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

...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)

Blue Filler

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.

The Real Reason Behind Batman's Falling Out With Superman

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

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.

Buzz Buzz

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.

An Affinity for the Dead

Howdy, folks - I apologize for the lack of any substantial posts in the last little while, I've had an avalanche of new projects, Christmassy-things, and - fine, I admit it - apathy, all hit since the beginning of December.

Let's begin today's post with a hypothetical question, a question of philosophy, if you will. If you were to encounter this :


Your reaction would be most similar to:

A - Jesus-fuck, it's a demon.
B - Hey! I saw him wrestle in Memphis back in the eighties.
C - Mom?

or D -


D - I'd hit that.

What are you guys, Tim Burton? She has a skull for a face. Also, her tights appear to be burning with an ethereal flame. You do not "hey, baby" that, you run from it. This is why the DC universe needs superheroes - everybody else would have gone extinct if it were otherwise.

Plus, I mean, come on - she's obviously out of your league.

(source: Action Comics #595, reprinted for your convenience in Superman in the Eighties. Superman dies in this one! Not a hoax!* Not an imaginary story!)

(*totally a hoax.)

Think Wholesome Thoughts, Chum

From the pages of DC's Countdown #31, Jimmy Olsen learns that abbreviation is not always convenient:



Oh, toilet humor: will you ever let me down?

This "Television" Is Have Being the Greatest Invention of All Time

The new season of good TV finally begins this week, which means that I'm going to have a really tough time keeping up with all of my procrastination. Here's what I'll be watching this season.

Mondays:

Chuck,The Big Bang Theory:



Chuck begins at 8PM, while The Big Bang Theory starts at 8:30, which means I'm either going to have to be content with missing the ending of every episode of Chuck, or one show is gonna get cancelled this year. Sorry, Chuck, but I do like The Big Bang Theory more than I like the representatives of the "Nerd Herd." I blogged about the Chuck pilot here, but I've nary uttered a peep about its conflicting program, The Big Bang Theory, which I enjoyed immensely, if only because I am those guys. Well, not all fo tehm. Out of four "geeks" introduced, I loved the Sheldon character (played superbly by Jim Parsons) and all of his eccentricities. He reminded the most of what geeks actually are, as I and the friends I had in high school were: judgmental social outcasts who think you're an idiot if you don't know what we know.

The "teaser" opener for the first episode of Big Bang features Sheldon and Leonard (our protagonists) at a sperm bank, when Sheldon undergoes an "ethical dilemma" over the fact that he can't guarantee that his sperm would produce a child that was a genius. When Leonard responds that his mother would probably still love him despite not knowing whether to use an integral or a differential to solve for the area under a curve, Sheldon counters: "I wouldn't." That, my friends, is my variety of geek.

The only downside is that, in order to make the show funny in a "mainstream" way, they've had to "dumb down" some of the jokes, relying on cliches instead of the humor that arises naturally out of geeky awkwardness.

Heroes:

(9 PM)

When we last left our group of emerging heroes, Matt Parkman was "shot" a whole bunch of times; Peter and Nathan Petrelli were, supposedly, blown to smithereens; and Hiro found himself in feudal Japan. Oh, and there's talk about another "hero" (what do we call the super-powered in heroes? Metahumans? Mutants? Maybe we just call them "people..." hmmm...) who's even more dangerous than Sylar, who, if you'll remember, could use the powers of his mind to cut open peoples' skulls and eat their brains. If you're not watching this, I'm not talking to you anymore.

