The Forty Year-Old Fanboy

On a Matter of Four Dollars

2012-01-02T08:31:00.000-08:00

My whole family already knows what I'm going to write about from that title, and are already laughing. Be warned, math will be required for this story.

Some years back, we were all visiting The Wife's Mom, Jackie (about whom I have written) in Florida. The party included my Mom and my little sister, likely less than ten at the time. We all went to Universal Studios Florida. This was shortly after it opened in its full theme park form, and was...oh, let's call it struggling. They were offering deeply discounted tickets, and a free second day with each purchase.

The tickets cost $44.00 each. Jackie's current soon to be ex-husband Tom said he'd go buy the tickets. He wasn't going to PAY for them, of course - he told us all to give him the money and he'd go buy them. My Mom gave him her military ID card, saying it would get a 15% discount on the price. We all ponied up the cash, rounding off to 40 bucks each. He went off to buy the tickets, and we went off to enjoy the park.

As the day passed, Tom began to comment that we all owed him another four dollars each, as the tickets were 44 dollars, and not 40. We ignored him, as is out wont when dealing with him. He's the type of person that when they speak, you can't stop hearing a circus calliope in the background. He refused to stop; he began actively carrying on about the fact that he was in the hole for about twenty bucks, having kicked out the extra four dollars for each of us. He was told to shut up by the highest authority (Jackie), but he refused.

Finally, I lost it, and let loose with the most vicious arrow in my quiver - the truth. "Tom, my Mom gave you her ID card," I explained for all to hear. "At 15 percent off, that dropped the price of the tickets from 44 dollars to 38. I don't owe YOU four dollars, You owe ME TWO! Where's my two dollars, Tom?"

The look on his face was priceless - a combination of an old man trying to do ciphering without tracing numbers in the air with his finger, and the clear and sudden realization that he'd forgotten to use the card. He waved the whole thing off with a crotchety "Oh just forget about it!" and headed for a refreshment stand to get a bottle of water to pour over his throbbing head. The rest of the day passed without further incident.

The next day, we were all at breakfast, and as Tom went to the Little Curmedgeon's Room, the rest of us began recalling yesterday's incident with glee. I began doing a dead-on impersonation of Tom, demanding that everyone in the restaurant owed me four dollars. Everyone found it funny, but my sister Jennifer found it hiLARious - she was near loss of her excretory functions. When Tom returned to the table, we all calmed down and acted as if nothing has occurred. Except for Jen. She was unable to stop snickering, and couldn't look Tom in the eye. Every time he spoke, usually to ask what this kid was laughing about, she only laughed harder. Eventually we were all reduced to fits of giggling as Tom sat there in a cloud of befuddlement and ire.

Jackie's passed on, my Mom's passed on...Tom's still trucking along.

Tanj.

On the effect of holiday cheer on escaped convicts

2011-12-24T19:15:00.000-08:00

As we celebrate another holiday season, with its bustle and commercialism, it is all too easy to forget the man who was born this day. A man who dedicated his life to making this a better world, and who was taken from us all too soon, leaving behind faithful people who copy his actions and mimic his words in an attempt to keep alive his lessons.

I refer, of course, to Humphrey Bogart.

As part of the Humphrey Bogart Blogathon, a whole bunch of folks are reviewing some of Bogie's films. Most are picking the low-hanging fruit, and classics like Maltese Falcon and Casablanca were grabbed quickly. The Wife is doing The Big Sleep, which is practically two movies - an early example (maybe the first for all I know) of a film that underwent a major re-write and came out a very different film at the other end of the process.

I chose a film that not only gave The Trenchcoated One a rare chance to show off his comedic muscles, but actually took place at this jolly time of year, allowing to serve not only as a contribution to the communal showing-off of trivia, but as a Christmas post as well.

We're No Angels (1955) was originally a play by Samuel and Bella Spewack, who among other things wrote the book for Kiss Me Kate. It stars Bogie, Aldo Ray and the eternally delightful Peter Ustinov as three men who escape, just before Christmas, from the Cayenne Penal Colony in French Guyana (colloquially known as Devil's Island). They are hiding in plain sight in the town below, passing as parolees. Their plan is to steal clothes from a local general store, fake up some papers and get outta the proverbial Dodge on a steamship anchored off coast, currently quarantined.

They enter the establishment of Felix Ducotel (Leo G Carroll) a man with a soft heart and a head to match, under the pretense of offering to fix his leaking roof. As they spy from above, they learn the life of a mercantile owner is not a jolly one - he and his wife (Joan Bennett) are near ruin, what with his insistence on extending credit to everyone on the island. His daughter Isabelle (Gloria Talbott) is pining for The One She Left Behind, a kissing cousin for whom she still holds a torch. The three desperate men almost feel sorry for the family, commenting that there are more than one type of prison. Things get worse, alas - Felix' cousin, and owner of the shop, Andre (Basil Rathbone) is out on the quarantined steamer, coming to review the store's books. With him is his nephew Paul, Isabelle's beau, but he's been betrothed to the son of a shipping magnate. Scarecely a merry Christmas.

The trio determine to do what they can to make the family's season bright - The beg borrow and (mostly) steal the trappings and settings for a proper Christmas dinner, so they can have fun while they can before Andre arrives. He arrives all too soon, demands to see the books and heads for bed. And if wasn't for the fact that the convicts' pet adder Adolphe is in his bedroom, things would go quite badly indeed. Bogie whips up a new will that names both Felix and Paul as heirs. But it turns out that Paul is as big of a prat as Andre was, and promptly burns the will. No worries - he finds Adolphe before our boys do, and considering they just came of a quarantined ship, two sudden deaths are as easy to explain as one.

This isn't a laugh-out-loud comedy, more the quiet smile at the wicket they've stuck themselves in variety. There's a wonderfully slow scene as the three decide what they should do considering the fact that Andre has, unbeknownst to him, a deadly snake in his possession. They slowly and deliberately choose which of the three should hurriedly rush in and warn him, eventually choosing to cut for the honor. Bogie wins, starts a frenzied amble for the door, only to return, confessing he's forgotten the message.

What's fascinating about this film, aside from it being so entertaining, is the fact that with only one exception there's not a member of the main cast who hasn't appeared in one or two classic genre projects. Even Bogie was in The Return of Doctor X. Joan Bennett reached (in many eyes) her highest fame as grande dame of the Collins clan in Dark Shadows, and in her last film she played the first of Argento's Three Sisters in Suspiria. Talbott is easily recognizable, even those horrofic bangs, as the titular "I" in I Married a Monster From Outer Space. Rathbone was in too many horror and Sci-Fi films to even tabulate, and Aldo Ray had a great (albeit short) role as a man who follows orders to the letter in George Pal's The Power, a favorite in this home. The only exception to the rule is Ustinov, which is fascinating in its omission, considering the varied and disparate films he'd done in his career.

While DVD copies of the film are going for collector's prices, it's available for electronic download and rental at Amazon. It doesn't show up on TV at this season nearly as often as it used to, which may very possibly be connected to the fact that it is available for electronic download and rental at Amazon.

As a postscript, I note that the film's Wiki page starts with the disclaimer, "This article is about the 1955 film. For the 1989 film, see We're No Angels (1989 film)." I cannot express enough how important it is that you do not follow Wikipedia's advice.

On great comic songs through history

2011-11-18T08:18:00.000-08:00

OK, fair warning - this list probably doesn't have YOUR favorite superhero song. Over seventy years, there have been a lot of songs written about comic book and comic strip heroes. There's been musicals by the (wait for it...) score, like Annie, Lil' Abner, It's a Bird, It's a Plane It's Superman and even Doonesbury. There have been novelty numbers, serious songs, and some tunes so iconic they ended up in the movie adaptation of the hero decades after their creation. Ana amazing assortment of artists have contributed music to superhero films; even Jim Steinman (indisputable mastermind behind Meat Loaf's Bat out of Hell series) did a rendition of "Original Sin" for The Shadow. And some years later, he got to write a few songs for the Batman musical that Tim Burton was working on. I write a bit about that over here on my Tumblr feed, where I post smaller points and thoughts.

Here's a short list of a few songs inspired by the comics you've likely heard of, and hopefully a few you haven't.

Alley Oop - The Hollywood Argyles

Possibly the perfect examples of the one hit wonder, this manufactured studio band charted the once, and never again. Written by Dallas Frazier ("There Goes my Everything" and "Elvira") it was recorded while the artists were all drunk on apple cider. It's a simple song with a hook that won't leave your head.

In addition to a notable career in gospel music, Gary Paxton, the producer behind the song, also produced the perennial novelty hit "The Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett.

The Ballad of Barry Allen - Jim's Big Ego

Jim Infantino (yes, he's Carmine's nephew) is the charismatic overlord of the Boston-based band Jim's Big Ego. "The Ballad of Barry Allen" is a heartfelt song about a man too busy to stand still. They're also known for writing a new "New Year's" song for the folks at NPR.

This is off their 2000 release, They're Everywhere! with cover art by Uncle Carmine.

http://bigego.com

Aquaman's Lament - Mark Aaron James

As we've seen, there have been a LOT of interpretations of Aquaman, from the "Outrageous!" adventure junkie in Batman: the Brave and the Bold to the "Denis Leary of the sea" as seen in Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner's Supergirl feature in Wednesday Comics.

But a drunk king of the seas pleading his romantic case to Vicki Vale? THAT is a new one.

Mark spent most of his early career in Nashville, which s an odd place for a rock singer. One of his songs, "June 17th" was featured on LOST.

http://www.wix.com/markaaronjames/mark-aaron-james-page#!

Ring Capacity - Kirby Krackle

We tried, OH how we tried to get this song on the Green Lantern film soundtrack. Nerdcore tunesters Kirby Krackle put this one on their second album "E for Everyone", and as a sign to how much the kids seem to like this stuff, the song is available to play in the videogame Rock Band.

http://www.kirbykracklemusic.com/

I Whipped Spiderman's Ass - Wesley Willis

Wesley Willis was a chronic schizophrenic from Chicago who cobbled enough money together over the years to produce and release several hundred songs, all performed on a Technics KN Series keyboard. His songs are simple, loud, repetitive, lewd, and impossible not to enjoy. In this one, he relates the tale of when he had an altercation with the wall-crawler over the sum of seventy dollars. He has a similar song about a fracas with Batman.

http://www.monzy.org/wesley/

Superman's Song - Crash Test Dummies

I suppose you could argue that The Death Of Superman was the idea of these guys - this song came out a full year before the comic event was released. The song is great, but the video is positively heartbreaking.

Go Monkey Go - Devo

The Powerpuff Girls got so popular that a whole album was released with songs in tribute to the toddler titans. Heroes and Villains featured music by Shonen Knife, The Apples in Stereo, Frank Black and mankind's last defense against the Ninnies and the Twits, Devo.

Go Monkey Go was a drum-heavy tribute to the PPG's arch-enemy, Mojo Jojo, with an animated video by Primal Screen. The boys appear in the video in Mojo-garb, their iconic energy domes painted white and standing in for the satanic simian's brain protective.

http://www.clubdevo.com/

Dan Dare (Pilot of the Future) - Elton John

Even in these days, Elton was slyly admitting his tastes for the alternate..."Dan doesn't know it...but I liked the Mekon",

Dan Dare, or more correctly his nemesis The Mekon, got a lot of mentions in popular tunes, especially by British bands. Robert Plant did "Messin' With the Mekon", The Mekons were a seminal punk band, and American band Too Much Joy included "If I were a Mekon" as a hidden track on their album Too Much Joy

Mutants in Mega-City One - The Fink Brothers

One of a long series of worst-kept secrets in entertainment, "The Fink Brothers" were actually the rock / Ska band Madness, they of One Step Beyond and Our House.

Their lead singer, Suggs McPherson also contributed the song "I Am" to the Avengers movie - no, not THAT one, the one based on the TV show, starring Uma Thurman and Ralph Fiennes, and in that order.

This Vicious Cabaret - Alan Moore / David J.

As opposed to the other songs on this list which were inspired by the comics, this song first appeared in the comics, and only later was recorded.

The song first appeared in the classic V for Vendetta, and was adapted to a musical biscuit a year later by David J, who brought old people (like me) the bands Bauhaus and Love and Rockets.

Clearly I haven't named them all - there's Magneto and Titanium Man, Sunshine Superman and many other passing and oblique references. What ones do you remember and enjoy?

On The Man Who Got Plentiful Variants

2011-10-09T12:03:00.000-07:00

The custom cover variant has become the new iteration of the marketing gimmick that is the alternate cover. If a store buys enough copies of a book, the publisher will print a custom cover featuring the store's name. IDW did it for Godzilla, and Marvel just did it for Spider-Man.

Nice way to get your customers excited, only slightly more controversial than the idea of gimmick covers in the first place, a topic upon which I have spoken before. Now, the goal in doing a variant cover is to entice buyers to buy EACH of the covers to keep their collections "complete". But in this case, we're talking about dozens of covers, spread out to individual stores across the country. Surely the attempt to collect a full set of those covers would be impossible. Right?

Wrong.

Bleeding Cool shares with us the exploits of Dough Boy (whose name, I must assume, refers more to his wallet than his physical consistency) who successfully collected a set of all 144 variant covers to Spider-Man #666. I shall quietly point out that 144 = 1 gross. Sometimes the English language is kind to writers.

Through a combination of trolling eBay, calls to individual shops and requests via Facebook for people to pick up copies for him locally (One cover was only available in Japan, for example) he was able to collect a full set for just shy of twelve hundred dollars. Now, there's a definite sense of accomplishment in doing something that no one else has been able to do. But IMHO, there's a greater sense of accomplishment when there's a large number of people who would WANT to do it. There's a lot of entries in the Guinness Book of World Records for things that damn near nobody would ever bother to try to do, let alone beat, except for the sole fact of it would get them in the Guinness Book of World Records.

I am in no position to cast the first stone here. I have in my possession a complete run of the American Perry Rhodan books (Yes, including the Master Publications magazine releases - who wants to touch me?) a complete run of The Destroyer, and am one shy of a complete run of Doc Savage Paperbacks (Double edition 117 - 118, since you asked). Similarly, I have multiple editions of E.E. "Doc" Smith's Lensmen series, as well as the Lord of the Rings trilogy, including the "bootleg" Ace editions. But those were out of my love for the books and series in question. This seems much more like an attempt to Do What Has Not Been Done, as opposed to some spontaneous show of affection for the issue.

But back the industry. These are the two most intriguing paragraph's from the over-moneyed and under-goaled gentleman's story:

One thing became clear during the chase...retailers for the most part were not prepared for the onslaught of communications from completionists. I contacted numerous retailers who said they would get back with me whom never did, or did so after a month. It was great to contact most retailers who understood the desire to own them all and they were more than happy to sell a copy at a reasonable rate and ship it.

There were some retailers who would refuse to communicate with non-local consumers, some retailers who would not mail under any circumstance, and some retailers who decided they were going to jack their cost way up to take advantage of the completionists.

Now in honesty, even though the cover price of a variant book is the same as a regular cover, it does cost more to the store, because in most cases they have to buy quite a few other titles just to get the right to buy the variant. So if a particular cover requires the purchase of fifty copies of the standard cover, as an example, that one book effectively cost the store the cost seventy-five dollars or so, based on the average discount they get. So if they never sell all those standard covers, they have to charge at least that much for the variant simply to break even. The same holds true of "chase" trading cards - someone had to open a box or a case full of cards to find that card, so the cost needs to reflect that expense, since the majority of those other cards will not sell.

So I don't see it as "taking advantage" of the customer to charge a premium for these rare items. If anyone is taking advantage, it's the publishers, taking advantage of the collector mentality of the market.

But let's look at the other times that a store will attract new customers. When a book makes the papers, say when Captain America or Batman died, and then returned a few months later, or the Spider-Man / Barack Obama issue. Those weren't variant issues, they were regular issues of a monthly title. But they made the papers, so stores get besieged by newcomers keen on getting that book. At that point, the stores have two basic choices:

Make hay while the sun shines, work under the assumption that they'll never see these people again, and get what they can for this one-time sale
See this as a possibility to get more regular customers, make up some coupons for a percentage off their NEXT visit, get a bunch of stuff on sale while the newcomers are coming through, and aim for more long-term income.

I think it's safe to safe to say the lion's share of stores went with plan one.

The best way, I feel, for a store to benefit from the variants and heavily publicized books is in getting new regular customers, and maybe a bit of press for yourself. Say you score one of these hot variant covers. You could slap a hundred-dollar price tag on it (and settle for a fraction of that a year or two from now), or you could, say, raffle it off, and donate the proceeds to a local children's hospital or charity. One phone call to the local paper could get you a photo in the leisure section, which could attract more folks to your store. Make sure your local TV station knows about the next hot comic, and see if you can finagle yourself an interview about it. The media is very lazy - once they have your name and number, it's amazing how they'll declare you the local expert and consult you when any comic-related story crosses their desk.

I know it's hard to overlook that short-term payday, but with all the things happening to the industry today, anything you can do to increase your market, or at least your potential market, is a good thing to try.

As an aisde, I'm rather pleased that at no point in this post did I accidentally misspell "variants" as "varmints". That would have been way too Freudian.

On how we strive for Nick and Nora, but settle for Rob and Laura

2011-10-03T18:29:00.000-07:00

This blog post is a part of the Dick van Dyke Show blogathon, hosted by the folks at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear. Click the link to see a list of other folks touching on the same topic today.

I went the opposite direction from most kids. I knew that what I saw on TV was pretend. In fact, I knew this so well, I assumed that save for the news, EVERYTHING on TV was pretend, including cities. I assumed that not only were the people fictional, the places were as well. I mean I knew there was a New York City, but I knew there was no 704 Houser St.

So this is why, until I was about 20, I didn't know New Rochelle was a real place.

I was driving up to Yonkers with The (eventually) Wife, saw a sign for the exit to New Rochelle, and honestly said "You mean it's actually a place?" She looked at me like I had lobsters on my face. "But that's where Rob and Laura Petrie lived!" She assured me it was indeed a place, and the doors of my world opened just a bit wider.

The Dick Van Dyke show was one of my favorite sitcoms as I was growing up. I first saw Mr. Van Dyke (As most kids my age did) in Mary Poppins, and while the show was far sight from the movie, it became regular viewing for me.Rob and Laura had the kind of relationship The Wife and I have - we have fun, we overreact to things, and while neither of write for a comedy show, we're as witty as the cast of the show. As the title says, as much as we'd like to be Nick and Nora Charles (Heck, I'd settle for Ralph and Sue Dibny, without all the unpleasantness at the end, of course), we more often than not end up as Rob and Laura.

I've said for many years that Dick Van Dyke is an under-appreciated actor. I've written about two of his films at The Wife's blog: Cold Turkey, a vicious little bit of satire about a small town trying to quit smoking en masse to win a twenty five million dollar prize, and Fitzwilly, a caper flick with Dick as a con man butler who rooks the upper class of New York City, all to keep his bankrupt dowager boss from going to the poorhouse. Neither feature much of his trademark physical comedy, but a lot more of his acting chops.

The Dick Van Dyke Show was much more the work of Carl Reiner, who created the show and appeared as Alan Brady, eponymous star of the show for which Rob wrote. The show was clearly based on Reiner's work as a writer for the legendary Your Show of Shows, starring Sid Caesar. The show featured a true Murderer's Row of writers - Neil Simon, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and many others cut their teeth on that show. Carl's not the only one to dig into the show for inspiration - Neil Simon wrote Laughter on the 23rd Floor and Mel Brooks produced My Favorite Year, a fictional tale based in that legendary writer's room. Few remember the short lived sitcom starring ex-Roseanne beau Tom Arnold called The Jackie Thomas Show, but after one episode I realized it was essentially an update of the Dick Van Dyke Show, but with the Alan Brady character taking more of a center role. Indeed, the same could be said of 30 Rock as well.

Picking a favorite episode of this series borders on the impossible. But I knew there was going to be a near riot for the right the do "It only Looks Like a Walnut" (Brandie got it over at True Classics) so I went with another flying saucer epic, "Uhnny Uftz"

"Who's Sonny Tufts?"

Rob, Buddy and Sally are pulling an all-nighter at the office, and while the others are out getting coffee, Rob hears an unearthly sound and sees a flying saucer outside the window of his office. Buddy and Sally return too late to see it, and assume Rob was asleep and dreamed it. Rob is adamant, even as he explains that the saucer had lightning bolts on it like the comic strip star Brick Bradford, and the eerie ship spoke, saying what sounded like "Sonny Tufts".

Laura is no more receptive to Rob's tale, and chides him gently. He gets no further when he reports the sighting to the government, and when his psychologist friend assures him that he really did likely imagine it, he lets it pass. But after another all-nighter the next evening, Rob hears and sees it again. This time, however, Buddy returns in time to hear the Gas Music From Jupiter, which they determine is now coming from somewhere upstairs in the building.

Exploring the floor above, they are confronted by a man who seems to know about the saucer, and is most distressed that it had any witnesses. After a seemingly threatening request to enter his office, he reveals that there really is a saucer, but it's a toy, and the secrecy is to make sure the invention isn't stolen before Christmas. Rob and Buddy agree to keep mum i exchange for one favor - a five minute chance to spin the thing around the room.

Dick Van Dyke gets the chance to do a bit of schtick, lots of fright reactions and bit of work up on the office windowsill. He also excels at talking to himself, and has a fun scene as he listens to perfectly normal sounds that seem terrifying at three in the morning when you're only person in a huge office building.

Two notable guest stars in the episode - Madge "Aunt Harriet" Blake as a batty lady at the Metro North station who claims to have seen the saucers as well, and that little old toymaker was John Mylong, who played the elder scientist in the infamous masterpiece Robot Monster.

This is an episode I saw the first half of as a kid at my grandmother's house, and had to head for home before the payoff. I didn't see the end of the episode for almost ten years, so needless to say I was primed to learn the secret of the mysterious saucer.

I've done a lot of things...but I would never Uhnny Uftz you.

On the untapped potential of a world with seventy years of superheroes

2011-09-03T15:36:00.000-07:00

Last time I talked about the past of Earth-Two. This time I'm going to talk about its future.
I've discussed it before - the "Sliding years" theory. The idea that all the years of comic book adventures you've ever read of any character all took place in a far more compressed time period, and took place in the past few years, as opposed to the fixed point in the past when it was originally published. Case in point - the Fantastic Four were first published forty years ago, but in the internal fictional timeline of the Marvel Universe, they haven't been active for that long. Back in the 80's John Byrne opined the period was seven years; now, another couple decades later, it could be as much as twelve to fifteen years, as Grant Morrison has estimated for Batman's career.
For TV fans, look at this way - All the episodes of M*A*S*H, ten years of them, had to have all taken place during the three-year period of the Korean War. So you have to (you should pardon the expression) mash events together - several of the Christmas episodes were all the SAME Christmas, for example, just different looks at different events.
In the new post Flashpoint world of the DCU, the period has been shrunk back to about five years. So not only did a lot of the stories we've read not had time to happen, the world as a whole has barely had time to get used to the idea of superheroes, and be changed by them.
Depending on how old you are, think back to big things that happened to the world in the past, and how amazing they were, and how long it took the world to get used to them. Stuff like the fall of the Berlin Wall, people on the moon, even the Internet; think about how the world changed to adapt, to add these events into its paradigm. Five years isn't that long. There's still going to be people who are suspicious of superheroes, some who still think they're all a hoax.
Now envision a world that has had superheroes for seventy years.
Earth-2 is back, and with it, the Justice Society of America, who fought crime, and the Axis, in World War II. In the old days, the all or nothing days, the Pre-Crisis Days, "Earth-Two" was that world - the JSA fought as far back as WWII, and never stopped. Some people took up the job inspired by them, some heroes had kids who joined the family business, and generally, it was a very different world from the main Earth of the DCU.
That alone is a great reason to bring it back. It's the opportunity to generate a parallel brand, in the way that Marvel has the Ultimate line, and the WWE have Raw and Smackdown. Make them different enough, and you'll have fans of each one separately. One of the problem with the DCU is they've got so many great characters, there's no place to find a spot in the limelight. It's EXACTLY why the WWE broke up their two shows. Two champions, two rosters, twice the chance to rise to the top. The Marvel Ultimate Universe is basically the same characters twice, with different histories and different stories being told about them. Earth 1 and 2 can be ENTIRELY different worlds, with wholly different heroes.

Assuming they don't get their own Superman again (and I hope they don't), who would be the most powerful hero of Earth-2? My guess is, we haven't met him yet. And that's AMAZINGLY cool. On the whole, save for Dr. Fate and The Spectre, the general power level of the Earth-2 heroes was quite a bit lower. There were a lot more costumed humans than there were super-humans. That was mainly because in the early days of comics, they simply hadn't stretched their imaginative wings far enough yet. But if you take one of Dan Didio's comments to its extreme, if a less powerful Superman, one who could be injured, is more dramatic and exciting, than a normal human who chose to train a bit and put on tights can be even MORE dramatic, no? We could see a lot more of that in a new Earth-2.

You know who would be PERFECT on Earth-2. Ted Fucking Kord. On Earth-1, characters like Blue Beetle were utterly overshadowed by the top echelon on power. But on a more "Down-to-Earth" Earth? He could be near the top. So too characters like Gangbuster.
Let's think about the social effect that the existence of seventy years of actual Superheroes would have on a world. Consider - right now, in this world, becoming a superhero is officially the act of a crazy person. And we have dozens of them. On our Earth, you tell your parents you want to be a superhero when you grow up, they either pat you on the head, or take you to the psychiatrist. On DCnU-Earth, they'd say, "One of those crazy people? You'll break your neck!" Say it on Earth-2, and they'll say, Well, you better drink your milk and finish your homework, they don't let lazy-bones in the Justice Society". "Superhero" is a valid and viable career option.
In the more educated to the concept audience that modern readers have, a really bold writer could take the alternate history to amazing lengths. Roy Thomas was ever forced to come up with reasons why the JSA didn't all just to fly over to Germany and kick Hitler's ass. He created the magical barrier, created by the Spear of Destiny, which prevented the Amerikanisher Schweiner from entering the theater of war.
Now, imagine a world where they could. The war never got as far as it did, the A-bomb was never dropped. Aliens have been attacking earth for decades, and we collect up the technology, reverse-engineer it and advance humankind at quantum speed. The present of Earth-2 might not be a Utopia, but it could be a very interesting place to be.

If DC brings back Earth-2 exactly as it was, how many readers is that going to attract? Well, what was the print run of the last issue of JSA that came out last week? THAT'S how many. It's not going to pull any old-time fans back - the ones that want the JSA back that badly are still reading comics.

But a world that has had superheroes for almost a century, and has been growing and changing as a result of it for all that time? A world lifted and changed, literally on the shoulders of heroes? They can SELL that.

On the return of an old friend, and the six billion people living on it

2011-09-02T17:33:00.000-07:00

Earth-Two. Say it to an older comic fan (raises hand) and watch their eyes well up.

When superhero comics first appeared in the 40s, heroes from the three companies that eventually became DC Comics teamed up and formed the Justice Society of America. The team appeared till the end of 1950, when the superhero genre as a whole started to wither, save for the "Trinity" characters, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, who kept right on going.

Six and change years later, DC decided it was time to bring the superheroes back. But rather than revive the existing characters, they chose to create new ones with the same names and similar powers. They started with The Flash, in Showcase #4. As a tip of the hat to the characters of the past, it was revealed that the new Flash, Barry Allen, read The Flash comics, and that was why he was inspired to become a superhero, as opposed to, I dunno, getting to a doctor and having himself checked out after getting doused with chemicals and lightning.

That's a facet of Barry Allen that gets rather short shrift today - he was a comics fan. He read and collected comics, and was inspired to do good by them. More than ever before, this was a hero fans could identify with.

Showcase did very well, and a continuing Flash title soon followed, as did new "Silver Age" versions of lots of other characters. And a very interesting thing happened. DC started getting letters from readers who wondered what had happened to those older characters, and if they could see them again. This rather surprised DC, who assumed that the comics readership was constantly rotating, and that in the past six years all the old readers had long since moved on.

So they had a brainwave. In keeping with the more science-based motif of the new books, they explained that the adventures of the heroes of World War Two took place on a parallel earth, like ours in many ways, but with a slightly different history, namely with superheroes appearing in the pre-WWII era. They even had their own "Trinity" heroes, which neatly explained how Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman could have fought Hitler and still look just the same in the mid-50s.

So Barry Allen met Golden-Age Flash Jay Garrick in the nigh-legendary "Flash of Two Worlds", and started a tradition that would last twenty years. Soon the entire Justice League of America met their Earth-Two counterparts, the Justice Society, and would every year for decades.

They didn't stop there. Earth-Three was an evil opposite of the other earths, with the super-powered denizens their worst criminals. As other companies' comics characters were purchased over the years, they usually got their own Earth, to explain how their adventures could have happened. The Quality Comics characters like The Ray and Phantom lady were put on Earth-X, another "Alternate History" Earth, one where World War Two was still raging into the eighties, which gave their heroes, the Freedom Fighters, a chance to keep doing contemporary stories against the Nazis. When DC licensed the Fawcett characters, They ended up on Earth-S, for "Shazam". The Charlton characters got their own earth for all of five minutes or so, as it was introduced and destroyed mere pages apart in Crisis in Infinite Earths.

Crisis (so important is it in DC History, it can universally be spoken of as a single capitalized word) was intended to "simplify" the "Complicated" history of the DCU. The whole multiple Earth thing was seen as daunting to new readers, which the company certainly wanted to attract. So Crisis wiped the slate clean. There was now only ONE Earth, upon which the JSA fought during WWII (albeit without Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman), and some decades later, modern heroes appeared, some bearing the same names as the earlier heroes.

Of course, that meant that a great number of stories no longer "happened", or happened with different details. Many events happened at a different period, and indeed, even Crisis, which we'd just read, was now substantially different in continuity than as we'd just read it.

Sound familiar?

The JSA was the biggest casualty of the event. Aside from being slapped into a history they never made, it was decided that the characters were too old for the readership, and in a story released around the same time as Crisis, they volunteered to fight an eternal battle in a magic dimension to stave off Ragnarok.

I don't know how "complicated" the idea of parallel worlds is, especially to a reader of comics and science fiction. I first learned about Earth Two when I was seven, specifically in Flash #229. It was explained in one panel, and it made PERFECT sense. I didn't know who who this "Jay Garrick" jasper was, but the idea of a whole 'nother Earth full of heroes was amazingly cool, and sealed me to DC even more. I mean, Marvel just had the ONE Earth, and everyone on it seemed so...depressed.

(Dig the way they drew Earth-Two for a while, with the land and sea-masses reversed. I can only imagine the ecological nightmare of an earth with twice as much land as water...)

After just about the same period of time as their last break from action, the JSA were brought back again and given a new series which was VERY quickly cancelled, to the surprise of the fannish community. They were then soundly put down in a later event, Zero Hour, Crisis in Time, where a number of them were killed in battle.

But you can't keep a good team down. After yet ANOTHER event, Infinite Crisis, the team was revived again, this time under the hand of James Robinson, and shortly thereafter, one Geoff Johns.

Immediately after Infinite Crisis, a weekly title, 52, made the revelation that parallel Earths were back. Not the full-blown multiverse of the past, but a set of 52 Earths, most of which have been identified. They're not the SAME worlds of the pre-Crisis multiverse, but many are very similar. There's a version of the Marvel Family on Earth 5 (instead of "S") alternate versions of the Charlton heroes on Earth 4, and the Quality characters on Earth 10 (instead of "X", the Roman numeral for 10), also featuring Nazi versions of other DC heroes.

Note that while the Pre-Crisis Earths were spelled out, the "Post 52" Earths use numbers. That was a deliberate choice to show the difference between the two versions.

And there's an Earth-2, which features a different version of the JSA from the one on the "main" earth, alternately known as either New Earth or Earth-0. It had the most similar history to its pre-Crisis counterpart. It looked for all the the world to be the Pre-Crisis Earth-Two a world in which the timeline continued on after Crisis. A story Geoff Johns wrote for the JSA annual had Power Girl return there, and we got a look at what looked essentially like Earth-Two would have looked like if it had survived Crisis. tantalizing, to say the least.

Well, now there's been one more event, Flashpoint, and this time, the JSA have been wiped off the board entirely. The first superheroes in the world are the modern versions of Superman, Batman, Green lantern, et al, and what's more, even their histories only go back five years.

Fandom's reaction was white-hot and brutal. Fans were not ready to let these characters get taken away again. But never fear; DC wasn't going to wait another six years this time. Even before the book in which the reboot happened could be released, DC announced that the JSA would indeed be back, in a new project written by James Robinson, and drawn by Nicola Scott.

But didn't they just get finished telling us that the JSA was gone from the new history? Yep. The JSA were moving back to their traditional home, Earth-2.

I'll lay odds some folks wept openly.

But here's the question I've been asking...Is it going to be Earth-2...or Earth-Two?

Either way, it's going be a fun adventure.

In part two of this rambling I'm going to talk about how if they play their cards right, and take advantage of the opportunity of a blank slate, Earth-2 could end being DC's Ultimates universe.

On the end of Flashpoint, and the start of a New Universe

2011-08-31T21:14:00.000-07:00

Right, well THAT'S over.

Flashpoint has brought the DCU that I grew up with, the one that all of my childhood memories are connected to, have been brought to an end. The various books tried to bring their stories to a nice coda, and all told they did a good job.

Flashpoint #5 brought this latest event to an end, and started off the new DC Universe. While it took place in a world greatly unlike our own, it was ultimately a story of two men, Barry Allen and Thomas Wayne.

Interesting bookend - at two times in his life, Barry causes chaos by attacking the Reverse-Flash in the timestream. Once by "killing" him in the original run of his book, and now by trying to undo the massive changes Thawne had made to time.

I don't like the idea that Barry doesn't get his parents back. From the moment that was changed in Flash: Rebirth, I didn't care for it. Barry Allen was always the character in the DCU having the most fun. He was married, had a nice set of parents, and an addlepated father-in-law. Of all the heroes, he was the one most likely to be smiling. But the events of rebirth had him saddled with a horrific history - now his Mom was killed, presumably by his father, who was taken to jail for it. What a change! But once it was revealed, gloatingly, that the Reverse-Flash was responsible for it, it was almost unfair that it couldn't be undone.

Perhaps the info in Flash #1 will prove me mistaken, but the end of FP #5 has me thinking his parents are still dead, he knows that Thawne is responsible for their death, he remembers his history of the alternate timeline, but might not recall that Thawne is dead. Not as satisfying an ending for him as I'd like.You could argue that Thawne won, dead or no. And he's a time traveler; there's really nothing stopping him from coming back.

The tie-in books were as advertised - they were entirely ancillary, and did not have to be read at all to further the plot of the main book. While they were all interesting, I can't say I agreed with the choices of who got books and who didn't. I'd have happily traded Legion Of Doom for, say, a S!H!A!Z!A!M! mini. The two I enjoyed the most were Project: Superman and The Outsider. I would not mind seeing either The Outsider or Project Zero make their way to the DCnU.

