Dance of the Puppets

Three Months Later

2012-01-22T23:26:00.000Z

By Week four of the relaunch I'd been so grossed out by all the sexploitation they'd fitted into their launch month that I lost the will to say much about the final batch of titles, but three months later it seems like a good time to revisit the grand relaunch and see how much of it has stuck.

Not much, I have to say. My reading habits are fairly erratic, and none of the titles leaves me shivering with anticipation, so I often find myself catching up a couple of issues at a time. Which is often no bad thing, since they are almost exclusively paced to be read in the subsequent trade paperback edition. Anyhow, let's see.

From the original 52 (plus one that first appeared a month later), I've got it down to:

Batgirl: I keep forgetting what's going on in the story. Could use a "Previously" page. Or just be published quarterly as a graphic novel series.

Demon Knights: Hooked me right at the start, unlike most of the titles, but my attention is starting to drift. Needs to get on with the plot.

Flash: Hey, I'm as surprised as you. I always found the Flash incredibly dull, but I'm enjoying the new series. Has a lot to do with the creative art style.

Frankenstein: Another that got my attention right at the start. Had enough twisty turns to keep me reading and finished the first story before my attention wandered.

Green Lantern: Opened well, despite being the least "relaunchy" title in the set, but I don't expect it to hold my interest long term.

Green Lantern New Guardians: A stand out first issue achieved what few others managed - introduced a protagonist and gave him enough character to make you sympathetic towards him before throwing him into a bizarre situation that hooked you into wanting to read the next issue. Sadly, by issue four it is sinking beneath the weight of GL continuity and the typically ludicrous behaviour of the Guardians. One bad issue and this one gets dropped.

My Greatest Adventure: Technically not one of the Fifty Two, but after three issues I'm still remembering to pick it up. Having three stories is definitely a bonus for me, though traditionally anthology titles don't do well.

O.M.A.C.: It's entertaining, but there's something really forgettable about it. It might have hooked me in time, but as it's being cancelled, it's not going to get the time.

Wonder Woman: Initially liked the fresh take on the character, but I'm beginning to think it's straying a bit too far from the source material.

That's quite a steep fall off from the first month, and most of those that are left are about one bad issue away from being dropped.

I'm left feeling like whoever DC are aiming their comics at now, it's not me.

One week later Reviews: Part 3

2011-10-08T14:26:00.000+01:00

Okay, this is more like two weeks later now, but I didn't get around to reading half of them for a week after they came out, partly because the poor quality titles are dragging down my interest in the whole enterprise, and partly because I found some European comics I'm enjoying more. I'll maybe come back to them in another post.

Batman: Batman for architects. Bruce Wayne is building some skyscrapers, but we'll throw in a random fight scene to remind you what comic you are reading.

Birds of Prey: Black Canary and her bird themed sidekick fight some invisible guys in a church, with a car.

Catwoman: I so wished I'd never broken my rule by reading any Winnick. Is this fanfic? It reads like fanfic.

Green Lantern Corps: John and Guy can't get boring jobs on Earth that they don't need or have time for, and bad things are killing off lots of aliens (and Lanterns) we've never met.

Legion of Super-Heroes: Better than Legion Lost, since I did read it to the end, but I can't remember a thing about it, so not much better.

Nightwing: Nightwing, about a foot taller than seen in this week's Batman, jumps around some rooftops and.. does stuff, I guess.

Supergirl: Supergirl crashes to Earth in a meteor and fights some guys in battlesuits. That is actually all that happens in it. Seriously. Is this supposed to get me interested enough to read issue 2?

Wonder Woman: This is Wonder Woman done as a Vertigo title. There's lots of symbolism and references to Greek mythology and horses' heads. I don't remember it too clearly, but unlike most of this week's selection, I am interested enough by it to want to reread it.

After three weeks the plots are getting so samey. So many of them involve some mysterious threat that is nastily killing off NPC's while our hero or heroes are off having some exposition, until they finally bump into each other on the final page. The mysterious threats are largely interchangeable, because it's not like they'd want to give anything away in the first issue.

A couple of titles get the fight started early, a couple have fight scenes that appear unrelated to anything, included only to remind you that you're reading a superhero comic. Some do it better than others. but none of them that I've read stray very far from the template.

One week later Reviews: Part 2

2011-09-23T15:59:00.000+01:00

In which I attempt to do something different from everyone else reviewing the new DC comics by judging the impact they have made on me through attempting to recall anything about them a week after I read them.

Batman & Robin: Damien is a brat as ever.

Batwoman: So pretty! And there's ghosts and stuff.

Demon Knights: Etrigan's in love. It's so cool. Ystin is my hero or heroine or somewhere inbetween. Madame Xanadu is there too, and a mysterious horsewoman. There is drinking and castles and snarkiness and dragons. I am looking forward to next issue.

Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E.: There's this town, see, where everyone's been turned into monsters, and Frankie was vacationing on Mars so he's pissed that he was called in, but there's also the Creature Commandos, who are like a Universal monster movies star lineup, and they fight the monsters the townspeople were turned into and the Frankie's four-armed ex, who I think is called Nina was there too.

Green Lantern: Hal Jordan isn't Green Lantern because of some unexplained thing. Sinestro is a Green Lantern even though he is the bad guy. The Guardians really need to have someone to point out when they are doing monumentally stupid.

Legion Lost: I tried, honestly I did. I got about as far as page three or four several times, but each time I got so far and then life seemed too short to continue. It's the extreme opposite of accessible.

Mister Terrific: Mr T's girlfriend seems to be Karen Starr who may or may not be Power Girl. I quite liked this one but I don't recall much more than that other than a bad guy shows up at the end.

Red Lanterns: It's cute because Atrocicus has a cat who is also a Red Lantern. And some stuff happened, I guess.

Resurrection Man: The bad guys are chasing Resurrection Man, who gets killed and then gets better and then gets new powers, but he doesn't wear a cape. And there were these two girls who I read somewhere are the Body Doubles, who I thought were a copy of the Dirty Pair except they are idiots.

Suicide Squad: The squad are on a mission, except SURPRISE! it was a fakeout all along, and I know all the names, but they are being played by different, and less interesting characters.

Superboy: Are they going with the version from the Young Justice TV show? It looks a bit like that. Anyway, he spends most of the issue in a tube being studied and then escapes.

Coming next week: I break the habit of a lifetime and read a Judd Winnick comic and wish I hadn't

New52: One week later

2011-09-19T20:47:00.000+01:00

This is my "I'm too lazy to actually review all the new DC comics" post. What I'm going to do is read most of the comics (Judd Winnick is a step too far) and see if I can remember anything about them a week later.

Action: Superman is young and stupid and catches a train.

Animal Man: Something about blood and ugly sketchy drawing.

Batgirl: This one I enjoyed, then read some reviews of it and then read it again to catch some of the neat little details I missed the first time around. Must remember to read next issue twice.

JLI: Almost felt like a full comic. The team got together and then something bad happened; I forget what. And Batman was cool.

Men of War: MEN doing MANLY things. Shooting at each other, mostly.

OMAC: Forget what happened exactly but it was very Kirbyish and fun. Will prolly reread when ish 2 comes out to remind myself why I liked it.

Static Shock: Static arrives in New York and has backstory. And then something happens, I guess.

Stormwatch: The Moon is the villain? People are looking for Apollo, and then Midnighter shows up at the end. I'd like to care more about this than I actually did.

Swamp Thing: Alex Holland doesn't want to be Swamp Thing and builds a house.

Now it all makes sense

2011-09-16T12:30:00.000+01:00

I never could understand why it was that Batman's computer gets hacked so often and all his incredibly dangerous secret plans get stolen.

Batman & Robin #1

It's because he uses the same password for everything. And it's only four characters.

Things I am not getting worked up over #17: Power Girl

2011-09-16T08:31:00.002+01:00

In the newly launched Mister Terrific, Power Girl appears in her civilian identity and does not display any superhuman abilities.

If you don't mind, I'll wait until the fight scene gets started (as opposed to the cliffhanger reveal we got to see in the first issue) before I decide whether this means she has no powers in the relaunched DC universe.

Starting over

2011-09-04T20:14:00.000+01:00

Much has been said in many, many blogs about the big DC relaunch currently in progress. I haven't posted about it directly because I don't have a lot to add. But I will say this: I'm quite looking forward to it.

Every time a title or character is relaunched, it's another throw of the dice. And while I have enjoyed a bunch of recent titles, there isn't anything I'm positively obsessive about, that I look forward to every month. Couple that with several titles that I positively hated last time around, and I'm generally optimistic.

Case in point; while I've been a fan of Supergirl since before I could read, I hated the last model. The origin was terrible, and only part of a ghastly story that failed on multiple levels, and the series that followed it went through creative teams every couple of issues, with no consistent characterization. I've heard recently that it did eventually find its feet, and even the dreadful and inconsistent backstory and characterization was explained away and rationalized. But that's still around forty issues of baggage, not to mention the period where the comic becomes a fourth Superman title. So as far as I'm concerned, the bar is set pretty low for Supergirl to do better next time.

Codpiece of Doom

2011-09-03T00:27:00.003+01:00

There was something that bugged me about the cover of the first issue of the new Justice League, other than the bland new logo and the generic image. Now what was it?

Oh yes, Green Lantern's massively weaponized Codpiece of Doom. Created by his magic Ring of Overcompensation.

The Moffat Regeneration

2011-08-31T16:26:00.001+01:00

Spoilers for Doctor Who, particularly the episode Let's Kill Hitler.

Steven Moffat wrote some of the best New Who, and personal favourites like The Empty child/The Doctor Dances and Blink[1] and yet my enjoyment of the series as a whole has been in a downward spiral since he was put in charge.

The only explanation that makes any sense to me is that around the time Moffat took control of Doctor Who, he regenerated into Jeph Loeb. The hallmarks are all there; the focus on superficial spectacle over solid story, guest stars shoehorned in at every opportunity, regardless of whether it screws with established continuity[2] or is remotely appropriate to the plot. Convoluted stories that don't work if you think about them at all...

The kicker for me was in the latest episode Let's Kill Hitler, which apart from bringing in one of history's biggest guest stars only to lock him in a closet after five minutes and forget about him, contains one of the classic Loebisms from Hush: introducing a major character's life-long best friend who has never previously been mentioned in the story while having them be central to overall continuity.[3]

At first I thought it was some clever time-travel thing and the Doctor would notice that Amy and Rory's past had been changed, or that their memories had been tampered with, but no. Apparently it's merely the same kind of bad writing that gives us time-travelling Autons making a plastic robot copy of Rory [4] for their Roman army at Stonehenge, even though they'd never met him.[5]

And that's not even addressing the throwaway concept of previously unmentioned time-travellers going around assassinating history's greatest criminals, but who are so crap that instead of surgical strikes to a time and place where the person won't be missed, they are entirely years off the mark, and when they screw up they leave extremely advanced technology lying around in Hitler's own office for him to reverse-engineer into a super weapon. But the Doctor doesn't seem bothered about this kind of tampering with time,[6] so let us not mention it again.

1) Though he managed to destroy any interest I had in the scary stone angels by bringing them back and overexposing them.
2) Daleks teaming up with Cybermen? Did Moffat miss Doomsday, where the Cybermen outnumbered the Daleks thirteen million to four and when they propose an alliance the Daleks sneer at them and kick their shiny metal asses?
3) And even underlining how poorly this is being shoehorned into the plot by handwaving why she didn't appear at both her best friends' wedding, but not why nobody noticed at the time.
4) Who was dead at the time.
5) Did the plot of The Pandorica Opens/The Big Bang make sense on any level at all? I'm sure there are devoted websites out there taking it apart and bodging it back together with ingenuity and convoluted assumption to somehow force it to make sense, but personally I think that's the job of the guy who was paid to write it. And possibly the script editor, who was also paid to check it made sense.
6) It's not like there's ever been previous stories about the Doctor dealing with a Time Meddler...

Spotlight hero

2011-08-24T21:28:00.002+01:00

Every comic blog has to champion an obscure character[1], and if you don't count Cir-El, Fantomah, Moon Girl, Sun Girl, or any of the others I've written about because it's not like writing about obscure comics heroines is a recurring theme or anything, or alternatively just stick with the one in current continuity, the winner is Doctor Light.

So I'm thinking of doing that hugely fannish thing of reading and blogging every single appearance of Doctor Light in order. But before I do, I thought I should comment on her recent run in the Justice League of America, since it's about as close to current as I ever do.[2]

It starts strongly with Justice League of America #27-30, a tale by Dwayne McDuffie that goes a long way toward telling the story we've been waiting around for since Kimiyo was depowered in 2006. McDuffie can't give us Kimiyo's triumph over EDL[3] as he has in the meantime been turned into a candle by the Spectre, but he does craft a story that fills in a lot of the gaps, and sees her repowered with the help of Milestone heroes Icon, Hardware, and the Shadow Syndicate, and given a snazzy new revamp of her costume.

McDuffie also manages to hint at the kind of power that Kimiyo has not been shown to use in a very long time. Even before she is repowered, and without the new costume that is supposed to focus or enhance her powers in some vague technobabble way, she is shown moving at light speed. Even the Flash only does that on special occasions and needs a good run up; Kimiyo can do that from a standing start. We later find that although she can absorb nearby light sources for power, she is also still connected to the star Vega, which gives her an incredible source of raw power, and possibly qualifies her as a fusionkaster[4]. Basically McDuffie establishes her as the heavy hitter she was always intended to be.

Sadly, this run on Justice League was one of the last things Dwayne McDuffie wrote before he died, but it is a fine example of his strength as a writer and his commitment to diversity, crafting a team that is perhaps one of the most racially and sexually diverse incarnations of the Justice League. He is followed for one story by Len Wein, who writes a decent Kimiyo; she is abrasive toward the frivolous Plastic Man, who she is teamed with, but eventually comes to appreciate his good qualities.

And then the rot sets in, as James Robinson arrives to helm one of the least liked runs of Justice League in recent history.

Remember how I said McDuffie couldn't give Kimiyo a cathartic triumph over her rapist because the Spectre got to the scumbag first? Well Blackest Night means that Robinson can dig him up[5] and tell that now superflous story. But wait, it gets worse. I can only read what happens as somehow a desire to in some way retell the whole rape story, perhaps for those who came in late or something? I don't know. either way, he has EDL being all rapey, and, after licking a dead little girl, attacking Kimiyo, who for the purposes of this story is inneffectual against Black Lantern Evil Rapey Doctor Light, even though the black Lanterns' big weakness is her primary powerset, and tearing her clothes off.

Anyway, after several pages of BLERDL being all expositional, he threatens Kimiyo's children, and she remembers that she can channel a star and fries his ass. It is not only an ugly and obvious telling of a story that now didn't need to be told, but in its effort to hit every wrong note when telling a rape story, also manages to be visually voyeuristic.

Robinson almost immediately replaces the entire team with a combination of white [6] heroes from the Teen Titans and generic Justice League, and while Kimiyo hangs on until #43 she's mostly just standing at the back and filling out crowd scenes. When she does speak she has no recognisable character traits. She's put on a bus off panel, leaving to look after a sick child. Given the way Robinson writes her when he does make her the focus, it's difficult to be too disappointed to have her leave the team.

She's seen twice more, filling out crowd scenes to show how important the story is by having lots of heroes show up, first in #51 and then again in #56, where the artist[7] gives her a costume that is different from either of the two she has worn previously in this series, which seems a bit lazy. She might only be a cameo here, but she was a member of the main team only a few issues previously.

So as the current era of DC fades into the west, I'm glad to see Doctor Light get some good resolution to her story arc and membership of DC's top team for a while. The good characterisation given to Kimiyo by Dwayne McDuffie is a satisfying conclusion, and anything beyond that is irrelevant.

And so, having told the end of the story, while we wait for Kimiyo to show up in the DCnU, I shall next go back to the beginning, way back to Crisis on Infinite Earths #4.

Notes
1) It's in the rules.
2) She guest starred in several issues of Supergirl recently, too, but I haven't read them yet.
3) Evil Doctor Light
4) See Nexus by Mike Baron and Steve Rude
5) Even though there was no body. How do you get better from being a candle?
6)Okay, technically one's green and one's blue, but they are still white.
7) Following his example, I couldn't be bothered to look up his name.

Light in the blandness

2011-08-21T13:48:00.001+01:00

Kimiyo Hoshi has an annoying personality. She is an astronomer, astrophysicist, medical doctor (1), and very accomplished in scientific fields that few people would even understand the title of, and knows that her time is valuable in costume or out, and so is easily irritated when she feels that it's being wasted.

She has also managed to keep her sense of personal value intact despite being the superhero equivalent of a rape survivor (2).

