Blackmarket Pies

Of Horn and Horse: The Last Unicorn #2

2010-08-04T21:07:00.020-04:00

Between working and writing and wallowing, I haven't given this ol' chunk of cyber real estate the attention it deserves lately, and I've especially been neglecting accumulating any content or ideas that one might deem -- I don't know, "geek worthy." I'd like to uphold at least a semblance of the image that I am a geek's geek, that I'm a stereotypical, misogyny-minded geek, at least, who gets excited by Green Lantern and watching Bane rip the arms off of a man and beat him to death with them, but let's face it: the Comics blogosphere -- or, if I may play Scott McCloud for a moment here, the Sequential Art Community(TM) -- has these angles covered, brother. No, I prefer to be the novelty of the comics internet, the Warhol to Sims's Boticelli, if you will: I write about Captain Canuck, unhealthy obsessions with the products of mass culture, and, yes: goddamned unicorns.

So, it is with that rambling monolog that I ease you, gentle reader, into the world of Peter Beagle's The Last Unicorn, as filtered through the art of a woman who never quite outgrew her first screening of a Rankin & Bass classic. The legendary journeys of everyone's favorite doe-eyed monocerous continue into issue #2 with the unicorn, whom I have named Mia to avoid having to come up with synonyms for the titular species, held under the thrall of an evil carny and her cohorts.

The book opens at the carnival of one Mommy Fortuna, who remains off-stage and unrevealed, lest we, I don't know, not go back and watch the movie or look at the preview from last issue, or, hell, even look at the cover of ol' No. 2 and ruin the surprise. She's talking to her two lackeys: Rukh, the big guy, kinda dumb, who likes to shout the travelign carnival's catch phrase, "Creatures of night brought to light!" with allt he gusto of Billy Mays; and Schmendrick, the lamest magician in all of literature, who is a god among men. Seriously, look at that face:

The perfect skin, the jaw line, the tender eyes... he's Ewan McGregor in a pointy hat.

She asks them what they've just seen, and Rukh, itellectual giant that he is, says he saw a dead horse. Schmendrick, though? He's a clever one; you can tell by the way he says "white mare," which must be code for "a goddamned unicorn," because people only seem to use the expression when they know what they're really looking at. One has to wonder how this hunky chunk o' good-lookin' even met up with Bumblebee Tuna and her merry band of would-be creatures of night (brought to life!), because I have to believe that the job market, terrible as it is, cannot possibly be so bad that you have to be reduced to performing coin tricks for a reject from the Mos Eisley cantina.

Anyway, Crummy Bobuna's carnival is a bit like the Royal Ontario Museum. You head over there with a fine lady on your arm, ready to impress her with your knowledge of ancient history, only to discover that most of the shit that's on display is so terminally boring and un-mockable, being dressed up for display.

Yup, ol' Rumble Racoona's monsters and creatures of the night (brought to light!) are only figments of the crowd's imagination. There are really only three real creatures in the place: our aforementioned Mia, our lovely hostess, and the terrible, utterly horrible, indescribable-in-a-Lovecraftian-way HARPY.

The harpy helps facilitate our unicorn's escape, sapping Mommy Fortuna's magic to the point where Schemndrick the Unstoppable can use his magic to bust open the cage housing Mia.

Or not. After disparaging Momma's skills earlier in the comic, we find out that ol' green eyes is even worse a magician, and perhaps even more of a showman, than the good Mommy herself: he attempts to use his powers to open the cage, when he could have stopped dicking around twenty minutes ago and just opened the lock using the key he pilfered from Rukh the Intelligent. K.I.S.S. - Keep it Simple, Schmendrick.

One short fight scene later, and the harpy is loose and snacking on Grandma Dynamite's roostery jowels while our heroes make a slow and deliberate getaway. And now we're one character up and another issue down.

I gotta tell ya, despite Schmendrick the Hottie, the art in this issue just falls flat when compared to the fucking Elysian Fields-like majesty of the opening panels of #1. The colors are dark and grey, which, I guess, are more suited to the increasing pessissism, loss of hope, and feeling of dread that can accompany being abducted by a zombie lady. But, goddamn, a couple of pages into the 2nd issue and suddenly I'm Hunter S Thompson, yelling at a book about how it's letting me down.

Next issue: DEVELOPMENTS!

I Can Whip Any Man in the House, and Ride any Philly in the Place

2010-08-01T11:06:00.022-04:00

I was watching the latest offering from DC Animation, the well-acted by ultimately predictable Batman: Under the Red Hood, when I finally got to the good stuff: the DC Showcase-branded Jonah Hex animated short. Now, what really got me in Jonah Hex wasn't the story or the animation, as both are derivative and stylistically similar to the 2008 release, Batman : Gotham Knight, but, rather, the few seconds prior to the film's opening.

The DC Showcase brand of animated shorts feature a sort of "title sequence" which takes viewers through a comic book shop full of DC comics properties before finally settling on a book featuring the character that we're about to see in the presentation proper.

And I fucking love this.

In addition to being a comic book geek, I harbor a passion for stuff: people's stuff, businesses' stuff, all kinds of stuff. I see the mass market, modern culture, and "consumerism" as a fascinating network of systems, inventions, and creativity all interconnected to form our modern lives. What does a person's stuff say about him? Why did he choose to buy this, or why did he have to buy this? We take home products as a given, when really --

Well, I'm getting off topic. My point here is that the opening was far more interesting to me than the Jonah Hex short. SO, I decided to slow it down and try to see exactly which products the fine folks at DC Comics had decided to draw my attention to, and ponder the reasons why.

As we fly through Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash accompanied by some very John-Williamsy-spacey-like-twinkly music, our gaze is directed toward various properties: there's Showcase #4, the issue that ushered in the Silver Age of Comics with Barry Allen way back in 1956; there's an appearance of everyone's favorite BustyAirborne Lass in Showcase #99 featuring Power Girl; followed by more issues of Showcase, natch. There's a few Showcase Presents collections scattered around, including The Elongated Man (hint hint), Ambush Bug, and Booster Gold, and I think I even caught a glimpse of a few collections from "the other guys."

And then I saw this:

May whatever heathen god you pray to bless the production intern who whipped out a copy of Showcase #78 to shove into the hands of COMIC SHOP PATRON #6. Everyone knows that the imagineers here at Blackmarket Pies love, love, love the obscure and the underappreciated, so when I saw a character that I had never heard of before being absorbed with care and attention by a hip twenty-something, I had to jump into the fray.

Showcase #78 features the man known as JONNY DOUBLE, whom wikipedia describes as "a down-beat Don Quixote in a society that frowns on windmills. A once white knight in rusty armor searching for that last dragon to slay. The poor man's Peter Pan."

Hmmm. While very British-invasion-esque for a comic from 1968, it sure doesn't explain a whole lot. Sort of sounds like Nemesis as written by Peter Milligan.

You all know what this means, lads: it's time to dig deeper into the cavernous bowels of the DC Unvierse and discover exactly who Jonny Double is, and why he came to be (hint: Chinatown had been released four years prior, and The Fugivtive had just endd its run). But that'll have to wait until I actually find a copy of Showcase #78. For now, it may be back to the unicorn well...

The Last Review

2010-05-02T21:22:00.037-04:00

There was something strange about the animated films of the 1980's - Walt Disney's efforts notwithstanding. The kids movies of the 80's shared common themes and even designs, all melting into some sort of grey Rankin/Bass/Bakshi soup that featured chunks of environmentalism/primitivism, fluorescent pink sparkles, blond-haired princesses, and irritating Casio keyboard-infused soundtracks. These films culminated in the 1990's with the release of Felix the Cat: The Movie, which put the much-overdo final nail in the coffin; but they began, arguably, with 1982's hugely successful The Last Unicorn.

I had an ex who loved this movie. She fucking loved unicorns to the point where I tried to find her some kind of effigy of a unicorn at my local malls for her birthday and discovered, in line with true monoceruses, that representations of them are entirely mythical. Searching on eBay near the end of our relationship, I found an old beat-up, original theatrical poster for this flick, and, having since become an "ex," had no idea what to do with it up to this point -- there it sat, always mocking me, letting me know that my room was now dressed like a little girl. "How would this look during a home invasion?" I thought. Truly, that was the most rational query that could enter my brain while staring at a poster of a doe-eyed Kardunn.

As an aside, I wonder how many synonyms for "unicorn" I'll have to look up to actually finish this post and keep it from getting repetitive.

As I sat in my room and contemplated this poster's fate, I took a quick look around the internet to see if anyone was in the market for faded-out childhood memories. What I found was so weird, so interesting, and, inexplicably, so entrancing that I could hardly wait to tell the blogosphere about what I had discovered:

IDW, a company that ostensibly employs an entire team whose sole task is to seek out any and all available licenses, had done it: they'd adapted The Last Unicorn into a graphic novel. And, coincidence of all coincidences, they'd done it at almost precisely the moment in which I actually remembered that such a work existed!

After hunkering down to watch the film, I went straight to my local comic book shoppe and picked myself up a copy, as should you all. My goal here is not to compare the two adaptations, but simply to - well, see which one I like best. I'm not a complicated guy.

The first thing I can tell you is that this adaptation blows the film out of the water right from page one. In the movie, we get a serene, idyllic foresty scene featuring two characters who'll never show up again. The book starts thusly:
fucking a. That is haunting. It's centered in a splash page that is nothing but the most peaceful, wondrous forest you'd ever see, but a prominent red flower in the foreground, and the tiny caption in the center, imparts the extreme loneliness that the last of her kind must feel.

The unicorn doesn't have a name in the book ( she does take on the moniker of Amalthea later in the tale, but that's another story...), but while I was writing a review for the film, I referred to her as "Mia," after the voice actress, Mia Farrow. I think I'll continue that tradition here, if only because it's easier to type "Mia" than it is to type "Amalthea" or "the unicorn."

After an introduction to unicorns offered by two hunters -- which is surprisingly moving in prose, compared to the flat, uninteresting delivery that the film gives us -- Mia appears, contemplating what one of the hunters had said: that she was the last of her kind, the final unicorn. Even more interesting is her internal dialog: she talks about not leaving, even to look for others; that she knows how to live where she is, and that she'd never want anything else. Is it rationalization? Does she maybe feel guilty that she's gotten complacent? It's revealed that she's never even spoken, not even to herself, in over 100 years. And then she must come face to face with the spectre of change: the knowledge that she can't stay in her own little forest forever.

When she heads out into the world, she's jarred by the sudden -- to her, at least -- change in man. It's not that no one can remember unicorns, but rather, that hey can't even see her as a unicorn. She encounters a butterfly who speaks in snippets of songs and poems, a medieval pop culture junkie who tells her what happened to the rest of the unicorns: they were all chased away by the Red Bull, who, presumably, merely wanted to give them wings.

Frustrated and longing for home, the unicorn lays down to sleep -- and his approached by three silhouetted beings. This signals the end of the first issue, which, lacking much of the action that one would normally expect from a first issue, is clearly designed with the trade in mind. This is unfortunate, as the art is wonderful -- if a little bombastic -- and the writing is golden, but there's not much here to convince someone who was wary of the book to continue on to #2.

Will I be going forward on this title? Probably, but only because I dig the writing. Unlike the aforementioned ex, I'm not a huge fan of unicorns. I don't hate them, certainly, but I suppose that I'm indifferent to their mythology. Maybe I'll become a fan after this series. ;) Here's to IDW makin' a believer outta me.

NEXT ISSUE: A woman with a head made out of a tree runs a travelling circus with a second-rate warlock.

Riddles

2010-04-28T21:47:00.001-04:00

What could it mean?

The Return of the Cap'n

2010-04-22T15:59:00.013-04:00

I've written about Captain Canuck before -- check out my entire week of Canadian goodness here -- and I think you get the idea that I'm absolutely enamored with the idea of a National Canadian Superhero, a comic book character who can somehow boil down to essentials what it means to be Canadian. And, like our comic counterparts to the south, this is true -- only backward. Captain Canuck was patterned to represent Canadian values, and now he's used as proof of those values, in some kind of twisted Disneyworld logic: if Captain Canuck is supposed to represent Canada, and Captain Canuck is "A," then Canada must be "A," as well -- even if the initial premise is incorrect. Captain Canuck was first created by Richard Comely in order to bring together the disparate visions of what a Canadian actually was, and the series tried to foist a Canadian mythos onto the popular culture of the Great White North, much as Canadian Nationalist ideas tried to do back in 1967, with the rise of Expo '67 and the ill-fated "Chimo" greeting. In the irony that we often find ourselves faced with today, the significant replaced the signifier; i.e. the symbol gave meaning to what was being symbolized.

But that's a story for another day. Because today, we have a story that couldn't possibly be tied to traditional, or even subversive, Canadian values. Unless, of course, Canadians are big on aliens that look like wads of splooge:

Yes, this is the story of Captain Canuck's unpublished fifteenth issue. Written and drawn before CKR Productions folded under the absurd conditions of the Canadian publishing industry, this issue would have seen the light of day if Comely and Co had succeeded in their scheeme to sell shares of the "Captain Canuck Corporation" to eager northern kids itching for a fix of down-home superheroics. Sadly, Captain Canuck, though wildly popular, could not make enough money to stay afloat, and the story of "The Stygian" -- no relation to the other Stygian -- would be denied to the kids of the 1970/80's.

Written by creator Richard Comely and the last Canuck issue to be illustrated by George Freeman, the story takes place after Tom Evans -- the good Captain's secret identity -- has been stranded in the "present" of the 1980's following an alien encounter in his future of 1993. In the dead of winter in Calgary, Captain Canuck has taken to construction work to support himself as he, presumably, tries to find a way back to his time. A fellow worker discovers a discarded purse, and, Canadian of upstanding character that he is, Mr Evans heads out to return it to its rightful owner.

Discovering that the purse belongs to a missing woman, he acts on a hunch -- literally, as there is nothing in the comic to indicate exactly where he gets the idea to go traipsing about government labs -- and visits the offices of the Stabler Research Group, where he comes face to face with every Canadian's arch nemesis: the locked door.

On the other side of the door are a group of scientists whose names and personalities are of absolutely no consequence. What does matter is what they've inadvertantly created: THE STYGIAN!

Part being of pure energy, part being of melty-cheese, the Stygian must feed off of the energy of people and electronics to survive. Other than this survival imperative, we don't know much about ol' Styg', but you can bet that if he does this to Captain Canuck:

then he's no damn good in my book.

Canukc, knowing nothing about the type science fiction aliens that he's battled for most of his life, inadvertantly lets the creature loose upon an unsuspecting Stampede City, where it's assumed that he passed up the great untapped potential energy of cow pats, instead settling on the lethargic energy of your average Canadian citizen. After a thrilling* chase throughout downtown Alberta, Canuck seems to be on the brink of finishing the creature off with a good whack on the side of the head with a manhole cover:

Unfortunately for the reputations of the boys in blue everywhere, the assault is interrupted by a group of vigilant police officers, who are far too focused on arresting the man in the arresting pajamas, and not the being of limitless power looming over him.

Our story ends with the Stygian getting away, and the poor boys and girls of 2004 (when this story was finally released to fans for the first time) are left on another cliffhanger that has yet to be resolved. But those aren't the only mysteries we're left pondering; I've got a few questions myself: for one, how does a being created from pure energy succumb to being smacked in thr skull with a steel plate? For two, can anyone in Calgary tell me what these terrifying, lanky giants in the background of this panel are supposed to be?

I'm going to assume they're some kind of artwork, and not, say, the Stygian's terrifying compadres.

Well, there it is -- the last, unreleased issue of the original run of Captain Canuck, killed in its prime by the realities of publishing in Canada. It wasn't lack of interest or sales that did Canuck in -- in 1979, the Captain was the highest selling comic book in all of Canada, as related in Captain Canuck #7, and you can tell from the panels I've reproduced here that Freeman's art was just gorgeous for an independent book in the late 1970's (or hell, for a comic book period). No, Canada's first and greatest superhero was deep-sixed by a government that, while claiming to value Canadian content, actually created conditions that were anathema to the continued existence of a true Canadian hero.

Updates

2010-04-21T00:49:00.003-04:00

While there probably aren't too many return visitors these days, I just want to tell that one Google bot out there that I am planning to update this week with -- well, something special. So keep checking back. I haven't forgotten about you, Google bot.

THE FLIGHT OF THE BOUNCY, BOUNCY PHOENIX

2010-04-17T17:35:00.003-04:00

Oooooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhh yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeah y'all. Guess what, sports fans?
SPEEDBALL'S BACK

If this is possible, then, pray, what other wonders might find their way back into my life?

Believe it.

Blackmarket Books: Carter Beats the Devil

2010-03-28T13:33:00.010-04:00

I've been on such a kick for the early twentieth century lately. Whether it's the history of the early comics industry, or just the aesthetic of art deco architecture, I've been just eating this shit up. Which brings me to my first post on this humble blog in just about 2 years: my recent fascination with the big, flashy stage magicians of the aforementioend era.

Carter Beats the Devil follows in the tradition of books like The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Oddly enough, they were both published in 2001. Carter tells the tale of Charles Carter III as he grows into a world class, headlining illusonist from the humble beginnings of a travelling show performer working alongside such acts as a dramatic monologist and an immigrant couple who use barnyard animals as musical instruments.

Like Kavalier, Carter is firmly embedded into the culture of the era. Gold weaves characters and events from the time -- like Houdini, the Marx Brothers, and the 1904 San Francisco earthquake -- into the life of Carter the Great effortlessly, without making it feel as if he's simply name-dropping.

In fact, I would even rate Carter higher than Kavalier at this point: Chabon seemed to let the plot drive his characters more toward the end. He also handled his characters with kid gloves, allowing them some measure fo power against the publishing giants of the day, in contrast to actual conditions for writers/artists at the time -- the only comic book creator to actually get any respect was, ironically, Bob Kane, because he had the pull necessary to play hardball -- even when he was using ghosts most of the time! Carter, on the other hand, must struggle and suffer through the "minor leagues" of magic before he can get anywhere, and even then, he requires the self-interested assistance of Harry Houdini before he can rise up the ladder.

I'm not quite finished the thing yet, but, so far, everything's looking good. I can only hope that he doesn't flop after the half-way point like Chabon seemed to do with Kavalier.

Giddy Up

2008-04-29T19:32:00.003-04:00

A lot of the JLI members complained about their boss riding them all the time...

but clearly, Captain Atom got the worst of it.

(See Max Lord ride bitch on Captain Atom in the Invasion! crossover from 1988, Captain Atom #24.)

Complain About Spider-man 3 and Superman Returns All You Want...

2008-04-27T15:24:00.004-04:00

...because when it comes right down to it, this hemisphere gets the best when it comes to licensing deals.

Behold:

Bonus question: Is it better than Ghost Rider?

(HT: GeekPress)

A Public Service Announcement from Blackmarket Pies

2008-04-27T02:54:00.006-04:00

Hiya, folks - you may have noticed that little bar at the bottom of your browser when you visit Blackmarket Pies these days. You may have even gotten a full-page ad that covered most of the screen, exhorting you to visit the web page for the Bloggers' Choice Awards. DO NOT PANIC. This is an ad that I have added to my humble little blog here in order to earn a little bit of cash to help me pay off some debts. The ads are courtesy a service known as SocialSpark, a service run by the company called Izea, whom you may have already heard about going under the name of Payperpost. They, incidentally, have sponsored this here post.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, you might be saying, hypothetical Keanu Reeves - what do you mean "sponsored?" Like, they paid you to write this? In a nutshell - yeah. Oh, don't look so offended. I would never compromise my integrity by posting about something that I did not agree with or support.

Social Spark is a site that pays you to draw people's attention to another's services via your blog. There's a bunch of services out there that will pay you to write a blog entry about a product or service. A lot of these are designed dishonestly - they will pay you to express a positive opinion, whether you've actually used their product/service or not, and they'll request that you refrain from telling people that you're advertising for them. Social Spark isn't one of those. Social Spark has a "Blogger Code of Ethics" that sets it apart from those other sites, ensuring that by using their service, you are not resorting to dishonest tactics, nor are you alienating your readers.

As you can see, Social Spark offers you a couple of options when it comes to turning your blogging hobby into a few extra dollars. I've chosen to go with "Blog Sponsorships" for now - those would be the full-screen ads and the bottom bar - because it is the least, shall we say, "touchy." Sure, it's right in your face, but if you're annoyed by it, then the bar is easy to ignore, and the full-screen ad is easily minimized.

Know this one thing, gentle reader: if you see a sponsored post on Blackmarket Pies in the future, know that I would never post something that I did not agree with. If you've read some of my posts in the past re:Steve Ditko, you might have noticed that I share his code of values. I will not compromise the integrity of my site by lying to you, my readers, about a product or service. Not these days. If the majority of my readers express a displeasure with the idea of paid-for posting, then I will have no choice but to keep it at a minimum, or to refrain from it altogether. But I hope that this little "Disclaimer" will allow you to continue to read, and by extension, support my site, even if you might see a "sponsored by" line affixed to any article. A blog cannot survive without readers, and so I put you ahead of any advertiser.