My biggest disappointment of the tie-ins was Booster Gold, not because of any failings in the story, but for what I presumed / hoped his role would be. Being as they went to such lengths to point out that his was the only regular title crossing into Flashpoint, I took that to mean he'd play more of a role in the proceedings. But ultimately, he faced Doomsday (again - that is a character that has absolutely been overused, and one I will not miss.), tapped into Flash's Speed Force, and went home. Didn't get to fix anything, didn't even get to save the girl.

Oh yes...the girl. Alexandra had parasite-like powers, and at the moment before she, oh let's say "Died", Booster was trying to travel through time. And then a mysterious figure wrote the words on Rip's blackboard, and at the tie same time a mysterious hooded figure helps guide Barry to the right path to fixing things as near as can be.

Connection? Who the hell knows?

The mysterious hooded lady is clearly the beginnings of another over-arc. Not an event, per se - Dan Didio has sworn blind we won't get one of those for some time. But she's already been sighted in preview copies of other first issues, so she certainly seems to have a role to play.

Justice League #1 looked very promising, and was a very nice start to the new Universe. It had a couple clunkers ("He combusted into fire"...peewwww) but it did a good job of giving the feel of how things now are.

There's not a single title I don't want to give a fair look, there's several I'm quite keen on, and a few I'm right chuffed about.

There's still a LOT of questions I have about the timeline of the DCnU. With only five or so years of history in place, there's simply no time for ALL the events we've read about to have happened, either in whole or in part. The lesser event books alone are likely all gone - I will not be sad to see Armageddon 2001 to go out the door, and Amazons Attack...please.

I may try to go into more detail about these questions over the next week, but let's just ask about a few tentpoles here...

Who's died? The events of Batman RIP have likely occurred, as they funneled directly into Batman Inc, which is firmly underway as this new world starts up before us. But was it still at the hands of Darkseid? Did Final Crisis happen as we read it, if at all?

Superman? Did he die at the hands of Doomsday and come back? We know Superboy's origin is all new now; Is Steel in the DCnU, or just some iteration of John henry Irons?

Or what about Hal Jordan? Geoff Johns did a great job or winnowing away the effects of Emerald Twilight from Hal's life - maybe this is the chance to wipe it away entirely? If Superman didn't die, did Hank Henshaw destroy Coast City? Hal could still have been possessed by Parallax and gone on a bit of a tear, but could have been stopped before he died. We know Kyle Rayner has a ring in the new continuity, but who's to say he got it the same way, as a result of the same exact tragedy?

Let's go back to the first big one - with only one Flash in current continuity (that we know of - they're being deucedly cagey about Wally), did he ever die? Did Crisis ever happen? If not, Flash may never have died, which means that even more of the events of Final Crisis are under flux.

A lot of questions. In full fairness, not all require an answer to permit enjoyment of the new books, but when people have upwards of 70 years of continuity in their heads, it's a fair question to ask how much of it will be of value in the future, as opposed to just being useful in talking about the past.

Which I expect I'll do a lot.

On the latest threat to the survival of the Comics Industry. Not.

2011-08-10T19:21:00.000-07:00

The folks at Newsarama posted an article today with the provocative title, "Will digital comics KILL Comic stores?"

This is a question that had gotten a lot of talk over the last few weeks, since both DC and Marvel have announced that their books (Some of Marvel's, all of DCs) would go digital on the same day as print. And after some thought, and some actual research, I am prepared to give my answer.

No. next question.

The only thing that will kill the comic store is the dwindling number of comic readers. Explain to me how adding new customers will cause an industry to diminish.

You can't buy trade paperbacks digitally. Nor T-shirts, nor action figures or any of the other things you can buy at a comic shop, save for the monthly books themselves.

Bob Wayne had it exactly right - if a store is experiencing diminished sales as a result of either the lame duck session until September, or due to the New 52, they're not doing ther jobs right as a retail outlet. The same holds tru for digital.

The savvy store will embrace digital, link up with the comixology site, offer special discounts and deals on items for digital customers, and very possibly do better than ever. The short-sighted store will curse the darkness, shake its fist, get caught up on all those issues that have been piling up, and wait for the next death issue to get spoiled in USA Today a day early so they can jack up the prices on the book for the first-timers who come in to get one.

Record stores, at least the ones that went away, only had one product. Records stores now sell records (Yes, I still call them records; shut up, I'm old), movies on DVD, videogames, interesting coffee-table books about said records and movies, t-shirts, and...whaddaya know...comic books. Plus, they're in places that are accessible to the walk-by trade, and have attractive window displays, and sales, and in short, actively COURT customers.

And in honesty, this is all a moot point until the prices drop.

Paying the same price for a physical object you can hold, put on a shelf and use to keep your beer from making a ring on the coffee table, and for a digital copy, one that can barely be said to exist at all save for your memory of being enraged at some plot point or another after reading it, is sheer lunacy. It is a pure cash grab, eliminating both the cost of physically printing the book, and an entire level of the sales process.

A $1.99 comic book is profitable; it must be, because DC already plans to drop the prices on their titles by that dollar six weeks after the street date. So functionally, if you want your digital titles on the day of release, you're being penalized a dollar. But even at that "discounted" price, DC is making FAR more on a digital title that a physical one.

Under confidence, a local comic shop confirmed that they get a 56% discount on DC titles, which means that for a $2.99 DC book, they're paying $1.31. As I assured him when he told me this, I have no problem with this. The monthly books are their biggest seller, they have to pay for most of the rest of the stock and the monthly nut of the store, so a good profit margin is perfectly reasonable.
But it still means that Diamond is getting $1.31 per title. (Yes, other stores may have different discounts, but it's a solid, verified number and one we can use as a base of discussion.) It is not unreasonable to assume that Diamond's profit margin on said books is near to this. If we assume that Diamond's profit margin is HALF of that, or 28%, they're paying 94 cents a book to DC. If it's 50% (not impossible), they're paying 66 cents a copy.

So this means that at somewhere between 94 and 66 cents a copy, a DC title is profitable, presuming a sufficient number of them are sold.

So let's look at the cost of printing the book. Now, the further up the chain this goes, the less hard data we have on prices, so we're making reasonable guesses. One comic book printing company online advertises a price of $9,730 for a 32-page comic book, slightly less than 50 cents a copy, on a print run of 20,000, the level commonly considered to be the line of demarcation for cancellation. Now DC has does a LOT of printing, and many larger print runs than that, so it's not unreasonable to assume they're paying easily half that, possibly less. So let's stay cautious and say it's 25 cents to print a DC title. take that off the top, and we have anywhere from 41 to 69 cents a copy of a $2.99 comic book that DC is pulling in. That's enough, presuming the book sells well enough, to cover payments to the creators, editors, art staff, etc, and still make the company money.

I refuse to believe the 99-cent comic book isn't possible, especially if it sells well. Because again, the best and safest way to make money is not to charge a lot of money to a small group of people, but to charge a small amount of money to a LOT of people. This is made even easier when you don't actually have to make anything. Once the cost of creating the book is done, expenses cease, save for the cost of creating and keeping current the website that you're selling the comics from, a relatively small amount, amoritzed over the time the site is in use.

What DC (and Marvel, I know) is trying to do right now is charge a lot of money to a lot of people, and that doesn't go over well.

Digital comics will not, in the long run, be profitable via a higher profit margin, but by the increased sales that a larger potential readership provides. Make the books good, make them cheap, and make nigh-effortless to obtain. 1 and 3 are handled.

Get to 2.

There's another facet to digital comics, as they're being sold now, that I still have a problem with, that of portability. They've made strides - I can read digital comics from Comixology from my phone, PC, iDevice, and even my PSP. That's good, but it's not 100% good. They're still tied to the internet, and cannot (to the best my knowledge) be backed up to a cd or other media and archived, nor can they be read from such media. Bit-torrent files are perfectly portable - they can be tossed onto a CD and saved, and there's nary a device that doesn't have a CBR reader for it. That's not an argument for torrenting, it's to show the target that digital comics must strive for. An iDevice has a limited storage space, they don't have SD cards or other hot-swappable media - if I want to swap out books, it's a time-consuming process, and, I hasten to add, there's no way for me to read the files on anything but the iDevice. I can't take the files and view them through iTunes or any other local reader.

Marvel's original digital offering, only a few short years ago, now seems almost archaic. They offered the ability to read copies of their book, on their website, for a monthly fee. You didn't own the books, you didn't even have a guarantee they'd be there tomorrow, as it was supposed to be a rotating library. Shortly afterwards, companies were offering entire runs of titles on DVD for not unreasonable prices. But they were PDFs, which didn't scale well, and the interface took up valuable screen space. So that dropped away, sadly.

A proprietary data format runs the risk of becoming unusable. As long as there are digital devices, there will be MP3 players. I want, nay I require, the ability to download my purchases and use them as I see fit, with the reasonable exception of making copies and distributing them. Show me that, and drop the price to that magic number of purchase without throught that has made so many ridiculous apps so ridiculously popular, and I can't imagine things not improving.

We're in a much better place than we were. A year ago the argument was "Will pirating comics kill comic stores?" They didn't. Now wer're worrying that similar files, now available legally, will do the same. They won't. There's a dedicated core that want books they can hold, bag, board and box in the basement.

They're just not a large enough number to keep the industry alive.

On the scariness of the phrase "giving them a rest"

2011-07-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't heard, DC is revamping its entire line of books. The entire DC lineup is starting over with new Numbers One, with many books going away, and others taking their place. And like everything else in the comics industry, up to and including the ratio of cadmium yellow used to make orange in the baxter-paper titles, it has been the cause of much consternation, a word which here means "yelling and screaming on the basis of no evidence whatsoever".

Many of the arguments being made are perfectly reasonable. The frooferau over Barbara Gordon returning to the role of Batgirl has been a heated one. But hot on its heels is the seeming apparation of the Justice Society of America. There is no new JSA title in The New 52, and Dan Didio has gone on record that they plan to "give the characters a rest".

Power Girl has also vanished along with the JSA. While a popular character for many reasons (OK, yes, for two in particular) she seems to have also been pushed to the side for the nonce. But people are taking too far a leap, assuming that "don't appear in a book" equals "No longer exist in the new DC continuity". The one statement that has sent the largest number of panties into a twist is Grant Morrison's statement which describes Superman as "Earth's first superhero". People are taking this to mean that there were no costumed characters before this, and since in this new continuity, the heroes only appeared less than 10 years ago (so it's been inferred, anyway), this means there were no heroes to form the JSA.

I think Grant Morrison's statement has been largely taken out of context. Grant has long said that Superman should be the sun source for all superheroes in the DCU. It was a central theme of Final Crisis - The extra dimensional beings that we perceive as the Monitors peered into our world, and saw Superman, not as a physical being, but a perfect image of heroism, what Plato described as the "Form" of the Hero. At the climax of the tale, Superman is the last living creature, and re-builds the universe from memory, so that literally as well as figuratively, "It all started with Superman".

And here's the thing. HE'S ABSOLUTELY RIGHT.

Yes, there were characters in costumes fighting crime before him. Zorro first appeared in 1919, for example. But Superman was a paradigm-shifter, he was a game-changer before the term had been invented, let alone used to death. Comics were a curiosity, an experiment before two Jews from Cleveland created him. When he was published, you could actually hear that sound effect of the Enterprise going into warp drive coming from the comic publishing houses of New York. It was the sound of an industry kicking into gear.

So yes, literally, It All Started With Superman. And the character should remain at that point in comics. He is the best of us, he is the best we can be. And that is, I think, what grant is trying to say.

Now, how does that allow the existence of heroes before him?

Rather easily, really. The important word in Grant's quote is Superhero. Like he did in the real world, Superman's appearance raised the bar, changed the definition of the idea, indeed CREATED the word. I see no reason to think that there couldn't have been heroes, Mystery Men, Caped Crimefigters, what have you, in the past, even before the JSA. When Superman comes along, he just jumps it all up to another level.

Look at Grant Morrison's greatest work, Watchmen(*) There were heroes before Dr. Manhattan appeared, but when he did, the whole definition changed. And if you read the book carefully, you realize that the original Mystery Men of the 40s were inspired to get into costumes by the adventures of a guy in tights in a new comic book. So even here, It All Started With Superman.

Besides, Mr. Terrific is getting a new book, so not all the members of the JSA are gone. He's a legacy character, taking the name of the mystery man from the JSA era, so this at least suggests that said character could still have existed, which in turn opens the door for the rest.

But there's an elephant in the room when it comes to the JSA, one that even its fans find hard to wave away. The timeframe of modern comics keep moving forward - the "Sliding Seven" to which I've discussed in the past. But the adventured of the JSA cannot be updated - they are tied firmly and inexorably to World War II and cannot move. So while the start of Superman's career is anywhere from seven to ten years ago from this moment, The JSA's heyday was going on seventy years ago. That's as many as seven tens! The farther back it gets, the more tenuous an explanation that they were kept young and vital by magical feedback from one of their last battles becomes. So while there's no reason that the JSA couldn't have existed in the 40s, the idea that 90% of its members are alive, healthy and actively fighting crime today becomes a stretch, even in a world where Martians fight crime and eat Oreo-analogues.

Geoff Johns tried to set them up as a training ground of new heroes, a repository of experience and history. It was a GREAT idea. Use the organization (and the book) as a way to bring new heroes into the fold, make sure they get the right start and the right training. In the Batman: The Brave and the Bold cartoon, batman is one of those heroes trained by the JSA. Wildcat taught him to fight, and the others taught him strategy, etc. It's a great idea. It just never caught on. The fans wanted to read about the old (and all that that implies) members of the team, and not these "young boys", to use a pro wrestling term. So the old guard kept on fighting, and the new folks got used less and less, and ultimately, things remained largely the same.

Many have pointed to a panel in the first issue of the most recent Justice League run which was supposed to show various moments of past and future history of the team. One of them was a new version of the discovery of Earth-Two. Many have pointed to Geoff Johns' ability to play the long game, and suggest that that may be a look at the NEW continuity, in which the JSA's adventures occurred on a parallel Earth. That's all well and good for preserving the stories, but it doesn't eliminate the whole seventy years of time issue.

My hopes on the JSA are fairly optimistic. I am wholly confident of their place in history. It's entirely possible that in Today's New DCU they still exist in the capacity in which Geoff tried to create. We may not see them all the time. Like The Challengers of the Unknown, they are the Grand Old Men of the hero industry, called in as advisors when events occur way above the experience and pay grade of the heroes of today. We shall see.

(*) Calm down. This is a callback to one of the greatest internet running gags in existence, which started on the message boards on Newsarama. Some guy posted a message asking "Will Grant Morrison ever write anything better than his masterpiece ,'Watchmen'?" The regulars immediately broke into two camps, either thinking this was the most illiterate boob ever to set fingers to keyboard, or realizing they were in the presence of prank-greatness. Myriad posts appeared correcting the fellow's "error", and he calmly replied that THEY had it wrong, that they were confusing Alan Moore and Grant Morrison, which is easy, since they're both British. It was brilliant.

On Flashpoint salvo two, and a look at more of the DC Refresh, but ultimately about Batgirl

2011-06-11T21:45:00.000-07:00

We're a couple weeks into the Flashpoint event now, and one could make one of two arguments - that the announcement of the DC Refresh has either (both?) made the events of Flashpoint even more important, or completely overshadowed them. Like so many comics-related announcements, news that a big thing is coming several months hence, like a new creative team or a whole new direction, turns the current run of the book into a lame duck sessions; a dead book walking, even more so than it may have been before said announcement.

The Flashpoint books are still coming out, and already people are looking past them. That's a shame, because while it doesn't look like any of them will remain around after the event's end (OK, one; more on that later), they're good books in their own right, and worth a read.

Emperor Aquaman and his story is key to the altered world of Flashpoint, and it's here we see it in detail. Interestingly, Prince Brion of Markovia (Geo-Force) plays a major part, both in flashback and in future plans. Tony Bedard plays the book as a political thriller, rife with intrigue and backroom dealings, one of the things that made his R.E.B.E.L.S. run so interestingly. Politics is a slippery world and only those with deft feet can avoid slipping.

Citizen Cold is by far the most interesting of this week's books, mainly because it's the one that stays closest to the character's original version. Captain Cold is the hero of Central City, taking the place of The Flash, who has never existed in this Eobardian timeline. But it's all a con - Len Snart is still a petty thief, but instead of turning to crime after obtaining his cold gun, came to the realization that you can get a lot more out of people if they like you. He takes villains out with extreme prejudice (The dream-battle between him and Mister Freeze is hilariously short), blatantly courts TV journalist Iris West and happily takes all that Central City offers him. When his sister Lisa (AKA The Golden Glider) kills their abusive father, his calm (cool?) demeanor cracks, but just for a moment.

Geoff Johns and his compatriots have done a real job of making the Flash villains more than gimmicks in costume, many with Scott Kolins at his side. Kolins has done a number of very solid Flash-related tales on his own, many with Cold at their core, and this is no exception.

Deathstroke and the Curse of the Ravager is an odd duck in an already very unfamiliar pond. In this world, Slade Wilson is a pirate, with a crew both human and meta, taking advantage of the chaotic world to fill their pockets, and to search for his daughter Rose, stolen by parties unknown. We get a good look at what he and his crew were up to before their short appearance (and seeming demise, but I doubt that) in FP#2 Jimmy Palmiotti plays with the idea well, writing the dialogue in just enough of the kind of stilted pomposity you use to hear in old pirate movies to make it interesting. How important it'll be to the central plot of the event is questionable, but it's fun so far.

Frankenstein and the Creatures of the Unknown is the latest attempt to use the Frankenstein (re)created by Grant Morrison, combined with an alternate-timeline version of the Creature Commandos. Jeff Lemire does a solid job of providing an origin of the new-world characters, starting in WWII and leading right up to the present. It appears to tie into the yet-to-come Project Superman, as it appears they are awakened by the chaos after Superman escapes his test lab. It's a really entertaining book - apparently they sensed it would be, as Frankenstein is finally getting his own book post September.

And speaking of Post-September...

We now know that something at the climax of Flashpoint (details withheld because they want you to BUY the damn books) will result in the DCU returning not its current normal state, but a slightly altered one, where some histories are the same, some are amended. All 52 of the new books have been revealed, and while the exact details of their histories and respective continuities are not known, a few statements made along the way allow us to make some general assumptions:

They keep using the term "younger". That, combined with statements that we're looking characters from a few years back in their histories, before they had as much experience, makes it fairly clear that we're looking at at the very least a rollback of the DC continuity, if not an actual reboot. But there are odd choices being made as to how those rollbacks are happening, and they're most easily seen in the Batman titles.

Even though we're looking at a "younger" Batman, he's apparently still had time to go through three Robins. Tim Drake is still Red Robin (appearing in Teen Titans, and BOY will I have more to say about that later), Damian will be appearing with his father, Bruce, for the first time, really. Grant Morrison's Batman Inc. will be continuing, so clearly those events are still in the canon.

Dick Grayson, however is back as Nightwing, stepping back from the Batman-mantle he took on recently. Many people are seeing that as a demotion; once he became Batman, they argue, it would be an insult to return to a lesser role. On this I disagree, as I never saw his move to Batman as permanent. Especially when Bruce came back, I saw the idea of two people as Batman, trying to give the implication they were the same character, would not last. If I may draw a comparison to Captain America, very few people thought Steve Rogers wouldn't come back, and that when he did, that he wouldn't return to the role of Cap. That Bucky did such a good job that people wanted him to remain as Cap (and similarly, how Dick did as Batman) is a testament to the characters, and the way they were written, but ultimately, they were ever supposed to be transitional and temporary roles. Dick never had time to really become Batman; he's had a very long time to become Nightwing, and that's the character he feels more "right" being.

Now Barbara Gordon going back to being Batgirl, that's another thing entirely.

The reaction to Babs becoming batgirl again has been met with an astounding amount of emotion on both sides.

Jill Pantozzi, The Nerdy Bird, has been one of the most vociferous, with both a heartfelt article and an equally emotional interview with the book's writer, the redoubtable Gail Simone. I wrote about my own feelings about such a change some time back, and while my timing was off, the point holds - Oracle is an astounding character, made into spectacular by a series of deft hands at the wheel, not the least of which the aforementioned Ms. Simone. So indeed, could she "go back" to the old position, after becoming so great a character in her own right?

In short, yes. In her interview with Jill, Gail made a couple of points that make perfect sense:

The lady in the wheelchair was becoming a crutch - Oracle was supplying data to the Bat-family, the Birds of Prey, and pretty much any hero in the DCU who could get her phone number. She was a dramatic magic wand as potentially annoying as The Doctor's Sonic Screwdriver, in the wrong hands. Gail said it herself - She made it so Batman didn't have to do any detective work, he'd just call her.
In limited amounts, such a source is useful; used constantly it makes fighting crime a bit too easy. Oracle, as written by Gail in BoP worked perfectly; a small team fighting crime, with the help of a big sister. But as used in other books, she was Google.
Part of the reason they have to keep nerfing heroes is, as many have said, they become invulnerable. It's common belief that Batman, at this point in his career, can beat anyone with sufficient Prep Time. Superman can punch Saturn out of orbit; makes it hard to believe Live Wire is a threat. And with one phone call, just about any hero in the DCU could get plans to a villains lair, full specs on the baddie's powers, and instant access to reinforcements. If the DCU were the DCU video games, Oracle would be the strategy guide that listed all the secrets.

They were gonna do it anyway - The decision was made - Batgirl was going to be Barbara Gordon again. Gail had a choice of lighting a candle or cursing the darkness. She realized she wanted to write Batgirl - who wouldn't? - but couldn't find a way to do it without effectively un-doing so much character development over several decades. The Refresh separated the baby from the bathwater. It became possible to eat from the Batgirl-cake while keeping the Oracle cake. Everybody wins.

To these points, I add two of my own:

Most people "know" Barbara Gordon is Batgirl - Yes, it's the same reason they got rid of the "Matrix" version of Supergirl, including the wonderful work Peter David was doing with her. It made far more sense to try and attract new readers with the version of the character they "know", even if that version hasn't been around for almost 25 years. And considering how well the character was received (even if it took several years to get her right, thanks to Sterling Gates and Jamal Igle), it looks like it was the right move. As many people were enjoying all the other versions, there seems to have been a strong sense of "Oh thank God, the real one is back".

So no matter how good the adventures of Cassandra Cain were, and that Steph Brown's currently are, the general public hears "Batgirl" and thinks Yvonne Craig. And really, who wouldn't?

IT'S GAIL FUCKING SIMONE - Personally, and I say this to you clearly and distinctly with no hyperbole whatsoever, I cannot think of another writer in comics today who if they were handed this book, I would have any faith in it whatsoever. Gail has taken Barbara Gordon...not Batgirl, not Oracle, but Babs herself...and turned her into a character so strong and unique that I can't think of another writer's hands I'd trust her in. When Gail left BoP, my interest in the book ceased - I hung around purely to see how bad it was gonna get. And as good as the folks on the book were, it was slopping over with WhaTheHell. Oracle: The Cure was Shakespearean, in the sense that is full of sound and fury, and signified nothing. Gail returning to BoP a year ago was like Hogan returning to the WWE - things were back to As They Should Be. So knowing that Babs will be in the hands of the one person DC I trust to do it right...well, the books could be called Babs Eats Soup and I'd know it was going to be good.

So all told, they are doing something not everyone agrees with, but they are doing it for fair reasons, and with the best people available. But the question is...what exactly are the they doing? The answer to that is, "they're not going to tell us...what are you, stupid?". They have books to sell, and just telling us what's going to be in them will make more people say "oh, thanks, now I don't have to buy it" than "Wow, I have to read that, as I am sure the detailed narrative in the book will be much better than the two sentence summary you gave me",

But again, based on what we've heard, we can make some deductions. Let's take Gail's words and use them against her...

We haven't said she was never Oracle. We haven't said there won't be an Oracle. We haven't said what age she'd be. We haven't said if “The Killing Joke” remains canon or not.

Let's look at them out of order. She (and most of the DC folks) has said we'll bee looking at these heroes from "several" years back, before they got really REALLY good at their jobs. So that certainly implies they'll be younger. Saying "We haven't said she was never Oracle" is the same as saying "We haven't said she was ever Oracle" so that doesn't help us.

I could never really get behind, taking the Babs that's been running the Bat-verse, toppling countries, helping herd the JLA, all those things...I could never see, even with the very heartfelt and passionate words of many people with disabilities who asked for it, putting that Babs back in the cape and cowl. I don't think I could ever have done that.

Which implies simply that's this is not what she's doing.

Perhaps we're looking at a compression of time. Consider the rule of the Sliding (X) Years, the idea that the entirety of the events of the DCU, starting with either the first appearance of Superman or the Flash (debatable) happened X years ago from TODAY, not at a fixed point in the past that gets further and further away. Right now, Grant Morrison presumes that period to be about 15-20 years. If you look at the period of time since the actual start of the Silver Age (just about 50 years), Crisis comes right in the middle - it's fair to assume the same is true for that sliding period in the DCU timeline. So that means Babs has been a wheelchair for about seven to ten years, and has been oracle for a year or so less than that, DCU-time. That's a LOT of time. Puts the heroes in their late thirties, maybe even early forties, depending when they started.

The current Best Guess is that with the clock rolling back, there simply won't be enough time for all the stories that we've read over the last decades to "have happened". So like the junk drawer in the kitchen, stuff will be removed and either tossed, or a place found for them, until the drawer can be closed again, with room to put more stuff in. Let's say they're planning to made that sliding time period closer to seven to ten years. With Crisis still n the middle, we're only looking at Babs being Oracle for three to four years; perhaps much less. That's less time for her to get used to (and really good at) being Oracle, and allows her to have been Batgirl for longer than she was Oracle. And that's a somewhat reasonable time period for a person to have had massive spinal trauma to recover some sensation and mobility to a degree. In a super-science world of the DCU, it's more than enough time for them to fully cure her, well BEFORE she becomes an institution.

In that new paradigm, with less adventures on the books, might it be more acceptable for THAT Babs Gordon to return to the tights? Bearing fully in mind that DC will not be coming to your house and taking back all the comics in the longboxes? I think at least it might soften the blow.

I know people are worried about Cass and Steph. All I can say is, I cannot imagine that those characters won't have a role in the new DC.

Again, this implies that the characters will still exist in the DCnU, but does not say they were ever Batgirl. While it's odd that Batman will still have time to have three Robins, is it more of less unbelievable that there were two other Bats-girl? So again, there might be a Cassandra Cain and Steph Brown, they may never have been Batgirl; that doesn't mean they can't be great characters, perhaps in some other costume or form.

Here's the deal - we don't have a clue what any of the new books will be. Some will assume the worst, some will remain cautiously optimistic, and some will make comparisons to sliced bread that will make others want to buy them a thesaurus. I'll keep going over the rest of the new titles in the coming days, but all told, it looks like I'll be buying some books, and not others. In short, much like today.

The big question, the one upon which all this is hanging, is whether or not more, a LOT more new people will be reading them. Far FAR more than the ones that will stomp away in a huff at the threat of change, swearing they Quit Comics Forever. That is a question that not even Oracle can answer.

On Flashpoint Salvo One and the first peeks at the "DC Refresh"

2011-06-02T20:17:00.000-07:00

Flashpoint was at first seen as just another summer event, a little different in that it didn't tie into any regular titles save for Booster Gold. It was at its base a chance to do a mess of Elseworlds stories, and some very promising ones at that. But the question everyone asked (at least the ones who didn't assume the answer was "not at all") was how much, if any, would this event affect the DCU moving forward.
Well, now we know, don't we?

Now that we know damn well the books will have a solid impact on the future of the DCU, it's likely worth giving them a more detailed look.

Flashpoint #2 it the central book of the event and is where the Flash / Barry Allen would be having his adventure to try and fix this mishegas. At least up until the end of this issue, that is...

Seriously tho, I'm sure this is a classic Republic Serial cliffhanger, and first thing next issue he'll sit up gasping or screaming bloody murder. Remember, if he isn't the Flash, the Speed Force never gets generated, and Thawne can't tap into it, and we're in a Grandfather paradox.

We get a look at a couple more of the new characters of this new world - the pirate Deathstroke will be getting his own mini starting in a week or two, and the war between Atlantis and Themyscira will be see in Aquaman and Wonder Woman's own minis. Lois Lane isn't seen, just discussed, and of course, The (surprising) Batman, who still seems to remain at the center of things, no matter who he ends up being. The idea that he'd go to all these lengths to let his son take his place is a sign as to how single-minded the Wayne men are.

My main issue with the book is more a worry than a problem. There's SO much new stuff to introduce, so many new characters and ideas, that I'm afraid there won't be enough time for any of them to DO anything. We're two issues down out of five, and the only characters whose stories have moved appreciably forward are barry and Batman. The heroes (and tweens) of the world decided to do something...and that's it. We see Slade and Steve Trevor get into trouble, and that's about it. If they don't get to more action in the next issue, numbers 4 and 5 are gonna be crammed to confusion.

Abin Sur the Green Lantern - My favorite of the tie-in books so far, it hinges on the idea that Abin Sur didn't die on his trip to Earth many years ago, and is still the GL of the sector. With Earth no longer the bastion of heroism it was, the war againt the Black Lanterns is going badly, and with no Hal Jordan to challenge him, Sinestro is still a Green Lantern, and Abin Sur's best friend.

Perhaps part of the reason I'm enjoying this book is that since there's less new concepts to introduce (just nods to the differences), they get right into the story. It's interesting that even in a new timeline, the Guardians are conniving bastards who lie like little blue persian rugs.

Abin Sur and Sinestro have been redesigned to hew to their portrayal in the upcoming film, and that's fine. Sinestro is using any means necessary to find out what's going on, and they're both ignoring the Guardians, something that goes usually end well.

Batman: Knight of Vengeance is another book that has a direction in mind, and gets going fast. Like the GL title, it's based on one change - Bruce Wayne died in Crime Alley with his mother, and Thomas lived. The way he chose to enact his wrath on crime is markedly different than the way his son went, taking a wholesale tack rather than one man. Note that in this world, Oswald Cobblepot is working with him (how happily, I imagine we'll learn soon). He's not afraid to kill, and isn't nearly as "code-approved" as his son was. Like the GL book, I see his Joker looks much more like the recent Ledgerian film version.

It seems more unconnected to the main FP story, more interested in telling its own story about its own Batman. We got one reference to the events of FP#2 where he asks Jim Gordon if he'd change the world for the better if he could. Perhaps with Barry's help, he'll be able to.

World of Flashpoint is serving the purpose of explaining more of the bits of the new world that aren't covered in the main title. We got a bit more of a backstory to the history of the world - the JSA existed, but had no Flash, so they didn't succeed in their fight against crime. Check out those members of H.I.V.E. - the young chubby-cheeked Ras Ahl Ghul? Looks like Damian's original purpose was achieved.

Traci 13 remembers the time before Thawne started dicking with things, and is a far more powerful magician than she was before. That, combined with the countdown started at the end of the book gives me the impression that with a bunch of books they swear you don't HAVE to read to get the whole story of the event, this book may be the one of which that is the lest true.

Secret Seven was my least favorite of the titles, mainly because I never got into the previous Shade series, tho more from my own tastes at the time than any flaw in the book. The George Perez art here is wonderful as always, and the story is perfectly good. It seems to have the least to do with the main story so far. It's the odd duck of the set so far. Here more to give Milligan a chance to write Shade again, which is not a bad thing.

DC is swearing blind that the wholesale renumbering of the DC Universe in September is NOT a "reboot". They're not starting everything from scratch, but they are giving the JLA a new origin, giving a bunch of characters new costumes, and making them all "younger", which implies that some of their adventures may not have happened, or at least not yet. So, we're really talking semantics.

Twitter person Grant Giandonato has come up with the perfect term - "The DC Refresh" - when Flashpoint ends, DC isn't rebooting, they're hitting the F5 key and clearing the cache.

The first ten new issues after Justice League hve been officially announced, as opposed to the ones that have been rumored and supposed. They're an interesting set of choices so far:

Wonder Woman went through a year-long alternate reality already and a rather talked about costume change, so it's no surprise at all that she gets a new outlook...but another new costume? That's a surprise, considering all the stumping they did for the last one. Brian Azzarello is a very good writer, and I think we'll see Diana take an more dramatic turn. Cliff Chiang popped onto the scene with that brilliantly beny Doctor Thirteen mini series, and his clean line art style quickly became a fave of mine. Looks promising.

The Aquaman book is not a surprise at all, since it was announced several months back. The new post-FP world opens a number of questions, however. How much of his tragic past (and various incarnations) have happened?

It's not a terrible surprise to see The Flash in his own book again - Johns went to great lengths to bring him back, I didn't expect it'd just be for 12 issues. With Francis Manapul and Brian Buccellato sharing the art and writing duties, it could be interesting indeed. They've both got lots of experience with the character, and likely lots of story seeds from past collaborators.
We've seen a number of artists get writing gigs, only to fall behind quickly. I'm hoping we don't have this problem in the post-FP DCU.

The rumored and unconfirmed loss of Gail Simone on Birds of Prey has raised much speculational ire online, but the news that she'll be taking over Fury of Firestorm has calmed many seething hearts. At the end of Brightest Day, the dangling thread was that Ronnie and Jason were stuck as Firestorm, and that they were going to detonate in ninety days DCU time. That sounds a tad too thematically similar to the One Year Later plot twist for Firestorm where Jason was merged with Lorraine Reilly (Firehawk) and if they were separated by more than a mile, there were dangerous complications. I'm hoping that part of the plotline is either ignored, or sorted out quickly.

The new look of the character, or should I say characters, is promising. I'm a big fan of the Japanese TV shows like Ultraman, Kamen Rider and the Super Sentai shows that get turned into Power Rangers. Last year's KR show was called Kamen Rider W, which brought a unique spin to the formula in that it was two people who merged to form the hero. This had been done before in Ultraman Ace, but this also added the multiple forms concept that had become popular with the shows. So Kamen Rider would look different and have different powers, depending which of the pair was the active member of the transformation.

So imagine my surprise when I saw this art which seems to mirror that concept. There seem to be Jason-Active and Ronnie-Active forms, and a more powerful "super-form" as well. Could be interesting.

Considering that James Robinson was originally attached to the Hawkman title as of last year, I gotta tell you, Tony Daniel is a step down. Philip Tan on art will be welcome, for sure. The rundown of the character seems rather different than the current version - hard to tell if they've chosen to pull back on the history of the character, or just choosing to fill that in later. I'll certainly give it a go.

I gotta tell you, I did not expect to see Green Arrow make the cut. His current title has been a mad Goop Melange of ideas thrown at the proverbial wall - he got married, his son got attacked by a death cloud lost his memory and genetically merged with Plastic Man, he killed a villain, got forgiven, got divorced, and the last year has been naught but an extended tie-in book to Brightest Day. JT Krul has done well with the cards he was dealt, don't get me wrong, so I'm perfectly willing to see what he'll do moving forward. And art by Dan jurgens is always a delight.