But it isn't that I admire her inner strength and forgive her irritating personality as an unfortunate byproduct. I like that she's annoying. Unlike many characters that are supposed to be endearingly roguish but just come off as creepy and bigoted, Kimiyo is supposed to be annoying. And where any other character who started off with negative traits would over time have all their rough edges smoothed away, Kimiyo has managed to remain annoying for twenty five years (3).

Admittedly, there was one period during the JLI years (4) when they tried to explain it away as an allergic reaction or something (5) but thankfully it didn't stick.

So just remember, DC. When Kimiyo Hoshi Doctor Light eventually returns in the relaunch (6), Don't even try to sugar-coat her. She's not supposed to be the nice one.

Notes

1) Or whatever the current writer thinks it is she has a doctorate in.

2) and it wasn't even thinly disguised; it was flat out stated by her abuser that what he was doing to her was rape

3) Happy quarter century Doctor L.

4) yes, Kimiyo was a charter member, and even leader at one point, of the JLI, though she never seems to get invited to the reunions.

5) does that count as a retcon?

6) and she will.

Clone it, Baby, One More Time

2011-08-19T13:40:00.000+01:00

I was in my local comic shop yesterday and noticed a book entitled Spider-Man: The Complete Clone Saga. It's quite a thick book, and amused me that Marvel had finally got around to collecting it. Perhaps they think the hate for it has died down after fifteen years?

It was only later when I checked that I found out the sheer magnitude of the project. I mean, okay, I knew it dragged on for ages*, and if I'd thought about it I would have realised that it wouldn't all have fitted into even an Essentials/Showcase size volume, but six?!? At £25 a pop?!?!?

Marvel is seriously expecting people to spend £150 to read the most loathed, bloated, misguided, over-written story they ever produced?*

You have to admire their balls.

*I wonder if it will include the "we have no clue how to end this story" special they did.
**To be fair, it worked the first time around. The whole reason it became so bloated was because it was so successful that they kept extending it way beyond its original premise.

Fantomah: The First Retcon?

2011-08-14T14:00:00.001+01:00

I have no proof that what happened to Fantomah in Jungle Comics #27 was the first retcon, but it has to be one of the earliest in the history of comics.

It's actually sort of Fantomah's second retcon. Her first was in Jungle

Comics #16, but that was a much softer change; a result of the strip losing its original creator Fletcher Hanks. I don't know who the subsequent writers or artists were, but although Fantomah is doing her "spirit of vengeance" gig, she no longer has her characteristic skull-face and she's traded in her little black dress for a blue swimsuit. She later picks up a pet panther in #19, and even a boy sidekick in #23.

No explanation is given, and it's really more a change of style than an actual retcon. It might even be considered simple progression if it wasn't quite so abrupt. The changes that occur in #27 are in a different league.

As the story opens, Fantomah is accosted by an cloaked figure who has been searching for her. He calls her "daughter of the Pharaohs", tells her that her city needs her, and gives her a whole new outfit to wear. Fantomah initially claims no knowledge of what he's on about, but goes along with it. Once she is in the new outfit, her hair magically changes colour.

The old guy is almost immediately killed, but Fantomah mysteriously knows the way to the hidden city she's never heard of. When she arrives, she is immediately hailed as it's queen, and takes charge. By the end of the six page story she has forgotten about her boy sidekick (who never even appeared in the story), and now appears to be a normal woman with some Egyptian-themed magic. She has also acquired an arch-enemy.

So to recap: They've changed her entire appearance, location, powers, and supporting cast. When the only thing left from the previous series is the name, you have to wonder why they didn't just start a new strip.

Postcards from a Golden Age

2011-08-13T14:09:00.001+01:00

I once said I'd maim for a copy of Sun Girl #2.

Turns out, all I had to do was wait. I've just found scans, not only of Sun Girl #2, but also several issues of the wonderfully bad Moon Girl*, and even Venus. I'd love to get these in actual paper format, as I did Fantomah, but no one seems in any hurry to reprint these gems.

Sun Girl #2 is a nice little comic. It's not Earth-shatteringly exciting or significant, but honestly I'm a little sick of how every comic needs to be part of some cosmically important event lately. The art is full of character and wit, if seeming a little cramped at times, though that may just be the result of it being a more compressed level of storytelling than I'm used to.

In thirty pages we get three Sun Girl stories, one Blonde Phantom, and a text story. Sun Girl fights electric aliens from another dimension, thwarts a pair of burglars by laughing at them, and defeats a horde of crystal monsters, while Blonde Phantom solves a crime that she knows nothing about.

While not quite up to the high standard of issue 1, it's light and fun, and I only wish the series had lasted more than three issues.

*Though bizarrely, someone seems to be doing a new Moon Girl series. Who on Earth thought that was a good idea?

Wonder Woman never wore a skirt

2011-08-12T16:16:00.006+01:00

It's one of those errors that seems to get endlessly perpetuated. Originally started by someone who hadn't looked very closely at early Sensation Comics, and continued by those who a) didn't look too closely either, or b) never bothered to check their facts.

But if you go back to Wonder Woman's first appearances in All Star Comics #8 and Sensation Comics #1 and actually look, it's clear in many panels that the two legs of the "skirt" are separated, and in fact it's a pair of loose culottes.

Over the following issues the culottes become tighter and more streamlined (shrunk in the wash?) until by issue #9 they are the Familiar star-spangled shorts associated with Golden and Silver Age Wonder Woman.

But they were never a skirt.

Images from Sensation Comics #1.

Stupid Steampunk

2011-08-11T15:59:00.002+01:00

Don't get me wrong; I think there's some amazing, beautiful, and ingenious steampunk costuming around.

And then there are the ones where the designer thinks that all they need to do to be steampunk is to throw on a liberal sprinkling of cogs and gears as decoration. Some of it even looks pretty, but it's still stupid. The whole point of steampunk costuming is to create an illusion of functionality, so random bits of brass stuck together work, being obviously non-functional, work against the illusion.

Evil again

2011-02-10T21:31:00.002Z

So it seems Supergirl has turned evil again. You can tell because her outfit has gone black, while becoming tighter and shorter. In other news snow is still cold.

How does it work, anyway? If you're a teen female hero, does your outfit get a tiny bit darker and shorter every time you cross on a yellow light or photocopy your ass at a party? Or is it cumulative and everything is perfectly fine until one time you are telling some guy you are washing your hair, and ZAPPETY! YOU ARE EVUL!!

It's about time! (and space)

2010-08-27T01:47:00.004+01:00

Valerian and Laureline vol 1. The City of Shifting Waters

Long time readers may recall that I was so appalled at the quality of the translation of the most recent English language edition of Valerian that I started working on my own translation of one of the earlier volumes. The good news is that Cinebook have now started translating the whole series from the beginning.

I had high hopes for this translation as I've read several other European books that they have published in English editions, and I wasn't disappointed. Unlike the terrible ibooks translation the new one is clear and entertaining. In fact the plot isn't hugely interesting or original, involving Valerian and Laureline tracking down a mad scientist who has escaped back in time to 1986.

Not that this is a 1986 you'd recognise. The polar ice caps have melted and New York is underwater. And this is where the story really stands out. The art depicting flooded New York is fantastic. It's interesting to see this alternate 1986, though when it was first published in 1976 this was a possible scary future instead of a warped past.

Although I'm happy to see it, and I love the art, this is clearly an early work and neither the writing nor the art have really hit their stride yet. I found it odd that there are no women in the story other than Laureline, and even odder that nobody in the story appears to notice. Even in this early adventure Laureline is clearly more competent than the titular hero, and in fact is held back for the first part of the story for no very good reason other than to enable Valerian to get into trouble for her to rescue him from when she does turn up. And then later in the story she is again put out of action so that Valerian can bumble about ineffectually.

The writer, Mezieres seems to have some issues with women, though he seems to have got over it by Ambassador of the Shadows (vol 6) where Valerian is kidnapped and Laureline is allowed to take centre stage to rescue him.

One thing I like about this new edition is that the series is not called Valerian Spaciotemporal Agent as it was known when this was first published, but the current (and more accurate) Valerian and Laureline.

small press, small mind

2010-08-21T22:32:00.000+01:00

My tolerance for small press comics is fairly low. There are a lot of good ones out there now, and the top end blurs the distinction between small press and, er, big press. But there is still also a lot of crud.

But we all have to start somewhere, and the best way to learn how to do comics is to do comics. But there is a "small press" mentality that irritates the hell out of me.

Disclaimer: Please note that there are a ton of excellent small press comics that do not fit into this tirade, from the humble mini-comic photocopied at work when the boss wasn't looking, to the glossy colour 64 page spectaculars. If you think this rant is aimed at you, then deep down you must believe that you deserve it.

What I am talking about is the attitude of those that somehow think they are above mundane details like correct spelling, coherent storytelling, basic research, or any kind of perspective on what they are doing. I am unable to comprehend why someone would go to all the time and effort to create a comic purely for the love of doing it, and then not bother to finish it properly. Have they lost interest in it half way through? Do they consider it in some way cool to make it less than it could be?

And then there's the "re-inventing the wheel" approach. The language of comics has been developed through a century of use, but that's not good enough. These people know better. The result is almost always something that is far harder to follow than a regular comic, but doesn't have anything more to say. The alternative styling achieves no useful purpose and in fact distracts from the storytelling.

But the main thing I dislike about these small mind/press guys is the way that they are incapable of dealing with any feedback that is not exclusively telling them how wonderful they are. Say "I liked that story but this panel would work even better if the hand was a little bigger" and they react as though you had called them a donkey bothering bed-wetter. And the funny thing is that the better looking someone's work is, the better they are at handling creative criticism. Nobody is perfect. I've seen Brian Bolland original artwork and was incredibly reassured to find that there was whiteout all over it. Even he makes mistakes.

So these days if someone asks me for an opinion of their work I have to say to them "do you want a real opinion or would you just like me to say it looks nice?" And yet nine times out of ten when they claim they want a real opinion and I pick out a couple of weak spots that could do with some polish, they still get all offended and behave like I suggested they had innappropriate relations with zoo animals. The tenth one will look thoughtful and then often say "Yes, there was something bugging me about that that I couldn't quite work out" and be happy that they have found a way to make their work better.

How to tell whether someone likes your work:

If they give you some blanket negative comment like "It's a stinky pile of poo." then they don't like it and probably haven't even read it.

If they point out some small error, or suggest some way in which an aspect of the story could be improved then they have read it, thought about it, and found some way of helping you to make it look better. This person likes your comic and wants it to be the best it could possibly be. If you feel personally insulted by their comment then you are an idiot. This rant is for you.

Moral of the story: don't ask for an opinion unless you really want to recieve one.

Reasons to be Kimiyo

2010-08-21T22:22:00.000+01:00

When Kimiyo Hoshi was first introduced way back in Crisis on Infinite Earths, she was a doctor, a scientist, and a single mother with two children, and she lived in Japan. After a long stint with the JLA she eventually retired from the hero biz to spend more time with her children. In Infinite Crisis she joined the fight, protecting her homeland (still Japan) from attack.

In Green Arrow in a story supposedly taking place after IC but published some six months before, Kimiyo is a management executive in America. Her powers are taken away and she is left dying. Now in Birds of Prey we find her alive and well, apparently with powers, and working as a scientist in Japan.

So what exactly happened here? Here are my theories:

1) Superboy Prime's reality punching activities created an alternate universe in which Kimiyo's entire backstory and geographical location were different. This alternate universe collapsed before anybody noticed it other then Green Arrow, who didn't care enough to check whether Kimiyo was still alive at the end of the story.

2) It was a clone.

3) Dream? Hoax? Imaginary story? I'm running out of ways to explain away Judd Winick's lazy writing and his editor's negligence.

In fact my best guess is that the blanks will be filled in during 52. Either that or everyone is going to pretend the Green Arrow story never happened.

Get-out clause

2010-08-21T22:17:00.000+01:00

There's this cool bit in the Xena episode of The Simpsons where Lucy Lawless explains to her fans that any time something occurs in Xena that is incongrous, anachronistic, or plain makes no sense, the explanation is "A wizard did it".

DC developed a similar philosophy some time ago, and every time they have an Event they use that as an excuse to cover any continuity screwups up to the current time. After Infinite Crisis their excuse was Superboy Prime reality punches, but even they seem to realise how weak this was so within a year they came up with Mister Mind munching on the multiverse to explain away anything that didn't make sense. Unfortunately the main thing that didn't make sense was how someone, regardless of how powerful they were, could alter reality by hitting it, or how a giant space bug could eat an intangible concept.

Marvel got onto the bandwagon somewhat later, and it has to be said that while their excuse is an epic cop-out, it's a lot less metaphysical. Anything that went wrong/didn't work so we want to undo it/was plain stupid and made no sense: A Skrull Did It.

So it's a thing now?

2010-08-20T23:20:00.004+01:00

Today I came across the Mammoth Book of Special-Ops Romance.

I hadn't realised that there was enough special-ops romance for it to qualify as a distinct sub-genre, let alone fill a Mammoth book.

One last thing

2010-07-31T17:09:00.004+01:00

I'll shut up about ereaders and ebooks and anything else that involves taking a regular word and then sticking an 'e' in front of it, but I just wanted to share one last thing that makes me happy about my Sony PRS-600:

One thing they got completely right is that when I switch it on it takes maybe three seconds to go from switched off to looking at the last page I read.

That's faster to boot up than my MP3 player. It's faster than my TV or my mobile phone. It's so much faster than my PC that I could switch them on at the same time and read a few pages while I wait for the computer to get its act together.

I'm not sure I could find my place any quicker with an old fashioned, dead-tree book.

Typical!

2010-07-29T17:16:00.004+01:00

A week after I give up waiting for Amazon to get together a British edition of the Kindle and go buy another ereader, they announce a release date for it.

I expected to feel a little annoyed, but I'm not really. I found an ereader that I'm so happy with I want to hug it and pet it and call it George, and while the Kindle has some advantages, notably the massive library of ebooks that Amazon aren't interested in selling in any competing formats, it also has a few drawbacks that I'm delighted I don't have to deal with.

ebay strangeness

2010-07-28T20:32:00.003+01:00

I just counted fifteen copies of The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas listed on ebay in the non-fiction category.

I realise that homoeopaths are deluded at the best of times, but I find it hard to believe that many of them would claim their magic remedies to enable telepathy or time-travel.

eBook report: second impressions

2010-07-28T15:09:00.003+01:00

When you read a review it's usually true to say that the reviewer has not spent enough time with the thing they are reviewing to get bored with it or break it. The truth is that a professional reviewer simply doesn't have the time to spend much more than half an hour with the thing because they are paid by the word, and time spent reading books, playing games, or poking gizmos is time they are not earning money.

Consequently they can give you some basic look & feel information about the product, but they can't say much about what it's like living with it for a month. So I thought it take that extra step and chronicle my ongoing experiences with the Sony PRS-600 Reader.

It's been a week now and I'm surprised how much the reader has become an integral part of my life. I'm almost tempted to clasp it close and murmur "my precious". I think the size is key here. It is small enough for me to easily carry around with me, but with a large enough screen to make reading it as easy as reading any paperback. I'm glad mine came with the nice leather cover as this prevents it from getting bumps and scratches from everyday use, and holding it with the cover open feels much more like an ordinary book-reading experience than if I was just looking at the screen.

I'm also glad I invested in a 2GB SD card, as I managed to fill up the main system memory quite quickly. And while this may be largely down to the half-dozen manga I included, any graphics heavy files, like computer manuals or text books, would similarly take up much larger amounts of space than pure text. The specifications say it will hold "upto 350 books"; I doubt I managed fifty before I moved on to the SD card. Having said that, I think 2GB is probably enough. Unless you are a voracious reader who is planning to be away from home for a month or more, loading up the machine with more than 200 books is only going to leave you lost for choice about what to read next.

I think I've now managed to work out how to use all the functions available. The librarian in me is a little dismayed to find that listing books by author name will only catalogue them by first name rather than surname, but I like that you can sort books by "collections" based on tags. This takes a little effort to use efficiently because a lot of books come with dozens of tags, but I just worked out how to edit them down to something that suits me using Calibre. So if I don't have anything particular in mind I can now easily search through individual catalogues of "short stories", "humour", "science fiction", "cheese", or any other category I feel like setting up.

I did install the Sony software that came with the Reader, but Calibre is so much more useful that once I became aware how limited the Sony program is I haven't bothered with it.