And, hey - if you're a blogger, go ahead and give Social Spark a whirl. You're bound to find something to help you out over there, whether it's blog sponsorship like I've used, sponsored posts for services that you'd like to support, or even just idea for posts - what Spcial Spark calls "Sparks." They might have paid me to post this, but they aren't paying me for referring you. And that's FACT.

So, Social Spark - transparent, tastes great, and less filling. We'll return to examining who's got more awesome power, Blue Devil or Speedball, tomorrow folks - stick around, I promise I won't sell-out completely.

Great Moments in Mounties: Less-Than-Model Behaviour From the Men in Red (Captain Canuck, Vol. 1 #3)

2008-04-27T00:33:00.009-04:00

Yeah, alright, I'm up, I'm up. What day is it? Sunday? Oh, good, I didn't sleep through the weekend - wait, what? Next Sunday? Aw, crap.

So, yes, I may have overslept a tad, and neglected this fine blog for almost a week now, but you should have realized that I would never give up trying to achieve immortality via the internet so abruptly - not without a well-reasoned excuse, anyway.

The last time we looked into the proud tradition of Mounties in Comic Books, we saw Batman and Rob battling evil Quebecois in service of an apparent summer camp for RCMP personnel. Tonight, we'll learn that there's no guarantee that the Men of the Mounted will be portrayed authentically even when the comic comes from the northern side of the border - Captain Canuck #3 is our principal piece of evidence in making that case. I previously published a week-long-ish tribute to the Captain (and his many wacky merchandising schemes) that you can look over here.

Let's recap a little: in 1975, Richard Comely and Ron Leishman would sense a hole in the market where a patriotic Canadian superhero should have been, and so they set about self-publishing Captain Canuck, a comic book series following the adventures of Canada's top C.I.S.O. agent as he foils plans by Commies and other new-world-order-types to usurp Canada's true place as a natural-resource-fueled super-power. Despite solid popularity, costs for such an independent book were high, and the company could not continue publishing Canuck at a price that was competitive with imported American superheroes, and only 14 issues could be released sporadically from 1975 to 1982 until Captain Canuck ultimately folded. He would return three more times (or more, depending on where you happened to live) between 1993 and 2005, but the general decline in comic book sales, coupled with poor distribution and the constantly shifting creative directions of Captain Canuck's copyright holder (the views expressed in his 1982 magazine, Star Rider and the Peace Machine, are not exactly what we would call "marketable") would defeat the Captain in every one of his attempts.

So, that's Captain Canuck.

Now, meet Captain Canuck in his formative years.

As Captain Canuck #3 opens, the oddly-inked eponymous hero is working with his fellow C.I.S.O. officers, the super duo known as "Redcoat and Kebec" (Redcoat is in red, Kebec is stuck with the colours of the flag of his namesake), as the crack security organization moves in to arrest a "crooked MP," Rosechuk. This issue never reveals exactly what Rosechuk - or "Rosey," as his criminal buddies like to call him - is up to, but one thing is certain: the Canada of alternate-1993 (the "future" portrayed in the series) must have one hell of a penalty for corruption, since he escapes the clutches of C.I.S.O. using this:

a skyscraper cum missile silo.

Although Captain Canuck is the second-greatest Canadian bad-ass - pulling just ahead of William Shatner, but slightly behind that Prime Minister who held conversations with his dead dog - he is, in fact, vulnerable to a rocket's flaming exhaust, and must be transported to a hospital to be treated. This is where we have our first glimpse at the Mounties of the Future (TM), who are dressed more sensibly, if not more Judge-Dreddy. That's where any dignity the Mounties might have been given in this comic stays, though, because we're barely given six pages until eeeevil Mounties show up in full Musical-Ride regalia.

The dark RCMP officers are there to kidnap the Cap'n, because their boss, crooked MP Rosey, wants to make sure that C.I.S.O. doesn't have any information on his source of funding... and... uh... is that a pitcher of urine next to the Captain's bed?

Huh. Strange thing to keep there.

Bodily fluids aside, another villain has gotten word that Captain Canuck is in the hospital, and he's dispatched his own people - another kidnapping squad, determined to find out who Captain Canuck really is, and then to hold him hostage for the mysterious Mr. Gold. The two abductors, one a doctor turned informant named Borden, the other a professional named Wilby, get into the hospital room by posing as doctors. As they're preparing the Captain, the two faux-RCMP officers arrive with orders to move Captain Canuck to another hospital - "for security reasons." Captain Canuck asks his maker for a little strength, but it's really the collision of two thugs' greed that allows him to take advantage and kick some fake Mountie ass.

With a little unexpected help from "Dr." Wilby, the Captain is perfectly fine. But the thug in the scrubs has apparently come prepared, because he whips out what appears to be RCMP identification. Oy vey, another false Mountie! Is anyone in the RCMP really who they claim to be?

As the story comes to a close, the Captain and the pretty nurse who was so intent on getting him naked are herded into an ambulance the evil "Dr. Wilby," where the good doctor immediately degenerates into a third-rate Dick Tracy villain, throwing out enough "sweethearts," condescending adjectives, and demented laughs to fill a graphic novel written by Frank Miller.

Oh boy! I wonder how the Captain will get out of this one! I'm a little kid in 1975, and I'm overwrought with anticipation! I just can't wait to look for Captain Canuck #4 on the news-stands next month! But I do wait. And I wait. And I wait some more. Because this is when Captain Canuck dies for the first time. Captain Canuck fans had to wait until 1979 to get the ending to this story. What the crap, Canada? First you give me stereotypical Mounties, and then you make me wait 4 years to read the ending of Captain Canuck #3? Egad. If that happened today, I don't know how anyone would be able to stand for it.

Cyberdyne Systems Presents

2008-04-20T16:32:00.002-04:00

...Caring for your infant harbinger of death.

Elseworlds

2008-04-18T21:01:00.002-04:00

Friday Night Fights: Classic Edition

2008-04-18T20:07:00.003-04:00

It's been too long, Bahlactus - the crowd is restless - they hunger for blood...

It's just too bad that the only black & white comics I have access to right now are in this old Sam & Max book. Oh well - violence is violence. RING THE DAMN BELL!

Top Five Reasons Why "All New Atom" Should Not Be Canceled

2008-04-17T20:01:00.005-04:00

1 - Gail Simone's not dead. She could still come back and write it - if we asked nicely enough.

2 - Head Have Not Have Conquered English Into Submission.

3 - What else are the "Lighter Than Air Society" going to do with their time?

4 - This comic used to be pure, concentrated fun. Where am I supposed to get that now that Rogers is leaving Blue Beetle? Wonder Woman?

5 - It hasn't even been around long enough to lose the "All New" part of its name.

Don't get the references? Then pick up the All-New Atom TPB's, and show DC how greatly we all want more Head.

Great Moments in Mounties: Batman #223

2008-04-15T22:20:00.020-04:00

The Mountie: a red-coated, steel-willed, horse-riding, Stetson-wearing hero who can track a man across a thousand miles of untamed wilderness, only stopping to wrestle the occasional Grizzly bear, and inform you politely that your tail-light is out, but he’ll let you off with a warning for now if you promise to have it fixed before you return to Canada on your next trip. At least, that’s the image that Hollywood has given the great Canadian police officer for much of the past hundred years.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or the North-west Mounted Police as they were known when they were originally founded, were formed in the 19th century to establish order in the wild and untamed north-west territories of Canada. The Mounties were famous for, allegedly, never having to draw their guns in order to do their jobs. Today, the RCMP is the largest police force in Canada, functioning much like the FBI/ATF does in America, but also performing front-line police work in the smaller or more remote communities that don't have police forces of their own.

Hollywood seemed obsessed with the Mounties at one point. The movies portrayed them as stalwart trackers, relentless in their pursuit of justice. In Pierre Burton's Hollywood's Canada, he describes the American view of our red-clad police force as "supermen, free of normal human appetites when on the trail of their man." This even contributed to the common error that the motto of the force is "We always get our man:" in actuality, the motto is "Defending the Right," which, to me at least, sounds a hell of a lot cooler.

Of course, Hollywood got it all wrong. For one, their mounties wore ridiculous-looking fur hats sometimes, and they could never really get the look of the Stetson right. More egregious errors included Mounties shooting first and not bothering to ask any questions, and a scene in McKenna of the Mounted (a lot of movies were called "-- of the Mounted") where an officer is discharged from the service and ceremonially whipped as a result.

And today, Mounties are still portrayed as ceaseless do-gooders who always wear their red dress uniforms, even though they're equipped pretty much like your average police officer - that means no funny hat (for the most part), and a bullet-proof vest on occasion.

This poor characterization isn't limited to movies, naturally. Comic books, those purveyors of only the highest quality entertainment, have contributed their fair share of misconceptions about the RCMP. I hope to have this as a regular feature, but like my other "features," "Comics That Have Pissed Me Off" and "The Continuing Adventures of Ronald Reagan," installments may be sporadic at best - especially considering that Mounties haven't been especially popular in pop culture for a few decades now, showing up only to be lampooned in media like Dudley Do Right and Due South. I've already got enough for at least two posts, so I think I'm ahead of the curve as it is.

One comic that has not helped the RCMP to shake their mythical reputation was Batman #223, a "Giant Batman." Don't get too excited; it's just an over-sized issue of the book, it doesn't contain any of those fantastic appearances of an actual giant Batman. I like to call this issue "Multinational Batman," because it features the fascinating gimmick of "Batman and Robin Face Danger Around the World!"

Although there are other stories of stereotypical hilarity within this tome, we're only interested in the wintry scene from the cover: Crime in Canada, a concept so shocking that Batman himself had to investigate.

The story is really titled - any guesses? - "Batman of the Mounties." And right from the get-go, I'm somewhat less than optimistic that this story will be free of the misconceptions and bad generalizations that have plagued the movies:

Sigh. Well, let's get on with it.

"Batman of the Mounties" follows the caped crusader as he ventures into the frozen north (strong and free, dontcha know) to capture the wicked LeClerc brothers, another bad trope of bad Mountie movies. Didn't you know that French-Canadians were evil?

Anyway, we open on an idyllic scene: the Mounties are apparently attending summer camp up in the Northwest, and they can barely contain their excitement when they see the fabled Batplane fly overhead. Boy, is there gonna be an awkward moment when Robin realizes this particular RCMP detachment (which seems to include slightly over 6000 officers) actually intended for someone else to accompany the Caped Crusader:

I mean, they already had a red tunic sized for Rob. Now what are they gonna do with it?

Aw, that's okay, guys. They already brought formal wear anyway. They also took along their "trees and rocks" uniform just in case they were to get stranded in Vancouver, and their leather uniforms just in case they... well, you know.

The Dynamic Duo have arranged to teach the Mounties their previously chronicled unique crime-fighting methods as a part of "National Law Enforcement Week," which is when we up in the Great White get off our asses and actually attempt to enforce a few laws for seven days - well, it's more like six because we don't open on Sundays.

Unfortunately, just as Batman & Rob begin to demonstrate how to apprehend rambunctious squirrels...

... one of the Mounties sets off in his ceremonial best - riding a horse because Canucks have yet to master the art of paving - in order to capture those dastardly Quebecois, the LeClerc brothers! The bros. have broken out of prison (but we just call it Quebec), and are headed the Mounties' way! Why, surely they could just wait for the idiots to pass by the massive encampent of police officers, right? Or maybe let Batman handle it? Nope, it's a much better idea to send "Bob" (actual Mountie name) off, on his own, with only a horse and the RCMP tradition not to ever draw his gun, to try to capture two armed and dangerous francophones. Bob Kane, or whoever really wrote "Batman of the Mounties," has apparently never heard of the Montreal Mafia.

Sadly, Bob's mission meets a sticky end, having to wheeze out a staccato speech to Batman and Robin as they find him dying in the snow. I don't think the way he's speaking his due to any distress, he might just not have learned how to use articles. Or he could have brain damage, I guess, because he insists on making Batman a deputy Mountie:

And forgive me for being presumptuous enough to question a "master crime-fighter," but in which universe does that make even one iota of sense, Batman? Robin isn't even old enough to drive a car, and you're letting him fly a goddamn super-sonic plane? And where would that thing even land out in the wilderness? There's too many trees to build a runway. And why would you have to become a Mountie in order to catch some bad guys? You've been doing it freelance for years, you crazy loon.

Well, questionable actions aside, Batman - who doesn't don the Stetson, so I wouldn't call him a real Mountie, anyway - sets off across the frozen wastes of Canada, following the trail of the most devious French killers around. And he gets to show off some of those "unique crime-fighting methods" again, this time wasting resources and putting distance between him and the LeClercs because, hey, walking sucks:

I don't want to get into posting every panel of this obvious masterpiece, but some of this crap is just too absurd to leave uncommented upon. The very next panel after "wind-surfer Batman..."

...sees the great detective not even considering that he may unknowingly following the path of, I don't know, a bear, instead of the criminals. Thanks to his little ice-surfing escapade, anything could have ripped the needles off of that tree while the LeClercs were half-way to Regina.

Then, the Mounties have the balls to say this to Robin when he comes back with the half-corpse of Mountie Bob:

O RLY? You, the genius who sent one guy and a horse after the LeClercs not five pages ago has suddenly decreed that they're too dangerous For even Batman to handle alone? I must say, our men in red aren't being given a good shake in this story.

Personally, I hope this is what he had in mind when he talked about sending "men" with them, though:

Yeah, we've got 'em up here.

The men of the Mounted Bear Patrol , unfortunately, can't waste their time tracking down the LeClercs because of a disaster in what I assume has to be a nearby town, so it's up to Robin (!) to catch up (!!) with Batman and take the evil Frenchmen down without help.

But I mean,really - when you've got a man who wastes as much time as Batman does building surf boards and changing clothes, manages to catch up with the bad guys, and then stops when he's being shot at to make a set of fuckin' skis (nevermind why his "snow" suit didn't come with snowshoes), you don't really need all that much help anyway, I reckon.

After what is ridiculously called "one of the weirdest fights ever," which involved balancing on logs cut down by an invisible logging company and floating in the river, Batman and Robin have finally apprehended the LeClerc brothers! But it's not quite time for a round of whiskey and vodka, as the LeClercs have a few tricks up their sleeves:

Which must lead to an exercise in Criminal Logic (TM):

thus preserving the status quo - provided that the status quo includes guys who've managed to foil the plans of psychotic clowns being duped by two backwoods thugs who could probably find a way to rationalize robbing a bank without taking any money. "No, mon frere! The money would make us a target! We will take zees artificial potted plants, instead! Zen we get away scot free! And grab zome pens while you're over zer!"

Don't worry - Batman and Robin "always get their man," even if it involves the unlikely scenario of Batman pulling the RCMP insignia that Constable Bob gave him out of his utility belt.

You know, the utility belt that the criminals made sure to remove so he couldn't come up with any tricks. That's okay, Bob - I know this story had a lot of twists to keep track of. Sometimes Batman comics are so complicated that you just can't remember what happened a scant two panels ago, especially if doing so would mean that Batman pulled that insignia right out of his ass. I would have just ended this comic after the fight on the floating logs, but then again, I've never been paid by the page.

So there ya go: Batman of the Mounties, our first look at Mounties in the comics. They might not have come out looking quite so good in this one, but not even Batman could manage that.

Fun Mountie Trivia: when Michael Moore made Canadian Bacon in 1995, he avoided paying the brave men and women of one of our finest institutions licensing fees for the use of "Royal Canadian Mounted Police" by calling his Mounties "Royal Mounted Canadian Police." Dude wasn't even trying.

The makers of Dudley Do-Right similarly avoided helping out the force when they purposely gave the titular hero the wrong uniform insignia - of course, that could always be rationalized by saying that they didn't want to denigrate the RCMP with their portrayal of the bumbling officer, but how many people actually know what RCMP signage is supposed to look like anyway? Certainly Bob Kane can't be counted among them.

Showcase Presents: The Essential Filler Post

2008-04-12T13:14:00.003-04:00

It's been a sparse week from me on the blogging front, but hey - a man's gotta eat, and I'm sure you're all well aware of how well blogging pays.

On that acknowledgment, today's not going to be a big break from the past week's lack of presence, because I just wanted to make a list of all the trade paperbacks of comics that I (hint, hint, Big Two) would kill to see on store shelves (or at least hidden away in some darkened corner of the Amazon.com warehouse). I was spurred to do this after noticing that there were enough "d-list" series and characters getting trades that seem to indicate that it's becoming decreasingly unlikely that we would ever see my favorite obscurities in a compact book-shelf worthy tome. For example, was there really all that much of a clamoring for the Phantom Stranger/Ronald Reagan epic from 1987, Heart of a Stranger? I mean, besides from this corner of the internet?

And hey, after I'm done, why don't you drop me a comment and tell me what your dream trades are?

DC Comics:

Shade, The Changing Man, Volume 1 [including Shade#1-8 (1977), plus the missing story from "Cancelled Comics Calvacade"]
Showcase Presents: Blue Beetle, Volume 1 [the original DC debut of Ted Kord from 1986]
Showcase Presents: Blue Devil
Showcase Presents: Captain Atom
Showcase Presents: The Creeper
The Hawk and the Dove, Volume 1 [featuring Showcase #75 and The Hawk and the Dove #1-6 from 1968]
Showcase Presents: The Best of Ronald Reagan

Marvel Comics:

The Essential Alpha Flight [yeah, I know they've got smaller trades coming out, but a big, cheap collection of around 30 issues at a time would be mighty more convenient than waiting a year for another eight]
The Essential Great Lakes Avengers
The Essential New Warriors
The Essential Speedball [bet you didn't see that coming, did you?]
The Awesome Slapstick![including The Awesome Slapstick! #1-4 and "Smells Like Teen Spirit," from Marvel Comics Presents #159-163]

Other:

Captain Canuck, Volume 1

So, what do you want to see?

A Tale of Two Invasions (An INFINITY WAR Crossover!)

2008-04-08T13:26:00.021-04:00

With all the recent hubbub (bub) over Marvel's Secret Invasion crossover event this spring/summer, wherein the characters (as it's hard to call them all heroes in this age of cynicism, isn't it?) of the Marvel Universe may or may not have been replaced by shape-shifting Skrulls, you might remember the last time something secret-y and invasion-y happened in a Marvel crossover: 1992's Infinity War event.

Infinity War concerned a villain named Magus and his machinations involving exact duplicates of some of Marvel's greatest heroes, including, oddly enough, Tony Stark and Reed Richards. The story wasn't anything remarkable, certainly nothing on the level of Secret Invasion - although, I was only 4 years old at the time of Infinity War, so fuck if I know if there was much hype on USENET or whatever.

I haven't actually read Infinity War, but I certainly have the gall to call it one of the greatest pieces of sequential art in the history of mankind, even ahead of those cave paintings in France. Why? Because it gave us this:

Evil Speedball.

EVIL SPEEDBALL.

EVIL SPEEDBALL!

Yeesh. he's a real looker, ain't he? And dig that caption on the cover: You didn't demand it, but you got it anyway--. Considering how some people feel about ol' Robbie Baldwin around here, that's a line I may just make my official blog motto.

New Warriors #27 is one of the essential stories in the Speedball canon. While the B-plot involves Speedy's buddy, Rage, having a crisis of conscience after slamming some punk's head through a windshield, the Speedball-centric issue sees the Masked Marvel return home to Springdale, Connecticut, only to find his old stomping grounds devastated, and the police finger him as the culprit! And, since it was the early nineties, we get this sight-gag courtesy of the sophisticated humor of penciller Darick Robertson.

I'll let you figure that one out.

The police are led by Robbie Baldwin's father, a notorious anti-super-hero crusader who's just been looking for an excuse to pump some lead into the bouncing hero - thus logically explaining why the police would subscribe to the "shoot first, ask questions never" philosophy, and why Speedball can't just surrender himself to them. Although how the police can mistake the two, given their very different appearances, must be entirely an effect of comic book logic.

Speedball escapes the sights of the police by using his kinetic field ("Speedball Effect") to sap all of the momentum out of their bullets, and heads over to the family home, fearing that his "evil twin" might be longing for some homecooking. Evil Speedball's already there and accosting his mother, looking to replace Robbie because - well, he feels like it, I guess. That's all the reason he needs, apparently.

Scattered amongst the fight is some faux-losophizing about having to become like your evil twin in order to defeat him, as well as the usual "I'm everything you don't like about yourself" bullshit, which doesn't make sense (unless this means that Evil Speeds is the living embodiment of Robbie Baldwin's malice towards woodland creatures) because Speedball certainly hasn't shown the urge to destroy things simply for the sake of destruction. Also, I really don't see how you could fight evil like crooks, gangsters, and super-villains (and, uh, giant birds) unless you had a hatred of evil. It's like that Star Wars bullshit about fear and anger and hate being the source of all evil in the universe - never made any fucking sense to me. It's a ham-fisted effort to make New Warriors "deep" through force, instead of natural flow.

So anyway, Speedball kicks the crap out of "Blackball" (the impromptu nickname he gives Evil Speedball, which is sorely deficient in my opinion because it totally omits the word "evil"), and the double dissolves into a pile of dust. By sheer contrivance, this drains all of the strength from Speedy, forcing him to de-power into Robbie Baldwin so that his father can discover his secret identity.