But more then any character right now, Green Arrow needs a cleanup. WAY to many thing tried in way too short a time - dump almost all of it, roll him back to the just after Longbow Hunters era, even back as far as the 70's JLA, and I don't think you'd get too many complaints at all.

The Justice League International title is just slopping over with potential for me. The JLI:GL mini-series did a fabulous job of turning the team into serious players, or more correctly, reminding people that they were serious players all along. People only remember them as a BWAH-HAH-HAH gang of loony losers, something that was even addressed in the series; that's even how other heroes remember them. But now they're a team to be reckoned with, and with Dan Jurgens at the helm, I'm quite chuffed.

Booster's got a new costume, and is dead-center on the cover. Might he be taking the leadership role? I'll be curious to see if his solo title continues. If you look at it from issue one, it seems rather clear that one of its purposes was to set up the time tampering plotline. I'm expecting to find out that all the plans he foiled in the early days of the book were the work of the Reverse Flash all along. Booster's a major player in Flashpoint; his title is the only regular book crossing into it. There's a fair chance that once FP ends, so will his title, and this will be his primary home.

Dan's verified that the woman in the lower left is a new character, but when I pressed and asked "NEW new, or new-version-of-current-character new?", he hemmed and hawed a bit. A lot of folks, myself included, thought it looked a lot like Donna Troy.

There's another very interesting change here. Look at that lineup, and think back to the JLI:GL series. Who's missing? Where's Blue Beetle? It possible he'll be appearing in Teen Titans, but considering the exposure he got on the Brave and the Bold TV series, not to mention recently on Smallville, I think one of the 52 new titles will be another try for Jaime Reyes. Just getting it on record.

Mister Terrific is a stellar character, and could easily carry a solo book.Indeed, the lion's share of the stories from JSA Confidential were about him, so it's clear he's a character people have stories for. He's got an interesting character quirk - he's an atheist in a world where God(s) clearly exist, and interact with Earth almost daily. He's so dedicated to science he's patently unwilling to accept that there's some stuff right in front of him to which science just can't handle. Lots of character potential there.

A lot of folks are worried that in this new, younger DCU, there may be no room for the JSA. This may be a moot point since there's already been solid rumors about another JSA book, one decidedly not including the work of Marc Guggenheim. And that's just FINE by me. The whole Monument Point arc had great promise, as it was originally described, but it became this morose beatdown of the characters, leaving Alan Scott stuck in a costume resembling a Franklin Stove, and the aforementioned Mister Terrific rapidly losing his intelligence like Sherman Klump in The Nutty Professor II. Obviously THAT'S going to get sorted (good - I can't stand People Getting Stupid stories, save the "Goof Gas" arc on Rocky and Bullwinkle and the story Flowers for Algernon) but all the promise of Monument point has yet to arrive. I wouldn't mind if it was followed up on, as it sounded good.

I have been saying for a LONG time that Captain Atom could be a great character. But...well...oh just go read this.Green Arrow needs rolling back a few years, but Captain Atom could easily be started over from scratch in the brave new DCU, with nary a whimper. Even better, put him on Earth-4 along with the Charlton Action heroes, and let him be the strongest character on the planet. There's no place for a second strongest person on the planet - Superman is it, period, or at least he should be. But in his own little fiefdom, with only a small number of characters to share the field with, Atom could be a big winner.

The assorted Confidential titles were a good idea, but limited - you can only think up so many other Batman or Superman stories to tell. But there's so many OTHER heroes in the DCU you can tell a story about that never get a chance to shine. DC Universe Presents is the book that will offer that forum. Try characters out in a regular title, see how they do. It's how oh so many heroes got their start back in the day. I wouldn't mind seeing Showcase come back either - I still think a book with two or three short stories of various character could do well. Stagger the stories so they don't all end at the same time, give the readers a reason to buy each issue. As the story they're enjoying is ending, they've already had a couple chapters of another story to enjoy and get interested in, as opposed to starting fresh the next issue.

As I was writing this, the next wave of new #1 issues were announced, from the Green Lantern corner of the DCU. Not a lot has changed here creatively, and that's a good thing - Johns, Tomasi and Bedard have a book each. Bedard's book, New Guardians is the one we know nothing about, but it puts Kyle Rayner in the star role, which was something missing recently. Add to that the already-announced Red Lanterns title by Peter Milligan and you've got a nice and varied set of books.

Of all the stuff at DC right now, the GL titles are the ones for which the most is going well, so odds are we'll not see too many big changes to the history. Just about everything else is up for grabs.

All told, I see promise and potential in every title so far, and a couple hold great promise for me. Save for the rumored change to BoP and the loss of James Robinson on Hawkman, I've not seen a serious misstep yet. So, let's give them a chance and see if they can deliver something new and exciting, as opposed to just different.

On the need to destroy to build anew

2011-05-31T20:16:00.000-07:00

WOW.

It was theorized, it was whispered, but nobody seriously thought they'd do, but they have.

DC announced today that come September they were re-launching the entire DC Universe. Fifty-Two new #1 issues. New origins, new costumes, new stories. So far the only book announced officially is a new Justice League title by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee, a book that has been a poorly-kept secret for at least two years. Other titles being bandied about include a reboot of Birds of Prey NOT under the control of everyone's favorite woman in serious need of help, Gail Simone, a Hawkman title by James Robinson and Philip Tan, and a Fabian Nicieza-helmed Teen Titans. All good news.

Fifty-two titles is about the same number of mainstream DC books they're publishing now, not counting the Vertigo and DC Kids titles. But they're already saying that quite a few titles won't be returning, and are promising a "wider range" of titles. Heaven only knows what that'll mean.

Naturally, many questions come to the fore, such as:

WHAT STAYS AND WHAT GOES? We don't yet know how much of DC Continuity is being rewritten here. They've said the JLA is getting a new origin, and the implication is that other bits will change as well. While they're shying away from using the word "reboot", they've said things will be "at a point where our characters are younger". So, does that mean a younger Superman, before he married Lois? A Batman earlier in his career, where Dick Grayson is still Robin? Where Wally West is Kid Flash, and Bart Allen does not exist? At this point we don't know.

To a degree, DC seems to be taking a page from Marvel's book when they did this to Spider-Man a couple years back. After the much-maligned One More Day arc (If you don't know, do NOT ask), Spider-Man was no longer married, and several years younger; closer in age to the readers.

It's not a bad idea. It used to be known as the "Sliding seven years" - the concept that all of modern comics history took place in the last seven or so years, in the same way that all ten seasons of M*A*S*H took place within only a three-year police action. But with 50 years of adventures since the launch of the Silver Age, that's generally considered to be more like 12-15 years now. That puts the big guys like Superman and Batman in their mid-thirties, easy, maybe pushing forty. Winding them back a few years makes them a bit more easy to identify with.

But will readers accept seeing their biological clocks wound back, and potentially any number of stories wiped off the canon? Well, now that the grousing is over, Spider-Man is doing very well (Dan Slott is bringing an unbridled glee to the book; it's more fun to read than it's been since well before JMS took it over) and though people swore it'd be a colossal disaster, Superman's reboot by John Byrne was a total success, as was Geoff John's more recent soft-reboot. So it's certainly get past performance on its side.

More than the events of years past, the question of what more recent events will "count" are on my mind. We're reading War of the Green Lanterns right now, and just finished reading Blackest Night, the end of a since massive story arc that started in issue on of Green Lantern Rebirth. Considering the GL titles are a sales juggernaut right now, it seems likely that they won't change much. But Justice League Generation lost ended with the promise of a new JL:I title. Is that still on the books, and will it still be based off the events of the maxi-series? After investing a year (and longer for the GL titles), it might rankle some for the new DC paradigm to ignore those stories, partly or in toto. Many readers were annoyed that several of the alleged Final Crisis prequel titled like Death of the New Gods ended up being stand-alone stories that were completely ignored and even directly contradicted by the following event. It wouldn't do to have that happen again.

WHO WILL LIVE, WHO WILL PERISH? While books are going away and new one are replacing them, might the same be true of characters? There's already rumblings that Adventure Comics will no longer star the Legion of Super-Heroes, but other characters who had graced its pages in the past.

One of the biggest complaints about the past few (ok, more than a few) years at DC ar the massive number of deaths that served only to waste good characters in exchange of a brief hotshot and some cheap heat. With time itself being up in the air in FLASHPOINT, who's to say that a few of those deaths couldn't be...fixed? Everybody's got someone they'd like to save, and if you have read my stuff in the past, you likely know whose mine are: Ted Kord, and Ralph and Sue Dibny. Their stories were well told, they were moving, and ironically, they all got more use and respect after they died than they did for years beforehand. That doesn't reduce at all my desire to see them alive, hale and hearty again.

I also have a few things I'd like to see done, as long as everything seems in flux...

CAPTAIN MARVEL: Rather a drop-kick here. They've been teasing a return of the Big Red Cheese as more and more of the brain-softening fiasco that was Trials of SHAZAM got stripped away and tossed in the bin. This would be a perfect chance to bring him back to the DCU proper. The SHAZAM book by Art Baltazar, Franco and Mike Norton was stellar, but suffered from the fact that by running under the DC Kids line, it was deemed "Not a real DC title" by the comics-reading intelligentsia. Well I've gone on record before that the DC Kids titles have been putting out entertainment on par with the "real" DC books ever since Jann Jones took the line by the horns and made something of it.
As neat an idea as the S!H!A!Z!A!M! kids seem in Flashpoint, that is absolutely NOT the Cap I want to read long-term.

USE ALL 52 EARTHS: One of the real problems in the DCU is when Superman is the top dog, the drop to number two is precipitous. As powerful as, say, Captain Atom is, when he's trying to fight an alien invasion or natural disaster, in the back of your mind you're still thinking "Why doesn't Superman just come help him?"
But put him on his own Earth, make him the biggest fish in the pond, and you can make him a real star.
DC has already brought back the Multiverse, albeit an abbreviated version, with 52 Earths. Put the ACTUAL Charlton heroes on Earth-4, not a Watchmen-ish version of them. Likewise Captain Marvel - he works best when he's off on his own, with or without the other Fawcett heroes
Oh, and get rid of that teen Ibis with the inexplicable costume while you're at it. He shames us both.

HOW ABOUT SOME OF THAT "POSITIVE" FEELING? After each event since Infinite Crisis, we were promised a return to a more optimistic tone for the DCU, a less rapey-murdery time where people survived adventures with just some scrapes and scars. And we never seemed to get it. This may be the time. I don't want to see a return to the simplistic and goofy sixties or anything, but it's possible to do a story that doesn't end with a body.

There's a bunch of books I'd like to see done as well. Considering how well the DC Kids books are doing, I'm at a dead loss as to how a monthly Captain Carrot book isn't being done. I'm hoping the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents survive the cut, and take a more active part in the the DCU, becoming its analogue to SHIELD, one that Checkmate was never able to be.

They promise a "Wider Range" of books. Are they talking diversity of characters, or a wider range of topics? I would love to see if a war title could hack it in today's market, or dare I dream, a comedy title like PLOP!

I'm on board for this. I want to see what they have planned, and see how many creative teams and titles interest me. I'll lay odds I'll end up getting more DC titles than I am now, and that, friend, is saying something.

On the celebration of another mythical holiday

2011-05-16T14:20:00.000-07:00

First time in years I had it written on the calendar ahead of time.
It's Miracle Monday, the third Monday in May, a celebration of the human spirit that will one day surpass any religious or civic holiday in human history, even the ones created by greeting card companies. It was created by Elliot S! Maggin in his Superman novel of the same name.

On Miracle Monday the spirit of humanity soared free. This Miracle Monday, like the first Miracle Monday, came in the spring of Metropolis, and for the occasion spring weather was arranged wherever the dominion of humanity extended. On Uranus's satellites where the natives held an annual fog-gliding rally through the planetary rings, private contributions even made it possible to position orbiting fields of gravitation for spectators in free space. On Titan, oxygen bubbles were loosed in complicated patterns to burst into flame with the methane atmosphere and make fireworks that were visible as far as the surface of saturn. At Nix Olympica, the eight-kilometer-high Martian volcano, underground pressures that the Olympica Resort Corporation had artificially accumulated during the preceding year were unleashed in a spectacular display of molten fury for tourists who walked around the erupting crater wearing pressurized energy shields. At Armstrong City in the Moon's Sea of Tranquility there was a holographic reenactment of the founding of the city in the year 2019, when on the fiftieth anniversary of his giant leap for mankind the first man on the Moon returned, aged and venerable, to what was then called Tranquility Base Protectorate, carrying a state charter signed by the President of the United States. The prices of ski lift tickets on Neptune inflated for the holiday. Teleport routes to beaches and mountains on Earth crowded up unbelievably. Interplanetary wilderness preserves became nearly as crowded with people as Earth cities. Aboard the slow-moving orbital ships that carried ores and fossil materials on slowly decaying loops toward the sun from the asteroids, teamsters partied until they couldn't see. On worlds without names scattered throughout this corner of the Galaxy, where Earth's missionaries, pioneers and speculators carried their own particular quests, it was a day for friends, family, recreation and - if it brought happiness—reflection.

Long story short, Superman is tempted by Satan himself, through his minion, C.W. Saturn. After endless disasters and acts of evil, Superman defeats Saturn by simply being the strong incorruptible character he is, refusing to take a single human life in exchange for the rest of the world. In his defeat, Saturn must grant Superman a boon; he chooses simply to have all the evil and destruction wrought by the demon undone, and have no one remember what they have suffered. The wish is granted, and when everyone awakes the next day, the terrors the world underwent are gone. But in their place is an unidentifiable feeling that they've dodged a metaphoric bullet, an overwhelming sense of of relief, the sense that something wonderful has happened somewhere in the world. This shared sense of inner peace and happiness passes quickly, but so moves the people that over the course of time, the anniversary of the event becomes a global celebration, and as man conquers the stars, a galaxy-wide one.

Elliot S! Maggin is responsible for some truly magnificent parts of Superman history, and this book is one of them. In another story, Kristin comes back to learn more about the mysterious "Superwoman" who appeared once to save Superman, only to discover that she herself was the strange visitor from another time.
He is also responsible for the single funniest time-travel joke ever. The Miracle Of Thirsty Thursday! from Superman #293, came out a full six years before this novel, and shares many similar concepts. Joann Jamie, a future historian comes back to our time to discover the secret of the titular event of the story (see what I mean?). When she gets here, can't find a hotel room to save her life. Another tourist explains that the city is choked to bursting with OTHER time-travelers who are also trying to learn the secret- he reveals he's from a couple centuries LATER than Joanne, and he reveals that they STILL haven't figured it out.
While these stories have been wiped away by numerous Crises, they still hold an important place in the hearts of Super-fen. Kurt Busiek wrote a story where another Kryptonian was living in secrecy on Earth, under the name...Kristin Wells. And just a year or so back, Sterling Gates got to write about a mysterious new Superwoman with a costume similar in design to Kristin's a clear tip of the hat to the original.
The full text of Maggin's novel is available online, It's long out of print, but can still be found in used bookstores if you're lucky enough to have on in your town. You should find one.

Now if I can only remember to celebrate Klordny this year, I'll be set.

On finally being able to easily explain why the dwarves in Final Fantasy saying "Rally-Ho! is funny

2011-05-12T10:02:00.000-07:00

Modern video game fans know "Rally Ho!" (sometimes translated as "Lali-Ho!") as the greeting of the Dwarvish race in the Final Fantasy games. But older fans, who grew up in the late 60s and early 70s remember the phrase from a far different source.

The Impossibles were one of Hanna-Barbera's first Superhero cartoons, following Atom Ant and Secret Squirrel, and coming out the same year as the legendary Space Ghost. As opposed to the more serious hero from the Ghost Planet, The Impossibles were a more tongue-in-cheek show, with an animation style closer to the more "cartoony" Winsome Witch style. Featuring villains like The Paper Doll Man and The Insidious Inflator, the trio fought crime in the Washington DC area, as well as a number of fictional cities across the country.

Coil Man had the ability to stretch and spring his body, Fluid Man could change to any form of water, including steam and rainclouds, and Multi-Man could create a seemingly endless stream of duplicates, all expendable, as long as the villains never took out the original, which they never seemed to. Fluid Man could fly; indeed they all seemed to be able to on rare occasion, though Coil Man usually bounced along, and Multi-Man had this cool way of traversing chasms by generating duplicates in rapid succession like a deck of cards being spread out on the felt.

Like all superheroes, they had secret identities, though theirs were a bit "Hide in plain sight"y. When not fighting crime and/or evil as The Impossibles, they were a popular singing group called...The Impossibles. I mean, NOBODY made the connection? Even when on occasion they'd visit the villains' prison cells as the SINGING Impossibles? Also, we never learned their real names; they were ever referred to as "Coily", "Fluey" and "Multi" to each other, in our out of their fighting togs.

The shows would begin and end with a small number of the band's catchy pop tunes, a theme we'd see repeated on Josie and the Pussycats. Though, sadly, we never got to hear longer versions of the songs, and certainly never got to buy an album.

The character designs and stories were a delight, and the voice talent was from the heart of H-B's stable of classic actors. The team were voiced by the inimitable Paul Frees, Hal Smith (who aside from his miles long voice resume, you likely better remember as Otis the town drunk on The Andy Griffith Show) and Don Messick, who was as close to royalty as a voice actor can get. They doubled up on numerous characters, but villains were also voiced by such luminaries as Alan Melvin (Best known as Barney Hefner on All in the Family) and Fred Flintstone himself, Alan Reed.

The team were paired with an equally outlandish superhero character's adventures, Frankenstein Jr. The creation of boy scientist Buzz Conroy, Frankie was a giant robot with a seemingly infinite array of powers. Combatting an endless rogues gallery of criminals and mercenaries, the pair prevailed time and time again in their science-fictiony world of the near future.

Again, only the best voice talent was good enough for Hanna-Barbera. Frankie was voiced by Ted Cassidy, who didn't get nearly enough of a chance to show off his vocal and comedic talents as Lurch on The Addams Family. Buzz Conroy was played by Dick Beals, another perennial worker for H-B, and best known as the voice of Speedy Alka-Seltzer.. John Stephenson, the original Dr. Benton Quest played Buzz' dad, Professor Conroy. His wife, Buzz' mom was never seen on the series; The Wife assumed she left the relation ship early; I assume some sort of experiment of which the pair do not speak...

Once again beating the trend to the punch, Frankenstein Jr. appeared well before the big explosion of gian robot cartoons. Only Gigantor (originally the Japanese show Tetsujin 28) appeared first, several years earlier, but while Jimmy Sparks controlled Gigantor from afar, Buzz piloted Frankie personally, riding on his shoulder. Only years later would the genre make a reappearance in Japan, spawning the endless examples that we've seen since.

After a great number of requests, the increasingly awesome Warner Brothers Archive has made the show available on DVD. The Print-on-Demand DVD industry has seen a lot of growth in the last year or two, with almost all the major studios starting a line. It's a great way to make movies available that would appeal to a core audience, but could never support a full-blown release which would require thousands of copies to be printed and distributed. Here, they only need to build the content and label, and burn a copy as it's ordered, making each release profitablequickly, possibly after only a few dozen orders.

As the lines have proven successful, more time and money have been invested on the releases. In addition to a very nice digital clean-up and re-mastering of the cartoons, this release features a short documentary on the shows, with interviews with animation historians and W-B animator Scott Jeralds, late of the under-appreciated Krypto the Superdog and The Secret Saturdays. The mini-feature includes a look at a lot of pre-production art for both series, back when the super-team was to be named "The Incredibles" (Pixar dodged a bullet there, huh?) and Frankie was actually going to be created by Dr. Frankenstein.

The WB Archives have released a number of H-B series so far including The Pirates of Dark Water, and up next, The Herculoids. But it's this release that has created the most excotement and joy in our household, and it's WELL worth a look.

On the countdown to the Alpocalypse

2011-04-26T17:58:00.000-07:00

So "Weird Al" Yankovic made the papers lately. You might have heard about it.

Allegedly, Lady Gaga, a popular vocalist, refused Al permission to include a parody of her song "Born This Way" on his album. Specifically, her manager asked Al to actually write, record and submit the parody, a series of hoops that no artist had ever requested. After doing so, Gaga's manager, Troy Carter, told Al that she had decided against the song being included.

After a moment of frustration, Al did what he did when Atlantic Records vetoed the James Blunt parody "You're Pitiful" (even after Blunt himself gave permission, but feared he didn't have the clout to overrule the label): he posted it on the Internet for free.

The reaction was quick, overwhelming, and rife with vituperatives. The Lady Gaga was immediately declared the internet's Special Friend and was driven into the dirt. Already riding a wave of negative pulicity over her latest release, Al's misadventure synced up PERfectly with the action line of articles casting her in a negative light, so it got picked up by websites and periodicals all across the spectrum.

And it was glorious.

But Team Gaga had another club in their bag. The Bemeated One came out claiming that she had never even HEARD the song - Media mastermind Troy Carter had taken it on himself to turn down the song. Gaga heard the song (how could she not), LOVED it, and immediately approved it for inclusion on the Al-bum.

Now, there are two possible scenarios at play here...

What we have been told is true - Troy Carter decided that the song wouldn't be in Gags's best interest and turned it down, and the ensuing imbroglio was his fault, and his alone.
Gaga DID hear and turn down the song, and once the backlast started, realized she'd shit the bed, and when she couldn't figure out how to turn it into a new outfit, asked Troy to take a bullet for the team and say he'd made the choice on her own.

We will never know.

The bright side of the whole mishegas was that with the song approved, Al now had a full set of songs ready to go for the new record, and was able to go ahead with plans to announce a release date.

And announce one he did.

ALPOCALYPSE drops June 21st.

Those who know me know my love for Al's work is deep and profound. So as a tribute to the man, and a way to keep from having to come up with anything to write about for the next two months or so, I'll be recapping and reviewing all his albums to date. I may well cram in a recap of his TV show, which by God deserves one.

Stick with us as we tear through a twenty-year career in a little under eight weeks, and go into more detail than anything the Biography channel ever could.

On another note, now that Doctor Who has started up again, I'm doing my recaps for Newsarama. The first one is up for The Impossible Astronaut, and if you enjoy the show, there's a passing chance you'll enjoy my analysis. Share and Enjoy.

On the passing of royalty

2011-04-20T07:29:00.000-07:00

She was the queen of the Companions. She was a reporter that could have, on her worst day, gone toe-to-toe with Lois Lane. Of all the passengers of the TARDIS who had come before, she was the first that you got the feeling that Something could be Going On between her and The Doctor. We will not see her equal, and she is gone from us too soon. 907 years would have been too soon.

Elisabeth Sladen passed away today, reportedly of complications from cancer. Doctor Who website Gallifrey One confirmed the news with a report from Nicola Bryant, who played Peri Brown on the show.

Sladen's early acting career started with an uncredited role in 1965, and included a brief run on British perennial Coronation Street and police procedural Z Cars. It was her work on Z Cars that got her suggested to the production staff at Doctor Who when they were looking for a new actress to work against Jon Pertwee. Her performance as intrepid reporter Sarah Jane Smith on the show was the one that would make her a household name. When she left the series five years hence, her departure made the news, one of the first times events on the program were covered by the media.

She continued to appear in other shows and productions, but her career would always lead her back to Who in one fashion or another. After a pilot for a series, teaming her up with "Tin dog" K-9. she returned for the 20th anniversary special The Five Doctors and some years later for the Children in Need charity performance Dimensions in Time. She appeared in a series of radio format plays from Big Finish, a fan-run company that produced authorized Doctor Who adventures for many years, including the period that the show was off-air.

When the series returned, hopes rose high that we'd see Ms. Sladen reprise her classic role; when she did in the adventure School Reunion, to say it was a success would be an understatement. Almost immediately afterwards, a new spinoff series, The Sarah Jane Adventures, was launched. Aimed at a younger audience than Who, it featured Sarah Jane protecting the Earth from alien threats with the assistance of some young people from her home at 13 Bannerman Road. The series ran for four seasons, with a fifth already in production. There are reports that much of Sladen's footage is already shot, so we'll be blessed with a little more of her work.

She is survived by her husband Brian Miller, and their daughter Sadie, who appeared with Elisabeth in her Sarah Jane Smith plays for Big Finish.

On a classic telling of a classic joke about a classic character.

2011-04-15T12:14:00.000-07:00

John Boardman is what we used to call a Big Name Fan back in the days of Science Fiction fandom when fanzines were typed, and printed on mimeographs, or if you were really lucky, on the Xerox at your office if no one was looking. He hosted First Saturday at his home in Brooklyn, and was almost required attendance if you were a fan in NYC. I believe every fannish community had such a recurring party, and First Saturday was ours.

For those who played the complex boardgames from companies like Avalon-Hill, John is best known for inventing Play-by-mail Diplomacy, a game which is like Risk in the same way the Titanic is like the Minnow. He ran numerous fanzines and APAe over the decades, including APA-Filk, the first one to which I ever contributed with my first zine, "Beyond the Last Visible Dog".

When asked (which was often) and if plied with liquor (which was required), he would regale all and sundry with the following epic poem, a rhythmic and lyrical rendering of an old chestnut of a joke, making it so much better.

In honor of the upcoming film, it is presented for your pleasure, in tribute to Professor Boardman, and the many fine times spent at his domicile.

The Thong of Thor
by John Boardman

In days of yore the great god Thor would ramp around creation.
He'd drink a pint and slay a giant and save the Nordic nation,
Or kill a Wyrm and watch it squirm and vainly try to fang him,
Or lock up Loki in the pokey and on the noggin bang him.

Once he did bawl through Thrudvang hall that on a trip he'd wander
In a disguise from prying eyes in Midgard way out yonder.
So all his slaves and carles and knaves packed up his goods and gear-o,
And off he strode on Bifrost road, a perfect Aryan hero.

In Midgard land he joined a band of hardy Viking ruffians.
And off they sailed and rowed and bailed among the auks and puffians.
Whene'er they'd reach a foreign beach they stopped to raid and plunder.
Each Nordic brute got so much loot their longship near went under.

But though they rolled in coins of gold they had one joy forsaken.
For on each raid Thor's party made, no women could be taken.
Each drab and queen fled from the scene when Viking sails were sighted.
And Thor felt needs for certain deeds that had gone unrequited.

Thor's brows were black as they rowed back to Oslo's rocky haven,
Unto his crew he said, "Beshrew me for a Frankish craven,
"If I don't wrench some tavern wench, or else may Frigga damn her!"
Replied one voice, "You've got first choice. You have the biggest hammer."

Into an inn this crew of sin disbarked upon their landing.
Each tavern made was sore afraid of pirates of such standing.
But golden coins warmed up their loins, and soon the ale ran free.
Thor's motley crew poured down the brew and made an all-night spree,

Thor's glances strayed unto a maid with hair as gold as grain,
A lisp so shy, a downcast eye, and not a trace of brain.
He swept her chams into his arms and to an upstairs bower,
And did not cease or give her ease for three days and an hour.

When he arose and donned his clothes she looked like one near death.
Her limbs were weak, she could not speak, and scarcely gasped for breath.
"You ought to know, before I go, I'm Thor," he bade adieu.
"You 're thore!" said she. "Conthider me! I'm thorer; thir; than you!"

On the importance of having a Two

2011-04-06T19:02:00.000-07:00

Freakazoid: One: Norm Abram is missing. Two:...

Cosgrove: We don't have a two.

Both Marvel and DC had returns of major characters today; one fairly well guaranteed ahead of time since it was the plot of the book, the other a pretty universally guessed (but denied till the last moment) secret.

Marvel has brought back The Scarlet Witch in the miniseries Avengers - The Children's Crusade. Now, Wanda Maximoff's history is a complicated one, due to a number of decisions and changes of mind made about her origins and adventures.

To summarize (and get a lot wrong) greatly, she first thought she and her brother Quicksilver were orphans, and first appeared working with/for Magneto in the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. She later found out she was the child of golden-age heroes Miss America and The Whizzer. She later LATER found out she was misled about that, and they were in fact the children of the selfsame Magneto who ordered them around like day-laborers. The both turned face, Wanda fell in love with and married The Vision, a synthetic human. He figured out a way to create artificial sperm so they could have children. She discovered later that she had in fact dreamed all that, and the children that she carried, bore and raised were creations of her own reality-warping powers. This started her decline into madness, one that first caused her to reshape the entire world into one where mutants were in power, with her father in charge. Realizing what she had done, she changed everything back, with a major change - 90% of the world's mutants lost their powers, and it seemed as if there would be No More Mutants. She vanished, and was presumed dead.

She popped up a couple times, seemingly depowered and with no memories of her actions, but that appears to no longer be the case. There are several issues to go, and there's every possibility that she'll be gone again (one way or the other) by the end, but a couple events in the latest issue, including seemingly undoing one of the deaths she caused (TANGENT ALERT in the EXACT FUCKING WAY I've been saying they could STILL bring back Ted Kord, by simply popping him away right after the presumed death, let every THINK he's dead, don't affect any of the events said deaths caused, and bring him forward to the present, where there would be much rejoicing. END TANGENT ALERT), I'm thinking they may try to rehabilitate her much like Geoff Johns did Hal Jordan by claiming much of her actions were out of her control, and in fact few if any people died from it after all.

Allan ~~Fallbe~~Heinberg has been telling some wonderful stories with the Young Avengers since their first appearance, tying two of the members to Wanda in a very nice way, making the events of the new mini a logical extension of their character arc. The part about Doctor Doom wanting to marry Wanda, not so much, but hey, bitter with the sweet.

Over at DC, the Brightest Day mini-series is one issue away from completion, and the new champions of both the White (life) and Black (death) energy have been revealed, and in a weird way...it's the same person. The Black Champion is Swamp Thing, who hasn't been seen in the DCU proper since the mid 80s. The champion of the White entity is revealed to be Alec Holland, the scientist from whose remains Swamp Thing would be created (again, to summarize greatly).

Swamp Thing was a...some term other than "game-changer"...for the comics industry. The first major US work by Alan Moore, it became the first comic from the Big Two to drop the Comics Code altogether and market to an adult/mature audience. It would become the tentpole title for Vertigo, DC's new all-mature titles line, which has been a success ever since.

The downside to that is that we never again saw Swampy in a regular DC title. The idea was that if he appeared in a DC book, kids might seek out the mature title, see something Mommy and daddy wasn't expecting, and here comes the media. That, combined with the alleged iron grip group editor Karen Berger held on the vertigo characters, rendered the character unusable by DC.

Vertigo hadn't used the character since 2005 after another short-lived attempt at a revamp. So the chance that he could return to DC became more and more possible, and considering the forest motifs that came up in Brightest Day, more and more folks posited the same Clever Theory that this would be his Rebirth.

In both cases, the return of these characters at both companies has been met with vocal reactions, mostly to the positive. But in both cases, I have to be the guy who asks "NOW what?"

Yes, we're all happy to see Swamp Thing back. But after a three-issue "aftermath" mini where the new guardian of Earth gets the hang of his new position, we've no idea what plans there are for the character. They tried, repeatedly, to spark new interest in the character at Vertigo, each sputtering to an end. Which of those versions will we see DC use? Are they all to be wiped off the map and go back the Moore version, possibly even ignoring Rick Vietch's contributions? Where's Abby and Tefe? Will see a new Swamp Thing title, and if so, will be similar to the horror theme it's had for decades, or a more Superhero-y bent? Or will it end like oh so many spectacular returns, going up like a firework, and ending just as fast? Will Swamp Thing sink to the mid-card of DC characters again, or have they got something specific in plan?

Similarly at marvel, while the story they're telling with Scarlet Witch right now is very good indeed, if she stays around, do they have a plan in mind? or will she simply go on a big apology tour, take a spot in the Avengers again, and drop back in place?

As a TV producer famously said when asked why he doesn't take advantage of all those internet videos for a show, "What happens in episode two of 'Cat runs into kitchen door'?"

DC has guessed right on a couple of returns: Green Lantern was a success beyond all hope, Flash has spawned the new event Flashpoint, and Legion of Super-Heroes is back to having two monthlies dedicated to it. Aquaman is getting a new series after Brightest Day, as is Hawkman is the rumors and tongue-slips are to be believed. So it's to be assumed that DC has step two firmly in mind. I'll just be curious to see how well fans react to it.

On a classic example of the audience not wanting what it's been offered

2011-04-02T21:20:00.000-07:00

It's Wrestlemania weekend.

To a wrestling fan, that's as big a deal as the Super Bowl, the World Series or any other championship for any other sport. It is traditionally the season finale, the event at which angles and plotlines running for much of the year come to a head and climax. It's the big one, the one event that you still get, even if you're a lapsed fan. Back in the day when there were only four pay-per-views a year, the three months between the Royal Rumble and Wrestlemania were an emotional rollercoaster. Now that they have to set up big matches every month for a PPV, that's reduced a bit, but they still do a good job of upping the ante for what is known as "The Showcase of the Immortals".

The list of the classic matches that have appeared at this event is long indeed, but there's one in particular I'd like to discuss today. The Rock vs. "Hollywood" Hogan as WM 18, or as it was billed, "Wrestlemania X-8"

First, a bit of history. By this point in time, "Hulk" Hogan had long since left the WWE for its chief (and honestly, only) rival, WCW. Its boss, Eric Bischoff, had a radical idea; he wanted to turn Hogan into a bad guy, or "heel". To say it was a success was an understatement. With Hogan's help, WCW would beat the WWE in the ratings for almost two years. Hogan stopped using the "Hulk" moniker, and started being known as "Hollywood" Hogan. (This is not only because of the new persona, but because Marvel Comics got a check every time they used the name "Hulk".) The same charisma that made Hogan such a superstar was now being used to make him the most hated man in WCW, turning on old friends, teaming with people whose guts he once hated, everything a heel does. Seeing it done by Hogan was almost unfathomable.

Time passed, WWE took the upper hand once again, and eventually they ended up buying WCW. This meant they got ownership of WCW's sizeable film library, as well as all of the current wrestler's contracts. Many started working for WWE straight away, but many of the big names, including Hogan and the other members of his "stable", the NWO, took a bit more coaxing. They eventually showed up shortly before Wrestlemania, and The Rock (at the time the biggest good guy, or "babyface" they had) quickly challenged him to a match.

Wrestlemania was held in Toronto that year, at the SkyDome. Now Canadian fans love wrestling, and take it seriously to a degree that can't be fathomed by Americans. Not that they "don't know the truth" or anything, but that they suspend disbelief, appreciate the mechanics of the sport and can recognize a well-performed match when they see it. They don't watch it with the smug irony Americans do, but with the determined to have fun eye of a person who knows he's surrounded by like-minded people who aren't going to judge him, and is determined to have as much fun as he can. In that, I envy them.