As for the extra features of the PRS-600, I like the touch screen. I haven't tried a reader that has a lot of buttons, or a few buttons that have to do multiple jobs, but I have an old MP3 player that has one rocker switch that, depending on how you press it, adjusts the volume, moves forward or back through the current track, moves forwards or back between tracks, and pages through the menus. It's a pain in the ass, and way too easy to find yourself in completely the wrong track when you just wanted to make it a bit louder. Even if you have enough buttons for all the functions, I doubt it compares with simply touching the relevant part of the screen. It feels very intuitive and comfortable.

I haven't yet felt the need to use the dictionary, except to try it out. But I can see where it would be nice to do an immediate look up when I come across a word I don't understand. And this feature also enables you to search for particular words anywhere in the book. For me it's a nice extra, but I'd definitely class it as a luxury, rather than an essential.

I still find the biggest drawback is the lack of books available in ebook format. While it's possible to find plenty of free ebooks on the net, from copyright-free older books at sites like Project Gutenberg (who so far have surprisingly little H.P. Lovecraft) to more legally dubious collections, if you want to buy from strictly legal booksellers like Barnes & Noble or Waterstones, you'll find the selection limited and expensive. I read an ebook of a writer previously unknown to me and was unable to find any other works by her available in electronic form. I ended up getting her Times Bestseller in paperback from Amazon for the princely sum of one penny.

In conclusion, one week on I give the Sony PRS-600 Reader 9 out of 10 for making reading fun, but I give the booksellers 4 out of 10 for wasting the opportunity to sell me stuff by not providing books I want to read at a reasonable price.

Eye on the Price

2010-07-25T12:08:00.002+01:00

One big drawback of ereading is book prices. On the one hand you can't browse second hand bookstores for ebooks, and on the other it seems that publishers are under the distinct impression that it costs more to format a one megabyte file and make it available for download than it does to buy a lot of paper and ink, combine the two with a lot of big machines into a pleasing shape, and then ship the result to the shop.

I can't imagine any other reason why the new bestseller I want to read costs more as an ebook than it does as a hardback.

I don't think that word means what you think it means

2010-07-24T11:51:00.000+01:00

Kekko Kamen listed under 'Mature Content'.

eBook report: first impressions

2010-07-21T15:26:00.005+01:00

While I was waiting for the Sony Reader to arrive on my doorstep I've been preparing a bunch of books to load onto it using Calibre on my PC, which is a great little program that appears to be able to convert almost anything into a format my Reader can understand.

I therefore picked samples from many different sources and formats to test how the Reader handled them. The one thing I'd been a bit concerned about was the page refresh speed, particularly with graphics, after seeing this little video.

The reader duly arrived. Instructions are minimal. One page of the small leaflet shows you where all the buttons are, and the other page basically just tells you to plug it into your computer and follow the prompts. To be fair, it's a fairly simple device. It only does the one thing, so the instructions don't need to be lengthy. But it would have been nice if it had informed me about basic functions like automatic bookmarking of everything you read, rather than leaving you to find this out by trial and error.

The unit itself is the size of a Tokyopop manga, but a lot thinner. Also noticeably heavier. I did set up the official software, but soon found it limited and annoying. I think I'll probably just stick to Calibre.

I loaded it up with my test selection of books, and started reading.

First impression is how dark the screen is. I'm just not used to a screen that isn't backlit. It's fine in normal daylight, but I can see why they sell little light attachments for them. Next thing I noticed was that I had a little trouble focussing on the lettering. I think that's maybe because I was trying to read it at the distance I would for a normal book, and it's not quite the same. We shall see.

Then I got on to testing how comics looked on it. Manga looks surprisingly good, although text readability drops off fast as it gets smaller. Some fan translations use an unnecessarily small font that leaves lots of empty space in the text boxes and balloons, and is difficult to make out even on a full size monitor. After a little trial and error I found that changing the orientation does wonders for readability. It leaves something to be desired aesthetically to only be able to see half a page at a time, but I'm prepared to sacrifice that much if it means I don't have to squint with my nose pressed against the screen. It still doesn't save the tiny-text fan scans, but I'm not sure what would.

The major relief is that page-loading times are fine. I noticed it was a little slower for a 200 page file, but I'd expected that, and had intended to split up anything over 100 pages anyway. As far as manga is concerned, it ticks all the boxes.

Ordinary book files read pretty much like reading a regular book. Variation in quality seems more down to the original file coding than anything else. Hard to say without an extended test. I need to actually read a whole book on it to judge.

The touch screen works so well I almost forgot to mention it. After a couple of minutes it felt so natural to turn pages by a little flick of the finger that I stopped noticing I was doing it.

Clever stuff you can do with the Reader includes highlighting passages or even scribbling on pages, but I can't work out how to do the dictionary look up, though. You'd think a machine that is perfect for reading PDF manuals would come loaded with one of its own, but no. I think I saw a review on Youtube that went through all the features. I'll have to see if that explains it.

To conclude first impressions, it seems to do pretty much what I expected of it, which is a good thing, since that, after all, was why I bought it. Biggest drawback at this point is the annoying lack of documentation. But, to be honest, if the worst you can say about a new device is that the manual is a bit lacking, then I think it's a good result.

Like a book

2010-07-19T08:53:00.004+01:00

At the point where everyone is buying an iPad I have instead opted for a Sony Reader. Why? I suppose the most obvious reasons are 1) it cost me less than a third as much as an iPad, and 2) an iPad wouldn't fit in my bag.

It's all about defining what you want. I wanted something that enables me to read books, that reads like a book, doesn't strain my eyes (like a book), and that fits the paperback sized space in my bag(1). Sure, the iPad is new and shiny and does lots of clever things and connects to the net and all that stuff, but it doesn't have an e-ink screen and it's too big for my bag. So the fact that it does all kinds of extra fun stuff is a bit pointless if it doesn't fulfil the primary criteria I was looking for(2).

I had been waiting for the Kindle to show up in the UK. But it's been a year since the Kindle 2 was released, and Amazon UK are still suggesting I import it myself, so I don't think they are really trying. Plus I'd need to get the Kindle DX to get the right wireless connection and that one is again too big for my bag.

So that was how I ended up looking at the Sony PRS-600. I did my research and read user reviews, and it seems to be the best e-reader currently available. The older 505 is a little cheaper, and it's generally considered to have a slightly clearer screen, but the 600 has twice as much memory and useful extras like the built in dictionary. It's also touch screen based, instead of all the buttons on the 505; not sure what difference that makes.

Having decided on my choice of reader, it then seemed a good idea to see if I could actually find the books I wanted to read in a suitable format. It turns out that yes, I could. I found all sorts of obscure science fiction novels that I own or once owned and would love to read again. I found books I wanted to read that I've been unable to find in dead tree format because they've been out of print for twenty years. And I found five of the seven books currently on my Waiting to be Read shelf.

Okay, I confess some of these were not strictly legally authorised editions. But when it comes to books that I already own in another format, or a book that I've been hunting for ages and would happily pay money for if only someone would make it possible for me to buy it, I don't feel like I've cheated anyone.

What really surprised me was the manga. It hadn't occurred to me that I could read manga on it. I mean manga collections are the right size(3), but I guess it hadn't realised it could do pictures too. In fact there seems to be a whole niche fan base for ebook manga. It's a shame the official publishers haven't noticed or they might be able to open up a whole new market.

So having found my e-reader and ascertained that there is plenty of material available for me to read that interests me, I have now ordered a Sony Reader PRS-600. I'll let you know how it works out when it arrives.

1) Truth to tell, the last two actual books I've read don't fit that last criteria, as one was an oversize paperback and the other was a hardback.
2) Sure, I could get a bigger bag, but I like the one I've got. Had I found something that was perfect in every other way, I might have considered this, but I didn't.
3) Manga, specifically, rather than comics generally because the standard collected format for manga is the right size, so it's intended to be read that way. Western comics are intended to be seen larger and so are much harder to read at this size. They are also usually in full colour.

Tooting one's own tooter

2010-07-16T17:57:00.005+01:00

Returning to this blog after a long gap, I had a stroll through some of my old posts and I'm surprised to find that some of them aren't half bad. Which got me thinking about collecting together the good bits and publishing them. Probably just as PDFs, as there would be all kinds of copyright issues if I wanted to do anything more professional.

And then that turned into two books, because there's enough to do one that's purely Wonder Woman focussed and one that's everything else. So I'm now working my way through collating it all and polishing it up a bit. Though probably not much, as I'm far too lazy to make that much effort when I'm not getting paid for it.

I guess this means I'm going to have to finally get around to reading the last thirty issues of pre-Crisis Wonder Woman in order to finish it off. Le sigh.

ETA: Here's a question for anyone who has read much of my ramblings; for the non-Wonder Woman collection I wasn't thinking of including any actual comics reviews, but as I look through, I find that some of them (particularly the Teen Titans and Legion Showcase bits) stand up quite well. Should I include them or not?

Feminist language

2010-07-14T15:59:00.003+01:00

Language defines our world in so many unconscious ways. The words we use to describe things say a lot about how we view the world. More, the associations we have for a word are important, even if we don't see any connection. So when people say that when they use "gay" as an insult it has nothing to do with their attitudes toward homosexuals, they are wrong.

How can I say that? Consider the trouble caused by the usage of the word "niggardly", which has no racial connotations at all, and yet people who have used it have been given reprimands, been sued, or even lost their jobs for using a word that sounds similar to an unacceptable word. In fact it's now pretty much disappeared from the language altogether.

In the early days of feminism there was an effort to add some gender balance to language by changing words that had "man" in them to something a bit more gender-neutral. Some did take; for example "chairman" is now often "chair-person", or the slightly sillier (to my mind) "chair". Many did not. What I've noticed lately is something of a feminist revenge, where rather than attempting to "fix" the established language and persuade other people (particularly men) to use it, women have just started making up new male-specific words that often describe aspects of the female experience (eg. mansplain, man flu) which somehow hadn't been covered before.

And what's even more amusing, to me at least, is the rise of male-specific words to describe things that are traditionally more female associated, and why it's not in any way effeminate or un-manly for a guy to be associated with them (eg. man purse). Possibly used sarcastically, but your mileage may vary.

Not to be confused with words where someone has taken an offensive female-specific word and applied it to a man (eg man-slut). Equality of offensiveness is still just offensive.

A stroll through Urban dictionary has pages of this stuff, including many hilarious examples I've never heard of before, but am now noting down and looking for opportunities to insert them into conversation.

Boring, Boring Violence

2010-07-11T14:01:00.002+01:00

It's not exclusively a comics thing, but I am starting to get fed up of what many comics writers seem to think is a realism thing to get specific about all the injuries the characters are suffering.

The first time I noticed it was The Dark Knight Returns, where we get this litany of damage Bats is suffering from as the story progresses, but I've seen it a lot recently. Where the "reality" falls down is where despite being concussed, shot, beaten up, a broken arm, had their powers stolen, shot again, dropped out of a helicopter, and had their leg bitten off by a werewolf, the hero still somehow manages to hold it together for as long as it takes to win the day.

It doesn't take long before the tension created by injuries becomes lost once you realise that it's not actually stopping them from doing anything they need to do, and they will completely recover from it anyway. Lately I've been reading The Dresden Files, and it's reaching the point where I feel like a sucker for feeling any kind of concern for the latest injury Harry is dealt, because, honestly, if the broken leg he got last chapter isn't slowing him down, I don't see how being beaten up again is going to make much of a difference.

I'm not saying that I want to see the lasting effects that such injuries cause someone to recur through the rest of the series, I'm just saying that if they are not going to have real effects then don't have them in the first place.

Is it worse to have a character seriously hurt but somehow act like they haven't been nearly as badly hurt as we've been told, or to not have them hurt that bad in the first place?

Edited to add:
I think I've solved it. It was when it occurred to me that The Dresden Files are written in the first person. It's Harry telling the story. Things never were quite as bad as he tells you; he's bigging up how hurt he is for sympathy and to show how cool he is. Harry Dresden has manflu.

Bugged about Big Finish

2009-01-04T17:45:00.002Z

I did a review a little while ago of one of the Big Finish Doctor Who audio productions. I've listened to a few of these, and even a couple more since the one I reviewed.

The trick is to avoid listening to the extras they put on at the end after the drama, in which various people involved with the production congratulate each other about how brilliant it was. I'm sure they've worked hard on it, and they are on a bit of a buzz after working through some fairly intensive recording sessions, but telling me it's fantastic when I've just listened to it and I know it is not fantastic just makes me more aware of its shortcomings.

So two pieces of advice to Big Finish productions:

1) Cut out all the extra bits that are just self-congratulatory lovey-stuff. Either give us something that is going to enhance our appreciation of the production or don't bother.

2) Get a script editor who understands that highly convoluted plotting does not equal clever storytelling.

So is Final Crisis over yet or what?

2009-01-04T17:14:00.002Z

Event overkill in the DC universe

Now I don't for one second think there's some big conspiracy at DC to undermine Final Crisis and make a fool of Grant Morrison; it's just a side effect of company greed out of control.

Final Crisis was presented to us as the big climax to the trilogy, following the awesome Crisis on Infinite Earths and the disposable Ultimate Crisis. The rot set in a year before it even started. Morrison had requested that the New Gods not be used in other comics in the lead up to FC, so that he could build up his reinterpretation of them. So Dan Didio rushed out and commissioned the dreadful Death of the New Gods mini-series, which was not only a bad, bad comic, but directly contravened events in Final Crisis, and gave Morrison a handicap before he'd even started.

So Final Crisis rolls around, and just as what's supposed to be the big event kicks off, DC elects to run several other big stories, each with their own spin-offs. There's Maelstrom, which ties into a bunch of Superman-related titles, there's Kingdom's Come A Bit Early in JSA and friends, there's the build up to next year's big event in all the Green Lantern books, and there's even Morrison's own Batman's dead no he isn't over in the Bat-family.

At first I assumed that at least some of these fitted together in some convoluted way with Final Crisis, but that doesn't seem to be the case, and consequently I can't keep track of what is a spin-off from which event. Especially the ones that are convoluted side-stories to Final Crisis.

The result is that I end up reading less comics, rather than more. And I have no idea whether Final Crisis is even finished yet.

Who even gives a

2008-11-12T21:37:00.005Z

Doctor Who: The Dark Husband
Big Finish audio adventures

I'm sure that the vast majority of people watching Doctor Who now have little interest in the previous incarnation of the show and are blissfully unaware that it is carrying on in the form of audio dramas produced by Big Finish featuring original cast from Doctors 5 to 8.

Don't be fooled by the professional look and the official BBC license; this is definitely a fan production. I've listened to a few and, although having their own continuity, are not generally obsessed by it (1) They are for the most part okay, with rare bouts of originality (2), but for the most part don't exactly push the envelope.

Which brings me to one I've been listening to today. It's called The Dark Husband, and features the 7th Doctor (3), Ace (4) and some other guy they seem to have picked up along the way. I should probably wait until I've finished it before commenting, but I'm not sure that's ever going to happen.

The first episode is so arch you could mistake it for the Colosseum. So many lampshades are hung about every Who cliché they are enacting that they must be the best lit studio on the planet. And yet the plot, such as it is, involves two factions of the same race who are in an eons long conflict for no very good reason, and have no distinguishing features other than one side is very hairy and have unsophisticated tastes while the other side is hairless and highly sophisticated. And then the Doctor and co. show up and each side assumes on the basis of no information at all that they are spies for the other and attempts to kill them without even a gesture toward interrogation before we reach the actual plot and we can get out of generic land before I fall asleep.

Honestly, it's so painfully Who by the numbers. After all the self-awareness in the opening scenes' dialogue you'd think the writer might be attempting to subvert the form, but I haven't spotted any sign of it so far. The conflict that the Doctor is here to resolve barely qualifies as two-dimensional. And the Doctor himself is so smug you want to kick his arse. He's deliberately and meanly dropped Ace into yet another adventure after promising her a vacation. And the conflict has been going on for centuries, with millions dead on each side, which leaves you wondering why the Doctor didn't turn up a bit sooner if he really wanted to help.

And then the Doctor appears to know more or less about what's going on depending on the needs of the plot. On the one hand, it transpires that he has deliberately arrived at this time and place (5), and appears to know more than what is going on than just about anybody, including the inhabitants, who are doing the old "We no longer remember the reason for our war or the details of the rituals you have just invoked", and at other times is claiming that he's just working from some information that he picked up off a war memorial after they arrived (6), and has no idea where it's leading.

Halfway into episode two I'm wishing that the writer would make up their mind whether the Doctor knows more about what's happening than anyone else or that he's making it up as he goes along, and stop trying to do both. I don't really care about the aliens as they are so stupid that they've been killing each other for centuries without knowing why, and without any noticeable success, and have no culture other than is required for the plot anyway. Really, the only thing of interest is the business about how a marriage could stop such a conflict, and who the bride is. And that's only interesting because it's been made into such a mystery by having nobody present have any idea about what's going on.

