what should arrive in my mailbox a few weeks later but this:

It's hard to explain just how giddy this picture makes me. I'm just sorry it's taken me this long to get it scanned in for the entire world to enjoy.

Random Comic Book Panel Theater 2099: Half Insect, Half Man -- All Cop

2006-11-07T00:51:00.000-06:00

Okay, the following has little to nothing to do with the actual plot of the issue of Ghost Rider 2099 it came from, which is all about the Cyborg of Vengeance jacking into the head of his comatose girlfriend, but that's okay: I think the sequence speaks for itself.

Random Comic Panel Theater 2099: Punishment Day!

2006-11-06T13:39:00.000-06:00

Inspired by the "World Tour" storyline in Exiles, I've recently gotten my hands on a bunch of the old Marvel 2099 series. Overall, I've been pleased; Spider-Man 2099 and Doom 2099 in particular are both great series. Sure, there are some stinkers in there (Ravage 2099 and Hulk 2099 spring to mind) but I've have been pleasently surprised by a couple (Ghost Rider 2099 and X-Men 2099) . Today's Random Comic Book Panel Theater installment comes from one of the more uneven titles in the line, Punisher 2099, during that period in the series where our titular character has had a bit of a psychotic break. And really, what fun is a Punisher series without a psychotic break now and again?

And Lo, There Shall Come . . . an Indexer!

2006-11-06T10:04:00.000-06:00

As if I didn't have enough on my plate already, I recently signed up to be an indexer for The Grand Comics Database project, which should put my skills as a librarian and my curse of borderline OCD to good use. Plus, it counts towards my "professional development" which means that, in a way, I'm finally getting paid to do comic book related work. Sure, it's not any more than I was being paid before I started indexing, and technically I'm not supposed to spend more than 5% of my time on it, but that's beside the point.

So without further ado, I give you my first indexed issue.

Please, hold your applause.

These Random Thoughts Came From Earth-K!

2006-11-01T07:12:00.000-06:00

As you might remember from a previous post where the Cap'n and I take responsibility for being slackers when it comes to posting, I'm starting a new business. This means that money and time are very tight and, unfortunately, comics have been the first thing to give. However, out of his great largesse, Zac Of The Great Heroes Quotes loaned me a FAT stack of books from the last few months so I'd have something to read. Naturally, they have elicited a response. I'm machine-gunning through the stack, so I'm having all kinds of thoughts that aren't worthy of a whole post BUT might turn into one later. They are as follows:

So Marvel is doing a crossover with Guiding Light. Frankly, the fact that this came from the most uninteresting manufactured event in comics (the totally organic, no you really should have seen it coming marriage between Black Panther and Storm) just makes it all the more fascinating to me. You can argue the finer points of cross-marketing all day if you like, but the fact is that this thing will probably work (depending on your definition) and here's why. If you take a long running super-hero comic and switch money for super powers and sex for fistfights, you've got a daytime soap. Deal with it.

What the high-falootin' HELL is going on with Supergirl? I understand that the original Kara we knew and loved is dead and gone forever (as much as anyone is in comics). Agree or not, I also understand that, while Peter David's Supergirl is a huge fan favorite and a tremendously well written comic, there were some who couldn't wrap their minds around an earth-bound angel mixed with a disenfranchised teenager and a glob of goo from a pocket dimension getting to wear the most famous set of super-colors in the world. But this bizarre thing we have masquerading as Kara now just floors me. She's Superman's cousin, programmed by Zor-El to kill baby Kal out of jealousy for living in Jor's shadow his whole life? And he does this while the planet is CONSUMED around him? Now that's petty on a magnificent scale. Then she goes to Kandor (which was not what I expected from the bottle city at all, did I miss a memo?) with a Supergirl we like, makes out with a guy she thinks is her cousin but who might be Ultraman from Qward or even from the original Earth 3 (since yellow sun works on him, see) and then goes home in a snit to date Captain Boomerang II. I have all the issues, I know I didn't miss one, but it sure FEELS like I missed at least two or three. This bullet will see a longer post in the future I think, because this is a giant mess.

Just what is Ultimate Fantastic Four up to being this damn good? This God War thing with Pasqual Ferry on pencils is just friggin' genius and the stuff before that ranged from pretty good reads to damn fine comics despite Greg Land's static art style. I've always felt like FF should work for me and I've been shocked when it hasn't. This, against all odds, is working for me.

I have no idea what is going on in Ultimate Power #1. Sometimes I consider this a strength in comics. The world is so weird and wild and wonderful, I SHOULD feel like I'm getting left out of the loop a bit by what's going on (see above about God War). I can't imagine me reading the rest of it even for free out of somebody else's long boxes. Bendis' typical nothing happens writing style + Land's prettiest art that doesn't seem to breathe = me being bored. The Serpent Society was sexy in a sideshow way though.

First the Dead Girl mini and now the Oath. Is Marvel working to make Dr. Strange an actual character we can enjoy reading about instead of a walking epiteph and exposition machine? I hope so, because I enjoyed the Oath LOTS.

I like Lone Ranger a lot, but it seems a little strange to take this long to retell an origin that almost everyone knows. Or maybe I'm projecting. Zac thought the bullets-as-eye-holes was a new addition to the mythos, so I might be in the minority of kowing the Lone Ranger story in such detail. The raggedy-ass mask in the cover of issue 3 looks great, though. Well done.

I'm still working my way through the Civil War core books. I can't say that I think its genius or even particularly good, but I am heartily amused. It's like watching two strippers wrestle in Jell-O while debating the finer points of our foreign policy. Then, in between each round of the wrestling match, they bring out some old men in military uniforms and kick them in the groin just for a change of pace. Gratuitous is the best word I can use to sum it up. Dammit, I'm still reading it, though.

I'm barely a third of the way through the stack, so I'm sure there'll be more random thoughts to come.

DC One Million and What Makes Crossovers Good

2006-10-16T10:28:00.000-05:00

In honor of the fact that Brad Meltzer is boring the pants of anyone with sense to see it over in the self-importantly titled Justice League of America and that Marvel is apparently working double time to alienate as many readers as humanly possible with Civil War, I spent some time this weekend rereading a collection from the unarguably last truly great massive crossover event. Naturally, this event just happened to coincide with the arguably last great run of the JLA. Astute readers will have guessed that I speak of the unparalleled DC One Million.

Rather than get deep into the story and possibly ruin all the great twists and turns it takes, I want to point out the things it does RIGHT when it comes to crossovers.

First of all, it was giant, crazy, sci fi fun, like a Silver Age story seen through a Modern Age lens (not unlike All-Star Superman or Earth 2). The story felt huge and not just because it impacted every single DCU title (which it managed to do in a significant way, but I’ll come to that). It also felt big because the danger was epic, the characters were epic, the entire concept of a Justice League from 830 centuries in the future is epic, everything is simply HUGE. Not “widescreen” whatever the hell that means, but everything had import and the pace never slipped in the main miniseries. It was a breakneck pace punctuated by moments of radness that added to the overall experience but weren’t the main point of the overall experience.

Second, this wasn’t a crossover focused on “fixing things” or retcons and had nothing to do with the past at all, it was fundamentally about the FUTURE. Not only within the actual narrative, but by creating a whole slew of new concepts for writers to play with in future stories. A Superman Dynasty? Marrying into the Fifth Dimension’s royalty? Solaris, the Tyrant Sun? Although nobody has had the guts to touch Morrison’s shiny new toys, the beauty is that SOMEBODY will. They’re just sitting there, waiting. One of the best (and worst) things about comics is that we NEVER throw anything away. Bottom line, the whole crossover hung together in a clever way that didn’t feel forced at all, it was simply a story big enough to involve everyone in the DCU.

Incidentally, as a corollary to the above, there were a ton of small ideas thrown in there as well. Mentioning how long Steel’s armor survived and who wore it, the idea of some Starmen being very evil because of Jack Knight’s dalliance with the Mist and a thousand other small (in comparison) ideas that could be used in a big way.

Third, this crossover had moments for second and third stringers that didn’t involve getting their heads blown off or being struck to death with a bolt of lightning. The reason I give a crap about reading Huntress in Birds of Prey is because the JLA showed how she could save the day even though she’s kind of a tool on the streets of Gotham. Barda kicking Wonder Woman One Million all over the Watchtower showed that Barda is a warrior sometimes softened into a woman while the Amazons are women sometimes toughened into warriors. Oracle held the whole damn world together when it was going absolutely mad (which she would do AGAIN in Infinite Crisis). The Resurrection Man is the most valued member of the Justice Legion of the future, how cool is that?

Fourth, the story totally held together. The core story had about fifty characters between heroes, villains and those in between and was spread across 830 centuries and still managed to make complete sense in the end. What’s more, it managed a Shakesperean or Greco-tragic moment when the JLAs of two eras were forced into making the most difficult and costly decision they’ll ever have to make because it affected not just their own two times, but all the centuries in between.

Fifth, there were no Red Sky tie-ins. Every single DCU title gave a glimpse into the 853^rd century. Granted, some were more interesting or well crafted than others, but nobody had to wonder how this issue of Supergirl or Titans or (believe it or not) Hitman tied into the overall story. Not every title was essential to understanding the bigger plot, but every issue added color and depth.

Sixth, this gigantic company-wide mega-crossover event was done in a month. One. Month. No four monthly lead-ins and 7 months (if it was on time) of core crossover or putting your entire line on hold so that the timing will work out. In four weeks, every corner of the DCU was affected by an epic storyline, we all had a great rollercoaster ride, and then it was over. No fill-in artists or host of inkers (and One Million still looked great, BTW), no glossing over backgrounds, in short, no half-assing. My socks were thoroughly rocked for a solid four weeks and then it returned to my regularly scheduled programming. Whoever thought of that ought to get a medal and a handshake from the President.

I tried to keep this mostly positive, although some stark contrasting had to happen to drive home my point. One Million was great, it deserves better treatment than a single volume printed on toilet paper that you can buy at your LCS, but if that’s all you can afford, get it. If you want, try for whole runs on ebay or go through the dusty back issue bins of every LCS you come within a five mile radius of or try and fill it in at cons. If you have adaptable ethics, there are ways to read every single issue of it on the internet. Whatever you have to do, ignore insulting do-overs of crossovers with marginal quality in ridiculously over-priced collections, ignore an attempt to apply super-heroics to “ripped from the headlines events” and go on a trip to the 853^rd century. You won’t be disappointed.

This Quote Came from Earth-K!

2006-10-08T07:40:00.000-05:00

Heroes isn't that bad, but after two episodes it's really starting to reek of the unearned self-importance that only big-network TV can deliver. But I'll still watch it.

Zac Beverage,
Friend of Tate and the man that made up the Nike Swoosh

This Review Came from Earth-K! V for Vendetta...the MOTION PICTURE

2006-10-02T12:28:00.000-05:00

I finally saw V for Vendetta this weekend. I didn’t rush right out to see it in the theater or immediately rent it because the Wachowskis are, at best, hit and miss; and that’s taking into account that I’m the only person in the world, it seems, who thought the first Matrix was crap. The other reasons I didn’t see it were From Hell (the movie), LXG (and if the fact that this film was renamed LXG doesn’t tell you everything about the process of the book’s adaptation, then there is little hope for you) and the fact that Alan Moore didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

I don’t worship at Moore’s altar, but I do think he does good work most of the time. The first League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a lot of his super-hero work, From Hell, Tom Strong (and the majority of the ABC line) are all really great reads that often have additional layers of either meaning or metafictional goodness, but they don’t mean he can do no wrong. Similarly, the fact that he’s done some stuff that is virtually unreadable (Promethea) and is now making forays into depicting child (and adult, to be fair) pornography as art doesn’t mean he has lost all ability and credibility. That being said, I do think it means something when an author says he doesn’t want to have anything to do with adaptations of his work. Be he prima donna who doesn’t like his vision to be futzed with or an indignant artist who feels his work is being manhandled, you make the call! Frankly, I think Moore is both…that’s how even-handed (fence-riding) I am.

The movie is watchable. I’m not willing to give it much more than that. Natalie Portman once again hands in a performance that makes me wonder what the hell she was doing when she was on screen in the Star Wars prequels. In other words, it was good to the point of amazing whereas she could have been replaced with CGI in Star Wars, and that C stand for cardboard. Hugo Welling does an AMAZING job of creating V through voice alone and left me wondering how he managed to make me think the Fawkes mask looked sad at times. The rest of the cast does their jobs well and the art direction/set design is very visually interesting.

The film wasn’t without problems, however. Moore’s book very starkly placed fascism and anarchy at two ends of the political spectrum, having the government decidedly fascist and V blatantly working towards anarchy. The movie has a totalitarian government with fascist overtones, but doesn’t really make them ideologically fascist. V, on the other hand, seems to be focused on freedom as opposed to anarchy, but the two aren’t remotely the same thing. This isn’t the only place that the movie diverges from the book, but it is by far the most problematic. I’m prepared for changes in narrative and characterization (like giving V a characterization, for one thing), but what we have here is a total transplant of ideas and concepts into a very similar story. America worships freedom as the ultimate end and the only thing we should be focused on, but that isn’t nearly the same thing as the anarchy that V espouses in the book. The ideological transplant ends up being something like a decent but noticable nose job. Each piece looks good on its own and they fit together reasonably well, but it isn’t a perfect match.

This leads to another chink in the armor. Alan Moore was a disenfranchised Englishman making political commentary about Thatcher-era England by setting his story in a dystopian UK. The Wachowskis are apparently disenfranchised Americans who don’t have the balls to do a political commentary on Bush-era America set in America, so they co-opt V for Vendetta and let the framework of the story and England do the heavy lifting. It makes the use of the phrase "Uncompromising Vision" on the above poster a little ironic and annoyed me the longer I watched. I desperately wanted them to tell me a story where America’s current situation was taken to a logical extreme and have it make an impact on AMERICA. The whole thing feels like a giant copout and I’m surprised I didn’t hear more about it when the movie first came out.

While the set dressing was very nice, there were a couple of serious disconnects for me. One was every time the Chancellor addresses his cabinet from a 70ft screen. It is a great visual, very Orwellian (a literal Big Brother), but not even remotely realistic. I mean, seriously, if I were elected President in ten years and started telling my cabinet and the Congress that I’d be addressing them only from some hidden location and instead of a serviceable big screen television, they’d have to look at a face 70ft tall, there is no way the press wouldn’t find out about it. Even a press controlled by the State wouldn’t be able to suppress fun facts like that and I would instantly be seen as a super-villain of some sort. Nobody besides world conquering megalomaniacs would relate to people this way!

My final analysis: watch the flick, but be prepared for a C movie with some A+ stuff that nets it up to C+ or B- if I’m feeling generous. The messages and themes get muddied up something fierce and nobody is really quite the same as they are in the book, but its still entertaining. In fact, if you are a lover of the graphic novel, I think you’ll probably be unhappy about the adaptation, so you should probably just save yourself the heartache. Instead, be happy that you can now buy a really nice Guy Fawkes mask from DC Direct.

This Excuse Comes From Earth-K!

2006-09-30T13:19:00.000-05:00

I'd like to apologize for the lack of posts, recently; there's been some interdimensional interference which has made it difficult to make the transition from Earth K to here. I'd like to go into more detail about the difficulties, but am afraid that the particulars are too complicated for those not well-versed in dimensional travel. The best metaphor I can come up with is that the interference is very much like if I had gotten a promotion at work which sucks up all of my free time, while simultaneously moving into a new place which is currently without Internet access due to the actions of a previous tenant.

For the record, Bubblegum Tate thinks that my metaphor is horribly flawed; he prefers to compare the interference to quitting a job due to an unhealthy work environmen and taking classes in order to start up your own P.I. business, right before finding out that you and your wife will soon be parents.

Potato, potahto.

Moon, Mon

2006-09-20T14:21:00.001-05:00

I'm not sure which one of thes December solicitation covers has me more excited: the return of Mon-El to the pages of Legion

Or the return of Moonstone to the pages of Thunderbolts

Oh, who am I kidding: love Lar as I do, Thunderbolts just isn't the same without the Machiavellian Dr. Sofen.

Welcome back, Karla; here's hoping you're here to stay this time.

I Be ILLin'

2006-09-15T10:39:00.000-05:00

You know, it's really a good time to be a comic geek.

And I'm not just talking about the wide range of comics to choose from, or the high quality of writing, or even the plethora of comic related movies, TV shows, and the like, although all of those are cool. But the thing that makes me the happiest to be a comic geek at this point in time is the proliferation of comic books at public libraries.

Growing up I was always a big reader of all formats, but one of the happiest days in my young life was the day when I first memorized that magical Dewey Decimal number: 741.5 , the number for all things comic related. Granted, the pickings in the 741.5 range at the Miami* Public Library were pretty slim, comprised mostly of comic strip collections. And while these collections did introduce me to the denizens of Dogpatch and the freaky world of Charles Addams, it was the small number of volumes devoted to comic books that really grabbed my interest. The actual comic book collections was limited to some "so-and-so through the ages" style collections devoted to showing selected highlights from the 30s through the 70s of the Dark Knight, the Man of Steel, and The Big Red Cheese. Oh, and Marvel's The Superhero Women, which featured such noteworthy characters as The Cat and Shanna the She-Devil.

Now, while these minimal number of collections were nice, and did introduce me to many of the mainstays of the DC universe, it was the comic related reference books which I found myself endlessly fascinated by. Filled with references to characters I'd never heard of before (Hydro-Man? The Black Terror? Captain Triumph?), these historical records of the evolution of the comic industry were a goldmine to my comic-hungry young mind. Even better, some of them actually included reprints of full stories from the Golden Age, such as the origins of Crimebuster

the Golden Age Daredevil

and the aforementioned Hydroman

These glimpses into the past merely whetted my appetite for more, and I would spend many years grousing about the difficulty of reading every comic I wanted to read without it costing me a small fortune.

But now times, they have changed.

In the past several years there has been an explosion in the number of public libraries which regularly purchase TPBs for their collections; my own local library has a standing order for all things related to Supes, Bats, Spidey, and the Muties, plus a few other odds and ends for good measure. But even with a great source for comics at the local library level, there's an even better source.

The wonders of Inter-Library Loan.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, ILL is a process by which you can ask your local library to contact other libraries throughout the country in order to borrow something your library doesn't own. It is thanks to ILL that I was able to read the entirety of Cerebus, Bone, Castle Waiting, SpyBoy, Love Fights to name just a few. True, not everything is available through ILL, and there are many things which I'll purchase even if available through ILL just to help support the titles, but for someone who wants to read anything and everything and yet has a fairly limited budget, the power of the library is an effective tool. Plus, the more comic books get circulated, the more money libraries will be willing to spend on purchasing new collections, which, in my opinionation, can't be anything but good for the industry.

So, do yourself a favor: the next time you're curious about a title, but aren't quite ready to part with the cash, take a trip down to the local library and see what's what -- you might be surprised.

*OK, not FL, and therefore pronounced My-am-uh not My-am-ee

Random Comic Book Panel Theater: Why I Love Hawk and Dove Pt.2

2006-09-05T08:27:00.000-05:00

Dove's real super-power: super-sarcasm!

Random Comic Book Panel Theater: A Rebuttal

2006-08-27T15:16:00.000-05:00

With all due respect to Chris of Chris's Invincible Super-Blog who is, by and large, the foremost expert on what constitutes awesomness in all walks of life, I believe that his recent argument about Red Tornado being totally emo, while containing some valid points, is working on dated information. I mean, sure, in his early appearances, Reddy was little more than a walking punching bag for the rest of the League, but by the time Fury of Firestorm #4 rolled around, he had evolved into something so totally non-emo, it's frightening:

That's right: he's gone from "whiney stumble bum punching bag emo" Reddy to "quoting an SNL skit which was long dead by the time this was published" Reddy.

A vast improvement, I would say.

Random Comic Book Panel Theater: Special "Sorry We Haven't Posted More" Double Panel Post!

2006-08-25T15:25:00.000-05:00

So, the big question is this: Random Comic Book Panel Theater -- Terse?

Or just lazy?
You make the call!

P.S. Did this sequence from Power-Man #21 come up when the Thunderbolts kicked the New Avengers' butts recently? Like, when Atlas slapped Cage around, was it accompanied by a nice "BACHOOM!" or "SPLOW!"?

If not, it should have been.

Random Comic Book Panel Theater: Why I love Hawk and Dove pt.1

2006-08-16T17:32:00.000-05:00

Sal's theory of super-villain naming*

*even if it flies in the face of #4 on Tate's list

Random Comic Book Panel Theater

2006-08-15T11:26:00.000-05:00

Today's entry: When Cap'n N. first realized The Vision kicked butt.

And Now a Brief Word from Our Sponsors

2006-08-14T12:59:00.000-05:00

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"Gorilla City" lyrics by master filkers Ookla the Mok from their monkey concept album "Smell No Evil"
"Infinite Monkeys Press" blurbs by the deranged mind of Cap'n Neurotic

This Review Came From Earth-K: Daughters of the Dragon

2006-08-03T19:28:00.000-05:00

In recent days and months much has been made of continuity, it's effect on comics in the past and present and what it's effect will be in the future. Is it a boon? Is it a doom? Is it just the way things are now? Was it the missing piece that allowed comics to grow into the form we know and love? Or the form we know and loathe? Good questions all, and I may have found an answer in the most unlikely of places. You see, I just finished reading Gray and Palmiotti’s Daughters of the Dragon…and it rocked my world.

In brief, the Daughters of the Dragon are Misty Knight and Colleen Wing.

Misty is an ex-cop who had her arm blown off while working on the bomb squad and Tony Stark offered to replace it with a bionic one with super strength. Colleen was raised by her grandfather in the Way of the Samurai and is possibly the most deadly swordswoman on earth. Together they founded Knightwing Restorations, a private investigation firm, similar to Power Man and Iron Fist’s Heroes for Hire, and bail bonding agent that will bond out super-villains. Naturally, super-villains being super-villains, this has a tendency to make Misty and Colleen into bounty hunters as well.

According to much of the prevailing wisdom, Daughters of the Dragon shouldn’t work at all. It is mired (although I would say steeped) in continuity. Let’s face facts, the bedrock buried deep beneath this story is, at best, 30 years old. The Daughters are a Blaxploitation film blended with a 70s Kung Fu movie…but in a much better way than Black Belt Jones. There is almost no way that these two characters would be paired in the way that they are today; they’re two separate fads of a bygone era put together. But unlike oil and water, these ladies go together like sweet, sweet chocolate and savory peanut butter. If this sounds familiar, it ought to. Power Man and Iron Fist hooking up as Heroes for Hire is pretty much founded in the same era and thought process.

What’s more, this story uses the Marvel Universe as a backdrop better than any company spanning mess of a crossover could hope to. The clients of the Daughters, as well as the group of guys who are the main impetus to the plot, are all z-list super-villains. Rhino is as close to the big time as any of these losers get and he goes down like the proverbial bitch from the onslaught of Misty and Colleen.

The Daughters’ assistant is the victim of a chemical accident that happened when he was working for AIM (I have to believe as a low level flunky…he seems the type). Tony Stark shows up. So does Iron Fist. So does the Punisher. So does Mole Man. So does a metric ton of Hand ninjas and AIM mooks as well as a lot of costumed, but ultimately forgettable, bad guys. The kicker is NONE OF THEM ARE EXPLAINED OR GIVEN A BACKSTORY.