Hogan had left the (at the time) WWF in 1994. In 2002, wrestling fans never thought they'd see him in a WWE ring again, so his return was a time of nostalgic joy indeed. The way the story was being played, Hogan was clearly the bad guy, and The Rock was the good guy. But after an absence of eight years, these old-school, hide-bound wrestling fans were simply not going to boo Hulk Hogan.

After a nice recap/prologue, Hogan makes his entrance at 3:30 in the clip above. He's not coming out to his classic song, "Real American", he's not in his traditional red and yellow, he's got a beard and is clearly playing an arrogant bad guy. Listen to that crowd. They Do Not Care. This is their chance, possibly their only and last chance to cheer for him, and damn the plotline, they choose to cheer. The announcers, Jim Ross and Jerry "The King" Lawler, hastily amend their commentary from what was surely supposed to be clearly negative to the "You have to appreciate his past, regardless of what he's like now" variety.

He stands in the ring alone for a solid three minutes before they send in The Rock. They wouldn't stop cheering long enough to cue the entrance music. He gets a mere minute and a half to enter and do his moves for the crowd before the music stops and the match ostensibly starts at 7:45. Again, the crowd would not let the show continue. The pair can not start the match for almost another two minutes. They spend a good chunk of time looking out into the audience, clearly overwhelmed at the reaction.

The sound never lets up. When Hogan lands a blow or sends Rock to the map, they pop like their son just scored a touchdown after triumphing over cancer and a serious stammering issue combined. When Rock was winning, they acted as if he had called each of them, face to face, and in front of close friends, fat. Ross and Lawler swore blind there were people cheering for The Rock. At that moment, there were probably more people in the SkyDome cheering for Dick Butkus.

As the match went on, it was clear what the audience wanted, and the pair knew how to deliver it. Hogan started to flag, falling under Rock's blows, which gave Rock a chance to take on the heel role, prancing and preening, almost taunting the crowd as Hogan lay on the mat. This gave Hogan the chance to return to his traditional babyface role, if only in disposition, as he kept on using traditional "heelish" moves like biting, choking, and a glorious nut-shot that had the crowd wincing and cheering. If there was any question that the roles had reversed, Rock gets Hogan down and puts him in the Sharpshooter, signature move of Bret "Hitman" Hart, member of the Hart clan, the closest thing to the Canadian Royal Family of wrestling there is, and whose history with Vince McMahon is Quite Another Story Indeed.

When Hogan starts his "Hulk out" revival sequence, the crowd goes to eleven. Once that starts, you can call the match with your eyes shut: three blows by the opponent, Hogan stands straight up, stares him down, does the "YOU" point, Irish Whip, big boot, Atomic Leg Drop, 1 - 2 - 3. And by the time the ref got to three there wasn't a person in that arena over the emotional age of ten. A Hogan match is the wrestling equivalent of comfort food - you know exactly what you're gonna get, it's always warm, yummy and filling, and that crowd had not eaten in a loooong time.

Except the ref DIDN'T make three. Rock gets up, and after TWO Rock Bottoms, he wins the match. And it is not until the very end, when he goes for his big finisher The People's Elbow, do the fans start cheering for him. Because what tops off a nice meal of comfort food like a great dessert.

By this point, the lines of face and heel were lost - Hands were shaken, and the proverbial torch is passed. They'd obviously planned a long run with the NWO angle after this match, but after that reaction, it was clear it would not stand. In what felt like a hasty move, Hogan's NWO compatriots Scott Hall and Kevin Nash come out and start beating up on him for losing, giving Rock the chance to come to his aid and set up a quick face turn for Hogan. The traditional six minutes of posing for the audience followed, and it's clear that the crowd would have sat through another twenty.

Hogan stayed with the WWE for another year and change, but to draw a parallel to a previous era, Andre the Giant stayed around for a while after Hogan beat him in WM3 so many years before. In both cases, most consider those matches to be each wrestler's last great moment. But the real star of that match was the audience. There's hasn't been a crowd that hot and excited for a match since the fifties, and there hasn't been one since. They told the WWE what they wanted, and they were smart and deft enough to change plans and deliver.

On how some things end in a...oh, I just can't DO it!

2011-03-18T12:27:00.000-07:00

It's just been announced that DC will be cancelling the latest version of The Flash with issue 12, ending it just as their next event Flashpoint starts.

This is not the first time they've ended the book's (you should pardon the expression) run abruptly. They cancelled the book when Bart Allen was in the red suit right in the middle. Even went so far as to solicit three fake issues so when the book came out, the surprise of the events of the book were not ruined three months back. The surprise was of course that Bart died.

And a bunch of people wailed and screamed and rent their garments and went on about the commonality of death in the DCU, and all that. And another bunch of us read the issue of JLA that came out the same week (almost as if it were planned) and saw Brainiac 5 holding the little wand, and we all said "Well okay, this is obviously already handled".

And sure enough, a year and change later, Bart came back in the stellar Legion of 3 Worlds, and Barry had already come back in Final Crisis, and all told, it was looking pretty good for Flash fans.

But now they're cancelling the book again, and once again everyone is cursing the darkness, complaining that DC can't seem to get a book off the ground, it's all the fault of the creative team, yadda yadda.

And I stand here nonplussed, asking "Really?"

I will tell you right now, this was planned from square one. Geoff Johns is the current reigning master of the Long Game. He plans to a degree that put the Bene Gesserit to shame. He plans his stories over the course of YEARS. He had the Sinestro War in the planning stages by the time the new Green Lantern book started. And he teased both Blackest Night AND War of the GLs in the middle of Sinestro War. They told us about Flashpoint right at the beginning of the new title, and pretty much everything that's happened in it has been connected to it, directly or obliquely. It was a single 12-issue story, intended to bring us right to where we are now, primed and ready to see what Eobard Thawne can do with full access to the timestream.

This is not changing horses in mid-stream. Geoff raised this horse from a foal. He helped birth it. He may have held the stallion's hat while it was shagging the mare. In a very real way, we've been reading one huge over-arcing tale since GL Rebirth, possibly longer.

Now, in the case of Bart, I don't think it was as carefully thought through. As I understand it, they did want to get Bart over as the Flash, although they were already talking about bringing back Barry. The first six issues by Bilson and DiMeo were, I'll be honest, disappointing. It felt like stunt-casting; get the guys who did the did the Flash TV series (Which was at best, small islands of great in a sea of meh) to write the comic, and get a little mainstream publicity. It consisted of several issues of Bart...not running. The idea was that accessing the Speed Force could kill him, so he was trying to give it up, but then things happened that made him change his mind and it all just felt like I was watching Robert Altman's Popeye again, and as good as it all looked and as fun as it was to watch I just wanted to see him EAT...THE FUCKING...SPINACH...AND GET ON WITH.IT. That, combined with the fact that the several years Bart spent in the Speed Zone were summarized in a single chaotic two-page spread that answered NO questions, left a sour taste in my mouth.

This was followed by a move by Bart to Los Angeles and becoming a forensic scientist, a move that was supposed to make a connection to his grand-dad, but felt far more like a last-minute change because what they were doing wasn't working. And by this point, Lightning Saga was getting ready to go in JLA and JSA, and that's about when they decided that Bart had to go. Just not for too long.

Supposedly it was originally Barry that was to return in Lightning Saga, but they held off till Final Crisis to give the return more weight. So they brought back Wally from his exile to the Speed Force, a move that was originally supposed to mirror the events of IC when Wally took the torch from Barry. Wally and his family were back, and the kids were older, and they tried to make his story stick, but once again, for reasons no one can pinpoint, it didn't catch on. I think by this point, the apparent bait-and-switch of Lightning Saga (Heck, even Batman thought it was Barry coming back) had the fans thinking that we'd see the "real" Flash back sometime soon, and as happens all too often (See Shooter's recent run on Legion) the readers looked past what they had in anticipation for what they may have at some point in the future.

So while he didn't get killed off or shuffled off to another dimension (this time), Wally's tenure as the titular Flash ended shortly before Final Crisis. And that where we saw both Barry and Bart come back, and things looked rosy.

Plans for a Kid Flash book by Sterling Gates were put on hold. The idea was to give people just one Flash for a bit, to get people re-acquainted with Barry. And it's worked well. The new Flash title has been exciting, and has really turned up the Sci-fi and time-travel facets of the character. Some don't care for that, but it makes perfect sense. Remember, the Multiverse had its origin in Flash, with the seminal Flash of Two Worlds. Time-traveling villains were part and parcel of his story from the beginning. So if you're going to do a story about time travel, Flash is the character to do it with.

From the first issue of Flash Rebirth we saw that The Reverse Flash's plan involved dicking with time to mess up Barry Allen, but not to the point of destroying him. So the plot of Flashpoint is simply that taken to the extreme.

Now I was right there saying "Hang on, changing history, that's supposed to be impossible, it's what Booster Gold was supposed to be combating in his book, you know, the one that Geoff co-wrote for a while". So when it was announced that not only was he going to be involved, his title was going to be the only monthly book tying directly into the event, I was REALLY chuffed. Is it possible that even the threads he set up in Booster Gold were part of the groundwork of Flashpoint? I wouldn't put it past him.

So if you think that this end to the Flash book is "another example of what's wrong with DC today", I suggest you have it exactly backwards. It's an example of what they're doing right.

On Pete, Pully and the Postcard

2011-02-28T07:10:00.000-08:00

It would have been my father-in-law Pete's birthday this week. He was a guy who lived life to the fullest, and spent much of it in the company of...certain people. To give you an idea of what I mean, The Wife, her mother and sister and I went to see Casino, and they spent most of the film reminding who each of the character really were, and how they knew them; "Oh, that's The Corporal, and that's supposed to be Uncle Tommy..."

Pete was the kind of guy that when we went out to eat on the weekends, people would come over and introduce other people to him. Far more a Damon Runyon type of company than Mario Puzo, if you know what I mean.

This is a story as much about Pete as it is about character actor B.S. Pully. Pully is best known for playing Big Julie in the film version of Guys and Dolls, a role he created on Broadway. Before that, he was a nightclub comedian, and recorded an album, "B.S. Pully's Fairy Tales". A joke from his act went:

"I was in the elevator in the hotel, and I accidentally bumped into a lovely lady with my elbow.
'I'm terribly sorry, madam' I said, 'but if your heart is as soft as your bosom, you'll forgive me.'
She says, 'If your cock is as hard as your elbow, meet me in room 519'! "

When Pully was called to Hollywood to reprise his role in Guys and Dolls, he was short on cash, and went to Pete for a touch.

"I'll pay you as soon as I get out there," Pete recalled in one of our Saturday afternoon lunches, doing a passable impression of B.S., a voice not too far from his own.. "They can't pay me till I get there." So Pete fronts him the money, and off he goes. Two weeks pass, no word from B.S.; three weeks, four, nothing. Pete figures that's money he'll never see again.

Six weeks later, a postcard arrives to Pete's restaurant.

"Dear friends, am having a wonderful time filming the movie, miss you all terribly, (signed) B.S. Pully.
P.S. - Dear Pete - enclosed, please find the money I owe you."

Pete flips the postcard around in his hands once or twice, and asks for a really sharp knife.

"I thought he was crazy enough to paste it inside somehow."

I miss Pete.

On the run-up to the next adventures of a timelord

2011-02-26T20:26:00.000-08:00

We're just weeks away from the next season of Doctor Who, and if I have to tell you what that is, kindly leave the Internet.

Gleefully little information has come out about the upcoming series, and while that's torturous, it's also for the best. Here's a brief look at what we know so far.

We know that the season will indeed be two mini-seasons. The average BBC series is six or so episodes in a series, while Doctor Who is 13 episodes, plus the Christmas special. Showrunner Steven Moffat realized that by splitting the season in half, you can spread the excitement out - the first half of the season will run starting in April, and the remaining episodes in late summer or early fall, followed by the Christmas episode. This means there won't be as long a wait between new episodes, no more than a couple of months at any time. This also means they'll be able to change up the current narrative format of the season, that of one long narrative arc, culminating in the last two episodes. Now they can do two smaller arcs, with what they describe as a gamechanging cliffhanger in between. One wonders if they could extend things and make the Christmas episode part of the storyline as well, as opposed to the more standalone story they are now. Odds are it's not necessary, as it does quite well as it is.

We know Neil Gaiman has written an episode. And that's damn near about it, save that "It will be on television, and it will be in color" We know it'll be broadcast in the first half of the season, or at least that seems likely, considering when it was filmed. Suranne Jones (who played the Mona Lisa in Sarah Jane Adventures last year) plays a character named Idris, about whom many have already kvelled.

Mark Gatiss is writing another episode, as is gareth Roberts. Moffat's writing five, as it's tradititional for the showrunner to provide the lion's share. Steve Thompson, who wrote for Sherlock, is writing one as well, and Matthew Graham, creator of Life on Mars, is writing a two-parter

The casting news has been trickling through as well. Another British comedian with a long history with the series is joining - David Walliams of Little Britain fame will be playing a character named Gibbis in what's being called "A spooky episode" written by Toby (Being Human) Whithouse. Also, elfin waif Lily Cole and ubiquitous British actor Hugh Bonneville will be in an episode with a pirate theme of some type.

Most recently, James Corden announced (quickly confiemed) that he'd be back this season, reprising his role of Craig Owens from last season's The Lodger. Considering we saw a control room that looked just like the one from that episode in the season teaser, this raises many questions as to how much of that episode was more important than originally thought. It is in fact very possible that the control room we saw in the teaser is the EXACT same one from the Lodger - considering that Corden's episode has yet to film, that may be a clip from the previous episode, or just a random unused shot of the set, tacked on there.

It's amazing the actors that the new series has been attracting. Not just for the cool factor either; the show has been doing such a good job that people know that an appearance on the show will be a feather in their cap.

If you need a bit of a look back on the previous season, I happen to have done recaps of each episode for the folks at Newsarama. Here's a list of them if you want to give them a perusal...

01. The Eleventh Hour

02. The Beast Below

03. Victory of the Daleks

04. The Time of Angels

05. Flesh and Stone

06. The Vampires of Venice

07. Amy's Choice

08. The Hungry Earth

09. Cold Blood

10. Vincent and the Doctor

11. The Lodger

12. The Pandorica Opens

13. The Big Bang

14. A Christmas Carol

See you all in a couple weeks.

On a week of Death, part 2 - Fictional

2011-02-23T13:13:00.000-08:00

In amongst the real-world sadness of the past couple of days, several comics were released today that dealt with death as well, two about the reactions of loved ones, one an actual death, or more correctly a confirmation of what readers assumed from events two weeks hence.

Dan Slott and Marcos Martin presented a heart-rending memorial to a character the general public has never heard of in Amazing Spider-Man #655. In the previous issue, J. Jonah Jameson's wife Marla was killed in an attack by the Spider-Slayers, creatures who, in the various years hence, she helped design, and JJJ helped finance. This issue dealt with the ways various characters dealt with said passing.

The first 11 pages of the 32-page story are silent, and utterly gripping. It's not just a case of not hearing what people are saying, it's people not speaking, too shaken by events to do anything but shuffle mutely through their day and the communal sadness of the funeral of a friend. Considering the emotion portrayed in the pages, I'll lay odds that even sans dialogue, the script for them is as long as the rest of the book.

The remainder of the issue is a massive dream sequence, courtesy the guilt-besotted subconscious of one Peter Parker. He sees and talks with all the people who he is directly and indirectly responsible for the death of, from Uncle Ben , right up to Marla. Some were killed as he faught, some in revenge by villains, and one he killed himself. They all demand their moment with him, some asking for explanation, some just marching by, reminding him of his actions.

The issue ends with Peter making a vow to himself, one that also serves as the title to the two-part story - "No One Dies". It's a moving promise, but tragically, one that can almost never be kept. Peter has spent his life taking the weight of his misdeeds (real and imagined) onto his shoulders - this decision, all but doomed to eventual failure, is going to shatter him, and send him to a place that will spawn great literature.

Dan's writing has been stellar as far back as his Arkham Asylum mini for DC - losing him to Marvel stands as one of DC's biggest business missteps in recent history. As good as he's been on She-Hulk, Thing, et al, he seems almost genetically bred to write this title. He once posted a picture of his refrigerator - under a series of upcoming covers stand the words "YOU GET TO WRITE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN" emblazoned in multicolored alphabet magnets. The sheer joy that oozes from his pores as he writes this book shows on the page. This issue has no joy, of course, but his deep knowledge of the character shows as he includes mentions and cameos of characters that you were convinced you were the only one who remembered them. I saw Tim Hammond, AKA "The Kid Who Collects Spider-Man", for pete's sake.

They are going to have to pry this book from Dan's withered and arthritic hands, and I'll be there with a stick to smack the people who try it.

In the years since the great unpleasantness that was One More Day, one artist has risen from nowhere to be the most stunning creator Marvel has. He is Dan's favorite collaborator Marcos Martin, and he doesn't just handle the art on this issue, he makes it his bitch. Already sporting a thin line and sparse design that demands positive comparisons to Steve Ditko, he piles on layout tricks that defy description. Cinematic and moody camera angles and in-page tryptyches to denote passages of time challenge other creators to keep up. A double page spread of an Inception-style spiraling midtown, centered at the Flatiron building, is at once staggering and still ultimately readable. You will draw Norbert one day, Mr. Martin. This I swear.

One More Day will never be forgotten. Brand New Day Almost got it forgiven. Big Time, the plot arc Dan has been writing now that he's the sole writer on the book, is good enough to let it be put on the shelf and not brought up anymore. Spider-Man is joyous, broad and the most fun it has been in years.

While Spider-Man is experiencing a rebirth, modern Marvel's first title experienced and ending this week. Fantastic Four ends its run (insert cynical eyebrow raise here) with an issue dealing with the MU's communal reaction to the death of Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, in the previous issue.

Now as I've said before, death in comics is at best, fleeting. With Johnny's demise, now ALL FOUR MEMBERS of the Fantastic Four have now died, at least one more than once, and all have come back hale and hearty, save (so far) for Johnny. He died (allegedly) in the Negative Zone, an extradimensional space where the laws of physics are scarcely suggestions. There's no body - first rule of comic-book death; no body, no death. The only real purpose for a character to die in comics, honestly, is to provide a good story. And Jonathan Hickman has done so.

Like in Spider-Man, the issue is silent, tho in this case it's the entire story, save for the last panel. Unlike Spider-Man, the reactions are not all sullen and quiet. Valeria Richards declares (via a to-do list on a blackboard) the aim of her organization of savants is to kill Annihilus. Reed apparently tries to with the help of the Ultimate Nullifier (Though one could argue this was a dream sequence). Ben Grimm has a cathartic episode with the help of Thor and the Hulk, and Franklin Richards has a heart-to-heart with Spider-Man in a backup story where they remember their respective uncles, both of whom they feel they could have saved, has they only acted.

It's a good issue, albeit with (IMHO) somewhat weak and decidedly muddy art. Hickman has done a great deal to get the FF back to its "Cosmic" level, where it belongs. The issue sets up a number of plot threads that will be picked up in the new title, FF (Future Foundation) starting next month. But in honesty, like the deaths of so many tentpole characters in the past, I have no belief it will stand. I have no doubt Hickman will tell great stories, ones that may not deal with Johnny's return at all. But ultimately, they will bring him back with great pomp and circumstance, re-lauch the Fantastic Four title, and return us to the first-position at which we feel the most confortable. There's just too much money on the table from licensing, movie rights, etc, for any major changes to take place.

It's the desire to return to square one that annoys me the most with the third major comic book death this week, the confirmation of the passing of Jaime Reyes, the new Blue Beetle in Justice League: Generation Lost. After the headshot max Lord gave him last issue (a thematic bookend to the one he gave to Ted Kord in Countdown to Infinite Crisis), Reyes was declared DOA on the last page of the latest issue, surprising no one.

Reyes was met with the most vehement opposition of a new character since Kyle Reyner replaced Hal Jordan as Green Lantern. In both cases, the fans saw the change as a deliberate attempt to generate hype for a new character at the expense of the old, at the cost of the original's entire fanbase. The fact that Jaime was Hispanic was seen as insult to injury by (too damn) many, claiming it was just another attempt to "cram another minorty character down our throats".

I am a huge Ted Kord fan. But I'm honest enough to know why they killed him off. He was burnable. He had his fans, but ultimately, little enough had been done with lately that he could be used as a plot point to spark a big new story. Unlike what they did with Martian Manhunter in Final Crisis or even Bart Allen in the final issue of his run of the Flash book, they did so with no plan to bring Ted back, or indeed, any desire to.

But a couple of very strange things happened. First off, the new Blue Beetle was really really good. The first few issues co-written by Keith Giffen were good, but when he left and John Rogers took the reins, it kicked into high gear. Several issues (especially an issue-long fight with Typhoon, who will forever be known in my head as "The Giant Naked Bad Man") stood as the best issues of their moth of release. Second, Ted Kord started getting a LOT more respect. In the Blue Beetle book, in Booster Gold, and elsewhere across the DCU, writers started doing stories about how Ted was not the BWAH-HAH-HAH guy we got used to in JLI, but a solid detective, a great adventurer, and generally deserving of far more respect by both the hero and reader community. He got more ink after he died than in easily the last five years previous. Death was the best thing to happen to him.

But the hardcore Tedfen wouldn't give in. They stubbornly refused to sample the title, regardless of the fact that in many cases, it was exactly the kind of fun lightheated entertainment they were demanding more of from DC.

DC responded by doing an end-run. They made Jaime a featured character on the new Batman: The Brave and the Bold series, exposing him to more people than any issue of any DC issue could. But even there they gave tribute to Ted, featuring him in a couple stories, voiced by Wil Wheaton. The Beetle action figures regularly sold out faster than others in the assortments - Jaime was a breakout star. He's going to be featured on Smallville soon, along with Booster Gold.

But the petulant comics fans kept on whining. And regardless of the number of fans he's collected in the past few years, they chose to take him out in the same fashion )and pose) as Ted, as a sort of apology. And in both cases, the death served to show what a badass Max lord was.

Now again, I don't expect this to last. Specifically, I don't think it'll last more than a couple weeks. (Jaime shows up in an upcoming issue of Supergirl, so that's a pretty big clue, or a really clumsy mistake). But what infuriates me is that there are thousands of people reading the last two issues, pumping their fists in the air and saying "YEEESSSSSsss!!!!"

I invite those people to line up and kiss my pudgy ass.

On a week of Death, part 1 - Non-fictional

2011-02-23T11:06:00.000-08:00

Comic fans deal with death almost every week. Luckily, most of the time they're transitory, temporary, and reversible; so much so that it's almost a running joke. We have several examples of that this week, and they will be addressed shortly. But alas, there have been two all too real examples this week, both deserving moments of respect and remembrance.

Dwayne McDuffie died this week, apparently from complications after surgery for a heart issue. This has been met with disbelief and depression across fandom. Dwayne created Damage Control, a series of hilarious minis from Marvel about the company that fixes New York City so quickly after the endless superhero battles and alien invasions. It was an organization so well received, it was used as part of a major plot-point in a couple of the last Marvel summer events.

He was instrumental in the creation of Milestone Comics, which brought us some of the most memorable new superhero characters of the 80s and 90s. There was rarely a DC panel at a convention that someone didn't ask when they were returning. After their canceling, he went on to create an animated series based on Static, one of the characters from the run, launching him to a whole new audience. More on that in a moment.

His run on Fantastic Four was brief but memorable, mainly for creating an all new team and relegating the original members to supporting cast, and still being staggeringly entertaining. I still maintain that his one-shot "My Dinner With Doom" was one of the best bit of character work with the characters in a very long time, and it alone was what made me excited for his FF run.

He is likely responsible for introducing more people to the Justice League of America than any single issue of the comic since the birth of the direct market, possibly any year's worth of issues. He wrote for, script edited, and produced the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited series for Cartoon Network, as well as a number of their dvd releases, including All-Star Superman, released the day after he passed.

His run on the JLA comic should have been triumphant, but ended up nasty, brutish and short. Hobbled by a number of events and crossovers he was alternately asked to incorporate into his narrative or step aside as others did fill-in issues, while his stories were exemplary, he never got the chance to get up to speed. As a result of the tumult of the various crossovers and events, he was more than once asked (at the eleventh hour) to rewrite stories, replacing one character for another, including one exchange where a character's living status had changed 180 degrees between writing and publishing. When he gave his fans a look behind the curtain at what he had been dealing with (stark honesty and forthrightness was one of his strong suits), he was hastily fired from the book, adding a number of stories to the Library of the Unwritten.

At the same time, many fans' requests were answered when the Milestone characters were announced to be returning to the DCU. The return was handled...oddly. Characters began reappearing in random books, Dwayne wrote a (very good) story in JLA that served to explain how the world of the Milestone Universe and the DCU merged, And Static (now wearing a version of his animated series costume) appeared in and joined the Teen Titans. But after a brief period of use, the majority of the characters dropped to the bottom of the cauldron, leaving only Static. Were I prone to conspiracy theories, I would opine that DC made a deal for the entire run of characters solely so they could get access to Static, easily the most well known character of them all. Static is getting his own title shortly, but so is Xombi, one of the later additions to the lineup, which seems to (happily) throw a wrench in that theory.

Perhaps of his connection to Milestone, Dwayne was ever being accused of doing things for politically correct reasons, and sometimes less polite choices of words. His changes to the FF and JLA roster, most of which were dictated by Editorial, were seen as "forcing minority characters" upon us. He would often have his fun with said people - when he posted a sketch of all black/minority characters in a JLA thread, it started a (you should pardon the expression) firestorm of vitriol across the Internet as small-minded fans thought up new ways to insult him.

While I often heard Dwayne speak of his adventures with various people and publishers, I don't recall him ever complaining. He carried on, persevered, and ultimately succeeded.

His passing is tragic, and all too soon.

The same day, we learned of the passing of Nicholas Courtney, best know for playing Brigadier Alastair Gordon Lethbridge-Stewart on Doctor Who. Much like many actors from the original run of the series, he kept in touch with Who-fen via the convention circuit, as well as various reprises of the character with the folks at Big Finish, producers of radio-style audio plays based on Who and several other popular series. The Brigadier got a few mentions on the new series, ultimately returning to the role on the DW spin-off series The Sarah Jane Adventures, starring fellow Who-lumna Elisabeth Sladen. Posts and related tales paint him as a kind and gentle man, with nary a harsh word against him.

In my mind, The Brigadier will ever remain on assignment in Peru.

On the question "why did God harden the Pharaoh's heart?"

2011-02-09T13:42:00.000-08:00

It's a phrase that has been dropped in Nick Spencer's wonderful T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents series twice now, both times when SPIDER revealed that they were effectively in control of the situation to a degree that T.H.U.N.D.E.R.hadn't even considered. Much like the climax of Se7en, where the package is opened and Somerset says "John Doe has the upper hand!"

It's a reference to a long-debated religious question about the story of Moses and the Exodus. A snippet of the relevant text follows:

Exodus 9:12 - "12 And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had spoken unto Moses"

That's read to mean that God actively MADE the Pharaoh more evil and vindictive against the Israelites, thus requiring Himself to send more plagues upon Egypt to effect the Jewish slaves' release.

Now if you read more of the passage, it can also be read that it's just that the plagues simply had the opposite effect desired, and made Pharaoh more angry toward the Israelites, as opposed to more amenable to setting them free. But yet the first argument is still asked. And for those who choose to read it that way, there are several versions of the argument that all pretty much boil down to the same thing:

God did it to make Himself look good.

Some temper the statement more to the idea that God, being omniscient, knew that Pharaoh would not react well to these acts and threats, and chose to take advantage of the path He knew things would go.

In short, God hacked the system, took advantage of advance knowledge to create a scenario in which He would be lauded and praised, and got His people out of the situation, just as He wanted.

Now take that scenario and turn it towards T.H.U.N.D.E.R..

How did T.H.U.N.D.E.R. defeat the Warlord, only to start fighting a new threat, SPIDER, almost immediately afterwards?

Why was T.H.U.N.D.E.R. so surprised that SPIDER had the upper hand on them?

Is T.H.U.N.D.E.R. doing things deliberately to make themselves look good?

And are those things getting out of their control?

Mind = BLOWN...

I've no idea how close to the truth I am (and judging by the way Spencer has been able to confound my expectations with each issue, I'm likely not even close), but it's an interesting topic of discussion.

There's also the fact that a terrorist organization is using the Bible in its statements, and not a text more closely connected (rightly or no) with more violent actions.

This is a stellar book. Very much not a simple superhero title. Seek it out. The latest issue features a five-page section by George Perez that will remind you once again why he is not only head and shoulders above the rest of the artist in comics today, but chest, hips knees and shins as well.

For a more in-depth look at the debate of the Pharaoh's Heart, check here, and any other number of religions sites on the net.

On the public getting what it wants, and the industry getting what it deserves

2011-02-01T16:01:00.000-08:00

Eric Powell, creator of The Goon (not to mention a Conspirator) recently posted a very funny video about the need for "diversity" in comics. I naturally assumed he was referring to the PC concept of more women, more gay characters, etc, but no; he was talking about more types of comics - westerns, SciFi, etc. I include the video here for your perusal:

UPDATE - Alas, due to many negative reactions to said video, Eric has removed it from the YouTube, faster even than anyone could grab a copy and re-post it.

Harsh terms indeed.

Now I grasp satire perfectly, and I'm not going to go off on a rant about any of his comments, as they're all valid to varying degrees. Eric's worked for DC (his Bizarro World run was a delight) so I assume he doesn't have any Mooreian hatred for the Big Two.

The point he makes is quite correct - comics in America is largely made up of Superhero books published by two compaines. I don't agree with his choice of the term "monopoly", as that suggests positive action against other companies, and potential illegal activity. They definitely have the market controlled, but not (IMHO) out of actively nefarious practices, just standard (take that as you will) competition.

I've written before about how hard it is to get a new book off the ground today, even from one of the Big Two. Right now we've gotten the market to the point where the only people in it are people who like superhero comics, and trying to sell something new and different (even if it's not very much of either) to that audience is a sisyphean task. That's more because of inaction than action.

The comics market has dwindled steadily in this country over the past 70 years, for a number of reasons:

F#*$ing Wertham - The Comics Code may have finally gone the way of all flesh, but its effect may never be erased. Since the fifties, comic books have been seen as a) primarily children's entertainment b) bad for you. Comics were the first of the many Reasons Your Kids Are Acting Up the popular media has tried to sell to the parents of America to explain why their beloved darlings started to act up when they hit their teenage years, as opposed to the perfect little angels they were as kids. Wertham was the first pop psychologist - he understood the "new media", a term that has found new use today, but has ever been around, just referring to different media. People in those days trusted figures of authority - he had a suit, and diploma and an accent, surely what he said was right. Nowadays, not a single expert goes unchallenged; this is usually a good thing, but we may be reaching the other end of the pendulum-swing, to a land where ALL theories are valid, or at least deserving of a fair hearing.

Many more explanations for your kids' misbehavior have been presented over the years; rock and roll, television, reefers, video games... lather, rinse, repeat. But none was as decimated as comics. Thanks to Wertham, the movie trope of "a comic book in a grown-up's hand means he's an illiterate cretin" has survived until today. And it took several billion dollars of ticket sales before even a dent was put in the standard practice of starting a comics-related news story with Batmanny sound effects.

In almost every other country, comics are as respected and popular a medium as any other. I've ever mentioned the fact that there are comics (magna, whatever) in Japan dedicated to Mah-Johnng. This is largley because adults read comics, openly and great numbers in those other countries. The market exists, so the books are written to appeal to that market.

The Direct Market - By the time the 80's rolled around, comics sales were dropping, but ironically, because of LOW prices. Drugstores and candy shops, traditional homes of comics purchases, were not seeing enough profits from comics. A slick magazine which sold for two or three times of a comics was much more alluring a product. That's why the "Dollar Comics" were created back in the day, to provide a more profitable item for the newsstands.

The newsstand market was drying up, and the Direct Market was created to effectively save the industry. Comics were sold directly to comic shops, bypassing the newsstand distributors. It worked, and everybody made money. But the downsides were numerous, the most obvious being it turned comics from an impulse purchase to a destination purchase. The potential market shrank precipitously. Since you had to go to a special place to buy comics, pretty much the only people who went there were already buying. Unless a store could afford a prime location with lots of walk-by traffic like a mall or at least a major shopping high street, they were limited to "pre-sold" customers.

Isolationist Comic Shops - Sadly, for a whole lot of comic stores, that suits them fine. There's still a lot of stores run by people who opened them to find a place to house their collections, and if they only had to deal with their fellow fans who knew what they were talking about and didn't bother them with dumb questions, that'd be great. There's one store in my area that actively looks down their nose at non-fans, and another who, even though they have a mall location, chooses not to participate in Free Comic Book Day because they see it as a waste of money. These are the stores have no desire to find the legendary "new readers". They charge outrageous fees to the walk-ins for the hot Death issue that made the papers, and breathe a sigh of relief when they don't return.

Things That Are Newfangled - We'll never again see a TV show that earns anything above a 30 rating. With hundreds of channels to choose from, not to mention DVDs, the electric-type Internet and endless other distractions, the viewership is so diluted it borders on impossible to attract the audiences of only a few decades ago. The same holds true of comics. With so many things to appeal to people, especially teens, getting them to try ANY comic, let alone a non-superhero one is quite a trick. It's not impossible. The young adult book industry was almost non-existent until a single mother from Britain wrote a book about a Boy Who Lived.

We Do It One Way - What Eric seems to say is the biggest problem with comics today is IMHO the least important of the issues. Right now, the "regular readers" comics market is made up of about 100,000 people, tops. And largely, they like superhero comics. So that's what the publishers supply. If you want to compare DC and Marvel to Coke and Pepsi, it's not their responsibility to convince people to drink orange juice.

I've already alluded to how hard it is to get a new book off the ground. That's largely due to the reasons I've mentioned, not because of any active desire to keep non-super-books off the shelves. It's the eternal chicken/egg scenario - new types of comics will only flourish if there is a larger potential market, and the market will only expand if there are more types of books. And with only a fraction of store all that interested in even GETTING new readers, the onus falls on the larger stores, mainstream bookstores and the up and coming digital market. In short, the companies that are more often than not accused of "ruining" the industry.

The solution is not try to sell more and different books to the current market. The secret is enlarging the market. To light a candle as opposed to cursing the darkness.

How do we do that? Buggered if I know.

We may have gone too far. The industry has drawn itself into a corner, and may not have time to wait for the ink to dry. It may well end up that the lion's share of profits from a comic are from the film rights, and the comics become just ways to keep the character in the eyeline of the public, or at least the ones who know where the comic shops are.

But then you see the crowds at San Diego of the New York Comic Con, and you figure, "Surely there must be someone still buying these things".

Like Eric, I don't have any answers either. I just have different questions. But the end result is the same - comics are a respected and beloved (and popular) medium and art form all over the rest of the world, and until it can become the same here, you better get to like multi-month crossovers.

On the varying ability to accept blatant breaking of the laws of physics

2011-01-15T17:02:00.000-08:00

OK, I know, Indiana Jones should not have been able to survive a nuclear blast by hiding in a lead-lined refrigerator. But you know, he's Indiana Jones, maybe it was a side-effect of drinking from the Holy Grail or something; let it go.