Other than this hideously contrived mystery, it's so generic and yet at the same time so heavy on the meta-commentary that I may never get to the end of it. How it can be so smug about cliches it's perpetuating without doing anything original with them is so annoying that I may be forced to destroy the discs in a very creative way. But if I can keep the irritation down I might just keep going to the end in case they actually do throw an original twist into the story.

And if they don't, at least I get to go "see? I knew it."

Notes
1. except for the sequence involving the 8th Doctor starting with episode 50, but that seems to have been handily resolved now. I have no clue how.
2. like the one story that's on two CDs that can be listened to in any order.
3. sylvester Mc Coy
4. who has been stuck as a teenager for the last twenty years.
5. so much so that he deceived his companions into wanting to go there.
6. somehow, the inhabitants have entirely failed to notice this, despite it being on a mural on the side of the only landmark on the planet.

It Rhymes with Goth

2008-10-08T00:34:00.000+01:00

There's been a little chat lately in some corners of the blogospherahedron about the work of cartoonist Elena Steier, whose pictures contain elements some find racist and/or sexist [1].

But that's not what I want to talk about today. I think her work is simply not very funny [2]. I would have lost interest in her website real quick if it were not for one series of cartoons she does called The Goth Scouts. She's even given them their own website, despite them being neither funny, nor actually containing any gothic elements.

It's a typical, if considerably tamer than most, Wednesday Addams knockoff in the Evil Little Girl genre. Only without any of the usual visual attributes you might expect. There are four characters, but to all intents and purposes they are interchangeable and don't appear to have any individual character traits.

Even the name irritates me. Okay, I can see some mileage in doing a goth take on girl scouts, but if it were me, I wouldn't call it it something as unimaginative as Goth Scouts. I'd call them Crypt Scouts or Ghoul Scouts or something [3], and dress them in loligoth girl scout uniforms with extra bats and skulls, and a variety of horror-trope achievement badges. If you need to call them Goth Scouts in order for the reader to be aware that they are A) goth, and B) scouts, then you're doing something wrong.

Anyway, to get to the point, shortly after reading one of their typically unfunny cartoons I came across an episode of the syndicated Rhymes with Orange which did essentially the same joke, and I was intrigued by the comparison, so for your edification I thought I'd share.

The essence of the joke is a suggestion that the neighbours have been murdered. The Goth Scouts cartoon doesn't really process the notion much further than "Look, bones! Wouldn't it be funny if it was the neighbour?" [4]

This falls pretty flat, and undermines itself with unresolved aspects so you are left wondering why a murderer would have left the bones lying around in the garden, if the dog is a giant or it's just the perspective, and what the tiny girls and their giant dog are doing in the neighbour's garden in the first place. Perhaps I'm over-thinking this and the intention was just to suggest that the girls have morbidly over-active imaginations. Except that in other episodes they regularly interact with monsters and vampires, so that doesn't work.

The art on this strip is usually the best part of it, with some nice cartoon rendering, so this is unusually weak, with lots of irrelevant detail and the characters stiffly waving their arms at each other rather than supporting the joke in any way.

The Rhymes with Orange cartoon handles the joke a lot better, with a nice little play on words and a veiled hint of menace suggesting that the character himself has murdered the neighbour. A much better development of the notion. But what's going on with the art? It's so irrelevant to the joke that you could replace the text with a whole different gag and nobody would know.

It's worse than a generic talking heads image because there's enough going on in the picture to make you think it should be relevant in some way, but it's not.

Notes.
1. I find both.
2. People will excuse an awful lot if the jokes are genuinely funny.
3. Preferably something more imaginitive, but you get my drift.
4. Not especially, no.

One Hulk, two Hulk, red Hulk, boo Hulk

2008-10-04T09:19:00.005+01:00

Hulksies are red, dilly dilly,
Hulksies are green,
Ed Mac draws lumpy people and
Jeph Loeb's still a hack.

Gentle reader, as you may know, I am not overfond of the writings of Jeph Loeb. It would not, perhaps, be going too far to say that, were it up to me, he would be first up against the wall when the revolution comes [1].

I was thus delighted when he signed up with Marvel, as it meant that he would no longer be interfering with characters I liked. His origin for Supergirl has been more (if you read this month's Action) or less (if you read this month's Brave and the Bold) retconned out of existence, along with her skeevy parental issues and nude adolescent spaceship-piloting, and most of his other additions and revisions are well on their way to being dismantled, ignored, reinterpreted. or set to fall down the next passing Crisis.

Thus it is that I now only read Loebwork for the thrill of the truly awful. The relaxing experience of knowing that I will not be disappointed by plot holes or lapses in structure, continuity, or basic physics. Indeed, I look forward to them with the gusto of one playing a drinking game wherein you take a shot every time Grant Morrison features a minor character unseen since 1966.

So I've been reading Hulk. AKA Red Hulk.

Is it in any continuity with other Marvel comics? I have a vague notion of dedicated fanboys working feverishly through the night to wedge all the cameos and guest stars into continuity, but I sincerely don't care [2].

Red Hulk is big and mean. Red Hulk is so strong he can beat up Classic™ Green Hulk and punch Thor into space. But sometimes he uses a gun.

Classic™ Hulk is very Silver Age retro and refers to himself in the third person. Classic™ Hulk is not a bag of hammers.

Each issue is composed of 95% Red Hulk beating up on this issue's guest star, 5% dropping hints and having people make inaccurate suspicions as to who Red Hulk might be.

I don't care who Red Hulk is.

There are also little one page gag strips by Audrey Loeb [3] at the end that feature Red Hulk, Green Hulk, and Blue Hulk. They are a delight.

In the latest issue, after five issues of Red Hulk beating the crap out of everyone, finally, Classic™ Hulk and Thor get together and beat Red Hulk. And then they go away, leaving Red Hulk to recover and go beat someone else next issue.

It has all the depth of a video game[4].

Notes

1. You can make guesses about who would fill the number two and three slots if you like. It's not difficult.
2. And how many SHIELD helicarriers are there, anyway? I don't think I've read a Marvel comic in the last year where they haven't crashed one.
3. She is either a relative, or it's very unfortunate coincidence.
4. Space Invaders, not Age of Empires.

Ten things the ultimate geek comic collection should have to be truely awesome

2008-10-03T04:09:00.003+01:00

There's one of those memes going around where people list all kinds of things they consider essential to any comic collection of any worth. I read a couple of them, found that I only had about a quarter of the things listed, and realised I didn't care.

So here's my short version of things to claim you have in your collection if you want to look cool (but you don't actually have to own them).

1. A current obscure title that nobody else has heard of, which goes to show how cool you are for being aware of it.

2. A title that everyone has heard of but doesn't think is that special, but for which you have a cunning argument for why it is cool.

3. A title that everyone already knows is cool, just to show that you have some common ground with the rest of comic fandom.

4. A golden age title that nobody else has heard of (you can make one up if you like as there are lots of short lived golden age comics that sank without trace).

5. An indie comic that nobody else has heard of because only 5 copies were ever printed.

6. Some outrageous kitchy light-hearted silver age element that could only be reused today with heavy-handed symbolism or knowing self-reference.

7. A comic, or particular run of a comic that has been out of print for at least twenty years, which you can lobby for collected reprints of.

8. A title you think must be very cool because you completely fail to make any sense of it. If it's a manga, you can't even work out whether to read it left to right or right to left because it makes as little sense either way.

9. A hideously expensive deluxe collection of some title . I mean if people are going to pay hundreds of dollars for it then it must be good, right?

10. A comic so obscure that it was never actually published. Or even written.

Edit: Damnit, I just thought of another one. Okay, consider this a substitute for any of the other ones, or an additional feature of one of them.

Ω. A comic with which you have some kind of personal connection, even if it's only that you once stepped on the inker's toe at a con. Anything works providing you can spin it into an anecdote to bore friends, acquaintances, and complete strangers for the rest of time.

Triple Treat

2008-05-24T00:47:00.002+01:00

I always liked Triplicate Girl, even though she was useless. In a club where everyone has to have a super power, her power is to turn into three girls with no powers. And yet somehow nobody ever brings this up.

Of course her powers are actually tremendously useful. It's just she never gets a mission that would take proper advantage of them. Imagine how great she'd be in a covert operation: she can be in two or three places at once! She could be having a conversation with the evil overlord, while at the same time rifling through his panty drawer. And eating pizza.

There are great stretches of Legion stories I haven't read yet, so it may be that someone did get around to writing her well, but there's not much sign of it in the two Showcase volumes so far available.

And it gets worse. In volume two, one of her selves is killed! One third of her being is destroyed! And so we get a touching little scene in which she says "Oh, guess I'll need a new name, then." You can almost feel the entire lack of emotion. By complete coincidence, the day I read the story, I also saw the episode of the Legion cartoon where T-Girl #3 gets offed, and they at least gave her a couple of minutes to be upset about it before changing her name to Duo Damsel.

And then to cap it all, in a recent storyline (mostly Countdown) she loses her second self, and renames herself Una. She now has the super power of being able to be one girl. I'm not sure if this technically counts as a super power anymore.

Cause, but no effect

2008-05-15T15:22:00.001+01:00

One of the things I find endearing about characters in silver age Superman comics is their incredible naivety and lack of awareness of the world around them, not to mention their entirely disproportionate response to situations.

Jimmy Olsen tries to drum up publicity for the Daily Planet by pretending to be an alien from Mars, because he's seen the success the newspaper made out of old hoaxes. He's perhaps momentarily forgotten that these days Superman drops by to give them daily exclusives better than any dumb hoax.

And then in order to help a girl become more popular at college, does Lois give her a makeover? No, she gets Superman to pretend the girl is his secret girlfriend, thus making her the target of any criminal in the world who might want to get back at him. In just the way he uses as an excuse not to get serious with Lois.

And that's not even counting the occasion where Superman fights a villain with ice powers by moving the Sun closer to the Earth to make it too hot for him. Overreact much?

Everyblonde

2008-05-12T01:01:00.002+01:00

I was as surprised as everyone that the Iron Man movie didn't suck. So I'm taken in by the hype and pick up Invincible Iron Man #1 and what do I find? I had to go check the credits to make sure the artist wasn't Greg Land, because the comic seems to feature his popular Everyblonde.

Doesn't matter what comic Greg is drawing, what company it is, if there's a blonde in it, it's her. Black Canry, Sue Richards, Ms. Marvel, Pornface Girl; they are all played by the same girl as far as Greg's concerned.

So I'm left wondering, is this a subtle homage to the king of swipes, or does Salvador Larocca just read the same porn as Greg?

Brief Comic Review: Salvation Run

2008-02-17T03:12:00.003Z

I know I said Countdown: Arena was like Secret Wars, but Salvation Run is like Secret Wars too. Only with less plot.

Arena was lots of heroes fighting each other for some all-powerful overlord whose name I've already forgotten. It didn't make any sense, because his whole point was to build an army to fight someone else in a different comic, and keeping all of them would have been far more effective than having them fight to the death and take whoever was left, but that would have made for a much shorter story, and we wouldn't have had the excuse to see different versions of the same character kill each other.

Salvation Run is a bit like that except that nobody is making anyone kill anyone else; they are doing it because they don't like each other.

It's more than halfway through now, and the entire plot up to this point has been: villains get dumped on a strange planet. Villains fight each other.

It has some nice art, though.

Yellow Peril

2008-02-12T18:24:00.000Z

One of the things you have to understand about yellow is that it is a colour. Colour is not a quality possessed by things you cannot see. In fact one might say that an invisible object could be defined by it's complete lack of colour.

Not so for Green Lantern, where I've encountered at least three occasions in GL Showcase volume #2 where our dumb hero is laid low by things that are both invisible and yet at the same time also yellow.

It's a neat trick if you can pull it off.

A Dictionary for Dan

2008-02-11T05:49:00.000Z

Interviewed about one of the upcoming projects from DC, Dan Didio was asked if it would be new-reader friendly compared to something like Final Crisis.

His response? "It’s certainly new reader friendly, whatever that means,"

Dan, if you don't know what it means, I don't think you can claim it applies.

Of course the fact that you don't understand the term probably explains a lot about the state of the company you are in charge of.

The Legion of Bland

2008-02-09T18:33:00.000Z

I've been reading the second volume of Green Lantern Showcase, and I'm enjoying it a lot more than the first. John Broome seems to have picked up some of the nuttiness of his colleagues, and the stories are a lot more entertaining for it.

They are also full of howlingly dumb moments, which are often funny for all the wrong reasons, but at least they're not boring. The stories written by Gardner Fox are still dull, though. And when he adds a level of the fantastic, he then goes and spoils it by spending way too much time on leaden explanation that doesn't actually work anyway.

At some point I'd like to get on to the peculiar qualities of the colour yellow, as defined in this volume, but I'm about half way through now and I just reached Green Lantern #32, which introduces a group of heroes so generic that it stopped me in my tracks.

While Jack Kirby might imbue a character with a distinctive look and hint at a fascinating backstory, even when they are only intended to appear for two pages, like Gnorda, normal size queen of the giants, Broome gives us a super group composed of Energiman, Golden Blade, Strong Girl, and Magicko.

Nothing tells you how how important a character is than giving them a name like Strong Girl.

The budget for this issue must have been very low, as they don't even get to do a team up, spending the entire story imprisoned for GL to save them. So we never do get to find out what powers Strong Girl and Magicko might have. The assault on the villain's fortress also occurs off-panel to the extent that we have GL shooting off rays in one panel, and in the next it's so destroyed that there isn't even any rubble. A rare example of Gil Kane phoning it in.

On the plus side (depending on what you consider a plus) this story does include GL fighting a giant sentient oxygen atom with electrons that look and behave a lot like basketballs.

And how much of a dick is Hal Jordan at the end of the story, telling the released heroes he'll have the Guardians assign a Green Lantern to this sector, since they obviously can't handle it on their own?

Have these guys ever turned up again?

A metric f*ckload of deck chairs

2008-02-05T20:12:00.000Z

In Detective Comics #673 Batman imagines a case for Stephanie's costume in the Batcave. It may not even be real, but it does suggest that deep down Bats thinks she deserves one, and in a wider context acknowledges the same fact, despite Dan Didio's rather poor editorial joke about her not getting one: this presumably being a hint about the current rash of appearances by Spoiler in several Bat-titles.

This was an entirely arbitary goal set by girl-wonder when it was first formed. Only an idiot would assume that this means the battle is over. But it gives the guys at g-w a reason to celebrate.

One more yawn

2007-12-30T09:25:00.000Z

Joey Q has been talking about doing it for at least a year.

The publicity was hinting at it for months.

Every fan has been assuming it for the last six months.

Every blogger has been complaining about what a bad idea it is.

And so the biggest twist in the Spider-Man story One More Day is... that it's exactly what everyone has been expecting all along.

After a year when the level of misdirection at the big two has reached the point where creators lie in interviews and publishers put out misleading solicitations for comics that will never be published, I am a little baffled to find the biggest Spider-Man story of the year to telegraph its big conclusion months before the first issue was even published.

So I'm now left wondering what they are going to do when the next movie rolls around and it features Spidey and Mary Jane as an item, given that last time Marvel bent over backwards so far to identify with it that they put him into his black costume for several issues for no good reason other than it was in the movie.

I'm less wondering how they are going to integrate the new status quo into the overall Marvel continuity that is so tightly clenched that if Thor sneezes in one comic, Daredevil hears it in another, because it's that obsessively tight continuity that puts me off reading any of the individual titles I might be interested in if they weren't going to be suborned into some huge uberstory every other issue.

I hope Joey Q is happy. Because I'm not sure anyone else is.

Now it all makes sense

2007-12-14T19:06:00.001Z

I think Gail Simone might be on to something.

Maybe the reason big Joey Q is so obsessed with breaking up Spider-Man's marriage is because he has a secret agenda to out Spidey as Marvel's premier gay icon.

It all makes sense when you think about it. All those hints over the years. All the subtext. It's not hard to see when you are looking for it. I can only hope this leads to an even greater diversity in the Marvel stable, as Tony Stark is revealed as a transvestite, and Johnny Storm comes to terms with his gender dysphoria.

One more thing

2007-12-12T09:33:00.000Z

Having seen several reviews of Ultimates 3 #1, I'd just like to say this:

I hated Jeff Loeb before it was cool, too.

One big bluff?

2007-12-12T09:07:00.000Z

I'm beginning to wonder if this One More Day stuff is all a big fakeout.

Short recap if you don't know the story: Spider-Man is faced with the choice of letting Aunt May die (again) or having his relationship with his wife, Mary-Jane erased.