The thing that rocked my socks right off my body is how amazingly well all this comes together. It’s basically a buddy movie with a little revenge motif on the side held together with two completely different sensibilities that have absolutely no place together in 2006 and a mountain of attitude . . . but none of that hurts it a bit. The plotting and use of characters is great. There’s an added layer if you know who Rhino and 8 Ball are, for instance, but it isn’t like you were going to mistake them for heroes anyway. Knowing who Tony Stark is helps, but you figure out pretty quick he’s a multi-billionaire womanizer who likes doing multi-million dollar favors for his friends and that’s all you need for this story. Everyone, including Orka and the MOLE MAN for crying out loud are seamlessly integrated into this story. If you know who they are, there’s added flavor but if you didn’t, you wouldn’t be lost a bit.

The art is absolutely gorgeous and perfect for this type of story. The villains, even the goofier ones, actually seem dangerous. The women are all beautiful, but not in a typical comic book way. The fight scenes are frenetic and well staged and the storytelling is superb. I want to see more from Khari Evans and I want it now.

Since the plot is relatively thin (and that’s perfectly okay) the book is really held together with attitude . . . much like all my favorite action movies. Bad Boys will always be better than its sequel only because of attitude. Road House is a great movie purely because of its attitude. Daughters of the Dragon works the same way in both dialogue and art. We accept that these two women work together, act the way they act, talk the way they talk and look the way they look because if we stopped for even a second to think about it, we’d be left behind. And we don’t want to be left standing on the curb! We want to be in the passenger seat, trying to decide which is more fun (and dangerous), looking at the road or at Colleen’s dangerously exposed cleavage. The women are smart, dangerous, sexy and violent. They talk tough and are just street enough to make me buy it when they front out their assistant for sounding like a wanksta. They are literally everything I want from my action movie heroines wrapped up in six short issues, including katanas and giant afros.

In summation, I absolutely loved this series. I can’t wait to read it again. I can’t wait for the trade so I can read it over and over. I’m even going to buy Heroes for Hire in floppies! (I only buy two Marvel titles currently and my wife makes me buy one of them and the other is a mini, so adding at third is a big deal) The damn thing had absolutely no right to work at all, let alone work as well as it did and for that it gets the highest praise. EVERYBODY READ DAUGHTERS OF THE DRAGON! EARTH-K DEMANDS IT!

PS: I just realized I got to the end of my review and never mentioned the main villainess. That doesn't means she's unimportant, she just really isn't the main issue of the book. Neither is Razorfist, although he is as completely ridiculous as his name implies. Say what you will about violence in fiction, but I liked what Coleen did to him. I mean, just look at him, he's begging to be beaten.

I've Got a Theory . . .

2006-08-01T20:06:00.000-05:00

Y'know, I've started to suspect that there's some fundamental difference between your earth and Earth-K, sort of like during JLA/Avengers when Flash travelled to Earth-616 and discovered that there was no Speed Force. Yes, over the past few months I've become convinced that back on Earth-K Tate and I tapped into some primal force which is unaccessable here. That's right: here on your earth there is no Wordy Bastage Force.

In an attempt to combat this lack of Wordy Bastageness and make sure that our membership in the Legion of Wordy Bastages isn't revoked (yes, I know we're the only two members, but we're sticklers for the rules), I've decided to canabalize, I mean "update," some old comic-related blog posts from my Crisis of Infinite Monkeys blog to post here, thus preserving the illusion of Wordy Bastagedom.

Click here to find out where all of my money goes.

While I devote a lot of time and energy into my Movie and TV addictions, my true pop-culture passion has always been comic books. At times in the past I’ve downplayed my fanboy predilections due to a desire to avoid the “you read comic books and you’re how old?” looks, but those days are long behind me. I now embrace my comic book love whole-heartedly and even managed to work comics into at least one assignment each semester while working on my Masters degree:

Introduction to Information Control: created a comic book database
Introduction to Information and Access Retrieval: created an annotated bibliography of comic books
Collection Development: created a collection development budget for comics
Genre Fiction: wrote a 15 page (single spaced, cut down from 20) paper on the use of different genres in American comic books
Website Development: created the Infinite Monkeys web page
Electronic Databases and Information Services: forced my group members to answer reference questions about comic books

Now that I wear my comic book nature on my sleeve, I’ve discovered that most people, in an attempt to make polite conversation, ask the same question: “What comic books do you collect?”

I’m never sure how to answer that question, since the odds are that a discussion of the books I actually collect would more than likely cause my non-comic-geek audience’s eyes to glaze over in a mixture of boredom and confusion, since there isn’t a Superfriend in the bunch. That won’t be a problem here, however, since (a) if you're reading this you're probably already well-versed in comics and (b) I don’t actually have to look at your faces as you read this. So, what follows is a list of the books I’m currently buying in monthly format, instead of waiting for the trades

DC COMICS

Birds of Prey: Only tangentially connected to the (mercifully) short-lived WB series. Originally conceived by Chuck Dixon, the book stumbled a bit -- okay, a lot -- after he left, but has regained its former glory (and, to me, even surpassed it) under the talented hands of Gail Simone. The series follows Barbara Gordon, daughter of Commissioner Gordon and former Batgirl, who, after being paralyzed by The Joker, used her l33t haxxor skills to become the superhero world’s resident fount of information, Oracle. BoP also follows Oracle’s (primarily female) field agents, most notably Black Canary and Huntress, with the recent addition of former Justice League Detroit member Gypsy adding some fresh blood to thd group. Smart, funny, and action-packed book.

Firestorm: A revamp of one of my favorite characters as a kid. Over the years the concept of Firestorm has been tweaked in several different directions, and I have to admit I wasn’t too keen on the latest variation when I first heard about it. But, the likeable characters have won me over, and the decision to pull in elements from the Ronnie Raymond years have mollified my fears that they were just trying to throw away the past.

JLA: I'm really looking forward to the revamp by Meltzer, if for no other reason than to wash the horrible taste of "World Without a Justice League" from my mouth; man did that story arc suck.

JSA: One of the first series I got hooked on as a kid was Roy Thomas’s All-Star Squadron, which featured just about every Golden Age hero ownded by DC. So it’s only natural that I would be attracted to JSA, which focuses on some of those Squadron characters, as well as their successors. I'm curious about what direction the book will take with it's upcoming relaunch, but so far Geoff Johns has yet to let me down.

Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes: The one series I feel compelled to buy no matter what. Yes, it’s had its ups and downs over the years (I’m looking at you, Sneckie!), and the latest revamp, in which the Legion is more of a cultural phenomenon than a super-team, is a far cry from the Legion I grew up with, but LSH will always hold a special place in my heart.

Manhunter: Let me be the latest in a long line of bloggers to raise my voice and proclaim "Please Buy This Book!!!!!!" The recent reprieve for the series has made me a happy, happy geek. Although I wasn't happy with the way the author has retconned out the last couple of Manhunter series, I'm willing to let it slide for the sake of one of the best supporting casts in comics today. Please, ask your local comic shop to add this to your pull list, and help us break the Cameron Chase curse.

Teen Titans: Another title from Geoff “How many books is he writing?” Johns. I was a little leery of this title when Didio decided to axe Young Justice to make way for it, but once I actually read it, I was hooked. I'm looking forward to the upcoming "world tour" issues which will explore the massive Titan turnover during the One Year Gap. Oh, and special kudos to Johns for his recent Doom Patrol storyline, which managed to pay homage to pretty much every iteration of the team.

Y: The Last Man: The only Vertigo series I buy monthly instead of waiting for the trade. Why? Heck if I know.

The Atom: When I first heard they were launching a new Atom series, I couldn't have cared less; then I heard that Gail Simone was writing, and my attitude did a total 180. Only one issue in, but right now it promises to be quite a wild ride.

Blue Beetle: Although I was one of those who mourned the death of Ted Kord, I have to say that the new BB series is a great read. Do yourself a favor and give it a try.

Checkmate: I'm starting to think that Tate's plan to wait for the trades on this series was a good one; by the time I finished the first arc I felt like I needed to re-read it all to make sure I picked up on everything. At the same time, the promise of Waller reforming the Suicide Squad will keep me buying the monthly for at least a little while longer.

Secret Six: Probably my favorite book on this list; too bad it's only a mini. My new favorite writer Gail Simone writing one of my favorite characters Deadshot? How can I not love it.

52: Yes, I'm shelling out money for the biggest marketing gimmick of the year, but you know what? I'm actually enjoying it. Well, except for the "History of the DCU" back-ups, which have mercifully come to an end. Seriously, is there a single person out there who enjoyed those? Anybody? And why is it that those wastes of space took up 4 pages, but the "secret origin" inserts will only be 2? I mean, come on!

MARVEL COMICS

New Thunderbolts: Let me start by saying that I loved the original Thunderbolts series. Kurt Busiek took a bunch of second- and third-rate villains and turned them into three-dimensional characters who were doing their best to seek redemption. Even after Kurt left the series, I was a fan of Fabian Nicieza’s take, even if he did overdo the “twist endings” a bit. I was saddened when it was cancelled, and quite excited when its return was announced. However, this new series has not been able to recapture the magic of the original for me. There are still flashes of the book that I loved, and the flashes have increased since the end of the over-long Purple Man storyline, but until Fabian decides to restore Moonstone to her full, Machiavellian glory, this book probably won't crack my top ten.

Powers: Formerly published by Image, this recent addition to Marvel follows the adventures of a couple of police detectives who work the “powers” beat, dealing with super-powered crime. One of the benefits of a creator-owned series is that anything could happen to any character at any time, and that sort of uncertainty helps keep Powers on the cutting edge issue after issue. I would say “month after month”, but that might imply that Bendis and Oeming actually manage to put out an issue each month . . . The main reason I don't wait on the trades for this one is the often amusing letters page.

Runaways: In addition to having a great cast of characters, this book continues to throw twists and turns that I never see coming; too few books out there I can say that for.

She Hulk: Dan Slott’s take on the Jade Giantess is one of the most consistently funny and entertaining books around. I only caught the first series in TPB, and have committed to picking up the monthlies now that it's gotten a new lease on life. If only Slott's Thing had managed the same. *sigh*

Ultimate Spider-Man: This is not your father’s Spider-man. Brian Michael Bendis’s reinvention of Spidey has its champions and it detractors. Personally, this is the only one of the Ultimate series that I have found to be a consistently engaging and entertaining read. Bendis takes a lot of crap for his decompressed and dialogue-heavy storytelling style, and at times I can agree with that (especially on Daredevil), but for this series it works for me.

X-Factor: Did I mention that Peter David is another of my top 5 writers right now? I didn’t? Well, now I did. My one complaint is the artwork, which occasionally makes my eyes want to bleed. But only occasionally.

Astonishing X-Men: As a long-time fan of all things Whedon, there's no way I could pass up a chance to see him writing Emma Frost and Kitty Pryde. And to those who complain that the latest arc is just fan service, all I have to say is: what's wrong with that?

Civil War: I sort of hate myself for caving in and buying this overblown crossover machine, but I've committed myself now, and can't escape. Not as bad as I'd feared, but really not as good as some folks claim.

OTHER COMPANIES

Hero Squared: The only place to find Giffen and DeMatteis's patented Bwah-Ha-Ha style of humor, and thus a must buy.

Fallen Angel: I'm so glad this series has found a second lease on life at IDW that I'm even willing to keep on paying their outrageous monthly cover prices . . . for now.

And that's pretty much it for my monthly books. I've reallly tempted to pick up Mystery in Space and The Omega Men since they promise to have ties to one of my all time favorite series, L.E.G.I.O.N., but the jury is currently out.

My First Year of Comics

2006-07-28T11:29:00.000-05:00

A while back, 2 Guys Buying Comics started this "First Comic Week", creating a nice blog meme asking folks to talk about their very first comic. I wrote on it over on my other blog, but think it fits in much more nicely here at Earth K.

The biggest problem with the idea of a "first comic" is that I honestly have no clue what the first comic book that ever caught my interest was; as mentioned previously, I got hooked on my uncle's comic book collection before I can remember, so it's highly possible that my first comic was Nova #1 which I don't recall ever seeing at the time, but which my uncle says my young toddler hands destroyed. However, while narrowing down whether I was first entranced by Avengers #147 and the appearance of the Squadron Supreme or by my cousin's issue of Showcase #100 which featured practically every character to ever appear in that book is next to impossible, thanks to the beauty of the Grand Comics Database I was able to narrow down the list of suspects for the first comics I ever purchased myself. Being the sort to go overboard in all things (and, being totally overwhelmed by nostalgia by the whole process), I've decided to not just focus on my first comic, but on my first year of comic purchasing which, if my calculations are correct, began with the cover date of February, 1979. And what would that first crucial title be? Click here to find out.

Super Friends #17 Feb. 1979. Honestly, I feel embarrassed that this is the first comic book I ever purchased. Not because it was Super Friends; well, not just because it was Super Friends. No, I'm embarrassed because there's absolutely nothing about this cover that I find appealing today. Which bring up an interesting point; not a single one of my well-worn issues of Super Friends still has a cover; heck I'm not sure any of them still have all of their pages. In fact, it's been so long since I've seen any of the covers that I had to double-check that this #17 was even the issue I thought it was, since the cover left me so under-whelmed. Even the story inside isn't all that great, all things considered; the Super Friends have been separated and tossed through time and space and have to find a way to survive. Of course, this issue did serve to instruct me in a few of the basic rules of the pre-Crisis DC universe, like the idea that the whole red/yellow sun thing wasn't just a Kryptonian thing, so that if a sun suddenly turned blue or white normal humans would suddenly become like Superman.

But while this issue doesn't hold up as well under my present-day scrutiny, I'm much more forgiving of the other issues of the series I purchased. For example, there's #23, which featured the Wonder Twins squaring off against the Mirror Master; #24, featuring the Wonder Twins evil twins; the Halloween themed #28 featuring Felix Faust and faux versions of Swamp Thing, Bizarro, Solomon Grundy, and The Demon (and which is one of the earliest memories I have of buying a book solely because of the cool cover); and my favorite of my Year One purchases, #25, where the mind controlled Super Friends try to take over the world and are stopped by a wide range of international heroes including future Justice League members Green Fury (who would later become Fire) and Tasmanian Devil, as well as Wonder Woman's African counterpart, Nubia. That's right, Nubia.

Man, sometimes I miss the 70s.

Seriously, how cool would that cover be to a four year old?

One month after picking up my first issue of Super Friends I moved on to the series it was descended from with Justice League of America #164 (March, 1979). Again, the cover doesn't strike the 30-year old me as anything that would catch my eye, but the story inside had more than enough off the wall goodness to keep my young mind entertained. While the cover focuses entirely on Zatanna's search for her mother, the first half of the book is actually concerned with the League's battle with Anton Allegro and his magic synthesizer. There's a great scene where Zatanna uses her backwards spell casting to give all of her teammates magic earmuffs to block out Allegro's attack; again, I really miss the 70s. I only bought one other issue of JLA during that first year, but it was a doozy: #171 (Oct. 1979), featuring not only a JLA/JSA team-up, which helped to fuel my love for all things Earth-2 already kindled by a few of my uncle's comics, but also the death of a hero. True, it was Mr. Terrific, someone I'd never heard of before, but still a pretty significant event. Unfortunately, it would be many, many years before I would be able to track down #172 and finally find out who the culprit was.

The next month I branched out to my first solo title with The Flash #272 (April 1979). Now, as goofy as the cover might seem (homicidal clown using a super-calliope to paralyze The Flash), I can see why it would have appealed to almost-4-year-old Cap'n Neurotic. Like a lot of titles at the time, the cover story only took up the first part of the book, while the second half set up a couple of mysteries which would consume the next several months of the series, primarily the creation of a character who I'm sure almost nobody else remembers, but who holds a special place in my comic geek heart: Clive Yorkin, crazed emotional vampire who for a time was the primary suspect in the death of The Flash's wife. Yorkin would play a big part of the next issue I bought, #278 (Oct. 1979), which also introduced me to perennial Flash villains Captain Boomerang and Heatwave; the scene where Flash kicks Boomer's butt was one of my favorite sequences of any book back then. It was rivaled only by the fight with Professor Zoom, the Reverse Flash, a few issues later in #281 (Jan. 1980). Surprisingly enough, the Zoom-splits-in-half thing promised by that eye-catching cover actually happens in the book itself.

That same month I picked up my first Flash I also picked up the Superman team-up title DC Comics Presents #8 (April 1979). Again, not sure exactly what possessed young Cap'n N. to pick this title up, although I have a vague thought that this one was purchased for me, not necessarily by me; I could be wrong. Anyway, the comic itself is filled with all sorts of freaky scenes, like Swamp Thing having his arm ripped off and then slowly growing a new one, or him accidentally creating an army of Solomon Grundys, all of which probably added to the appeal. This is also the first comic I have a really strong recollection of making my dad sit down and listen to me read out loud. I also picked up #16 (Dec. 1979( guest-starring Black Lightning; this issue confused the heck out of me at the time, as it featured a character who jumped all over the evolutionary ladder, a concept that I wasn't quite up to speed with at the time. Plus, the whole "Black Lightning puts on an afro wig as part of his costume" thing didn't quite make sense to me at the time.

The next month I continued my exploration of the DC universe with Green Lantern/Green Arrow #116 (May 1979). This is another case of "I don't remember ever seeing that cover before in my life!" Also, this issue features an obscure villain that always springs to my mind when I think of GL, but which probably only a handful of other comic geeks know exists: The Crumbler. I always liked the visual effects of his power, for some reason, which is probably one of the reasons he's stuck out in my mind for so long. For once, I actually bought the subsequent issue, #117 (June, 1979) which featured the first time Guy Gardner donned the power ring; I just re-read this last night, and it's really odd to see a hesitant, unsure Guy, as opposed to the loony toons versions of Guy which would dominate during Giffen's run on the Justice League titles in the 90s.

My next new title to purchase was Superman #337 (July 1979). I've never been a big Superman fan, and would buy very few issues of this series over the years; in fact, the next issue I wound up buying years later was a direct result of my early love of this issue. The premise of the issue is that Superman is having a horrible day, as he's attacked by one super-villain after another, from the well-known (Brainiac, Bizarro), to the moderately well-known (Metallo, Toy Man), to the "who the heck is that cowboy, and why does his horse have wings?" (Terra Man). This issue would color my perceptions of each of these villains for years, even though they all turned out to be imposters . . . but perhaps I've said too much. Anyway, the character of Terra Man was just oddball enough for me to pick up any other book I saw with him on the cover, hence the later issues purchased.

Look, an actual Marvel title! Will wonders never cease? That's right, it took me around 8 months to finally join the ranks of Marvel consumers with my purchase of The Invaders #41 (Sept 1979). Another book whose cover has been gone forever, but as soon as I saw the scan on GCD I thought "that's it!" From what I can tell, this was actually the last issue of the series, and it’s pretty much non-stop action. Don't know for sure when I figured out that the series was set during WWII; I do know that the character of U-Man was directly responsible for me learning what a U-boat was.

Once the Marvel floodgates were open, they just didn't stop: next up was Micronauts #9 (Sept 1979). I had already been exposed to the Micronauts thanks to my cousin having a couple of issues, but this was a world of difference. His issues were set on Earth, where the heroes were the size of toys; this issue was set in the Microverse (yes, the Microverse) and introduced the warrior world of Sparta (a name which meant nothing to me at the time, but which now makes me roll my eyes). Even though I had a great love for the Micronauts at the time, the series was hard to find in my neck of the woods, and it would be many years before I would be able to expand my collection.

Next up I made a return to DC with the anthology title Adventure Comics #465 (Sept/Oct 1979) which featured four different stories: a Flash story where he talks to dolphins; an Aquaman story where he deals with underwater villains in Arctic waters; a Deadman story which boggled my young mind because I didn't realize that the reason nobody was reacting to his speeches was that nobody could see Boston at all; and, last but definitely not least, a Justice Society of America story which introduced me to The Huntress and prepared me for the JLA/JSA team-up that was to come out a month later.

Finally, we finish up my first year of comic buying with the reprint series Marvel Super Action #15 (Jan 1980), which featured an early adventure of the Avengers where they traveled back in time and witnessed the death of Captain America's sidekick, Bucky, a pretty pivotal event in the Marvel Universe. My grasp of the Avengers was pretty weird at this point in time, since I had gorged myself on all of my uncle's Avengers comics, which spanned a huge amount of time, from the first line-up, to the first big line-up change, to the days of the Serpent Crown saga. I had no clue how it all fit together chronologically, and yet it didn't matter; all that mattered was that they were all really, really cool, and I couldn't wait to read more.

And thus ends a brief (well, briefer than it could have been) run-down of my first year of comic buying as best as I can recollect; if I were to extend it just a mere two months, you would get to hear about the first issue of Uncanny X-men I ever got, smack dab in the middle of the Dark Phoenix Saga, but that's a story for another time.

My Golden Age of Comics

2006-07-26T09:17:00.000-05:00

A while back Scott Tipton of Comics 101 wrote a column based on an old Roy Thomas quote he remembered: "The Golden Age of Comics is five." Of course, while trying to track down the source of the quote, I came across examples of the Golden Age being cited as both 8 and 12 (and Dox knows what other ages might be floating around out there as well) but whatever age you plug in, it all boils down to the same idea: everyone's "Golden Age" is determined by the age they first discovered comics books. So, for me, the Golden Age of comics is around 3.

I was introduced to the world of comics by my uncle who was only ten years older and thus in his early teens (prime comic buying time in a young boy's life) during my formative years. Any time we went to visit my grandparents back then, pretty much my first stop was his bed room closet and the metal box full of comics located there, which I would poor over while sitting under his FOOM* poster.

I've written before about my first year of buying comics (and will probably post that here sometime next week), but it was my uncle's collection that started it all off, and impacted the way I'll think about comics forever. So, I can firmly state that all of the following are totally my Uncle's fault.

Click here to find out how my uncle twisted me forever.

1. My love of the Vision and Scarlet Witch: The bulk of my uncle's books were Spider-Man titles, but he also had his fair share of Avengers, which exerted a much stronger pull on me than ol' Web-head for some reason. A good portion of his Avengers issues had a strong Vision/Wanda** focus, from Wanda's training with Agatha Harkness to the quest for the Celestial Madonna to the battle for the Serpent Crown to that wacky issue where Viz takes a fantastic voyage inside an overgrown and comatose Yellowjacket.

To top it all off, he also had the four-part Marvel Team-Up story which found Spidey, Wanda,

Viz,

Dr. Doom (!) ,

and everyone's favorite baldheaded egomaniacal telepath***, Moondragon,

all traveling back in time to the Salem Witch Trials to battle the evil Dark Rider and his sycophantic servant, the nearly rabid, foaming-at-the-mouth Cotton Mather.**** All of which combine to explain why the two of them are part of my quintessential Avengers line-up.

2. My fascinations with alternate Earths: My uncle's collection also included some early issues of What If? with its regular dose of alternate realities. I was particularly enamored of the different powered F.F. and the Iron Avengers stories; something about the variation in powers and abilities grabbed my interest.

But in addition to the What If?s, there were some other factors in my burgeoning interest in alternate Earths. The first was the Serpent Crown Saga issues of Avengers featuring everyone's favorite Justice League analogues, the Squadron Supreme.

I can't even begin to tell you how many times I read those issues, even before my young mind made the JLA connection; by the time the expanded line-up appeared in The Defenders I was gung-ho to figure out which new members corresponded to what League.