None of that stuff from the later Die-Hard movies should have really worked either, you don't see anybody complaining about that, do you?

But once in a while a plot point comes along that I just have to hit the mental brakes and scream "now HOLD on there!"

The Kid was just watching (and I can't believe I'm typing this) Tom and Jerry meet Sherlock Holmes. Malcolm McDowell voices Moriarty, so there's that. But here's the deal. Moriarty has invented a device that uses the sun's rays, intensified by large diamonds he's stolen, to make a steampunky heat ray. He plans to use it so steal the Crown Jewels. "I intend to use the power of a solar eclipse to generate a beam SO powerful that it will cut right through the Tower of London", he says.

Ummm....

Professor...

You're going to do what?

The whole film is centered around the idea that the Napoleon of crime is going to use a solar powered device at the one moment in time that it will do him no good.

I explained this scenario to The Wife. She has less knowledge of hard science than the average Republican Senator, and SHE saw the problem.

I hasten to add, he was explaining this plot to a young woman, a cat, and two clothes-wearing mice. So his mental stability is already in question.

I get it, it's a kids' movie, I shouldn't get my knickers so bunched up about it. But there's a slight difference between, say, getting Planck's Constant wrong and suggesting that a solar eclipse is a good time to attempt to harness the sun's rays for nefarious purposes. I'm reminded of the (insert ethnic group of choice) space program planning a manned mission to the sun, but they're going at night so they'll be fine.

I also saw The Green Hornet today.

Now this was another film that a lot of people couldn't believe was happening. I've been waiting for it as far back as when George Clooney was going to star, based on a Kevin Smith script. Needless to say, this is not that movie.

But I tell you, Seth Rogen pulls it off. The film is funny as all get out, but is not played for laughs. Britt's desire to help the city is legitimate, his motivation works, and he doesn't become a super-buff fighting machine all of a sudden. Kato builds Britt the Gas Gun specifically because he has the pugilistic acumen of a arthritic giraffe.

Christoph Waltz has a ball as the crime king of LA who fears he's no longer intimidating to his younger underlings, and Cameron Diaz gets a solid role as Lenore "Casey" Case, Britt's new secretary, personal girl Friday and resident genius.

The film worked, it was drop-dead funny (very much in the same "funny action movie" as his previous film Pineapple Express) but there was a moment where I was totally won over. In the middle of a traditional "We're not friends anymore" man-fight between Britt and Kato, they tumble into the pool. Kato can't swim, and Britt has to save him. Now, if you don't know much about the history of the Green Hornet (Also known as "Everyone in the world"), you'd never know that in the original Green Hornet stories, that's how Britt and Kato met; Kato is drowning, Britt saves him, and Kato pledges his life to Britt's service. So for them to have gotten a nod to that bit of history was a REAL thrill. According to the end credits there was a nod to the Lone Ranger in the film as well, but damn if I could find it. (George W. Trendle created both the Hornet and the Lone Ranger, and according to canon, John Reid is an ancestor of Britt). It worked, and wonderfully. The old school logo and themesong from the TV show get a cameo, and all told, it hit more notes that suggested that they really had read the books and heard the old radio shows than many other comics films have.

So why am I mentioning it in the same breath as a Tom and Jerry film? Because like the other films I've mentioned, it has moments of patent OH COME ON. The Black Beauty, always a wondercar, now leapt up to Chitty-Chitty Bang Bang levels of efficacy, including being able to drive after being cut in half, with a quick explanation that it has front-wheel drive. Oh, and was the gas tank in the front as well?

You're having so much fun there's really no time to sit back and note the lapses in the Newtonian laws that hold our universe together. But in a brilliant bit of marketing, the producers did a tie-in episode of Mythbusters, in which they actually tested some of the more outlandish stunts in the film to see if they could happen in real life, and proved that they were "pretty much bullshit", as Seth Rogen described them on a recent appearance on Opie and Anthony. So it was kind of cool that they tried to take control of the argument by calling themselves out on it.

So I didn't get upset when they escape from being buried alive by setting off all the car's armaments. But if those weapons had been solar powered, I'd'a been right there railing against it.

On the return of a nigh-extinct mode of fannish communication

2011-01-03T18:20:00.000-08:00

Last year, DC Comics announced they were reducing the price of their books back to $2.99, a move that got quite a lot of positive reaction. The down side was we'd get two less pages of comic story per issue. They were reticent to say what they were going to put on those two pages, tho. Today they dropped the news - they were bringing back letter columns. Old-school fans (raises hand) were over the moon at the news, and younger readers were all asking, "What's the point? we have Facebook and the electric-type twitter to let everyone know our opinions". And the old school fans just shhok our heads and sighed...

Back before everybody had unrestricted access to every other person on the planet, you had to WORK to be heard. You needed actual talent to be on television (Or if you were a woman, two talents), a tremendous amount of luck to get your music heard, and you had to be real witty to make it into the letter columns in the back of the comics.

Metropolis Mailbag. The Ha-Ha-Hacienda. Flash-Grams. The JLA Mailroom. Europinion. This is where most fans met each other. Indeed, comics fandom STARTED as a result of the lettercols. When EC comics started publishing the names and addresses of letter writers in the columns, the fans did something weird - they started writing to each other. Pen-pal friendships were started, and eventually fanzines started to make the rounds.

Look at the the current plight of the three major TV networks; When there were only three or four channels, it was easy to have a big hit. Now you're competing with hundreds of cable channels, not to mention video games, video on demand, Tivo and who knows how many other electronic hobbies. Far harder to get your show in front of a lot of eyes. Nowadays, anyone can start a blog, and like Syndrome said in The Incredibles, "When everybody is special, then no one will be". With thousands, maybe millions of blogs out there, everyone has an equal voice, but not everyone has an equal talent. There's no filter. Making the Letter Column was an achievment - the editor (ok, assistant editor) decided your letter was better than the piles of other letters they got that month. Or, if you wrote to a book with limited readership, the letter was better than one they could make up themselves to pad out the page. It meant that thousands of other people who read the book were seeing your name. Like Navin R. Johnson once said, that's the kind of spontaneous publicity a person needs.

Some of comics' biggest names arose from those letter columns. Bob Rozakis and Martin "Pesky" Pasko were regular letter-writers. And in more recent history, a fan named Geoffrey Johns wrote to the editors of Superboy, suggesting that Kon-El might not only be a clone of Superman, but lex Luthor. Needless to say, he was laughed off the page by the editor, and he was never heard of again.

There were other perks too. Lucky lucky letter hacks and fans got tuckerized in the comics. There are more fans' names in Legion of Superheroes than about any other title; Here's a list of the ones we know about. BBC TV and radio host Paul Gambaccini was once a massive DC fan and letter hack. When they wrote the story about the guy who makes the costumes for the Rogues, his name was... Paul Gambi.

Being a regular guest of the letter columns meant other fans knew your name. It was like having a blog today, but a blog that people actually READ. Marc Lucas, T.M. Maple, Charles J. Sperling, Uncle Elvis; these are names well known to readers from the 80s and 90s. I was a fledgling letterhack, and in the equally fledgling days of Compuserve, would often get notes of compliment when I had a couple of letters published in one week. I even got a hand-written note from up-and-coming writer Jeph Loeb when I wrote a positive letter about his Challengers of the Unknown miniseries. Indeed, it was John Ostrander who got my career started, when he asked that I take a comment I'd made about his Hawkworld book on the Compuserve comics forum and send it in to the letter column, where more people would see it (The times, how quickly they changed...)

So seeing those letter columns return means a chance for fans not only to get their voice heard, but gain the extra little note of approval that those opinions were interesting enough to see print. And proper print, with ink and paper.

To gain the legitmacy of the printed word is a vanishing achievment. I'm pleased to see it make a return.

(And yes, I'm aware of the irony of talking about the advantages of letter columns on a blog, so there's no need in pointing it out...)

On the last role of a great man, that of the last plot of an evil man

2010-12-17T10:47:00.000-08:00

Peter Sellers' talents as a comedian and an amasser of automobiles are inarguable. But in many eyes, his last film, The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu is a letdown. IMHO, the people who are disappointed by it don't know a great deal about the character, or Sellers' earlier work.

Very few people have seen a Fu Manchu film that they weren't snickering at; fewer still have read one of the books. Fu Manchu is the archetypal Asian mastermind, spawning endless imitators; from the comics' Yellow Claw to Buckaroo Banzai's nemesis Hanoi Xan, leader of the World Crime League. He’s fallen madly out of favor in recent decades, thanks to encroaching political correctness, but if you can track down the original novels, they’re classic pulp entertainment, very much “of their time” but no less entertaining.

Sellers plays a double role in the film, that of the titular Oriental master of crime and the English detective Dennis Nayland Smith, Fu’s arch-nemesis. As the film opens, both Fu and Smith are worse for the wear. At the ceremony where the Devil Doctor was to drink his Elixir Vitae, the potion which grants him eternal youth, it's used by a clumsy minion (Burt Kwouk, Kato to Sellers' Clouseau, in a cameo) to put out a fire. Near death, he is forced to hatch a scheme to obtain the ingredients for a new batch. Once it's clear the insidious Si Fan is active again, the British police are forced to contact Smith, long since retired. A series of torture sessions by Dr. Manchu have left him a broken man; he spends his time dazedly puttering around his country cottage in the company of Delight, a manual lawnmower (you heard me) he found and befriended after his escape. The news that Fu and his hordes were on the march rouses him from his torpor and he agrees to help.

Fu Manchu needs diamonds for his elixir; not a large number of small diamonds, but a small number of very large diamonds. The 75-karat Star of Leningrad is stolen shortly after the film begins, and the plot to steal its twin, the King George V diamond is the meat of the story. Smith realizes that Fu would not allow himself to simply steal the diamond; he predicts the yellow devil will attempt to kidnap the King and Queen, and ransom the gem.

Still early in her career, Helen Mirren shines as policewoman Alice Rage, selected (after a stellar audition where she tap dances and plays the saxophone, together and at the same time) to impersonate Her Majesty as a decoy. She is captured by the evil Doctor, only to fall in love with him when he reveals his softer side. ("Call me 'Fred'! That's what they called me when I was at Eton!") Her subtle lisp never fails to bring a giggle ("Oh, Fwed...") and her rendition of the music hall standard "Daddy Wouldn't Buy me a Bow-Wow", just a hair off-key is hilarious.

American TV legend Sid Ceasar plays American FBI agent Giuseppe “Joe” Capone who spends most of the film acting the boorish American, spouting embarrassing racism ("You're one great Limey bastard!") or talking on the phone to a relative in Chicago, barely able to hear him over the sound of machine-gun fire. David Tomlinson (best known to Americans from Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks) plays the British chief of police, his last role before retiring.

Many reviews complain of Sellers’ laconic performances in the film. I must assume they didn’t make it through the film. Smith slowly awakens over the course of the film as the chase reinvigorates him. Fu Manchu find love in Constable Rage, and that carries him through much of the film, until his quest to formulate his elixir. So the soft line readings many mention work perfectly for the character, and even if he was a bit weak during the filming (he was advised not to take the role due to his heart condition) it didn’t stop him from being funny.

I have a rule of thumb for a spoof. Read the script and take out the jokes. If you still have a good script, you have a good spoof. Following that rule, this is a fine spoof, as the plot is a solid (if formulaic) Fu Manchu story.

As for the jokes…a majority of the humor in the film follow the madcap form of Sellers’ earliest success, the Goon Show. The character “Fred FuManchu”, noted bamboo saxophonist, appeared in his own adventure as well as several cameo appearances over the run of the show. The odd last names of many characters like “Minge”, not to mention Nayland’s wacky mode of travel at the climax of the film are also reminiscent of the wild mindset of the series. This is even different from Sellers’ Pink Panther films, where most of the comedy was from slapstick and Sellers’ clever mime-style reactions to things. Here the comedy is in the plot and the dialogue. There’s a fair amount in stereotypical humor as well, but again, seen in the context of the time, before people got skin the thickness of rice paper, it’s a lot of fun.

The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu is now available from Warner Archive, as is another of Sellers’ films, The Bobo. No mechanical spiders are necessary for purchase.

On the many faces of Aquaman, and the importance of keeping Batman clean-shaven

2010-12-15T09:02:00.000-08:00

On the DC blog-site The Source, Dan Didio writes about the recent Kevin Smith miniseries "Batman: The Widening Gyre".

(TANGENT ALERT) Which I REALLY enjoyed. When he's stayed responsible and gets the scripts written on time, Kevin does really good comics work. This and the previous mini Cacophony (the pair making the first two thirds of a trilogy) are really fine "possibly in continuity" stories, with the kind of just shy of filthy humor that kevin does expertly. The story he's building is very interesting, and the third chapter will be interesting indeed. I'll go so far as to say that his "Batman and the Joker" scene at the end of cacophony can stand toe-to-toe with the end of Killing Joke in the fight best "masks off, hearts on sleeves" scene between those characters. And Walt Flanagan, a man best known to fans of the Askewniverse for having a fast dog, and who we met while he was working in Kevin's comic shop (he always remembers his friends; gotta give him that...) has a very different style, one that might not work for a regular monthly but worked perfectly for this very uniquely themed story. (END TANGENT ALERT)

In said piece, he discusses a sequence from the book which, as originally written, was hilarious, and could never be published. The scene involves Aquaman misunderstanding Bruce Wayne's cries of private interpersonal communication (AKA Making The Beast With Two Backs) with cries for assistance. The scene was still damn funny as published, but allegedly they were SCREAMINGLY funny as first handed in. And Dan knew they could never see print.

(TANGENT ALERT PART DEUX) Which right there is an argument for a Mature label for DC titles. Like any character, there are stories that can be written for DC characters that might not be suitable for every reader. Very good stories, stories that might attract new readers (I know, the semi-mythical "new reader" argument again) but since DC makes books for kids, they're loath to do "mature" stories with those mainstream characters for fear of Mommy or Grandma buying one for junior by mistake and starting a shitstorm. The Vertigo line, originally intended to be the place for those kind of stories, has become its own successful and separate fiefdom, where characters go and (until recently,at least) don't return from. If I may make a comparison to the films, DC has a "G" line (The exemplary Johnny DC books) a "PG" line (The mainstream DCU) a per se "R" line (Vertigo) but no "PG-13" line where slightly more mature (In the complexity and dramatic sense, not necessarily the salacious "boobies and poo-poo words" sense) stories can be told with an opportunity to give fair warning that the title "might not be for everyone". The first of Kevin's minis danced controversially close to that line, to the point that some claimed it "went too far" for a DC book. People were REALLY put off by the idea that the Joker even MENTIONED Batman's junk, let alone saw it. The editors were cool with everything that got into the book, but (according to Kevin) had problems with the idea of Batman having stubble, something I find a great example of counting the pennies and letting the nickels fall where they may. Anyway, If DC had a sub-imprint for the more adult-y stuff, such complaints could be addressed before they start. MOST mini-series and one-shots are of questionable continuity already. Implicitly suggesting that these "DC-13" books are slightly more questionable in their timeline placement is not going to make too many heads explode. And the more mature reader is likely not going to want to worry (or care) about which two issues this story shoehorns into anyway, so BFD. (END TANGENT ALERT)

At first read, it seems Kevin wrote Aquaman in that slightly naive, "new to the surface world" mindset that Mark Waid experimented with in "JLA Year One", where Hal Jordan gets him to scour the Secret Sanctuary for a bulb wrench. But in some Q&A sessions, he revealed he was basically writing Aquaman as a surfer/stoner, one who's not quite in phase with the world of the dry-legs. (The result being that when I re-read the scene, I hear Jason Mewes in my head reading Arthur's lines) This of course upset hard-core Aqua-fans, claiming that that's "not what the character's about".

(And this is not a Tangent alert, because it's what I actually planned to write about)

Interestingly enough, there have been SO many different interpretations of Aquaman in recent history, in many different media. In addition to this "Hang loose" one, there's the "OUTRAGEOUS" version on B: B&tB, a version that, before he re-appeared in Blackest Night and Brightest Day, I'd have happily read comic books of. Jimmy Palmiotti and Amanda Conner's included him in their Supergirl strip in Wednesday Comics, where Jimmy described him as "The Denis Leary of the Sea". His take was that Aquaman's zone of patrol is the ENTIRE OCEAN, so naturally he was gonna get a little testy. Again, great idea; how well you could use it in a continuing story, who knows, but perfect for that moment at that time. Even the Young Justice preview played him more in the regal sense, more than we've ever seen him played in the comics. And I'm not even COUNTING the older animated versions, voiced by (variously) Marvin Miller and Norman Alden.

Now each of those interpretations, especially the ones for the cartoons, are all perfectly valid. But as a rule, when you see that many interpretations of a character, it's because they don't have a personality to speak of, or at least not one that everyone identifies. Aquaman is one of those characters that has gone though so many iterations, both subtle enroute changes and radical revamps, that he's one of the biggest messes DC has. Dan would regularly ask at conventions "What's 'the Right' Aquaman? Is it the green and orange suit, the more tied to Atlantean myth version Peter David wrote, the water-hand guy, which?" It was only after the vast majority of answers he got was "The orange-and-green-suit guy" did he start to have a course to pilot for a return.

Right now, the best solution DC has for sorting out a character is Let Geoff Do It. That's not a dig - his work is spectacular, he hits all the points, and come up with a version of the character(s) that respects the previous iterations, explains (or explains away) the less successful ones and results in a strong "first position" character that he or any other writer can then move forward with. Nobody's going to please everyone (especially comics fans) but his versions provide the greatest good-enough for the greatest number. And now he's addressing Aquaman in Brightest Day. He's bringing the character back to a recognizable state, while simultaneously making wholesale changes. Mera is now a kickass warrior, though not from the extra-dimensional race she once was. There's a new Aqualad, and his story is still unfolding. And the Aquacave is back. If Storm and Imp show up, I may lose the ability to digest food for a brief period. The reaction to Tusky the Walrus is too horrifying to imagine.

But again, we're not getting the return of a past version of Aquaman, we're getting yet ANOTHER iteration, but one with enough similarities to the past ones it seems familiar enough not to inspire (much) controversy. And that's the right way to go; namely, forward. Flash, Green Lantern, Toyman (I've talked about that one before) nothing was un-done, just addressed, and moved past. When we see the much rumored and prayed for Captain Marvel fix (I'm invoking personal opinion and choosing the term "fix" over "revamp" on purpose), I imagine we'll see something the same. Much of the previous versions (hopefully the best bits) will remain, with re-told version of other bits, forming a new paradigm intended to appease, appeal, and attract the various audiences.

Let Geoff Do It.

Aquaman currently appears in Brightest Day. The TPB of Widening Gyre is out now.

On the presumption of error

2010-11-29T11:49:00.000-08:00

My appreciation of James Robinson's recent work at DC is well known. He's recently come off a run of Superman ~~Minus Superman~~ that gave more character to Mon-El than he's had in the decades since he was created. He's been writing Justice League for about a year now, more if you count Justice League:Cry For Justice (!) which you pretty much have to since it serves as a prologue to his run perfectly.

James has a very different style than we've seen on JLA for a while. He's more interested in character building that just having people fight each other. So there's a lot more thought-captions and internal narratives that you'd see in other books. And if you read those captions, you'll see that the characters he's writing about are growing exponentially. He's made Congorilla and Mikaal Tomas into more three-dimensional characters than they've likely ever been. He's done a good job of showing that the former Teen Titans deserve a place on the JLA, as opposed to merely being interim title holders.

His first arc brought a good close to the characters he used in CFJ, with an obligatory Blackest Night crossover folded in. His JLA JSA crossover, "Dark Things" gave a proper return to Jade, as opposed to her one-panel return in BN. And all throughout he's been building up the foundation to his current arc, Omega Man. He's given us a look at bunches of classic DC characters, in a series of flashbacks designed to set up the existence of a powerful device. He's come up with a solid use and explanation for Doctor Impossible, a character introduced in Meltzer's run on the book, one who almost every writer since has used and tried to explain, and failed. He's been given permission to use the Multiverse, something that had been allegedly locked down until Morrison gets his Multiversity mini-series done. In the most recent issues, we've discovered that these "dark gods" have been trying to resurrect Darkseid, only to end up bringing into existence the mysterious Omega Man. In short, he's been writing a series of pretty cosmic-level threats, exactly the kind of things the JLA should be fighting. And doing it well. Add in a few done-in-one semi-solo stories that further build up the character of the characters and you've got a pretty solid run to date.

So why is he still catching crap from the readers?

I think Cry for Justice is where the honeymoon ended. That CFJ was a divisive storyline is a grand understatement. And perhaps of that, his run on JLA has been met with many brickbats. "He doesn't have any of the big guns on the team" (like that's the first time that's ever happened) "the roster is changing too much" (Again, lots of precedence, and he's got it to a stable point now, and considering the rasher of shit the DCU has gone through in the last year, it's no surprise things have been in a tizzy) and lots more.

Sometimes I get the impression that fans are angry at him that he won't just suck under and give them what they want (i.e. more Jack Knight) and view everything else he does as lacking. They come off sounding like a spoiled child at Christmas saying " I don't CARE that you got me a little battery-powered car that I can ride around in, I WANTED a pony".

Also, ever since the rumors (persistent but so far very without merit) of a Johns/Lee helmed JLA, some readers have been viewing everything else as a long lame-duck session that they must suffer through. It's bad enough when that happens to a book when a team change is actually announced; current events JLA are being looked past for something that doesn't even exist.

So readers are in a funk, and are reading the book with a chip on their shoulder. And so every plot-point that they don't like or understand are painted as colossal failures. Case in point; in the cliffhanger in the latest issue, The Omega Man transforms Supergirl into the black-costumed "Dark Supergirl" that we saw in the early issues of her solo title, the ones that had a lot of readers scratching their heads. Readers quickly clamored that Dark Supergirl had been expunged from continuity by Sterling Gates, and for James to bring it back means that either A) he didn't know it had been removed, B) He knew, and didn't care, or C) some other explanation that can end with "and so he sucks".

Depressingly few people seem to be considering D) He knows what he's doing and has a story in mind.

When asked, Sterling Gates has said that James does indeed have a plan in mind for this story ("and it's pretty cool"), from which I infer that he didn't "forget" anything. Considering the pair worked together for a year on Superman, I'm willing to bet that's true. But since the readers have already made their choice, any data that comes along MUST go into the negative pile, or they run the risk of being proven wrong.

It's a mindset that I've come to call "The Presumption of Error". If the reader has already decided (for whatever reason) that they don't like the writer of a story, they assume that any change they make to continuity is due to gross incompetence or disrespect, and not that they may have a good story planned.

In some cases, it's hard to tell if a change is an error or not, but if the end result is a good story, it's usually not too big an issue. The very creation of Wonder Girl was the result of a mistake; Bob Haney mistakenly read a series of "impossible tales" (AKA "Imaginary stories") featuring Wonder Girl as if they were a separate character, and added her to the Teen Titans. Nobody's demanding to go back and write off all those stories because he got the continuity wrong. (They've gone to great lengths to try to explain her past, but that, to say the least, is another story.)

In Justice league, Generation Lost, Judd Winick has been delivering a solid story, one far better than a lot of people thought him capable of; myself included. So when little "oopsies" started appearing in the narrative, the staunch anti-Winick crowd declared the story an abject failure; if he can't get little details like this right, how could he possibly write a good story?

One of Captain Atom's "powers" is that if he absorbs too much energy, he jumps forward in time. It's the basis of his DC Post-Crisis origin. But in JL:GL, Atom has now been able to travel BACK in time to the point of his departure, once his body had processed the energy. Now I've yet to find precedent for this new ability, unless it's an extrapolation of the dimension-hop from the Wildstorm "Armageddon" mini, which was pretty damn good. So it appears to be new. But again, in the eyes of those who presume error, he's either just unaware of how Atom's powers work, or he doesn't care. He's been quoted in interviews saying that he doesn't worry all that much about the details when telling a story. I understand what he means, and he's right - one should never let continuity get in the way of a good story. Making Atom now be able to only temporarily jump in time isn't too big a change, unless he tries to claim he could do it all along, in which case it would rather invalidate his whole origin. So yes, it's a change. At the moment it's made, it may sting a little, but in the fullness of time, it will either become canon (hey, Superman only used to leap an eighth of a mile once) or it will be ignored or re-written by someone else. Often, both.

Also in the latest issue, Power Girl was able to be taken down by Kryptonite, possibly artificial Kryptonite. Small problem; PeeGee is from Earth-Two, the pre-Crisis Earth-Two to boot; Earth-zero/New Earth Green-K doesn't affect her, or at least not to the degree it would (our) Superman. So while I recognized that and assumed that it was somehow successfully synthesized E-Two Green-K ( a challenging prospect but hey, they had 120 years to perfect it, so who knows), the haters just used it as another log for the Winickaust.

View continuity as a foundation garment and not a strait-jacket. It's supposed to support you without restricting your movements. Don't let the length of Batman's cape keep you from reading a great story.

David's Law says "If the reader or viewer wants a particular ending or event to happen, they will accept any damn fool thing you have to do to give it to them" Bartilucci's Inverse to David's Law states "If a reader does NOT like the ending you have written, they will latch onto any "error" you made in narrative or continuity to prove it's invalid". Alas, far too many readers nowadays live by the latter and not the former.

It is entirely possible for a writer you've never liked to knock it out of the park. But if you insist on spinning the stats so it didn't count, or finding ways to find fault with every story based solely on your dislike of the writer and their past performance, you run the risk of cheating yourself out of some great stories.

On the forty-seventh anniversary of a 900-year-old man

2010-11-23T13:05:00.001-08:00

It was supposed to be an educational program.

This time-traveling Doctor would visit assorted parts of history, have some adventure laced with enough fact to qualify it as educational, and off to another land the next week.

Then came the Daleks.

As of today, Doctor Who has been running on TV and other media for an astounding 47 years. Eleven actors in the part (not counting film, stage and radio format productions), dozens of companions, hundreds of enemies, and millions upon millions of fans.

There's no analogue to Doctor Who in the United States. No science Fiction show has become as ingrained in American culture as it; Star Trek comes close, but The Doctor is almost as a part of the British mindset as Sherlock Holmes. Sci-Fi had a higher level of respect in the UK-The Quatermass experiment was one of the first major dramatic presentations new television owners got to see after they bought their sets to see the new Queen get crowned in 1953. By the time Doctor Who came along ten years later, Sci-Fi was as respected a form of fiction as any.

Something to bear in mind that while Doctor Who is as good as many American Sci-Fi shows aimed at adult audiences (and better than most), it's still considered a Children's show in Britain. That's amazing compared to the insipid crap that passes for children's entertainment here. Part of the thing is that they don't think children are brainless clods in other countries. A children's show doesn't mean less intelligent, just a bit less violent and scatological than the adult programs. They were often written by the same people as the adult shows. Both Russell T. Davies and Steven Moffat got their start in children's television and moved on to impressive careers in adult drama before returning to their roots as Who-fen.

Doctor Who is also amazing in that it survived being off the air for almost two decades. Save for the US-produced TV movie, new episodes of Doctor Who did not appear from 1989 - 2005. Of course, that only meant new episodes on television. Fandom kept the character alive via new novels from Virgin and a number of other publishers, fan-produced tribute shows like PROBE and eventually authorized audioplay productions by companies like Big Finish. Almost an entire generation of writers like Moffat, Davies, Mark Gatiss and Gareth Roberts became established and successful writers for British television, all assuming that they'd never get a chance to write for the one show they got into writing for in the first place. "People try to impress you" says one of the Doctor's companions in a recent episode. The same seems to be true of writers. Once given a chance to write for the character, people seem to up their game, sometimes pulling out plots and stories they've been polishing like jewels just in case the call ever came. Neil Gaiman will be writing an episode for this coming season, Richard Curtis (Four Weddings and a Funeral) wrote one for the last one; quite the pedigree.

Similarly, the actors who have appeared on the show is equally impressive. Not even counting the ones to play the Doctor, the people playing cameos reads like a Who's Who of acting. Comedians like John Cleese, Elanor Bron, Peter Kay, and Rowan Atkinson, dramatic actors like Derek Jacobi, TV legends like Bernard Cribbins, all lined up to have a part on a show that has as much respect in the eyes of the British public as anything you'd see on Masterpiece Theater.

Craig Ferguson dedicated an entire episode of the Late Late Show the Doctor Who recently when the current Doctor Matt Smith appeared. He summed up his love for the show and the character perfectly - he's a man who fights horrors of the universe with only his mind and intellect.

It's an amazing show, one built by love and creativity over nearly fifty years. Nothing can hold a candle to it.

Special surprise - I've used that So Hot Right Now text-to-movie program to have this entry presented by a fitting host.

On how the day Superman graced your village was the most important day of your life...

2010-11-18T11:55:00.000-08:00

If you put aside all the vitriol about the choices JMS made for his (abortive) run on the series, Superman #705 is a nice little story. Pretend it takes place in Metropolis or something. The fact that he's walking the Earth like Kaine is ancillary to the idea that he wants to get down to Earth and interact with people on a more personal level. But that's another conversation we've been having endlessly, and as I say, we'll just table it for now.

The core of the story is how Superman saves a mother and child from an abusive father. The boy puts his faith in Superman utterly to save them, making a banner to hang from their home to let him know they need help. The father is about to attack the mom, and the boy steps in between, warning his dad to stop. Now in endless stories (and often in real life) that's the turning point in such a relationship - the father backs down, the child finds the strength to fight him, or some other heartwarming result. But that's not how it goes. The dad backhands the kid, who drops like a sack of batteries, and the dad throws him down the stars to the basement. Played slightly differently, and if it weren't about a little kid, that could be a moment of evil black comedy, on par with the first issue of Kick-Ass. But alas, it's just how it really happens too often.

The kid screams loud enough for Superman to hear him, and he comes to their rescue. Again, heartwarming, makes you feel good, and Superman even makes a little comment about this is something anybody could have stopped this by keeping their eyes open.

But consider this. The kid has learned what he pretty much knew at the beginning of the story; he's not able to solve his own problems, Superman has to do it. It's exactly the argument Luthor was making all along. Not exactly the best way to grow up, is it?

Compare this story with G. Willow Wilson's fill-in from last issue. That was a story about humans, and missed opportunities and roads not taken. Again, taken with a cynical eye, the summary of that story was "Thank GOD I got out of this burg!" But it was a set of characters who could understand each other's lives and problems. Nothing got magically fixed at the end. If Superman had been in that story, he'd have called Bruce Wayne and amazingly, a fat architectural and graphic design contract would have landed at their door.

Because that's how Superman is being treated in JMS' stories, like a primary-colored Santa Claus, touching down in selected lives, changing them forever by direct action, or sometimes just by showing up. It's very difficult to write a story that deals with both gods and commoners. Eagles and ants, to allude to a controversial Peter David comment. It begs the question of how Superman can choose to help this one individual over another; who can guess how many other abusive homes he's passing on his constitutional, or other crack houses? The only thing you can go with is the idea that Terry Pratchett put forth in Hogfather: he doesn't have to actually visit every house, just certain selected ones, and the help for the other people just sort of...happens.

There was a real good JSA story from a while back where Jakeem Thunder decides he's going to start using his Thunderbolt magic to help people individually. He has the T-bolt build a whole row of houses for people. The next day, more people come for serious help, and he helps them. Eventually, people are coming asking for large-screen TVs. He also learns that for everything he creates out of nothing with magic, a similar item crumbles and collapses elsewhere in the world, in accordance with the law of conservation of personal possessions, or something. Alan Scott sums the lesson up in two parts:

1) You can't use magic to solve people's real-world problems, they have to fix them on their own.
2) People are greedy dicks.

OK, he didn't actually say that part, but it was pretty damn obvious.

These "one on one" stories work better when done rarely. "The Kid Who Collected Spider-Man" is an awesome story, but if they did one every month, you'd be wishing the kids dead. The Superman books used to do the annual "Metropolis Mailbag" story every Christmas, and they were delightful, and hilarious and heartwarming all at the same time. And most importantly, they were a year apart.

That's been my problem all along here. Once in a while, these kind of stories are fun. All in a row, they get tedious, and both in the DCU and in the real world, people start asking, "Don't you have something better to be doing?" For all the talk JMS made about what an inspiring character Superman is, he's not been doing a whole lot of inspiring here. Personally, I think the idea of Superman as inspirational figure was better done by Mark Verheiden in his "What Would Superman Do?" story in Superman #225.

JMS's stories have been good, but so far, I'd have to describe them with a very ironic adjective.

Pedestrian.

On the freedom to be a belligerent asshole, a right which is not guaranteed in the Constitution

2010-11-14T14:10:00.000-08:00

Amy Alkon, The Advice Goddess, has a wonderful syndicated column that we never miss. Her website collects those columns and the comments are often as entertaining and engaging as the columns. She also collects various clips and articles on topics close to her heart. She believes (like I do) that the hysteria over vaccines causing autism is placing kids at risk as diseases that have been all but dead are making a resurgence because parents are choosing not to get their kids vaccinated. She's staunchly anti-carb, and has gone on record as calling sugar poison. She thinks that the Islam religion is inextricably connected to politics, their only desire is to destroy all other religions and cultures, and the Muslims you know who AREN'T like that simply don't know enough about their own religion.

In short, she's a human being. She has beliefs that I agree with, some I disagree with, and when I disagree, she responds intelligently and engages in reasoned debate. I hasten to add, I have never changed her mind on any such topics, nor has anyone else. Her work is worth your time.

Right, that's out of the way...

Recently she posted a series of videos featuring people being "mistreated" by TSA employees; clips that were supposed to display how close to a police state we are, filled with faceless officers that will demand our ID at a whim and come into our houses and take away our butter and rap records.

Here's the problem. All I saw were two guys deliberately "acting up" to see what would happen. And in both cases, nothing did, save for some tension and some harsh, even poorly-chosen words.

The first fellow STARTED with "if you touch my junk I'm gonna sue you" and he was surprised that he kept getting passed up the supervisory chain?

The second guy was recording/broadcasting for his blog was surely hoping and praying that he'd get a response. And after a few minutes of checking over...he didn't get one. He showed them his ID and his boarding pass, and they let him go. They kept an eye on him, yes, but he didn't get the rubber truncheon up the jacksie that he was hoping for. Both started the situation with a confrontational attitude. Both went in all but assuming that there would be trouble, and feigned surprised when there was.

Penn Jillette once told a story (can't find the original; this is a report on same) about going through security, but his leans toward the security person doing something wrong, and Penn calling them on it. He got his junk brushed in a pat-down and asked to file a complaint, as he was just assaulted. They brought any number of people over to address his issues, and it eventually ended with him being offered a VIP service that would allow him to bypass security entirely. in short, he waited UNTIL something went wrong (however small or inadvertent), and THEN complained. Penn, BTW, is also awesome.