See? I told you this was an essential Speedball story. His mother had known for months that he was a superhero, but his father's attitude toward "vigilantes" forced Robbie to hide it from him. This development would have Robbie moving to New York to stay with the New Warriors permanently, which would, in turn, lead to the origin of "Hindsight Lad," which then led to much of the hatred against the New Warriors during and after Civil War when Hindsight set up DestroyAllWarriors.com, which exposed the heroes' true identities.

So, way to go, Evil Speedball. You helped to totally screw over one of my favorite characters. I hope you're happy.

Smells Like Seen Spirit

2008-04-07T09:44:00.005-04:00

At the risk of being an accomplice to film industry espionage - and the continuing risk that I run of turning this place into some kind of, I don't know, second-hand Ain't It Cool News - I've tracked down a site which had the foresight to save those pictures from the set of Frank Miller's ~~Sin City 2~~ adaptation of Will Eisner's The Spirit. Click here if you missed 'em the first time around, but be quick - who knows how many monkeys Lionsgate has trolling the 'net for this stuff?

Khaji-da!

2008-04-04T01:56:00.005-04:00

In case you missed it over at the Newsarama blog...

an incarnation of the Blue Beetle will finally be showing up on your TV screens, in the latest Batman cartoon, Batman: The Brave and the Bold.

While characters running the gamut from The Creeper and Booster Gold to Aztek and B'wana Beast managed to get themselves cameos in the DCU in media other than comics, we have been denied any appearances of any of the Blue Beetles - neither Garrett, nor Kord, nor Reyes - in any form, whether it be Justice League Unlimited, or even Teen Titans. Why? Well, apparently Fox Feature Syndicate, the company that created and owned the blue bug in the forties until they went kaput and sold the rights to Charlton, had short-sightedly signed away the broadcasting rights to the character in order to produce a radio program. While I can only speculate, it would seem that they concluded that comic books were a fad, and were due for a crash sooner rather than later. It was, therefore, better to get their money now, and if that meant losing out on holding the rights to a worthless asset in a few years, than so be it.

That license finally expired in 2006, but by then it was too late to feature him in JLU - the cartoon had been canceled. Luckily for us Blue Beetle fans, though, no matter how many such shows are shit-canned, there will always be room for more Batman on our Saturday mornings.

The case of Blue Beetle is pretty enlightening, actually. I used to believe that if you tried hard enough, and maybe wrote a few letters, you could get a cartoon or toy based on any character you wanted. After searching for information about the Blue Beetle rights, though, I came across this post on the boards at Action Figure Insider, and was thoroughly humbled. I wasn't really disappointed, though - I felt more informed, and less like DC had something explicitly some of my favorite characters. It was calming to find out that, sometimes, no matter how popular a character, or how much money you could make out of it, you just can't use something - even if you own the character! Who knew making action figures, or cartoons, could be so complicated?

"Unique Crime Fighting Methods"

2008-04-03T00:02:00.005-04:00

At ten the next morning...

And that's why there are no DC superheroes in Canada. Any more questions?

More Scholarly Fun

2008-03-30T16:28:00.004-04:00

Omar Ha-Redeye and Jacob Kaufman reveal The Lord of the Rings's true nature as an epic story of property law at Law is Cool:

The novel The Lord of the Rings was a phenomenon. The movie trilogy based upon it has grossed over a billion dollars and won a slew of Oscars.
But what’s really interesting about the work is that it is about property law.

Here's a snippet from the post:

Hierarchy of Ownership and Possession
The Lord of the Rings story is that of a property hierarchy with one owner and a series of possessors.

Biblo states,

[The Ring] is mine isn’t it? I found it.

He seems to be laying a claim of ownership through finding. But finding only lets a finder hold possession in a thing. It does not extinguish the rights of those higher up on the hierarchy.

In Anderson v. Gouldberg it was found that “possession is good title against all the world except those having better title.” It does not matter that several of the possessors of the Ring like Isildur and Sméagol obtained possession by violently dispossessing others. That circumstance does not change the dispossessor’s rights vis-à-vis a third party.

The fact that all parties subsequent to Sauron hold only possession in the ring is acknowledged in the text. When Gandalf forces Biblo to give up the Ring, he tells him to,

[s]top possessing [the Ring].

After discovering that Aragorn is the heir of Isildur Frodo exclaims that the Ring really belongs to Aragorn. Aragon corrects him:

It does not belong to either of us, but it has been ordained that you should hold it for a while.

Frodo later elaborates that the Ring,

does not belong to any mortal … though if any could claim it, it would be Aragorn.

Here he demonstrates his understanding of the property hierarchy – with Sauron at the apex as owner and Aragorn as next highest as a descendent of the first possessor after Sauron.

This is just the kind of stuff that I'd be doing if I was in law school.

Read the whole thing over at Law is Cool.

(HT: GeekPress)

Losing My Readership

2008-03-30T15:43:00.003-04:00

...one LOL at a time.

Friday Night Fights: Slapstick Week

2008-03-28T21:17:00.007-04:00

One thing you might be surprised to learn about Bahlactus (other than his ability to connect with the youth of today) is that the man makes a damn fine cup of coffee:

Fine enough to kill for.

SPECIAL BONUS BOUT!

You didn't think I'd forget, did you?

It just wouldn't be the Fights at BMP without Speedball, The Masked Marvel!

Slapstick Week: Where are they now?

2008-03-27T22:37:00.020-04:00

Sometimes, comic book characters are not well-received, and subsequently fade away; their solo series are canceled, and they're relegated to existing only as entries at the back-end of a volume of "Who's Who in the DCU" or "Handbook to the Marvel Universe." Sometimes, though, these characters aren't that bad, they just happen to be disliked by the Powers-That-Be, and no amount of popularity or profit can bring them back to the world of the relevant (I think I might be tempted to call this the "Quesada Effect" if it didn't apply equally to DC's editorial mandate to degrade and eventually kill every single member of Justice League International). Case in point: Slapstick.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Slapstick was apparently voted as the best new Marvel character of 1992, beating out Carnage for the title. So, you'd expect Slapstick to be given a solo series after his four-issue debut, maybe give him a chance to defend his title? No dice. Slapstick was, for all intents and purposes, never seen again. Oh sure, he showed up a few times in the pages of Marvel Comics Presents, where he joined up with the New Warriors (the super-team that gave a second chance to another short-changed hero Speedball), but since then, there's been nothing. Nothing. NOTHING!

Well, almost nothing. The Civil War event has made a habit out of taking previously established heroes and completely subverting them, having them behave in ways that send their fans into convulsive seizures. Civil War turned Iron man into a fascist; Captain America into a reckless, irrational nut; bouncy bouncy fun fun Speedball into a masochistic bore; and Spider-man into someone who's willing to do anything to avoid dealing with the responsibility of his actions. Yeesh.

Continuing in that fine tradition of artistic ruination comes Civil War's destruction of the one, the only, Slapstick. Within the pages of Marvel's Avengers: The Initiative, a character who's called Slapstick, and resembles Slapstick, lurks - but he sure as hell ain't my Slapstick. Let's take a look:

What the purple hell - why is Slapstick wearing fatigues!? Why did he even join the initiative? He wasn't what you'd call a "hero." He only intervened when it affected him directly, or if he found it amusing. And why does he need training? He's shown time and time again that he can survive having a hole blasted into him by a rocket launcher, being punted by The Thing, being repeatedly electrocuted, being set on fire... there isn't a lot that can kill him when he's in his "electroplasm" state. And since he never appears as Steve Harmon at the Initiative's base, this could mean that Stark doesn't even know who he really is, or what gives him his powers - so how can he possibly be a threat to him? There is simply no reason to believe that Slapstick would ever willingly register with the government.

While I'm grateful that Slapstick is making another appearance in Marvel continuity, this character might as well be Deadpool as far as I'm concerned. I haven't seen him do anything that could qualify as "cartoonish." The only scene that made me laugh was in Initiative #5, where Slapstick responds to Constrictor's insult when he calls the recruits the "kids that thought they could take on the Hulk" with "actually, they were - I just went along because everyone else was doing it and I wanted to be popular." And I think you'll agree that that's a pretty weak joke for Slapstick to make.

The Marvel climate after Civil War is not the place for Slapstick to participate in - Slapstick, being a comedic/satiric character, should be a commenter on the Marvel U. He should be looking at the seriousness of these comics from the outside and subverting it, making us wonder why Marvel comics aren't actually to be taken as fun anymore, but as serious, brooding texts where serious things happen and everyone is seriously not in the mood for Slapstick's shit. If you'll recall my post on why I thought Slapstick succeeded as a comedic character, then you'll remember that the most important part of Slapstick was irreverence. When Slapstick begins to respect what was previously mocked, he's no longer Slapstick. Now he's just insane.

I am so sick of comic writers taking previously established characters and, rather than giving them situations which might believably change their attitudes or beliefs (like when James Robinson turned Mikaal Tomas, one of the many Starmen, into a withdrawn, abused, former drug addict in the pages of Starman), simply change the character to fit whatever plot they've devised (I'm looking at Spider-man again). I'm not disparaging plot-driven stories at all, I'm just saying that if you're writing "Indiana Jones and the Book of Infinite Jest," you better keep Indiana Jones' personality in mind when you write the scene in which he encounters The Joker. If you want to have the man who encounters the Joker grovel in fear at the majesty of the Clown Prince of Crime in order to establish his fearsomeness - or something - then you probably shouldn't be using Dr. Jones for that one, because Indy ain't that kinda guy.

And Slapstick ain't even physically capable of being held in a prison cell, never mind being the kind of guy to sit quietly and wait to be interrogated.

You know what kind of heroes would register with the government and join the Initiative? The Great Lakes Avengers. And they did just that back in Cable and Deadpool. But they're completely ineffectual. They would be just the right sort of group to have to go through training with the Initiative, even though they wouldn't provide nearly the level of "angst" that the writers are going for. Maybe they could have just added Squirrel Girl, or Doorman - Doorman doesn't take a lot of things seriously, and Squirrel Girl is sweet and innocent. If they were looking for characters who would lighten the mood of The Initiative, those two would have been fine. Hell, you could re-write the entire run up 'til now with Squirrel Girl, and you wouldn't have to change a thing, since Squirrely had a crush on Speedball, and would have been just as likely as Slapstick was to attack Gauntlet for disparaging the name of the New Warriors. She actually has a bit of a vicious streak already, if you ask me - or Doctor Doom.

So, there ya go - Slapstick isn't dead, but he might as well be. Disagree with me? Think you can justify the complete change in Slapstick's character? Put your comments where - uh, well, where the comments are. In what conceivable universe would Slapstick ever agree to attend boot camp?

Come For Your Trial, Stay For the Corruption

2008-03-27T14:09:00.003-04:00

Let's take a brief break from Slapstick Week for just a few minutes, because the Newsarama blog just picked up on something interesting: a New York City councilman wants to officially name "Gotham City" as NYC's primary nickname, in order to capitalize on the release of this summer's Batman flick, The Dark Knight.

That's just a bad idea all around. Gotham City is not a nice place. If you're not being accosted by a psychopathic clown while waiting for the subway, you've got to watch your back for the crazy in the bat costume who thinks you've got a connection to somebody's Al Ghul. Then there's the justice system, which, despite the aforementioned crazy's efforts to eschew any real political reform and stick with beating the crap out of ugly people, has yet to keep anyone in jail long enough for them to become homesick. This is the last fictional place in the world that you want associated with your hometown.

I mean, even if this councilor believes the comparison to be apt, do you really want to advertise it?

Contrary to the popular colloquialism, bad publicity is only that - bad. Say no to Gotham.

The Science of Slapstick

2008-03-26T22:25:00.007-04:00

I am all about the slapstick humour. Ever since I was first introduced to the Three Stooges in my formative years, it has been an essential part of who I am. There is truly no greater comedy than a subtle, delicate slap to the face with a blunt object. Shows like Earthworm Jim, Freakazoid, and Pinky and the Brain still hold special places in my comically oversized heart. So it should come as no surprise, if you’re familiar with the little fella, that I enjoy the hell out of Marvel Comics' Slapstick.

When slapstick comedy is done well, it’s friggin’ hilarious. But you have to have particularly good timing, and at least as good a wit, to get it right. For instance, superficially, one wouldn’t see too much of a difference between the antics in Animaniacs and those in the earlier Looney Toons shorts – but there’s a huge, glaring gulf between their types of humor. The original Bugs Bunny cartoons just cannot elicit laughter from me. Maybe it’s because there were no network censors back then, or that no one was particularly worried that kids might copy what they saw on the screen, that allowed them to use anvils and dynamite so indiscriminately. But I can sort of articulate why it doesn’t work for me: it’s too obvious. It’s too fantastic. There’s no heart in it. But most importantly? It lacks intelligence.

There are three things that are essential for slapstick to be funny to me: irreverence, wit, and the nature of the violence itself.

Irreverence is an example of incongruity: that is, something that occurs but which is not consistent with what we would expect. For example, we expect people to treat Daredevil with respect, and to be afraid of Ghost Rider: Slapstick does neither.

The key to irreverence, of course, is that the target of your satire, or violence, has to command respect, without actually deserving it. Ayn Rand once wrote on humor (and you can read these and other writings at The Ayn Rand Lexicon):

“Humor is not an unconditional virtue; its moral character depends on its object. To laugh at the contemptible, is a virtue; to laugh at the good, is a hideous vice. Too often, humor is used as the camouflage of moral cowardice.”

She later added on a separate occasion :

Humor is the denial of metaphysical importance to that which you laugh at. The classic example: you see a very snooty, very well dressed dowager walking down the street, and then she slips on a banana peel … What's funny about it? It's the contrast of the woman's pretensions to reality. She acted very grand, but reality undercut it with a plain banana peel. That's the denial of the metaphysical validity or importance of the pretensions of that woman. Therefore, humor is a destructive element—which is quite all right, but its value and its morality depend on what it is that you are laughing at. If what you are laughing at is the evil in the world (provided that you take it seriously, but occasionally you permit yourself to laugh at it), that's fine. [To] laugh at that which is good, at heroes, at values, and above all at yourself [is] monstrous … The worst evil that you can do, psychologically, is to laugh at yourself. That means spitting in your own face.

In this way, the pretensions of Ghost Rider are undercut in Slapstick#4 by the fact that he’s simply a character in a comic book, and deserves no more respect than Slapstick himself does. If Ghost Rider were to exist in the "real world," he would be quite a terrifying figure indeed - but he would also be a man with a perpetually flaming skull:

This irreverence is also seen in Slapstick #2, featuring the Punisher caricature, “The Overkiller:” a comic book character who never smiles is taken down a few pegs by a comic book character who seems to never stop smiling. Slapstick mocks the overly-serious nature of the anti-hero, and his illogical dedication to becoming a criminal in order to wipe out crime.

The original Looney Tunes used wit, but it was – well, very good, really. I can recall a scene where Wile E. Coyote has been blown up, and then knocks on Bugs Bunny’s door, announcing “My name is mud.” Bugs turns to the audience in an aside before the clip irises out, and says, “Mud spelled backwards is dum[b].” That has to be the least funniest Looney Tunes gag that I have ever seen, because the irreverence was not specific to Wile E. Coyote, did not play off of his pretensions, and forced Wile to say something that he had no reason to say. Irreverence has to point out the subject’s failings or fallacies to be successful.

But, like Northrop Frye explained in his paper, “The Nature of Satire,” (published in the University of Toronto Quarterly, Vol.14, Oct. 1949) irreverence is not enough to make something funny, because irreverence can also include vitriolic invective:

...it is the tone that makes a work of art a satire...To have too much hatred and too little gaiety will upset the balance of tone.

This is where wit comes in. Wit can turn something appalling into something hilarious. Take this set of panels:

Now, we’ve all seen the “this means war” bit in Looney Tunes cartoons, but it’s the intertexuality (oh, god! Oh, god! Postmodern theory is creeping in! Let’s get this over with as quickly as possible...) that gives it new life here. First, there’s the acknowledgment that Slapstick is, indeed, inspired by the cartoon characters of the past. Then there’s the even funnier allusion to the modus operandi of the Punisher: his “war on crime,” and his history as a war veteran.

Of course, a big part of the wit is actually in that incongruity I mentioned earlier. Check out this character: the Neutron Bum. A better name for a villain I have yet to see. Villains are usually after revenge, or millions of dollars: the Neutron Bum, however, only wants a cup of coffee:

The final component of successful slapstick, which is evident in Slapstick (naturally), is the violence itself. The violence has to be of a certain type – Sweeney Todd type mayhem will offend more than it will tickle, and the funniest parts of movies like Army of Darkness are the homages to the Three Stooges. Slapstick comedy, above all, cannot hurt or permanently damage their victims. Whether this is achieved through innocuous acts of violence like the Stooges’ face-slaps and nose-tweaks, or by introducing incongruity and turning a horrifically violent act into a harmless annoyance (a la Wile E. Coyote and explosives), doesn't matter. Slapstick straddles this line well, even in the mostly realistic world of the Marvel Universe:

A film or comic can be violent, but without wit, it isn’t funny. Take the original Looney Toons cartoons, for instance. Sure, they’re funny to kids, but why do I enjoy Freakazoid and Pinky and the Brain where I don’t enjoy Looney Toons? Well, Looney Toons lacks intelligence. People get blown up with dynamite, shot in the ass, dropped out of airplanes – but the quips aren’t exactly Oscar Wilde. And the wit can fall flat if it doesn’t include “the denial of metaphysical importance” to an object of attack. Without these, the violence is simply perplexing – something which may have helped provoke the moral crusaders who saw cartoons as nothing but trash for the mind. Slapstick isn’t the funniest stuff around, but it contains all of the elements – in my opinion, whatever that’s worth – that give it staying power.

The Secret Origin of Slapstick!

2008-03-24T16:08:00.048-04:00

Every great hero has an origin story, and, fortunately for us scholarly types, so does every lousy one. Slapstick, the zany character who is essentially a cartoon who lives in the "real world" of the Marvel Universe, doesn't have an overly complicated one, or even an interesting one, but it is where all superhero stories begin, and so that is where we venture to now.

Slapstick arrived on the scene in a 4-issue miniseries that began in November of 1992. Writer Len Kaminski and penciller James Fry III created the cartoony "super-hero," but I couldn't find any information on exactly what inspired them to do so. Was there merely an editorial fiat for comic (as in "comedic") characters? The nineties would see the rise of similar heroes, from Earthworm Jim to Freakazoid, but Slapstick was there first. A clue to his origins is given on the splash page:
a dedication to Steve Ditko? You all know my affinity for the man's work, but to what extent did he inspire the creation of Slapstick? Maybe I should have tracked down Kaminski and Fry and asked them... well, you live and learn.

Let's get this show on the road, huh?

Meet Steve Harmon. He's...

not quite right in the head.

Steve's modus operandi is to take absolutely nothing seriously, playing practical jokes that would be construed as signs of a severely disturbed mind today.

(Okay, admit it - you laughed at the nun joke. C'mon, I won't tell your grandmother.)

Somehow, in what is surely an insult to the rigorous standards of the public school system, he's managed to make it to High School, where he spends his days - well, in detention, mostly. At other times, he can be seen hanging out with his best friend and studious nerd, Mike.

Steve's days as a "super hero" (and we must remember that that term is used only for expediency, and with the most generous of definitions in mind) begin when he seeks out revenge against another student, Winston, who's gotten him into detention by informing school authorities that he was the one to - well, for dramatic effect, I'll let him tell you:

Honestly, now - a corpse? Even if your willing suspension of disbelief will allow you to imagine that a guy was able to steal a dead body without being arrested, you still can't get around the fact that this kid wasn't summarily expelled with great relish, and got off with only a week of detention. They have got some loose standards in the schools of the Marvel universe.

Steve's plans are inspired as most great ones are: by a creepy-looking clown handing out fliers advertising a carnival. His vengeance isn't exactly Machiavellian in its complexity: he's going to dress up as a clown, blend in with the carnies, and hit Winston in the face with a pie when he heads on down to ride the ferris wheel with his lady friend. Bravo, Steve. Bra-vo.

Naturally, his plan hits a snag when the carnival turns out to be run by evil clowns from Dimension X (as hypothesized by our hero) who abduct Winston and his girlfriend, Heather, before Steve can see his devious machinations come to fruition. Calling upon his inner hero, Steve grabs a conveniently-located giant mallet and follows the circus folk into their dimensional portal within the House of Mirrors.

Steve manages to get through the portal just a little too late, and as a result, is transformed into a stylised version of himself: he has purple hair that resembles the wig he was wearing, a completely white face resulting from the make-up he had put on, exaggerated eyebrows, and two comically over-sized, four-fingered gloves.