Now big boss of Marvel, Joe Quesada has been saying how he wants to undo Spidey's marriage for a couple of years now. J. Michael Straczynski, who wrote the story, has expressed how unhappy he was with writing it. Everyone, but everyone in comics fandom is aware of this, even if they, like me, haven't read a Spider-Man comic in ages.

So I'm just thinking this has to be the least unexpected twist in the history of comics, coming at a time when the publishers are so desperate to misdirect readers about significant plot developments that they will lie in interviews and even post fake solicitations for comics that will never be published. There's also the matter of the proposed change being universally condemned by fans, and the fact that there are plenty of flavours of Spider-Man already available in unmarried form.

Oh yes, and don't forget that this would also be taking the core titles away from the movie version in a year when Spidey suddenly started wearing his black costume for no reason that makes sense other than to strengthen the ties to the movie franchise.

I cannot see anything positive in cancelling the marriage at this point, and a lot of negatives. Which doesn't mean they won't go ahead with it; both Marvel and DC have made some amazingly boneheaded choices lately. Of course if they do pull the big twist on us, they might gain some kudos for not doing the thing nobody wanted them to do, but they'll have also made it impossible to trust their word about anything, and you'll get some fans assuming that they changed the ending at the last minute due to fan pressure, so to a degree it's a no win situation.

OEL is an oxymoron

2007-12-11T08:49:00.000Z

This is one I've been intending to rant about for a while, but a recent snippet of news I've seen sent me over the edge.

Marvel have decided to produce an X-Men manga. None of the people associated with it are Japanese. Now I think Raina Telgemeier is a very talented writer, and may well produce an excellent comic, but it still won't be japanese, and it probably won't read much like a comic produced by Japanese creators for a Japanese audience, so calling it "manga" seems a bit of a cheat to me.

Original English Language manga is to me a contradiction in terms. If it's created by English speaking people for an English speaking audience in a western style for a western publishing format, then it doesn't matter how big the eyes are or how many speedlines you include, it's not manga. It's no more manga than strawberry flavoured candy is in any way related to actual strawberries. It might be very nice strawberry flavoured candy, but it can only compare favourably with other strawberry flavour candy. When compared with actual strawberries, you cannot help but notice that it is not a fruit.

It's cultural appropriation at its worst. Japanese culture tells stories in a different way, with different emphasis and pacing, and with different references. Attitudes to the medium of comics are different in Japan, which leads to a different publishing structure. It's not just difficult for an American production to properly emulate a Japanese comic, it's almost impossible. And most of the time, they don't even try. They simply pick up a few superficial stylistic tips, and think that's enough to hitch a ride on the manga bandwagon.

And one other thing: if you are a westerner, creating a comic to be published in America to be read by Americans, constructing it so it reads right to left is a ludicrous affectation and I will mock your foolishness and cast aspersions on your character.

You have been warned.

The breast thing again

2007-12-08T19:09:00.000Z

There was an excellent competition over at Project Rooftop to design a new costume for Wonder Woman. There is some amazing creativity there, and it's worth a look if you haven't seen it. But that's not exactly what I want to talk about.

One of the entries included an image of Wonder Woman with one breast removed, and one of the judges, Joel Priddy opined

"You know, with the dozens of Wonder Woman avatars running around out there (Power Princess, War Woman, Winger Victory, etc.), I can’t recall anyone making use of the Amazonian mastectomy before. Go figure."

I commented that perhaps it hasn't been used because it had been disproved a long time ago.

I happened to check back today and found that I had received a couple of responses that surprised me, and rather than sidetrack that thread on a detail, I'm going to address them here.

Dean Trippe said:

you’ll note we refered to the mastectomy AS a myth.

However, I’d say the exclusion of the breast-removal in popular representations has more to do with squeamishness and male boob-fixation than lack of research.

That's an interesting opinion, and there may even be some truth in it.

The Amazons in Y The Last Man have it, but they could be seen as a cult, using this as part of the indoctrination. The Amazons in Xena don't do it, but quite apart from considerations such as the cheesecake aspect or whether self-mutilation of this kind would be permitted on prime time TV, there's the problem of actually creating the effect with real actors. I'm not sure there are enough actresses with mastectomies to fill the ranks, but I suppose it might be achieved by hiring a lot of flat-chested women and giving them one large prosthetic boob, either way I don't see the idea getting that far.

Off the top of my head I can't think of any other popular representations of Amazons, apart from Wonder Woman herself, and she's been dual-breasted since 1941, so it seems a bit late to change that now. I suppose they could dig up another lost tribe of Amazons who did it, but why would they, unless they wanted to show how stupid the group were, since it is of no practical value?

Sonny said:

The Amazons were mythical warriors, Marionette, and if you’ll recheck the review,

Whether it was a part of the original myth or added later, the whole point of mythology is what it says about the creators (or those who adapt the creations) and the reactions of those witnessing them. Marionette’s strong reaction to it should make Jess proud. Getting such strong reactions from art (either positive or negative) is quite an accomplishment.

Whoever originally added the mastectomy idea to Amazonian myth obviously had a similar spirit to the creator of this website.

Yes, Sonny. The Amazons were mythical warriors. And the people who first wrote about them, created art about them, built statues and frescos depicting them all showed them with an even number of breasts. Quite clearly, in some cases. The fact that the word used to describe them was mistranslated to suggest that they were single-breasted does not make it an enhancement or variation on the myth, it makes it an inaccurate understanding of the source material.

If I choose to describe unicorns as having three legs, does that make it a valid adaptation of the myth of the unicorn? No. Does it enhance the myth in any way to add a lot of baggage suggesting that women mutilated themselves in order to give themselves a bit more bow-room, when all you have to do is go google women's archery to see that modern women manage quite adequately without this disfigurement? No.

And while you're right, it is an achievement to get an emotional response to a piece of art, A) I wasn't responding to the art, I was responding to Joel's comment, and B) I don't think that gaining the emotional response of annoyance at seeing an old inaccuracy perpetuated is an achievement of which to be especially proud.

A brief comic review

2007-12-07T09:30:00.001Z

Countdown: Arena #1.

It's like Secret Wars, but with extra death.

Or, I don't know, maybe one of those tedious threads that crops up on every comics message board before long where people debate who would win in a fight between hero X and hero Y, and you know it doesn't matter how carefully they analyse the relative powers and skills, it all comes down to what story the writer wants to tell.

Or it could be a videogame. One of those dull fight games where the plot is just a thin excuse for the fighting. It's like watching someone else play one of those.

Plus DC get to kill off a whole bunch of Elseworlds characters that were minding their own business.

The Paris Hilton of the superhero set

2007-11-28T21:28:00.000Z

No, not Supergirl. The other one; Stormy Knight AKA Phantom Lady. When I was first introduced to the current Phantom Lady I was intrigued to find that beyond the cliché hot bod, at age 22 she also had a degree in quantum physics. I've been waiting for the last year for Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Grey to develop the physics nerd side of her, but they seem to have forgotten that whole aspect in favour of making her a drunk, embarrassing, airheaded party girl, drowning in cliché.

Add to that Renato Arlem's lazy art, and I am fast losing all interest in Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters. It's bad enough when you see cut and paste in webcomics; to see it in a DC comic is simply wrong. I had been intending to do a quick count of how many panels in the latest issue reused elements from previous panels, but when it became apparent that there were several examples on almost every page, I gave up in disgust.

This comic has too many characters, which means you get very little depth to any of them, and the story is trying so hard to be "torn from the headlines" that it just comes across as tabloid cliché conspiracy theory with extra superheroes. It manages to be extremely wordy without saying much of interest, and the whole thing is a big disappointment.

Oh, and if you want to get an emotive image of someone slashing their wrists, you need to a) make them sympathetic beforehand, and b) use an artist who is not going to get it so totally wrong. Anyone care to guess what's wrong with this picture (other than the dodgy perspective)?

Statuesque

2007-11-25T01:21:00.000Z

After recent commotion about representations of female characters in miniature form, I'd like to take a moment to show appreciation for when they get it right.

Here's a manga-fied Wonder Woman.

She's holding a sword and shield, in a pose that suggests she's ready to use them. There's some stylish detail work (click on the image to see it larger) and the costume actually covers more skin than the regular version, though it may look more skimpy due to the optical illusion of her having considerably more leg than usually depicted.

And here's Wonder Girl. I'm not quite sure what she's supposed to be doing, but it looks like she's about to cheerfully tie someone up.

See, toy sculptors? you can get it right when you try.

Scott Kurtz cracks me up

2007-11-25T00:52:00.000Z

See, it's funny because even though Brent is technically an adult and in a relationship, the mere sight of a fully clothed woman with large breasts makes him unable to function or think about anything other than boobies.

And when I say "woman" here, I mean cardboard cutout of a woman traced from someone else's comic, since it's the same image cut'n'pasted into every panel but with slight change of expression.

Surprisingly, this was not written and drawn by a 15 year old.

Win some, lose some

2007-11-23T15:12:00.000Z

Remember Public Enemies #1, 2, and 3? Grant Morrison does, and as part of his ongoing plan to reintroduce the entire silver age back into continuity, Batman #670 polishes up Silken Spider, Tiger Moth, and Dragonfly for a new age, in an issue that also featured our old friend I Ching. Back in Batman #181 they were rivals, and if they had any super abilities, we were never shown.

I like them as a team, and now they have powers. Sort of.

On the minus side, the former most wanted are here merely served up as an entrée for Batman. They go down so easy that you can practically see Bats yawning. And they aren't all that impressive anyway.

Dragonfly has the ability to summon some white misty stuff from her arm. What this does, we never find out because Bats takes her out in two panels. And it's only that long because he pauses to give them a quick "sux 2 B U" speech.

Tiger Moth appears to have the power to shoot people.

With a gun.

This leaves only Silken Spider, who gets a nice visual, but then it turns out all she can do is some variation on the pheromone shtick that Poison Ivy worked to death years ago.

I'm left wondering quite what the point was. Why dust off an obscure concept from 1966 and give it a makeover, only to throw it away in seven pages?

Will we see them again? And if we do, will they ever be anything more than cannon fodder?

Update: Yes. We see them again in Nightwing #138. They are once again defeated as soon as they appear. Congratulations, girls. You've become a running gag.

The odd thing here is that they are referred to as has-beens, even though they've never been seen before in current continuity. This suggests that they were at least competent once. Shame we don't get to see any hint of that.

The simple answer to continuity problems

2007-11-20T13:35:00.000Z

I haven't read the whole of Batman and the Outsiders #1, but I've seen scans of the pages where Batman claims to be unaware of a lesbian relationship among members of his team. Now this is Batman, the guy who is so psychopathically anal that he makes plans to defeat all of his friends and team-mates, on the off chance one of them goes bad. The idea that he would be unaware of a romantic relationship in a team he leads is laughable, unless you plan to do a plotline about him mellowing out or losing his grip.

Many fans have attempted to work out a rationale that enables this interpretation of the character to fit with how he has been generally characterised in recent years. It's something I've seen time and again where someone has acted completely out of character, or in extreme cases, appeared in one comic after they had died in another.

My advice is don't sweat it. Sometimes you just have to accept that the writer is a dick and let it go. It's not your problem that some writer has written a story that doesn't fit continuity, and it's not your job to fix it. The current run of Supergirl has contradicted itself so many times that most of her backstory up to the present issue is a pick and mix. Choose which parts you wish to believe and ignore what you don't. Don't try to make it all fit together because it doesn't.

Nobody can ruin Batman, or Superman, or Wonder Woman, or the JLA by writing them badly. These heroes will outlive any dumb characterisation, and if you want a rationale there will always be a Superdick Prime punching reality or a Mister Mind Chewing on the multiverse or whatever they hell they come up with next year to give them an excuse to disown all past mistakes. And with the afterlife having such a revolving door policy, it doesn't matter how dead a character is, they may come back one day.

So read the good stories and don't worry about the bad. Leave it those who are paid to do so try to make sense of it. Don't blame the character because the current writer is a lazy jerk with an agenda, and don't rescue him from his errors by attempting to rationalise them. It's not your job. It's his.

Duh

2007-11-20T12:24:00.000Z

I have no idea how I missed it, but I only just found out that there's a Supergirl Showcase due out next week.

There is not enough squee in the world to adequately describe how I feel.

Excuse me. I have to go queue at my local comic shop now.

Or I could, you know, tell them to hang on to a copy for me. Which probably won't leave them one to put out on the shelves if I know them.

While I'm on the subject...

2007-11-16T18:08:00.000Z

Maybe I'm expecting too much of DC. It's entirely possible that the murder of the entire team (except Cyborg) in Titans East is actually just part of the whole Death of the New Gods story. Though I can't see why exactly this would lead to the original new Teen Titans reforming, which is the whole point of it.

Thing is, Power Boy was already on the hit list because he comes from Apokolips. As an Apokolipian or possibly Apokolite, he's marked for the New Gods cull currently underway. Possibly Little Barda too. I have no idea where she comes from, but the name suggests a New Gods connection. So it may be the whole thing was simply a hit on Power Boy and everyone else got caught in the crossfire.

Either way, doing a story featuring the shock death of Power Boy is pretty limp. I mean, what's the shock? Power Boy killed by a different mysterious psychopath from the one you were expecting? And while I don't know there was anyone who cared enough to want him dead, I suspect he will be the least missed. It's not like anyone is going to admit to liking him when his defining characteristic was an unhealthy obsession with Supergirl, as Judd Winnick reminded us of here.

In fact he devoted several pages to a sequence about how funny it was that Power Boy was such a creepy stalker that he gets girls to dress up as the object of his obsession when he has sex with them.

Judd, a word of advice: you'd be more convincing with the "not a misogynist" argument if you didn't write things like this. Also, avoid writing humour; you're crap at it.

Dead Again

2007-11-16T17:33:00.000Z

Can you guess which comic I want to rant about today?

Here's a clue: At least one hero is murdered in order to generate interest in another comic.

Still too many to choose from?

How about, it's a currently running storyline?

Wait, that's good for at least three comics.

Written by Judd Winick?

That narrows it down to two...

Okay, the answer is Titans East. A one shot that gathers together a group of c-list heroes and Power Boy*, and then kills them.

I could go on about how short sighted it is to keep blowing holes in the diminishing roster of unique characters that make up the DC universe. I could talk about how every minor hero has a few fans who will be upset at not just their deaths, but the careless way they were cast aside.

It baffles me what they hope to achieve here. If you liked the characters, it's just going to piss you off. If you weren't particularly interested in them, you're not going to care much that they are dead. As for bigging up the mystery villain by demonstrating that they are not only capable of killing heroes, but evil enough to do so for no apparent reason; fans of that weary old trope are already well catered for right now, as there are two other DC titles running the same plot, and at least one of them is taking out much more powerful heroes.

My only faint hope in all of this is that DC will eventually apply the same strategy to their own offices. If they expect to generate interest by killing off a few has-beens and c-listers, imagine the publicity it would generate if Judd Winnick was graphically murdered by a mysterious editor in chief.

Get some new ideas, DC. This is not only stupid, annoying, and wasteful. It's also starting to get embarrassing.

*Power Boy does not qualify as a hero unless your definition of hero is wide enough to encompass creepy stalkers and attempted rapists.

Night of the Living Snorefest

2007-11-07T02:55:00.000Z

Am I the only one who's really, really bored of zombies?

I mean SO totally bored of the very idea that the mere mention of the "z" word sends me into a coma and the idea of some comic or movie warming over those rotting leftovers one more time with their hilarious and almost original idea for a zombie sitcom makes me want to strangle them with their own intestines?

I'd just like to add...

2007-09-27T22:26:00.001+01:00

Props to Looking2dastars, who has provided a selection of icons to cater to fans of many of the characters Winick has written.

Winnick the Pooh

2007-09-23T14:59:00.000+01:00

I love Amanda Conner's art. I hate Judd Winnick's writing.

Can I enjoy the Green Arrow/Black Canary Wedding Special if I just look at the pictures and ignore the text?

Not that I'm saying Steve Trevor is a creepy stalker, but...

2007-09-13T10:58:00.000+01:00

Sense of Wonder (Woman)

2007-08-25T03:17:00.000+01:00

Robert Kanigher wrote Wonder Woman in a peculiar steam-of-consciousness way that reads a lot like dreams in comic form. In the second story in the Showcase collection Steve Trevor is for no explained reason now piloting a rocket plane to chase and observe an experimental rocket. (1). Unexpectedly, Steve's plane accelerates faster than the rocket and disappears into space, so Wonder Woman gets her invisible plane a quick refit at Paradise Island and follows, also becoming caught by the strange effect and sent hurtling across space.