The other factor came from some of the few DC comics in his collection*****. Out of a total of 4 Justice League of America issues, three featured alternate Earths stories, two of which were JLA/JSA team-ups, including "Crisis on Earth-X" which introduced me to The Freedom Fighters

and that strange cross-over where comic-writer Cary Bates is written into the story as the villain

Which also, if you'll notice the lower left-hand corner of the cover, features the ugliest variation of the Robin costume ever.

My uncle also had one issue of the clunkily titled The Justice Society in All Star Comics with The Super Squad which would introduce me to even more wonders of Earth-2.

I can honestly say that this is the book that cemented my love of Dr. Fate, Alan Scott, and Dr. Mid-nite, helped along quite a bit by the pencils of a young Keith Giffen. Plus, when Vulcan showed up years later in All-Star Squadron, I actually knew who he was, and how many 8 year olds in 1983 could have said that?

Man, do I miss Earth-2.

3. The fact that I will always think of Mirage, Will o' the Wisp, and the Kangaroo as "classic" Spider-Man villains: While my uncle's books featured their fair share of big league Spidey-foes (Green Goblin, Doc Ock, Sandman), there were also quite a few issues featuring villains who pretty much faded into obscurity after those initial appearances, a fact that I didn't realize for many, many years; for the longest time I just thought that Mirage would frequently fade in and out as an antagonist for the Wall-Crawler,

that the Kangaroo bounded into the webslinger's path on a regular basis

and I was sure that Will o' the Wisp had lit up the series more than once.

Alas, they were all, if not one-hit-wonders, than at least not likely to threepeat.

His collection also gave me an appreciation for ol' quilt-head himself, The Shocker

for which I'll always be grateful. However, even at the time, I could tell that this dude

was a total loser through-and-through.

4. My love for "lower-tier" characters: 1990 was a good year for me because it saw the return of two character concepts that had captured my imagination as a toddler. First of all there were the Guardians of the Galaxy, who had been granted their own series, and who I had been fascinated with ever since I first saw them in a couple of my uncle's issues of The Defenders, first traveling back in time to help everyone's favorite non-team fight off a giant humanoid telepathic electric eel with the incredibly creative name of "Eelar"

and then bringing Doc and co. to the 31st century to help fight off the Badoon

This brief glimpse at the Guardians would whet my appetite for more, especially the enigmatic Starhawk. These issues (along with the "Valkyrie in jail" story) would also fuel my fascination with The Defenders, which I would collect sporadically over the next several years, only to complete my collection with one of my first big Ebay purchases.

The other returning character in 1990 was the man called Nova, who got another chance at comic book life thanks to The New Warriors.****** My uncle had quite a few issues of The Man Called Nova, which was cemented in my heart thanks to Rich's costume and his wild cast of villains like The Sphinx who spent most of the series searching for the mind that held the Anti-Life Equation . . . er, I mean . . .

And then there was the highly confused Blackout who later became a pivotal villain as Moonstone and Zemo's pawn in The Avengers

And of course, who could forget the awesomely bizarre Megaman.

Hard to believe he never caught on as a recurring foe, huh?

Those weren't the only random characters imprinted on my young mind. My uncle's collection also introduced me to Adam Warlock, The Gardener, and The Stranger (as well as Woodgod, even if only in a couple of panels) in an issue of Marvel-Team-up

And then of course there was Black Goliath

Who would then help ol' Luke fight the ultimate in z-grade villains
The Circus of Crime!

I could go on and on, but instead I shall leave you with this:

MODOK!

*Friends Of Ol' Marvel; yes, my uncle was a Marvel zombie
**Yes, I'm one of those who tends to refer to certain characters by their civilian name rather than their nom de guerre.
***without a Y chromosome, at least (sorry, Prof. X)
****an image that was difficult to dispel later on in life when I had to read some of Mather's writing in one or two classes. So, I guess you can blame that on my uncle too.
*****Marvel zombie, remember?
******which, incidentally, also featured the Earth-616 Vance Astrovik, who I had first seen in the Eelar issue of Defenders

Avengers Dream Team #6

2006-07-23T17:11:00.000-05:00

Black Widow

Natasha Romanoff is very likely the Marvel Universe’s most dangerous woman on Earth. Schooled in a hundred fighting styles, the tradecraft of a one-time super power nation and an agent of SHIELD, Natasha played the most dangerous game on both sides of the Iron Curtain for years before she put on a costume and started fighting guys with undersea bases and death rays. She’s in my Avengers for her level head, command ability (she’s the second in command after Cap as far as I’m concerned), nearly unequaled combat experience and she’s the leader of the Avengers Espionage Squad. This is an idea that I stole from the Legion of Superheroes and it seems to make sense in the Marvel Universe even more than the DCU. If you live in a world with SHIELD, Hydra, AIM and all the other super-espionage outfits the MU boasts, you are periodically going to need to infiltrate, sabotage and, frankly, spy on a bunch of organizations. Years of working both sides of the Cold War makes Natasha more than capable of leading and coordinating the efforts of the Espionage Squad and taking over the Avengers’ strategy if Captain America should ever be unavailable.

During our JLA discussions, Tate noted that our choices demonstrated the difference in the sort of JLA stories each of us were wanting; I think that same idea holds even more weight with The Avengers, especially since there's not a single point of agreement between us this time around. His idea of an Avengers Espionage Squad, while interesting, doesn't mesh with my mental picture of the team; this shadowy Avengers feels very Bendis to me, and I always preferred my Avengers to be a bright and shining a la the Starlin, Shooter, and Stern years. Although I know Natasha served a lengthy term on the team, much like Spider-man I've always thought she functions much better as a solo agent.

Scarlet Witch

Out of all of the characters on my list, I don't thing any of them scream "Avenger!" to me as much as Ms. Wanda Maximof. The Avengers were where she went to seek redemption after her time following Magneto; the Avengers were where she learned to tap into her mystical heritage; the Avengers were where she met the love of her life; the Avengers were where she went insane and murderous . . .

Er, um, scratch that last one, okay?

Seriously, though, Wanda seemed to latch onto the "Avengers as family" theme more strongly than most anyone else; add onto that the versatility and coolness factor of her powers (nebulous though they may be), not to mention my early fascination with her (more on that soon) and that's why the Scarlet Witch is a must-have member of my team.

I think you can compare Wanda with my Vision response in many ways. She's just wrapped up in so much stupid stuff! House of M was the absolute capper and it will be many years before she stops being radioactive for me. Aside from the general distaste I have for what's going on with her, I can't argue with the Avengers-as-family feel for Wanda or with the potential coolness of her powers (although that statement strays dangerously near to radiation levels unkind to human life).

I did like her quite a bit during the oft-mentioned Buskiek-Perez run, though. Not enough to wash House of M and Disassembled out of my mind, though. I know I'm the one who keeps bringing up the hotness factor for membership, but I think it needs to be brought up one more time so I can talk about George Perez. Perez managed to give Wanda a costume that, while a little more ridiculous than standard super-hero fare, managed to show off her gypsy heritage and her sexiness. Perez also gave her a slightly different look in her facial features that showed she was a different ethnicity than her teammates without pounding us over the head with it. When you looked at Perez's Scarlet Witch, she looked like a hot magic-user of gypsy descent. Her costume told the tale and accentuated the hotness, you can't go wrong with that.

Avengers Dream Team #5

2006-07-21T17:11:00.000-05:00

Spider-Man

Although Spidey has only recently joined the Avengers in the comics, he has acted in a reservist capacity many times over the years. This has always seemed a bit of a travesty to me. In a lot of ways, the Web Head is to Marvel what Man of Steel is for DC: the flagship character, the beginning of their super-hero universes, the epitome of what the company’s characters will be like. I know they’ve always wanted to the Wallcrawler to be a loner, but the guy deserved to be in the Big Show a damn sight sooner than he’s been allowed to be there. As I’ve said, part of that is what he means to the Marvel Universe here in the real world, but the guy’s no slouch when it comes to the power department either. Super agile, super strong, able to leap tremendous distances, super smart (he invented his own webbing when cruel fate gave him every OTHER spider-power!), a precognitive spider-sense to alert him of danger. Spidey is one of the most well-rounded super-heroes around. He’s able to go toe-to-toe with very powerful villains, but can get himself into places quietly and undercover if necessary. He’s a good compliment to Tony in the science department, comes in a close second to She-Hulk in the strength department and edges out the hard core members of the Espionage Squad (see below) in agility and sneakiness (animal instinct apparently wins out over extensive training). His adaptability, impressive power level and indefatigable optimism even in the face of personal and super-heroic tragedy make him a total package team player.

Afraid I'm square in the "Spidey should be a loner" column. Not that it isn't nice to see the wall-crawler finally getting some respect and recognition from his fellow capes and all, but to me, Peter was never meant to run in the pack. While I don't begrudge him the chance to do so now, anytime I see a group picture with him in it, I instantly start to play a mental game of "which of these things is not like the others."

Vision

Power-wise, the Vision has always appealed to me; his ability to control his density makes him both an excellent spy and a formidable opponent. Not only has he gone toe-to-toe with Thor, but he was able to take out Hyperion with one well-placed phase. It was this self-same battle with Hyperion in my uncle's well-worn copy of Avengers #147 that served as the beginning of my fascination with the Vision, aided by the pencils of one George Perez who illustrated possibly the coolest action sequence the Vision has ever been involved in, although that might be the 4 year old in me speaking. Still, that fight, coupled with the relationship between Vision and Wanda (not to mention his unique word balloon style) combined to win Viz an eternal place in my Avengers line-up . . . and this is pre-deconstruction and/or destruction Vision, btw. Y'know, it just dawned on me: not only is The Vision the third of my Avengers #200 cast members, he's also the third cast member to have a history full of being horribly screwed over; sadly enough, the final part of this quartet shares in that as well, but more on that next time.

I'm not sure I can get worked up enough to say anything about the Vision but "eeeeehhhhh..."

I think the first issues of Avengers I picked up off the newstands involved the Vision having just been torn to bits, It hink it was called VisionQuest. Even as a youngling, the name should have tipped me off. They bring him back cold, emotionless and all white. The all white thing was kind of cool since he used his powers to be sort of "ghostly" and it sort of went with his name (although Apparition might have been even better with that color scheme, apologies to Tinya Wazzo), but the emotionless thing, especially with Wanda pining away for him, just completely missed with me.

Now it might be that he's never shaken that initial introduction with me and it might be that he's been wrapped up in some of the stupidest and/or off-putting stories of all time. Wanda marrying the Vision is creepy, I don't care what anybody says. I also say that SOMEONE should have thought it was a damn sight weirder when she got pregnant by Vizh. Regardless, I'm unimpressed with Vision. He doesn't inspire revulsion or anything, he more just inspires me to yawn a lot and start waiting for thigns to get silly.

Four Color Philosophy II - The THRILLING Conclusion

2006-07-20T06:43:00.000-05:00

Click here for the thrilling conclusion!

Okay, so this is a comic book blog and you're wondering what all this philosophy talk has to do with comics. I'm glad you asked! In almost every way, the supermen presented in glorious four color and newsprint are exemplars of Nietzsche’s philosophy in pop culture. Let’s look at a few examples of how they’re the best examples and then I’ll share with you the two I consider to be the BEST of the BEST examples.

1. Rise above the Herd and live glorious lives…
Imagine if every single day you saved somebody’s life. Or went to a distant planet. Or fought monsters. Or romanced princesses of lost continents. Or traveled through time. Or met beings of godlike power. Or if you WERE a being of godlike power. If any one of these things was true, let alone all of them, what would you have in common with your family or co-workers? Absolutely nothing, your concerns would have risen as far above the Herd as the average person’s thoughts are above the animals. This is how most superheroes live. To paraphrase a comic writer the Cap'n and I enjoy, comic book universes are a day-glo funhouse where the world is threatened every ten minutes and godlike beings clash in the skies like fireworks. Does this describe your life in the cubicle?

2. …That ultimately end in Tragedy.
Nearly every super hero is in the midst of a mission that cannot be successful. Superman actually describes his daily activities as the Never Ending Battle. Wonder Woman seeks to bring Peace to Man’s World by fighting for it. Spider-Man and Batman will never be able to save their lost loved ones no matter how many people they protect each night. Each catastrophe is averted, but a few more lives are lost, a bit more property is destroyed, a few more comrades fall. And when they wake up the next morning, they’ll be ready to do it all over again. THAT’S tragic optimism.

3. Become the next step in human evolution.
The absolute best example of this is the X-Men. Although they technically go against Nietzsche’s concept that the next leap in human evolution will not be merely biological, there is another aspect to the X-Men that is VERY Nietzschean. They were born a step above, but the Herd looks down on them. The Herd KNOWS that it is inferior, and it fears the X-Men because of this. Despite the hatred and fear, the X-Men strive for acceptance and co-existence which will never be given to them. They know it’s a hopeless goal, but they strive for it anyway because the alternative is stagnation. All of that on top of the “typical” activities of visiting distance worlds, traveling through time and doing combat with beings of godlike power!

4. There is no religion in super hero comics.
Oh sure, there are a few exceptions, but for the most part, nobody in super hero comics belongs to any organized religion. The closest you get are the characters that actually interact with those beings that are considered gods. However, in true Nietzsche fashion, the heroes are arrayed against the gods as often as they are the agents of the gods. In a world devoid of religion, a standard for ethics and morality can only come from within. Superman does what’s right because it’s what’s right (Sound too simple? I challenge you to find a better explanation of Superman’s motivation). Spider-Man does what’s right because of a lesson he learned in tragic circumstances from his Uncle Ben. Batman ignores the law in order to serve Justice. If you are living the life of the ubermensch, then mere morality cannot hold you accountable.

Unfortunately, this is also where the parallels fall apart a little. Nietzsche would be horrified how often the ubermensch of comics are tending the needs of the Herd and protecting the status quo. Is Superman really maximizing his potential for the betterment of everyone if he’s not using his powers to END crime (or war, hunger, poverty, pollution, ethnic cleansing, etc), not just fight it? Are the X-Men working in the best interests of both humanity and mutants if they aren’t using their powers to take over the world and institute a government of mutants that ENFORCES peaceful coexistence with humanity? Batman operates outside the law, but refuses to kill even the most deranged dangers to the lives he holds dear. Is he REALLY serving the public good by not ending the Joker’s rampages once and for all? According to Nietzsche, the superhero may actually be a bigger failure than the Herd. In every way they live the Dionysian lifestyle, but they can’t quite let go of their last vestige of mere humanity.

As the audience for this blog is more in tune with comics, I hope that I've given you some aspects to think about that haven't occured to you before. These concepts can certainly go deeper. Take the examples I used of how the superheroes still conform to traditional morality. There’s a fertile ground for discussion there. How many times has Superman flown into a country like Iraq or North Korea and deposed the leader who’s oppressing or starving his people? Since I originally wrote this, Gail Simone has written a story where the JLA removed a leader, but even then it was only at the behest of the UN and they constantly felt like they shouldn't have been involved. But if you were Superman, wouldn’t that be the right thing to do? We are told to act locally and think globally, but with that kind of power acting globally would be easy. But where do you stop? Do you put the world under your control? If you do, what happens when the power starts to corrupt you? I'm sure most of you have read Watchmen by Alan Moore, but if you haven't make it the next book you read and see if you don’t wind up with similar thoughts.

When the high schoolers and I started kicking these questions around, they inevitably landed on “Who is the best example of the Nietzschean ubermensch in comics?” Up until I sat down to write this post, I believed that Batman exemplified Nietzsche’s ideal. After all, here is a man who had everything important in his life taken away from him while he was too young to do anything about it. He did not fall into the quiet misery to which so many of the Herd would have succumbed. He took his sadness, his drive, his ambition and his existing advantages and forged a new destiny for himself through sheer force of Will. When the Herd’s laws were shown to be a hindrance, Batman ignored them in the interest of his self imposed definition of Justice. In the face of a hopeless war, he fights on night after night, losing a little bit more of what ties him to humanity with each sunrise. He trains lieutenants despite a loner nature because he knows the work must go on when he inevitably succumbs and his mind or body fails him. Batman has so separated himself from humanity that he barely bothers to maintain the so-called secret identity. Bruce Wayne is merely another tool he uses in service of higher ideals. Batman has had very few love interests, even fewer friends and has even managed to alienate Nightwing, the original Robin, a man he raised, because of devotion to his ideals. Batman even holds himself aloof from the other ubermensch, believing himself to be superior to them because he does what they do without the benefit of special powers even as he’s separated from the Herd by the fact that he can keep up with the other super heroes. All these things are true, but I kept coming back to the major failing of all the super heroes from Nietzsche’s standpoint. Batman has morals and CARES for the Herd instead of disdaining them.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that this is a fundamental flaw. Batman couldn’t be the truest ubermensch. Then it hit me like a gamma bomb in the desert. Batman isn’t the ubermensch, but the Hulk IS.

The Incredible Hulk is a superman that is set in stark contrast to the Herd mentality of Bruce Banner. It was Banner’s scientific genius that created the gamma bomb that would give birth to the Hulk. It was Banner’s own force of will that allowed him to survive the gamma bomb by becoming (a key Dionysian concept) the Hulk. Since that moment, though, Banner has hated and feared the superior being he created. And he has, in true Herd fashion, tried to destroy it at every turn.

The Hulk is raw power and passion in a rampaging form. In true Dionysian fashion, he knows nothing but his own desires from moment to moment. He has literally frozen time for himself through sheer force of Will. Nothing can stop him because of the strength of his Will. After all, the madder Hulk gets, the stronger Hulk gets. The Hulk knows no morality beyond his own needs; whether Hulk wants "his Betty," or the world to “leave Hulk alone,” or the sheer joy he takes in wanton destruction, he makes his desire into reality. He is the next step in human evolution and hates the man he once was even more than Banner hates the Hulk. The Incredible Hulk exemplifies Nietzsche’s overman.

That about sums up my thoughts on Nietzsche and how he relates to comics. The only thing you guys got that the kids didn’t was my musing on the Hulk, and I intend to add that the next time I'm invited to help teach the class. I’m pretty sure that this entire line of discussion would absolutely appall Nietzsche. If anybody knows where he’s buried, let’s go get him. With a couple magnets at either end, I bet I’ve got him spinning fast enough to light the eastern seaboard!

Four Color Philosophy

2006-07-18T08:32:00.000-05:00

This was originally written for and posted to Neurotic's other blog for one of his Four Color Friday features. That was a few months ago and we thought that this blog, being generally erudite and educated about comics, would benefit from the discussion the essay could start. Also, I discovered that somebody had quoted it thoroughly on their own site and I decided I ought to get the same mileage. So without further ado, I bring you Four Color Philosophy!

I originally came by these thoughts while preparing to teach a group of high school seniors in a class that doesn't really have a name that I know of. It might be called Sr. Bible, but it might also be called World View or Philosophy From a Christian Perspective. Regardless, while discussing Nietzsche, the teacher of the class, a long term and very good friend of mine, started researching the concept of supermen. Naturally, our favorite group of supermen came to mind and he decided I'd be a worthwhile guest speaker. How do our comic book heroes, especially the original who shares his name with Nietzsche's favorite concept, stack up to the ideal set forth by the philosopher? Let's take a look.

I have an initial caveat. I will not be editorializing on Nietzsche’s philosophy except in how it comes into play with my personal favorite slice of pop culture, the super hero comic book. If any of you would like to discuss it in greater detail and in light of your own philosophical or religious leanings, that’s what comments are for. And believe me, I have got some SERIOUS commentary on Nietzsche, I’m just trying to maintain a tight scope.

As I’m sure many of you are not aware of the basic tenets of Nietzsche’s philosophy, we’ll start with a primer. In as few words as possible (which isn’t really all that few), I bring you the Brief Guide to the Glorious Anti-Christ. Don’t look at me, that’s what other people called him, I’m just borrowing it.

With no belief in a transcendental God but a desperate need to make some sense out of the universe, Nietzsche developed a few core beliefs. He vehemently believed that life is Tragedy; devoid of hope for good or justice but also devoid of the cynicism that would believe in evil’s ultimate triumph. Indeed, Nietzsche thought of good and evil as abstracts with no real meaning, that there could be no immorality in a world that was inherently amoral. For Nietzsche, the only hope against despairing nihilism was to give in entirely to the Dionysian spirit.

Dionysian thought was centered on tragic optimism and sought to stop the moment in time through a lust for knowledge, youth, beauty and your own superhuman power (starting to get an inkling of where we’re headed here?). A Dionysian would create a superabundance of creative energy and seek to harness that energy towards change or “becoming.” There was no hope outside of yourself, only the potential of self-transcendence could hope to lift humanity out of its mire. This is pretty heady stuff, but believe me when I say I'm really trying to boil this down to the simplest explanations.

Nietzsche hated the middle class and its so-called “good life.” Comfort and conformity were chains causing the mass of humanity, the Herd as he called it, to stagnate in its own mediocrity. The merely average spent their days toiling away trying to get that slightly nicer house or slightly larger television (pardon my modern perspective) while the Dionysian sought to write music, create poetry, make art, love, fight battles and really LIVE, even if they would ultimately fail (constant and tragic failure is a core Nietzschean concept that I’ll deal with in greater detail shortly).

Nietzsche also loved the theories of Charles Darwin. He believed that humanity will be supplanted by a newer, better humanity even as we supplanted the apes before us. However, Nietzsche also believed that this next evolutionary step, this creation of the ubermensch (overman or superman) would not be merely biological. Humanity would do with Will what biology could never hope to do. Humanity has an innate Will to exercise power over itself and others, according to Nietzsche, and it is this Will that is the key to the next step in human evolution.

Nietzsche’s most influential work and the best example of his thought is the epic poem Thus Spake Zarathustra. Zarathustra is a fictional Persian prince who comes down from the mountain to explain that he is in absolute awe of humanity’s potential, but is in constant lamentation over its inability to move the vast majority of itself out of a passionless, orderly and rational existence and into something greater.

According to Zarathustra, we should aspire to heroism because it is the highest state of self-actualization. The definition of a hero is one who strives to achieve goals that have hitherto been the purview of the gods. However, because the hero strives for unattainable goals, they usually fail. Tragedy is the glorious end for the Hero! The Herd also fails, but its goals are so low that there is no tragic or transcendent dimension. In the striving and ESPECIALLY in the failing, the hero rises above the Herd’s pathetic, lowly existence and becomes something more through the exercise of the hero’s Will.

Sounds pretty damn good, doesn’t it? The attractiveness isn’t surprising. The examples of the tragic hero are nearly uncountable in mythology. The Greeks had Achilles who, knowing that life was useless and fleeting, sought immortality through fame. The Norse had Siegfried who knew throughout most of his life that it would end in tragedy, but fought the good fight and demanded all that life could give him despite the whims of the gods. With very little investigation, you will find examples of this ideal in nearly every culture.

“But what about our culture?” you might be saying (that is, if you're still awake at this point). Examples in today’s pop culture are nearly as rampant as they were in older civilizations. Think of James Bond who succeeds in the face of insurmountable odds through his own strength of will. But his successes are never long term; he is just holding the line against the Communists with no real hope of ultimate victory. To borrow another example from my teacher friend , you also have Ferris Bueller. Ferris’ life is hopeless. He is embroiled in his last opportunity for “one good day” in the last good time in his life, his waning youth. Soon, college and adulthood will close in and turn Ferris into the middle-class drone striving for the mediocrity that he sees his parents exemplifying. But before that happens, he will have one amazing day despite all the powers and circumstance arrayed against him. (If anybody likes, we can also talk about how Ferris Bueller is literally an example of evil in its truest form, but that’s a bit off topic in a discussion of a philosopher that didn’t really believe in good or evil.)