Steve has also been reduced to a puddle, the result of being stretched across a number of different dimensions. In this state, Steve is welcomed to Dimension X by the “Scientist Supreme,” a character that I’ll be calling “Dr. Groucho” from here on out for better word flow, since he has that little “cartoon doctor” thing on his head and resembles Groucho Marx – he’s also done-up in clown make-up, but so is everyone else, so it’s not really notable enough to make a big deal out of. Dr. Groucho has determined that Steve’s body was transformed during the trip through the portal. Steve is now composed of a substance Dr. Groucho calls “electroplasm,” which makes Steve invincible, but which also requires the good doctor to cram “Pseudo-molecular Stabilitrods” into his gloves, which will stabilize the particles and allow Steve to become a solid - err, person/thing. Groucho has also modified the gloves so that Steve can change to and from his clownish appearance and his human form, and store items in a pocket of sub-space, so that he can retrieve them seemingly from thin air.

Yes, Slapstick’s powers all come courtesy of a doctor in clown make-up who looks like Groucho Marx. Keep that one in mind for Marvel trivia night.

Anyway, it turns out that Winston and Heather were abducted to help the Overlord, ruler of Dimension X, take over the dimension in which the regular Marvel Universe resides. The Overlord has taken a device created by Dr. Groucho called the “Mediocritizer,” which brainwashes people into believing whatever he wants them to believe. The thing about Dimension X is that it’s postmodernism fully realized: when everyone is made to believe the same thing by the Overlord, that belief becomes reality. In fact, the Overlord maintains a castle that is perched impossibly atop a small cliff merely by his minions’ collective suspension of disbelief.

Long story short, Steve manages to defeat the Overlord using a combination of cartoonish violence and terrible comedy. It's not pretty, and it's not very funny, either.

To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have been surprised if sales dropped off significantly after this issue. It feels a bit as if writer Len Kaminski was forced to tell an origin story, and had to slap one together at the last minute - it's certainly not on par with Slapstick #4. I think the series would have been better served if we were introduced to Slapstick, and then we got his origin story told to us afterward, in a condensed, flash-back format. Hell, did we even need an origin? He's a living cartoon, and he likes to hit people with a big mallet. What else do we need to know? Slapstick is funny (in later issues), but his alter-ego, Steve Harmon? He's just kind of a prick. The less seen of him, the better.

Ah, but we can only dream of what could have been...

FUN BIT OF TRIVIA: According to "The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe," Slapstick was "voted best new character of 1992 over Carnage." I totally buy that.

EDIT: I just realized how similar the origin of Slapstick is to the origin of Ditko's The Creeper: both characters put on a costume that becomes their alter ego thanks to a pseudo-sciency situation, and both heroes use tiny devices to transform into these "stored forms." Both characters are also batshit insane in their disguises.

NEXT: I attempt to put my limited university education to good use by proving why Slapstick is funny. Tune in then, and watch as I suck all of the fun out of comics!

Spoiler Alert

2008-03-23T00:02:00.003-04:00

Hey, you remember how Darth Vader's entire character was changed when he was first revealed to be just a pasty-faced old guy in the third Star Wars movie, and then when he was turned into a whiny, moody, not-quite-so-scary teenager in the prequel trilogy? Well, Marvel was there first, in Marvel Age #4:

although this one was decidedly more upbeat.

The Slapstick Cometh

2008-03-22T00:53:00.005-04:00

Coming this Monday...

If you loved my focus on Speedball...

You'll absolutely kill yourself over...

SLAPSTICK WEEK.

It's, uh, funnier than it looks. Really.

Friday Night Fights: Business as Usual

2008-03-21T19:18:00.008-04:00

There is only one thing that can put the fear of god into the dreaded Doctor Doom (and simultaneously turn on the ladies)...

The might of Speedball, of course. What were you expecting?

Bahlactus, of course, fears neither god nor man.

Introducing the Blue Devil

2008-03-19T22:43:00.054-04:00

I think it should be apparent by now that I have a love for the obscure, the unappreciated, and - well, the crap. My favorite comic characters are, in order: Jack Knight, Vic Sage, Ted Kord, Booster Gold, and Speedball - B-level heroes, at best. I also have a soft spot for Shade, the Changing Man - the original, not the Vertigo remake, The Phantom Stranger, The Creeper, and Captain Atom. I am the Justice League International of comic fans.

Given that, it should come as no surprise that Blue Devil has managed to capture my heart as well, in concept alone, without me even having to read one issue of his solo series. I'll admit to reading the latest series to feature appearances by the blue man, the recent Shadowpact, but all the magic bullshit going on in that title doesn't allow me to keep my interest up long enough to even bother to read the issues in order. Although I will say that I have totally fallen in love with Warlock's Daughter - so I keep reading. Don't judge my standards.

What you say? You don't know who Blue Devil is? Poppycock! Surely, you've seen his masterful cameos on Justice League Unlimited? Certainly, you have his one and only action figure displayed proudly on your desk as you read this, inspiring your own dreams of writing high-caliber, yet woefully under-appreciated, comics?

Well, I guess it is a bit silly to assume that everyone is as cultured as I am. After all, I wouldn't be writing this if you did devour every Blue Devil appearance voraciously, because I'm sure that DC would not let a darling character, even a B-lister, escape exploitation for long. Look at Ted Kord, for instance - fucker had to die before we rallied around him. Which reminds me: Dan Didio, you do remember that I've called dibs on Blue Devil: Year One, right? Are we still on for lunch? You never return my calls.

If you do know who Blue Devil is, then you might have only seen him in the pages of Shadowpact. If you enjoy that fine publication, (and I do realize that I am speaking to, perhaps, one person who fits that criteria), then you might be surprised to know that his original form was more - uh, artificial than it is now.

Blue Devil, created by Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn in 1984 as one of the last new heroes to be introduced before the shit hit the fan in Crisis on Infinite Earths, tells the story of Daniel Cassidy, a stunt man who was working on the set of the movie Blue Devil near the ruins of an ancient temple in a remote jungle. When two of his cast-mates decide that there's nothing safer than to go rummaging through a building that's adorned with demon skulls and enough pointy ends to put out an eye just by looking at it, they awake an honest-to-goodness demon who proceeds to tear ass all over the place until Cassidy uses his Blue Devil suit - which has been outfitted with servos and other assorted goodies that increase his strength and stamina - to put the bitch down for the count. Unfortunately, the demon got a chance to zap Cassidy with a bolt of magic, "fusing" the powered suit to our powder-blue hero. When a villain named "Shockwave" (according to the cover of Blue Devil #2, "he likes to break things") leaves his apartment building in ruins while looking for some "super-kryptonite", Cassidy is reluctantly cast into the role of hero when the police mistake him for a new super-powered defender - and are stupid enough to yell it within earshot of the villain, putting Cassidy in immediate danger. Once the "Blue Devil" defeats Shockwave, he begins his quest to find a way to separate himself from his invention, calling on the likes of Superman, Zatanna, and S.T.A.R. Labs, and facing unexpected challenges when the producers of the Blue Devil movie move to sue him for using their trademarked image and name.

What's really interesting about Blue Devil's origins is that it was originally made up as a pitch for Steve Ditko to draw. According to part of an interview that was published in Back Issue magazine that was posted on the forums of Comicon.com:

We decided to do something that takes something from every Marvel character we ever loved. Let’s take Iron Man, the guy in the costume; the Thing, the tragedy of the guy stuck in a shape he didn’t want; and a light-hearted, bouncy approach and a character who was going to move like Spider-Man.

And we wanted something like the Green Goblin. How about Blue Devil? We called him that because Dan’s wife is from North Carolina and he was a [Duke University] Blue Devils fan. Then we started creating Blue Devil and thinking, “Ditko is going to love this!” We created this great proposal, and it was everything that we knew was going to set Ditko’s light on high beam. We took it in to Manak and he gave it to Ditko. Ditko looked at it and said, “I’ll do it if I have to, but this is really not my kind of stuff at all.”

Knowing Ditko's personal philosophy, I'm not surprised he didn't want to do it: anything with magic or demons wasn't of interest to him at that point. If you look at all of the things he did in the 1980's, you'll see that there's a lot of science fiction, but nothing that was supernaturally inclined - Speedball, Static, ROM, etc.. This is confirmed over at Occasional Superheroine, where Valerie D'Orazio recounts how Ditko wouldn't draw a story for Batman: Black & White for exactly that reason. C'mon guys, a little bit of research and a little change to the Blue guy's origins, and we coulda had a Ditko Blue Devil!

But, alas, that is not how things went. Now, don't get me wrong; I said I liked Blue Devil and I do, but that's despite the supernatural elements. I think that stories which use magic as a device will always get mired in logical difficulties, and they tend to be quite cheap int heir execution - the late Arthur C. Clarke liked to say that sufficiently advanced technology was indistinguishable from magic, but I prefer to think that sufficiently contrived magic is indistinguishable from coincidence - that is, magic will usually present itself in whatever form is necessary, and doesn't have a clear identity. It can be whatever the writer wants it to be at a certain time, whereas Science Fiction technology may be fantastic, it is still limited: a transporter can only function in the ways that the creator has declared it to function - it cannot, for example, be used to make a smoothie unless it is modified considerably, and then it ceases to be a transporter. This, of course, does not apply to the U.S.S. Enterprise's deflector dish, which I have determined to have been brought into being using a lock of Spock's hair and a summoning circle - that shit is magic.

But I believe that any "magical" conceits can be overcome by making other elements of the story even more fantastic. A well-developed character can overcome even the dumbest of plot devices, and, luckily, Blue Devil is just interesting enough to make you forget that he's only there because DC accepted the "it's magic, it doesn't have to make sense" defense.

The concept was interesting enough that DC brushed aside the Ditko rebuff and handed it off to up-and-coming artist Paris Cullins, who would go on to provide art for much of the Blue Beetle series in 1986 (this series featured Ted Kord, a Steve Ditko creation, thus proving that the comics industry is actually a creative time loop).

But before he would grace our comic store shelves in the first issue of his own series, Daniel Patrick "Blue Devil" Cassidy was introduced to comic fans in a 16-page preview that came bundled into Fury of Firestorm #24.

With the clunky title of "The Costume Makes the Man? Man! What a Costume!" the Blue Devil preview takes place before he's been made the victim of demonic hoo-doo and concerns the villainous Trickster's attempts to steal Cassidy's power suit before he's finished adding all the different bells and whistles to it. The Trickster's motivations don't seem to go beyond "he's built something that I couldn't," but for a 15-page comic, I suppose it's enough.

So Trickster heads over to "Vernor Brothers Studios" to steal the suit straight from the set, only to discover that the suit's out and about on the lot during a promotional photo-shoot. Unfortunately, no one's bothered to fax over the memo that explains that the suit's just a mock-up, and the actor wearing it isn't Cassidy, but the star of the Blue Devil movie, Wayne Tarrant. Wayne was roped into the job through the standard Hollywood method: first, stroke the actor's ego through begging.

When that doesn't work, tell him he's worthless and threaten to shit-can him.

It's a bit like the Kubler-Ross model, but the only thing that's dead is your dignity.

Once alerted to the problem, Cassidy decides that the suit has enough gadgets to be able to hold its own against a man whose trademarks include striped pants and pointy shoes, and hops aboard his ~~magical broomstick~~ rocket trident to chase the freak down.

What ensues is a beautiful ballet of two special-effects geeks trying to out-nerd each other with their frivolous applications of technology. Soon enough, though, Cassidy's had enough with that shit, and rushes the Trickster. You'd think ol' James Jesse would have some experience with a man running straight at him, since he is a member of the Flash's Rogues' Gallery, but maybe it's just that he's not used to Superheroes who don't give him time to pull a new trick out of his bag when they're busy mouthing off at him. That'll be a bit of a trademark with Blue Devil over the first few issues: he don't take, nor talk, no guff. He's got things to do, man.

The fight teaches Cassidy that his suit isn't anywhere near as powerful as it needs to be, and returns to his lair to begin modifications. So, congratulations, Trickster: you have inadvertently made sure that Daniel Cassidy gets trapped in a form that could - and will - kick your ass.

The Blue Devil series lasted through 1986 and ended up with 31 pretty fun issues - so he was more successful than Blue Beetle or Booster Gold, but he wasn't quite a Captain Atom. Once his series was canceled, he was turned into a stupid git who made a deal with the devil to became a famous movie star in the Underworld Unleashed miniseries in 1995, and in so doing, became an actual demon somehow.

Hey, shit happens.

Today, you can see Blue Devil regularly in the Shadowpact series, but it's not very good, and doesn't let the Phantom Stranger actually do anything, so I don't know if you'd go for that. Buy the trades, at any rate, and see if it's up your alley.

Blue Filler

2008-03-19T22:08:00.006-04:00

I'm working on a post about Blue Devil. It's running longer than I thought it would. So in lieu of something substantial, please enjoy this barely-Comics-Code-Approved dialog from Blue Devil #4:

Look at the glee on Superman's face.

"Its origin and purpose, still a total mystery..."

2008-03-18T23:37:00.003-04:00

The last of the Big Three is dead: Arthur C. Clarke, author of 2001 and many other stories, died in Sri Lanka today (or tomorrow, I guess, considering time zones) at the age of 90.

Who will pick up the SF mantle?

"If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative."

(photo from http://www.nndb.com/people/725/000023656/)

A Musical Interlude

2008-03-18T00:00:00.000-04:00

Just Warming Up the Portfolio For DC

2008-03-16T14:40:00.004-04:00

Chris Sims challenges the internet to write a Brave and the Bold plot via Mad Lib, and who am I to refuse an activity with so much possibility for disaster?

C'mon, everybody! Join in the fun!

Friday Night Fights: Speedball vs. The Future

2008-03-14T20:13:00.004-04:00

Dear great and erudite sage Bahlactus,

Will kicking ass in the future be filled with as much Speedball as it was in the past?

Thanks, buddy. That's a load off my mind.

(Bahlactus the Great gets all of his predictions straight from the future via Spider-girl #15)

The One Where I Mistakenly Indulge in Culture: Mosh Pit on Disney

2008-03-13T22:59:00.003-04:00

Without a doubt, this has been one of the worst - if not the oddest - listening experiences of my life. I hesitate to call it the absolute worst, because I'm sure that there's still plenty of CDs being produced and sold by professional wrestlers, ex-soap-opera-stars, Fiona Apple, and that one guy whose only job was to hold that mirror up for Morris Day, that I have yet to, err, appreciate as such. But after you've heard the first track on the inspired "Mosh Pit on Disney," an inexplicable medley of Japanese persons (and one robot?) yelling out the title of the album, you can at least guarantee it a spot on your "what were they thinking?" list.

Released in Japan in 2004, Mosh Pit on Disney features both English and Japanese artists giving their interpretations of famous tunes from Disney's toons.

The first track (that would be Track 2, after the "intro") is oddly enjoyable, and even strangely relevant: Andrew WK gives us his piano-laden rendition of "The Mickey Mouse Club March." Hey, if you like Andrew WK, you'll like this one, because it sounds exactly like every other song he's ever performed - except that he was presumably forbidden, by an executive with great foresight, from using the word "party" in any capacity. Be warned, though: if you didn't feel the compulsion to "mosh" along with WK on this one, you should probably put the CD away now, because "Mickey Mouse Club March" is the only track that ever comes close to being "mosh pit worthy."

It's all down hill from here, as the next track is a take on Aladdin's "Whole New World" by the Japanese band, Low IQ 01. The singer apparently lacks the ability to pronouce "R's" and "L's" correctly, and the song descends into an incomprehensible mess. The song is further hindered by the artists' choice of making the first half of the song take inspiration from Muzak, and the second half a partially-chewed "All-American Rejects" demo.

Speaking of the Rejects, they make an appearance on this album, too: Track 14 has their take on "When You Wish Upon a Star," which they manage to turn into a deleted scene from "High School Musical." The resulting song is so cheerfully saccharine, it makes a can of frosting look like a healthy lifestyle choice.

It doesn't all look like the aftermath of an attack from Godzilla's radioactive breath: some of it was just stepped on a little. "The Main Street Electrical Parade" sounds pretty good (at least until the kazoo breaks in), as does the ska-like, synthesizer-filled version of "Someday My Prince Will Come," which is probably because neither of these tracks include any vocals. Even Smashmouth, forever in need of another paycheck from a cartoon character, puts in a smooth and catchy version of The Jungle Book's "I Want to Be Like You," a re-imagining that seems at once appropriate, but also vaguely disturbing.

There are some artists who are noticeably absent, and who would have increased the "mosh" factor: what, Marilyn Manson, king of the cover song (and someone who can actually achieve what might be called a well-done cover), couldn't find the time to record "Hakuna Matata?" I really would have liked to hear Children of Bodom take a crack at "So This is Love?"

While you're waiting for the release of Mosh Pit on Disney Volume 2, you can purchase Mosh Pit on Disney at Amazon.com. There were two versions released by Walt Disney Records: the original CD, and a special box-set including a key chain, figurine, and stickers. Both editions feature the same tracks, and both will leave you scratching your head in bewilderment: do the Japanese really thrash around to Smashmouth and The All-American Rejects, or do they just think that we do?

Descent Into Darkness, Part 2: It's Just a Mess

2008-03-12T21:37:00.002-04:00

In 1998, the WWF was at the height of its popularity, and there were no depths that were too low too dredge in the organization's efforts to promote itself. It was a time of hastily arranged licensing deals that resulted in some truly terrible products - and comic books, being comic books, were not spared from "The Monday Night Wars." Mankind got his own one-shot issue, which we can be thankful didn't get any further than that. We weren't so lucky when it came to other "superstars," like the Undertaker: he was the star of his own ten-issue series. I looked at #0 in a previous post (Part One of my "series"). Tonight, I'll be subjecting myself - and you, gentle reader - to Undertaker #1.

To recap: the Undertaker is actually a demon from Hell who's supposed to be the rightful ruler of Hell's prison, "Stygian." The only problem is that he was ousted form the position somehow, and now he has to fight a ponytailed Gen-X-er named "The Embalmer" and a corpulent fellow named Paul Bearer to secure his power over a freakin' prison in Hell. To paraphrase a movie slogan, "No matter who wins, they lose."

To be honest, I'm not really sure how everything works in this "universe." We've got Hell, and I'm pretty sure that should work like what I'm familiar with: piss god off, go to Hell. Pretty simple to understand, but it gets fuzzy once someone tries to apply earthly concepts to very unearthly planes. How the hell can Hell have a prison? Who would be in Stygian? What does death mean if you just get sent to Hell, which appears to be easier to get out of than a wet, bullet-riddled paper bag?

A more important theological matter, though, is of course:

Why is there a wrestling ring in Hell?

And it's played in all seriousness, folks. There's no rolling eyes, or tongues-in-cheeks. We're completely expected to believe that Satan likes to watch a little Sports Entertainment while chilling after a long day of raping Stalin with a pineapple.

But these questions were with us with Undertaker #0, and they will be with us right on through to #10. So, you know - don't try to think about them too much.

A bit of the old prose (ending in an egregious failure to use an ellipsis properly) elaborates on the story seen so far: the Embalmer, the Undertaker, and Paul Bearer are actually seeking out three books of – OF DEATH (Bwa ha ha). Perhaps sensing that the job as warden of Hell’s prison was not quite incentive enough to get the Undertaker fightin’ demons every month, the writers have clarified the matter by specifying that whoever holds the three books – OF DEATH – will not only own Stygian, but also have access to a whole slew of “~~unimaginative~~ unimaginable destructive powers.” The Undertaker has the third book in the series, the Embalmer holds the first, and no one knows who has the second, so I’m hoping that a future issue segues into scenes of ‘Taker and the Embalmer hopping from a quaint used book store in the village to an Antiques Road Show meeting to find it, perhaps with its ultimate acquisition relying on a light-hearted convoluted trading sequence.

Our issue begins with an internal monologue by the Dead Man himself, spoken as he beats the living hell out of your everyday, garden-variety demon: half HR Giger, half “Invasion” alien. In our last issue, we learned that the Undertaker was ousted from his position as chief demon of Stygian, so what he’s doing here corralling an “escaped demon” is beyond my ability to rationalize. This demon is apparently working for the Embalmer, who has the power to create portals to – uh, wherever the hell the Undertaker is at the moment.

Deadpool’s subconscious (re:caption boxes) tells us that it is prophesized that the Undertaker will take possession of the three books – OF DEATH. So, no problem, right? It’s in the prophecy, which means that all ‘Taker needs to do now his sit back and wait for the books to come to him. For all of my griping about The Dark is Rising, I have to give the author this: she knows what a prophecy is. All the kid in that book had to do was hang around long enough, and the shit would all fall into place. That’s what prophecies are: things that are destined to happen. So I don’t see why the Undertaker is even going to look for the books, since he knows that it is destiny for him to be the ruler of Stygian.

Of course, we wouldn’t have a riveting story if we just had 24 pages of the Dead Man eating chips while waiting for the Embalmer to impale himself on his own sword, so despite the clear meaning of the term PROPHECY, we still have to put up with this dreck for the next – oh, 9 issues. Of course, we still don’t get a riveting story, but that’s another point altogether.

The Embalmer, the Big Bad (well, Badder) of the series, is actually a regular old man whose mother named him with foresight: the moniker describes his “mastery of the art he was most proficient” – butchered English aside, I think that means that he was a professional who actually embalmed corpses, but by the looks of the art, he doesn't seem very good at it:

Isn’t the whole point of embalming to preserve the dead? I believe that stripping the flesh from their bones might be a little bit counter-productive in that effort.