Once she's retrieved her wayward boyfriend, she observes the Earth being destroyed by a flaming meteor, except no, it's only a cardboard cutout of the Earth that evil aliens were using for target practice, because they feed on planetary fragments, and Earth is next on the menu, even though it's 200 light years away and there are plenty of uninhabited planets closer (2). And they appear to have brought the reluctant astronauts from their home purely to gloat at them (3). Tough for them that Wonder Woman can fashion a giant magnet out of the nearby landscape and use it to pull the meteors off course and send them crashing back to the planet that launched them (4).

Of course now Wondy and Steve are stranded in space, hundreds of light years from home, except what's this? Could it be a handy spacewarp that will return them to Earth space? You can bet it is.

It's only with the third story that some of Kanigher's less entertaining themes become explicit. The problem is the relationship between Wonder Woman and Steve Trevor. Personally I've never been able to understand why she puts up with his nagging. The situation is that Steve wants Wondy to marry him and settle down, i.e. stop going out and doing hero stuff. Wondy's response is that she cannot marry him until she is no longer needed to battle crimes and injustice. Only then can she think about herself.

This is a twist on silver age Superman's lame excuse for refusing to marry Lois Lane. Here Wonder Woman has to put the concerns of the whole world before herself until she is no longer needed, and her definition of being needed is impossible to fulfil, since it not only requires there to be no crime and injustice, but no natural disasters too. And yet rather than challenge this absurd notion, Steve instead repeatedly attempts to trick the woman he claims to love into marrying him. It seems to be far more about control than love, and it's my least favourite aspect of these stories.

But back to the plot: this story completely rewrites part of the origin story, with an entirely new telling of how Wonder Woman became Diana Prince and came to work at Steve's office in Military Intelligence. In this variation Steve bets Wondy that if he can find her three times in 24 hours, regardless of how she is disguised or hidden, then she will marry him. When she finds that he has tricked her, she gets her own back by applying for a job in his own office (5) so that she'll be right under his nose all the time without him recognising her.

Would I recommend this as a book to give to kids? On the one hand the stories are light and fantastic, bursting with sense of wonder and fairytale logic, while short and self-contained, but on the other they have some underlying values that I would be uncomfortable exposing to someone who was not experienced enough to recognise them as the BS they are and able to reject them while still enjoying the rest of the story. Don't get me wrong, I love this stuff, but that doesn't mean I don't see elements in it I don't like.

Notes.

1) We are told that the plane is slower than the rocket, so I doubt it can be observing it for very long.
2) I can only assume that Earth is a particularly tasty morsel on the galactic menu, since it seems to attract planet eaters from across the galaxy.
3) no better explanation is given, and that's all they actually do with them.
4) She never did have an actual code against killing, did she?
5) and only in a Kanigher story would an office worker have to take part in an underwater race as part of the application process

Showcase of wonders

2007-08-23T12:22:00.000+01:00

For some, the publishing event of the year might be the final adventure of some schoolboy wizard, but for me it was the Wonder Woman Showcase. And although I wasn't queuing at my local comic shop for my copy at midnight (because I knew it wasn't going to be delivered until around 10am), I was there to pick it off the shelf before it had time to get comfortable.

Just to point out how important this collection is, I want to remind you that while Batman and Superman have enjoyed reprint collections from throughout their history, Wonder Woman has not been so lucky. There was a collection of golden age adventures published in the early 1970's, and four volumes of DC Archives that got up as far as Wonder Woman #9, but nothing has ever been reprinted from the late 1940's to 1986 in any substantial form. Robert Kanigher was writer on Wonder Woman for over 150 issues and yet there has never been a collection of his work available until now.

But be warned: before you read this book you will need to rise above all thoughts of logic and continuity. There is no place for them here.

The volume opens with Kanigher's retelling of Wonder Woman's origin in Wonder Woman #98. This is a good starting point as not only does it give us an origin, it's also the first issue with full art by long time WW artists Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, and is arguably the point where Wonder Woman enters the Silver Age.

As an origin story, it's quite different from the usual version; the Amazons hold their contest to decide who will be sent into the outside world before Steve Trevor even arrives, and to avoid favouritism, all the contestants are dressed in Wonder Woman costume, including masks of Diana's face so that they will all look alike. But having won the contest, our heroine must prove herself by turning a penny into a million dollars, to finance the building of a summer camp to be donated to children's charities, because Pallas Athena is very big on healthy summer fun for children in rich first world countries.

The more bizarre aspects of the story start to become apparent when Steve Trevor arrives on the scene, parachuting down from his stricken aircraft. Since men are forbidden to set foot on Paradise Island, our plucky heroine launches herself into the air, and then catching Steve, she blows his parachute all the way back to America.

If at this point you are considering how many laws of physics this breaks then you should probably stop now, as it only gets worse. Wonder Woman's adventures with the penny she has been entrusted with, and her ultimate solution to her dilemma are so bonkers that I'm not even going to tell you about them. I wouldn't want to spoil the fun.

And that's just the opening story.

No Batgirl review

2007-08-15T23:37:00.000+01:00

I was intending to do a big review, or several, of the Batgirl Showcase, but I'm probably not.

Fact is, it's pretty much what I expected. There's some crashingly sexist bits, and a lot of it is silly, coming from the era of the Batman TV show, and occasionally it's quite good. But so far there's nothing I feel moved to dwell on at any length.

Of course this may be influenced by the fact that the Wonder Woman Showcase is due out next week, and I have been looking forward to that since before the Showcase reprint series began.

At least there shouldn't be a problem with the cover of that one...

Bland Gordon

2007-08-15T21:40:00.001+01:00

Whenever I see an adaptation of some story I like, I play this game: how much would I have to change before it was so far removed from the original as to be not considered a copyright infringement?

Your mileage may vary, but the all time champion for me is the 1970's Doctor Strange TV movie, where I reckon that all connection to the source material could be lost by changing two (1) names. The new Flash Gordon TV show isn't up to that level, but on the basis of the first episode, it's not far off.

First off: this Flash Gordon may be a marathon runner, but he is still way too nerdy to be the kind of hero associated with this role. Flash Gordon needs to be big and dumb: physically strong enough to have boundless self-confidence in his own abilities, and dumb enough to have a narrow vision of what is right and to go for it undeterred by the more complex issues. This version is more Clark Kent than Superman. And then Doctor Zarkov now seems to be reduced to lab assistant comedy sidekick, whose wacky inventions are hit and miss, but which I predict will usually come through when the plot depends on them. And Dale Arden seems to be channeling Lois Lane.

And then there is Ming. No, this isn't Ming. Ming is grand and capricious. This is some cheap stereotype dictator in quasi military uniform from any number of bad SF TV shows. And of course he is white, because it would be racist to have one of the most entertaining character roles in Science Fiction be a non-white person (2). So he is white. His daughter is so white I have trouble telling her apart from Dale. The guards are white. Most of the various different races of Mongo I could spot were white but in different ethnic costumes. The evil scientist is white. In fact the only non-white characters are Flash's buddy who doesn't get to be part of the adventure, and a black Mongo woman who only appears long enough to give Ming an opportunity to show how mean and petty he is.

Now it's just a personal opinion here, but I think Ming ought to be oriental (3). He should be oriental and grand and wear lavish costumes and laugh a lot, and throw people to the crocodiles on a whim. And his daughter should be oriental too, and spoilt and slutty, and maybe sides with the good guys in the end for all the wrong reasons, or gets redeemed at the end if you really must. And quite a lot of other people in Ming's court should be oriental. Yes, they are villains. Well, Aura is sometimes a villain. Either way, I think it's pathetic and racist to recast iconically oriental characters as white, purely because they are villains. What next? A white Fu Manchu? (4) The way to make these characters non-racist is not by making them white, but by writing them well.

And there weren't any spaceships.

How the hell can you do Flash Gordon with no spaceships? They are an intrinsic aspect of the story, but here we just get a cheap Stargateish rippled air cgi effect. I realise this production is low budget, but then so was the 1930's serial (5) and it looked better than this.

Notes

1. or possibly three, it's a long time since I've seen it

2. Or perhaps the subtext here is that white people are evil and bad.

3. I'm aware that the term "oriental" is considered offensive by some in the USA, though I'm not clear why. To Americans "Asian" may have the same meaning, but in the UK it is used purely to refer to inhabitants of the Indian sub-continent. In the UK "oriental" has no negative connotations and is used by the BBC, which is good enough for me.

4. okay, technically both Ming and Fu Manchu have historically been played by white guys pretending to be chinese, but you know what I mean

5. By modern standards.

Strange and unusual

2007-08-07T18:25:00.000+01:00

Fletcher Hanks: I shall Destroy All the Civilized Planets

The amazing thing about Fletcher Hanks' stories is how they are at the same time repetitive and unique. Fantomah and Stardust are essentially the same vengeful god figure in different trappings, Stardust the science hero fighting organised crime, Fantomah the jungle goddess with magic powers. In almost every story some villain has big plans, and often a private army to carry them out.

And yet even though they may claim to be guarding or protecting the planet/jungle it is not until after the villain has caused great devestation and loss of life that the hero steps in, utterly destroying the villain in bizarre and peculiar ways. The biggest difference between Stardust and Fantomah is that Fantomah often warns the villain that the path he is taking will not be tolerated. Not that anyone ever pays attention to the flying girl (often just a disembodied head), and by the time those long blonde curls are framing a skull it's too late to say sorry.

But it is within the basic formula that Hanks' genius comes alive. Villains seek domination using invisible vacuum tubes or giants, invisible except for their flaming purple hands, or by pausing the rotation of the Earth to cause the entire population to be flung out into space. New York is a favourite target and gets bombed three times in this collection, as well as being attacked by a giant artificial tidal wave and a whirlwind, and in a Fantomah story, overrun by giant panthers.

If there is one thing that marks the storytelling out as being from the earliest days of the artform it is the lack of conflict. Hank's heroes are always so much more powerful than their enemies that the question is not so much "will our hero triumph?" as "what peculiar and ultimately terminal punishment will our hero hand out today once they have utterly crushed the villains' plans?"

And the punishment is often a big feature of the story. In some cases inflicting strange and unusual punishment on the villain takes up as much as half the pages.

It's a collection of strange and unusual ideas wrapped up in formulaic storylines.

But I still like Fantomah best.

A match made in...

2007-08-03T22:54:00.000+01:00

If you were going to create a comic book specifically to put me me off ever reading it, what would it contain? How about attempted rapist Power Boy written by non-misogynist Judd Winick, who we all know is all in favour of feminism and not the rape apologist suggested by Green Arrow #57 (or whatever. I can't be bothered to check again), with art by Ian Churchill, who can only draw one female character, who is blonde, with a big chin and ankles so thin you expect them to snap at any minute.

I begin to wonder if there aren't meetings at DC that start with "What can we do to piss Mari off?"

Similar meetings at Marvel involve Jeph Loeb and Greg Land but are less effective because there are so few of their comics I can be bothered to read anyway. In fact the only Marvel titles I've read in the last six months or so were written by Jeff Parker, who understands the concepts of both fun and telling a story in 20 pages.

Civilized planets, your days are numbered

2007-08-01T04:32:00.000+01:00

I'm now working my way through Paul Karasik's book of Fletcher Hanks comics I shall Destroy All The Civilized Planets. It is a mighty collection of 15 stories, and I can only hope it is so successful as to prompt a second volume. There are another 9 Fantomah stories, and I have no idea how many Stardust, and others still languishing unseen for so many years.

Before I get on to tackling the individual stories I'd just like to get a little picky about the format of the collection. I can understand why Karasik didn't want to burden the reader with lengthy discussion of the work, but I would have liked to see some kind of introduction that gave basic information about the comics that are being reprinted. As it is all we have is an undated listing of where each originally appeared (in the contents page) and that's it. Not even a bibliography to tell us how many more stories are out there.

And then the order of the comics selected seems entirely arbitary. Although the volume opens with the first Stardust story, the Fantomah episodes are run in practically reverse order, which is a shame as there is a clear evolution in style as they progress, and this can only be properly appreciated by flipping backward and forward in the volume.

As a Fantomah fan I would have liked to see her first published appearance, but it's not included here. It may be that Karasik was unable to obtain a copy of it for publication, but as there is no accompanying text of any kind, we don't know. I'd also like to know more about how the character was taken in such a different direction after the departure of Hanks, and ultimately retconned into an entirely different character, but that's a personal thing and hardly within the remit of this volume.

What we do get is an autobiographical 16 page strip at the end by Paul Karasik about how he found Hank's son and interviewed him. It's an odd choice for the presentation of an interview; turning it into a comic makes it feel like a dramatisation, and I'm left wondering how much of it was fictional. Information about Fletcher Hanks seems to take second place to the author's slice of life adventure, and although it does convey his excitement about meeting Fletcher Hanks Jr. you are left feeling that if it had been done as a straightforward text piece it would have run to rather less than a page.

None of which takes away from the achievement of getting this stuff in print at all, but if there is a second volume I'm hoping it will contain some factual information like a bibliography and publication dates. It needn't be lengthy or intrusive, but it would be a nice extra for those of us that are interested in that stuff.

Enough with the petty complaints. Next I'll get on to the actual stories.

Sleestaak, that's my skull

2007-08-01T04:28:00.000+01:00

May I direct your attention over to one of my favourite blogs, Lady, That's My Skull, where I have contributed to Sleestaak's series of Final Panels from Canceled Comics, with my own favourite final panel.

The Big Finish

2007-07-24T02:29:00.000+01:00

When you are reading through the Legion Showcase you could be forgiven for wondering if they missed an issue. The one that introduced their arch-nemesis The Time Trapper.

When he is first mentioned, Mon-El and Superboy are pursuing him through time after he has a fight with Cosmic Boy and Sun Boy, but we never saw this initial encounter and it's never recapped in detail. All we get is an ongoing subplot where the Legion are unable to break past the "iron curtain of time" 30 days in the future.

Whether this is a set point thirty days from the initial encounter, or a moving point that is always thirty days from the current time is unclear. I originally assumed it was a fixed point and the Legion were facing a countdown to a major battle, but their adventures continue on for issue after issue without it appearing to get any closer, or their being especially concerned about an approaching deadline.

The penultimate story in the collection features Superboy's evil babysitter, Dev-Em. This appears to be a sequel to a Superboy solo story but unusually there's no editor note to tell you. The short version is Dev-Em was bad; now he's good but he's pretending to be bad. And the Science Police, who you will remember claim there is no crime worth bothering about and the best way to deal with a planetary threat is to send in a bunch of teenagers rather than try diplomacy or military action, are now found to have a counter intelligence corps. Or maybe the Interstellar Counter Intelligence Corps has taken over the Science Police in a bloodless and entirely uneventful coup, since the Legion initially say that's who they will turn Dev-Em over to when they believe he is a criminal.

Either way, it's obviously the same lot because they decide that rather than send Dev-Em to complete the mission they've trained him for, they'd prefer to send Superboy in a plastic mask pretending to be Dev-Em. At least if they'd sent Mon-El they wouldn't have needed the contrived deus ex machina to get our hero out of the trap when the villain pulls out the kryptonite.

And so we come to the final entry, and the first actual appearance (of the back of the head) of the Time Trapper. It transpires that the Legion have a Secret Weapon. A weapon so dangerous and powerful that they don't want anyone to know about it. Except somehow the Time Trapper has heard of it and cons the Legion into letting him torture them to get the secret out of them.

Under the guise of some Commander Wilson of the Science Police, who are back in charge of running the universe by ignoring most of the crime going on, he persuades the legionnaires to go through a simulated interrogation to see if any of them will crack and give out the secret.

Problems with this: first, they know it's not real so why do they get so scared? Second, I'm not sure what the secret is they are supposed to be hiding since the weapon is quite a complex piece of equipment that they need to build from scratch. It's not like they are giving away a location for this doomsday device. They'd need to draw diagrams.

Anyway, we get a series of scenes of legionnaires being put through tests and either overcoming them or failing in a way that prevents the secret being given, like Shrinking Violet getting so small that her voice can't be heard, because a thousand years in the future they don't have the technology to pick up faint sounds. And Lightning Lad fails and gets locked up in a giant hamster ball forever, except no, it was a trick. He spotted that the commander was a fake and gave him the wrong information. Was it too much to ask that he tell his friends instead so they could prevent the villain's escape?

So the Time Trapper proves that he doesn't actually need any more doomsday devices as he is already powerful enough to throw suns around, and the Legion run up their ultimate weapon out of household objects they find lying around, and siphon off all the power of the entire universe to blow up the errant suns.

Seems like overkill to me. I mean suns are big to you and me, but on a universal scale they are barely dust. Of course the Legion live in a very small universe, as has been noted earlier, so things may be different for them.