Well, there isn't a lot about comics so far, is there? The good news is, the groundwork is laid and we can talk about comics in part two tomorrow. The bad news is that you have to wait until tomorrow to talk about comics. Please come back and comment, vigorous philosophical debate will follow!

Avengers Dream Team #4

2006-07-06T17:11:00.000-05:00

She-Hulk

On a power level with Thor or her cousin, the Incredible Hulk, Jennifer Walters adds exuberance for super heroics that most of the rest of the team doesn’t have. She enjoys her job as She-Hulk even more than she likes lawyering as Jennifer, and it shows. Whether she’s enjoying a good scrap or holding up a collapsing building until all the children are saved, she’s doing it with gusto. She’s erudite and will use five dollar words while kicking your ass leaving you wondering how you got so lucky as to have this jade vision take you into custody. This leads me to the last thing Shulkie brings to the table. While she’s not the only woman on the team and not the only hottie, she is the only 7 foot tall, statuesque one. Her ability to stop traffic, either with her muscles or her looks, is legendary and belongs on this team.

Ah, Shulkie. She just missed inclusion on my list; my first real exposure to She-Hulk was the issue when she first joined the Avengers, and I've had a special place in my heart for her ever since; but, love Jen as I do, I just couldn't find room for her in my line-up. But rest assured, when we eventually run out of other ideas and do a "Legion of Super Lawyers" column, she'll be at the top of my list.

Ms. Marvel

Carol Danvers has been a presence in several of my all-time favorite comic books. The first issue I ever bought of The Avengers was #200, the issue where Ms. Marvel left the team to traipse off to Limbo with her son/lover Marcus (not quite as icky as it sounds, but close); in many ways this issue solidified my ideas of who the quintessential Avengers were, as will be evident by the time I finish my list and you see that 4 out of my 7 were members at that time. Coincidentally, the next issue I remember buying was Annual #10, which featured her return from Limbo, as well as her total depowering by Rogue. I then followed her adventures over in Uncanny X-Men where she became Binary, but while I was glad to see her re-powered, to be honest, I really, really missed the Ms. Marvel outfit, which for some reason is one of my favorite female super-hero costumes. But I digress. Experience, power, a warrior's instincts, and a cool costume: that's why Ms. Marvel has to be on my Avengers team.

We find that dreams can come true as our good Cap'n gets his wish and Captain Marvel returns to the Avengers (if you consider the current group to be the Avengers, which I understand is hotly debated) and her own book. I'll tell you, I love the idea of a perpetually B-List superheroine realizing that there's no good reason for her not to be A-List if she'd just put her mind to it. Its an interesting take and a surprisingly good reason to give her a series when, I'll be honest, I really couldn't think of one. I'm prepared to acquiesce on this one, especially since I'm pretty sure Dan Slott has made it impossible for me to like anyone else writing Jennifer.

Earth K's Statement on Superman Returns

2006-07-04T19:10:00.000-05:00

This is a statement from all of us at Earth K and since Blue and Red make Black when you mix fingerpaints, that's the color that will henceforth be the official "speaking for all of Earth K" color.

Superman Returns was good but not great. Unfortunately, the longer we think about it the worse it gets so "good" might be downgraded to "merely adequate" as time goes on. It is likely that we will end up on "meh."

As a love letter to Donner and his films about Superman, this movie succeeds on every level. Unfortunately, those damn Donner films just weren't very good and anyone that says otherwise is viewing the world through nostalgia-tinted glasses.

As a movie actually about the characters of Superman and his supporting cast, the movie fails miserably. The top five reasons are as follows:

1. All kinds of things happen for literally no reason (Superman crashes when he returns to earth, water makes Kryptonian crystals grow, Lex has a chance to create super weapons and give amazing gifts to mankind and make Superman look like an ass, instead he makes inhospitable land. There are plenty more but we're tired of thinking about them).

2. Everyone is horribly miscast with the exception of Perry White and Parker Posey. Before you get excited about Brandon Routh, don't. He wasn't cast to play Clark Kent/Superman, he was cast to play Christopher Reeve playing Clark Kent/Superman. This he does well. Unfortunately, we don't care. We doubt we're alone.

3. Nobody talks to anybody for more than sixty seconds at a time. There isn't just a lack of meaningful dialogue, there is a distinct lack of all dialogue.

4. Superman isn't Jesus Christ, however he is messianic. If you want that explained, just ask and we will. Also, even if he was Christ-like, we'd really appreciate it if everyone could stop hitting us over the head with it.

5. Superman needs to punch stuff. Especially when something has happened that will really piss him off. Such as nearly murdering him and/or stealing the last remnants of his long dead homeworld. Lifting heavy things is really interesting ONCE. After that, we require something more interesting than pensive looks and fake straining against weight.

To sum up, we liked it but we feel that a lot of opportunity was squandered. That makes us a little sad.

Thank you...and good night,

The Staff of Earth K

PS: It behooves us to point out that we liked Jimmy too inasmuch as we'd actually like to see that actor turn iunto a wolfman or turtleboy or Elasic Lad. Frankly, that would have upped the interest quotient of this movie to a startling level.

These reviews came from Earth K!

2006-07-04T13:06:00.000-05:00

In an effort to keep my promise and be more on top of things, here are the reviews of my buy pile from last week.

Spoilers Ahead!

Batman #654: Well, I may have gotten a bit overexcited with my last review of Face the Face part 7. It turns out that this arc has let me down quite a bit. First of all, it could easily have been six issues if this was all the payoff I was going to get. Second, once again Batman is portrayed as the World’s Greatest Detective with writer tricks rather than actual detective work. Whatever convoluted trail he followed to get to Great White is essentially the same trick as Batman thinking “of course, there’s only one quarry with this time of silicate in Gotham!” Weak. Third, I know that Harvey has supposedly not been Two Face for a year, but to the reader it has been about five minutes. Therefore, whatever shock value there was supposed to be in Dent returning to a life of crime turned up nil. The confrontation with Two Face was weak as well; it would have been a lot better if he’d just faded away leaving Gordon and Batman wondering until Two Face showed up again. Great White is a really stupid villain, and that pains me to say since I really like Dan Slott’s work. He’s Black Mask-lite which further bears up how stupid it was to kill Roman (Man, Catwoman is a book with so many problems they just spill out into the rest of the DCU). The HUGE change in relationship between Bruce and Tim was given about the time that should have been given to the confrontation with Two Face and vice versa. Overall, the arc was okay, but it could have been better. Unless Robinson was given a checklist of what exactly what had to happen and how many issues it had to take. If that’s the case, then it was as good as it could be and that’s what happens when editorial does more than half the writing. I’m glad Face the Face is over, but I only really feel like it wasted my time for two issues. If Robinson had kept it down to six, I would have been a lot happier. Frankly, it doesn’t really matter because once I pick up the first issue of Morrison’s “Batman and Son” this week, I’ll forget all about this arc.

Action Comics #840: There will be a statement from the staff of Earth K shortly explaining this, but Superman Returns was a bit of a disappointment for us. This is likely because Up, Up, and Away is what the movie should have been. Superman is out of commission for a bit, then returns to deal with a Lex who has discovered how to tap into Kryptonian tech. That describes both this arc and the movie, but one was obviously executed MUCH better than the other. Even without Johns’ involvement, I’m sticking around to see what Busiek does with Superman going forward. This is the first time that I’ve actually been excited to buy a Superman book (All Star doesn’t count!). I can’t give higher praise than that.

Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes #19: It is no secret that we of Earth K are lovers of the Legion. I feared that Britney Zor-El’s involvement would be disastrous, but her brief time with the Legion so far has actually made me somewhat interested in her. Well done, Mark Waid, for that was a Herculean task. One reason for that is likely that she’s sort of a background character if not a plot device and she takes a major backseat in this story. I’ve felt that after the war story, the book has meandered a bit while it sets up the next few subplots, but one of the subplots comes home to roost in this issue. The cover blurb says it all; it’s a 31^st Century Whodunit! Chameleon takes center stage and we get to know him a little better. He’s sort of been the weird exchange student that just doesn’t get it up until now, but with this story we get to see him take some initiative and we get a little in his head to understand why he doesn’t get it. So as not to ruin the mystery with spoilers, I’ll just say that while I miss the previous incarnation of the Legion a really, really lot, I’m enjoying the hell out of Waid and Kitson’s re-re-re-re-re-imagining of the Legion. Buy the trades to get caught up and then buy this thing monthly; it’s a good ride.

Brave New World #1 and Virgin Comics #0: I’d personally rather not review books that are essentially trailers for other books since their job is completely different than a normal comic. Both of these books made me want to look closer at some of the titles they featured. In that respect, they were a success. Some of the titles still look totally uninteresting to me, so that’s a failure. I will say to DC that I don’t appreciate a big thing like the reveal at the end of Brave New World appearing in a book that is essentially a preview. As a preview book, it didn’t really NEED a framing device and when said framing device shows up later and everyone who didn’t buy BNW wonders what the hell is going on, that sucks. Still, I might buy Creeper and the Atom…so Didio probably doesn’t care if I think the last couple pages are stupid.

One Month Later

2006-06-27T08:18:00.000-05:00

For a variety of reasons, I've been unable to get and read my comics from the LCS for the last month or so. For the same reasons, I've been unable to blog. If anybody is interested and doesn't already know, post a comment and I'll do a quick post explaining. However, since this is a comic blog and not one about my whiny personal life, here's the stuff you should have read in smaller doses over the last month.

Spoilers Ahead!

Action Comics #839 and Superman #653: These two issues are parts 6 & 7 of the excellent Busiek/Johns 8 parter Up, Up, And Away! If you aren’t reading this book and consider yourself a fan of DC, Superman or just super-heroes in general, you have no excuses. It has done a fabulous job of resetting Superman’s status quo (including some apparent changes to the New Krypton that must go along with the post-Crisis New Earth) and giving some hints as to how Clark has spent his year without powers. Better yet, we’re given an idea of what Lex has been up to in the last year and all his machinations finally come home to roost. There isn’t really any bad here unless and until DC starts claiming it was always their plan to return Superman to something more in line with the original Donner and Singer films. It might be true, but it’ll ring hollow in the face of all the crystalline Kryptonian tech and the shiny, 3-D S-Shield Supes is now sporting. Either way, I can’t wait to see how this arc wraps up.

Detective Comics #820: Overall I’ve really enjoyed Robinson’s OYL reset for the Dark Knight (of which this is part 7 of 8). This is going to sound like a dig, but the best word I can use to describe it is “serviceable.” It’s getting me where I need to go. Gordon is commissioner again, Batman is less of an asshat and Tim is actually working with him all the time. These are all good things.
The issue previous to this one was a total letdown as Harvey talked himself back into being Two Face and while that did make me worry for the last couple installments, I probably shouldn’t have. I have some general questions about the story (like why Batman would leave a recently stabilized Harvey in charge of meting out vigilante justice for a solid year), but most of them were probably mandated by editorial. Bottom line, I expected to just mark time until Morrison and Dini took over the Bat titles, but instead I’ve really enjoyed the ride.

Birds of Prey #98: BoP is the workhorse of my comic buy-pile. Some issues are beter than others, but there’s never a bad issue. This is one that feels a little on the worse side. I feared a deus ex machina once Prometheus took Shiva down in two panels last issue and there was something of one, but it was also one that had been foreshadowed in the lead-up to this issue. Really, the weakest part of this installment was Prometheus letting the Birds walk out once the Crime Doctor was dead. Maybe that would have happened if there was some sort of contract and he wasn’t being paid to kill the Birds, but he works for the Society now. I doubt that Talia and Deathstroke are going to be too amused to find out that he didn’t kill Oracle’s operatives when he had the chance.

I’m sorry to see Shiva go, she was a great addition to the book and I was really hoping that her status change would continue for longer. For instance, I’d like to see the Birds run into Batman or Green Arrow while Shiva was running with them as the Jade Canary. Shiva and Canary each getting “daughters” was a very nice touch of synchronicity, hopefully Simone will be around for a good long while to shepherd that new status quo. Unfortunately, with a young Asian girl who knows how to kick ass running around Babs, I can’t help but think of the mess that is Cassandra Cain. Ah well, none of that is Simone’s fault that I know of, I’ll try not to hold it against her going forward.

All-Star Superman #4: I have a bit of a crush on this book right now. The two months in-between issues seems interminable until you just about forget about how much you enjoyed the previous issue and then BAM! there’s a new issue in your pile. I recently read that Morrison described his All-Starniverse as the Pre-Crisis Superman with 20 years of continuity that we know nothing about. I love that, it shows through every issue of this book. Twenty more subjective years of Lois getting jerked around by Clark as he tries to protect his secret, twenty more subjective years of wacky stuff happening with bottled cities and long-dead alien father’s college roommates, twenty more subjective years of Jimmy being the coolest cat in the world because he hangs out with the Man of Steel.

That’s where we find ourselves with this issue. Jimmy Olsen is leading essentially a dream life with the coolest best friend, the hottest girl his age and the baddest ass job in the world for the biggest metropolitan newspaper ever. The good news is he’s about to be P.R.O.J.E.C.T. manager for a day. The bad news is he’s been cursed with bad luck by the Queen of the Gypsies. Naturally hijinks ensue and Morrison does an amazing job of showing why Superman would hang out with a kid who wears bow ties, which isn’t something that always made sense to me. This series has been absolute magic and this issue was no different. How else but magic could you explain me actually wishing I was Jimmy Olsen?

Wonder Woman #1: Okay, at this point you’ve read it, heard about it or don’t care. Bottom line, I’ve never given two shakes about Wonder Woman. I always thought the spy days sounded interesting, and now I may get to see for myself. I like Donna as Wonder Woman, I like the new Wonder Woman outfit, I liked what was done with the villains and I love to see Diana in a white version of Mrs. Peel’s catsuit.

But I’ll say this. If Heinberg runs me off this book with ridiculous and over the top melodrama (I’m looking at you, Young Avengers) or if issue three isn’t out by September…2008 (I’m looking at you AGAIN, Young Avengers), then I will be royally pissed off.

Casanova #1: I like Matt Fraction’s work. I’m not obsessive about it; when he wrote something in the universe of 30 Days of Midnight, I didn’t get it because I didn’t like the original book. But I did love the ever-loving hell out of Last of the Independents and I’m still anxiously awaiting Big Hat (pay attention, Matt! I still remember it even if nobody else does!). I’m very likely to add a Marvel book to my pull list with his Punisher. So, I dig his stuff. I dug Casanova VERY much.
I can’t explain the plot, but that’s okay because the plot is totally meaningless. It’s a bunch of influences thrown together into the pot that is Fraction’s brain and brought to a boil. The art is damn fine as well. You could do a lot worse for two thin greenbacks. Go buy this…in fact, buy it instead of Fell. I want to support the format, but I’ve heard about all I need to from Warren Ellis.

Astonishing X-Men #15: There’s been some talk in the blogalaxy that Whedon is relying to heavily on the nostalgia of the old Claremont/Byrne days and is trying to recreate some Golden Age of the X-Men with this book. I think that, whether we like it or not, nostalgia has become a big part of our comics and we need to decide if that’s what we want or not. If I can get quality writing like this each month, then I’m in like Flynn. The last time the X-Men were worth reading (aside from Morrison’s New X-Men run) was back in those days, so a writer could do a lot worse than looking back at them and emulating or making reference to that era. I also, however, give Whedon mad props for having the huevos to build on the stuff Morrison did. Since every other writer has broken their back to undo that stuff, its extra gravy for Whedon to embrace it and combine it with the classic stuff. I’m not blind to some of the problems of this series, but neither can I focus on those problems when I’m getting such an enjoyable read.

Green Lantern Corps #1: This comic isn’t bad by any stretch, but it did fail to rock my socks in any significant way. When I think of a book devoted to the Corps, I think of a book like JLA: 100% Spectacle, 0% Characterization. I’m not really interested in getting to know a bunch of Lanterns, what makes them tick, what they fear and why it keeps cropping up. I’m not really interested in watching Kilowog be the understanding father figure and Guy being the disreputable uncle. Wait, I lied, I am interested in that. But I need it in a MUCH broader context than some backwater planet that’s having a civil war…I have Marvel’s entire line for that. The GLC as a police force, sure. The GLs as cops or troubleshooters, sure. But for crying out loud, make the trouble they shoot big enough to get the attention of the Guardians of the Galaxy! Anything smaller is just Green Lantern of Sector XYZ doing their day to day stuff. I don’t really care about GL of Sector XYZ, I have Hal and his book for those kind of stories. I enjoyed this read, but it isn’t what I was expecting or what I want from a GLC book. It gets a few more issues, but I need it to get above a Tales of the Jedi setup.

Godland #11: I’d be a liar if I said I didn’t do anything other than love this homage to Jack Kirby. There are some things about it that grate on friends of mine, but I’m willing to accept those things as part of the overall tone of the book. I’ve enjoyed every issue and #11 was no exception. This series is highly recommended. However, nearly a year into the book, and its still just more and more madness piled on top of itself. Something somewhere needs to be resolved and it would be nice if it were done inside the first year’s worth of issues.

Eternals #1: Apparently Dan Didio isn’t interested in getting the money I would spend on the Fourth World, so I’m forced to spend that money elsewhere (see above as well as this entry). If you’ve read the early Eternals stuff, you can see that Kirby was in a very Chariot of the Gods mood back then (Gaiman even references that book), but the Eternals were unfortunately integrated into the Marvel Universe proper. Because of this, they’ve never really took off, they just don’t fit in the grander scheme that is the MU. Gaiman is apparently going to try and reimagine them back in and make it work this time. I enjoyed this first issue, but I’m willing to chock that up to being willing to give just about anything that’s moving a Kirbyverse forward. For six issues of Gaiman’s great writing, Kirby’s great concepts and Romita Jr.’s great art, I’m all in.

Liberty Meadows #37: I really shouldn’t have bought this. It is, after all, two freakin’ years late. Seriously, two years. But the fact is that the book is really funny and my wife loves it. We all know Cho now, he’s a very good artist. He’s got a sense of humor in strip form. Liberty Meadows is good comics and I’m stuck buying it even if it comes out every Centennial. It is my own personal shame.

Avengers Dream Team #3

2006-06-21T05:11:00.000-05:00

Iron Man

Money, technology, a ridiculous level of firepower and the guts to wield all of it while tanked on bathtub gin…that’s Tony Stark, the invincible Iron Man! As Tony Stark, Tony is a multibillionaire, the owner of a multinational company and an inventor of military grade technology of world renown. As Iron Man, he’s his own bodyguard (one of the lamer secret identities, in my opinion, even if it does explain why they’re always near the same place at roughly the same time) and a human being wrapped in enough ordinance to take on a couple of Balkan nations without breaking a sweat. What Thor is up close, Iron Man does at distance and if it comes to a technological problem, Tony’ll have it fixed and patched into his armor before the Mad Thinker gets off his coffee break. Sure he’s wildly promiscuous and a dipso, but I think that just adds a little unpredictability, and who doesn’t want that when you’re fighting Dr. Doom or Ultron?

I used to like Iron Man quite a bit, but over the years my love affair with ol' Shellhead has gone the way of the dodo; while I'd be hard pressed to pinpoint at what time I started to drift away from the Iron Avenger's fan club, but I know what might best sum it up: the aformentioned issue of Busiek's run, when Cap tries to get Tony to break Morgan's control but Tony is too caught up in being a high-and-mighty knight to be able to do so. That inherent snobbery which has pervaded his characterization over recent years has made me distance myself from Mr. Stark.

Yellowjacket

Yup, that's right: instead of an alcoholic snob, I instead opt for a mentally disturbed wife-beater. Who says I don't make bold choices? I think one of the reasons I like Hank Pym as a character is that he does have all of these obstacles to overcome, and has successfully regained the trust and respect of those he once let down (Chuck Austen's horribly out-of-chracter run aside); after all, the infamous "wife-beating" aspect of Earth 616 Hank (as opposed to the rabid jackass Ultimate Hank) took place when the man was on the brink of a nervous breakdown. He's repented, atoned, reformed, and healed: as John Astin said on many an episode of Night Court, Hank's "feeling much better now." Out of all of Pym's many aliases, the one which I've always enjoyed the most is Yellowjacket, which has always struck me as the most interesting variation, both visually and in terms of abilities. Plus, I'm sure it doesn't hurt that this was the identity he was using when I first started reading the series.

I love the Yellowjacket outfit, Hank had a real look going there. He's also a scientific genius, so I can't argue against that since that's a selling point of Iron Man as well. But COME ON, as Yellowjacket he's essentially the Wasp without the hotness! Sure, he's done bad and made good and that's a major theme of the Avengers (they have a lot of ex-villains in the ranks, no wonder the MU USA wants to register them), so there's something metatextual there. I'm thinking this might come down to a pick of Yellowjacket because he makes for interesting reading while I would replace him with the Wasp because she's more interesting to look at. I don't think this qualifies as shallow so much as good marketing. Think of the covers, man!

I Know, I Know, But "Loyal Book Apes" Just Doesn't Have the Same Ring to It . . .

2006-06-16T10:51:00.000-05:00

I am currently three weeks behind in my comic reading, due to my recent move screwing up the delivery of my comics,which is a tad frustrating. So far I've managed to stay spoiler-free for 52; not so for Civil War. Darn you, Sci-Fi Wire and your too descriptive headlines!

I'm hoping that by next week Bubblegum Tate and I can get things back on track and regale you with something other than increasingly non-controversial wish lists.

Until then, please enjoy a few testimonials for my alternate-universe publishing company, Infinite Monkey Press. Who knows, maybe someday I'll be able to import some of the titles across the vibrational barrier . . .

Avengers Dream Team #2

2006-06-14T05:11:00.000-05:00

Thor

When it comes to raw power in the Marvel Universe, you can’t top the Mighty Thor. He’s so powerful he’d probably be able to hang in the DC Universe. There isn’t much to Thor other than being a raging powerhouse. Well, he does have the hammer and the hammer gives him the ability to fly, travel across dimensions (although usually only home to Asgard), hit people at great distances and spin it as a shield to deflect just about any attack thrown at him. Combine all that power, that weapon and the fact that Thor isn’t creative enough to know when to quit and you’ve got the “brick” of the Avengers.

I object to Thor solely on the basis that all of the "thee"s and "thou"s give me a headache.

Quasar
Remember that scene in Busiek's run that I mentioned last time? Well, our boy Wendell Vaughn was right there with Monica in the "I Heart Avengers" club. Plus, there's the cosmic-level powers and that whole "protector of the universe" thing. Oddly enough, I never really read Avengers while Quasar was a member; however, I was a huge fan of his solo series, and it's been a bummer that he's been moved to the background of the Marvel Universe since its cancellation. It would do my heart good to see Quasar back in the big leagues again; I've had great fear that Marvel might use the Annihilation "event" as an excuse to knock Wendell off.
If they did, I can only hope that it would be Kid Reaper who came to collect.

I'll give you Ye Olde Queen's Englishe gets really annoying from Thor, especially becuse he's a VIKING. STOOPID. I blame Stan for that side of things (not my precious King, no sir!). Let's replace Thor with... BETA RAY BILL!!!

Quasar is a good pick! I think in the MU someone who's operating on a "cosmic" scale is a very good idea. I mean, Thor sort of kicks out the jams on a higher plane, but he's not much for gathering intel which means he only knows what Odin wants him to know. Quasar has got his cosmic gauntleted finger on the pulse of the universe. Considering how often all roads lead to Earth in the MU, that makes good sense. Wow, where's the controversy? Is this just a goofy love fest where we disagree but admire eachother's intentions and forethought? LAME. Let's find something to argue about.