Now, let's spin it around - did the police/TSA/what-have-you overreact? In the first case, all they did was pass the guy off to the next person because they didn't want to deal with it, or knew they were out of their depth. All the claims and accusation of 10K in fines were not on the tape - is there a part two as there was with the second fellow? So in the first case, we have no recordings of anything but the TSA folks explaining that he does have to be searched before he's allowed to board his plane, and interpreting his heigtened reaction as all the more reason of making sure that he is.

I didn't see (well to be fair I didn't see a lot as his video showed almost everything but the cops, but I certainly didn't hear him report) any hands being laid on the second fellow, or any other actionable things that he could legally complain about. Any ramping up of language was in reaction to his actions. It's what cops do. It's a cop's job to keep a situation under control. So if the cop thinks you're moving away, or moving towards his partner (dog), they're going to do what they feel is necessary to maintain control. And to do ao, they...spoke harshly to him.

Now yes, absolutely, they could have started with Guy Two by sending over a person better trained in dealing politely with the public, someone who could have started a courteous conversation more to his liking. But here's what it looked like from the security folks' point of view - a person was videotaping them. This is permitted, but when a person was asked if they were press, his answer was mumbled and noncommital, and after being asked, he packed up and walked away. Tell me that isn't gonna set bells off in their heads.

For all the claims that the guy made that they were so anxious to catch a terrorist over and above the simple desire to keep passengers safe, they let him go without a scratch, or even a terribly good story to tell. When you want to perform an experiment, it's important not to affect the experiment with your own notions or any contamination. Accusing the TSA people who are talking to you of "liking" the power they wield is pretty much gonna affect their response. But ultimately, they were able to identify this guy as a blogger who was hoping he'd get a story to get famous with, and let him go.

It is highly important that we keep changes in our daily lives like these from turning into the nightmare end that people like this constantly insist they will. Keeping an eye on the government is vital. The methods chosen by these two fellows are of questionable efficacy.

I lead my life by two quotes:

"If you look for the evil in men, you will always find it."
--Karl Malden (allegedly quoting Abraham Lincoln), Pollyanna

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
--many, including Robert J. Hanlon

Ultimately they both mean the same thing. I try to go through my life believing that things are done for good reason (or at least good intention), and their failure or going pear-shaped is the cause of poor planning, not Machavellian-level good planning. If we work under the assumption that the police are out to get us, and every arrest is an attempt to keep us down, we insult the policemen who really are trying to help, and increase the risk that the ones who are on the side of the angels will walk away, unwilling to deal with the daily enshitting.

We are in an unpleasant period. The perfect security system is the one that only goes after the guilty, or at least only checks everyone else, because I'M innocent and should just be let through. Until they invent a device that allows the TSA to see the guilt in a man's soul (an assuming the ACLU would allow them to use it) we are stuck with the various methods we are stuck with. Similarly, since they involve humans, they will proceed at varying degrees of smoothness.

So far, the massive two-handed grabs of our liberties that have been predicted have consisted of the occasional two-year-old being mistaken for someone on the no-fly list, and the odd person carrying things in their luggage being mis-identified by security and resulting in some measure of inconvenience to the passengers and occasionally others. Both fall under the second of the quotes above. I've heard FAR more stories like these, of people deliberately testing and challenging the system in place, and achieving no more than making life difficult for themselves, and again, the people around them.

Something that I find interesting is that quite often, when people making claims like this hear the arguments that the government is out to, say, take our guns away, those theories are laughed off as ravings of a lunatic paramoid. Interesting how some accusations of government takeover are seen as gospel and others are seen as manic, depending on which side you're on.

The proper response is not "keep your head down and shut up", nor is it "Never give them a moment to try anything". Keep your eyes open, maintain oversight, be prepared to call them on errors and infractions, but remember that ultimately, we are dealing with humans, and the mistakes you see may be the fault of bad or incompetent people, and not the system itself. Scrolling back on Google Society, there is a lot wrong with the entire government; corruption, people out for themselves, and The Peter Principle proving itself over and over. But the problem is with the people, and not the system that was set up two centuries and change ago. But as I mentioned before, the act of contaminating, of even measuring, an experiment runs the risk of changing the outcome of the experiment. Even the grandest of them.

On the law of diminished attempt

2010-11-08T12:55:00.000-08:00

As you may have noticed, I've got more than a bit of my heart and hope dedicated to the upcoming DC Comic T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. I've spent no small time spreading the word about the book, the original series, any angle I can come up with.

Trying to get a comic reader to try a new book is like trying to convince a kid to eat a new food, and the arguments made are often just as illogical. Every time a new comic comes along, especially one based on an old title, you're going to get a number of pat reasons that a reader will not be trying it:

I don't like that writer/artist/character Perfectly reasonable; no reason you should have to try a book by a person you don't care for. Of course, there's always the chance this is the book that works for you, but if you've sampled a person's work and don't like it, at least there's some personal experience behind the argument. They have to convince themselves it's worth the look. But often, even more frustrating is the inverse:

I like the character as he was One of the eternal complaints of the comic fan. changes get made to a character, sometimes rather small, often quite sweeping, but all too large for some dedicated fans. The new Blue Beetle had a lo9t going for it, but a lot against it in many fans' eyes. The argument was that they "deliberately" killed off Ted Kord so they could create a new version of the character, a PC one that exists solely to pander to minorities and special interest groups. This argument often had an air of "We're not talking about Ted anymore, are we?" but there was no shifting some of the Tedfen. And it's a damn shame, because the latest Blue Beetle was some of the most lighthearted and entertaining work to come from DC in a long while. The comics fans may not have taken to him, but the animation fans sure have - the new Blue Beetle has regularly been the most popular character on Brave and the Bold, and the recent live-action CGI test footage DC leaked suggests we'll be seeing more.

Now, an argument based on personal opinion (wrong or right) is damn hard to shift. I can only get too frustrated over them, even if it's a book I really think a person would like if they gave it a shot. But the saddest reason I've heard against a new book is...

"What's the point, they're only going to cancel it anyway"

How defeatist does that sound? That's the argument of a guy who's had one too many (too few, perhaps?) failed relationships and has soured on personal contact in general. They've gotten into one book too many, only to have it canceled out from under them, leaving them with a small number of issues that almost don't warrant it's own title card in the Longbox.

And so when the next book comes along, there's one less pair of eyes willing to give it a bash, and the road to cancellation goes just a bit faster. And they click their tongues and say "you see?" and ask for their three copies of X-Whatevers.

I hope I never get that jaded. I'm as dedicated a Ted Kord fan as they come, But when the new book came out, I gave it a fair try, and was delighted at what I found.

The Kid gave Scratch 9 a look, and it's now her other Wednesday Night Thing, next to her future husband Sonic the Hedgehog.

The Wife is reading all the Muppet titles, long having forgotten the sting of every comic she put her love into getting pulled away like a teacher grabbing your baseball cards after the bell rang. She's STILL getting over the cancellation of Lloyd Llewellyn.

But here's the deal - you never know what book is going to be good. Keep your eyes open, at least give the various previews a look, and don't just give up and buy a new cushion for your rut.

On the hardest-working lycanthrope in show business

2010-10-29T11:03:00.000-07:00

Just about every city had a horror host at some time in its history. New York had the legendary John Zacherle, the Bay Area had the decidedly not horrific Bob Wilkins, and before he became the voice of ABC television and Parkay margarine (not to mention the father of director Paul Thomas), Ernie Anderson was world famous in Cleveland as Ghoulardi. Even Boston comedian Lenny Clarke had a movie show on WSBK called (creatively) the Lenny Clarke Late Show, featuring Denis Leary and Martin Olson. Back in the day, the horror host was often a second job for someone at the station, like how the weatherman also used to host the kiddie show. This was remembered fondly on SCTV, where Horror/kiddie show host Count Floyd was "actually" the news anchorman Floyd Robertson (both of course played by Joe Flaherty). Kids' shows and horror shows were often the most creative places in television; neither were paid much attention to by the brass, they often shared cast and crew (usually heard laughing from behind the camera), and there was a feeling that they could do anything they wanted. And slowly but surely that creativity was rewarded. More teens and adults started watching, and the shows took on a pop-charm. In most cases, kids show hosts are a beloved as the horror hosts. Sandy Becker, Soupy Sales, Chuck McCann, Bob McAlister...and that's just New York City.

That freewheeling atmosphere is largely gone now. Shows, especially kids' shows, are carefully pored over for anything offensive, valuable lessons are shoehorned in, and gone, gone are the days where violence and slapstick could be seen in its unedited form. So when I hear of a show that throws back to the good old days, all or nothing days, the Kukla Fran and Ollie days, I'm happy to hear about it.

Which is why for the last couple of days, I've been getting emails from a wolfman, apologizing for not catching up with me.

Wolfman Mac and his enhancement talent,
Boney Bob

Mac Kelly is the creator, star and damn near everything else of Wolfman Mac's Chiller Drive-In. He produces the show in Pontiac, Michigan and syndicates it on a number of regional TV channels, and nationally via the Retro TV cable channel network. Of the dozens of local horror show hosts across America, his show has the biggest distribution, in a head-to-head race with Elvira's recently-revived program. But at its core it's an old school low budget local horror show - volunteers running the lights, people bringing extension cords from home, the lot. Everyone pitching in for their love of the medium, like a Hammer horror film made by the Little Rascals. And that is the sum of its charm.

He was happy to agree to an interview, but has been so busy with appointments, appearances, and business meetings that went late into the night we only got to meet up today. The show started as Nightmare Sinema on cable access, got a spot on a local station in Detroit, and just got a national syndication through Retro TV last November, a deal that came just in time.

"It was last October that we got our national syndication," recalls Mac. "I had been contacting RetroTV and a couple other networks for months and months. And I was at one of my advertisers, and it was one of those days where there was NO money coming in. Halloween was coming up, we had no merchandise, we had nothing. And I remember saying, 'I think I've brought this about as far as I can bring it.' And no lie, twenty minutes later I get the call from Retro TV saying 'All right, I'm gonna put your show into 80 million homes, get me some programming immediately. Bye!' Alright, well I guess we're gonna keep this going!'

Getting that national deal wasn't exactly the road to fame and fortune, however. His income comes solely through the ad dollars he can sell for the show. So while he was hustling the show himself when it was local, now he's doing the same thing on a larger scale.

"It's definitely been a labor of love. There was a point over last winter where I was wrapping my tennis shoes in duct tape to keep the snow out. I had to sleep in my studio, because it's carpeted, and it's the only area that's closed in. The building doesn't have any heat, and I had a couple of space heaters, and I slept on couch cushions for months until we had some advertising sold, get back out and get my own place. There was a time, not too long ago that I was homeless, doing this, past the point where a lot of people would say "Give up". I went days, days not eating. And my people would show up at the studio and there would be no sign that I was living there. They'd get there and I'd throw open the doors, "Hey c'mon in, NOTHING's going on!" This has definitely been a struggle, by all means, but we're so close. We're about five, six months away before we're at a position where I can finally compensate myself properly, my cast and crew... But right now, I manage, two times a week, for about sixty episodes, round up thirty to forty volunteers to come in and do a TV show."

He's been offered work on radio, which is where his career started, but he's dedicated to making the show a hit. "First, I just wanted to see if I could do it, and once I proved to myself that I could, I wanted to become a household name, because I loved the horror movies. And now, now that at times this production has brought me literally and physically to my knees, it's a mission. I want to show we've done something new, no one's done this kind of format before, we created it out of thin air. I want to prove we can make a success of this."

He's made a few enemies in the mean time...people he's never even met. "There are people who hate what I'm doing, who want to keep the show off the air, JUST because I keep the show family-friendly. Those people speak out against me, do YouTube videos about me, say that I've got a kiddie show. They don't like that I'm this kind of horror host.

"One of the very few successful horror hosts out there is Elvira. I talked to Cassie (Cassandra Petersen back in April, and she told me there were some plans to be bringing her back. And that's fine. We have a very different show, we have a situation comedy; Seinfeld meets the Munsters. I just went to a convention a few months ago. There's 150 horror hosts in this country. And the only ones doing what we're doing are Elvira and me. The only difference is she has the million-dollar sponsors. When the camera goes off, she gets to be Cassie Peterson again; I gotta get on the phone and sell advertising."

If you watch the show, you'll see the grinning visage of J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, High epopt of the Church of the Sub-Genius. But while Mac loves the organization, he defines himself as "spiritual but not religious". He is an ordained minister in the Universal Life Church, however, and is legally able to officiate at weddings, something he's done for a couple of years now. He'll be performing a mass ceremony this Halloween, his second annual. But it's a more personal philosophy that's kept him going in this quest to make his dream a reality.

"Before The Secret and laws of Attraction became the chic thing to do, the hot book to read, these were principles I knew as a kid and a teenager, bringing things into my life that I'd work on and focus towards. It's very much how the television came to be. And while there's not any money on the table right now, and I drive a $200 cargo van, I believe with all my heart that this show is about to become successful.

"A lot of people talk about 'When I lose the weight...when the kids get to that age...when the house is paid off' Those times never come, and there's never a good time to do it. And that's been my whole thing this whole time. Even lying in the dark, shivering, knowing that I'm doing something good. And I get cards from kids, drawing pictures of me, and we just keep going. And I know it's gonna pay off, I know it's gonna happen. All the hard work is there."

It is indeed.

Wolfman Mac's Chiller Drive-In runs Saturday nights at 10PM on the Retro TV digital television network. Check their website to see if there's a local station in your area, and check with your local cable channel to get them to pick it up.

On the challenges of writing a comic book about scary Forn Parts

2010-10-28T10:13:00.000-07:00

I'm begging you, PLEASE forget that The 99 has Muslims in it.

Forget that it was created by a Muslim professor specifically to give Muslim children some positive role models so they don't grow up thinking that the guys with exploding jackets are cool. Forget that the concept, origin and themes of the book are based on the 99 aspects of Allah, and that similar concepts pervade the book. Forget that it's staggeringly popular in other countries (Muslim and non), not only because it's entertaining, but because they have heroes that a Muslim child can look at and identify with.

Because let's face it, you don't know bugger-all about the Muslim religion, and if you didn't read in the paper that this was all so, you'd never know.

You know the story of Aladdin, Ali Baba and the other 999 nights? Muslims. Has anyone asked Disney to pull copies of their film off the shelves or stop showing off the characters in the theme parks?

The origin issue of The 99 starts at the fall of Baghdad; the Mongols overran the city, razed it utterly, and destroyed the most expansive library of the time, throwing the books in the Tigris river, the ink turning the river black. All that really happened. The comic starts with the knowledge from the books being absorbed into 99 gems with the help of a magic potion. The gems give the bearers superpowers.

Now that's a HELL of a White Event, and if you didn't get told that it had deliberate Muslim overtones you'd just think it was as cool as any version of the Thief of Baghdad with its flying carpets and giant genies.

This book has gotten almost no distribution in America. I got ahold of the first few issues, and never saw another one. I asked my local comic shop how many had come out; they thought they'd gotten the first mini-series done and that was it. A check of the website shows that they've done twenty-five issues to date. Two years of monthly issues, and I'll lay odds you won't be able to find a single copy of a single issue in a store near you, save MAYBE for the origin issue, because everybody picks up first issues.

Some people are starting to notice the limited distribution of the . There's a guy on eBay trying to get upwards of 25 dollars for the first few issues of the book. Bear in mind, they're all available digitally from the 99 website for $1.99 each.

A full year ago, DC announced they'd be doing a crossover with The 99 and the JLA. Y'all had a full year to learn about the characters. How many did? The talk show circuit glommed onto the idea that a Muslim Comic Book existed, and that Superman was to appear with them, and had to put on new shirts cause the drool stains looked horrible. I really don't want to turn this into a tirade about the short-sighted way most people are seeing anything connected to Muslim culture but...well, if it walks like a camel, and spits like a camel...

I know I've rather buried the lead on this piece, but the lack of fair looks this book has been getting has infuriated me, and I really thought it needed venting.

The first issue of JLA / The 99 came out this week, and to be terribly honest, if you don't know dicky-bird about The 99 (and most of you don't), it won't make a lick of sense. Which is why at the very least you should download the origin issue FOR FREE from the 99 website. It takes place on Earth-Crossover; Superman is not on walkabout, Wonder Woman appears in her new costume but not in a dystopian landscape, and there's only one Batman. The mini (and the regular series) is written by Fabian Nicieza and Stuart Moore, who as far as I know are not on any government watch lists. It starts with a promising moment of cooperation that gangs quickly aglay, and ends with the tease of a new Noor Stone and new member of The 99. The concept of intolerance being used as a weapon by the bad guys is an obvious direction to take the book, but Fabe & Stu keep it from becoming hammer-handed. The art by Tom Derenick and Drew Geraci is clean and impressive. It is worth your time, as is the regular series. They are doing a great job of showing that there are swarthy people in the world who do nopt want to blow us up. We could do worse than to meet them half-way.

Similarly but less controversially, Paul Cornell is writing a book that is steeped in the mysticism and culture of a foreign country, is filled with references to its ancient practices, and is drop-dead awesome. In his case, the country is England, and the book is Knight and Squire. Grant Morrison brought back the Batmen Of Other Lands club in his R.I.P. arc, and K&S were the breakout stars. Paul Cornell, who writes for Doctor Who, and was nominated for numerous awards after his Captain Britain title was canceled at Marvel, was handed the job of expanding the brief glimpse of Superhero Britain that Grant gave us, and he has run with it. He plays England the way most Americans think of it - a strange land steeped in magic, strange accents, and tea. The entire first issue takes place in a magical pub where the heroes and villains meet to drink and schmooze, protected from attacking each other by a magical spell. The spell, of course, wears off. In three pages he introduces more new characters than the average title does in a year of Wednesdays. This is a book so full of creativity that it must be read standing up, for fear of spilling any. Cornell is also doing a bang-up job on Action Comics, about which I have already kvelled. He's about to take on Batman proper as well, and I expect that story to have a much darker bent, once again keeping the reader surprised as to how much he can do.

Both books do a great job of entertaining and letting you see other peoples and cultures without being pedantic about it. Pick up on them.

On the relative legal safety of saying "no"

2010-10-11T08:33:00.000-07:00

"Think twice, and then say nothing" --Ancient Sinanju proverb

I'm a big fan of Opie and Anthony, as now heard on Sirius/XM Satellite Radio channel 202. I mentioned some months back that they had gotten permission to run their Homeless Shopping Spree, in which forgoten men are given cash, are escorted to a local upper-class mall and allowed to purchase whatever they like, all while being chronicled on-air. The whole crux of the bit is to watch the reactions of the stores as these guys toddle in, cash in hand. I hasten to add, in the four or five times they've done it, there has not been ONE incident; nothing has been stolen or destroyed, no violence has occurred; indeed, since the customers have cash and are usually accompanied by dozens, even hundreds of O&A fans, it's the best day of sales the stores have in a while.

The Lawyers (Or as Opie refers to them, "The babysitters"), however, wanting to make sure that nothing would happen (both litigiously and comedically) and suggested they CALL the malls ahead of time and ASK if they could bring a busload of homeless people to their establishment. This would rather ruin the spontaneity of the bit, and it was, alas, cancelled.

This is an example of the new standard in entertainment today, and in "shock jock" radio in specific, and in the case of O&A even more specifically. The legal departments of stations, networks, etc work through endless Worst Case Scenarios, mentally running progressively unlikely simulations to see how many might end in "...and then we get sued and lose the house". It's the kind of things your parents would warn you about when you were a teenager; if you do X, Y will happen and they'll come after US! (*). So the lawyers, in an attempt to nip such situations in the proverbial bud, either say said stunt, bit or parody cannot be done, or attempt to buffer it with so many disclaimers or codicils as to remove any possible comedy from the thing.

Example: radio shows cannot do prank calls anymore. It's one of the things that made Don Imus' name back in the day - he'd call businesses and ask for outrageous things. His first album, "1,200 Hamburgers to Go" features a number of them, featuring an attempt to rent a car to be used in the Indy 500. It's a standard bit, been done for ages. But nowadays, in the litigious world we live in, you can't DO that anymore; you either have to call the company ahead of time and WARN them that they will be pranked (again, removing the potential humor entirely) or just fake the whole thing. I'm rather surprised they haven't decided that faking a prank call is in some way misleading to the listener, who could then sue for mental cruelty or some such. (Perhaps I should keep my damn mouth shut...)

This morning, O&A were talking about the potential return of a classic bit they've been doing since they were on terrestrial radio, without complaint, repercussion or incident; a bit called "What the hell is THAT!?!" In it, a number of listeners would come to the studio, all having assorted growths or other Things They Should really Get Looked At, and get examined by actual doctors, live on the show. Now the true purpose of the bit is not to help people, but to give the gang the opportunity to look at assorted growths and react/mock accordingly. But considering at least one guy was warned that a thing in his mouth might be cancerous, there is some potential good to come of it (the event was enough to get comedian and Third Mike on the show Jim Norton to give up smoking on the spot. And FTR, the guy got it checked and it was benign, but hey, better safe, right?)

Again, I must stress, NEVER has an O&A bit resulted in any legal action. Indeed, they've never resulted in anything other than outstanding ratings and a few letters from peiople who likely didn't ever hear said bit, just heard ABOUT it. That last one, The Bit Of Which We Do Not Speak, resulted in getting them fired, but again, more as a result of the publicity than any actionable damage.

So anyway, this on-air diagnostic bit, the kind of thing they've been doing for years, and the kind of things the people like Dr. Oz and Dr. Dean Edell make a CAREER at, is being "looked at" by the lawyers from XM. And why? Not because it's gone wrong before, but because it might concievably go wrong in some unlikely way in the future.

Similarly, frequent guest of the program Dr. Steve (star of his own show, "Weird medicine" also on channel 202) is now being checked and double-checked for his next appearance. The desired bit - Dr. Steve would attempt to break the world record for the most prostate exams in a four-hour period. Again, Dr. Steve is an actual doctor. And bear further in mind, he ALREADY gives medical advice over the radio on that very station, without incident or issue, by adding a simple disclaimer that any advice given should be double-checked by your own doctor, yadda-yadda-blither-blather. But when presented with this bit now, the lawyers asked, "Is Dr. Steve licensed in New York State?" Because they feared that his sticking fingers up people hinders might be misconstrued as practicing medicine in the state without a license. Never been an issue before, but all it takes is one guy in a suit saying "Yeah, but what if...?" and the brakes are hit hard.

Comedian Rich Vos got it exactly right when he said, referring to the people who make these decisions, "No one will ever get fired for saying 'no' to something." We live in a CYA world now where it's safer to say no to something risky. Regardless of the upside of saying yes, it's easier to play safe and go with what's been done before. It's why we rarely see something new on television, and as soon as we do, it's immediately copied to death, as it is now a safe and proven idea.

In today's world, Mr. Carlson would never have been allowed to bring those turkeys anywhere NEAR that helicopter.

Lawyers have successfully created a new market for themselves, that of coming up with scenarios where a company MIGHT get sued, and then warning them about it. And because there have been so many outlandish suits in the recent past (Your honor, the floor wax label did not actually SAY it could not be used to wash dishes...), the companies do not just laugh the nightmare scenarios out of the room. Because, of course, once they've been warned such a scenario MIGHT happen and then move forward anyway, they are even MORE liable should it occur. Back to the earlier comparison, it's like when your mother (or god help you, spouse) says "Make sure you don't XYZ" which all but puts the curse on it, making SURE it will happen if you choose to go ahead anyway.

But here's the really annoying bit. Who put us in the situation where lawyers can point to the crazy lawsuits that have cost companies millions of dollars? OTHER LAWYERS. Whenever a person has an accident that was clearly his fault and could have been avoided with a modicum of common sense, there will be a lawyer who can spin a situation that makes it the fault of the place and company at which it happened. And it's been proven that juries tend to side with the plaintiff in such cases, not because they think the company was actually liable, but because they think the person "deserves" the money, and because they hope that one day THEY will be lucky enough to get to sue a company and don't want to mess up their karma by saying this guy shouldn't get his bit'a sumthin-sumthin'.

Now here's the happy ending. No, none of the bits have gotten approved (yet), but O&A took the incident to the air, went on about it, and turned it into about an hour of RIVETING radio. They've had years of practice, but O&A can make some tasty lemonade.

(*)This bit copyright Kevin "That's Not Right" Meany, who is likely still using it in his act.

On the challenges of bringing home the bacon when your nemesis is a giant radioactive porcine alien

2010-09-08T13:34:00.000-07:00

In a column on Newsarama, Jill Pantozzi, AKA The Nerdy Bird posited the summer of the Teen Titans. In it, she posits the kind of jobs that the team might take over the summer, and how they gang aglay.

But in such frippery, she sheds light on an equally fripperous and intriguing question...how DOES the average superhero support hirself?

The Big Three sort of don't count - Batman is calamitously wealthy, and Superman doesn't need to eat; he has a job largely just to keep in touch with Humanity. Wonder Woman, at least before the recent (presumed temporary, but what do I know) revamp was royalty of an independent nation, and as such fairly set should something arise which requires a sudden application of funds. Even Aquaman's financial needs are largely moot - if he sees something on QVC he wants, he just needs to go for a swim and pull up a chest of booty or two. He probably gets them appraised by Carter Hall to save time.

But that leaves a fairly large number of heroes at varied alphabetical plateaus who have lairs to support, jobs to hold down, and in the case of the younger adventurers, research papers to finish. Rather a burden to bear.

We already know that Bruce Wayne is not new to helping out a friend - He owns several apartment houses in the fashionable end of Metropolis, and has arranged it so that a newspaper reporter and his wife got to the top of the waiting list forone of the better locations on Clinton Street. We also know that Ollie Queen was secretly funding The Outsiders, which was of course started by Batman several incarnations ago. With these two facts in place, it's fairly easy to extrapolate a fairly diverse support network for the crimefighters of the DCU.

Once a hero establishes themselves (and has their first crossover), it can be assumed that certain doors open to them. Jobs with subsidiaries of Waynetech or Queen Industries are likely available in most metropolitan areas, positions with hours in varied shifts, with managers who are very understanding of the need for unexplained absences. For the younger vigilante, scholarship materials to local colleges will start to arrive in their mailbox, possibly with applications already filled out.

Paul Gambi doesn't take too many new clients, but once in a while he'll get a name left on his counter and calls are made offering his services. Equipment manufacturers are a secretive, circumspect lot, but when you get a note with a drawing of a bat at the bottom, you get a new catalog printed up and mailed out toot sweet.

The JSA has been offering training to new heroes for some time now, which again, is likely financed by the heroes themselves. Alan Scott was quite the media magnate in his day - odds are he sold off his holdings for a tidy sum, if indeed he sold them at all. He likely owns a nice piece of Galaxy Communications. Ted Knight may live like a pug, but he owns that gym outright, and likely most of the surrounding block. Tyler chemicals was quite the powerhouse in its day as well. It's safe to say the JSA are solvent enough to handle some Extreme Makeover: Headquarters Editions on their own.

Then there's the question of licensing. While there will ever be people who claim that it's perfectly legal to slap a hero's face or logo on a shirt as a public figure, there are always lawyers who show up and quietly explain that there's a holding company that can be worked with to create approved products, and in doing so help various charitable endeavors.

Nobody's gonna get rich as a superhero (not without getting a stern talking to a la Booster Gold) but it's fair to assume that with sufficient proof of dedication, the job can be made at least a little bit easier.

And by the way, the aforementioned Mam'zelle Pantozzi has been appearing on the annual MDA telethon for years, first as one of "Jerry's Kids" living with muscular dystrophy; she's now old and successful (and pretty) enough to help host the New York City local event. Making a donation to fight this spectrum of disorders, even after the end of the Lewisian baccanal, is a good thing to do with your money. Donate at mda.org, or text "MDA" TO 20222 and a donation of $10 will be placed on your next phone bill.

On the ability to believe a man can perambulate

2010-08-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

There's a recurring question that pops up among comics readers to the effect of "With all the alien tech that falls to Earth in one form or another, how is the Earth of DC or Marvel not decades or centuries ahead of us technologically?" And believe me, we can go on for HOURS coming up with explanations - the government grabs it all, there are advances but they're minor and in the background, etc.

But in simple fact, the reason is far more logical. If the world of the DC Universe were as advanced as it should logically be based on the number of alien devices and superintelligent inventors, it would become a world of the science-fictiony future. And that’s a world a lot of readers wouldn’t be able to identify with, and it’d turn them off. A superhero comic and a science-fiction comic aren’t the same thing, so the general standing is to keep the street-level world as similar to ours as possible. Unless they’re collateral damage, people on the street only see the superheroes when they look up.

In Superman, JMS has brought Superman down to street-level in his “Grounded” arc. Superman is taking a Forrest Gump-like (I am SO sure he’s sick of that comparison) walk across America, partly to help restore their faith in him after the New Krypton mishegas, partly for him to re-connect to the “normal” people of the country, and partly to get a cheap pop in sales and publicity as he walks through each city. This month in Superman #702, he walks through Detroit, a city with no small number of real-life problems. He talks to a number of city-dwellers, but spends more time talking to a group of alien scientists who are hiding from their oppressive home planet in human garb. They make it clear that they mean Earth no harm, just want to live their lives in paranoid solitude, etc. Superman believes them, but feels they shouldn’t just hide out; like all immigrants, it’s almost their responsibility to contribute to the country, either culturally, or in their case technologically.

The aliens do a good job of calling him out on this, pointing out that he’s an alien as well, resulting in a nice “That’s different” moment. And considering that Superman and his family isn’t exactly peppering the planet with Kryptonian technology, or forcing the Amazons to send plans for the Purple Ray to the countries of the world, etc, his request isn’t exactly fair.

Long story short, he convinces them that sharing their technology could result in an astounding amount of benefit to the world, as well as to the city of Detroit. In the span of two panels (and what HAD to have been a period of weeks if not more), the aliens have cut a back-room deal with the government to allow them to buy up a bunch of disused auto factories and start manufacturing products extrapolated from their alien tech. So in the proverbial swell foop he both makes the aliens more safe on Earth and helps provide jobs for many thousands of Detroit workers, very possibly bringing about a total revitalization of the city.

I’m curious how the people are Detroit are gonna feel about that ending when they read the book. I fully expect some profiteering headline-whore to chastise it, saying it in some way diminishes the plight of the city or some such crap.

But it’s an example of what I’m talking about – with all the aliens and such in the DCU, this kind of thing should be happening left and right. I know Luthor wasn’t able to grow wheat in Africa back in Heroes for Hunger, but that was DECADES ago – I’ll lay odds that with sufficient impetus, he could grow turkeys in Astroturf.

But by doing so, it potentially minimizes the severity of the issue in question. It’s why Babs Gordon remains wheelchair bound. It’s why there’s no World Trade Center in comics anymore. In the Marvel U, Damage control could and should have rebuilt the Twin Towers almost immediately. Yet they remain down.

YES, Superman and his new alien friends could cure cancer. Superman brings them a ex-autoworker obviously dying of some massive lung complaint and says to them, “fix him or I’ll blow the whistle on you”. But by doing so, it changes the rules in which that world plays.

Watchmen is one of the only comics that really looked at the effect of a godlike being would have on the world. The Cold War ended instantly. He was able to generate the materials to build low-size high-capacity batteries, so electric cars became plentiful and cheap. But interestingly, the street-level world didn’t change all that much. There were poor people, there were newsstands; it wasn’t THAT different. So maybe all that technology wouldn’t make that much a difference after all.

Will these aliens ever be mentioned again? Or the sudden renaissance of Detroit they will likely cause? I’ll bet no. Unless it’s a seed for a plot he’s working on later, they’ll likely fall into the disused plot pile, along with all the other things that you’d think would change the world, but never seemed to get used for anything more complicated than robbing banks.

I’m liking JMS’ Superman issues, don’t get me wrong. The stories are working. But placing this godlike creature among mortal men just drives home the point of how hard it is to have them both in the same story. You need a hell of a big lens to keep them both in focus. It’s easier to write a story where he’s towing Saturn back into orbit than one where he helps build a house. Because some smart-ass is gonna ask “Why don’t YOU just build it?”

He’s doing it well, but I’m not sure how long it’ll stay interesting. Eventually I’m going to want to see Superman face Superman-level threats. Till then, I’ll be happy to read this 21st century superpowered remake of Route 66.

On the reward for a year of patient silence

2010-07-19T09:35:00.000-07:00

I'm quivering. I'm giggling like a schoolgirl, and don't know what to do with my hands.

There's not a facet of the news about the rebirth of the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents that doesn't make me happy.

First off, they're sidestepping the whole origin retcon problem perfectly - it all happened. The entire Tower run is now solidly part of DC Continuity, in its entirety, unchanged. This also means they took place as much as 50 years ago, if they choose to place them in the 60's. This is AMAZINGLY cool. It puts the Agents in the same area as the Challs - the sole defense the world had against outlandish threats, from the era between the JSA and the modern heroes.

Yes, that means that aside from Dr. Dunn, we'll get all new agents. But that really works for me. As I've said before, it's entirely possible to give a new guy the suit and retain the feel of the original. And I'll be very curious to see what folks they choose.

They kept the "core", to revisit the concept I've touched on recently - their powers are slowly killing them. The Thunderbelt puts strain on Dynamo's nervous system, Lightning's suit ages him every time he gives it the gas, and Menthor...well, I'm quite keen to see what the side effects of the helmet are now. Now yes, the idea has been used in comics before, one favorite was in Strikeforce: Morituri. But it's a concept that's got LOTS of possibilities.

I'm assuming the fellow in the business suit is the new Menthor. It's a neat idea, and considering the original Menthor suit bore a passing resemblance to The Atom's togs, they'd only have had to think up new ones anyway.

Only NoMan will remain as an active member from the original team. Which means that Dr. Dunn has been living in a series of android bodies for a couple DECADES. There is a LOT of potential there. People start hallucinating after a couple of hours in those sensory deprivation tanks. He's functionally been in one for years. And the idea of being able to swap out of your body right before you die. You ever have a dream where you're dying and you wake up at the last second? Odds are that's what it feels like. What's the effect on a mind after that happens a couple hundred times, but you're not dreaming?

So SO many questions. Exactly how long ago did the original series happen? Will we see a new version of the THUNDER Squad? Or the Undersea Agent? What of the 80's revival will be considered canon? How will the team interact with the rest of the DCU, and organizations like Checkmate?

It is going to be a VERY long time till November. Luckily there will be several conventions between now and then at which to wheedle information from them.

On yet another costume intended to attract attention and generate debate

2010-07-15T11:19:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen it yet, Entertainment Weekly has Ryan Reynolds in his Green Lantern outfit on the cover of their special Comic-Con preview issue. And predictably, it's generated some comment.

I do have some problems with the outfit, but likely not the ones most have. The mask looks a bit odd. It's too low in the middle, which makes the sides look almost pointy. The lines of (I presume) energy look like they're supposed to mimic the sinews of muscle. It's interesting, but makes the suit look too busy. I'm hoping that's more of a "climactic" effect, to give the look of his body bursting with energy, perhaps after drawing a charge directly from the central battery.