Journeyman:



(10 PM)

Another new show for this season makes Monday night even more crowded, and, unfortunately, I call this show at getting the axe quickest. Don't get me wrong: it wouldn't be on my "watch" list if I didn't like it. There's the time-travel thing, there's interesting character developments (exactly how did Vasser end up with his current-wife, who looked like she used to be his brother's girlfriend? Why is he travelling in time in short-spurts instead of controlled periods? What connection does "Livia," his supposedly-dead fiance, have with his situation?), and there was the clever bit at the end (SPOILER: Vasser takes his wife's ring from the present and buries it in the house's yard in the past, digging it up when he returns so that his wife will believe he's actually a time traveller, and not just on drugs) that made it good TV. I just can't see this show providing many reasons to keep watching: you can only do clever time-tricks so many times before they get mind-numbingly obvious, and the "saving lives to make the future a better place" rings of "Quantum Leap," as well as bringing up many uncomfortable questions: for instance, if there's someone else who's controlling his "leaps" through time, why don't they allow him to prevent WWII? What about paradoxes? What does the existence of time travel do to the concept of morality (if a person is a criminal in the present, do you treat him as a criminal in the past, before he commits his crime? The pilot sneakily avoided this by having its "bad guy" be hit by a bus, but Vasser is going to have to encounter this crisis eventually)? There are just too many places for this show to falter.

Oh, and did I mention that Vasser's dead fiance is totally hot?



Tuesdays:

Reaper, House




(9PM)

Another day, another conflict. You know I've gotta go with House on this one, CW, so why do you schedule Reaper in the same timeslot? House ended with almost all of the regular cast resigned or fired, and that leaves some very interesting possibilities on the horizon for this show. I mean, there's no question that Cameron, Chase, and Foreman will return, but the interesting question to ask is going to be: How? How can they just come back to the hospital after all that was said and done? How have their characters changed since they've been gone? House isn't one to apologize, forget, or even let go of the past, so it'll be fascinating to watch how they're going to get through this.

Sorry, Reaper: all you can offer me is a fat guy with no social etiquette and a man who's gotta capture demons in a vacuum cleaner.

Wednesdays:

Bionic Woman (haha! No, no, I'm just fuckin' with you - Bionic Woman really is a terrible, terrible program. Don't watch it.)

Mythbusters:

Alright, this really shouldn't be here, since Discovery airs new episodes of Mythbusters approximately "whenever they feel like it," but it does come on in the fall (sometimes), and I like it, damn it!

Thursdays:

Smallville:




Smallville is one of those shows that should serve as an example to networks: the first few seasons of this show were real stinkers, but, starting with the addition of Lois Lane, subsequent seasons proved to be stellar examples of great television. Instead of the early "freak of the week" episodes (similar to early episodes of The X-Files), the show's writers started delving into that rich mythology of the Superman universe, introducing characters like The Flash, Green Arrow, and even Aquaman. Season 7 looks like it can only get better, with the season premiere featuring Bizarro, Lex Luthor contemplating going straight again, and the arrival of "Supergirl." Actually, to be completely honest with you, the addition of Supergirl has me on edge a bit, but the show-runners have proven that they can write engaging stories with even the most unrealistic characters (The Martian Manhunter, for one), so I'm optimistic.

Plus, JIMMY!

Fridays:

Stargate Atlantis:



(10PM)

The Season 3 finale saw the City of Atlantis powering up its hyperdrive in order to leave the planet and escape from an Asuran beam weapon. Unfortunately, the city was grazed in the process, resulting in the injury of Weir, as well as forcing Atlantis to drop out of hyperspace earlier than it should have, stranding them in the middle of nowhere.

I've seen the first two episodes of Season 4 (albeit in a format which lacked music and sound effects, unless you call being able to hear the director yell "bang!" an effect), and I've gotta tell ya: this season looks like it may be the best yet for Atlantis. Shepperd was given something meaningful to do, there was more conflict, and Weir had more to do in the second episode than she ever had in all of the first three seasons. Sure, Teyla got short-changed, and Ronon was left playing the muscle (including an hilarious scene where he plays "tough guy" and tries to intimidate one of the doctors into removing a large shard of glass from his shoulder), but you can only focus on so many characters at once, one of the weakness of having as large a regular cast as Atlantis does.