Avengers Dream Team #1

2006-06-09T00:11:00.000-05:00

All right, I know that in our dream list introduction I said that we were going to also include an alternate member picked from the ranks of characters who've never held membership, but unfortunatley your good friend Cap'n Neurotic has been lax in his JLA Dream Team duties.

Lo siento.

However, Tate and I had both made quite a bit of headway on our Avengers discussions back when we first started working on our dream team ideas, so rather than leaving our reader(s?) hanging, I figured we'd save the alternates for later, and dive right into our ideas for the best line-up of Earth's Mightiest Heroes.

Captain

America

Cap is the leader of the Avengers. That’s not a fact, it is an ontological statement describing who he IS. Nobody is more qualified to lead the Avengers based on combat experience, tactical and strategic know-how or ability to inspire. When Cap says that you’ve got to get it done, nobody asks how, they just follow him to the job. On top of this, he’s an excellent hand-to-hand combatant, a gymnast and carries an indestructible shield that keeps him alive and in the thick giving orders where lesser mortals might be turned into red, white and blue paste.

Blah blah blah contrarian blah blah can't really argue blah blah blah and now my pick.

Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau)

I could mention her wide range of powers, or her many years on the team, or her stints as leader, but my choice of Captain Marvel (can't bring myself to call her Photon, let alone Pulsar) can be traced back to possibly my favorite moment of Kurt Busiek's run on The Avengers: the scene when Captain America and Hawkeye try to snap their ensorceled teammates out of Morgan le Fey's spell by appealing to their inner pride in being Avengers. A depressingly small number of them responded to the call, but Monica was chief among them. That's one of the things I looked for when picking my team: someone whose identity is tied so tightly with the team. Maybe it's the whole "living together in a mansion" thing, but to me, the Avengers were always closer to being a family than the Justice League, and it's that close-knit behavior which I most associate with them. Of course, that's not the only criteria, otherwise Captain America and Hawkeye both would have made the cut. I also tend to have empathy for those characters who have no outlet other than the team book: Cap and Hawkeye have ranged far and wide, but outside of Avengers, Monica has been sorely lacking in exposure for far too long, although Nextwave (which I have yet to read) might remedy that.

I own that issue of Avengers, awesome stuff. I can see why you'd use that as a criteria. With the JLA, theyr'e pretty much solo acts that come together for the biggest problems, but the Avengers are family and you want someone who is really committed to the fam if you're going to do a season of Real Word New York of the Marvel Universe. Which is essentially what the Avengers are. Several heroes, picked to live in a mansion, given a goofy job and then watched to see what happens when they stop being polite and start getting real.

I'd be curious to know now if Nextwave has sated your craving for Monica. I find the book hilarious, but I also have no emotional attachment to previous incarnations of the characters (those that existed before).

Bottom line, I can't really argue against this choice because she's acquitted herself as an Avenger well in the past but, once again, I find myself making some picks based on the awe they inspire. And Captain Marvel does not inspire my awe.

Justice League Dream Team #7

2006-06-06T00:11:00.000-05:00

Mister Miracle

I’m a total freak for the Fourth World, so this one won’t come as a huge shock to those that know me. However, why Scott over Orion or Barda? I needed someone who knew there way around technology. Mister Miracle has the greatest relationship with a Mother Box EVER and while he might not be a genius of technology, she IS! Just get Mother Box near the techno-problem, and she’ll start solve it quicker than you can say “Hightfather’s PJs.” How many times do the villains put the heroes in some elaborate death trap? Once in a while, one might answer. If you were in a diabolical death trap, would you rather have Superman or the guy who escaped from Apokolips when he was barely out of his teens? Scott Free all the way, man! Plus, if the JLA were ever in a real pinch for firepower, Scott just has to call his wife and ask her to help out. In case you didn’t know, Scott Free is married to Big Barda, onetime leader of Darkseid’s Female Furies. We’re talking about a woman who beat down the Wonder Woman of the 853^rd century (“She might last a week or two on the firepit crust-colonies of Armagetto,” Barda says after knocking Wonder Woman through most of the Watchtower, “but she lacks discipline.”)!

Mister Miracle rounds out this team and makes it the perfect Justice League of America.

I know this flies in the face of all of Tate's Kriby-love (I suspect he was tempted to have an All New Gods JLA), but I never have liked the idea of having any of the Fourth World characters in the League; I think I've always felt that the New Gods were a bit too, I don't know, cosmic to be involved with the League. Yes, Scott and Barda worked well in Giffen's League due to the comedic tone, and the inclusion of the New Gods during Morrison's run fit in with the escalating threat of his run, but on the whole, I shy away from the idea. So, who is my 7th? Let me tell you, I've gone back and forth on this a lot, and after a heated round of einey-meeny-miney-moe, I've settled on:

Captain Atom

I realize that my League is a bit testosterone heavy, and I was this close to choosing Black Canary, but something made me go with the good Captain instead. I think Captain Atom is one of those characters who hasn't fared so well over the years outside of his own title; in his previous tenures in the League he was often portrayed as bumbling, intolerant, and kind of unlikable hot-head. A lot of that came from him being the straight man in Giffen's JLE, and a lot came from the horror story that was Extreme Justice (the less said about that the better). I guess I'd just like a chance for Nate to finally step forward and show his potential as a leader without all of the artificial obstacles being thrown in his way.

The Fourth World is pretty cosmic, this is true. But Scott and Barda are about as down-to-earth as you can get in the DCU. They live here...and in suburbia. Plus, they're really great characters. It isn't like I wanted Lightray in the League or anything. That would be totally weak.

While I can certainly understand wanting Captain Atom in the League for both firepower and to give him a shot at being a likable guy (Extreme Justice was quite the load of baggage for him), I'm surprised to see him mentioned as leader. You can see from earlier that I assumed Hawkman would be the leader of Todd's JLA and I stand by that pick. Maybe Captain Atom would be a good second in command, but with Katar around I can't see him wearing the big shoes at the Big Show, Nate's tenure as leader in the JLE notwithstanding.

Wow...the most non-argument argument ever. On to the Alternates!

Justice League Dream Team #6

2006-06-03T17:10:00.000-05:00

Zatanna (fishnets)

Sweet Christmas, I LOVE Zatanna. She’s like that soulful and talented artsy chick that is super hot but has no idea how hot she is. On top of that, being half homo magi, she wields an amazing level of mystical might. Also, as the daughter of Zatarra, she has access to decades of spells, research and lore at her fingertips. The kicker is, due to her great relationship with her father, she’s already studied and knows most of it! On a final note, my League needs someone who can pull off fishnets without looking like a Rocky Horror reject and, as much as I love the Black Canary, Zatanna leads the League in hotness.

All right, something we disagree on!

Sort of.

I mean, yes, Zatanna is one of my picks. Out of the small number of magic users who have graced the League over the years, Zee is the only one whose presence automatically screams "Justice League!" to me; the first issue of Justice League of America I can remember buying for myself was a Zatanna-centred storyline. I mourned her departure from the League during the Justice League Detroit days, not only because it removed one of my favorite characters from the book, but also because the storyline itself was SO horrendous. But I digress.

So, if I agree on picking Zatanna, where is my quibble with Tate. That's easy: the fishnets.

That's right: I hate Fishnet Zatanna.

Chalk it up to my contrarian nature, if you must, since practically every fanboy out there seems smitten by them, but I've never been able to get 100% behind the stage magician look as a costume for Zee. Sexy? Definitely. Heroic? Eh.

Me, I prefer my Zatanna in something a bit more super-hero-y

Skipping why we all love Zatanna (and we ALL do, every single last one of us), we'll go right to the Great Fishnet Controversy. I agree that Zatanna needs a super-hero outfit, but I maintain that the stage magician's outfit is much better than her other one. From the List of Bad Things, you can see that I want to get at least a suggestion of what a character is able to do from their costume and/or name. That's the most classic trait of the super-hero outfit and one of the major things that distinguished the super-hero from the pulp hero. Skin tight outfits with snazzy colors, chest emblems and capes all scream super-hero in a generic way, but the stage magician outfit literally tells Zatanna's origin (the short version anyway) as you look at her...up and down...very, very slowly. As soon as you see her, you know how she fights crime and what her day job is. AND SHE'S FREAKIN' SMOKIN' HOT IN IT! See the offering below and we'll let the fans decide.

Maybe the "K" Should Stand for "Konstantly Behind Schedule"

2006-06-02T22:27:00.000-05:00

The Legion of Wordy Bastages have been busy combatting the forces of evil recently*, which is why we have been lax in our posting of anything outside of wish lists this week. I can't speak for Tate, but I know that my situation is calming down, so I hope to finally get around to reviewing X-Men: Last Stand before it hits DVD, and maybe a few comics here and there as well.

But the real reason I'm posting is to comment on two pieces of news that caught my attention this evening.

The first one, which I'm sure will get tons of comic blogosphere attention, is the news that Manhunter has been given an additional 5 issue commitment: there was much rejoicing in Cap'n Neurotic's new household at that news. Who knows, maybe the Cameron Chase curse is, if not broken, at least weakening.

The other bit of news that got me excited was that the upcoming Starlin-penned mini Mystery in Space will feature not only former L.E.G.I.O.N. member Captain Comet, but also one of my favorite Starlin creations . . .

Yes, that's right, it's the return of The Weird!

Who the heck is The Weird, you're probably asking? That's a very good question, and one which I plan to explore more soon, after I dig the issues out of storage and re-read them.

My one question now is exactly how The Weird is still in operation, since, at the end of the mini, I'm pretty sure he exploded.

My guess?

Superboy punched something**.

*I don't care what anyone else says, "having to move" and "dealing with shoddy Internet connections" are too evil!
**So, what's the over/under on when that joke gets stale?

Justice League Dream Team #5

2006-05-30T11:10:00.000-05:00

Firestorm (Ronnie Raymond and Dr. Martin Stein)

As adaptable as Green Lantern but in a completely different way, we have the original Firestorm, the Nuclear Man! Limited enhanced strength and invulnerability wrapped up with high speed flight and the ability to transmute anything to any other thing at the atomic level. Who else can deal with a barrage of missiles by turning them into petunias in pretty vases? Zatanna maybe, but she’d do it with MAGIC, Firestorm does it with SCIENCE! This brings me to the next part of what makes Firestorm unique and solidifies his place on the League. He’s a combination of Ronnie Raymond, confident college student, and Dr. Martin Stein, seasoned professor of physics. He’s got youthful exuberance combined with the advice of a learned man of science and of the world. A fine addition to the Big Show.

Oh, look, we agreed again. Yippee.

To be honest, when I first proposed the whole "dream team" idea to Tate, Firestorm was the first person to pop into my head as a must-have member. My first introduction to Ronnie and the Professor was The Fury of Firestorm #4; there was no way I could turn down a cover like this:

Inside that issue I got to see young Ronnie struggling with some tough decisions, weighing what he knows was right with what he thought was best, a struggle that brought him into conflict with the JLA; a conflict that was almost over before it began when he encase Superman in a globe of Kryptonite and Zatanna in a globe of lead.

Did I mention this was a couple of hundred feet over the ocean when he did this?

The other League members rushed to free the others, and then swarmed back to confront the rash young hero (was *this* close to calling him a hot-head), only to find him floating there, face in hands, crying his eyes out.

Now, I can't tell you exactly what was going through my 7 year old mind when I read that story and saw a hero who was pushed to do the wrong thing and instantly regretted it and strove to make up for it, but I can tell you one thing: I was a Firestorm fan from then on.

Again, what can I say when there's no controversy? I may not have the emotional connection to Firestorm that Todd does due to comics, but I have it from television. I read mostly Marvel when I was a kid, but I watched Superfriends religiously. That's where I met Firestorm. He just seemed like a heckuva good idea. He got the advice from his "parent" but he was in the driver's seat and didn't have to listen if he didn't want to. However, he was a good kid and usually listened even if he did talk back a bit. There's a good lesson there. Since then, I've enjoyed Firestorm in the comics (except for this latest series...it’s not the Firestorm I know AND I'm already buying way too much of DC's line), especially that bit in Crisis where Killer Frost ends up loving him. Absolutely classic.

Tate's Top 50 DC Characters of All Time: Bottom 25

2006-05-26T18:27:00.000-05:00

Once again in no particular order here is the other half of my top 50. And look! I only broke the two sentence rule once here too!

Superman – What can be said? The first and best example of the super-hero and the moral compass of the DCU.

Batman – The true heir to the pulp heroes that preceded him. Master martial artist, brilliant scientist, adventurer, vigilante and weird creature of the night all wrapped up into the perfect synthesis of pulp hero and super-hero.

Kyle Rayner – Kyle is a perfect coming of age story and walked many of us through our awkward 20s as we tried to figure out just what we were supposed to do with ourselves now that we were saddled with all the responsibility. Reading about Kyle is like hanging out with that friend all of us has; you know, the one we wonder how they’re going to make it in the world one moment and the next moment we’re impressed how together they seem to be.

Hal Jordan – While Hal isn’t quite the ideal hero he used to be (test pilot isn’t nearly as cool a job now as it was in the 60s), he’s still the only super-hero I can think of that flies into the teeth of danger humming a jaunty little ditty and thinking about which hot chick he saw in the crowd would like to get with Green Lantern after she’s saved from the menace. Hal Jordan is what Plato would call the Form of Cool.

Guy Gardner – Kyle is the guy you call when you’ve been out drinking and find yourself arrested. You can’t call Guy because he’s next to you in the cell and likely suggested whatever it was that got you arrested.

Matter Eater Lad – When a kid manages to get into the premier super team of the 30^th century based on his ability to consume and digest any matter, you know he’s a cat that has to have a sense of humor. It’s icing on the cake when he’s able to save the day too.

Brainiac 5 – He’s smarter than you; he knows it, you know it and, just because he’s a nice guy, he’s trying his best not to treat you like the drooling ape you are in comparison. He does not, however, always succeed. He’s a good guy anyway.

Lex Luthor – Mad scientist, leader of super-villains, captain of industry and one-time president of the USA. Oh, and he’s the only bad guy who attacks Superman because he’s smart (as opposed to those thatattack Superman because they’re really stupid).

Ra’s al Ghul – I once heard someone say that Ra’s is the kind of guy you’d meet in a really upscale bar and start talking to only to realize that he had some pretty darn good ideas about the way the world should be run…right up until he mentioned the killing of 85% of the Earth’s population and ruling over the remaining 15%.

Two Face – A man with a brilliant career in front of him and a pack of demons behind him slips through not fault of his own and the demons catch up to him. His keen mind, knowing both sides of legality, is overshadowed only by the fact that it’s there’s no telling what he’s going to do from one second to the next.

Booster Gold – The fact is, Booster is how most of us would be if we had super-powers as we used them to shamelessly plug ourselves every chance we got and try and turn our celebrity into money. We pretend we like him because he’s a lovable rogue, but really it’s because he’s the real Everyman of the super-hero set.

Blue Beetle (Ted Kord) – Beetle is how most of us would LIKE to be if we had super-powers (or gadgets or whatever). The fact that Booster convinces him to give in on wild schemes is like a look into most of our heads as our self-serving side cajoles our responsible side into ridiculous antics.

The Viking Commando – He’s a Viking warrior that wears fatigues and combat boots and carries a machine gun along with his axe and was resurrected to kick Nazi ass. How the hell can you not love him?

Zatanna – Zatanna is the hot female best friend with whom you always have an amazing time with but have no chance of ever getting out of the “friend zone.”

Frankenstein – Although this poor bastard has seen some rough treatment from popular culture over the years, Grant Morrison gave us a pulp-flavored version that instantly made it into my top fifty.

The Question – Whether he’s a fighting corruption as an Objectivist under Ditko, learning the secrets of the universe as a Zen master under O’Neil or being a conspiracy nutjob on JLU, the Question is always an entertaining character. Totally unpredictable, he’s the spanner in the DCU’s works.

Supergirl – This is the pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El I’m talking about here. She was a heroine who started out hidden by her cousin and then grew into a superlative hero in her own right and she managed to do it all without acquiring a Tramp Stamp (tm).

Black Canary – Dinah is working her way up the list of top martial artists in the DCU, is a formidable detective and has probably done more good with the Birds of Prey than she did all those years as a Leaguer put together. She’s also part of a DCU dynasty, and those are my favorite part of DC.

Starman – Speaking of dynasties, Jack Knight didn’t want anything to do with it. But the bone of contention between himself and his father became the thing that finally let them connect.

Wildcat – Ted Grant is a man’s man and a ladies’ man who will kick your ass for being belligerent and then buy you a beer to say he’s sorry. Mentor and Sex God, thy name is Wildcat.

Black Adam – While the original idea of a previous champion of Shazam going bad isn’t exactly inspired, the idea that Black Adam could and would return to the ideals that caused Shazam to choose him in the first place is. The fact that he did it his way (and that this involves vibrating the Psycho Pirate’s face off) is just gravy.

Robin (Tim Drake) – For the first time, we have a Robin that we can actually believe would take over for Batman AS BATMAN if Bruce should ever be unable to perform his duties (why does that sound like Miss America?). Tim is the World’s Greatest Teen Detective and that’s always been my favorite aspect of Batman; it really is just natural that it be my favorite part of Robin as well.

Robin (Dick Grayson) – You’ll note that I’m avoiding all the nastiness that has been Nightwing since Dick left the Titans. Dick was yin to Bruce’s yang and brought a much needed smile and joke to the gloomy cave Batman called home; he is missed.

Hawkman – His background may be complicated, but there is nothing simpler than a man with a massive wingspan and a scary hawk mask swooping out of the sky to club you with a mace. The coolness of that image is certainly a lot simpler than trying to explain WHY that’s so darn cool.

The Cap'n's 50 Best DC Character Countdown - #1-25

2006-05-25T00:58:00.000-05:00

Okay, I know I said I'd wait till Friday to put up the rest of my list, but I can't help myself; the compulsion is strong in this one.* After having read through the lists of quite a few of the other participants in The Great Curve's poll, the only real regret I feel is that I neglected Shayera Thal, who was the heart and soul of Ostrander's Hawk-titles. Oh, well; maybe next time

25. Two-Face (Harvey Dent) Maybe it’s because one of the first Batman stories I ever read was a reprint of his first two appearances, but Two-Face has always been one of my favorite Bat-foes. His reliance on the flip of a coin is just a great hook, and the evolution of his psychosis over the years has added some interesting layers.

24. Animal Man (Buddy Baker) The everyman hero who inherited the mantle of weirdness magnet, Buddy is defined almost as much by his family as by his powers.

23. Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) Watching the evolution of Cassie was one of the joys of Young Justice and Teen Titans, although I do admit that I sometimes miss her old makeshift costume.

22. Superboy (Kon-el) I found the adventures of the youth constantly struggling to live up to the burden of the "S" more compelling than the adventures of the originator of the "S" himself.

21. Crazy Jane (Kay Challis) Sure, she may be Deus Ex Machina Lass, but Crazy Jane afforded a world of storytelling possibilities, not to mention what was probably the most accurate depiction of DID (then MPD) this side of Madison Clell's Cuckoo.

20. Raven While not necessarily my favorite Titan, I have always found her to be one of the more interesting members, due to her constant war with the demons inside her.

19. Matter Eater Lad (Tenzil Kem) To this day I'm still not sure how Tenzil made it through the Legion's try-out process; as ludicrous characters go, he's pretty high on the scale. But it was during Giffen's run that he became into the Tenzil I know and love: a ludicrous character who grew to embrace his own ludicrous nature.

18. Robin (Tim Drake) Dick may have been first, Jason may have been the most controversial, Steph may have been the most abused for stupid plot devices, but Tim is the only one who’s actually made me care about the mantle.

17. Captain Boomerang (Digger Harkness) Although a bit goofy in concept and design, his time in the Suicide Squad did wonders for ol’ Boomerbutt’s characterization. Self-absorbed, mercenary, spiteful, and vindictive, Digger also proved to be a highly capable agent when the mood struck.

16. Hawkman (Carter Hall) Despite having a continuity that could make your head spin, Carter makes the list because of his role as a bridge between the heroic ages; the addition of his role as an eternal reincarnate has opened up some interesting storylines as well. Plus, as stated before, he just looks cool.

15. Dr. Fate (Kent Nelson) The premiere mystic in the DCU, I always enjoyed Fate's hodgepodge of Egyptian trappings mingled with the Lords of Order mythology; Kent's struggles to avoid being subsumed by Nabu were just icing on the cake that was Fate.

14. The Spectre (Jim Corrigan) The struggle between justice and vengeance given form, The Spectre's penchant for over-the-top retribution appeals to the horror fan in me; during Ostrander's run, the spiritual battle between Corrigan and the Wrath of God cranked the drama up a notch.

13. The Demon (Etrigan/Jason Blood) A total wildcard, just as liable to help as to hinder, making any story featuring Etrigan a constant guessing game of which way he's going to jump. Plus, rhyming!

12. John Constantine Manipulative, conniving, and a right bleedin’ bastard to boot; that’s our John, and we love him for it.

11. Cameron Chase Yes, she may be a jinx on any book she stars in (farewell, Manhunter, we hardly knew ye), but dang it, Chase is cool!

10. Ambush Bug (Irwin Schwabb) This should make Ragnell happy. He was “Bwah-ha-ha” before “Bwah-ha-ha” was cool. Wait . . . was "Bwah-ha-ha" ever cool? Anyway, I had to include this pinnacle of absurdity in my list, lest I face the wrath of Crazed Mutant Letterhacks

9. Terra (Tara Markov) Traitorous witch, but a compelling one; the rise and fall of Terra remains the high point of the Wolfman/Perez Titans for me.

8. Starman (Jack Knight) He started out as the ultimate reluctant hero, and eventually grew to be the perfect inheritor of the family name.

7. Firestorm (Ronnie Raymond and Prof. Martin Stein) Cool design, cool powers, and an interesting take on the youth vs. experience dynamic; Firestorm has been through many incarnations over the years, but while I've enjoyed aspects of all of them (the "RonRay" debacle in Extreme Justice being the exception that proves the rule), it's the original composition that will always hold a special place in my heart.

6. Phase (L.E.G.I.O.N.) A strong, capable leader who was one of the only people able to handle Dox, Phase was the rock which kept L.E.G.I.O.N. functioning. I keep hoping that IC will have undone that horrible “She’s part Cargggite” retcon from the Peyer years, but that's a rant for another time.

5. Oracle (Barbara Gordon) Do I even need to elaborate on this one? Babs is da bomb, yo.

4. Dove (Dawn Granger) I'm an unabashed fan of the Kessels' Hawk and Dove series, which was filled to the brim with engaging characters, of which Dawn was the height; she was a welcome reinvention of the Dove concept, not bogged down with the ongoing "but I'm a pacifist!" angst, but instead empowered by an analytical mind which kept her several steps ahead of her foes. I will be forever grateful to Geoff Johns for bringing Dawn back; now if only someone would utilize her. I'd especially like to see her run into Captain Arsala again

3. Deadshot (Floyd Lawton) My favorite anti-hero; plays by his own set of warped morals, but doesn’t hide behind any sort of “just trying to reform” shtick. Floyd makes no bones about who he is, which is refreshing.

2. Amanda Waller Tough, no-nonsense, doesn’t take crap from anyone, whether hefty or svelte The Wall endures through sheer attitude alone.