But here's the thing. The pic is billed as a "first look", and that's exactly what it is. With almost a full year until the premiere, I'll lay odds this design will change. It's one of the mixed blessings of CGI effects - you can tweak it until quite close to the release date.

In fact, I'm betting this isn't even actual CGI output. It looks much more like Photoshop. Take a look at the hi-res copy of the pic at Newsarama. The mask looks rather flat, much more like it's just painted on his face, as opposed to the more solid look that you'd assume a mask would have, even one generated by the ring, as this one allegedly is. The colors of the suit are flat, with not too much texture. I'm betting this is only a pale shadow of what the final product will be.

My copy will likely be waiting for me at home today or tomorrow, and if there are more pictures inside, I'll be able to make a more educated decision. But right now, my decision is that I can't MAKE a decision. You can't make a decision on the film based on one picture.

At least, not any more. I remember when that picture of Michael Keaton in his Bat-gear showed up in, of all things, TIME magazine. The photo was intended to calm the fans down, to make sure we understood that this was to be a serious take on the character, not a comedy, regardless of the choice of star. And it worked - there wasn't a comic shop in the country that didn't have a copy of that pic posted. You could hear the sigh of relief, followed by the first of many held breaths over the next decades as our anticipation built.

But that suit was a physical thing. They were almost finished filming by the time that photo hit. If fandom cried foul, they had no way to change it. With the GL costume being CGI, if there's a hue and cry about it, they can change it with relative ease.

If there's any fully-rendered effects yet, they exist solely to show at Comic-Con next week. And even they may change in 12 months.

There will be PLENTY of leaked footage, in-progress effects shots and photographs taken from 3 miles away using L.B. Jeffries' telephoto lens from Rear Window for you to make your mind up about the film before it opens. Don't hang all your outrage on a last-minute slapped together piece to get a shot on the EW cover. Save it, parcel it out over time. If you declare the film crap now, you run the risk of being ignored for the next year. And if there's one thing the children of the internet fear, it's being ignored.

On a successful destruction of another part of my childhood

2010-07-09T17:56:00.000-07:00

I've told these stories before, but I told them long enough ago I think I can get away with telling them again. I've always had a sort of emotional attachment to The Atom, DC's Silver-age version of the Mighty Mite. One of my few memories of my father is of him reading me the origin of the Atom. And from way back then, I remembered Ray Palmer's little mnemonic for the difference between stalactites and stalagmites -

Stalactite has a 'C' in it! Let that stand for Ceiling! Stalagmite has a 'G' in it! Let that stand for ground!

Over a decade and change later, in high school Earth Science class, our teacher had just finished this really horrible story that was supposed to help us remember the difference between stalactites and stalagmites. As soon as he finished, I raised my hand, and quoted Professor Palmer's mnemonic perfectly. My teacher looked at me, and to paraphrase Robin Harris, he hung up cause he knew I was right.

So suffice to say, I know the origin of the Atom pretty well. Ray Palmer finds a piece of dwarf star matter and uses it to perfect his shrink ray. By passing sunlight through a lens he created (now with a dwarf star coating) he can shrink things, but they promptly explode due to instability. During a spelunking expedition (from which came the aforementioned mnemonic) there's a cave-in, trapping the class. He happens to have the lens with him, so he decides to sacrifice himself by using it on himself. He sets the lens between two outcroppings and aims a beam of sunlight through it. He succeeds and makes a small hole large enough to let everyone escape. With seconds to go before he expects to explode, he passes through the beam again, and is surprised and relieved to find out he is restored to normal. Apparently some water dripped onto the lens, water that passed through the walls of the cave and picked up trace minerals that somehow stabilized the shrinking process. He retrieves the lens and helps everyone escape through the opening he created. And by his next appearance he perfected the process, made himself a costume and joined the DC pantheon of heroes.

Now that's pretty much a textbook silver-age origin. A series of wild coincidences, some pseudo science and heaping helping of OH, COME ON. But it works. It's a jumping off point, it's a story that doesn't need to be addressed all that often and serves to get the hero into the costume. It's not changed one iota (which would have been a great name for the character as well) since it was written. Through Crisis and revamp, Ray's simple tale has remained unassailed. The only nod to reality it got was the space rock was now merely infused with Dwarf Star Matter, as opposed to being a solid chunk. I believe that tweak came some time back, as some clever arse noticed that a solid piece of dwarf star matter A) wouldn't exist since stars are made of incendescent gas, and B) would weigh something like 14 godzillion pounds (or 6.350293178 godzillion kilograms). But other than that, nothing.

Until yesterday, when Jeff (Sweet Tooth) Lemire all but entirely rewrote it in the Brightest Day Atom Special.

Now here's where you expect the old fart comics fan to rail and moan about change for the sake of change, and how it was perfectly acceptable before and why did it have to ruin it, yakkity schmakkity blither blather.

But here's the thing. He NAILED it. He makes several major changes, but none are negative, and none make Ray any less Ray.

Let me explain. There's a sort of paradoxical concept from literature know as the Ship of Theseus. They all center around the idea that a beloved object, over time, gets fixed, parts replaced, and eventually, there's not a bit of the original object left, but it's still that object. Terry Pratchett used the "my Grandfather's Axe" version of the story twice, once in Strata and more recently in The Fifth Elephant. The point is, you can swap out all the bits of something, but if you're careful, never lose the intrinsic…thingness of the thing.

Sometimes some comic revamps are so radical they DO lose "the thing and the whole of the thing". The threatened Fantastic Four moving to the suburbs, for example. And in most cases, the really embarrassing missteps go away, either via another revamp or just a sort of embarrassed shuffling of the feet and everyone kind of agreeing to never mention that again. But here, the changes are not outlandish, and even when they contradict previous stories, they do so in ways that interest me, and not outrage me.

Case in point - In the new origin, he perfects the shrinking process himself, as opposed to a freak accident involving dripping water. It's not as exciting and dramatic, but it actually makes Ray a BETTER scientist. He solved his own problem, as opposed to a lucky accident.

In the new origin, he already had the costume ready. Well, so what? Come on, he says it himself, you don't build a shrink ray without at least thinking of using it on yourself. And he explains that the suit is to house the shrinking apparatus and not just to save people and get babes. It's similar to the idea they tried in the Flash TV series, that the suit was originally designed to monitor his vitals and keep from overheating (tho how wearing foam rubber from head to toe keeps you from overheating is beyond me). Having his first appearance still be connected to a cave-in is a nice tip of the hat to the original story.

Jeff's also added a whole family for Ray to have sad memories about. Now to be fair, that's becoming somewhat de rigueur nowadays, as in Geoff Johns' revamps of both Green Lantern and Flash. And it seems pretty obvious to me that Ray's mysterious uncle is either...

A) His real father
B) Himself, or possibly one of his enemies (most likely Chronos or someone with access to the Time Pool) trying to make sure his eventual adulthood and shrink-ray creation goes smoothly.
C) Some mad combination of the two.

Don't get me wrong, these are pretty major changes. But like so many DC characters, The Atom went through more than a few radical changes in vector. He became a teeny-weeny John Carter Of The Front Lawn, got de-aged to a teenager, and had more shit piled onto his fragile psyche by his ex-wife than any one man deserves. Roger Stern gave him a family background in the Power of the Atom series - supposedly he's an only child. But AFAIC, since that was added DECADES after the character first appeared, it's not quite the same level of cement-solid canon as other details.

Now I won't lie to you, I REALLY liked Ryan Choi. Or perhaps more correctly, I liked Gail Simone's writing on All New Atom, and the absolutely wacky concepts she introduced. Of them all, the idea that Ivy Town, as a result of all the quantum compression, time travel and dimensional experimentation it's hosted over the years, is now parked halfway into the Outer Limits. I LOVED that. It was an easy setup for a ridiculous amount of story ideas. It's something I'd sorely love to see again.

But by re-telling Ray's origin, Jeff gives a whole new audience a chance to jump on with the character, and pretty much takes him back closer to his original concept than he's been at for quite a long time. He's more sure of himself, no more of that "size=self-esteem" crap. He's back at Ivy U, with Professor Hyatt. And he's a hero again. These are good things.

In short, Jeff ends up with a story that is still the story my father told me.

Tell you what, Jeff...have him use the Stalactite/Stalagmite story in a future episode, and it'll be perfect.

On the result of showing a powerful man exactly how weak he is, relatively speaking

2010-07-01T09:56:00.000-07:00

Look, there are spoilers. Get Over It.

Simply stated, Marvel don’t know what they lost. They canceled Paul Cornell’s thought-provoking Captain Britain book, and then it starts winning awards. Paul jumped ship to DC, bagging an exclusive contract, and got handed Action Comics. That’s what I call a positive career vector.

One catch: you can’t use Superman. JMS is sending him on a little spirit quest for a year, so you’ll be writing about Metropolis without a Superman. Now that’s the same offer made to a certain other well-known Superman-loving writer (whose name shall remain unsaid), and said writer dropped the offer like a hot rock. But Paul saw opportunity in the scenario, and chose to talk about Metropolis’ biggest brain, Lex Luthor.

As a result of the end of the New Krypton plotline, Lex Luthor has a presidential pardon, has been re-instated as the head of Lexcorp, and odds are, with the help of a gracious media, been able to restore his reputation to the point that he’s top dog in the Big Apricot again, especially with Superman off on Walkabout.

This is a textbook example of a first issue. Give people a solid snapshot of the character, get a couple plot threads going, and end the issue with a SOLID cliffhanger. Hits all the bases.

As opposed to the last year of Superman books (which, I hasten to add, I enjoyed) where you were asked to invest in brand new characters (or in Mon-El's case, a new look at a character) this is a character everyone knows, so there's no hesitance to get over. And still Paul shows new sides to him.

The Lois-bot just speaks VOLUMES about his fixations. She's The One Who Got Away, and if he can't have her, he'll just build one. He couches it in "I need a devil's advocate" but it's such an obvious bit of petulance. LOVED it.

I may be digging a bit deep, but I took “Spalding” as a Marx Bros reference – Geoffrey T. Spaulding had a personal assistant named Jamison in Animal Crackers. I’ve already asked Paul if his other name is indeed Jamison. Which would be awesome. The relationship between him and Lex seems to be similar to Lord Vetinari and Drumknott in the Discworld books. I love it.

If you want to make a comparison to Paul’s work on Doctor Who, it seems he’s playing Luthor as The Master. He’s utterly in control in any situation, playing three games ahead, never mind three moves, and always out for himself. He’s not been played this well in years. Even in recent years he was leaning back to the “mad scientist” mold and away from the corporate wolf that Byrne, et al, re-molded him in. I’m pleased that didn’t complete – I really like the idea of Luthor being a captain of industry. It should be very difficult for Superman or anyone to touch him, as he’s the head of a company that’s “too big to fail”.

Let’s look at all the plot threads Cornell set up in one issue, shall we?

Lex’s Quest For Fire: He got one taste of true power, and it’s bent his brain. Just like Virgil Samms taking one hit of Thionite while undercover and having to spend the rest of his days aching for another, Lex has fallen hard for the power that he can barely contemplate. He’s well aware that’s it’s affecting his actions and perceptions, but he’s equally positive that he can maintain control. Classic junkie-speak.
It’s got to be KILLING him that something could make him so off of his game. So much so that he decides he needs a Jiminy Cricket, someone to walk (three steps) behind him and whisper “Remember, thou art mortal”. And that brings us to…

Lois-bot built with Kryptonian tech that they don’t quite understand: That’s just got “Lois bot out of control” painted all over it, don’t it? Or even better, making the jump to sentience and either allowing Lex to take the relationship to another level, or the old reliable “trying to take over real-Lois’ life” story. Either way, Robot Lois is a great swerve, since it was the one thing in the previews and Paul’s interviews that had everyone partaking in what we call in our house “The ethnic loss of all shit”. Positively brill.

“If I got more support from your people”: That line likely got glossed over by most folks. Who are Spalding’s “people” exactly? I’m thinking he’s not just referring to Lexcorp employees, or metrosexuals. Spalding got a lot of camera time – I’m betting there’s a reason for that.

Mr. Mind: Come on, that was awesome. Virtually unseen since 52, the Venusian earworm has all the makings of a major villain. More subtle than Starro, access to alien tech, and he’s a friggin’ worm. You started the issue not knowing who the weirdos dressed in lots from a Morrison Doom Patrol costume auction were, and you ended not know what their boss has planned. And all along, Lex is just playing them like pan flutes.

What a lovely start.

On the analysis of a minor change in a major character

2010-06-30T11:26:00.000-07:00

N.B. - In the interests of full disclosure, I should clarify that I’m writing this column before I’ve read the actual issue and storyline on which I am commenting, basing my opinions solely on what has been released and leaked since last evening. This is so that I can work from the same position of no knowledge that the rest of fandom is at. Indeed, “the position of no knowledge” may be fandom’s favorite, place and show going to “missionary” and “doggie style so we can both watch X-Files”. A second, actual review of said comics and stories will follow.

Okay, you’ve all seen the new costume by now.

Okay, you’ve likely all laughed your ass off and spouted your vitriol on the Twitter.

Okay, now let’s calm down and look at this rationally.

Okay, as rationally as comics fans can.

Of the section of fandom that’s seen the new costume design, I’ll warrant about…35 percent actually read the attached articles, as opposed to those who just saw the picture and assumed the thousand words underneath were ancillary. They just flew off the handle, landed at their keyboards and screamed “childhood rape”. So for those people, here’s what those words said.

JMS’ story is based on what science fiction fans refer to as a Change War. You go back in time, change one little detail that will snowball forward and eliminate or cripple your enemy’s power base. It’s the kind of thing Booster Gold is fighting in his title. It was the plot of the last weekly title, Trinity. It’s EXACTLY what the Justice Society of America has been involved with in their book as we speak, with the final issue of the story coming out today. It’s the same plot idea behind the new Tom Strong mini series. Hell, JMS wrote a Real Ghostbusters story that did the same thing, where the guys go back in time and bust the three ghosts before they can scare Scrooge straight. So this is not a bold new idea. But like all, ideas, great things can be done with it, depending on who’s at the wheel.

Now in Wonder Woman’s case, the “one little detail” isn’t all that little. 20 years ago, Paradise Island was destroyed. Princess Diana was smuggled off the island to keep the line of Amazons alive, and now in the “present” of this wildly alternative timeline, the Amazons are a ragtag handful of warriors scattered across the globe. That’s present in which we pick up the story.

To summarize, the claim that JMS has changed Wondy’s origin and continuity is largely misleading. He’s writing a story in an alternate timeline in which events of her life are wildly disparate from the norm. It almost certainly cannot connect to the rest of the DC titles, as it would require that timeline being referenced in all the other books. It’s going to be a stand-alone story about Wonder Woman’s attempt to get her proverbial life back. Any appearances by Wonder Woman in other DC titles (and there will almost certainly be some, if only in Brightest Day and JLI:GL) will be of the “classic” Wonder Woman, and not the one we’ll be reading about in this series. That could be confusing for some readers, so odds are it won’t be done much. I’m rather curious to see what the rest of the DCU will be like in this book. Will she still be a founding member of the JLA? Will there be too many other heroes at all? Will the Max Lord incident have happened, or just end very differently? Since this is a story about Wonder Woman, I don’t know how much time will be dedicated to those questions, but I’d like to see some, at least. Part of the fun to such stories are the differences to the world made by the change.

I think the endgame of the story is fairly easy to predict, at least in broad strokes. Wonder Woman will return to mainline continuity, largely unchanged. The events in said story will have never occurred, save likely for Wonder Woman remembering them. We may see some minor tweaks to the cast, points in her life seen from a new light, but ultimately, we’ll have what Alan Moore described as “The Illusion of Change”. Like Bruce Wayne’s current apparition and return, we get a chance to enjoy something different, get reminded about what we liked about the character in the first place, and then get them back.

JMS was just recently directly involved in a storyline very similar in theme to this one. Namely, One More Day in Spider-Man. A minor (yet to be explained) change in Mr. Parker’s past was made, resulting in his marriage to Mary Jane Watson having never occurred, resulting in a great deal of his past adventures occurring in ways of varying variance. The way the story was finally done was so unacceptable to JMS that he left the book. I don’t know if this will happen or not, but played properly, but if he chose to, this story could be a massive “So there” to Marvel, a plot that screams “HERE’S how you do this story, you clods.”

If this were anyone else writing this, I’d be rolling my eyes and walking away, waiting for the next retcon to come around. But JMS is one helluva writer. I have no doubt JMS' story will be well written, and that I will enjoy it. Same with his run on Superman. Both stories are very bold moves to make, a real change from the status quo. In both cases, he’s taking the characters off on their own proverbial spirit quest to get back to a more archetypal interpretation of the character.

But here’s the thing that has be worried.

Many Superman fans have just spent a year complaining about how the Superman titles didn’t have Superman in them. They claimed they didn’t want to read about a bunch of other characters in the books. Those who chose not to read missed out on a great bunch of stories, as I’ve talked about endlessly over the past year. But point is, they wanted to see Superman back in Metropolis, and his books, fighting bad guys and saving the world from alien invasions and the like.

DC has all but admitted they pooped the bed. Some are couching it by saying it was a mistake to do it for a whole year, some said the error lay in taking him out of all the books at once. But the point was the same – a lot of people didn’t want to read non-Superman Superman books.

So what are they doing this time? They’re taking him out of Metropolis for a year.

There’s a definition of “insanity” as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different outcome”. They just got done saying taking Superman out of Metropolis and filling the gap with an opportunity to read about a whole bunch of other characters was a misstep. And now they’re doing it again.

Now bear clearly in mind – I enjoyed the last year of Super-titles, and I FULLY expect to enjoy this year. Paul Cornell is a stellar writer, and seeing what he has planned for Luthor and Action Comics will be a major portion of the next year. Similarly, I fully expect JMS’ Superman stories to be moving, dramatic, personal and the kind of stories you wish they wrote about Superman every day.

I also fully expect a LOT of readers to hear that top-line description – “Superman goes walkabout, Metropolis unprotected, other heroes step up to fill the gap”, think it’s New Krypton all over again, and stay away in droves. JUST like they reacted to the Wonder Woman announcement, picking out the bits they were the most incensed by and screaming “I quit comics forever”. And once again, they will be cutting themselves off from some very good books.

JMS or no, both characters have Big Uphill Battle written all over them. People who like the books are going to have a LOT of work to do to get people to get past those powerful first impressions and give them a try. So get ready for a lot of persuasive speech if you end up liking them.

Now let’s get back to The Costume.

This costume, plain and simple, is a choice designed to do exactly what it has done: spark comment. Wonder Woman has got more buzz in eighteen hours than she has had in eighteen years. Bringing in a hired gun like Jodi Picoult didn't do it; the exemplary work of Gail Simone didn't make a dent in the apathy and inertia of the comics fans.

But change the costume, do something that people can see, and post, and publish and retweet, and you've captured their attention.

The reaction to the new costume in online comics fandom has been 90%+ derision, and not without good reason. It’s a jarring change, from iconic to street thug. Comparisons to 90’s club wear are prevalent, as well as references to synonyms of the word “trollop”. But again, these are comments made not grasping the Bold New Direction of the character. If Wonder Woman were still the Princess of Paradise Island wearing that, it would indeed be laughable. But in this story, Wonder Woman was raised in New York City. So she dresses like a New Yorker. It’s more logical than it seems.

There’s no possible way the costume will stay tho. Just like her history, there are far too many dollars being made on the iconic costume in licensing alone. All the folks making lunchboxes and t-shirts don’t want to hear that costume is going away. Heck, they tried to change Batman’s costume a while back, and get rid of the trunks, making the suit a more monochromic look. Didn’t take – too many t-shirts out there.

This costume is a hot-shot, intended to draw quick and furious heat, in the hopes that people will HAVE to try the first issue, whether out of genuine curiosity or “just to see HOW bad it is”. It will go away.

Dan DiDio has gone on record as being a member of the “no publicity is bad publicity” camp. To continue the pro-wrestling metaphors, his philosophy is that whether the fans are cheering or booing, they’re up on their feet and actively participating. Right or wrong, he wants to see a reaction to what DC is doing, not just a quiet acceptance as the fans pick their books up off the racks.

Mission Accomplished.

On the Convention Wars taking an interesting turn with an unexpected success

2010-06-13T20:13:00.000-07:00

I chose not to attend Wizard World Philadelphia this year, mainly because there was nothing going on there I was interested in. I knew that the few artists I wanted to see would likely also be at Baltimore and/or New York later in the year. Also, I, like a lot of comics fans, have been decidedly turned off by Wizard's bullying tactics against other conventions, particularly against Reed and the NY Comic Con.

This started a few years ago, when Wizard scheduled their show the same weekend at Shelly Drum's Heroes Con, a show with a long history, a stellar reputation and a tremendous amount of good will. The first year it happened, Wizard swore they were at the mercy of the convention center, this was the only weekend available, hands were tied, yadda yadda yadda. When happened a SECOND time, many eyebrows were raised. DC only decided to attend at the very last minute that year, splitting its teams to provide both shows with a fair-to-middling roster of editorial and creative talent. But the next year, with the show safely on another weekend from Heroes, DC still chose not to attend anyway. Marvel had already chosen to stop attending, claiming a desire to cut back on convention appearances altogether.

But this year, with DC and Marvel absent (indeed, I believe Zenescope was the largest comics company to be attending, based on the website), a larger list of media guests than comics, and a general sense of inertia among online comics fans, many artists are reporting that WW Philly was a rousing success, with lots of fans, all with lots of money, all willing to spend. Ethan Van Sciver reports it's his most successful show this year to date.

So...what happened?

I think there's a couple of things going on here. First off, Philadelphia does not have any other comic cons to speak of. Many--bordering on most--comic fans in the area don't have the funds or resources to get to other shows in the area like Baltimore, New York or even strong shows out in Pittsburgh. So to a degree, they're a captive audience. Back in the '90s, the company I was working for chose to run a show in Philly, even though we were based in New York, on the assumption that while Fred Greenberg was doing a good job of providing NYC with shows, no one was doing the same for Philly. And we guessed right - we drew 35,000 fans for our first (and alas, only) show, which is tremendous for the first time out of the gate. I've been saying ever since that Philly is a woefully under-served city convention-wise, and the results Wizard had this year might shine a light on this. It seems to me that like New York and many other major cites, Philly could easily support more than one major show. If a second company chose to bring a show to the town, it could do very well, and not reduce attendance for either Wizard's show or New York. In the words of Daffy Duck, "If they like that mess, they're starvin' for some real hoofin'!"

Also, Wizard has been slowly making a change in its direction with their shows. Each successive convention they run has been less purely comics and more "multi-media". By appealing to fans of TV shows and films, wrestling and MMA fans, as well as comics, they've been able to appeal to a larger range of people, and thus expanding their potential customer base. In a way they're turning into the modern equivalent of Creation Entertainment, who used to dominate the media-con landscape in the '80s and '90s, and is still doing a brisk business with their branded Star Trek, Twilight et al shows across the country. Interestingly, the reaction of science fiction fans who were used to going to fan-run conventions had the same reaction to Creation then that comics fans have of Wizard now. "Mediafen" are somewhat looked down on by other more pure/traditional Sci-Fi fans, and the shows that Wizard are putting on are getting the hairy eyeball from the comics community. But in both cases, their continuing success points to the idea that they must be doing something right, infuriating as that may be.

The other point to consider is that, as much as it galls us, the online fannish community is not neccesarily representative of comics fans in general, and really makes up only a small sliver of it. Bloggers will endlessly bemoan the fact that one book will sell like the proverbial hotcakes while their personal favorite spends most of its time on the bubble. And while the Internetigencia will pooh-pooh the lopsided guest list of the Wizard shows, SOMEBODY is lining up to see Patrick Stewart and the Iron Sheik. While the talkative and verbose upper crust of fandom will cluck their tongues at the Great Unwashed and their tastes, the selfsame Great Unwashed goes through their day blissfully unaware of the very existence of the people who are clucking. It's not that "they don't know any better" as is so often said; it's that they know what they like, and it's not really our place to lambaste them for it. I mean really, they're not putting all those reality shows on just to spite you.

When Reed started the NY Comic Con and started its march West, Wizard went into overdrive. It started buying up conventions left and right, shows of various size and regional reach. This, bear in mind, came after a period of time where they CANCELLED several of their shows for various reasons, be it lack of funds, interest or what have you. Once they started grabbing more shows, most famously Mike Carbonaro's Big Apple Convention, they started counter-programming. First they ran a show in New York that they didn't go out of their way to make clear wasn't the New York Comic Con; Reed had to skip almost a year for its show, going from February in 2009 to October in 2010. Wizard ran a show in October of 2009 to fill that gap. The show was acceptable, according to most reviews, but compared to the size and professionalism of the NYCC, it was a fart in a hurricane. Wizard next set up a convention in LA the same weekend as Reed's first show in Chicago, C2E2. The plan was to draw many of the media stars away from the Chicago show with the allure of a shorter trip. It succeeded, in that both shows had lackluster attendance, compared to what either show could have drawn if it were unopposed. That seems a rather nose-to-spite-face way of scoring a win. Wizard then announced that they'd run their Big Apple Con the SAME weekend as this years NYCC, in a facility only a few blocks up the street. They have since pulled back from that play, moving both the weekend and location, retrating to the Penn Plaza, location of most of Mike C's major shows, a facility that has gotten scathing reviews by many attendees in past years based on its age, cramped quarters and general state of disrepair.

There have been endless reports and rumors of both companies wanting to sign publishers to exclusive deals. Those stories have (AFAIK) never been confirmed, but as time has passed, fewer companies have chosen to work with both companies, the lion's share choosing to go to Reed's side of the playing field. At least as far as the public face of the two companies are concerned, Reed has had the moral high ground. They've gone out of their way to never disparage Wizard, making it very clear that the country and the market is large enough to support two companies, and hopefully more. It's been Wizard who has given the impression that the industry must "choose" between the two. But even though most have chosen Reed, Wizard has still been able to hammer out successes with their shows by basically doing what most of the comics bloggers have maintained needs doing - appealing to a larger audience and drawing in more people. They're the underdog that the smart folks don't want to win...but the majority simply don't care, as long as they get to go to a con.

So Philadelphia is in a rather sad position - filled with people happy and anxious to go to a convention, and currently being served solely by a company that has done a bang-up job of burning bridges. So Philly misses out on its chance to get a "proper" comics convention and attends one that's better than nothing, and the publishers who've decided to stop working with Wizard miss out on a chance to reach a somewhat captive audience. It seems that everyone loses in the scenario loses...except Wizard. They get a perfectly acceptable and (presumably) profitable convention, and may get the impression that they "don't need" the stuff that the publishers can provide. If the market is happy with cheap hamburger, why bother to offer expensive steak?

Philly deserves a better comics show, and I maintain the company that provides one will be richly rewarded. If Wizard can get the publishers to return, they already have a solid reputation in the city, and presumably a contract with the convention center that may preclude another comics show from getting access to it for a good number of weeks in either direction. If Reed chooses to move in, they'll be able to provide a massive show, based on the tool chest it's already assembled, but will place itself in the position that Wizard has been in, stepping into "someone else's territory", similar to the scenario in Chicago this year.

Wizard endlessly argues that there's room for two, drawing comparisons to Coke and Pepsi, Marvel and DC, et al. But what Wizard isn't mentioning is that the aforementioned companies are available all year and the customer has the choice of sampling one at one time and the other at another, or both, or neither. A convention is a static limited event, and if the choice is between two options at a similar time, it's more difficult to choose to do both. It's the reason TV networks program similar shows in the same time slot as their rival stations. They don't want to to watch BOTH shows, they want you to watch THEIR show.

I still maintain that Philly is large enough to support two major shows in a year, and indeed the rest of the country is large enough to support two major convention companies, so long as they maintain a modicum of decorum and avoid direct confrontation whenever possible. But of course, humans are involved, so that outcome is as likely as people taking turns at a hard merge on the highway or choosing to go to the next show where there's only one ticket left for the current one.

On a bit of DC Marketing that desperately needs to be done

2010-06-13T09:56:00.000-07:00

So Geoff Johns posted this photo on his Twitter Feed of a guy's Green Lantern Tattoo. For those too lazy to make with the clicky-linky, it's a tat of a Royal Flush poker hand, made up of GL playing cards. Presumably, the fellow will then have Geoff's sharpie-on-skin autograph added to the tat, a practice growing in popularity.

But I got to thinking. With the plethora of color Corps and members of same, a deck of playing cards based on the current Green Lantern Mythos could easily be produced. With eight Corps, you could actually do two seperate decks, or one deck for a game of Cripple Mr. Onion. But I think one deck ought to do, as a couple of the Corps don't have that many members.

Green for Clubs, Red for Diamonds, Yellow for Hearts and Black for Spades seems the most likely setup. Violet (love) for hearts is pretty obvious too, But you can't very well leave out Yellow, and there's only four suits traditionally. They tried to popularize five-suit poker many years back, but it never caught on.

Now in a lot of photo cards, they'll put images on each card, but IMHO that makes it slightly harder to recognize a Face card. I prefer the numbered cards to be a number of the symbol and little else. Maybe you could have nice art of the symbols in different quantties being generated by a Corpsmember, to get the best of both worlds.

It seems the Color Entity should go on the Ace, and the most powerful/popular member of the Corps go on the King. So it'd be...

GREEN:
Okay, quite a bit of debate possible here. More than a few characters who deserve the Face card spots. But how do you decide?
Also, do you bow to the obvious gender-streotypes here and put a female in the Queen spot, or open oneself to endless snickering by putting a guy in that position?
Perhaps the best solution is to not make the choices, and going with popular characters NOT from Earth. Luckily, there's a GL named Jack, so let's go with him, and there's no actual proof of Mogo's gender, so...
Jack - Jack T. Chance
Queen - Mogo
King - Hal Jordan (Maybe with Kyle, Guy and John in the background to shut everyone up?)
Ace - Ion

RED:
Jack - Dex-Starr
Queen - Laira
King - Atrocitus
Ace - The Butcher

YELLOW:
Jack - Despotellis (1st runner-up; Arkillo)
Queen - Kryb (1st runner-up; Lyssa Drak)
King - Sinestro
Ace - Parallax

BLACK:
Jack - Black Lantern Kal-L
Queen - Black Lantern Mera
King - Black Hand
Ace - Nekron

VIOLET (for argument's sake):
Jack - Miri Riam
Queen - Wonder Woman (1st runner-up; Fatality)
King - Carol Ferris
Ace - The Predator

And the Jokers? Well, Larfleeze, obviously, along with the Bizarro Yellow Lantern. Tho if Avarice were a suit as well, I rather like the idea of dressing him in three different outfits (incliding a queen's robe) for the face cards.

So, DC...I'd get hopping on this.

On the experience of a voice from the past screaming at you like a homeless man on a street corner

2010-06-09T18:19:00.000-07:00

One of the nice things about the electric-type Internet is it allows friends and relations, long ago lost to moves and parting ways, to re-acqauint with each other and restore ties, or at least share the odd witty comment on each other's walls.

And then there's the experience I just had.

Out of nowhere and with no prelude, I just got the most fascinating string of tweets from old an High School buddy. They are included below, un-edited and un-spell-checked, tweets separated by "//".

vinnie sending you a tweet last time to get your attention, then I'll let 25 more years go bye. If you want a friend ok //

but if you want to pontificate about comics, norbit, christianity and conservitive stuff, not interested. //

I sometimes wondered how we became friends in highschool at all. It really doesn't matter so take it easy, be what you want //

oh and Dr. Who really is some of the worst SciFi that they ever came up with. Look at Heinlien and Asimov if you want good.

I'll throw that again; the last time I interacted with this fella was 1984, when we graduated Chaminade High School, the school that also produced Brian Dennehy, George Kennedy, Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Hughes from the Village People.(not all at once, of course)

I saw him add me as a friend on the Facebook some time back, but didn't have anything to say to him, so I didn't. He started following me on the Twitter TODAY, followed immediately by these stream of consciousness tweets.

Now I've done some horrible things in my life (ask any McDonalds counter-person within a ten-mile radius) but I've no idea what I could have done to him to warrant this mad rambling.

The part that's fascinating is that he seems upset with me for what I'm doing and talking about now. To the best of my awareness, I don't have a mailing list or anything that was cramming my rapier-like wit down his throat, so I'm not sure how my rampant pontification invaded his personal space.

Upon investigation, I see his twitter feed is only slightly less crazy than Yoko Ono's. Some samples:

Where is my sanity when I worry about yesterday's thoughts?

We waste so much time with ego, anger and pride. We think the little things we do will last beyond us. We are mistaken...

If we feel we know the truth, we have nothing. It is only by "dropping all" that we have all, become all, find ground.

Thought in all actions is need until finally, thought is no longer needed.

Pain is what occurs when you allow yourself to be wrapped up in emotions and attachments...

There are times when I allow myself to take offense at things my ego points out as "offensive", and then there are times when I am well.

Anger, love, passion, all just spitting distance... First you gotta breath... Then you have to know what breathing truly is....

All this touchy-feely inspirational poster speak, and he spits vitriol at me like I was wearing a fur coat at a PeTA meeting. I feel..oddly honored. I mean, to be able to make such an impression on a person that he'd seek you out 25 years later to insult you...That means either I'm that impressive, or he's that impressionable.

When we were in in school together, his favorite author was Michael Moorcock, and his favorite word was (as he pronounced it) was "mye-rid". After having him use it in a sentence, I asked, "do you mean "Myriad"?

He did.

When I showed The Wife the tweets in question, she guessed EXACTLY who sent them, having never MET the man, based SOLELY on the stories other Chaminade Men have told about him.

Out of courtesy, I won't mention his name, or actually give his twitter feed. But if you went to school with me, you already KNOW who it is. And you are in no way surprised.

On a glorious return to the 30th century

2010-05-19T16:15:00.000-07:00

OK, fine, 31st century, you nitpicking yahoos...

After months of anticipation, years of setup, and decades of patient waiting from hardcore fans, Paul Levitz has relaunched the Legion of Super-Heroes with a brand new number one. It carries on from the new iteration of the team that Geoff Johns et al has been writing for the last few years, as far back as the Lightning Saga. The original Legion is back, their adventures with Superboy are back in place, and Levita has the job of taking a team that has floundered for a couple dozen years now and whiping them back into shape.

Paul Levitz was the publisher of DC Comics. He has a large collection of whips.

In a single 48-page issue, Paul does the following:

Creates almost a dozen new characters (tho to be fair, several of them may be dead already)

Restarts the Green Lantern Corps by recreating the event that gave it its start in the first place.

Hands a Power Ring to literally the last character anyone would have expected, all the while playing fair about who it would be.

Destroys the homeworld of one of the Legionnaires, and in a way that doesn't make it feel like a cheap death at all.

Slips in the first major reference to the upcoming Flash event "Flashpoint" in a perfectly logical way.

Sets up no less than five plot threads for future use.