And so all is well and we end on a totally sitcom note as newly thin and no longer Bouncing boy introduces his girlfriend who is a little chubby, and our heroes are surprised because of course now he is thin he doesn't need to date fat chicks. Was that even funny in 1964?

Trolls in Action

2007-07-20T00:39:00.000+01:00

A year ago I did a brief post regarding what seemed to me a shortsighted policy at John Byrne's Byrne Robotics message board.

Seems someone who posts there finally noticed it and linked it on the board. So I have the unusual experience of a year old comment becoming a hot topic.

And by hot topic, I mean it's attracted a lot of abusive trolls.

What, you thought they might want to actually discuss the policy I was criticizing?

It's a small universe after all

2007-07-18T12:44:00.000+01:00

Adventure #319

The inhabitants of the the tiny planet Throon are entirely xenophobic and set up a barrier around their planet to prevent anyone visiting them. They haven't quite thought it through, though, as this barrier causes rocket motors to fail, which basically means anyone getting near enough is not so much persuaded to go away as stuck there without the ability to move, or worse, caused to crash on the planet.

Now this wouldn't be a huge problem in Star Trek. They'd just set up a warning beacon and everyone would avoid the area. The problem here is that not only is the universe a lot smaller than you'd expect, the mysterious planet Throon with its xenophobic occupants are apparently right in the middle of the spacelanes.

Yes, traffic throughout the universe is going to grind to a halt because there's a 60,000,000 mile diameter area of space that they can't travel through.

The furthest Mercury gets from the Sun in its orbit is 43,382,322 miles, so if you imagine the orbit of Mercury, the Throon exclusion zone would fit within that.

How small is the Universe when space traffic from one end of it to the other cannot bypass an area that tiny? And how is it that a planet of such immense strategic importance remains virtually unexplored?

Anyway, the Science Police are on the case. Unfortunately they aren't very good with crime, and there's probably some legal red tape about invading an independant planet's soveriegn airspace to sabotage their defence systems, so they call in a bunch of teenagers to do the job for them. A later writer might have used this story to make a point about sending young people off to war, but here it's just another day for the Legion.

Deciding their best plan is to send in a small team to infiltrate the planet and destroy the force projectors, our heroes pick members for the team based, not on whose powers are most appropriate for the task, but the Planetary Chance Machine, a device that randomly fires out little balls to hit people on the head.

Proving that they are not entirely useless, the Science Police dig up a couple of people who claim to have visited Throon, but there's an odd gap in their information that becomes apparent at the end of the story. We are informed that the Throonians all live in one huge building and the rest of the planet is covered with dangerous jungle.

This is obviously a dangerous mission, and logic would dictate simply dropping large rocks on the force projectors until they break, but as far as the Legion is concerned it just means not letting the girls go. Though curiously, once the first team has been wiped out and the promise of danger has been fulfilled, none of the other male legionnaires try to shut out the girls.

The Throonians must have been expecting the Legion as they zap Superboy the moment he shows up. The rest of the team sneak around from the far side of the planet and then run out in front of the building. Their clever strategy is for Brainiac 5 and Lightning Lad to go one way as a diversion, while the rest of the team go another. It never occurs to Brainiac 5's amazing computer mind that they might be able to shoot in two directions at once, and so that's the end of the first team.

At this point you might be thinking "Why didn't Chameleon Boy make himself useful for a change and turn into an indiginous creature and try to sneak in?" or wondering why they didn't pick Invisible Kid for a stealth mission. Because then Night Girl wouldn't be the hero, that's why.

Meanwhile, the universe is grinding to a halt. People on distant planets are starving because they have given up all agriculture and are entirely dependant on imported food that has to be flown through Throon airspace. It's a bit like America being entirely reliant on imports that can only come via Gibralter, regardless of their origin.

So with the first team flattened in short order, what's their strategy? Do they suggest to the Science Police that they nuke the site from orbit? No, they send in another team consisting of whoever happens to be left back at Legion HQ.

Again, they come up with a cunning strategy for getting close to the Throon building, and once there simply run out in front of it to get zapped.

Back on Earth, Legionnaires who were on missions in space have returned without going via Throon, which makes complete nonsense of the whole premise of the story. Having failed to learn any lessons from the first two attempts, they send in a third group. This time at least they have Phantom Girl, who can use her powers to avoid being hit by the zappy rays that took out the first two teams.

Except no, she is infected by the secret invisible Throonian stupid ray that is an integral part of their defence systems and forgets to go out of phase when they are attacked, so she goes down too.

So finally all that's left are the Substitute Legion and those legionnaires they forgot to include this issue. They didn't even think to summon the Legion of Super Pets like they did to fight Satan Girl.

And since it's Night Girl's story, she doesn't run out in front of the building to get zapped by the defences, she burrows in underneath it to come up inside. So much for Brainiac 5's amazing computer brain. He never thought of that one.

She finds the vast building virtually empty, and discovers an important point that the two advisors had somehow missed; the entire Throonian civilisation is extinct apart from two old guys. It's never explained how the rest of their race died out, and there must be one hell of a lot of automation to keep the place running and even install new defence systems when the only people left are a couple of mad old duffers.

So everyone lives happily ever after, and the old gits aren't even censured for almost causing the collapse of galactic civilisation and the deaths of many billions of people from starvation. And the Substitute Legion gets a tickertape parade for being not stupid.

Batgirl Showcase: take two

2007-07-18T00:42:00.000+01:00

Walaka challenged me to find an alternate image for the Batgirl Showcase cover and after scanning through the book this was the only candidate I could find. It's taken from the splash to Batman #214 and although I don't think it's any more appropriate than the one used, it has the benefit of depicting our heroine in a strong position. She might be doing something foolish and waering ridiculous shoes, but she's doing so in an empowered way.

Obviously this is a 5 minute Photoshop chop job, not a loving recreation of what might have been, but you get the idea.

Another thing about X-Men First Class

2007-07-18T00:00:00.000+01:00

Meanwhile, back in the 30th century

2007-07-17T23:39:00.000+01:00

Adventure #315 presents us with a badly misjudged morality tale. The Legion in their infinite wisdom condescend to take one of the rejected members of the Substitute Legion by requiring them to compete against each other, and then in the end take the one that fails his task because he knows when to quit (1) over his companions who were not faced with the same moral dilemma, and who completed far more difficult tasks.

Adventure #316 includes a panel that hurts my brain.

So there is so little crime in the 30th century that nobody much uses the big room full of police records right behind you, super powered girls are so afraid to reveal their abilities for fear of kidnapping and being made to commit crimes, and oh yes, there's all those people who the Legion spend fighting every issue (2). This was my first intimation that the Science Police were not up to the job.

At least Phantom Girl gets her nineteen pages of fame this issue, after being so thoroughly ignored for so long that you could be forgiven for wondering if she's still a member; though being a girl this means she has to spend it swooning over a Ultra-Boy who seems to have gone bad (3). When Shrinking Violet gets her moment in the spotlight in a later issue it is also so that she can pine over a bad boy.

Phantom Girl has vanished again by next issue, wherein we basically get a rerun of #304 only with Dream Girl taking Saturn Girl's role. You'd think Saturn Girl might at least have got a feeling of deja vu. And they never do explain why all the male legionnaires are drooling all over Dream Girl at the beginning of the story.

This episode also gives the first insight into the Pokemon nature of the Legion. Lightning Lass's powers are conveniently altered but it's okay as her lightning power isn't needed because it's the same as her brother's. Considering how many stories revolve around rejected applicants it's surprising they don't get one who is mad that he can't join because there is already a member from his planet/with his ability.

The other thing that puzzles me about this issue is how is it that Shrinking Violet's clothes don't fit her when she is turned into an infant, but they do when she shrinks?

The oddest thing about Adventure #318 is that Sun Boy goes bonkers and everyone else lets him. All the complications of the plot derive from that.

Then we get an issue of Jimmy Olsen which consists of female legionnaires fawning all over Jimmy to make his date appreciate him. Do the Legion spend all their free time watching the time scanner like it was a reality show or a soap opera or something?

Next we get to a story that is so big and so stupid that it's going to need a post all of its own...

Notes
1) and has powers so pointless he makes Bouncing Boy look useful
2) okay, half of them are rejected candidates for membership out for revenge, but it's still illegal
3) it's only a trick, of course

Batgirl on show

2007-07-17T15:05:00.000+01:00

I hadn't been planning to get to the Batgirl Showcase until I finished the Legion volume, but there's been some kneejerk outrage over the cover, so I'd like to take a look at that. I realise it can mess up a perfectly good rant to complicate it with facts, but I'm mean like that.

The plan:
Showcase covers follow a standard format of a recoloured version of a cover from one of the comics in the collection. They do not include text on the image. Obviously the ideal image is one that prominently features the title character(s) in iconic pose.

The problem:
All the stories in this collection are either guest spots in another character's comic or backup strips from Detective Comics. The backup character rarely gets cover featured. In fact Batgirl only appears on 6 covers of Detective comics and all but one are where she is appearing in Batman stories. Not only that but there are precious few full page images of Batgirl because space is maximised in her short backup feature and the splash page often contains three panels. On some episodes there is no splash at all, just a title strip at the top of the first page.

So there aren't a whole lot of images to choose from. Let's look at the covers, shall we?

Excellent cover but the text is heavily integrated into the composition, and it would look unbalanced without it.

Here Batman is as prominently featured as Batgirl. It's far from iconic, and relies on the dialogue to make sense of what's going on.

Again, it's not Batgirl specific or iconic, and relies on dialogue to explain the situation.

Here Batgirl is far more prominent but again, take out the dialogue and it's incomprehensible. But we'll come back to this one later.
This one would almost do. Batgirl is prominently displayed and the picture would work without the speech, but still it's as much a Batman image as a Batgirl one.
And finally we get to the only cover for a solo Batgirl story and it is once again reliant on dialogue. It's also too narrow because of the menu down the left hand side, but the main problem is that it's not a very good picture.

Even though Batman is the victim here and Batgirl the rescuer, the composition leaves no doubt who is the star of this show.
Again, this is not Batgirl's comic.

Of course the problem with guest starring in someone else's comic...

...is that they tend to want to be the hero.
This is one of my all time favourite silver age covers, but it's not saying "this is a Batgirl comic".
Bleh.
Don't think so.
This one's not going to do it either.

In fact there aren't any covers to comics in this collection that would suit a Showcase cover. But remember this one?
It's almost the right sort of composition, but take out the dialogue and you lose the sense. But the story did have a full splash page.
Here Batgirl is featured prominently, Batman and Robin appear, but are not the focus of the image, which is reasonable, given that they do appear in the volume, and it works without the dialogue.

Only problem is that it makes Batgirl look stupid, appearing to be more interested in fixing her makeup than fighting crime.

Of course there are vast numbers of silver age covers that feature the hero behaving in a bizarre or inappropriate way. Batman wore the most ludicrous costumes and Superman was always thinking he was a cowboy or getting a big domed head. So how does it work in the context of the story?

The Story:
In fact the story is all about Batgirl believing that she is too concerned with her looks and making an effort to overcome her perceived fault, ultimately using it to her advantage by distracting the bad guys by showing a little leg, as is pictured on the cover. In fact the examples given of her distraction are first where her mask is knocked out of place and she pauses to straighten it, and secondly where mud is thrown in her face. In both cases her behaviour is quite reasonable as she is in danger of having her vision obscured, so it is possible to read it as Barbara over-reacting to a perceived fault and working to overcome it. This is a bit undermined by her letting out an uncharacteristic scream at seeing Batman in danger; she's never done this before, and it's not even extreme danger, so it's very contrived. But despite this, the story is a positive in that it's all about Batgirl taking control and working to not only overcome her faults but use them to her advantage.

It is a bit cringeworthy, but if you can't accept that women were written clumsily in the 1960's then you won't be reading this volume anyway. Is it better to try to depict a female character having issues different from male characters and do it poorly, or to have no characterisation at all and the only difference between male and female characters is the girl is the one in the skirt, as you'd find in Teen Titans or JLA from a similar period?

In context, the cover depicts a scene where Batgirl is playing on the "silly woman obsessed with her looks" image to defeat the villains, and as such is okay. In a world where the default image of a female hero was the heroic stance associated with a male hero, this would work as the equivalent of Superman in a cowboy hat, or Batman turned into a baby; not iconic, but representative of the fun weirdness of the silver age. But the world is not like that, so it doesn't.

And of course, they didn't use the cover image, they used the splash image. Which does not represent any incident in the story and in fact suggests the complete opposite of the actual theme.

The conclusion:
Yes, it is a bad image to use for the cover of the collection, and one that is liable to put off as many potential readers as if it was all T&A, but given the alternative options, what would you have picked?

Thanks to the Grand Comics Database, from whom I steal many cover scans.

Retcon mania

2007-07-12T21:38:00.000+01:00

Don't like the current characterisation of your favourite hero? Has she been turn into a whiny brat? Married a complete jerk? Quite literally lost her head to become the latest sacrifice to the god of crossovers?

Chill. It's cool. Just wait a while. There is nothing in comics that can't be fixed. Then screwed up. Then fixed again, retconned out of existence, brought back again under the most absurd pretext and then broken again.

It's getting so there is nothing in comics that you can rely on as permanent.

Okay, sure, there will always be a Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Fantastic Four, etc. etc. but even the most iconic heroes have been messed around with. Superman will always have been sent to Earth from a dying world, but the specifics of that world change so much that I now have no clue what Krypton looks like or what the people wear. Batman's parents will always have been shot, but what was the movie they went to see and who shot them? And if it's currently Joe Chill, what became of him, and how many different ways has he died?

Retcons have become so run of the mill that they don't even wait for big events like Crisis now. The Supergirl of the nineties didn't go down fighting like her predecessor; despite having been a part of the DC universe for sixteen years or more she was dropped from continuity between issues.

But that doesn't mean she can't come back. In fact she did come back for two issues of Superman/Batman, along with the also kicked out of continuity Cir-El and some kind of idiot analogue of the silver age Supergirl, but they are all forgotten again now. Until next time.

So opinions please: can you think of anything in mainstream comics that can relied on not to change? And bear in mind that just because something hasn't changed for a long time is no guarantee it won't in the future. Bucky got to rest in peace for sixty years before he came back.

I used to think Dark Horse had some integrity

2007-07-10T21:49:00.000+01:00

From the Dark Horse upcoming solicitation list:

JOHN NORMAN’S GOR OMNIBUS VOLUME 1
JOHN NORMAN (W)

On sale Nov. 21
Novel, 768 pages
$14.95
TPB, 5 1/8" x 7 ¼"
John Norman’s Gor Omnibus 1 collects the first three novels in the series. Prepare to take a journey to a land of passion and sorcery.
• The first of a series of affordable omnibus editions collecting the longest-running science fiction action/adventure series of all time.

• With twenty-six books in the Gor series, there are millions of copies in print, with a global audience that reaches across all age groups and demographics.

Not ALL age groups and demographics, I think you'll find.

And you left out the part about it being vile misogynist crap.

More Legion snippet sniping

2007-07-10T18:10:00.000+01:00

One of my earliest WTF? moments in comics came while reading an old reprint of Adventure #312. The Legion are searching the galaxy for possible cures for death, just on the off-chance that someone's come up with a resurrection potion or something and not bothered to mention it to the rest of the universe.

Oh wait, I didn't mean death exactly. You see although Lightning Lad has been worm food since issue #304, they think he may only be mostly dead, which is a little bit alive (1), but rather than hooking him up to a life support, they seem to think he'll keep fine as he is. So Superboy goes off to investigate this planet where the people periodically fall into a state of death-like coma but then recover a few hours later. It's a condition that resembles what is known on 21st century Earth as sleep, barring the odd custom of this planet, where, rather than curling up in the comfort of one's own bed to lose consciousness, people of this world prefer to lie in perspex coffins out in the street.

After several more investigations by the six members of the Legion who are taking part (2) we find that Mon El knew a solution all along, which he demonstrates by having an android sacrifice itself to revive another android. I can't decide whether this is callous or idiotic. Either the androids are sentient lifeforms, in which case making one kill itself purely for demonstration purposes is reprehensible, or they are not living creatures and the demonstration is pointless (3).

So by a contrived quirk of plot, the only way to bring Lightning Lad back is by sacrificing one of our heroes. Except not. Because it turns out any old life form would do, as Chameleon Boy's expendable pet heroically bites the dust, only to be replaced by an identical copy a few issues later.

I'm not sure my brain can cope with attempting to explain the plot of Adventure #313, but I'll try. In a tortuously convoluted plot, Supergirl travels to the 30th century for one of her rare appearances in the Legion, but as she arrives she bumps into some red kryptonite that knocks her out and splits her in to two people. The first Supergirl to wake up decides that she wants to live a life of her own and not be rejoined when the temporary effect wears off.