1. Vril Dox The ultimate manipulative bastard (with apologies to Constantine), watching Dox work his Machiavellian schemes was always a thing of beauty. I'm sure that mine will be practically the only vote that Vril gets, with most attention being paid to Querl instead, but the emotionally detached bastard interpretation of Brainy owes much to his "heroic" ancestor.

And there you have it: my own strange take on DC's best characters. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go draw up my list of "Characters That I Think Are Really Cool, But Couldn't In Good Conscience Call 'The Best'" Let's see: Phobia, Red Tornado, Tyranosaurs Reich . . .

*Is it sad that using that phrase actually conjures up memories of Atari Force more strongly than it does Star Wars? I thought so.

The Cap'n's 50 Best DC Character Countdown - #26-50

2006-05-24T00:40:00.000-05:00

Unlike Bubblegum Tate, I did do my best to rank the characters as suggested by The Great Curve; it was difficult, and a few of these were practically a flip of the coin, but I think it's pretty representative of my take on things. As for how I chose the list, it was mainly a gut instinct sort of thing, driven by the thoughts "would I buy a book just because this character was in it?" and "is this character an exemplar of a certain trait I find appealing?" and the like. I tried not to include anyone merely for a the "ooo, cool costume/powers/etc." factor; if I couldn't come up with a rationalization for their inclusion outside of that, then they got bumped from the list.

I now prepare myself for the myriad "what were you thinking" comments which would surely appear if anyone besides Tate and myself actually read this.

50. Psycho Pirate (Roger Hayden) I always liked his powers and costume design from the first time I saw him in All-Star Squadron, but it was his role in the original Crisis and its after-effects on him which actually gave him enough weight as a character to include here.

49. Question (Victor Sage) Having never had the pleasure of reading his old series, The Question is here solely on the strength of his design, his appearances on JLU, and his intriguing nature so far in 52. I look forward to learning more about him.

48. Lady Shiva Prior to OYL, Shiva wouldn’t have made my list, as I don't follow most of the series in which she's been a regular fixture; her recent activities in Birds of Prey, however, bumped her up a few pegs in my book.

47. The Creeper (Jack Ryder) The wild and crazy guy who added a dollop of chaos to Justice League and Hawk and Dove was a high point of the 90s for me; I enjoyed the Uptight Jekyll & Madcap Hyde interpretation of the character.

46. Glorith One of my favorite reinventions of Giffen’s “Gap” Legion was the transformation of minor villainess Glorith into the new Time Trapper. Whereas the old Time Trapper was a mass of contradictory interpretations, Glorith was straightforward: the embodiment of ego and vanity and a hunger for power.

45. The Calculator (Noah Kuttler) As a regular super-villain, he was just another goofball with a gimmick. As the anti-Oracle (and a mentally unstable one at that), he's got potential out the whazoo.

44. Power Girl (Karen Starr) Headstrong, opinionated, unafraid to speak her mind, PG's ping-pong origin story could have been a horrible detriment to the character *coughHawkmancough*, but instead it only added to her poignancy.

43. Kobra Not generally a fan of the terrorist characters, but there's just something about the self-proclaimed bringer of the Kali Yuga that rises above the typical comic book madman for me.

42. The Spoiler (Stephanie Brown) Poor Steph never got any respect, being told time and time again to give up the cape & cowl, but she kept on plugging away, until she finally earned her shot at the big leagues. Sadly, TPTB decided to use her as an object lesson, wasting a perfectly good character for shock value.

41. Killer Frost This heat-sucking femme fatale is decidedly disturbed and definitely deadly; she's been a favorite ever since her turn as the villain in the first issue of Firestorm I ever bought.

40. Sandman (Wesley Dodd) A man driven by his dreams to seek justice, armed with little more than a gas mask and sleeping gas, the old school Sandman cut an impressive figure; although I first was exposed to him in his purple-and-gold-tights phase, it's the pulp-inspired fedora incarnation that earns him a place on the list.

39. Killowog C'mon, how can you not love the big poozer? While there are things I like about Alan, Kyle, and Guy, it's steady, inventive, Communist-leaning Killowog who stands out in my mind as a great character.

38. Blue Devil (Dan Cassidy) I miss the good ol’ days, pre-Neron, when BD was just a stuntman turned reluctant hero and bonafide weirdness magnet; whoever was behind turning him into a demonic sob story better keep their hands off of Ambush Bug

37. Sensor Girl (Projectra) The moment Jeckie took her revenge on Nemesis Kid for Val's death relying on nothing but her own strength, I gained a whole new respect for her; her turn as the enigmatic Sensor Girl just cemented that respect.

36. Hourman (Rex Tyler) Rex Tyler, Super-Junkie. 'Nuff said.

35. Johnny Quick (Johnny Chambers) This veteran of the All-Star Squadron is my favorite speedster, thanks to his quick temper and even faster mouth; the various Flash's might be paragons of integrity, virtue, and the like, but Johnny's flaws made him much more relatable.

34. The Riddler (Edward Nigma) There’s just something about a villain obsessively compelled to give himself away that’s inherently entertaining to me.

33. Plastic Man (Eel O’Brien) I'll admit that I’ve got a soft spot for the comedic characters; the non-stop chicanery of the Morrison-era Plastic Man was one of my favorite aspects of his run on JLA

32. Black Adam The current interpretation of Adam as a man who does what he feels he must in order to protect his people has made what was a fairly generic foil for the Big Red Cheese into a fascinatingly mercurial character who begs the question of whether the ends justify the means.

31. Black Orchid The eternal mystery surrounding her made her both compelling and frustrating to me, as I yearned to know her history, but knew deep down that no origin could ever be as interesting as the lack of one; having read Gaiman's Black Orchid series, I still stand by that statement.

30. Stargirl (Courtney Whitmore) Her evolution from rebellious brat to full-blown hero has been one of the real joys of Johns' JSA; there's just something about watching the growth of the next generation of heroes that appeals to me, and Courtney is a prime example of that.

29. Sue Dibny Have loved the ultimate super-hero's wife ever since she and Ralph decided to pain the Justice League Detroit's base chartreuse. Yes, she still would have made the list even without being bumped off in Identity Crisis. Cynics.

28. Elongated Man (Ralph Dibny) The nose twitch; it’s all about the nose twitch.

27. Wildcat (Ted Grant) A never-say-die scrapper with a bit of a stubborn streak, Ted Grant is not someone you want to mess with.

26. Bizarro Me am hating Bizarro. Him am worst villain ever. Me no want him on list.

Tate's Top 50 DC Characters of All Time: Bottom 25

2006-05-23T12:13:00.000-05:00

Bottom 25 might be a bit misleading since my list of the Best 50 DC characters is really in no particular order. I put them down as they occured to me so there are clumps of characters that make some sense together (at least to me) since one thought led to another. At any rate. Here are 25 of my top 50.

Oh, and because we realize that we're wordy, we limited ourselves to two sentences per. I don't know about the Cap'n, but I stretched those sentences to the breaking point. And I broke the rule on one guy. Other than that, there were no rules!

Captain Marvel – A child’s pure and innocent heart gifted with powers of the gods and ordered to do right. That’s a fairy tale concept I can get behind, especially when you wrap it in super-hero trappings

Phantom Stranger – A much more impressive Deus Exposition Machina and harbinger of doom than some big, dome-headed dude in a toga (I’m looking at you, Marvel!). When this gentleman calls, it is both dreadfully dire and dreadfully ridiculous.

Gentleman Ghost – I’ll be honest, I don’t even know what this guy’s deal is. But the concept is too delightfully silly and his design is so weirdly creepy that this is a guy without whom the DCU isn’t complete.

The Joker – Everyone was afraid of clowns long before we read about the Joker. He just took an irrational fear and made it a rational one.

King Faraday – James Bond is played out and who cares what Jack Ryan is up to. King Faraday is the true gentleman spy of the golden age of espionage and he brings the exact same personality to the Game in the modern age.

Sinestro – Sinestro has taken more of a turn towards mustache twirling evil lately, but in the beginning he was just a fascist who thought he was doing right by his people; that’s depth. I have faith that that the Sinestro Corps is going to take his fingers off his mustache and place his foot back in somebody’s ass.

Crazy Quilt – Artistic talent + using said talent for nefarious purposes + weird vision problems + getting your ass handed to you by the Boy Commandos + getting your ass handed to you by Robin = Someone who could only be called a villain in the DCU. He and Angle Man should get a weird buddy-movie style miniseries.

Catman – He wouldn’t have made the cut before Villains United, but Catman just goes to show that the DCU is a rich and wonderful playground with tons of background characters just waiting for the chance to become stars. The right writer, the right story and nearly anybody can become A-List.

Deadshot – Wrist Magnums? Hell YES Clint makes the cut.

Mister Miracle (Scott Free) – Its no secret that I love the Fourth World but in addition to that Scott has wacky adventures while teaching us things about marriage and the inherent desire for freedom in the human spirit. He loves his traps, he loves his midget sidekick and he LOVES his woman.

Big Barda – A woman with a heart as big as her bicep but with eyes only for Scott. She fell in love with a man who was able to show her things she didn’t even know existed…and then they escaped Apokolips.

Darkseid – Wrapping up my trifecta of Fourth Worlders is Darkseid. When Darkseid shows up the stakes are instantly higher and it’s always an “oh sh!t” moment. Who is the greatest threat to the DCU? Darkseid Is.

Jim Gordon – Jim is Batman for Gotham City when Batman can’t be (that is, from sunup to sundown). He works within the law more or less, but he holds the line in a town beset with weirdness and does a remarkable job for it for a guy without a cape.

Sgt. Rock – My dad loved this guy and I love this guy. That’s legacy and that’s a huge part of what DC is all about.

The Haunted Tank – A horror war story (as if war wasn’t horrible enough) is another one of those amazingly weird concept that could only survive in the DCU. Another amazing part of the DCU is that we accept that the Haunted Tank exists in the same world as Superman and Ambush Bug.

Danny the Street – I loved Morrison’s run on X-Men, but even turned loose in the Marvel Universe, Grant couldn’t come up with something as delightfully weird as a transvestite street. Lesser writers would have made Danny a one-shot centerpiece for a story; in the DCU, Danny joins a super team.

Mr. Nobody – The Brotherhood of Dada almost made the list as a whole, but instead I decided to go with the glue that holds them together. Bring back Mr. Nobody!

The Sandman (Wesley Dodds) – While he toyed with super-hero trappings for a while, Wesley wisely returned to his fedora and trench coat roots in order to show the DCU their pulp beginnings. Also, Wes shows that not everybody has to be in peak physical condition to fight crime or solve mysteries.

Starro the Conqueror – Lesser universes would be unable to abide a gargantuan starfish bent on universal conquest. In the DCU, Starro means its Monday.

Lois Lane – At times we’ve wondered how a reporter could be so damn stupid that she can’t recognize the face of the man she loves because of glasses. Thankfully, Lois is currently treated with the respect she deserves and is one half of the World’s Finest Married Couple.

Power Girl – Frankly, I love the fact that despite all the skin tight outfits and outlandish body types, the DCU has only one sex kitten. What’s more, I love that everyone, even Superman, seems to realize it.

Mister Terrific (Michael Holt) – I like that the DCU is diverse enough that nobody ever refers to Mike as the “Black Mister Terrific.” He’s qualified and cool and has an amazing costume and readers, writers and characters alike recognize that he’s a hero.

Mogo – A planet-sized being with the most powerful weapon in the universe and writers still find ways to use him. Only in the DCU.

Jimmy Olsen – In a lot of ways, Jimmy was the real wish fulfillment in the Superman books. Sure we all toyed with being Superman for a while but it all seemed like too much work. Superman’s pal, however…now THAT was a job!

Ultra Boy – Every teen group has to have a bad boy and every bad boy in a teen group seems to have to have a heart of gold. Ultra Boy takes that trite, hackneyed characterization and makes it sing.

Gotham City – This is a total rip off from Devon over at Seven Hells, but he’s absolutely right. Gotham City is a character unto itself and you can tell by how much work goes into the scenery anytime Batman is translated to another medium.

DC's 50 Best Characters

2006-05-23T12:01:00.000-05:00

The Great Curve has issued a call for votes for the 50 Best DC Comics Characters. Unable to resist such a challenge, Bubblegum Tate and I both dove in with wild abandon. We'll be posting our separate lists over the next few days, along with brief explanations of why we picked who we picked, but first a word of warning: my list of "DC's Best" doesn't include Superman, Batman, or Wonder Woman. How can that be, you ask? Because I can't bring myself to put a character on the list that doesn't resonate with me, that's how.

Yes, I'm a freak.

Anyway, we'll be spreading out our lists over the rest of the week. Tate's bottom 25 will be coming along shortly, with my bottom 25 being posted tomorrow, with our top 25s posting Thursday and Friday.

Enjoy

Justice League Dream Team #4

2006-05-22T05:10:00.000-05:00

Green Lantern (Kyle Raynor)

HEAT nerds…BACK OFF!! Kyle is the Lantern I want on the case. Hal may be fearless and John may be a good soldier and Guy may be…Guy, but Well Rounded, your name is Kyle. As an artist, Kyle is most creative ringslinger that Earth has ever produced. He’s got raw willpower in spades and has proved himself in battle time and again. He’s wielded immense power as Ion and managed to not go insane. He won Batman’s trust even after Hal went nuts and Batman had to deal with Guy. He’s the go-to-guy for the Guardians since he resurrected them AND Dream of the Endless said he would be the greatest Green Lantern. Not bad for a kid that borderline won his ring in a Crackerjack box.

Hey, what do you know, Tate and I agree on one!

Which is nice, I suppose, although it does sort of make for a boring post.

Hmmm . . .

I'm sure there's something worthwhile I can add.

Ummm . . .

Oh, I know, how about this: Kyle's kind of the underdog GL. He's got all this stuff going against him: he's young, he's foolhardy, his relationships always seem to lead to death and destruction . . . still, he's got youth and enthusiasm out the wazoo, not to metion the artistic mindset that makes his ring slinging a bit more entertaining to watch. I have nothing against Hal, or John, or Guy, but when it comes to which JLA GL I want to read about, my money's always going to be on Kyle.

But Guy's a close second.

Chock up two in the "agree" column because Guy is also my very close second. It makes for a short post but I just can't even pretend there's controversy here.

Justice League Dream Team #3

2006-05-19T10:10:00.000-05:00

Martian Manhunter

J’onn has been in every incarnation of the League EVER and he’s not about to stop on my watch. Just look at the superstition of it…when this cat is on your team, you WIN. Are you going to bench him EVER? I didn’t think so. Beyond that, he’s a tactician on par with Batman and possibly the only other being who has as much experience coordinating the efforts of metahumans. On top of that, he’s immensely physically powerful both close up and at range. He is one of the handful of telepaths in the DCU and he’s very good at it. Lastly, if necessary, who better than a mind reading shapeshifter to join Batman on the espionage squad?

Not to burst your superstitious bubble here, Tate, but . . . you do realize J'onn was a member of Justice League Detroit, right?

Seriously, though, J'onn almost made my list, but I felt like I was giving in to peer pressure: "C'mon, everyone else has put him in their League, why don't you?" I can recognize the power he would bring to the team, but love J'onn as I do, there are others I'd like to see on the team more. For example, my next pick:

Red Tornado

Another "Satellite Era" Leaguer, there's always been something about Reddy that has appealed to me. And although he hasn't really been a member of the team since the original Crisis (man, can't believe it's been that long), he's one of those characters who always pops into my head when I think of the League. Reddy's an odd creation: on the one hand, a creature of science, but on the other, a quasi-mystical Elemental being. This dual nature makes Reddy a character with an intriguing potential which has not been fully tapped, in my opinion.

Plus, he just looks cool (are you noticing a pattern here?)

You're damn right J'onn was in Justice League Detroit! That's the reason that the world wasn't taken over by Darkseid or mind controlled by Starro or sucked into Qward while Vibe was breakdancing and Gypsy was trying to figure out why the soles of her feet were like workboots!

Heaven help me, I agree with the reasoning for this pick as well even if I can't bear to find a spot for Reddy in my League. I loved Red Tornado's place as a mentor for the Young Justice team even if the overall title was a little uneven (was it supposed to be funny all the time? and if it was, did anybody laugh when that one villain's parents tried to kill him?) and I absolutely agree that the combination of Air Elemental (especially in the DCU with Animal Man's Red, Swamp Thing's Green and Aquaman's Clear connections) and technological wonder are a ripe ground for storytelling. Reddy's gotten short shrift for too long and deserves a really sweet team to make him shine again.

I think I'm starting to see the divergence here. I'm putting together a team built to deal with the biggest threats the DCU has to throw at planet Earth and Todd's putting together a team he'd like to hang out with (or at least read about). A different question may be cropping up: what types of stories do Tate and Todd want to see from the JLA and how do they differ? I can answer the last part... I think they differ A LOT.

OWL: One Week Later

2006-05-16T12:32:00.000-05:00

Due to my unusual buying habits, I usually don't get my comics until sometime Monday afternoon; by the time I've read them, processed them, and found the time to rant about them, it's been almost a full week since everyone else has read them. And yet, my opinions must be heard, and so I have decided to embrace my tardiness and publish my comic reviews One Week Later; we'll see how long before that feels really dated.

My excuses aren't nearly as good, or at least aren't nearly as interesting. At almost three bucks a gallon and my comic shop being thirty miles away I need an excuse to be in Norman and that excuse does't usually present itself until the weekend. Thirty miles isn't really that far away considering how much space OKC sprawls over, but going to Norman is like a rocket launch: miss your window and it'll be a terrible tragedy. I can't be there when the high school directly across from the comic shop is on lunch or dismissing and the Other University doesn't make it easy either.

At any rate, I'm willing to go with the Cap'n and review the titles OWL until it annoys us, our readers (both of them) or ourselves. I'm sure it goes without saying that spoilers may happen.

52 #1: The first issue of DC's latest "event" has garnered a ton of negative reviews so far, so let me once again assume the mantle of Cap'n Contrarian and say: I kinda liked it. Did it blow me away? Not hardly. But for me, it did the job it needed to do, setting up the characters for the storyline to come. I don't mind a bit of a slow build to my storylines, and while there might not have been a lot of "action" in the first issue, I didn't fell like it was filler, either. As for the shift in Booster's attitude jumping from Infinite Crisis to here, it didn't bother me as much as some; yes, Booster was all serious in his quest to avenge Beetle's death, but being successful in that endeavor coupled with the knowledge that he's about to become part of the greatest League ever seems sufficient to bring out the old glory-hound in him. I do think that having him cry crocodile tears for Conner was a bit over-the-top, but after his freak out at the ceremony I think we can all agree that our boy Booster ain't exactly the picture of stability.

She-Hulk #7: I'm a big Slott fan and am very broken-hearted over the news that The Thing has been cancelled; it was a danged fun book. But, at least I still have his take on Shulkie to keep me entertained. While I personally haven't been as big on the Starfox storyline as I have most of his work, I haven't had the visceral reaction to it that many other have. I'm going to trust that Slott has a bigger plan in mind, and that the truth behind Eros's action will be fully explored soon.

Angel Spotlight: Illyria One-shot: I don't usually buy and of IDW's books until they're collected in trades due to the price, but I' a sucker for Peter David's writing, and the chance to see him explore one of the more interesting characters from the last season of Angel was too intriguing to pass up. I must say I was not disappointed; PAD crafts an entertaining story and does a good job of capturing the voices of the characters. If nothing else, reading this made me pine for the late, lamented series by reminding me of how much potential there is left for the characters.

Firestorm the Nuclear Man #25: Despite my early reticince at the removal of Ronnie as Firestorm, I have to say that this series has grown on me considerably. In terms of characters, this was another stellar issue; I'm enjoying the Jason/Lorraine partnership, and am intrigued by Gehenna. As for the plot itself . . . look, I know comic books are all about suspension of disbelief, but the "science" in this one made my head hurt; I kept hoping that Jason was going to wake up and that the whole "trip to the sun and back" was just a bad dream. C'mon, guys, it's not the Silver Age anymore, things like that don't get to squeek by anymore.

Spider-Girl #98: I honestly don't know why I'm still buying this book; inertia, I suppose. It's not that it's a bad book; things would be much easier if it was. Instead, it's a steady, sturdy, average book; never chomping at the bit to read it, but rarely disappointed by it either. So, there's a part of me that's looking forward to its upcoming cancellation just so I can finally extricate myself from its unusually strong pull; if the rumors of its reboot are to be believed, I'm pretty sure I can resist.

Maybe.

Thunderbolts #102: I have to confess that I've been underwhelmed by the latest incarnation of this title; Nicieza has fallen into the trap of relying too heavily on shock endings, which can't help but wear thin on me after a while. Don't get me wrong, some of the surprises have been good ones, but the satisfaction gets drowned out by the sheer bulk of revelations and reversals and double crosses and such. All that being said, I thought this issue focusing on Joystick was one of the better efforts recently, and I chalk it up to one thing: characterization. This issue gave us insight into Joystick's history, which is something that I always loved about this book in the olden days; it was always at its strongest when it made us care about (or at least understand the motivations of) the characters. I think that might be another part of why I'm not as hot on the series now as I once was; the characters I grew to love are either MIA or massively changed. I miss Moonstone and Hawkeye and Moonstone and Jolt and Moonstone and Charcoal and Moonstone, and am not happy with the directions they've taken Songbird and Atlas and MACH [insert roman numeral here]. Oh, and did I mention that I miss Moonstone?

I'm easy this week, I only bought one book: Busiek and Johns' latest installment of Up, Up And Away in Superman #652.

Five parts into the series and we finally see Clark Kent take a backseat to Superman. I'm beginning to complain that a problem with Batman is that we never see Bruce Wayne, but I've never felt that this was an issue with Superman. However, Johns and Busiek have gone to lengths to show that, while a reader may see enough of both month to month, Clark's friends, family, co-workers and bosses (Perry and Lois) see decidedly less of him than they do of his caped alter ego. It will be interesting to see how much is said or done with the fact that Clark, who has spent the last year proving that being a reporter isn't just a disquise but is a calling and a talent as much as being Superman, will go back to looking like a flake who can't make his deadlines and can't adequately explain why. For instance, it would be interesting to have Perry throw up his hands in exasperation and just fire him over it. We'll see.

I'd better bullet the high points for brevity.
* Clark getting reaqcuainted with his powers in amusing and sometimes destructive ways.

* Lois discovering that Clark's powers are back because he's essentially a giant klutz who would probably kill himself if he weren't indestructible.

* Lois' reaction to Clark discovering his powers are coming back is a testament to how marriages actually work. Sure she was happy he was around more, but she knew his job when they got married and she loves and supports Clark no matter what clothes he's wearing.

* "Do that thing with your hair. I like it when you do that."

* Not at full strength, Superman is forced to use his head to defeat a cadre of very tough villains. He may not be Batman in the brains department, but no idiot is that good an investigative reporter.

* Superman overcomes his lack of powers and, thereby, regains them in order to save his pal.

I've been enjoying the hell out of this re-set-up of Superman for a Post-Infinite Crisis DCU so it pains me to point out that, intentionally or not, Johns and Busiek are keeping around some of the Pre-IC baggage. To wit, it is established that Superman's powers likely didn't return because he was unsure of his place in the world as Superman and he was willing them to not return. Many of you will recognize this device from Spider-Man 2. Many of you will also probably agree with me that this is a device much more suited for Peter Parker than it is for Clark Kent.