Embalmy somehow found a way to open a portal to Stygian, and in a similarly vague fashion – somehow - overthrew the ruler of the place at the time. Given the indications from last issue, I thought that was the Undertaker, but continuity was always a suckers’ game anyway.

Jump to the present: while the Undertaker whines about finding the books again – just in case we forgot what the McGuffin was after, you know, putting the comic book down a few weeks ago in disgust, and finally coming back to it today – the Embalmer speaks to the Dead Man’s unfortunate victim from the beginning of this issue in his office. Like all good villains these days, the Embalmer has somehow managed to acquire a large corporation, despite not showing one ounce of business acumen. The demon’s tail was cut off when the Embalmer closed the portal on him after the Undertaker grabbed the appendage, and he can’t shut up about it. In a bit of dialogue that was supposed to show the Embalmer’s callousness and disregard for his minions, he tells the demon to suck it up, imploring him to “grow another [tail]... or three, or four,” he doesn’t care. It actually just comes across as weird, since the demon wouldn’t be bitching about his tail if he could just grow another one in an instant. He also demands that the demon call him “Augustus Slayer” while in the mortal realm. It’s probably just for kicks, since it can’t be to remain inconspicuous.

A lot of this issue is just repetition, repetition, repetition – the Phenom likes to remind us every few pages or so that he would really like to get his books, and that he’s destined to be the ruler of Stygian, while the Embalmer likes to sit on his ass and talk about ruling Stygian while the Undertaker beats the crap out of the same interchangeable goons.

Undertaker #1 ends with a 7-page wrestling match with a nobody who calls himself “Mezzmor.” The strange thing is that while the ring begins to resemble some sort of Hell-scape, Mezzmore does not take on the appearance of a demon - which, according to the laws set forth in Undertaker #0, he should when in the presence of the Undertaker. So either Mezzmor isn’t really a demon – which is going to create problems for the WWF’s lawyers, since ‘Taker manages to liquefy him during the fight – or Vince McMahon has been investing in some really strange ring equipment. This one has talking turnbuckles that constantly attempt to eat Mezzmor, screaming about “meat” and “soup.” It’s one of the many aspects of this comic that prove that Chaos! was just throwing whatever popped into their heads onto the page, hoping it’d stick. It’s not cool, it’s confusing: we still have no reason why the wrestling ring is necessary for battling demons other than “whim,” and now we don’t even know if we’re in Hell or if the mere proximity of the Undertaker causes the ring to appear to be made out of dead things. And you want to know something else? I bet the ring’s completely different in Undertaker #2. There is no commitment to internal logic or consistency with this thing.

The last splash page reveals Paul Bearer behaving in a vaguely threatening manner, and it looks like he’s clutching one of the books – OF DEATH – or maybe it’s a just an ordinary book-book, I don’t know how these things are supposed to look. It doesn’t matter. He won’t do anything of any consequence in the next issue, anyway.

Although the strange, often nonsensical comics of previous eras seem quaint today, I can assure you that this one will only be regarded as terrible, terrible, and terrible to future scholars and masochists.

Hey! They actually published a trade of this bilge. A second volume was also produced, and is available at Amazon.com here. Click on the links to make a questionable purchase today!

The J'onn J'onzz Patented Ten-Step System to Recovery from Addiction

2008-03-06T22:11:00.023-05:00

1 - Admit that you are powerless over your addiction, and that your life has become unmanageable.

2 - Accept that a power greater than yourself can lead you back to sanity.

3 - Turn your will over to that power.

4 - Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself.

5 - Admit the exact nature of your wrongs.

6 - Be ready to have your higher power remove your defects of character.
7 - Humbly ask the power to remove those shortcomings.

8 - Make a list of all the persons you have harmed, and make plans to make amends to them all.

Even if they had it coming.

9 - Make direct amends to such people, except when doing so would do harm to them or others.

10 - Continue to take personal inventory in the future, and promptly admit when you're wrong.

NOTE: Your results may vary.

(Chances of Program success increases if taken in conjunction with Martian Manhunter #24, administered by Drs. John Ostrander and Doug Mahnke)

A Descent Into Darkness: A Review of Chaos! Comics's "Undertaker" Series, Part 1

2008-03-05T20:05:00.047-05:00

On Monday, I reflected upon the influence that Professional Wrestling circa 1997 had on the types of storytelling that a younger me enjoyed, and I also looked at a product of that "Attitude" era, Chaos! (damn you, exclamation mark!) Comics's one-shot "Mankind" comic book. Tonight I'll look at a character who was a little bit better suited toward comic-bookification (or "adaptation," if you're into the use of real words), and one whose stories intrigue me to this day: The Undertaker.

First, I think it's important that you get a little background on the character. Sure, I could refer you to the Wikipedia article, but it's always more fun to hear history from someone who's particularly passionate about it - which I, a little embarrassingly, still am.

The Undertaker was created at a time when gimmicks were still the bread and butter of Sports Entertainment, then called "Professional Wrestling." Performers didn't just have personalities, they had costumes - they were like real-life superheroes (or villains). And like superheroes, some of them had super powers. The Undertaker is one of the few wrestlers who've had their gimmicks survive the "Attitude" era, which re-envisioned wrestling as "Sports Entertainment," giving it the feel of a "Soap Opera for Men" that leaned more on realism and sly insider references than on larger-than-life characters. Today, if a character does get a more colorful gimmick to work with, it'll be played for laughs (see "Hurricane" Helms). The Undertaker, except for a brief period from 2001-2004, was a gimmick that thrived, despite what was going on around it. He could resurrect himself. He had an army of "druids" who would occasional hold torches for him. And he could, sometimes, shoot bolts of lightning. He was also not averse to trying to bury you alive.

The Undertaker was introduced at Survivor Series 1990 as a mystery partner for Ted "Million Dollar Man" Dibiase's "Million Dollar Team." He was originally named "Kane, the Undertaker," and was yet to be accompanied by long-time ally Paul Bearer, but the basic facets of his character - stoicism, propensity to speak in a gravelly-toned pseudo-biblical gravitas, and the tendency to finish off his foes by performing a "Tombstone" piledriver - were all there.

Soon after his first appearance, he split from Dibiase and began to appear on "The Funeral Parlor," a talk-show segment with his new manager, Paul Bearer. During this time, Paul Bearer carried an urn with him that seemed to have something to do with the Undertaker's ability to totally beat the snot out of everyone he fought. Bearer would hold the urn up at ringside when the Undertaker was in trouble, and the "Phenom" would sit up and proceed to kick ass.

The Undertaker would also bring a real, honest-to-goodness casket down to the ring during big matches, like the one with the infamous Ultimate Warrior. This led to the creation of 'Taker's specialty: the Casket Match, in which the winner was decided by whichever poor bastard got locked in a coffin brought to ringside. The most famous of these, at Royal Rumble 1994, was against the man known as Yokozuna, a character with a Sumo-wrestler gimmick, which involved the creation of a specially-designed coffin big enough to hold the reportedly 500-lb. man. In the end, the Undertaker would end up being shoved in instead, ganged-up on by a multitude of other wrestlers, who only managed to get the Dead Man to stay down when somebody knocked over his urn, and a cloud of nasty green shit came pouring forth. It would take more than a locked box to hold the Phenom, though, and his "soul" would float up from the casket after the match, determined to return at a later date.

Fast-forward to 1997, and the WWF is bigger than it's ever been, forced into that position by the "Monday Night Wars" with rival promotion WCW. Enter Kane, no longer a name owned by the Dead Man, but given to his eeeevil masked brother:

Kane was forced to wear the mask after being horribly scarred in the fire that destroyed The Undertaker's family's funeral home as a child, although he doesn't seem terribly bothered by it nowadays. After a convoluted series of slow-building clues, including broken Grim Reaper statues, graveyard desecrations, and mustache-less Paul Bearers, Kane showed up after 'Taker's "Hell in a Cell" match against Shawn Michaels at the "Badd Blood" Pay-per-view exhibiting nearly all of the "powers" of everyone's favorite deadman, but with a twist - he could seemingly control fire to an extent, setting people and things aflame at will (which culminated in an hilarious bit where he and his brother tried one-upping each other by firing bolts of lightning at various parts of the arena, which included quite a few hapless event employees). Soon after his arrival, he allied himself with the Undertaker, but then turned on him once more, locking him in his own casket and setting it on fire. The Undertaker was apparently "dead" for real this time.

That is until he returned, this time sporting a few new tricks: he tried to "Crucify" several people, and began prophesizing the coming of a "Plague of Evil." This is the era of the Undertaker that these comics were published under. It was also the downright most awesome thing the WWF/WWE has ever done. Although the Undertaker would go on to form the Ministry of Darkness, using giant flaming t-shaped symbols to scare the crap out of Vince McMahon, these events are not chronicled within the Undertaker comic book.

These issues, therefore, suck. Unequivocally.

I just thought you might like to know that. Hell, if you read my last review of a wrestling based comic, the aforementioned Mankind, you already know that, most of the time, the adaptation is very different from the source material. This one, though, at least acknowledges that the Undertaker is a wrestler, and so he should probably be seen wrestling at some point. This shall be the only place where Chaos! (ugh) Comics will not disappoint.

Believe it or not, The Undertaker actually had a longer run than I thought it did - it ran for 10 issues, and since Chaos! Comics didn't seem to realize that the comic book industry was in a bit of a slump in 1999, there were more variant covers than an X-Men mag. There was also a Halloween Special which I haven't been able to track down, and the god of your choice only knows what fantastically terrible goodies are in that one.

Tonight, I'll be looking at the only logical place to start our journey into unforgivable travesty. Actually, the logical place to start would be #1, so there's some well-laid plans already ruined. Looks like we're riding bitch with illogic for this one, which is quite serendipitous, as that's exactly what Chaos! (JESUS CHRIST, SHOOT ME NOW) Comics specializes in. We will begin our journey with Undertaker #0.

Alright: I've stalled this long enough already, let's get this shit over with.

Luckily for you, this one's more of a preview book - it's only 12 pages, instead of the usual 24 or so.

Undertaker #0 was one of those Wizard give-away dealies, a promotional item that was supposed to interest readers enough to actually shell out $2.95 ($4.58 for us poor Canadians) for issue #1. And, hey, bonus: the art isn't quite as ugly as it was in Mankind.

#0, written by Beau Smith and penciled by Manny Clark, sets the stage for the conflict to follow by revealing that the Undertaker is actually the ruler of some place called Stygian, which is either an owl, the River Styx, or a heavy metal band from Langhorne, Pennsylvania. Oh wait, he actually says it's "Hell's prison." So I guess it's a mix of all three.

Wow. Hell's prison. I thought Hell was a prison, in a way. Even so, why would you want to be the warden of a bunch of demons? Whatever floats your boat, I guess.

Apparently, there's a war being fought for control of Stygian - why, hell, who knows? The important part to know is that when you go to watch a wrestling match, you're really watching two demons duking it out for control of a prison in hell.

Yup.

You think you're seeing this:

But what you're really seeing is this:

Yikes. But also, huh? If you were a demon-thing, would you choose to fight over the most important real-estate in the underworld in a dark alley, perhaps while brandishing a sharp, stabby object - or would you choose to participate in semi-staged events within a limited, yet open, space, surrounded by thousands of people, and under a set of confining rules that include "no biting?"

You win this round, irrationality.

Anyway, one of those handsome fellers up there is fighting on behalf of a guy called The Embalmer. We'll learn more about him in #1. The other guy is fighting for the aforementioned Paul Bearer. Both are players in the war to control the inexplicably valuable Stygian.

The Undertaker doesn't like his demons taking time off to wrestle, though, and so he comes to the ring to send 'em back to his prison - which means that these demons are fighting to stay out of Stygian by fighting for two guys who want to own Stygian. Hm.

You've got to give it to Beau Smith, he's done his research: WWF referees are completely ineffectual, even in the Chaos! universe:

That'll teach 'em, Earl.

Okay, maybe not.

When I first read that, I thought he was saying "WAUUGH!" I thought maybe the author of The Loved One had some sort of unexplained grudge against him. Another opportunity for a spin-off wasted! It's these kind of short-sighted decisions that bankrupted this company in 2002.

There's not much else happening in this issue other than an atrociously bloody beat-down that the Undertaker lays on the two demons. He manages to send them back to Stygian by giving them piledrivers, which is a lesson that all priests should take to heart when performing any upcoming exorcisms.

The Embalmer shows up, looking somewhat less than dangerous:

and slightly more Gen-X than I expected. He is an inspiration, though - he was able to bed two women, even while insisting on watching wrestling afterward. He is a hero to us all.

Kane even shows up, but whose side he's on is left as a mystery for now - although we can reasonably assume that it ain't gonna be 'Taker's.

So there's not a lot to chew on in this one, but it does have me dreading the next.

After all, any comic where the fate of Hell rests on a "sport" with arbitrarily defined rules which are infrequently enforced can't certainly be good, can it?

Sorry

2008-03-04T22:01:00.002-05:00

I really am.

Have a Nice Day: Mankind Saves the Dispossessed

2008-03-03T20:16:00.037-05:00

When I was a kid, around the age of ten or eleven, there were two types of fiction that had me enthralled: one was Star Trek, a nostalgic remnant from even earlier in my childhood. The other was professional wrestling.

Don't snicker at me. The period from 1996-1999 was the second renaissance of wrestling; the "Attitude Era." It was mostly the product of Vince Russo, who was a story-telling genius when he was tempered by editors and Vince McMahon, but a complete idiot when he went unsupervised in Eric Bischoff's WCW. This period saw the rise of Undertaker's unstoppable and evil brother, Kane, who seemed to have a supernatural control of fire. There was the mighty Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Mr. McMahon epic. And we were also treated to the aforementioned Undertaker abducting wrestlers and turning them into his minions for a stable called the "Ministry of Darkness," whose heinous deeds included chanting lines from movies in Celtic, and "crucifying" other wrestlers on a totally wicked "Taker symbol:"

The "Ministry" story enthralled me, but I could never be as cool as the Undertaker was. I was shy, overweight, and socially awkward (I know, I know - a guy who blogs about comics, wrestling, and Star Trek possessing these qualities is simply unheard of). So I couldn't identify with the awesome power of the Lord of Darkness, nor could I possess the bad-assery of that other pillar of "sports entertainment," the beer-swilling, uncompromising, disrespecting Stone Cold Steve Austin. Nope, there was only one character that I felt entirely comfortable playing, and I did it to the hilt:

Mankind.

He was insane, pitiable, and not only did he profess to love pain, but actually proved that he did. For somebody raised in the public school system, there wasn't any other character easier to portray than Mick Foley's old sad-sack in a mask.

And I wasn't the only one who felt the same way. The oafish Mankind, a second incarnation of the persona that was a bit chunkier and funnier than Foley's previous take on the character, became a marketing smash. His catch phrase, "Have a Nice Day," was shouted all over the school yard, while his initially one-off sock puppet friend, Mr. Socko, was recreated faithfully by your's truly.

But don't take my testimony: take Choas! (yes - their company's name has an exclamation mark in it) Comics'! The Mankind character was one of the few that was shoe-horned into a terrible line of WWF comics in 1999, along with The Undertaker (whose series also featured Kane and Paul Bearer). You'd think that if you wanted to make a comic about a man-child with a fetish for agony, you'd try for something, you know, funny. But the Chaos! Comics guys were too smart to fall for that attempt at mediocrity and predictability - they read Rob Liefeld's stuff, they knew what comics were, and that was grim 'n' gritty. Thus, we got this:

Oh boy. He's a friendly fellow, isn't he?

This train-wreck can be blamed on writer Steven Grant and penciller Jerry Beck (whose illustrious career would continue with such titles as Insane Clown Posse). Think I'm being unnecessarily harsh? That's because you haven't read this thing.

It doesn't even wait to start pissing off the English majors. On Page 1, right at the top, we're treated to this little introduction to the Mankind character:

The WWF's Mankind may not lool like a force to be reckoned with, but don't let that fool you. As many of his opponents in the WWF ring have found out, Mankind can one minute be as docile as a child and the next as vicious as any professional wrestler out there.

This story takes Mankind out of the squared circle and pits him against insurmountable odds.Though all he's really looking for is a place to call home!

Oy, my syntax.

Mankind's adventure begins as he comes flying out of nowhere to kick the crap out of some inconsequential muscle who are hassling the homeless population of - err, a park somewhere. It doesn't start off all that badly to be honest with you. The first page gives zero indication that it's going to be a period of your life wasted, forever gone and irreclaimable. Of course, that's before Mankind's entrance:

Errrrrr - what?

The tough guys are unreasonably calm about the whole "man in half a mask and a tie coming screaming out of the darkness" scenario, because they respond in full sentences punctuated with periods. The difference between the art and the dialog is quite jarring, as the men look like they should be shouting, but there's nary an exclamation mark in sight.

After a couple of pages of scaring the bejeesus out of the mysterious attackers (one's sporting an eye-patch, so I'm going with "pirates" on this one), Mankind arbitrarily exclaims to his pal, Mr. Socko, that he's crashin' in the park with the homeless. Why they're homeless we never find out, so I guess we're just supposed to be on their side without questioning why.

A side note: I don't think I have ever seen seen uglier art. Ick. Look at the guy at the right picking his honker with his crucifix:

My gawd. That's sickening.

None of this makes any sense. Mankind is supposedly a professional wrestler in the Chaos! (ugh) universe, but he's just bumming it with the homeless? Even the jobbers get paycheques, man. Plus, what about travelling?

But all that's small potatoes compared to the hideousness of the rest of the book. Page 7 introduces us to the man who's called the "hit" on the homeless, the Mayor of Unnamed City. He's discussing "business" with a man who only wants to be known as "the Director," which should be a dead give-away that he's evil. He talks about "subjects" and "research," so now we know that he's also an evil scientist. So he's going to be rounding up drifters like that guy from Doctor Who. Remember, kids - PETA only cares if you experiment on animals.

The mayor's complained that simply getting the police to evict the squatters from the park would be a "public relations nightmare," so he opts for the Director's less visible methods: sending a squad of helicopters to shower the park in poison gas and abduct them for experimentation. Because nothing says "subtle" like having people knocked out and dragged away from a public place by a flock of black helicopters. I mean, really, it happens everyday in Toronto, and nobody bats an eyelash. Although when we abduct our panhandlers, we have the good sense to give 'em free booze and cigarettes for their troubles.

Once the filthy hobos are all rounded up, they're taken to the Director's evil lair. It turns out that this isn't just an ordinary mad scientist. He's doing it to save the human race from a coming "cataclysm," so the homeless should be grateful that they're being sacrificed for the greater good. Can I get Stock Action Character Number 3 please?

Ahh, where would the villainous geniuses of the world be without the person that calls him a bastard and reminds him that he'll never get away with whatever he's doing? If she wasn't there, he'd have no one to be condescending toward. As a bonus, she also fulfills the "pathos through loss of a child" role nicely.

Meanwhile, Mankind has been locked in a cell on his own, while the other prisoners have been, I presume, allowed to wonder around in a big open pen. Keep that part in mind for later.

The Director reminds one his henchmen - whom I have dubbed "The Amazing Beard" for his facial hair's propensity toward having parts of it appear and disappear at random - that every government in the world is backing his research to create the ultimate soldier - which flies in the face of his earlier statement that he was trying to save the human race from extinction. I thought maybe he was lying to his prisoners, but then, what purpose would that serve? Nobody's going to willingly allow themselves to be experimented on by a madman who had them kidnapped, even if it'll save everyone else. You'd have to be even more insane than the WWF licensing commitee that approved this dreck. Besides, there's more proof that "the Director" is just insane when he states near the end of this issue that he's above the "selfishness" that causes the homeless to actually value their lives to a certain extent. You know, because building super-soldiers by treating other people like animals for hire isn't irrationally self-absorbed at all.

Plus, he believes that Mankind is a "missing link" in his research. So I guess he's aiming to make 300 lb. psychos who look forward to dying.

Our - err, hero, I guess, proceeds to knock himself silly in an attempt to escape from his cell. This prompts the Amazing Beard to intervene, along with two guards who are immediately overwhelmed by the masked maniac. Throughout the fight, Mankind spouts some "one-liners" that can't even qualify as humorous non sequitors. For example: "You put me through hell! And all I got was this lousy t-shirt!" Chuckle, everyone, chuckle.

Remember how I told you how the prisoners were all just kind of kept in a big room, and not locked up anywhere? Well, that comes into play now, when the guards are distracted by Mankind, which allows the transients to "escape."

To stop the rampaging idiot, the Director tells another henchman (or the same one, I can't tell with this artwork) to use "Brute Force," which is not a legitimate strategy, but rather the too-fucking-cute name for a tag-team of gigantic soldiers created by the director, named "Brute" and "Force." Brute is on the left, which the blond crew cut, and Force is the baldy on the right with the soulless eyes.

So, the Director already has some super-soldiers. Why does he need a bunch of skinny, hungry, badly-drawn homeless people, then? It makes even less sense when you find out that the first person he's experimenting on is a little girl.

Brute and Force proceed to kick the crap out of Mankind, and they win, and everyone can breathe a sigh of relief and stop reading.