Saturdays:

Robin Hood (Oct. 6 premiere in the UK, apparently)

As tiring as this show was last year (Robin Hood has a plan, someone gets captured when the plan goes to shit, Robin Hood saves them with a big fight scene with the same music that they've used in every single other episode), I still enjoyed it immensely. They delineated between who Robin was was indeed robbin': instead of taking from the ambiguous "rich" and giving to the equally ambiguous "poor," Robin keeps his actions limited to robbing from the sheriff, taking back the tax money that was stolen from the citizens. Other Robin Hoods would merely target anyone who had more money than others, which would have created a problem once Robin had succeeded in defeating the sheriff - when the poor become the rich, and the rich are now poor, do you change tactics? This Robin Hood doesn't have to think about that, because he's clear on his principles: he's going to stop the sheriff from taking away the rights of the citizenry.

The "modernisation" may have gotten a bit ridiculous at times ("I shot the sheriff," "No, you shot the deputy"), and Guy of Gisborne needed to lighten the fuck up a little, but if you just want to watch a true hero go and kick some unjust ass, Robin Hood's your show.

(I know, I don't live in the UK, but I don't have to be in order to watch it, now do I? Thanks, INTERWEB!)

And that's my life for the next few months. Being unemployed rocks.

The Strange Case of the Canadian Superman

In 1967, Canada was... well, kind of full of itself. The country was celebrating 100 years of Confederation (it's a little bit like independence, except, you know, without the independence), they got a spiffy new flag, and we even tried to create our own marketing lingo in "Chimo" and the "Ookpik." The most important event of all, though - or, at least the event most likely to induce orgasms in members of the Canadian press at the time - was Expo '67, a World's Fair held in Montreal, Quebec. One reporter even called it "the most staggering Canadian achievement since this vast land was finally linked by transcontinental railway." Maybe you had to be there.

Regardless of whether or not Expo '67 was the second coming of Canadian Jesus, or just a ruse to lure in stupid Anglo-tourists, it would leave behind a legacy worth far more than a million rusting-geodesic-domes combined: Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, Superman's brother:




the Canadian Kryptonian, and , judging by the cover, a bit of a dick.

Now, a lot of us up here in The Great White North already like to think that Superman is Canadian. After all, Joe Shuster was Canadian, right? And The Daily Planet started it's publishing career as The Daily Star, an alleged homage to the Toronto Star, Canada's most unseemly tabloid. And the most damning evidence of all about Kal-El's Canadian-ness is that the government told me it was so, featuring Superman in a set of patriotic stamps in 1995.

But the truth of the matter is that Superman has no business with Canada: he's an American hero through-and-through, donning the red and blue, and standing on guard, not for thee, but for "truth, justice, and the American Way." And while Joe Shuster may have been born in Canada, he left when he was just 9 years old, long before he met up with a kid named Jerry Siegel and wrote about a super-strong man from a doomed planet.

To mesh this with my opening schpiel about the good old days of 1967 (bet you wish you were paying attention now, don't you?), this issue was supposedly written in order to commemorate the United States' and Canada's new-found bedfellow-ship with each other. Not only did we agree to host a few of Uncle Sam's nuclear missiles earlier in the decade, but JFK himself liked our Prime Minister, Lester Pearson, so much that he gave him the Presidential flag from his vacation house when ol' Lester (whose nick-name was "Mike" - not kidding, folks) came up for a barbecue.

So this new Canadian Superman is a pretty big deal, then.

Or story begins as any Superman legend would, whether it contains one Superman or two, with the destruction of Krypton - but wait, there's more! Kryptonopolis, candidate for most lazily-named city in the Universe and home to Jor-El, wife Lara, and son Kal-El, is saved from destruction by none other than Brainiac. Brainiac arrives in his "ominous spaceship" (re: red plate with an arrow stuck in it) and abducts the city, placing it in a bottle, a la Kandor. He then reveals just one of the many shockers you will find in this "imaginary story:" Brainiac is, in fact, on the side of the forces of good, saving Kyptonopolis not just because he wants another coffee-table conversation piece, but because he wanted to save them from their homeworld's destruction.

I wonder how the citizens of Kandor would feel if they knew that, even in an alternate universe, they still get the shaft. It's either living in a bottle where you face the constant threat of Brainaic's temper tantrums smashing your world, or you can just die with the rest of them. Oh, I'm sure they were all probably jerks anyway.