Post-Crisis (the other one) Superman was, for the first time, a man of doubt. He didn't always know what to do in a given situation, he despaired at how out of control his life was and often questioned the Never Ending Battle and his place in the world of super-heroes. I don't like it. That isn't Superman. Superman is a man of action to a fault. A man willing to sacrifice to do good. A man who would have been a hero in some capacity regardless of his powers (we're shown that in Up, Up And Away as he takes on Luthor and Intergang with nothing but a steno pad and a can-do attitude). Big picture, metatextually I don't want to even consider that Superman could or WOULD suppress his powers out of self doubt. It bothers me a lot and is perhaps all the more glaring due to how much I'm enjoying the rest of this arc.

Justice League Dream Team #2

2006-05-15T00:10:00.000-05:00

BatmanEverything Superman does out front of the League, Batman is doing in the back. While Superman may be quarterbacking the play, Batman is the coach making sure everyone is doing their job. While the rest of the DCU marvels at what Superman can do, they’re wondering what Batman CAN’T do. He’s a thinker, a planner, a tactician and a strategist. He’s got plans within plans and some of those plans are pointed at the League itself should anything go wrong. He can handle himself against opponents who are a lot more powerful than himself all while coordinating the rest of the League and deducing what the villains are up to. If necessary, Batman is a one man espionage squad with an extended family of operatives who are nearly, if not just as, skilled as he is. Most importantly, Batman has a willingness to ignore the rules when winning is more important. Nobody wants to disappoint the Dark Knight Detective either…mostly because they’re afraid of what he’d do to them.

Oh, good, looks like I get to be a contrarian again. That's right: Batman, not high on my list of favorite characters. Sometimes, I wonder if there's something wrong with my wiring . . . anyway, for me, even before the Dark Knight Detective became the Sullen Jerk Detective, Batman never gelled on the team effectively; about the only really positive Batman/JLA memory that springs to mind was the Bats/Guy Gardner "fight." Which, in a roundabout way, brings me to my next pick:

Blue Beetle (Ted Kord)

Sure, he's dead, but that didn't stop Superman or Green Arrow from re-upping their membership, now did it? I know that Beetle became something of a joke during the Giffen years (a fact that was pounded home mercilessly in Countdown to Infinte Crisis), but Beetle's got a lot more going for him when he doesn't have Booster around to give his inner child some wacky tabacky. Beetle's a skilled fighter, a talented inventor, a fairly good detective, and, of course, a bit of a cut-up. Personally, despite a love of all things dark and gloomy in most other genres, when it comes to my super-heroes, I prefer a bit of light-heartedness, and Ted's got that in spades.

Plus, he travels around in a giant blue bug; how can you not love that?

Okay, who doesn't love the Blue Beetle? Seriously! I can't even argue with these choices in and of themselves, I totally get the reasoning. However, nobody gets to make fun of your significant other but YOU (boy am I going to catch hell for this analogy). I'm not saying I want to date Batman, but I am saying that I have a huge personal investment in the character (his shield, yellow disk surrounding it just like when all was right with the world, permanently adorns my left shoulder after all) and won't have others bad mouthing him or his place in the League. Sure, he's become a total asshat lately and one thing Infinite Crisis and One Year Later better do is make him less of a jerk, at least to his own "family." Regardless, Batman belongs on the League and he'd want to be there if only to see that the rest of the amateurs they let run around the place don't drop the ball one lazy afternoon when the world is in dire peril.

I really wish I could have worked Ted into my League though...

I Have Another Really Good Idea, But Don't Have the Requisite Picture

2006-05-11T00:20:00.000-05:00

Everyone's been having lots of fun with Marvel's Civil War banners (pictured below) recently, so Tate and I thought we'd throw our own meager efforts into the ring.

You can go to The Fortress of Soliloquy to see a growing list of links after you enjoy ours.

First, the obligatory puns:

And next the obligatory "my favorite obscure character"

While the last one sums up Tate's feelings on the whole thing.

Justice League Dream Team #1

2006-05-10T00:44:00.000-05:00

Superman

Do NOT discount the necessity of the Man of Steel to the JLA. Although he hasn’t always been a member, he should have been. He’s the first super-hero, the one who inspired all other comers in one form or another in the real world. In the DCU he’s a powerhouse of varying (although always massive) power levels, able to deal damage close as well as at a distance. He’s got good leadership skills and everyone naturally looks to him as an example; he’s the foundation of the Justice League. Seasoned veteran or total noob, nobody wants to disappoint Superman.

Now is my chance to display the contrarian nature which has plagued my comic collecting existence and made me cringe in terror every time an outsider has asked the "So, what comics do you read?" question. Basically, if a character is widely recognized and beloved by the general public, I don't care for them. And such is the case with Supes here; I can't quibble with any of Tate's reasoning above, and yet, while Big Blue might be a paragon of virtue and the like, I much prefer my League to be Superman-free. So who's my first pick?

Hawkman (pre-Crisis Katar Hal)

Yes, that's right, my first pick is the "screwed-up character history" posterboy. I blame it on my growing up with the Satellite Era of the JLA; 4 of my picks are a direct result of my love for that era. So, beyond the Satellite love, why pick Katar? Because as an intergalactic policeman he brings a lot of knowledge to the game; as a warrior, he brings a lot of determination; as a long standing member he brings a lot of experience; and, probably the biggest reason of all, he just frickin' looks cool. I don't know why a man wearing a bird mask and wings is such a striking figure, but he is, especially when drawn by Kubert; in fact, in my dream scenario, there's a special codicil that all pictures of Katar must be drawn by Kubert, no matter who else is doing the artwork on the book. Want Jim Lee to draw every other character? Fine by me, but Katar is all Kubert, all the time.

A Superman free League is a bold move and a bold statement and really sets the tone for your lineup...especially when you switch him out for Hawkman! I like this move, I must admit, it’s ballsy. While Katar definitely doesn't bring the power level of Superman, he certainly brings the experience, the know-how and the leadership abilities. And I agree that, for some indefinable reason, he looks wicked cool and cuts an impressive silhouette. I can't agree with the pick, but I can certainly agree with your reasons for it.

And now begins phase II . . .

2006-05-09T00:13:00.000-05:00

Well, we're a week in here at They Came From Earth-K, and our readership level isn't exactly setting the blogosphere on fire (yes, we demand instant gratification), so let's go down the Comic Geek Checklist real quick to see what we're missing:

Spewing forth rampant negativity: check.
Championing one comic company over another, basically claiming that one is perfection and the other is total crap: check.
Eviscerating film adaptations because they don't conform to what's in the comics: check
Moaning and complaining in general: check.
Trying to convince others that we don't read comics just for the pretty pictures, even though we kind of do: check.
Compiling "dream lists" of characters . . . I think we have a winner!

Starting tomorrow, we will begin our weekly wishlist series, wherein we wax poetic about our "ultimate" line-ups of characters, creators, etc. To begin with, we'll be crafting our ultimate lineups for some of our favorite super-hero teams.

The groundrules are simple (or as simple as any groundrules created by the Legion of Wordy Bastages can be):

Tate and I shall both create a list of our dream line-up of a team
The list shall be comprised of seven team members and one alternate/provisional member/n00b
The seven members can be anyone, alive or dead, pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, post-ZH, post-post-Crisis, who has ever served on the team
The alternate can be anyone, alive or dead, pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, post-ZH, post-post-Crisis, who has never served on the team
There is no other set criteria; no quota of speedsters, powerhouses, telepaths, etc.
Each post will contain one selection from each of us, as well as our comments/critiques of the other's choice

First up tomorrow will be our first picks for the premiere super-team of the DCU: The Justice League

Why DC Roxxor My Soxxor

2006-05-08T00:12:00.000-05:00

Well, I had hoped to have some comic reviews up today, but since the post office has decided to be unbearably slow delivering this week's haul (including IC #7, dagnabit) I figured I'd go ahead and follow Tate's lead from last week; who knows, maybe we can start a Substitute Order of the Rolling Head of Pantha or something, to illustrate that, while we may not focus on them exclusively, it's DC comics that we hold nearest and dearest to our hearts.

Now, much like my compatriot, my younger self held very closely to the idea that Marvel = l33t, and DC=teh suxxor. . . or at least he would have, if the Internet had been around at the time. Of course, I was never a total Marvel Zed-word like Tate; even at the height of my Marvel fanaticism, I still followed several DC titles like Legion of Super-Heroes, New Teen Titans and All-Star Squadron. But, being from a small town in northern Oklahoma, I was at a bit of a loss when those series I loved made the move to direct market only, leaving me only those comics which could be perused at the local grocery store or gas station magazine rack. After moving off to college, I suddenly had a much better access to the full range of titles available, first through the local comic shop, and then later through the diabolical World Wide Web (the “e” in “eBay” stands for “evil”; just ask my checking account). And, as Marvel floundered, first sinking beneath the waves of its Imagization (Rob Liefeld has much to answer for), and later drowning in its own hyperbole (insert obligatory “crack the internet in half” comment here), I found myself drawn more and more to the house that Superman built.

Looking over Tate’s reasons for loving DC, I find one of them resonating with me more than any of the others: the concept of legacy. But for me, it’s more than just legacy that draws me to today’s DC: it’s the concept of history, the concept of a shared universe, the concept that nothing gets thrown away; yes, I’m talking about that dirty, dirty word “continuity.”

Since Joey Q has taken over the reigns at Marvel, he’s made several moves which I’ve applauded, and several that I’ve condemned, but probably the thing that bothers me most about “Nu-Marvel” is the way they treat “continuity” as something to be ashamed of. “No more footnotes referring to old stories,” they’ve proclaimed, “they take you out of the story and make people feel like they’ve missed something!” Y’know, there might be a nugget of truth to that, but in my experience, those footnotes didn’t make me go “Man, I missed something, guess I should just give up”; no, they made me go “Man, I missed something, guess I should go hunt it down!” Now, I realize that Marvel isn’t alone in this; DC has also become gun-shy about the footnote issue. But at the same time, they have once again embraced the idea of a shared universe, and are now seeking to do something with it that doesn’t spit all over the history of the characters . . .

Um, excuse me for a moment.
(I will not go off on a Disassembled or House of M rant, I will not go off on a Disassembled or House of M rant, I will not go off on a Disassembled or House of M rant . . .)

Okay, all better now.

Before I have to deal with all the “What about all the crap DC’s pulled with Blue Beetle and Max Lord and Dr. Light and Sue Dibney and Jean Loring, etc.? How is that not spitting on history?” questions, let me just say that yes, I realize that DC’s efforts have not been perfect. There have been stumbles along the way, but I haven’t seen anything that rivals the intense queasiness that most of Marvel’s recent “big events” have generated inside me. Say what you will about the JLA-mindwipe controversy, but I still feel like there was a lot better foundation for that than there was the “Wanda’s a psycho killer” story Bendis whipped up; and while what I’ve read about the “Illuminati” storylines makes me groan (Namor and Reed Richards secretly in cahoots for years and years?), not having read anything past the Sentry TBP of New Avengers, I can’t fully comment on that . . . yet.

So, yeah, history plays a big part of my love of DC; probably my favorite DC writer right now is Geoff Johns, who shows a similar love of DC’s long history, setting himself the task of untangling the convoluted histories of characters and concepts without arbitrarily throwing portions on the scrap heap. Instead, Johns looks for ways to make these “radioactive” characters viable again while still acknowledging what has gone before. I know some people take the “if you don’t like what someone else has done, just ignore it” track but honestly, just because you might hate a storyline doesn’t mean it isn’t someone else’s favorite; I give you Giffen's loved-by-me, maligned-by-many-others "Five Year Gap" Legion as evidence. Having respect for the past while moving towards the future; that’s one of the reasons I’m loving DC more than Marvel right now.

Which isn’t to say that Marvel doesn’t have some of that at play; in fact, my favorite Marvel titles tend to be the ones with writers who like to play around with all of the toys available to them. I think Dan Slott is a perfect example of this; not only does his She-Hulk treat all of her previous adventures with respect while still forging its own path, it’s also rife with characters and concepts long forgotten by most; so far the first few issues of his The Thing series seem to following her lead. I mean, how can I not love a book which manages to work in Murderworld, Constrictor, Iron Man, and Nighthawk into a single issue without seeming overly contrived? Along similar lines, Thunderbolts has long been a book which looks to Marvel’s history for inspiration; although the book has never been the same since Busiek left, Nicieza does well at finding new potential in old characters and concepts. But these titles seem to be the exception, rather than the rule.

Another thing that I like about today’s DC is that it features a little bit of something for everyone: the recent spate of Infinite Crisis prologues and OYL spin-offs have helped reintroduce variety to the DC universe. I’m a big fan of DC’s espionage-tinged titles from the days when Ostrander was king, Captain Atom was a mole, and you couldn’t cough without Amanda Waller popping up to tell you to cover your danged mouth; I don’t know if Checkmate will fully capture the feeling of those days, but it’s a start. Similarly, the reintroduction of non-Vertigo magic to the DCU makes me smile, as does the return to intergalactic adventures.

But I think the thing that has me feeling the most optimistic about DC right now is their idea for establishing character bibles, so that when you see Batman in one book, he’s the exact same Batman you see in every other book. There should be some leeway here (Giffen and DeMattis’ Justice League never would have thrived in a strict by-the-book universe), but overall, I like the idea that they’re putting down some more rigid guidelines for their more established characters; after wincing throughout the out-of-character portrayals of Superman by Chuck Austen and Batman by Brian Azzarello, I see these guidelines as a healthy, healthy thing. Of course, there’s no telling how well this approach is going to work (I give you the warring Dick Graysons in Nightwing and The Outsiders as evidence), but I appreciate the effort; it shows that the PTB at DC have some grander plan in mind, something that I just don’t feel when I look at the Marvel books.

Or, maybe I’m just bitter because I wasted all that money on six issues of House of M that could have just as effectively been told in half that space. Time will tell

Ultimate Avengers is ultimately...crap

2006-05-05T09:41:00.000-05:00

While maybe not as timely as it could have been, due to the release pre-dating the launching of They Came From Earth-K by quite a bit, Tate and I felt compelled nonetheless to voice our opinions on the recent Ultimate Avengers DVD. You know, it's just this sort of post that keeps us from being full-fledged members of the Loyal Order of the Rolling Head of Pantha

Click here for our review.

The Ultimate Avengers movie is just bad. In fact, it’s so bad it’s terrible. I mean, I made it through it, but it’s barely more than an hour, so that's not saying much. It’s like the bastard child of the 616 Avengers and the Ultimates put together by someone who is either autistic or isn't sure what the word pacing means and what it has to do with story telling.

Now, I was a little prejudiced going in, since I'm a fan of the old school, Earth-616, 1970s and 80s Avengers, and have felt that The Ultimates was, on the whole, horribly over-hyped. And as I watched Ultimate Avengers, the word which popped into my head the most was “Why?” Why did they decide to take some things from Earth 616 Avengers, some things from the Ultimates, and then make other things up out of whole cloth? Ultimates + Avengers = neither fish nor fowl.

A caveat from me as well. I've been a fan of the Avengers in the past. The Ultimates are a clever, well executed idea by and large, but I don't feel any prejudice anymore than I do between the Spidey and Ultimate Spidey books. I like Avengers and Ultimates for different reasons.

Being a guy who is only hit or miss with Millar, I can agree with the over-hype. MAYBE if they'd done Ultimates before Authority, it would have been shocking and really ground breaking. Post-Authority, it read like Avengers that really wanted to be the Authority but Corporate wouldn't let them. I think that's why it’s darker than the other Ultimate books but not as dark as other stuff we've seen that's similar.

That being said, with two amazing properties between the Avengers and Ultimates, why they decided to make this bastardized homogenization of the two is beyond me. It ended up not playing to either set of strengths.

I know that adapting anything from one medium to another is a crap-shoot, and there are things that may work well in a serialized, printed format that wouldn't carry over into a film, and I can accept changes made for that reason. But then there are changes that make you go “What the heck were they smoking?” For example, why add the whole “mystery” element to the Iron Man/Stark connection?

The one thing that has been consistent in any and all Iron Man incarnations is that Stark is Iron Man's patron; playing this silly cat and mouse came in the cartoon left me scratching my head

Actually, I'm not sure I'm willing to accept the crapshoot proposition on this property. Ultimates was billed as being huge and cinematic, that was the book's big hook or draw. The thing could have been a storyboard for the movie (ala Sin City) with very little lost or changed. But Marvel got cold feet, the movie had to be rentable by kids and the Ultimates is decidedly not kid friendly.

The Iron Man thing is a good example of that. I think Thor is too. I love the goofy, Kirby Thor and I love Ultimate Thor but for completely different reasons. I want to take a god of nature seriously when he stops whalers or hates a military-industrial complex for polluting the earth, but it simply isn't possible when he says “yeah, verily, I don't want to work for your military-industrial complex. Huzzah.”

While the mix-n-match Thor didn't bug me as much as the Iron Man thing, I agree that bastardized hybrid of the cartoon lost a bit of its impact by putting in a bit too much Asgardian into what, in the comics, felt more like an eco-nut.

To wrap up Thor, not just an eco-nut but a psychotic eco-nut with very destructive powers. A real weirdo wild card that they want to have around and then wonder what to do with him.

What about Black Widow? I was disappointed that her job appeared to be looking hot and going in two-guns-blazin'. What a disservice to the character.

Oh, and the awful accent. I was not the only one thinking she called Nick “Genital Fury.”

Ah, yes, “Genital Fury”: comedic gold, right there. This seems to be a weakness of most cartoon adaptations with Eastern European women: I cite every single cartoon version of The Scarlet Witch as evidence. While watching this, I kept having that line from “My Name is Earl” going through my head: “Say 'Moose and squirrel', say 'Moose and squirrel'!”

Having rewatched it with a group of likeminded wiseasses, you weren't alone. It was the second thing said about Black Widow after the “genital” business.

We haven't even talked about the slip shod production values yet. I think you summed it up best in your first comment to me after watching it: “Was it put together on some sort of bid system where whoever could do it for the least amount of money got the gig? And if so, was it odd to anyone that the whole production was going to be done for a super sized filet o'fish with extra pickles?”

Ah, I do love to be quoted. Yeah, as smart mouthed a comment as that is, I still stand by it. I admit that it’s possible Justice League (and previous WB animations) has spoiled me, but this is Marvel the supposed House of Ideas and alleged media powerhouse. Did they really think it looked good or was it under-funded? If the former, how? If the latter, why? Was Joey Q. going on and on about how cool it was total lip service or did he mean it? I want to be a fly on the wall for these conversations.

Bottom line, it’s shoddy and there's really no excuse for shoddy animation these days. The only explanation, to my mind, is that they just didn't care. But if they didn't care, why bother in the first place? Questions within questions.

For the first 20 minutes or so I was too distracted by the worst mouth synching I've ever seen in a cartoon to pay much attention to what was going on; I don't expect perfection from a direct-to-video production, but I do expect not to be taken out of the action by such blatant problems.

The best part of the DVD was the god-awful open talent search for voices. After I saw that, I couldn't help wondering why they didn't open the animation up to amateurs. I've seen better than that show done on flash for FREE. Probably by 13 year-olds.

Wish I'd known about the comedic potential of that feature before I sent it back through Netflix, although I think the film as is pretty much fulfilled my "unintentional comedy" quotient for the month. The only special feature I watched was the documentary on the history of the Avengers, which was notable for focusing on pretty much every aspect of the team that wasn't featured in the film (i.e. the good stuff), including several scans of scenes straight out of the George Perez penned issues during the Serpent Crown Saga which first got me hooked on Earths Mightiest Heroes. Well, that and pointing out the fact that I've apparently been mispronouncing Kurt Busiek's name for a good 10 years.

I'll tell you, it isn't a surprise to those who know me, but Marvel isn't really setting my world on fire. Still, when I heard about this project, I was excited and I'm probably not the only one. They screwed the pooch on this one, there's no credibility left for the sequel.

I think your comment about the DC cartoons was spot on: after the Batman, Superman, and Justice League (and, to some extent, Teen Titans) cartoons did such a spectacular job of translating their products to animation, I couldn't help but be let down by this train wreck.

My final point, which is a bit of a reiteration, is that we didn't have to be dissapointed and I, for one, wasn't expecting to be. Which made it all the worse when I was. I feel like anything else I say is just kicking puppies.

Final thoughts? I'm not sure we've done the thing justice. I wish I could say something good about it but there wasn't much.

I was just thinking that we should probably come up with *something* positive to say. For example, I actually kind of liked the whole “Avengers vs. Hulk” sequence

Yeah, and I like what they did with Captain America. I felt like the opening sequence was the strongest part of the film. Plus, they actually treated Cap like an early twenty-something guy thrust into weird situation and asked to lead crazy people with super powers. He was a little hesitant, thought he wasn't ready, but brought his A game when it was needed (the Hulk sequence being the best example).

Hey, look at that! We did say something nice!

Will wonders never cease?

Which Super-hero am I? Thank goodness the interweb is here to answer that question!

2006-05-04T08:39:00.000-05:00

Although incredibly famous, honored, and revered heroes back on Earth-K, Bubblegum Tate and I realize that here on Earth-Prime we're not quite as well known. So, in order to give you a better picture of what sort of heroes we are, we figured we'd use some of your more familiar icons as standards of comparison.

Cap'n Neurotic's results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man		65%
Superman		60%
Robin		43%
Hulk		40%
Green Lantern		40%
Catwoman		35%
The Flash		25%
Batman		25%
Supergirl		23%
Wonder Woman		18%
Iron Man		15%

You are intelligent, witty,
a bit geeky and have great
power and responsibility.

Bubblegum Tate's results:
You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern		75%
Iron Man		70%
Superman		65%
Spider-Man		60%
Supergirl		52%
Catwoman		50%
Wonder Woman		47%
The Flash		40%
Hulk		35%
Batman		35%
Robin		27%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power
and a good imagination.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Please remember that these are approximations. The Cap'n will in no way find himself attached to some Primal Totemic Power and I don't need any silly magic rings to get the job done.

DC can consider my socks thoroughly rocked, thank you very much.

2006-05-04T00:01:00.000-05:00

Do you ever think about the younger “versions” of yourself that exist within you? What I mean is, do you ever think about what grade-school you would think of high school you and what he would think of college you and etc? I have these kinds of odd thoughts often, but I usually use it as an excuse. Present Day Me doesn’t have to justify the girls he dated in high school because those were the decisions of High School Me and it seemed like a good idea to him. I apply this to the comic nerd within me as well and, let me tell you, the comic nerd I’ve been throughout most of my past can’t believe the stuff I’m reading now. The comic nerd of the past was almost exclusively a Marvel Zombie. I read Marvel comics exclusively most of my childhood and on into high school during the dreaded bust of the 90s. My favorites were Spider-Man and, God help me, Wolverine just like every other nerd my age. But the 90s eventually got so bad that I finally threw up my hands in disgust and left comics. Truthfully, though, I really only left Marvel. I was never a fan of DC (if you don’t know what that means, think Super Friends) and it didn’t even occur to Marvel Zombie Tate to take a look across the street and see what the Distinguished Competition was doing. It may have been just as bad as what I was already reading, but the point is that I NEVER EVEN THOUGHT TO LOOK!