Oh, wait. There are six more pages of this thing. I must have been day-dreaming again. Sorry.

Mankind manages to electrocute Force, thus:

Mmmm, Beefy? Yup, those folks like me who had wasted part of their Monday nights by watching wrestling will remember the time that Chef Boyardee's slogan was indeed "Mmmm! Beefy!" and, surprise, surprise, Mick Foley, in his Mankind persona, was the spokesman on commercials during broadcasts of Monday Night Raw.

Mankind manages to work his way into the Director's operating theater, hijacking the stretcher that the aforementioned little girl was placed on prior to the Director preparing to operate on her. Now, that just seems kind of silly to me. If I was going to cut somebody open, I sure as hell wouldn't be doing it with her still on a bed with friggin' wheels. That's just bad form. Unless it's a race car bed.

Anyway, Mankind is taking this stretcher for a spin, and actually gets Brute to push him out of a window - and remember, this stretcher still has an unconscious little girl on it - and plummets a couple of stories to Brute's death.

But don't worry, kids - your ol' pal Mankind's still alive, ready and willing to provide you with enough nightmare fuel to last through years of therapy!

The Director faces one final indignity when Mankind shoves his sock-covered hand into his mouth, killing him through the magic of professional wrestling.

And then the hobos kick him out of the tribe.

The end.

So, to recap, what we've got here is a wrestling comic book that throws away most of the wrestler's character, opting to Flanderize him instead, and includes approximately zero pages of wrestling. Everything that I loved about the WWE at that time, and Mankind, is absolutely nowhere to be found.

Maybe I'll have better luck with the Undertaker mini-series.

Friday Night Fights: Plain, Simple Foom

2008-02-29T21:32:00.007-05:00

Tonight on Friday Night Fights:

Just a nice, simple, Speedball-delivered FOOM. (from Speedball: The Masked Marvel #7)

More fooms, fangs, and even fings are delivered to you hot and fresh every Friday night, care of Bahlactus.

The Real Reason Behind Batman's Falling Out With Superman

2008-02-28T22:47:00.003-05:00

Supes told Green Arrow about this immediately after he left. What a jerk.

(More fun from DC Realworlds: The Return of the Justice League!)

The Realworld: DCU

2008-02-27T19:18:00.013-05:00

In 2000, DC released four one-shot graphic novels called "Realworlds,"stories that looked at ways that the DC characters affected the lives of people in the “real world” – our world. Sort of. See, it still isn’t our world because all of the stories are fictional, but they’re set in our world – there’s no real superheroes, no magic, no time travel, and no supernatural powers.

Four books were released: a Batman, a Superman, a Wonder Woman and a Justice League.

The Batman story sees a mentally-challenged man, Charlie, have trouble separating fiction from reality when he pretends to be Batman in a story set around the premiere of the Tim Burton Batman movie in 1989. Up until this point, the only version of Batman that he’s familiar with is the Adam West TV show, so Batman’s a real hoot for him. Of course, an interesting parallel is drawn when Charlie encounters his old “Robin,” and she’s fallen into drugs and crime. His once-happy childhood must come fact-to-face with the reality of modern life, and so too must his happy, campy Batman "mature:" once Charlie sees the new Batman movie, he starts to adopt aspects of that persona – the dark, “grim ‘n’ gritty," “mean” Batman that has guns on the Batplane. Thus. he goes from care-free crime-fighter into dour avenger. But things are once again set right in the world when Charlie gets beaten up by a bunch of hoods, and it’s the people who befriended the “old,” fun, and friendly Bat-Charlie who come to his aid.

The Superman book is somewhat less inspirational. Eddie is a mild-mannered grocery clerk who crosses a couple of toughs in the fifties, who then proceed to get him drunk and tattoo a giant “Superman” symbol on his chest. Eager to get revenge, Eddie is arrested while breaking into the leader's apartment, and spends the next two years in jail. During his stay, though, he starts to believe that his “S” tat is symbolic of more than his inability to defend himself, and ends up running the local crime syndicate once he’s paroled. His new, stony exterior is broken when he a few kids he tries to scare into obedience see the tattoo as the symbol that they’re familiar with – truth, justice, and acts of kindness. What Eddie fails to see is that you don’t have to be an unemotional dickwad to be tough, and thus his new Superman mindset must come into conflict with his criminal life. When he fails to silence a man who’s to testify in front of a grand jury because he doesn’t want the man’s son to see Superman beat up his pop, the rest of the gang decides to take him out, beating him senseless. The aforementioned son of the man who’s to testify finds him and brings him into his basement, where his father keeps him safe – at least, until he testifies, where it’ll be easy for the police to find him. Not content to sit around and wait for arrest, Eddie goes out looking for revenge once more, but manages to stop a drive-by shooting that would’ve killed the informer by throwing himself at their car. Earning redemption, Eddie “dies,” to be reborn in witness protection as Ted Carson, until he dies of a heart attack while helping children in LA.

The Wonder Woman story – I was never able to track down. The Comic Book Database, however, tells me that it was about a woman who plays Wonder Woman in the movies, and that one’s a little too obvious for my tastes; I like the indirect, tangential qualities of the stories featuring Batman, Superman, and the best book to come out of this series, the Justice League.

“The Justice League Returns,” by J.M. DeMatteis and G.L. Barr, sees four friends being invited out by their billionaire buddy during Halloween, 1999, to relive their youth spent playing “Justice League.” He sends them out in New York City, all expenses paid, with costumes of their respective superheroes: soon-to-be-divorced, disenchanted Michael Riley becomes Superman; plastic-surgery-playgirl and lawyer Karen Steuben relives her Wonder Woman days; down-on-his-luck, also divorced, comedian Nick “The Stick” Dimarco is Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man; and TV producer and asshole Richard Barrison dons the cowl and becomes the Caped Crusader, Batman. Their billionaire host, Bernard “Barnyard” Epstein, disillusioned with his role as a powerful corporate titan, can’t see himself as a hero anymore, and throws out his childhood alter-ego, The Atom, in favor of the villainous Despero.

Every one of the friends has become entirely disenchanted with life, believing that they’re wasting their time, just trying to keep death at bay for another day. In short, they’ve become pessimistic old farts. Richard gets through the pointless days watching I Love Lucy reruns. Nick seems to have lost his only shot at a comfortable life when he was fired from a sitcom, and now suffers from a “terrible disease” that he believes will kill him in a few years. Karen had plastic surgery to make up for what she believed to be ugliness, but still spends her days playing a character, engaging in wanton sex and frivolity, but tearing up when she confesses to Michael that love is the “only thing that gives life any substance” – quite a confession when you can see that she’s eschewed all of that, preferring to follow the mantra of "style over substance."

Bernard has sent them out on a journey through the streets of New York in their costumes, getting them to “play” again until they reach Yankee Stadium, where, in a “Wonderful Life” moment, Despero/Bernard shows them the good that they’ve done with their lives, and all that their days playing “Justice League” has taught them. Although Richard’s a grade-A asshole, he’s created a show that’s optimistic and gives people hope for the future; Michael’s students say he’s turned their lives around; Nick makes people laugh when their own lives seem like crap; Karen works with battered women and helps kids on the weekends – the only person that’s excluded is Bernard himself, so I’ll fix that by mentioning the lives he’s improved with – well, whatever it is that his company makes.

Bernard helps them to remember what they once believed they would do, and that, although things may not have worked out to the point where Karen’s swingin’ around a magical lasso and Michael’s saving Lois Lane from Brainiac’s machinations, they’ve made the world all the better for what they did do.

There is perhaps a bit of creepiness in the book, as Nick, playing Ralph Dibny, is frequently referred to not “living much longer:” once in childhood, and then when he’s an adult when Bernard tells the group that Nick has a double-hernia – which, Nick points out, could kill him if he doesn’t get treatment, which he can’t afford. Although these were printed in 2000, which raises doubts that the DC staff were in the know that far in advance of Ralph's death in 52, it is a little unsettling.

"The Return of the Justice League" is nicely done – it’s a bit of self-congratulation for DC, and helpful for those who despair that they haven’t “done” anything with their lives. What those people forget is that they’ve done plenty simply by living their lives, that pursuing their goals and values have rippled outward to attain the maximum benefit to the maximum number of people. The businessman, like Bernard, makes products available easily and cheaply when he seeks to make money. The comedian, Nick, provides entertainment, allowing people to forget about their problems for a few hours a night. The lawyer, Karen, makes enough money that her weekends can be spent helping those who do not deserve their fate; the kids whose parents died or the wives who were abused. The producer, Richard, inspires people, like DC has through the Justice League, to create a future like that portrayed in his TV show, where ability is rewarded and justice is served without deference to skin color or sex. And the teacher, Michael, trains others to achieve their goals, to ripple out in turn to touch all other lives.

Inspiring stuff.

And The dialog is pure DeMatteis – it felt like I was reading “Justice League International” all over again. In fact, there were places where I almost considered Michael, the Superman, to be closer to a Ted Kord. There's even a few "Bwa-ha-ha"s to be had.

Anyway, "The Return of the Justice League" is great stuff, so if you can find it, give this curiosity a spin. There's a few used copies at Amazon, so get 'em while you can.

Bioshock'd

2008-02-25T23:00:00.007-05:00

I got around to playing Bioshock this weekend - I mean the whole weekend for the whole game, start to finish.

In Bioshock, you portray the character Jack in a first-person shooter set in a would-be undersea community featuring the best and brightest of humanity being genetically altered and going absolutely batshit. Supposedly inspired by Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, the game tries to make use of her individualistic, capitalistic philosophy as a basis of the city, but it gets mired among the need to tell a creepy, interesting story.

This game troubles me on quite a few levels.

One of those levels is actually something I was expecting, and hoping to be troubled by: the atmosphere. The game is dark without making you blind, and the scares come from the eeriness of the surroundings, as opposed to the "jump scares" of, say, a Resident Evil, or Condemned. Take the Spider Splicers, for example:

These fuckers do that freaky Exorcist-walk - on the ceiling. Not to mention that they come screaming out at you like bloody lunatics, leaving you trying to kill them while flailing around a Tommy-Gun with all the accuracy of a National Enquirer article.

It only gets worse when Sander Cohen, a nutjob among nutjobs, encases a few of them in plaster - without checking to make sure they're dead first. The key to that particular scare is that the game gives you a moment to realize that something just ain't right, before the thing comes to life. It could have killed you without you even knowing it was there! Why the hell would it wait? That's just freaky.

Then there are the iconic creatures - you've probably seen them in trailers, or in preview art - the Big Daddies. Now, I know that I was supposed to find their charges, the Little Sisters, to be the freakier of the two, what with the "creepy kid rule" and all, but honestly - how can you not be frightened by a big, hulking thing that makes it's presence known with a haunting, whale-like bellow long before you see it, and taunts you by not attacking you unless you hit him first, despite the fact that he could slaughter you in a heartbeat? And to make matters worse - you pretty much have to kill it. It's perfectly content to refrain from bashing your head in, but ooooooohhhhhh noooooooo - the game requires you to piss the gentle giant off.

What also troubled me, though, are the story elements. As I mentioned previously, this game is supposed to have been inspired by "Galt's Gulch," a community of the world's most individual thinkers, artists, and industrialists in the novel Atlas Shrugged. It almost succeeds, but for a few flaws. For instance, how does our great founder of the city, Andrew Ryan (ho ho ho, what subtlety), build his city? "Galt's Gulch" is located on land that is owned by Midas Mulligan (I think - it's been a while), a banker now dealing exclusively with gold, and he sells pieces of the land to the others, like John Galt the engineer, and Ellis Wyatt the oil man. How does Ryan build his city? Rapture, as it is known, is built at the bottom of the ocean - but surely you can't buy a piece of the ocean? Wouldn't that mean Ryan is squatting? And Ryan also doesn't sell land to his residents, either - he sort of invites them in, tells them to pull up a chair, and provides them with all of their needs. Doesn't sound very individualistic to me.

Never mind the fact that Ryan has just seemed to let anyone into his city - Galt's Gulch residents had to make the difficult decision to abandon the world and give up successful businesses, legacies, and huge markets in order to gain access to Mulligan's city. They had to insist on freedom for everyone, or it was freedom for no one. The residents of Ryan's city seem to comprise the worst of the worst - including, as I shall soon discuss, a known mobster.

There's also the problem of trade - the game features Frank Fontaine, a mobster who also happened to be investing in genetic engineering. When scientists discover a sea slug that produces a substance similar to stem cells, he gets them to create ways to make people better, faster, stronger, smarter. And then he tries to take over Rapture. But doesn't he know anything about supply and demand? While he's providing people with the substance, known as ADAM, he's missing out on a whole other market! While a finite supply of ADAM could go for big bucks among a thousand people, demand would shoot way up once he had a market of five billion! He could hide out in Rapture while exporting the ADAM to the surface, eluding the authorities. You might argue that Rapture was supposed to be self-contained, and that contact with the surface was forbidden - but, like I mentioned above, you wouldn't need this rule if the residents actually considered the outside world to be corrupt and oppressive. And Fontaine, who quests to kill Ryan and take over the city, doesn't seem to be all too concerned about "rules," anyway.

And then we have to return to the Little Sisters. Why do they have to stalk the city, protected by the Big Daddies? Well, they do that in order to gather "ADAM" from the dead. I'm not really sure why it's only available from the dead, but let's just say that it is, and move on. Why don't the doctors just harvest it from the dead when those people are brought to the morgue? And, keeping in spirit with the capitalist spirit of the city, does the deceased body not belong to the family? Is it not their property, along anything of value that he has on him (or in him)? And if they have no family, then couldn't "the state" take possession of the ADAM, without a need for "Little Sisters?" It seems that Little Sisters would only be necessary after the city was strewn with corpses and abandoned.

But, aside form the problems of an inconsistent application of philosophy (or sense), the game is entertaining - to a point. The first few levels are fantastically engaging, but it becomes rote after you complete the "Fort Frolic" level. Nevertheless, I must still, half-heartedly, recommend Bioshock for your consumption.

Friday Night Fights: Speedball vs. A Beloved Children's Television Character

2008-02-22T21:17:00.009-05:00

And now, Speedball, the Masked Marvel, will have his face kicked in by Big Bird

...or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Your Friday Night Fight is brought to you by the letter BAHLACTUS.

LOLBats

2008-02-22T13:23:00.003-05:00

Migraines cause posts that no one can enjoy.

(original image from Newsarama)

Scientists Developing Cloaking Material, Light Still Can't Get Around Kirk's Gut

2008-02-20T00:38:00.002-05:00

From the Washington Post:

The nascent invisibility cloak now being tested ... is made of a material that bends light rays "backward," a weird phenomenon thought to be impossible just a few years ago.

Known as transformation optics, the phenomenon compels some wavelengths of light to flow around an object like water around a stone. As a result, things behind the object become visible while the object itself disappears from view.

"Cloaking is just the tip of the iceberg," said Vladimir Shalaev, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Purdue University and an expert in the fledgling field. "With transformation optics you can do many other tricks," perhaps including making things appear to be located where they are not and focusing massive amounts of energy on microscopic spots.

Did you notice how they described the stuff as a "Harry Potter" cloak of invisibility? Man, wasn't so long ago that the media would have thrown around "cloaking device," and made some kind of Star Trek reference. How far we Trekkies have fallen in the pop-culture landscape. They hardly ever even say "beam me up" anymore.

BONUS COMBO!!!

If you've ever wondered exactly what happened between the end of the original series of Star Trek and the movies that so drastically altered the - er, physiques of the cast...

...they introduced inter-stellar delivery.

The Transformed Man

2008-02-18T03:02:00.000-05:00

A-weema-weh, A-weema-weh, A-weema-weh, A-weema-weh, A-weema-weh, A-weema-weh, A-weema-weh, A-weema-weh, A-weema-weh, A-weema-weh, A-weema-weh, A-weema-weh, A-weema-weh, A-weema-weh, A-weema-weh -

In the Jungle,
the mighty jungle,
the lion sleeps tonight.
In the jungle,
the quiet jungle,
the lion sleeps tonight...

Near the village,
the peaceful village,
the lion sleeps tonight...
Near the village,
the quiet village,
the lion sleeps tonight...

Hush my darling,
don't fear my darling,
the lion sleeps tonight.
Hush my darling,
don't fear my darling,
the lion sleeps tonight...

(You can hear more from Jim Kirk's magnificent pipes in IDW's Star Trek: Year Four #6, written by David Tischman, with art by Gordon Purcell)

Judge Dredd vs. The Future: Up in Smoke

2008-02-17T23:47:00.001-05:00

1) I would like you to regard this image...

(image from here)

...and to note that the "Statue of Judgment" is much larger than the "Statue of Liberty." Ponder that while I ramble on.

2) Behold the Smokatorium:

...and the UK's sincere efforts to bring it about:

'£10 licence to smoke' proposed (from the BBC, HT: The London Fog)

And compare this panel...

...with the lofty thoughts emanating from our Canadian bureaucrats:

Ottawa to mark tobacco (The National Post)

More:

Anti-Smoking Paternalism: A Cancer on American Liberty (Capitalism Magazine)

Friday Night Fights: Speedball vs. The Malaprop

2008-02-15T18:25:00.000-05:00

It may not be Speedball Week any longer, but I still have those copies of Speedball: The Masked Marvel, and I still have a stake in Bahalctus's mighty test of skill and wit, Friday Night Fights. Thus, the only logical course of action is to keep documenting the all-out hoo-hah action that only Steve Ditko can provide:

Unfortunately, Steve's hoo-hah is completed negated by Roger Stern's jarring script error (or Jack Morelli's lettering goof):

Yar! Cap'n, thar be whales here!

Hey, hey - I know it sounds silly, but hey, everyone makes a mistake every once in a while. You don't have to be so harsh about it.

Especially when you're such a bonehead.

(Speedball faces his grammar demons in Speedball: The Masked Marvel #8)

"Hello Kitty" MMORPG, WTF?

2008-02-14T00:55:00.001-05:00

Brace yourselves, sports fans: The Hello Kitty MMO has gone into Beta.

Good crap. Hello Kitty gets an online world of her very own, while we SCI-FI/Comic geeks have to be forever deprived of our own worlds, like the Star Trek Online MMO (scuttled when the company went belly-up) and Marvel Universe MMO (killed because Marvel's afraid of competition)? The world makes no sense; the universe has gone all flip-flop-fiddle-faddle-foo.

Even though I'm mystified by the laws of our existence that could give rise to such a creation, I do wish the creators the best of luck with this venture. I just hope that the person who's been assigned to work on the game's dialog is not the same person who was charged with drafting the press release:

In addition to the standard MMORPG features such as customizable avatars, guilds, skill systems, and player economy, some of the outstanding Hello Kitty Online features include:

Unique game world: a persistent, beautifully designed environment where thousands of players and NPCs live, explore and quest in a magical world with real and imaginary zones such as the Flower Kingdom, Tokyo, Paris, Moscow...

The way it's worded makes it sound like players will encounter the mundane Flower Kingdom, while simultaneously being able to delight in the mind-bending weirdness that the fictional cities of Tokyo, Paris, and Moscow have to offer. Differentiate, guys!

But, I mean, hey - if anyone's actually, ahem, gotten into the beta - and I promise I won't tell the other guys - maybe you could let me know how it is? I'm wondering what you'd actually be able to do in such a game. Surely there can't be too much sword-swinging and adventuring going on, right? It's to satisfy my curiosity, obviously. I don't, you know, er...

It's Probably a Defense Mechanism: A Review of the Stargate Atlantis Episode, "Trio"

2008-02-09T21:27:00.000-05:00

The most recent episode of Stargate Atlantis continues to avoid building on any kind of an arc with episode 16 of the fourth season, “Trio,” in which Dr. Keller, Samantha Carter, and Rodney McKay all find themselves stuck in a hole. This is just about the third such episode this season, each involving Dr. Keller, so I’m guessing that she’s on some kind of fast-track to character development with the writers. The only thing I’ve learned about her so far, though, is that she’s terrible when put into a life-or-death situation, unless, as revealed in “Trio,” said situation involves bar games. So, if you’re ever captured by a Wraith with an affinity for beer pong, you’re going to want her right there with you. If, however, you are not in such an alcohol-fueled predicament, but instead find yourself a member of the opposite sex, you’re pretty much screwed: in her two out of three “locked room” episodes, Keller has ended up forming a tenuous and quickly forgotten quasi-sexual relationship with a crewmate. The earlier episode, “Quarantine,” showed us that when faced with danger and having her only plan fail terribly, she’s willing to let it all hang out and sex-up Ronon. In “Trio,” her failed “bar knife bridge” leads her to ask McKay out for a drink – an event that occurred after she was all too willing to strip for his failed plan of making a rope for his “grappling hook” out of shirts and pants. Given the evidence, I’m surprised that her earliest outing of this type, “Missing,” didn’t find her macking up Teyla, with whom she shared the spotlight of that episode. This may have just been common courtesy; after all, Teyla was involved with an Athosian man, and Keller did have the good sense to convince Rodney that he had inadvertently broken up with Dr. Brown in “Quarantine” before she began to shove her sweet thing all up in his grill.