He could have started off by picking up on any of the threads Geoff Johns laid out. He picked up exactly one (the new GL member) and took it in a way I'm dead positive Geoff never thought of, made passing reference to another couple, and just went off on his own.

Yildray Cinar (a name that sounds more like a character FROM Legion, not that of its artist) knocks it out of the park with a plethora of new character designs, solid story telling and only three splash-pages in the entire book. And one of those is so choked with action that it's really more a multi-panel page without borders. Awesome work. His covers were a mere taste of what he can do.

I swear to you, if this book doesn't become a juggernaut, I will lose all faith in comics fans.

On the latest chapter in a vey messy custody battle

2010-05-14T16:43:00.000-07:00

The Siegel and Shuster estates have been in a death-struggle over the rights to Superman over the last years, as I'm sure you've heard. Their lawyer Marc Toberoff has made great progress on his clients' behalf, so much so that DC has tried a new play that, if successful, coiuld get him booted off the case entirely.

Warner Brothers filed a suit against Toberoff himself today, claiming that he convinced the heirs of the Superman creators to sue DC and attempt to cancel the copyright agreement between them and the company to regain the rights to Superman, not to benefit the heirs, but himself. Citing papers gained through means that could potentially be described as "questionable", they claim that the agreement he entered into with the Siegel and Shuster families would put HIM, not them, in controlling interest of the characters. This could be seen as a way to unfairly benefit from the work, much in the same way he and the families are claiming Warners is. Many articles are calling this a low blow by Warners, and accusing them of "by any means necessary" tactics.

Here's the thing...All told, it's a pretty damn good play.

If they can make the case that Toberoff talked the heirs into grabbing for the whole pie (as opposed to the small piece they had) solely to ensure himself a nice commisionary payday, they could pull it off. They'd need to show that getting a larger share of the right is not in their best interests, and if the ownership breakdown as reported in the story is true, they might be able to. WB further points out that while S&S were alive, they were always happy to work with DC ad its owners and never made any attempt to sue or reclaim the rights from DC (in fact Jerry sued several times, mostly, as I understand it, under the advice of his latest wife.) It's only after their deaths and a discussion with Toberoff that the families showed any interest in such a move, which might suggest the idea came not from their heads, but Toberoff's. It puts Toberoff in the role of bad guy, not the heirs. And he's safe to tar; he's a lawyer after all.

Toberoff comments that it's perfectly legal for a lawyer to be working on contingency or commision, ad he's absolutely correct. But if the WB can show (or at least present the possibility) that his motive is for himself and not his clients, he might have to recuse himself. And odds are that whoever they get as his replacement will not have teeth as sharp as he, and would place Warners in a better position to reclaim victory.

Toberoff is also respresenting Jack Kirby's family in their quite similar case against Marvel. If this play works, expect Marvel/Disney to try something exceedingly similar.

The sad story between Siegel and Shuster and DC Comics (in all of its iterations) is well known in the industry. It's the story that every creator remembers (or should) when they prepare to sign an agreement with a publisher. They signed the worst deal since the sale of Manhattan. But to be utterly fair, neither they nor National Periodical Productions knew what they were holding. If either party could have POSSIBLY known what a kick in the zeitgeist Superman would be, they'd have gone through some positively epic negotiations.

To be blunt, S&S signed a contract, they weren't misled in any way, and if the current holders (WB) really wanted to, they wouldn't have to drop them a dime. And for decades, that was the position - fuck 'em. It wasn't until the Superman movie was coming out that Neal Adams and a number of other creators pressured DC into doing what they believed should have done a long time ago - re-establish creators' credits for the pait and let them share in the impossible profits the character has garnered.

This all comes back around to the subtle differences between "Must", "May" and "Should" do. DC didn't HAVE to give the boys a penny. They CHOSE to do as a result of pressure by its creators. And it also provided some good publicity for the company and the film. In the decades since the original agreement, the amounts provided to the creators and their families have been increased, voluntarily, by DC. The amounts were, to be fair, the merest fraction of what the character was making and had made. Many would argue that DC SHOULD give/have given them more, but the point is they didn't HAVE TO give anything.

It's exactly because of this that so many creators have gotten very nice checks from DC, along with very thick sheafs of paper to sign, promising that they won't sue if the characters become a big hit. Neal Adams and Denny O'Neil got nice payments for Ras Ahl Ghul, and Jerry Robinson got a nice check and an editor emeritus position at DC for his (finally recognized) creation of the Joker. DC wants to make sure this doesn't happen again. Tony Isabella can likely tell you a few stories about the creation of Black Lightning. But all told, DC and the other major publishers have learned a few things since 1939, and we'll likely not see a series of events like this again.

The opinions of the fans is rather varied. Were Jerry and Joe the ones behind this case, DC wouldn't stand a chance in the court of public opinion. But it's not; it's their kids, and in the eyes of many, they don't deserve a penny. One could easily argue that if Jerry and Joe had made this move and gotten the rights and money, it would have ended up in the kids' hands anyway, so so what if it just happens a few years later.

Most fans don't give a flying rat's ass for the kids, they just want their comic books. They see the families (and more so Toberoff) as evil people who are going to make it impossible for them to read about Superman anymore. The arguments about rights, fairness and the concepts of immortal corporations owning and controlling creations in perpetuity all shrivel before the blazing light of the question, "Does this mean DC can't do any more Superman comics?"

Again, if this was Jerry and Joe, the fans would be on their side without a blink of an eye. Because the fans would believe that they would want to keep the characters at DC and largely, nothing would change. But the families and their counsel are unknown entities. The mindset that this is solely about money. They can talk about wanting to restore the legacy of their fathers, but that falls flat, as their legacy has already been restored, and has been for 33 years now. So there's a feeling that these kids don't "deserve" the rights, or the money.

To be honest, I don't really mind the fammilies getting a nice payday; again, if S&S had gotten one, it'd end up in their hands. But I think that Warners should do everything in their power to get sole control of the rights to the characters when all is said and done. If the families retain rights to the characters in any amount, especially if those rights involve having say over how the characters get used, I can absolutely envision scenarios where they put the brakes on the occasinal deal in exchange for another payout.

Shared ownership of the characters will result i the cliche'd "two parties with half the map" scenario. S&S will own the rights to the origin, much of the design and description of many of the characters, and DC will own the trademarks. Neither party will be able to truly create a complete project without the cooperation of the other, and in such a situation, all it takes is the slightest hesitation to throw delicate negotiations into a gin-fueled tizzy.

So in honesty, this puts me in the "I just want my comics" camp, but at least I'm willing to say the families deserve a good payday for their trouble.

This is far from over. It's going to get uglier.

On the hopes that the third time will be the charm

2010-03-22T16:29:00.000-07:00

In the past few years, DC has made announcements about three stables of comics being folded into the DCU proper. The introduction of the Milestone characters was by far the one that generated the most excitement among fans. Milestone put together a solid and impressive set of books and characters in the early 90's, and only The Great Comics Glut could stop them. One character, Static, got a very good animated series based on him, and numerous crossivers with the other DCAU series. There wasn't a convention that came by where someone didn't ask about their eventual return to the DCU, and when they finally made the announcement, there was much rejoicing.

And then it sort of...well...

First Dwayne McDuffie get to write JLA, another move that got a lot of people excited, considering he had been story editor on the Animated series for years. He would get the introduce the Milestone characters in a major plotline in JLA, as well as have a number of other appearances across the DCU, including a series of issues of Brave and the Bold. Well, Dwayne's run on JLA was interrupted numerous times thanks to required tie-ins to Final crisis et al, last minute changes to plots that resulted in him having to re-dub panels at the last minutes, and by the time the Milestone story started, many people had written off his run etirely.

Dwayne's stories stories were all stellar, be was never "given the space to let him do the work", as Webb Wilder likes to say. As a result, the triumphant return of the Milestone characters was more of a wet firecracker. Now that the two issues of Milestone Forever have been released (also with lines taken out at the last moment for nebulous "fair use" reasons), the only evidence that they are back at all is that Static is a member of the Teen Titans. And there's more than a few people of the opinion that Static was the only character they really wanted, and were willing to take a bath on the rest just to get him. I don't quite buy it, but I don't quite discount it entirely either.

So now, save for Static (and a plotline in Teen Titans involving Dakota running right now), the Milestone characters are part of the deep pool of backup characters that might or might not get used by a creator down the line should they have a good idea for them. And for all the good it did, it would have been just as well if they never returned at all.

Last year and change, DC announced they has secured the rights to re-imagine the Red Circle characters, the characters Archie Comics held. If that announcement sounded familiar, it's because it was the same stable of characters they used to create the 90's Impact line of characters, a line that featured soe of the first DC work of Mark Waid, Tom Lyle and the late lamented Mike Parobeck. Rather than try again with those characters, DC chose to start again from scratch and create brand new interpretations of them. We got new versions of The Web, The Shield, Inferno and The Hangman, all introduced by J. Michael Straczynski. In addition to the new titles, the characters made appearances in other DC books to introduce them to the fabric of the world. And DC heroes appeared in the Red Circle books- The Shield locked horns with Magog and the Great Ten in his first few issues, and Web has come to loggerheads with Oracle. So while the Milestone characters were almost snuck into the DCU (and their sudden appearance wasn't explained for MONTHS, leading to great confusion), the Red Circle books would be definitely linked to the DCU from square one.

The books were quite interesting, with some bold ideas in them. But alas, both titles were cancelled this week with issue 10. Mirroring the Impact line, the last try was a team book, The Mighty Crusaders, which will come out the month before the books' last issues. Since the characters were not bought by DC but merely licensed, it's assumed they will vanish entirely from DC once the contract with Archie expires, just as the Impact titles went away with never another mention.

Now, in both cases, the idea was to bring in new characters to the DCU that new people could get into without having to sift through decades of history. This is a solid idea, and needs trying again. But there's a simple fact in comics - new ideas face an uphill battle. Unless a new characters or title has an "A-list" name attached to it, it's a battle getting current readers to try something new, simply because they're likely already buying quite a few books now. And getting completely new readers to a new title is even harder, since precious little comics news makes out of the comic shops.

There have been plenty of successes with new characters in comics over the last couple of years. They just haven't come from DC or Marvel. Image's comics are ALL brand new characters, but as I mentioned before, they all have the benefit of A-list creators to draw attention to them. Marvel has gotten a bunch of hits thanks to folks like Bendis, but most of them have been unconnected to the Marvel Universe itself. The Sentry is about the only truly new character to be a breakout hit in the MU, and if the rumors are true, that may change in the near future.

DC has usually gone the route of legacy heroes - taking a character name or concept that has been around a while and handing it to a new character. The new Blue Beetle is one of the latest examples of that. While his book was recently canceled after a VERY entertaining run, the character's become a breakout star on the Batman: Brave and the Bold animated series, with his action figures selling quite well. But again, he was brought down by the reticence to try something new, combined with a fairly sizable readership who were still smarting from the way Ted Kord, the previous Blue Beetle, was uncerimoniously shuffed off this mortal coil. In many eyes (not mine) it seemed as if he was killed off expressly so they could create a new version, a move that didn't exactly make any friends when they tried it with Hal Jordan and Kyle Rayner.

New characters at DC are few and far between. The Power Company had a brief but well-received run, Secret Six is a new version of an old title, featuring old characters used in a new way under the stady hand and twisted mind of Gail Simone, who's also getting to spread her magic on Birds of Prey again. But all told, save for those few exceptions, DC makes most of its money bringing us what they've been bringing us for decades. Being a to-the-bone DC fan, I have no problem with that at all, but whenever they try something new, I try to give them a fair hearing, and nine times out of fourteen, I enjoy it.

Last summer DC announced they had finally secured the rights to the THUNDER Agents, the Tower Comics characters created by a sadly underappreciated diety of the medium, Wally Wood. I was,am, and will remain to be over the MOON about this. I've gone on and on about the characters before, so I won't do it again. But based on the past two failed experiments, I am quite keen to see what DC can do this time to make the characters of interest to the new readers. I'm rational enough to know that they will have to rise or fall on new readers; there's simply not enough people who remember them to carry a series.

The Milestone characters were re-introduced with no explanation at all. If you didn't know who they were, you had no idea what was going on. The Red Circle books started on square one and were introduced to everyone at once. Both fizzled. So what's plan C? How do you introduce a whole set of characters to new readers and not overwhelm them? Off the record discussions with DC editors revealed that there are a lot of folks at DC who have been begging to waork on the characters, so I think we'll get some solid work from them; stories written by people who want to write them, as opposed to those who get assigned to. Will they tie the characters to an existing story concept like Checkmate, or even STAR Labs, or will they create something new? Will we see a big name or two involved, at least for the launch to draw attention?

All I know is that once the announcements are made, you are not gonna be able to shut me up about them. So go buy some cotton, cause you gonna have to block out the thunder...

On the labeling of an entire group by the behavior of its worst members

2010-03-21T12:31:00.000-07:00

Let's get a few facts out of the way straight away.

There are some outrageous assholes in the tea party movement.
The Democrats are happy to point to them and say "You see? That's how they all think".
In so doing, they are being delightfully hypocritical.

The act of pointing to a small group of people and claiming that they represent the entire group is a practice that Liberals take great glee in excoriating its enemies when they do it. Yet, as is true of anything when it benefits you, they see no problem when they do it, likely because they maintain that in THIS case they're right.

Protests, like talk radio and anything that will get you on television, attracts the most shrill and radical members of a movement. And television loves to show shrill and annoying people, usually to give you an opportunity to lord it over them. It's the reason they don't talk to the particle physicist or computer programmer who goes to science fiction conventions instead of the fat guy in the Klingon outfit. And every time they show them, all the perfectly rational people who like science fiction just facepalm and shake their heads.

Look at the folks that turn up for Earth Day, or any political protest. Not the kind of folks you want showing up in the halls of Congress. But again, for every hemp-wearing yahoo coming out for Global Warming, there's hundreds, thousands who have rational reasoned opinions, who grasp that you can't shut down industries but see the benefit of reducing pollution as much as can be without causing undue strain on the business of the industry. They just couldn't (or wouldn't be caught near) the protest because they have jobs or other such responsibilities. So they suffer the result of having people believe that the movement is made up of Burning Man refugees who think everything can be solved with a hug and a carbon shell game.

Lots of people have hesitations about the Health Care bill of varying levels of reasonability. The ones who bought the "Death Panel" line are sadly, tragically deluded. The ones who see great challenge in the government being able to keep such a large system under control and not grow wildly expensive...perhaps not so crazy, based on past performance. But as is traditional, it's far easier to point to the fringey tips of the wings than to spend time discussing the more rational arguments nearer the middle of the bird.

Frost/Nixon has a great speech at the end about the reductive power of television - the ability to compress an entire complicated issue to a soundbite or a closeup. And depending on the choices made, you can make someone appear a hero or a fool. The Tea Party folks are giving the media very little source material for the "hero" image.

Insane signs that can be easily twisted to appear racist (and statements and expletives this weekend that require no twisting at all) make it highly tempting to tar the entirety of people who disagree with the bill with the epithet "looney". And the binary "all good or all evil" culture that we more and more live in tempts us to believe that the other side is entirely wrong with no worthy ideas to be listened to. We may not agree with the entirety of our plan, but it's comforting to know that their plan can be discounted entirely.

There's nothing going on in this whole health care mishegas that hasn't been done before. Politicians have ever wrangled programs and funds for their home districts in exchange for their votes. (Indeed, I consider that far less "corrupt", as the talk show crowd have taken to calling it, than the ones who try to get benefits for themselves alone. At least they're trying to get something for their voters...) Parties have ever used interpretations of parliamentary procedure to get their bills through in scenarios where they're not sure they have the votes. We have seen endless examples of perfectly good ideas that turn into wishy-washy do nothing boondoggles that serve no purpose but to allow the politicians to be able to say they Got Something Done. And we've got lots of plans that the opposition has spent great time pointing out every shortcoming and failing of, so as to drive home the point that The Other Guys made a mistake, and you better vote us in before it all gets worse.

The big difference here is that all of these activities are being dragged out into the light by those who would see the bill fail, rather short-sightedly forgetting that all they're doing is alerting the people to the tricks that they'll be using four or five years hence. This isn't some new set of tricks and schemery, this is standard operating procedure for the Beltway, magnified to the point where it's visible to the naked untrained eye. By drawing attention to it, there's the remotest of chances that people will realize that twas ever thus, and might ask it be changed. If they can stop coming up with embarassing slogans to mis-spell on signs.

Now, the cynical among us might point that I myself am painting all politicians with the same brush, making myself guilty of the very infraction I attack them for. But of course, here it's perfectly acceptible, because in my case, I'm right.

On a small point of physics

2010-02-25T07:17:00.000-08:00

Usually I let scientific errors in comics roll off my back like complaints off a Southwest Airlines Customer Service representative. I mean after all, when you're dealing with a book where people can fly and have x-ray vision, complaining about the speed of light being unbreakable is a little hypocritical.

But occasionally I come across one I feel the need to comment on. In JSA 36, Jesse Quick and Baroness Blitzkrieg are having a brief high-speed chase/fight. Baroness B remarks that she doen't have to engage in fisticuffs with Jesse, she only has to "spread a number of obstacles in your path". She pulls a bunch of super-bounce balls from her satchel and tosses them in Jesse's path. The result, as Baroness explains that at the speed she's running, they hit her like bullets. Good idea.

Small problem. At the time she releases them, they're both running, at almost the same exact speed. If two objects are traveling at the same speed, relative to each other, they aren't moving. If one is moving at 500 MPH and the other at 501 MPH, the second one is only moving at 1 MPH, relative to the first.

So if Baroness releases the balls (there's no way to write that without sounding dirty), they're traveling at the same speed as the two runners, and in the time it takes for Jesse to plow into them, they haven't slowed down enough to strike her with much velocity at all. They'd be minor annoyances. Still something that could make her lose her stride and tumble (especially considering she's relatively new to speedstering, and doesn't have the reflexes, friction aura or ability to vibrate through obstacles of the flashes), but not enough to hit her "with the force of wrecing balls". If Blitzkrieg had been standing still and done the same, then yes, Jesses would have plowed into them at whatever speed she was running, and would have hurt like hell. Indeed, they might have just cut right through her, were she not able to avoid them. Of course, being bouncy-balls, a few might have bunced right back at Blitzkrieg and hit HER at Jesse's speed, having absorbed her kinetic energy. So, not as good an idea. Still, an elegant move, as Baroness calls it, tho.

I recall a story decades back that dealt with relativistic speeds of moving objects that got it RIGHT, but nobody could understand why it worked. John Ostrander did a mini about the cops of Gotham City (might have been called GCPD; too lazy to look it up). In the last scene there was a riot which the cops quickly quelled. Gordon mentions there were guns in the crowd, but most shots were fired in the air and injuries were from bruises as the bullets fell back down from the sky. People on Compuserve (an antiquated communication system similar to smoke signals) were asking how those bullets didn't kill anyone. After all, they're bullets.

I had to step in and explain that John had gotten it right, as he usually does. If a bullet is fired straight up, gravity starts to slow it down at the rate of g, or 9.8 meters per second per second. Once it comes to a halt, it starts to fall back down at that speed, but the bullet does not now have the terrific force of the gun's propulsion behind it. It's going to come down as it it had just been dropped from that height, which considering its small size and air resistance, is going to cause no more than a sharp sting if it hits anyone.

As you can see, I clearly have too much time on my hands.

On being given an unsolicited opportunity to undertake a grand adventure

2010-02-16T18:07:00.000-08:00

Long story short, I got laid off today.

Don' worry, you're getting the long story as well.

I was getting new work to do right up until Friday, everybody was pleased with my work, and all seemed well with the world. But after lunch today, my manager asked me to "come to a meeting", have mumbling that we had to go down to HR. Not the place one wants to go to a meeting.

The company is expected to have a harsh year, and as a cost-saving measure had to lay off a bunch of folks in a number of offices, and alas, I was on that list. It was made abundantly clear it was a choice from on high, out of their hands, yadda yadda.

I didn't get upset to speak of, we walked through my severance package and a short time later I was packing up my stuff. My previous manager was near tears - she had even tried to get me transferred back to her department, as she didn't want to lose me in the last corporate shuffle. No go, alas, tho they are keen enough about me that they want me to keep in touch should any other positions open up. So that's something.

I'll get the ball roling tomorrow. What with the electric-type internet, I can get all the paperwork and resume spreading going without having to get dressed, so that's nice.

I'll remain optimistic for quite a while - I'm that way. I'll try to keep being funny and yammering on about comics and other stuff that doesn't involve self-pity.

On analyzing the success of a bold experiment

2010-02-04T13:09:00.000-08:00

World of New Krypton has spent a year doing something that had been met with suspicion at best - taking Superman out of the Super-titles. The story, if you haven't been reading the Super-titles, is that the Bottle City Of Kandor was finally freed from its diminutive status after being liberated from Brainiac's ship. Once it was made quite clear that the governments of the Earth didn't quite know how they felt about 100,000 people with the power Superman suddenly appearing, they took the entire city off-planet and built a new Krypton on the other side of the sun.

Superman decides he needs to travel to New Krypton to check things out, considering among other things, the Kryptonians saved General Zod from the Phantom Zone and put him in charge of the military. He stays on the new world, assigned the rank of Commander of the Military Guild by Zod himself. Over the course of his stay, he deals with a series of assassinations of the ruling class, an uprising of the labor class, while all the while keeping a wary eye on Zod and his equally dangerous compatriots, Ursa and Non.

Of all the things I liked about this book, the greatest is that it successfully confounded everyone's expectations. Zod has been played as a hero to the people of Kandor/New Krypton, because that's what he was when they last saw him. And he's been exactly that. No plots to take over the Earth, no moustache twirling, nothing. He works with Kal-El, contentiously at first, but coming around to respect his more peaceful way of doing things. At no point throughout the book is Zod revealed as having a secret plan at all. He really is the hero of New Krypton. The series ends with Zod and Kal-El having a positively polite conversation. Admittedly, the conversation is dramatically interrupted, but there's no rug-pull. I was SO pleased at that.

I've complained in the past about mini-series that serve no narrative purpose, books like Oracle: The Cure, which neither delivered what the readers thought it was supposed to deliver nor told a complete story, rather just telling us to pick up Batgirl #1 in a couple months. WoNK (I wish it'd had a better acronym, but whajagonnado) did none of that. It served an important part of the overall Superman storyline, and it told a solid and coherent story that was ended. The secret of the conspiracy on Krypton was explained, it was solved, and the chracters behind it were punished. The surprise ending of Brainiac's ship appearing in the sky was a cliffhanger to a NEW story, not a dangling carrot that made you feel duped for buying an incomplete one here.

We got to see New Krypton grow as a planet, using its advanced science to terraform (Krypto-form?) the world from a lone city to a quite pretty place, even able to re-create some of Krypton's geographic wonders. We got a look at galactic politics, as representatives from Rann and Thanagar, as well as closer neighbor Saturn come to invetsigate this powerful new player on the field. (Robinson loves bringing back obscure characters, so Saturn was represented not only by Jemm, Son of Saturn, but The Faceless Hunter, a character who also just got a cameo on the brilliant cartoon Batman: The Brave and The Bold.) And we got to see how a planet full of of people who have spent most of their lives imprisoned reacted to suddenly not only being free, but having godlike powers overnight. It all worked very well, and did a spectacular job of setting up New Krypton and its people as real three-dimensional characters, something the residents of Kandor never really were back in the Silver Age. Because if you started to really appreciate and care for them, you might start to feel for their glass-enclosed plight.

It's exactly because they've done such a good job of "humanizing" New Krypton that I'm really hoping that once War of the Supermen is over, they don't get wiped off the map. As I've said before, a planet of 100,000 Supermen is rather a big Mcguffin to leave lying around, but there's any number of happy endings I can think of for the planet that would allow them to stay a part of the universe, one that Superman could visit for happy personal reasons if he chose. Park it around a red sun and have a fleet of L.E.G.I.O.N. ships keep strict watch on any ships entering or leaving the system, for example.

The only real complaints I had about the story are vanishingly small:

One, pulling a moon from Jupiter seems like a rather unsettling move to make, from both a "physics-al" and from a PR point of view. Even if they did nod to the three-body issues, saying that the variance in gravity is vanishingly small over the long run, the people of Earth would have to have been rattled that these people just grabbed a moon from another planet, just cause they needed it. It seems to me there's more than enough raw material in the asteroid belt to fashion a moon-sized object without rattling any cages, and they could still have gotten the same "moon headed towards Krypton" story that they wanted.

Secondly, while I'm sure we'll get an explanation for the mysterious abbatoir and the use of the animals' silvery pelts, I think it was played up a bit more than it should have been for a plot point not to be used in this story. Chekhov's Gun still applies; if you show the audience a gun, make sure it goes off. If it gets used in the Brainiac story or in War of the Supermen, it'll require a clunky moment to remind everyone of it. Also, since it didn't actually have anything to to with the mystery the story was working with, it was functionally a red herring. Again, just a minor point.

I've also mentioned that I'd loved to have learned more about Krypton's leisure time activities. We learned a small bit about its art, and a good bit of its mythology, but I'd love to see more. What is Kryptonian theater like? Their comedy - is slapstick funny to a Kryptonian, or do they prefer wordplay? I understand there's little place for such points in an action and intrigue-based story, but if there's a Secret Files coming out in association with WotS (not a much better acronym, but again...) it seems like a good place to put one. Again, the more you make people understand the characters, the more you draw the reader into the story.

As the story on Krypton ends, it's made clear that Earth, or more specifically General Sam Lane and his cronies in Project 7734 are the bad guys there. The conspiracy on Krypton was fomented by Lane, in the person of Superwoman, AKA Lois Lane's sister Lucy. Zod has kept his promise of worrying only for New Krypton's defense, and not its expansion. With Brainiac attacking (thanks to the able assistance of Lex Luthor), Krypton will be on the defensive, and surely Zod and his military guild will step to the forefront of both the battle and the narrative. At this time, there's no way of knowing which way War of the Supermen is going to go. Some people are already waving it off as "another Amazons Attack" (perish the thought) but based on the complex plotting (a term that could be taken many ways there) of the Super-titles so far, it might be any number of possibilities. There's nothing that says it mightn't be Earth and Krypton teaming up against Brainiac, or some other threat. I'm simply not sure...and I couldn't be happier about that.

The past year has been filled with a number of parallel plotlines in the Super Books. Each has spent time with different new and old members of the Super-Family, and how they deal with a World Without Superman. I'll look at them in detail in a later piece, as their stories are still unfolding. But all told, the Super-team has done a great job of telling a sweeping story, while still making each title entertaining in its own right. A lot of folks took the mindset of "If there's no Superman there's no reason to read the book" but I think they've really cheated themselves out of a great bunch of stories. I look to the future of the Superman narrative with a hopeful eye.

On the passing of an extraordinary personality

2010-01-26T09:10:00.000-08:00

The Wife's Mom, Jacqueline Kehoe, died back in December from complications of Pulmonary Fibrosis. We had her memorial service this last Friday. It was well attended and nobody started a fistfight, so I'd say it went well. As several people got up to say a few words, everyone made mention of the fact that they "had a few good stories" about her. Since no one actually TOLD one, I figure someone ought, so I stepped up. It follows hence...

When The Wife was yet but a little girl, her mom took her to the movies. About half-way through the film, she started wiggling in her seat. "What's wrong?" asks Jackie. "There's something wrong with my seat." says she.

Jackie turned around to discover that some unbalanced gentleman had sat behind the innocent waif, had slipped his hands up between back and seat of her chair, and was feeling her little patootie up.

Now, this was the early 70's. The average person might have simply moved seats, perhaps made a complaint to the manager. Jackie was not "the average person". She stood up and proceeded to verbally rip the creep a new one, punctuated with pelts from her prodigious pocket book. The man likely injured his back slinking out of the theater.

Jackie would go through hell and high water to protect her children, and make sure they were safe. I learned this every.single.day of my married life. She was a glorious person with a life full of high points and strong emotions. She was difficult to forget, and gave you no reason to wish to do so.

We shall miss her.

On the revamping of women and girls of the Battish persuasion, and the reappearance of avian predators

2010-01-19T08:42:00.000-08:00

For all the questionable and outright poor choices DC (read "Dan Didio" if you like, you know you want to) have made, I am still quite surprised that anyone still considers keeping Babs Gordon as Oracle, and NOT making her Batgirl again, to be a BAD move.

Babs was one of the few examples of a character undergoing a radical and shocking change and actually coming out the other side a newer and better character. Originally paralyzed by the Joker in Alan Moore's Killing Joke, John Ostrander couldn't stand the fact that such a great and classic heroine was taken off the board. So he (and the divine Kim Yale) created Oracle, turning Babs into a viable character again. And since then she's become FAR more important a player in the DCU than batgirl ever could.

The current version of the story goes that when DC Editorial decided to bring back Batgirl again, returning Babs to the role seemed the slam-dunk move. But they got talked out of it, and they went with Spoiler. And for the life of me, I can't get why anyone sees that as anything but a plus. Oracle is jut plain a great character. A rare example of a topical character (the "hacker") having the staying power to rise above the cliches of the trend. There's the argument about her being an inspiration to the handiicapped as well, but I don't neccessarily see her being tied to the wheelchair as intrinsic to the character. Yes, she chose this role because of her inability to help physically, but if she regained mobility, I don't see that making Oracle any less a strong character. In a universe where character lose major portions of their body and become better strong faster thanks to technology, Babs' paralysis has always stuck out like a sore thumb to me. It seemed much more like she needed to stay in the chair for narrative as opposed to "real" reasons. The only other major wheelchair-bound character I can think of in the DCU (and I'm sure y'all will bring others to my memory) is The Chief from Doom Patrol. In a weird way, I can actually see him CHOOSING to stay wheelchair bound, for two reasons. One, making his enemies underestimate him, and two, the Guy Caballero motive of "respect". But Babs, I don't think she'd really turn down a legitimate fix, as opposed to magic or prosthetics or what have you. But I, to borrow a catch-phrase, digress.

Whether or not the new Batgirl should have been Babs, Spoiler, Cassandra Cain, someone else or no one is another issue, and one that'll likely never die. The point was that turning Babs back into Batgirl would have been a step backwards in a lot of people's eyes. It's one of the few times that the chestnut about making the characters (back) into the version that the most people know is not the better move. Like Dick Grayson into Nightwing, trying to turn him BACK into Robin would have been almost laughable, let alone a poor use of the character.

As the tale goes, Dan wanted to kill off Nightwing as well, but was talked out of it by people (spearheaded by Marv Wolfman) who convinced him that there were more and better stories to be told with the character alive than dead. So Dan changed his mind. And if he hadn't, we wouldn't be reading the current Batman stories, which you have to admit have been pretty damn good. If he was as poor as his job as so many say he is, he'd have stuck to his guns, forced through the plot he wanted, and very likely seen it go up in flames faster than Conan at 11:30.

DC, Marvel, all the comics companies have copyrighted and trademarked characters which they need to keep using on a regular basis, or you end up with the scenario where Captain Marvel can't appear in a book with his name on the cover, or toys named after him. So we will ever see hero names re-used. There's no point grousing over it. It's why all the classic Superman characters started to re-appear oin the books after Byrne's famous "get rid of all the silly stuff" revamp. So for Batgirl to reappear is not a shock. Again, want to argue who it should have been; go ahead, and sei gesund.

The same is so of Batwoman. Not nearly as popular or as well known a name, but a name that needs using every so often. They got it into that Batman Beyond movie a while ago, but it needed using again. Greg Rucka created a very good and very intersting character in Kate Kane, one that has far outpaced the initial rowdy-dow about her interpersonal predilictions. That doesn't happen often; usually those re-vamped characters are sad shadows of the original, requiring years to find redemption in the proverbial "right hands". The plethora of Starmen (Starmans?) leap to mind. So to actually get a good, even great character from such pedestrian needs is quite a treat.

One of the single best revamps of a character in recent years (IMHO) was The Calculator. As much as I have to say against Identity Crisis (suffice to say I am a rabid Ralph and Sue fan, and let that be the end of it), taking Calculator from one of those aforementioned "trend-born" characters and revamping him into Oracle's opposite number was nothing short of brilliant. Gail Simone took the ball and ran with him, using him regularly in Birds of Prey, often in virtual battles against Oracle, and at least one face-to-face meeting. Gail eventually left the book in the capable hands of Tony Bedard. Tony's a very good writer, and delivered some solid character issues, but right at the end of the run, the direction they chose to take both the book and The Calculator bordered on embarassing. They chose to have him not only survive an attack by the Kilg%re, but survive with powers similar to the cybernetic beast. Which I found to be utterly pointless. Already a great villain with lots of resources and abilities at his command, giving him powers is like adding a spoiler and neon to a Dusenberg. This, combined with the choice to retroactively make him the father of Wendy and Marvin from Teen Titans was an attempt to make Calculator more than he needed to be.

Birds of Prey ended, immediately followed by the mini-series "Oracle: the Cure". This begged the question "cure for what"? The rumors ran rampant - Babs would walk again, Babs would become Batgirl again, she'd become a cyber-being like that guy from Psyba-Rats, and who knows what else. As I mentioned, I didn't see an issue with Babs being able to walk again and still remaining Oracle. A lot of people were really against that - they maintained that her position as a role-model was too important. I found that almost cruel; would the same people have begrudged Chris Reeve the ability to walk because he was too important as a role model, or Stevie Wonder to "get a peek" as chris Rock described it? Yes, I know, fiction and reality, but I still found/find it an odd position to take.

Ultimately...nothing happened. It was a protracted (and suffuciently entertaining) fight in the virtual and real worlds against the Calculator for possession of a facet of the Anti-Life Formula which ended in a sort of tie, with his daughter Wendy awakened from her coma (apparently the titular "cure") but paralyzed. Basically, nothing happened to Babs. The book ended with an entreat to read the upcoming Batgirl series, a book that now nobody had any idea who it would star. People complained that the book didn't deliver what was promised, never quite realizing that nothing was promised. People assumed it was Babs' "cure" we'd see, so all it could be accused of was that it didn't deliver what they THOUGHT is was supposed to.

The new Batgirl book is quite entertaining. Since I've already said I didn't care for the idea of Babs returning to the purple tights, and never really having to great an attachment to the young Ms. Cain, I am happy with the choice made. I do look forward to seeing Ms. Cain appear (and hopefully the narrative backflips she was put through resolved) and I wish the book a long life. But I dod suspect the most recent announcement might make the book feel redundant in many eyes.

Last week, DC announced that Gail Simone would returning to Birds of Prey. I've yet to hear this news accepted as anything other than a triumph for good comic books everywhere. Gail will be able to write characters like Black Canary and Oracle again; characters that many have said no one has been able to write as well since her departure. But for those who have been buying Batgirl for their monthly required dose of Babs, will the re-appearance of this title see their desire to read Batgirl diminish? Will DC decide that the best place for Ms. Brown to receive further training is among a large number of female heroes? I am curious, but hopeful, about Batgirl's future. The title? We shall see.