And hey, can someone tell me why every child under the age of ten in a Silver Age DC comic spoke with all the fluency of a slightly-advanced chimpanzee?



Just wonderin'.

Brainiac explains to Jor-El and Lara that he requires the element ZN-4 to return the city to normal size, but there must have been a sudden explosion of people enlarging themselves, because the supply of ZN-4, all across the galaxy, has been exhausted. So Brainiac and the -Els are left, Star Trek: Voyager-style, travelling through space trying to find a planet with ZN-4 on it.

In the meantime, the Kryptonians do what anyone would do in the circumstances, and mate: a brother to Kal-El, named by Brainiac (as the godfather, whatever the phrase might mean on Krypton) as Knor-El, is born. Look at the forehead on that kid!


His brother isn't Knor-El, it's freaking Sinestro.

But anatomical anomalies aside, the two Krypto-brothers grow up better than most brothers do, not once even coming close to killing each other. Knor-El decides that he craves power and kick-backs, so he trains to become a police officer, and Kal-El is drawn to the Erlenmeyer flasks of his father, and becomes a scientist.

When Brainiac (who consistently fails to live up to the name) finally finds a supply of ZN-4, he discovers that he parked in a meteor-impact zone, and tries vainly to shoot the thing before it hits the arrow+plate spaceship - you know, instead of just moving out of the way.


This does not end well for Brainiac.

The Kryptonians, on the contrary, are fine - they don't even try to find a reason as to why. Hey, shit happens, and they're just happy to be alive. But Jor-El makes a startling discovery: Brainaic has manged to transfer enough ZN-4 gas into Kryptonopolis to enlarge but one person. So they do the only thing one can do in this situation: forgo sending the smartest, the best, or the brightest, and decide who gets to live out their life un-bite-sized by putting on their own version of Kryptonian Gladiators.

No women allowed.

After a multitude of events, including moving hurdles, space chess, giant robot wrestling, and dodgeball, the winner is decided:

Knor-El wins! KNOR-EL WINS! Knor-El wins? Well I'll be damned; Knor-El does win.

So, Knor-El becomes Superman, and, in an amazing twist of fate, also becomes Ken Clarkson, ace reporter for the Daily Planet. After putting an end to a prison riot, Superman's next job is to investigate the landing of a giant phallus. Out of the space-phallus comes an alien bearing gifts of Kryptonite, and Knor-El, after being on the planet for less than a week, has already been defeated by the green-colored rocks. But all is not lost! Kal-El, that sneaky, two-faced bastard, was able to produce a small quantity of synthetic ZN-4 gas. Rather than sharing his discover so that they could all escape, or even better, selling his discovery to the other Kryptonians for top-dollar, good ol' proto-Clark Kent kept it to himself, just in case his brother was ever incapacitated by aliens in a giant - well, you know.

Kal-El thumps the aliens soundly, and saves his brother. But now the Kal-El is out of the bottle! What are they to do? You can't have two Supermen, that'd be crazy!

Those of you have read the title, and the introductory paragraphs, are probably wondering: but what, exactly, does any of this have to do with Canada? Well, I said that two Supermen would simply be nuts, so what does Kal-El do? He becomes HYPERMAN, Montreal's superhero!


Taking the secret identity of Charles LeBlanc, he also gets a job as a reporter, but for the Montreal Star - which would probably be a separatist paper if the stories of Hyperman had continued to today.

Alright - so it ain't much. Montreal is mentioned in all of two panels, and Hyperman doesn't really have any sort of characteristic that would make him more Canadian then American. But can you imagine if somebody had picked up that "imaginary story" ball and ran with it? What if there were an Elseworlds tale of Hyperman, clearing organized crime and drug-dealing bikers off of Montreal's streets? Would he be supportive of Quebec separation? Would he have fought the FLQ in the 1970's, or would they have eventually won, backed by a super-powered terrorist? There are unique Canadian stories here, man. It's really a shame that with all the Canadians working in American comics, no one picked up on Hyperman.

Superman vs. Spider-man

http://www.helium.com/tm/372057/superman-nieztches-ideal-originator