Speaking of Keller’s past romantic interludes, there’s a part of me that wonders if this might be what sets Ronon down the “dark path” that Jason Mamoa talks about wanting to do in an interview with Gateworld.net. I know I’d be pissed if my lady was fooling around with David Hewlett behind my back. If I had a lady. And if I knew David Hewlett. And if me doing something counted as any kind of evidence for what Ronon would do.

Sexual relations aside, I was just bored with “Trio.” It was a character-building episode for a character that I don’t particularly care for, it didn’t advance any of the dangling stories from this season (was it just my imagination, or were we not promised that Season 4 would be “darker” than previous seasons? I hope they weren’t just talking about giving them leather jackets.), and there was no real sense of peril. Rodney’s clever bit of “Arena” engineering was fun, though, and I liked their little discussion about Zelenka. Poor guy just can’t catch a break.

The good? McKay fails, but isn’t made to be the complete cause of the team’s problems, so we don’t have to hate him.

The bad? Keller turns into a frightened field mouse when in danger.

The ugly? We’ve seen it all before.

Correction: We also know that Keller would rather do Brian Green than that thief, Neil deGrasse Tyson.

Stargate Atlantis Airs Fridays at 10PM on Sci-Fi.

A Public Service Announcement From Judge Death

2008-02-07T21:15:00.000-05:00

Remember kidsss... it isss importanttt to maintain properrr hygiene if you want ttto impresss the ladiesss.

I'm here to helllp.

Judge Dredd vs. The Future : The Crime Swoop

2008-02-06T19:08:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, an article in the Sunday Herald, which reported on Judge Dredd writer Alan Grant's dismay at realizing that the terrible future that he helped to design was coming true, prompted me to take a look through some of my stash of the Judge and comment on other bizarre aspects of Judge Dredd's world that seemed to be coming true.

Tonight, I'm going to start off simply with the method of "law" for which the Street Judges are known - indiscriminant, unwavering, devoid-of-context policing that never questions the wisdom of its application. Let's start with Crime Swoops:

As described by our helpful caption boxes, Crime Swoops are completely unwarranted, random searches carried out with extreme prejudice by the street judges. For the children.

This panel from 2000AD #341 is absolutely absurd when taken in context with the rest of the issue. On the streets of Meg-City 1 during the "Graveyard Shift" story (spanning the issues of 2000AD #338 - 344), entire apartment blocks shoot at each other across the street, sending out armies to wage literal war between neighbours. A judge is killed earlier in the arc, and it's treated as business as usual. There are countless stabbings and other murders. In fact, a caption box near the end of the story says

"On average... there are now 24 A.R.V.'s [Armed Robbery with Violence], 139 serious assaults, 5 murders, 0-09 classifiable riots, and 230 traffic offenses every minute.... 7 Judges have so far died in the line of duty [the night in which "Graveyard Shift" takes place]."

But Dredd has the cajones to say: "Reckon the rest of the block'll get the message," while the caption box elaborates: "Crime swoops are harsh, but effective. They serve to uncover much illegal activity and act as a positive deterrent to other potential lawbreakers." (emphasis mine) Yup, that's a real good application of "Broken Window" justice - those murdering gangs of youths will surely think twice after seeing the middle-aged neighbors taken in for three years on the illegal possession of Nutra-Sweet.

So, has society degenerated to such an extent that the police are using "Crime Sweeps" today? Just check out the following links:

- Assault victim arrested and stripped by police. (ClassicallyLiberal)
- Hard Knocks With No-Knock. (Reason Magazine)
- The Worst Mayor in America. (Reason Magazine)
- Man Tasered For Filming Warrantless Police Search. (LiveLeak)

They're even starting to dress the part:

- Peruvian Anti-Riot Police Uniforms Look Like Judge Dredd Meets Batman. (Gizmodo)

Although I'm sure that these modern problems pale in comparison to the kinds of things that were happening in, say, Nazi Germany, Medieval Europe, or the Soviet Union, we consider those societies as vastly different from our own: we still like to kid ourselves and believe that our governments still value freedom and individuality. Disagree with my assessment? Check out the current crop of political candidates that my neighbors to the south have to select from.

When you read one of my previous paragraphs, you may have scratched your head when I mentioned "three years for the possession of Nutra-Sweet." Anyone who has been keeping their eyes on the government's encroachment upon what we choose to indulge in may have been able to make the connection, though:

Forget the "unlicensed firearm" bit - that's been done to death, quite frankly. I want you to focus on the "Illegal possession of sugar." What? Now why would they go and make sugar illegal? I'm glad you asked, hypothetical reader. Why, indeed?

- teachers ordered to "police" children's lunch boxes. (Daily Mail)
- Stossel: Trans Fat Ban Is 'Nanny State' Intrusion. (ABC News)
- Greenpeace poisons hungry crowd. Or not? (Classically Liberal)
- Too fat to love a child? (Junkfood Science)

States the world over have been stricken with "obesity epidemic fever," and feel the need to carefully nurse their citizens to ensure that they put only approved, government-subsidized industry products in their mouths. To paraphrase the good Judge, "Freedom is not for the people."

And that's not all I've got. This Crime Sweep has been very lucrative, indeed!

Yes folks, failing to empty your trash bins can result in some sever fines. Just ask the British, the ironic creators of "Judge Dredd:"

- Britons angry over trash bin bugging. (The Arizona Republic)
- Cameras in Cans to Spill the Beans on Fly-tippers. (Times Online)

As the years separating us from the time of Judge Dredd dwindle away, our present becomes even more disturbingly like Dredd's. What other policies reflective of Mega City One have we stupidly allowed to be established? Come back next time, ladies and gents.

The Better Way

2008-02-05T14:55:00.000-05:00

Any of my fellow Torontonians know what kind of hell they're in for when they attempt to board a TTC vehicle: they're frequently late, always crowded, and stupidly designed. And, sometimes, they smell funny.

But no matter which city you're from, you should take some bit of comfort in knowing that there'll always be somewhere even worse:

...and you know what that means, gentlemen and the ladies! It means that Blackmarket Pies has, unlike our unlucky commuters, rejoined the land of the living! Judge Dredd vs. The Future week finally kicks off in grand style tomorrow, and I'd be remiss if I failed to mention that missing such an occasion could, quite possibly, spell your doom.

(the Dark Judges and other problems with publicly-funded mass transportation systems can be further explored in the source of today's images, 2000AD #420.)

Technically Difficult

2008-01-30T14:06:00.000-05:00

"Judge Dredd Week" will have to be post-poned for now, kiddies - Uncle Computo caught himself a mean case of the "I-don't-want-to-work-I-just-want-to-screw-with-Michael-all-days,"and has been knoecked out of commission for now. I don't know when I'll be back up and running, but I thought it'd be a courtesy to let everyone know what's going on. Or what's not going on, which is my PC.

Bastard.

I am the Law

2008-01-28T23:05:00.000-05:00

Way back when I was in the third grade, the city of Toronto and its outlying bureaus had come together to form a more easily manipulated, controlling, unaccountable, sprawling monolith that would be known as Toronto, Canada's only city with a lop-sided flag. More accurately, actually, the referendum to "amalgamate" the cities was held when I was in the third grade, and, of course, I had no idea what this had actually meant. I saw posters that opposed the move and beseeched you, the voter, to do the same, and the general rhetoric was that this was an undesirable thing. And undesirable things, as you well know, get burdened with undesirable nicknames - emotional nicknames that hinge on the public's perception that "big things" are automatically "bad things." Nicknames like "Megacity."

Oh boy.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy, did that make my little third-grader mind race. After all, the only other place I had encountered the term "Megacity" was the movie that had captured my heart the previous summer: Judge Dredd.

Now, a lot of people hate this movie, because it's not really Judge Dredd, is it? No, it's just another big budget, dumb, Hollywood action movie. But I loved it. Of course, I also ended up loving The Rock and Con-Air, so you probably shouldn't be e-mailing me for Oscar recommendations. But, gimme a break, will ya? I was, what, 7 years old? It was enough for a movie to have a barrage of bullets and a really scary villain to put my butt in front of the TV.

Naturally, when a fellow student, probably just as ignorant as I, asked me what I thought about the "Megacity" plan, I gave him my opinion of Judge Dredd. Of course I was against the Megacity. I mean, "street judges" blowing up someone's car for illegal parking? The absence of fair trials? Sylvester Stallone as an authority figure? No thank you, sir.

Despite the almost universal revulsion it engenders with critics and fans of the Judge, a bit of movie-specific parlance had seeped into the vernacular. And it was Orwellian, too - the term was meant to evoke images of Judge Dredd's Megacities, huge metropolises of bureaucratic corruption and lawlessness; it was meant to convince people to vote on an important issue not by using their brains, but by using their feelings. Double-plus good, yum yum.

By sheer luck, the phrase had become ironic - by using the appeal to emotion to guide policy, a word associated with a dystopia used the methods of a dystopia to try to keep the status quo. the plan failed, though, and today, I live in the glorious city of Toronto, and I live to serve.

Following an article in the Sunday Herald, in which Judge Dredd writer Alan Grant discussed the growing similarities between Judge Dredd's world and our's, I began to wonder - in what other ways did "Judge Dredd" inspire aspiring non-thinkers? How many concepts from this famous British comic book series, not the movie, had been seamlessly integrated into our societies, without us even recognizing that it had happened?

I'll be looking through some Judge Dredd comics this week and making comparisons, hoping that it isn't all bad. But if it wasn't, then I wouldn't have any blog-fodder, now would I?

Friday Night Fights: Speedball vs. A God Among Men

2008-01-25T20:41:00.000-05:00

No, not Bahlactus, but the man whose very tears bring hope to the enfeebled: the one, the only, Chick Harris - in All-Out Hoo-Hah Action!

Hey, Chick Harris!

What time is it?

Wait. Two seconds 'til what?

(Chick Harris can outlast the expiry date of every meme on the internet, as proven in Speedball: The Masked Marvel #3)

Speedball vs. The Comics Code

2008-01-24T20:22:00.000-05:00

Please don't finish that sentence.

The alliterative and - erm, other - talents of Leaper Logan are to be found in Speedball: The Masked Marvel #3, pencils and plot by Steve Ditko, script by Roger Stern, Leaper Logan's outfit by Mel Brooks, apparently.

EDIT: Neilalien.com was kind enough to alert people to my earlier post, sending a ton of readers my way. Why don't you return the favor?

Speedball vs. The War on Crime, Part 2

2008-01-23T23:36:00.000-05:00

In my last post, I looked at the disproportionate number of villains that Speedball had allowed to succumb to their ultimate fate. Well, one reader might get the feeling that the editors at Marvel way back in 1989 noticed this, too, because it wouldn't be until Speedball: The Masked Marvel #10 that Robbie Baldwin would kill again.

Perhaps sensing that the death of the Speedball solo series was near, Steve Ditko let it all hang out with Robbie's Baldwin's murder spree in the final issue of Speedball's solo series.

By #10, the "Alex Bow murder" arc was tied up with the arrest of Dorian and his boss, Nathan Boder, but there was still the earlier problem of Robbie Baldwin's effort to catch Niels, the bouncing cat who could hold the key to ridding himself of the Speedball powers. Although that problem occupies a good portion of #10, the animal theme is exploited more prominently in the "A-plot" story of Clyde and the giant pig.

Clyde has helped to create a formula that will increase an animal's size to epic proportions, although we're given the impression that it was actually his partner, Dr. Rarque, who had done most of the work. Clyde is a man who only cares about becoming famous for the discovery, while Rarque is more concerned with the momentousness of his achievement, even musing that it may be the key to ending world hunger!

When the funding for the project is pulled after the pig is barbecued while trashing the lab, Clyde decides to take over for the mentally reduced Dr. Rarque and strike out on his own - illegally and in secret. He works out of an old barn, and dumps his failures in a swamp on the property. he runs into trouble when the local media begins sniffing around when his dumping spawns a giant chicken, leading to a typically-Ditko portrayal of the news media:

But you didn't come here to read my essays on Ditko-tropes, now did you? No, you came here to see hardcore violence against all of mother Earth's creatures, and Speedball likes to oblige.

The experiments lead Robbie to fear that the increased scrutiny of scientists that has resulted from the Franken-chicken incident will lead to the discovery of Niels, and more importantly, of his own abilities. He decides to get to the bottom of things so that the media will have a specific target, rather than blaming all scientists of misconduct.

His first victims are the giant ants that appear on Clyde's "farm."

I'm really surprised there aren't more of them. I mean, ants usually live in greater numbers than a couple, right? Anyway, Robbie Baldwin uses one ant to beat the other to death, and then moves on up the food chain:

To tell you the truth, I don't really care that Robbie's out there killing giant animals. They did, after all, try to kill him first. I just thought that it was a little inappropriate for the writer - in this case it was probably more Jo Duffy's fault, who 's credited with the "script" - to portray Speedball as thinking "I hope he dies!" I mean, they are more subtle ways to get that across, Jo.

Although, I can't really blame him, either. It is a giant, motherfuckin' snake.

When Robbie finally confronts Clyde, the two are interrupted by...

A BIG, FAT RAT!

Let's have a big round of applause for the immortal dialog of Jo Duffy, folks. She's earned it.

As I've drawn attention to previously, Speedball does not like rats. Hates them, in fact. Hates them enough to spew faux-tough-guy dialog like "Eat hot lead, rat!"

With two exclamation marks, no less. Yes, Speedball, the Masked Marvel, superhero, goes Punisher all over that rat's ass by shooting it in the mouth. No clever escape? No use of Robbie's kinetic powers to beat him to death with himself? A gun is your answer? Anyone can use a gun, Steve! Guns aren't exciting - unless they're, I don't know, rail guns or mini-guns or something.

And, look:
Clyde's dead, too. Of course, he was actually killed by his own abomination, so I guess we shouldn't feel too sorry for him. But, man - how many people do you have to see die before your reaction is "Gosh, that guy is dead?" He's not even shaken up over it. He doesn't even rationalize it with, "Well, that's what you get for being irresponsible." It's just, "Meh. Death. B.F.D."

Like I said, I don't have a problem with Robbie Baldwin fighting, or even killing, animals - I just think it could be a little less explicit. Maybe the ants lie there motionless, Robbie gives off a few good "wa-hoos," and we're lead to believe they're dead without anyone having to actually say it. I'm just a bit squeamish about my superheroes intentionally killing something, you know? Their first duty should be to justice - they don't have to save them, I just don't see the value in killing them.

Speedball vs. The War on Crime

2008-01-22T19:59:00.000-05:00

Speedball didn't exactly have the most impressive Rogues' Gallery. He fought a man in a rat mask who was trying to shoot cats, once. His main antagonist was actually Niels, a cat who was caught in the same "experiment gone awry" that turned Robbie Baldwin into Speedball. Speedball hoped to catch Niels and then - I don't know, use his mastery of science to figure out how to get rid of his kinetic powers.

None of his enemies really posed a believable threat to Robbie Baldwin, but for a kid who's only ability is bouncing off the walls whenever somebody hits him real hard, he racked up quite the impressive kill-count. Only Golden Age Batman could match the rate at which Robbie Baldwin was knockin' off scum-bags.

Speedball: The Masked Marvel only ran for 10 issues, but that was enough for Baldwin, a man who would soon lose his shit over indirectly causing the death of 600 civilians when a bad-guy went nuclear, to put a disproportionate number of evil men in their graves.

Speedball doesn't wait, either: he gets started right off the bat, in Speedball: The Masked Marvel #1. In Speedball's origin story, a group of masked crooks set out to rob the Hammond Research Lab of Springdale, Connecticut, where young Robbie Baldwin has been employed as the weekend (and, evidently, night) office bitch. After the accident that turns him into Speedball, Baldwin heads to the roof of the lab to hide his condition, and encounters the thieves trying to enter from the top. After a short fight which serves as a showcase for Baldwin's new-found kinetic powers, the thieves are pursued in their getaway van by the police, who waste no time in delivering justice:

Springdale justice.

Sure, that one was the fault of the police more than it was Speedball's, but if Speedball hadn't been there, they probably would have gotten away scot-free - and alive. Now, don't get me wrong - I hardly sympathize with the crooks, here. I'm just saying that there's very little difference between criminals crashing their van in an effort to get away, and Nitro blowing up a couple city blocks in an effort to kill the New Warriors during Civil War. The criminals are responsible for the deaths, Robbie, not Speedball. They became guilty when they chose a life of crime.

But let's move on, shall we?

Remorseless Kill Number 2:

In Speedball: The Masked Marvel #2, a man called Foxworth has stolen the "magnetic glue" formula from Dr. Sol Haven (which just screams "Steve Ditko named me"), and murdered him in an attempt to steal the files necessary to gain legal ownership of the discovery. If you've read Ditko's "Question" stories for Charlton, or his independent "Static" series, then this villain will sound familiar to you - he's the parasite who couldn't come up with an idea on his own, so he steals one to acquire fame and fortune. Too bad these types of villains are typically nothing without their stolen technology.

Dr. Benson, Robbie's boss at the Hammond Lab, just happens to be sending the very files that Foxworth is looking for back to Haven, so he sends Robbie to deliver them. When Foxworth has his lackey take the files and push Baldwin down the stairs in an attempt to kill him, his kinetic powers kick in and he sets out to kick Foxworth's mooching ass. Tracking him to an old button factory (Springdale used to be the button-making capital of the world until China liberalized it's economy - true fact), Foxworth gets the upper-hand by using his goo-suit to stick to anything Robbie throws at him - including Robbie himself!

Alas, Robbie is smarter than he looks - and realizes that without the suit, Foxworth is nothing. So he takes his helmet off.

And with that, Robbie Baldwin has now achieved the prerequisite number of kills to become a double-o agent.

As an aside, I want to mention that this would have been a great recurring villain for Robbie - Speedball is essentially rubber, and Foxworth has a suit that's essentially glue. The concept is little too limited to provide for any real variety in their encounters, but Foxworth is the only villain in the short-lived series to ever really give Robbie any trouble at all.

To recap: we've now seen two issues of Speedball, and it's 2 for 2 when it comes to featuring stories where the criminals pay the ultimate price. How many more filthy criminals will bite the dust in the next 8 issues of Speedball: The Masked Marvel? Tune in tomorrow for Part 2!

Speedball vs. Committment

2008-01-18T21:40:00.000-05:00

You know what? Let's make next week Speedball week. I've been sitting on these issues of Speedball: The Masked Marvel, and the plan was to take all of my Friday Night Fights entries from the scant material available in the 10 issues of that series. But I think Robbie Baldwin deserves a look back at what he was before hurricane Quesada swept through and turned him into this:

But you shouldn't worry about Penance sticking around for too much longer, Speedball fans. After all, Robbie Baldwin had already tried something similar to this way back in Speedball: The Masked Marvel #9, and it was met with - well, limited success:

"...and maybe I'll get some piercings! Yeah! And a tattoo! That'll show 'em! Oh man, they are gonna totally wish they never blamed me for Stamford!"

Friday Night Fights: Speedball vs. Dorian

2008-01-18T21:13:00.000-05:00

Friday Night Fights - Knockout!!! forges on despite my absence from last week's bout, and Blackmarket Pies continues the effort to rename it Friday Night Fights - All Speedball Rumble by bringing you the type of kinetic smack down that only Robbie Baldwin and Steve Ditko can provide. From Speedball: The Masked Marvel #9, Speedball tussles with Dorian, seen here taking out his anger on the funny pages:

My momma always told me to stay away from boys like that. With their big guns and fast cars, you're only going to get hurt.

Unless, of course, you hurt them first.

Why don't you go out with a nice boy, like Bahlactus? Now there's a gentleman you can take home to momma.

Identity Crisis

2008-01-18T09:10:00.000-05:00

Hey, you guys, look! Squirrel Girl gets a new costume in Wolverine: Origins #21, apparently:

At least, I'm sure that's Squirrel Girl. I mean, it can't actually be Wolverine or anything because that would be some terrible, terrible art right there if that were the case. She looks a little like Ayn Rand, actually.

Buzz Buzz

2008-01-16T21:08:00.000-05:00

Let's play a round of "Drop the Context," courtesy of Action Comics #265:

No! That means that little yellow box is full of deadly, Africanized bees! Stop, drop, and roll, Lois!

The box does "buzz" without a need for batteries, though, and Lois knows a good deal when she sees one:
Because sometimes Superman isn't readily available.

Man, I love the Silver Age.

Geoff Johns Writes Comics Just For Me

2008-01-13T19:32:00.000-05:00

Proof?

That is a page from Booster Gold #6 that features the Dan Garret Blue Beetle; the Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle; a Blue Beetle from the future; Booster Gold; Batman; Sherlock Holmes; the Elongated Man; Jack MOTHERFUCKING Knight; and just to put the exclamation point on it, the Steve Ditko version of Shade, the Changing Man.

EDIT, January 14: Oh yeah, and did I mention that they're all going to go bring Ted Kord back to life?

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the greatest man alive:

Headlines that Piss Me Off

2008-01-09T07:22:00.000-05:00

Bam! Ziff! Ka-Powie! I'm sure I don't need to point out what's completely unpalatable about this unfortunate article:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/84531

Can we let that show rest, guys? Can we just bury Adam West, already?