I eventually returned to the world of four colors and nowadays I read all kinds of comics. I read spy comics, western comics, new comics, 50 year old comics, big companies, small companies, color and even black and white. You name it, I’ll read it. But super-heroes, and to an almost exclusive extent, DC’s super-heroes still hold the preeminent place in my heart. I want to still be interested in the heroes of my youth, but I just can’t muster the give-a-damn. I love the X-Men and Spider-Man movies, Daredevil was better than it had any right to be and the Hulk was genius no matter what you’ve heard or think, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy any of their books and actually read them if someone put a gun to my head. Marvel just doesn’t excite me anymore. I look at the X-Men and all I see are the Black Panthers from the 60s. I look at the Avengers and all I can think is “are these REALLY the guys I want called if the world is in danger of being destroyed by extraterrestrials?” I look at Captain America and he looks the same but he speaks with a leftist’s voice, a voice that doesn’t understand what it was to be an FDR Democrat. The Marvel Universe of today might be called “realistic” by some, but I call it dreary. But I think Grant Morrison (a favorite and amazingly imaginative writer) said it best when he said “my DCU is a day-glo, non-stop funhouse, where the world is threatened every five minutes and godlike beings clash in the skies like fireworks.”

But why is this so? What is it that DC has over Marvel right now? I’m going to make some guesses and they are educated guesses but they are by no means the definitive answer. They are, I feel confident, SOME of the answers, though.

Icons: The dictionary says an icon is an important and enduring symbol. The DCU is full to bursting with icons. When someone sees Superman’s shield, they instantly think of Truth, Justice and the American Way. Batman’s shield is a symbol of hope through tragedy, justice through sacrifice and your own fear becoming lesser persons' terror. Green Lantern’s symbol speaks his oath without uttering a word. Wonder Woman, whether she likes it or not, is the icon of peace through superior firepower. Unfortunately, Marvel has only one icon in Captain America and he’s been turned into such a mess that its hard to tell what it is he stands for anymore…but that’s a subject for another column.

Legacy: It might come from being a universe that started nearly 70 years ago. It might come from the proliferation of kid sidekicks (something Marvel is just now giving a shot). It might have been our heroes growing older on Earth-2. It might be time travel stories or Elseworlds tales set in the future. Whatever the reason, the DCU passes its mantle from one generation to the next. We all want to pick up Batman’s books and see Bruce Wayne behind the mask, but we know in the back of our mind that if he were to fall then Dick or Tim would pick up where he left off. When Superman died two new heroes were born from it and despite how things look now, I don't think Superboy is down for the count. Every member of the current Justice Society of America was either a “founding” superhero or, more often, the heir to one in either blood or ideology. When Barry Allen died in the Crisis, Wally put away childish things and became the Flash the next issue. The heroes of the DCU look to the future and they do it by training the next generation in both skills and morality. The DCU also makes sure we know how it all comes together, too. Why else would they give us a team of forty or fifty teenagers from different cultures and planets who band together as heroes a thousand years after Superman and Batman were on the scene?

Imagination: Giant pennies. Bottled cities. Guardians of the Universe. New Gods. Caves, satellites, fortresses in the arctic, watchtowers on the moon and buildings shaped like Ts and Ls. Multiple earths. Last sons of doomed planets. Bald mad scientists (there’s way more than one). Marvel calls itself the House of Ideas, but the DCU has been coming up with wilder ideas and for a lot longer. Before there was a Marvel, Superman was visiting tiny cities from his home planet and meeting his dad’s college roommate. The Justice League was fighting a twisted mirror image of itself from a parallel earth where evil was the ideal. Batman had to deal with meeting the daughter of an alternate version of himself who’s mother was one of his greatest foes. The DCU has a super-escape artist for crying out loud! And his costume is AWESOME in its ridiculousness. And he has two sidekicks: a warrior woman from a hell planet and a midget. A freckle faced kid with a bowtie got into wacky adventures on three planets, transformed into monsters, gained and lost tons of super powers and even joined a super team a thousand years in the future just because he was Superman’s pal. All this happens because DC set a trend for anything-goes story telling. Not everything that came out of that was gold, but enough of it was. It continues to this day. The modern DCU has many architects and each of them loves the history but looks to the future with great imagination. Architects might be the wrong term to use. They're like a band. The "sound" each person makes flows into the other and makes the whole stronger than the individual notes could hope to be. They continue old legacies and create new ones all at once. Unfortunately, the House of Ideas looks to be built by three men who are playing kazoos and dishpans.

That will probably do for now, but I bet I revisit this topic in the future. I also want to caveat to all current Marvel Zombies: YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY. If you love Marvel right now and can’t understand why I want to read books about the Blue Boy Scout and the Big Red Cheese then that’s cool. You have the right to be wrong, feel free to exercise that right. I certainly don’t think everything from Marvel is terrible. I love She-Hulk’s current series and the Great Lakes Avengers are hilarious. I think a good chunk of the Ultimate Universe is tops. I own collections of Marvel books from back when the company really knew what it was doing (Simonson’s Thor, Miller’s Daredevil and Busiek’s Avengers are examples). I just lament the fact that House of M was so boring I only made it about two issues in. Or that Young Avengers had such great possibilities when it was a time-traveling romp before it became sad bastard, emo melodrama. Or that Spider-Man is attacked by illegitimate children of his first girlfriend right before he mutates into a man-spider…again. It’s all on a pendulum and I’m sure DC will start to suck again and I can make mine Marvel. See you Marvel Zombies in 2058!

Raging Negativity II: This Time It's Personal!

2006-05-03T00:00:00.000-05:00

It’s either the name of the villain or the sound of my interest leaving so quickly it caused a gust of wind: The “story” named Hush seemed like a match made in heaven. Star artist Jim Lee would team up with Jeph Loeb, author of two great Batman stories, The Long Halloween and Dark Victory, to do a Batman tale that would be set in the now but have underpinnings in Batman’s childhood. And boy did it look sweet! Too bad it read so sour! The thing is a giant mess of guest stars, random villains, red herrings, a new villain (a childhood friend of Bruce Wayne’s, like he doesn't have enough issues from his boyhood) and caps off with Batman revealing his identity to Selena Kyle, the Catwoman. As you read it, it is literally bad idea after bad idea with each bad idea handled worse than the last. The phrase may be in bad taste, but I’ve taken to calling it bat-porn: light on story and sense, but filled with "money shots." Plus it won’t stop haunting us! Hush is the most boring villain of all time and I defy you to tell me what his motivation is, but he’s taken over one of the bat books for the last several months as the only villain appearing in it. Catwoman keeps hanging out in the Batcave in Bruce’s robe! The AGONY! I also blame it for All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder (from here on out called ASBAR, pronounced ass-bar, the Boy Wonder) which managed in its first issue to be both bat-porn and soft-core porn all in the same book. Way to hit one out of the park Jim and Frank! The only reason ASBAR the Boy Wonder isn’t getting its own listing here is because it isn’t over and I’m really hoping that Miller is using it as satire commenting on how well Hush was received. Please, Frank, I beg of you...be laughing AT us!!!

The last time "domino" was cool was when KISS sang it...and that was a long time ago: Domino masks are stupid. They stretch my suspenders of credibility more than flying, more than proportionate strengths of bugs, more than magic rings and more than intergalactic empires all rolled into one. A strip of cloth around your eyes isn’t going to stop anyone from recognizing you and (post 9-11 world that we live in) it isn’t going to obscure your face enough for facial recognition software to not pinpoint you. That might have worked in the Old West for the Lone Ranger where nobody knew him without the mask and photographic technology was hard to come by or possibly I could be convinced that it might work for someone like Nightwing as he lives in a huge city (until this terrible idea of making him a male model; having pictures of yourself modeling underwear plastered everywhere, that’ll be real helpful to the secret identity). But the minute one of those domino-wearing sissies saves someone they know in their secret identity (which happens amazingly often), the jig is up.

Throwing in something incredibly ridiculous like Green Arrow’s (more on him below) trademark facial hair or, I don’t know, Ollie becoming MAYOR or something and the already shaky house of cards that is domino masks comes crashing down around our ears.
The saddest thing is that there are so many different options that make plenty of sense. Who didn’t love the Green Hornet’s full face mask and fedora combo? Or the Grifter’s devil-may-care variation on the Hornet’s style? Let’s get really creative like ol’ Wes Dodds did with his gas mask Say what you want about Kyle Rayner, but the kid thinks outside the box when it comes to masks Zorro’s do-rag that covers the top of the face obscures a lot more than a domino AND gives him a swashbuckling feel the Dread Pirate Roberts envied. Old school guys like the Crimson Avenger that just refuse to leave the domino alone at least wore a hat pulled low to shadow their faces. I may believe a man can fly but this is one four color concept I just can’t wrap my head around, even when it's wrapped around my head.

I shot an arrow into the air…I hope it hits the guy that created Green Arrow: Look, I don’t care if Green Arrow has been around since the friggin’Pleistocene age, he’s a bad idea surrounded by bad ideas created by other bad ideas. It isn’t enough he was a cheap Batman rip off who Jack Kirby couldn’t even make me care about, but he’s spawned literally hundreds of other archery-themed heroes and villains across at least three major universes. Speedy, Spider from the DC Golden Age, Shaft, Hawkeye, that girl in Young Avengers who is just waiting to have a crappy codename slapped on her…they all need to be Crisised out of existence. What would be the monumentally powerful force that could destroy all these heroes and villains across time and multiple universes? Common sense.

What’s in a name? If you’re a super-hero it better be your origin story in shorthand: This may be a personal sticking point, but if there’s one thing I couldn’t stand in the 90s it was codenames that had no bearing on people’s powers. It is a fundamental concept of super-heroes that you should be able to tell what they’re powers are from their name and probably be able to make a pretty good guess at the name from their outfit. “Hey, look at that guy in the bat costume; he looks like some sort of bat-man. That guy over there is dressed in green and has a quiver of arrows on his back. That’s pretty stupid, but I bet he’ll fire green arrows at crooks until someone wises up and shoots him with a gun. That strapping lad over there with the S on his chest sure can do some super things. Look at that guy with the handful of glowy cards…is he doing card tricks? Is he ‘Stage Magic Guy’? Wait, what? What the hell is a Gambit? Is he related to Risk over at Teen Titans? Are they using those names because they’re taking a real gamble on anyone buying this crap?”

I don’t want to pick on Marvel entirely, even though they also brought us Cable, Domino, Shatterstar and many others. DC gave us the aforementioned Risk as well as Grace and Jericho (who were not, but probably should have been, names of a religious themed super team). Wildstorm/Image is responsible for Grifter, Zealot, Spartan, Void, Maul, Rainmaker, Bloodwulf and the reprehensibly named and mired-in-the-early-90s Grunge. Pretty easy to tell why the 90s is sometimes described as the Imagization of comics, huh?

Mussolini was an asshat fascist and even he made the trains run on time: Comics are monthly periodicals. I know this may come as a shock to anyone who is new to the world of comics (like there are any of those...), but they really ought to come out every four weeks. Rain or shine, good art or bad art, well written or hacked out. Every. Four. Weeks. Do you think the Silver Age would have been as delightfully weird if they’d had flexibility in their schedules? Hell no! Half the reason they’re so weird is because nobody had any time to think things through. They made it work on the fly and we love them for it.

Monthly books coming out every six to eight weeks also cause massive headaches when it comes to keeping track of a budget.

I’ll add another complaint to general lateness; creators from other media who have a comic book story to tell are welcome. But they have to remember that part of a comic book story being told is that it actually come out every month…WITHOUT A HIATUS EVERY 6-12 ISSUES! This isn’t TV or movies that have season breaks or long production times. Comics come out every month. If I seem like I’m belaboring this point, it’s because apparently much of the industry has forgotten that comics come out every four weeks. Did I mention that comics should be monthly?

ADDENDUM: I guess I’m okay with a book being bi-monthly if they solicit that way and there’s a good reason for it. For instance, we know Frank Quitely can’t keep a monthly schedule with a gun to his head. Grant Morrison (and, frankly, anyone with half a brain) wanted him on All Star Superman, so it was solicited as bi-monthly so he could keep the schedule. Well God bless the genius that thought that up! Here in the real world, we call that “planning” and “scheduling” and it’s a damn sight less annoying that what we call “lateness.”

I'd like to see this Legion Lost in the Great Darkness

2006-05-02T15:55:00.000-05:00

Although Tate's and my tastes may differ in quite a few areas, there's one where we both agree: Long Live the Legion!

So it was with great joy that we awaited the JLU episode featuring our favorite 31st Century heroes, and despite a few "wish they had done X differently" moments, we were not disapointed, which gave us high hopes for the announced, on-going Legion cartoon. And then came the announced line-up which made us scratch our heads a bit, but still, nothing to get too worked up about. And then we saw the character designs . . .

Why doe the WB hate us so?

Now, to mitigate the raging negativity just a bit, I honestly don't think that the Superboy or Lightning Lad designs are that bad, and Timber Wolf, Saturn Girl and Phantom Girl look passable as long as you don't look at the malformed things serving as their heads *shudder* I mean, maybe it's just me, but I can't look at Timber Wolf without thinking that he's the bastard off-spring of a wookie and Jay Sherman's mom on The Critic. And then there's Brainiac 5 . . . words fail me. Tate?

Words aren't failing me, but words I can say in a family blog are. The heads and faces make the character concepts not just different from what we're used to but are also UGLY. The whole shebang is starting to smell like Titans Go! and I don't mean that in a nice way. The only difference is that while the Titans looked different than their comic book counterparts they didn't look like they should be ringing bells in France.

If this is what they're doing with the character concepts, I'm back to being leery of the subject matter and overall treatment as well. I thought Titans was okay for what it was, but it was apparently meant to amuse autistic children who take their ritilin by the handful and haven't yet realized that anime isn't cool anymore (and also my friend Jeff, but the only difference between him and the target audience is the ritilin). If that's the road the Legion is heading down, then I'm just going to go ahead and despair at Warner Bros. animation in a post-JLU world. I realize that I'm nearly thirty and I'm complaining about a cartoon and if the WB doesn't want to make shows for me anymore, that's fine. They just shouldn't be surprised when we stop caring and it takes another revolution the likes of Batman the Animated Series to get our attention again.

And did I mention that I'm going to have nightmares about Phantom Girl's face? I didn't? Well, now I did. Look, just because the girl's named for a ghost, doesn't mean she has to look like something that would give Takashi Miike sleeples nights, okay? And we won't even go into Bouncing Boy's haircut
Shameful; just shameful.

As Promised: Raging Negativity Pt.1

2006-05-02T00:02:00.000-05:00

When Bubblegum Tate and I were first discussing how to open up the blog, I briefly considered suggesting that we talk about our influences, how we became comic fans, what we're reading, etc. But we decided that it would be much more fitting for us to instead start off like any self-respecting geeks (or is that an oxymoron?) with our individual Top 5 Worst Things To Happen To Comics, and let those sort of speak for themselves.

Luckily, Earth-K Narrowly Escaped: In 1985, DC Comics decided that their policy of placing newly acquired characters and Golden Age versions of their current characters on alternate earths was too confusing for the average comic reader, and so engineered the mini-series Crisis on Infinite Earths in order to wipe the slate clean, obliterating all but 5 of these earths, and then squooshing those 5 into one homogenized version. Now, personally, I never got the whole "these multiple earths are confusing" argument; I mean, I had a firm grasp of the differences between Earth-1, 2, 3, C, S, X, Prime, etc. by the time I was 8 years old. Heck, the Earth-2 centered All-Star Squadron was one of my favorite series at the time, and every regular issue of Justice League of America I bought was just me marking time 'til the JLA/JSA team-up issues. By not only decreeing that there would be no more multiple earths, but that these other earths in effect never existed, DC creatively hamstrung themselves, wiping out a source of interesting characters and concepts and, ultimately, breeding even more confusion as their attempts to shoehorn these concepts into new holes led to the proliferation of #2 on the list
Oh, Look, Superboy Punched Something: Let us speak now of the bane of many a comic geek's existence: retcons and reboots. For the uninitiated, a retcon is retroactive continuity, the practice of saying that a newly stated fact has always been a fact, despite evidence to the contrary. A reboot is, pure and simple, the total erasure of a character’s history, starting them over from scratch. The biggest problem with retcons and reboots (other than the possibility that they might make one of your favorite stories null and void) is that, in a connected universe, they can't help but have ripple effects. Take the combined reboot/retcon of Superman post-Crisis, for example; one need look no further than the havoc wreaked on Legion of Super Heroes by the "there was never a Superboy or Supergirl" edict for proof of unintended consequences. I will admit to a bit of a love/hate relationship with these concepts. After all, the LSH changes actually appealed to my love of alternate history stories; the addition of Black Canary as a founding member of JLA in place of the R&Rd Wonder Woman added some interesting angles for the character; and, honestly, sometimes a retcon is really the best way to resolve problems with a character (more on that below). And yet, more often than not, they cause pain and confusion, either through their lack of reasoning (Superboy-Prime punching something doesn't really count) or through the way they interrupt ongoing plot lines (I will now never know why Glorith hated Celeste so much in v.4 of LSH or what the heck DnA had planned for Jo and Tinya's kid in their post-Zero Hour Legion; did I happen to mention I'm a big ol' Legion fan?). And then, there are the times a retcon is used to come up with a justification for #3.
Mass Murder, Shmass Murder, I's a Good Guy Now: It's hard to say where exactly it started, which character was the catalyst for the phenomenon, but by the end of the 90s, it was in full swing at Marvel, and had a grip on DC as well: the transformation of blood-thirsty killers into "heroes." I suppose you can't blame the PTB for the move; dark, edgy anti-heroes were "in," and what better fodder for the next wave of anti-heroes than uber-violent but extremely popular villains? These were not the redemption-seekers of Thunderbolts, nor the "just doing it for parole" members of the Suicide Squad; no, these villains were just plain psycho-killer bonkers. Some concessions might be made to why these characters could be palatable (Sabretooth found a way to control his bloodthirst briefly, and even turned himself in to the X-men when this control slipped; Venom would never kill an "innocent," a term with a very loose definition in the brain-chomping creature's eyes), but ultimately, the crazy-killer aspect was at the forefront. I have no problem with the occasional anti-hero (Deadshot is one of my all-time favorite characters), but the sheer proliferation of these characters bothered me, in no small part because they were basically just marketing gimmicks, being transformed not so much to serve the story as to serve the pocketbook. But still, better for the psycho-killers to become heroes than for us to have to suffer through #4.
I've Stubbed My Toe . . . The Universe Must Pay!: Now, this isn't quite as solid a movement as any of the above, but it is a trend that pops up every so often in the comic book world, leaving great devastation of long-established characters in its wake. Probably the most infamous incident for years was the Hal Jordan/Parallax storyline, wherein the long-time Green Lantern, distraught over his inability to save his home town from total destruction (plus a few too many hits on the head), goes on a rampage, slaying several of his former GL Corps companions in an attempt to gain enough power to rewrite history. A more recent example is the psychoization* of the Scarlet Witch during Brian Michael Bendis' much maligned "Disassembled" storyline in Avengers, which resulted in the deaths of several of her teammates, including her husband. The GL psychoization** was a little more painful to read because Hal's craziness totally came out of left field while the Scarlet Witch, on the other hand, did have a history of instability, but the way in which the story unfolded left more than one long-time Avengers fan nonplussed. For me, however, both of these pale before the horrible decision of DC to make Hawk (of Hawk & Dove) turn into the futuristic murderous psycho despot Monarch in the conclusion of DC's summer "event," Armageddon 2001. My quibble with this isn't just that they decided to take the two stars of one of my favorite (though recently cancelled) series and kill off one of them in order to turn the other into an irredeemable psycho killer; no, that was bad enough. But imagine my utter disgust when I found out that this turn of events came about because of #5 on the list.
Fanboys!: yes, that's right: fanboys! You see, the original plan for Armageddon 2001 had been for Monarch to turn out to be Captain Atom. For readers following both the "event" and the Captain's own title, this decision actually made some sense: out of all of the major heroes in the DCU, Captain Atom was the only character who was not viewed fighting Monarch in the future; that's right, in the Armageddon tie-in of Hawk & Dove there were multiple futures shown in which Hawk was a dedicated foe of Monarch. In addition, the final issues of Captain Atom's also-just-cancelled series showed the Captain going through some sort of spiritual journey which finished with him being merged with an amoral version of himself; the issue ended with ambiguity as to which version of the Captain was in charge, perfectly setting up the transition to Monarch. But, at the last minute, DC decided to change the storyline. Why? Because the word of Monarch's identity had leaked to the fanboy community, and DC decided that they would rather scrap their plans (and poor Hawk and Dove along with them) rather than disappoint the fanboys with a non-shock ending. Nor is this the only crime which can be laid at the fanboys' feet: most of the anti-hero proliferation came from the slavish purchase of any books featuring the psycho-killer characters, signaling big bucks to the publishers; the destruction of the multiverse can be traced back to the complaints of anal fanboys who were driving editors crazy with questions about whether the Spectre in the latest issues of Adventure was the Earth 1 or Earth 2 version; and the non-stop progression of retcons and reboots was the result of the same anal fanboys going crazy over each and every change and its ripples.

Yes, you fanboys have much to answer for, with your non-stop analysis of comic books, letting the treatment of fictional characters drive you to non-stop rants on the internet; how I would hate to be one of you. Yes, that would be a fate worse than death.

Worse. Than. Death.

*I swear, on Earth-K, it's a real word
** No, seriously!

Greetings From Earth-K!

2006-05-01T00:17:00.000-05:00

Greetings, citizens of Earth-Prime, from across the vibrational divide. I am one of your hosts, Cap'n Neurotic

I'm the other host, Bubblegum Tate.

But you can call us SuperGeek-Red and SuperGeek-Blue. We have come here from Earth-K for one reason, and one reason only: to blog about comic books. That's a good use of dimension-hopping powers, right?

Don't answer that! Don't question us! Behold! Our opinions are mighty!* They shall range far and wide, like the toll of terrible bells! ** They shall shake your interweb and crack it asunder!***

As to why we're doing this, well, let's just say that if Tate and I were to form a super-team back home, we'd have to call it The Legion of Wordy Bastages (and there would only be two of us -Tate). Gifted (some would say cursed) with penchants for verbosity, hyperbole, and egocentricity, we are compelled to spew forth our opinions to as many people as humanly possible; this particular blogosphere is merely our latest victim.

Our opinions could not be held in check by our own dimension. Pray that yours is more durable.

Our goals are simple: to enlighten, elucidate, and entertain at least three times a week (MWF), and possibly more if we're feeling especially loquacious (which we usually are). We'll be reviewing new comics, reminiscing about old comics, skewering crappy comics, and ranting about anything and everything comic-related as it comes to mind.

The fact of the matter is that blogging, in all its myriad forms is self indulgent and an attempt to get faceless masses to indulge you in your own psychoses, possibly with an eye toward some sort of gain. I ask you, dear reader, what could be more comic book than THAT? Take out blogging and insert "conquering the world" or "moon based death-rays" and faceless masses with "hired henchmen" and you've essentially got ever super-villainous plot in the history of four color madness! Essentially, we want others to pay attention to us and stroke our egos, even if it’s just with your attention, as much as any fiend who ever put on a garish costume to do battle with his own insecurities (and costumed do-gooders, naturally). The essence of blogging is low-rent super-villainy.

Or, at the very least, low-rent totalitarian super-heroing a la The Authority or Gruenwald's Squadron Supreme.

Anyway, be sure to come back tomorrow as we christen our new comic book blog with that time honored comic geek tradition: raging negativity!

*You must forgive my compatriot: he was bitten by a radioactive Kirby at a young age
**He was also exposed to a carrier of the dreaded "Excelsior!" virus
***And then there was the encounter with the rabid Quesada . . .