Too Easy

2008-01-06T22:48:00.000-05:00

http://www.toynewsi.com/news.php?catid=242&itemid=12279

You'll be much happier when you realize that your whole life has been nothing but an illusion, really.

Friday Night Fights: Speedball vs. Rat

2008-01-04T21:37:00.000-05:00

When you have a big pest problem...

you need a big...

wait, what? A gun? You don't seriously mean...

Well, that's not very sporting. I know one man who would never stoop to using a gun - Bahlactus. True fact, brother.

(from Speedball #10, plotted and drawn by Steve "armed and dangerous" Ditko )
(I have yet, by the way, to see an Essential Speedball book, Marvel. You might want to get started on that.)

Comics That Have Pissed Me Off, Issue 2: The Conclusion to Spider-man's "One More Day" Series

2008-01-04T13:05:00.000-05:00

Ahh, The Amazing Spider-man #545 - how many angry blog entries have you inspired so far? How many fatwas have been called on the head of Joe Quesada in response to your birth? How does the comics blogsophere hate thee? Let me count the ways...

Perhaps because the Marvel universe attempts to shoe-horn Superheroes into "real life," their comics seem to have the biggest and most annoying logical flaws for me. The last "comic that pissed me off" was Fantastic Four #244, and, oddly enough, was written by fan-favorite writer John Byrne. I say "oddly," because the next comic that pissed me off enough to write about was The Amazing Spider-man #545, which was also written by a fan-favorite - in this case, J. Michael Straczynski.

Just for full disclosure, I'm going to tell you that I'm not a big fan of JMS. His apparent "star power," though, did not have any effect on my opinion of the comic, so it's really a moot point. Really.

Oh, yeah - and I'm not going to dwell on continuity issues. I couldn't care less about them, really. I'm going to be focusing on the spirit of this comic, the black hole where Spider-man's soul used to reside. So grab your own copy of The Amazing Spider-man #545 and follow along!

I'm sure you guys all know the score by now: the latest story arc for Spider-man, "One More Day" has Peter Parker and a now pregnant Mary Jane Parker making a literal deal with the devil so that Peter can bring his dead aunt, that stalwart Aunt May, back to the realm of the living.

Well, that just pissed me off right there. Spider-man's greatest contribution to the world has always been the line "With great power, comes great responsibility." Now, whether it was Steve Ditko who coined the phrase, or the ever incorrigible Stan Lee, it doesn't matter for the moment (but it will, oh yes it will, matter in the future). What matters is that this maxim has always guided Peter Parker, you friendly neighbourhood Spider-man, through all of his adventures. It drove him to become Spider-man, to use his powers to ensure that criminals did not get away without justice being served, and it was probably the impetus for his unmasking during Civil War, as well. For Peter Parker to suddenly believe that he doesn't have to live with the consequences of his unmasking - that is, to be responsible for his actions - is completely out of character, in as far as I understand our arachnid-inspired hero.

But, I'll give Marvel the benefit of the doubt on this one - Peter's been through a lot of shit recently. He might not be thinking straight due to all the stress put on him in the last two years of weird spider-cocoons, bone-spikes, organic webshooters, and a gaudy-as-all-hell costume designed for him by the architect of the most mis-guided act of congress the world has ever seen.

Okay, so the whole regretful Spider-man story can be attributed to the need for character conflict. Granted, it's a conflict that Spider-man should be able to resolve fairly quickly if he's consistent in any way with his principles, but it might have made for an interesting story.

It's just too bad that it didn't.

Peter doesn't win this conflict: he loses to his new-found ability to completely ignore reality. Rather than deal with the consequences of his decision, he chooses to erase it from history. What the fuck kind of character is this? s this a guy we can look up to at all, anymore? Whine whine whine, actions actually have consequences, but I don't want to deal with them right now, I want to live in a fantasy world where my 250-year-old Aunt never ever dies.

It could have been very interesting to see how Peter dealt with the death (the real, absolutely final death) of Aunt May. You could have explored the character even further than he has been, and you didn't need to give him any "human/spider totem" connections to do it. And if your goal was really to dissolve the marriage between Mary Jane and Peter, for whatever whimsical reason that you profess to have about people not relating to a married superhero despite the fact that the majority of your readers are between the ages of 20 and 30, then you could have continued from there: have Peter dwell on whether or not he really was responsible for May's death. Have him realize, eventually, that he can't control every psychotic sniper in existence. But between those two events, have his brooding take it's toll on MJ - maybe Peter becomes over-protective, which would definitely chafe against her. Then you can have MJ leave and never come back. Or you could stop pussy-footing around and kill MJ, and accept the fact that people are going to be sending you email filled copiously with the phrase "women in refrigerators." Even FUCKING MIND-CONTROL OR A CLONE would have made for a better story than this bullshit.

Real people either get over their problems or dwell on them, they do not have them magically dissolved. For Marvel Comics to even pretend that their heroes are different from other companies because they're more "real" is a vile fraud.

JMS is as guilty as Quesada on this one, I'm afraid. In a post over at Newsarama, he states quite plainly that he wanted to undo continuity all the way back to 1971 - which is essentially what was done anyway. He has absolutely no concern for the fact that this would be Peter Parker completely avoiding dealing with the consequences for his actions. What the hell, Joe? I saw a couple episodes of Babylon 5, I know you're big on things "mattering" in the universe, that actions have consequences that resonate years down the road and aren't simply forgotten, like on Star Trek TNG. Heck, that fifth season episode of The Real Ghostbusters that you wrote even dealt with repairing continuity issues! Why would you wuss out now?

And the most hilarious part of all of this is that it's being done with motherfucking Spider-man, a creation of the legendarily uncompromising Steve Ditko! Steve never would have agreed to this bullshit. If Aunt May gets shot and dies because Spider-man unmasks, you know what Steve says? Good, it'll teach him something.

First of all, it's not Spider-man's fault that some retard with a sniper rifle wanted to take him out and someone else got in the way. Aunt May was killed because someone didn't like that Spider-man was a hero, that he wouldn't let those who want to ignore reality and take it easy in life get ahead by parasitically sucking off of the lives of the honourable. He knew it was a possibility that someone might strike back against his family (that's why he wore the mask, after all), he weighed the options, and he knew that Spider-man giving up and conceding that the super-villains of the Marvel Universe could have run of the place was a much worse outcome. If Spider-man stopped being Spider-man just to keep his family safe, even then they wouldn't have been - how many crazies run around New York on any given day in the Marvel Universe? What are the odds that Aunt May was going to be taken out by one of them just by whim? You can't ignore evil; when it is finished with its current victim, it's coming after someone else.

Speaking of crazies killing Spider-man's family members: what about Gwen Stacy? Killed directly because of the actions of Spider-man by the Green Goblin, Spider-man did not give up the pursuit of justice as a result. Spider-man did not wallow in his pain and attempt to undo the past. Yes, he mourned. But it only strengthened his resolve. Spider-man didn't kill Gwen Stacy by being good - Green Goblin killed Gwen Stacy, and no one forced him to become evil. No matter what anyone tells you, good can exist without evil, and vice versa. Each can exist in a vacuum, and no one's actions necessitates a response from another - it is all a choice. Spider-man made his. The Green Goblin made his. And Joeseph Michael Straczynski made his.

The Sound of His Voice

2008-01-04T00:23:00.000-05:00

Avery Brooks is the kind of man you'd totally expect to run into on the street, just ranting about flying cars. "I made it real! It's real! You hear me? It is real!"

The Greatest Super-hero Story Ever Written, Part 2

2008-01-01T22:02:00.000-05:00

In my last post, I showed you the glorious tale of What If Iron Man Lost the Civil War?, which ended in such a way that betrayed its original premise: iron Man did not so much lose the Civil War as he and Captain America, instead, formed what was essentially a voluntary superhero service, much like the police, but fueled by bizarre forms of radiation and technology rather than donuts. (I kid, of course - being a police officer, especially an honourable one, is tough work.)

So, why is this the best super-hero story ever written?

It's because the writer, Christos Gage, has helped provide a solution to a philosophical conundrum that was puzzling me for quite some time: how do you justify the existence of superheroes in a society that stands for individual rights and objective law?

I use the phrase "objective law" to refer to a system of law in which justice is afforded evenly and equally amongst all citizens. This means that a person's rights are protected by default: he doesn't have to find a willing security provider to protect his rights.

The best way to provide this level of protection is to grant the government a monopoly on the initiation of force. This means that while you can defend your life and your property in the immediate moment that it is threatened ("self defense"), retaliation, that is, the pursuit of justice and compensation, will be the exclusive domain of the government. If this were not the case, each person would have to find a way to achieve justice for himself - like a superhero - and their would be no objective standard with which to judge it.

David Odden, over at the Objectivism Online forum, sums up the issue rather handedly when he answers a user who was arguing for an anarchic system of law, based upon private "Security" companies - superheroes, if you will.

The following passage is unedited from the original source, (here: http://forum.objectivismonline.net/index.php?showtopic=7325&st=40&p=123458&#entry123458), with the exception of omissions for expediency (that is to say, I left the spelling, grammar, and whatnot intact, but several parts unrelated to my point have been excised).

...what is the law? (I'm hoping for something more informative that a Fuller-morphed-into-Hart sound bite). This question includes: what are the injunctions -- the things you may not legally do to another person of his property -- and please focus on non-obvious issues, not just "don't kill, don't steal". ... . I've pointed to copyright and patent law as one area to consider; defamation is another; law pertaining to abandoned property is a third. To be included in this is discussion of remedies -- supposing a person is guilty of theft, what exactly is the remedy. And finally, you need to discuss procedural law. For example, in finding guilt or innocence, is the burden on the accused to prove innocence or is it on the accuser to prove guilt (remember that it currently actually goes both ways, depending on jurisdiction); are their any standards for defining "legally obtained evidence" or is any evidence whatsoever, gottem by whatever mean "just fine"; and is there a standard for treating illegal evidence? Can the accused be forced to testify against himself; is there any penalty for perjury? Does the accused have the right to bring an attorney or other representation?

The point is that properly constructed government (monopoly government) has to answer these questions, and has answered these questions, but once answered, you can predict the relationship between law and your actions (that is, either you have or you have not broken the law). This result is because there is a single law, which can be known by all. That guarantee does not exist under anarchy, and instead you have the possibility of each individual defining his own law which he can declare "protects his rights", and forcibly defending his supposed rights directly or through an agent. Thus I could decide that you have no right to an attorney, my mere allegation of your wrong-doing is sufficient to force you to appear before my court, and if you don't have the economic wherewithall to mount a forcible defense of what you perceive to be your rights (to only be taken for just cause, to have an attorney to defend you, and the right to presumption of innocence), you will be rather SOAL. If you think that that is an acceptable outcome, they you could just say that and we can be done with it; if, on the other hand you think that is an utterly appaling outcome, I want to see how you intend to make law uniform.

Costumed vigilantes frequently take the law into their own hands. Batman steals evidence, violates property rights, assaults potential witnesses (see here for details)... and we tend to applaud him for it. Superheroes are vigilantes, using their own standards of evidence and punishment to deal with evil-doers. Ever wonder why the Joker never stays locked up for long? I'm guessing it's because Batman isn't exactly forthcoming when it comes to how he goes about his investigations, or, like shown previously, adhering to the letter of the law.

A very good example of the problem with superheroes is presented in the recent Identity Crisis event by DC Comics. The heroes, Green Arrow, the Elongated Man, and others, all got together to avenge the death of Sue Dibny- to bring the murderer to justice. Of course, they all thought it was the villain, Doctor Light, based on information that they and they alone had. If it had indeed turned out to be this character, given the circumstances of the investigation, how would they prove it? Hell, better yet, let's look at why they thought the perpetrator was indeed the good doctor.

Doctor Light once broke into the Justice League's secret satellite and attempted to rape the Elongated Man's wife, Sue. To prevent him from exposing their secret identities, the heroes elected their own form of justice: they would erase his memory. In the process, Doctor Light was lobotomized and became less than half of his former self: he became an idiot. The Justice League then wiped the mind of Batman to prevent him from telling anyone of their actions. As a result, Batman began his own program of justice: a satellite that would spy on all of the superheroes, and hold the keys to their defeat. Once again, this private justice resulted in the horrible event known as "The OMAC Project," where people were transformed into mindless killing machines, and worst yet, Maxwell Lord murdered Ted Kord, the Blue Beetle.

These might be isolated incidents, you say - exceptions that do not prove the rule. But how many times has Batman illegally tapped a phone? How many times have the X-Men chased after a new threat, setting out to defeat it without proof of guilt?

Superheroes frequently violate the principle that there should be a monopoly on law the ensures the rights of a country's citizens evenly and equally. They decide what evidence is satisfactory to them, they decide how much force is necessary to apprehend the villain, and they often even decide the punishment that the villain will receive - the classic "Phantom Zone" comes to mind.

Then there's the problem of property damage - when superheroes fight super-villains, buildings come down, cars are used as clubs, and private property is simply decimated. Who's to be held responsible for the destruction? Who's to pay restitution? One could argue that many villains are simply interested in stealing money, and that the shit only hits the fan once the hero shows up. Hell, on the cartoon series Justice League Unlimited, Superman usually looks for any excuse he can to pick up a stranger's car and smash it against the bad guy.

But superheroes are admirable characters - they do protect the little guy, and they tend to be on the side of justice, even if they often flout objective law. If it were otherwise, we probably wouldn't cheer them on as much as we do. It would be unthinkable to simply stop writing about these vigilante heroes, and we can't write about them all being locked or put in jail. We must also consider the problem of the super-villain, a class of beings, unique to the superhero genre, that can only be opposed by other powerful beings - i.e., superheroes. I think the police would have some trouble trying to apprehend Venom.

So we reach an impasse: we must apply the idea of objective, fair law to the superhero genre, but we must take into account the particulars of that genre, as well. We could force the superheroes to join the police or the military, but they would have to expose their secret identities in order to do that, which brings the problematic super-villains back into the discussion. These beings can warp space and time and shoot energy beams from their hands - it would probably be best if they didn't know who your loved ones were.

Plus, superheroes do tend to work better alone when they are doing what Batman does - investigating crimes perpetrated by characters that the police simply do not have the power to handle. So what do we do?

Enter Tony Stark: he thinks that superheroes should be subject to objective law, but that they should have their identities exposed, and be in eternal service to the government simply by virtue of having powers. Not a good idea, I think you've realized. Captain America believes that powered individuals should be able to choose whether they're going to be forever indebted to the government - but his solution, that is, no solution, would also leave the possibility for anyone who can manipulate the weather at will to punish criminals as they see fit, without any responsibility for their actions. Niether side can be right, obviously - superhumans need to respect the process of law, but then again, so does the government!

The answer was provided by Mr. Christos Gage: The Avengers would become an independent certification board, much like the ESRB. If you wanted to be a superhero, you wouldn't need to get Avengers certification, but you'd run the risk of being arrested for any of the myriad charges that victim could claim against you. For example, The Riddler could charge Batman with breaking and entering, or the citizens of Metropolis could sue Superman over the value of that car he's smashing up on the cover of Action Comics #1. By taking part in the Avengers training program, a superhero wouldn't need to reveal his identity, or be subject to the whims of the government (as, for example, in the fifty-state initiative, which might relocate some of those million-or-so New York superheroes to Utah). In addition, that hero would have the resources of the Avengers behind him if he ever messed up and destroyed a car or two. The Avengers, in turn, would work with the government to make sure that it's members were accountable for their actions, much like private security contractors that work for the military. It's the best of both worlds: the government still holds the monopoly on retaliation and justice, and superheroes can continue to do what they do without worrying about whether they have the authority to, say, use their super-hearing to listen in on Tobias Whale's private conversations.

And Captain America doesn't need to go crazy in his quest to kill ~~the white whale~~Iron Man. And Iron Man doesn't need to turn into a despotic cradle robber, taking mutant babies from their parents so that he can train them to be government slaves. And Spider-man wouldn't have needed to unmask, which wouldn't have then resulted in him refusing to face the consequences of his decision and erasing his marriage to Mary Jane from reality. And I wouldn't need to write about this, or Spider-man #545, either. We'd all end up winners under this plan.

Buzz Buzz

2008-01-01T02:37:00.000-05:00

Part 2 of this post will be posted tonight. New Year's Eve, you know.

The Greatest Super-hero Story Ever Told, Part 1

2007-12-30T23:52:00.000-05:00

I am not a Marvel Comics reader. In my tender youth in the early nineties, I enjoyed Spider-man, and even Ghost Rider, but I liked Batman better than either of them. In fact, just about the only Marvel creations I can stand these days are the Great Lakes Avengers/X-Men/Champions, an admission that will surely result in the revocation of my geek license.

Part of the reason for my Marvel antipathy has to do with Civil War, and how it made villains of heroes, while suggesting that there are only two courses in life: anarchy or government control. But since I was never a Marvel reader before Civil War, I can't blame the story-line alone for my avoidance of the Marvel Method. No, I am a DC man, through and through - Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Batman, Metal Men, and even the detritus at the bottom of the DCU lake, Crime Bible, are my literature of choice when I head on down to the trusty neighbourhoode comick shoppe. And I think that's because DC has adopted the editorial philosophy of asking the big questions about what the consequences of super-heroes would be in real life, with titles like Watchmen. Although Marvel was the first to put their heroes into the "real world," their method was to give them problems and angst - to make them people. DC took the characters and made them into gods. DC asked "what would be the impact of super-heroes on the world at large? What would need to be different to make super-heroes a possibility?" I don't know how much of this paragraph makes sense, but my point is that DC made super-heroes philosophically fascinating, rather than topically relevant.

I must concede, however, and honor Marvel Comics with the award for the Greatest Super-hero Story Ever Published. That story is the second tale in December 2007's What If: Civil War.

If you're unfamiliar with the mechanics of the What If series, let me break it down for you: What If is published approximately "whenever the hell Joe Quesada needs to reassert his power to make his whims reality," and revisits crucial, and often cataclysmic, events in the history of the Marvel Universe. These events are re-imagined with different initial circumstances, occurrences, or outcomes, and the result is usually explored. Some of them don't turn out so well. This one turned out half-well.

What If: Civil War contains two stories, as shown to Tony Stark by the mysterious Stranger. The first is rather inconsequential, and includes artwork of this caliber:

So you'll understand why I think it's best if we just skipped ahead to the good bits: the aforementioned Greatest Super-hero Story Ever Told.

Written by Christos Gage (who, in an unpublished post for this blog, concerning Union Jack: London Falling, I mistakenly berated for being the creative genius behind the script for Teenage Caveman), and featuring art by Harvey "thank-god-it's-not-the-same-guy-who-did-the-first-story" Talibao, "What If Iron Man Lost the Civil War?" doesn't really deal with Iron Man losing so much as it... well, you'll see.

Our story begins at a critical impasse - Captain America faces a choice: does he attack Tony Stark as his enemy, or does he listen to what Stark has to say? In this possible future, Tony Stark sincerely asks Cap for his help, and that's enough to convince Steve Rogers to call a temporary truce.

And then some trigger-happy bureaucrat notices the concealed weapon that Captain America's packing, and prematurely releases the Thor clone.

In the ensuing battle, Tony Stark proves his sincerity by coming between Faux-Thor and a lightning bolt meant for Goliath. Captain America and Iron Man realize that they're both fighting the same thing - not just a giant, blond-haired, dreamy he-man, but also the universe's many threats to humanity's safety.

Iron Man knows that superheroes need to be held responsible for the damage that they inadvertently cause. In this universe, he's able to articulate this reasonable, and clearly - not like the dick that exists in our current universe. And Captain America understands where he's coming from - after all, it was this collateral damage that motivated Captain America to surrender in the real Marvel Universe. Super-humans are motivated to go around fighting criminals, but the power to do something doesn't make one qualified to do something. And it is here that history is forever changed - or, er, it would be if this was the real universe.

Iron Man and Captain America join forces to create the Avengers' equivalent of the ESRB! An industry standard for superheroes, overseen by Captain America!

Iron Man is a hero again! Captain America isn't dead!

But the best line? This one:

Young superhumans were trained by their elders; taught both tactics and responsibility; serving only by choice, their identities protected.

The government is not a quasi-fascistic slave-driver, drafting the extraordinary to fight against their will! Free will and individual rights are once again championed within the pages of a comic book! I'm so excited, I've worn out my exclamation-mark key!

So, why is this the best super-hero story ever written? Well, that's a question I'm going to have to answer tomorrow night, because things may get heady. Things may get philosophical. And things need to be mulled over to make sure they're clear. Stay tuned, true believers!

Oooh! And I almost forgot: BUY THIS BOOK, EVERYBODY. Show the Mighty Marvel Bean-Counters that this is how super-heroes settle their disagreements; show Mr. Quesada that super-heroes don't have to be stupid louts punching each other to get the job done, but that freedom, and the individual spirit, and the qualities of Captain America can be present in all heroes. Show them that you want Cap and Iron Man to be buddies again - and alive, too, I guess.
And tell them to give Christos Gage a raise. And an assistant.