She devises a plan where she believes that she can siphon off the "red kryptonite effect" from her body and, rather than just dump it in empty space, for no very obvious reason she has to use it to irradiate other people, and because deep down she has a death wish and wants to be found out, instead of picking on some defenceless nobodies in the back end of the galaxy, she uses it on the people best equipped to stop her; the Legion. And just to make sure that they won't be badly impaired, she only uses it on the female members (4) except for the other Supergirl, even though she's the only person present actually vulnerable to any form of kryptonite, and the only one putting up any resistance. And just to make sure everyone knows she is the villain, she calls herself Satan Girl.

Unfortunately it takes the Legion awhile to get organised because even the robot-nurses of Quarantine World are unable to tell the difference between radiation poisoning and a virus, and by the 30th century they have yet to invent a device that can detect kryptonite radiation.

In the end Supergirl devises a plan that involves travelling back in time to get some help, but rather than grabbing Superboy, Superman, or any other male hero (5) available to them in all of time, they go collect Streaky the super cat (6), Krypto, and other assorted super pets for an entirely superfluous guest star role as they don't achieve anything more than Supergirl was already doing solo; keeping Satan Girl busy until her time (7) ran out.

Does this story make sense on any level at all? I'm thinking not.

Adventure #314 has one of the funniest moments in the whole volume. Villainous Alaktor steals a Legion time machine and does a kind of evil Bill & Ted, collecting Nero, John Dillinger, and Hitler to help him do some bad thing or other. So he picks up the most despicable people in history he can think of, and then gives them super powers. And then they tie him up and go and do whatever the hell they like.

The pure comedy moment is the hurt look on the face of the naive villain when he finds he is being betrayed and whimpers "But you promised!"

It cracks me up every time.

Notes

1) If you didn't get the Princess Bride reference, shame on you.
2) presumably the rest of the team just didn't care enough to take part
3) It would have worked better with chickens
4) though interestingly, the male legionnaires contribute little if anything; this is very much a Supergirl story
5) remember as far as they are aware, only females are susceptible to Satan Girl's radiation virus
6) presumably having forgotten about Streaky's telepathic descendant Whizzy
7) which they didn't know about

Little hat syndrome

2007-07-10T17:44:00.000+01:00

There's an old joke. A mother's at the seaside with her baby boy, who's playing in the sand by the water's edge. Suddenly a big wave crashes over the boy and sweeps him out to sea. The mother hysterically scans the ocean but he's gone, gone, gone, so she falls to her knees on the shore and sobbing, calls out to God.
"God, please God, I'll do anything, but you have to bring my boy back! Take me instead, strike me dead this instant, submit me to a thousand tortures, but please -- I'll give up all my money, everything I have in this life, I'll build a temple or a church in your name, whatever you want! But oh merciful God, I'm begging you, please give me back my child! "

There's a peal of thunder and a bolt of sunlight pierces the sea, and lo and behold, another big wave rolls to the shore and the baby boy is returned. Crying with joy, exclaiming a dozen thank-yous, the mother clutches her child to her bosom, and then holds him out for a loving look. She turns back to God. "God," she says. "He was wearing a little hat..."

Billy Mernit, who I stole the above quote from, talks about little hatting in creative writing, but it's equally applicable to comics criticism. I know I'm guilty of it, and I see it all around me. The better a comic is, the more any tiny fault stands out, and we end up focusing on that so much that any reader might get the impression that we absolutely hated something which in fact we consider a paragon, apart from this tiny thing that we feel the need to dwell on for three quarters of the review.

A very dull rainbow

2007-07-07T13:13:00.000+01:00

Since the Legion is composed not just of representatives from Earth, but from the entire Universe, you do rather get the feeling that the 30th century is a bit lacking in cultural diversity.

I realise that due to the prejudice of the time these comics were first published there are some parts of "the land of the free" where people would refuse to sell a comic that had a black face on it, but they could have thrown in a few pastel shades that the bigots wouldn't be offended by to at least suggest that the universe of the future wasn't almost entirely populated by white people. Of the sixteen legionnaires (guess which one is not featured on the big board here) and five subs who are supposed to represent maybe twenty different worlds, there are only two who are not white, and only one who has any physically different characteristics. And he's the one who can change himself to fit in whenever he wants.

And admittedly it's hard to tell when it's purely skin colour and you're reading a black and white reprint, but going by what I've so far read of this Showcase collection it appears that all women of the future are white Caucasians.

How boring.

Legion snippets

2007-07-06T13:02:00.000+01:00

I'm skipping past a few Legion stories. It's not that they don't contain their share of odd legionnaire behaviour and entertaining nonsense, but I never intended to do a an in depth analysis, and there's a lot to get through. Here's a few highlights:

Adventure #308

Lighning Lad spontaneously comes back to life, except it's actually his twin sister in disguise, who has stolen his corpse and taken his place in the coffin (1), which nobody notices until Sun Boy spots she doesn't have an adam's apple, rather than that she's an entirely different shape. I'm guessing she must have used some kind of 30th century bodysuit because when we see her not pretending to be her own brother she is not only a lot less muscled, but has the largest bust size of any of the female legionnaires.

Even in what is often depicted as a utopian 30th century, women still live in fear of attracting the wrong sort of attention, and their plight is still largely ignored. Have the Legion ever fought evil men who have kidnapped super-powered girls and forced them to commit crimes? They just don't care. It seems like sometimes the only option is to dress up in your dead brother's clothes so you can carry on his work secretly(2).

What does it say about the Legion that when they catch criminals they feel perfectly entitled to walk off with any of the stolen goods that take their fancy?

And I realise how they might be annoyed by Lightning Lad's nameless sister for showing up how poor their observational skills are, but making her wear that outfit seems an extreme punishment. Apart from being the ugliest superhero costume of the silver age, it seems to yell "Look at my pants".

Adventure #309

The silver age Legion of Monsters didn't feature Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, or even a werewolf, but it was still "the greatest threat to the Legion in their history". What, more than the threats that actually killed Legionnaires?

Isn't the universe depicted in this map a little small? Also flat? And who is missing from the Legion roundup this issue?(3)

And it's too risky for a girl to go on this mission, even though she's the only one at that point to achieve anything useful, and is in fact leader of the whole Legion .

We'll send in Bouncing Boy instead.

Notes

1) None of the Legionnaires are at all bothered by this.

2) For individual values of "secret".

3) Yes, it's Phantom Girl.

It really is First Class

2007-07-05T20:04:00.000+01:00

There are some phrases that you don't naturally associate with certain people. One you'd probably not expect to hear from me is this: I enjoyed an X-Men comic.

It's not that I particularly have anything against the X-Men, but their backstory is so huge and complicated that I can't imagine picking one up and having any clue who anybody is or what they are doing, even if it's explained. I read a lot of them when I was a much younger, but I have an idea that I wouldn't even recognise the characters I recognised. There is such a huge weight of continuity and I don't want to have to read a zillion other comics to make sense of the one in my hands, and that's before you add in all the recent "event" comics.

But I picked up X-Men: First Class #1 on a whim, and partly because it was free of all that continuity baggage. It's great. Sue Richards mentors a teenage Jean Grey, who is feeling a bit left out among her all-male team. Hilarity ensues.

I loved the story, I loved the subtle nuanced characterisation of everyone except the Mad Thinker, and I loved his unsubtle characterisation. I loved the art, which supported the characterisation so well. I loved that I could read a satisfying story in a single comic.

Come to think of it, the last Marvel comic I enjoyed was also written by Jeff Parker.

He's okay.

Wicked Barbie

2007-07-04T15:50:00.000+01:00

I still haven't got my Elektra Barbie, although it seems to have become less "collectible" and more "remaindered" and can be found for less than its original retail price in many places, while other comics related Barbies (in costumes that are so cheap and nasty looking that I'd never remove them from the box not so much to keep them collectible as to avoid looking at the ugly things) manage to multiply their value as they get older.

Anyway, I noticed today that they've done another one I am tempted by: a Wicked Witch of the West Barbie.

Except, wait a minute. I don't think this doll is finished.

I mean, doesn't she look awfully pretty to you?

And smiley?

Couldn't they at least have given her a hooked nose? I mean if they can make a doll look like Cher, how come the WWotW looks like a fashion model under disco lights? I realise it's supposed to be Barbie playing the WWotW, but is she such a primadonna that she'd refuse to do the makeup?

Ah well. Knowing me if I did get her I'd just dress her in spandex and call her She-Hulk Barbie.

accentuate the positive

2007-07-02T13:43:00.000+01:00

I'm rarely moved to spontaneously write about a comic I've just read in a positive way, because what usually moves me to write about some comic on the spur of the moment is strong emotion, and a good comic has to be very good before it will move me to write about it, where some relatively minor bad thing can send me off on a rant.

But there's a lot of negativity in the feministicomicsblogospherahedron so I'm making an effort to temper my comments a bit, which means on the one hand I'm trying to save the rants for things that either really deserve them, or which I think I can be most entertaining about, and on the other means I am making an effort to find the positive, and to applaud the good things.

Case in point: I've seen a few criticisms of DC's somewhat frivolous covers for the upcoming Green Arrow/Black Canary wedding event. I've also seen criticisms of the criticisms (which seems to be the big growth area in fandom lately). I'd like to point out that (as far as I know) this is the first "event" from either Marvel or DC for longer than I care to remember that does not require the sacrifice of a likeable but not so popular hero to the god of crossovers.

Just for once they are going with "light romantic comedy" instead of "violent and nasty", and I think should be celebrated for this.

The Secret Origin of Exposition Girl

2007-07-02T00:06:00.000+01:00

By the late 30th century a crisis is looming (no, not that one). The spread of information has reached a point where it becomes overwhelming. People are in danger of losing their own identities as they are drowned in the sea of knowledge that surrounds them.

It becomes so bad that everyone has to constantly remind themselves of who they are and what they are doing in order to retain their own identities. A side effect of this problem being that everyone loses any nuances of personality, forgetting that they are untidy or have a favourite TV show. Popular culture dies overnight as people become more interested in their own doings than anything happening to some celebrity.

People take to carrying placards around with them that they can place in front of themselves to avoid the embarrassment of having to remind close friends of who they are.

One villain attempts to use this to trick their way into the Legion of Superheroes by convincing the legionnaires that they are already a member, but succeeds too well and entirely forgets that he is not a heroic stalwart of the team.

It is amid this chaos that a new hero arises. Emo librarian Jenerica Jones gained all the knowledge of the universe when a freak accident caused the computer terminal she was working on to download the entire galactic internet into her head.

Donning a brightly coloured costume and cape, she is quickly inducted into the Legion where she serves the invaluable (if rather dull) purpose of reminding them who they are and what they are doing. She is Exposition Girl.

Exposition Girl picture by Karen Ellis who draws stuff.

I ♥ Mika Brzezinski

2007-06-30T11:11:00.000+01:00

In a rare outbreak of journalistic integrity, Mika Brzezinski, presenter on the MNSBC Morning Joe show refused to read out a story on Paris Hilton, saying that it was unworthy to be the lead news story when there were serious issues of far more importance.

She then attempted to burn the report, and ended up putting it through the shredder.

I'd never heard of Mika Brzezinski before today, or the show she appears on, or even the network she works for, but right now I'd vote for her as journalist of the year for having the guts to stand up and say on TV that the minor doings of people whose only claim to fame is that the media talk about them a lot are not as important as wars.

See it here.

Thinking Gilligan

2007-06-26T12:46:00.000+01:00

I was listening to the Gilligan theme song and something struck me.

The various characters are all mentioned in the song, getting a description that informs their personality and social status, except for one who is simply named. Doesn't Mary Ann have enough of a personality that they couldn't think of two words to describe her?

It's all Chinese whispers

2007-06-26T12:39:00.000+01:00

In early Superman stories it's explained that Superman's x-ray vision cannot penetrate lead. This is because in the real world X-rays cannot pass through lead or any other material so dense.

In Doctor Who, the original Cybermen are defeated when they are forced to inhale powered gold, which clogs their breathing filters, suffocating them.

Several writers later and we find that Superman cannot affect lead in any way, but has little problem with denser materials. He cannot even heat up this soft metal with his heat vision because... well, for no reason given. We also find that Cybermen are now so allergic to gold that a coin fired from a slingshot will kill them, even though it cannot possibly affect them in the way that originally incapacitated them.

It's all Chinese whispers. Writers see what their predecessors have written and follow the form without considering the concept. And that's without even considering the stuff they change deliberately...

Gilligan's whatnow?

2007-06-23T10:56:00.000+01:00

So I had a look on Youtube to see if I could find any clips of Gilligan's Island and this was what came up...

Surprise: some comics are still fun

2007-06-22T18:12:00.000+01:00

Honestly, I was all set to do a big rant about how the comic industry was going to hell in a bucket and I was going to build myself a fort out of Showcase Presents volumes and not come out until comics were fun again, and then I read the first Minx title The Plain Janes.

It doesn't suck.

I'm not going to do a detailed review of it because anyone with any taste is going to be writing about it. I'll just say that when I got to the last page my reactions were "aw, I was just enjoying that and it stopped" followed by "I wonder if there's going to be a sequel?"

This is a good feeling to have at the end of any book. So a good start for Minx as far as I am concerned, though my expectations had not been high, based on the initial publicity. And the name.

At the back there are several page samples of the next three volumes. They didn't make me want to run to the comic store right now to see if they are published yet, but I will be checking them out.

And it's nice to know I'll have something to read this summer that was written in my lifetime.

Kids of Tomorrow got No Respect!

2007-06-22T14:35:00.000+01:00

I think one of the things I like most about the early Legion is their total lack of respect for anyone. They'll travel back in time ten thousand years in order to invite their greatest hero to join their club, and then play a practical joke on him and make him cry.

They cross centuries again to invite Supergirl and then refuse to take her because while following their directions she accidentally gets a dose of red kryptonite that makes her look too old, even though A) she hasn't actually aged, she just looks slightly different (visually she just appears slightly taller and to be wearing lipstick), and b) it's a temporary effect that will wear off in a couple of hours.

So it's hardly surprising that when you see what appears to be a continuity error, such as them telling Supergirl that they are the children of the legionnaires that met Superboy, it's easy to read it as them just having a laugh at Supergirl's expense.

The bastards.

spot the difference

2007-06-20T13:01:00.000+01:00

Apparently Mirrorland has a stricter dress code...

The Legion again

2007-06-20T09:41:00.000+01:00

(I hadn't been planning to write much more about the early Legion adventures, but these Showcase volumes are so full of daft ideas that I can't help wanting to share the fun.

But first, a correction. In my previous article I said Shrinking Violet and Triplicate Girl weren't introduced until Adventure #300. In fact they, and Bouncing Boy first appear in a Supergirl story in Action #276 that, more than any other appearance, has all the hallmarks of a stealth pilot, as it features the most complete version of the Legion prior to their own series.

In this story we are told that the Legion has revised its policy of only allowing one new member per year to allowing one boy and one girl per year (1). Applicants shown include Brainiac 5, Sun Boy, Bouncing Boy, and Shrinking Violet. Since all of them are members by Adventure #300, the Legion series must take place at least two years later, assuming that these guys were taken on their second or third attempts, over other applicants that hadn't already been rejected (2)(3).

Other highlights of this story include Saturn Girl fooling Supergirl into not recognising her by wearing a mask, even though she is in full costume and has demonstrated her powers; the whole "super-girlfriends" routine which is ripe for innuendo by someone with a smuttier mind than I, and Supergirl's demonstration of power for her membership application, which involves destroying hugely important archeological sites by burrowing down to cherrypick a couple of choice items that made the archeoligist in me wince, and my experience is limited to watching the odd episode of Time Team; and how convenient is it that a kryptonite meteor just happens to fall out of the sky right on top of Supergirl just in time for Brainiac 5 to demonstrate his cleverness and self-sacrifice by slapping his force field belt on her and tuning it to fit her personally in less time than it takes for her to get out of the way of it. Anyone would think he had arranged it on purpose...

I feel a bit sad for poor Shrinking Violet here. I mean here she is, she's got as far through the Legion application process as having a placard with her own name on it, and then at the last minute she has to go up against someone who is related to the most famous hero in history that inspired the Legion in the first place, and who they have traveled back in time to personally invite. It must be particularly galling when Supergirl bogs off as soon as she's inducted and hardly ever turns up for meetings(4). She doesn't even get to be one of Supergirl's super-girlfriends.

Notes.

1) which makes you wonder how they end up with a 3:1 male/female ratio.
2) In Adventure #301 we find that Bouncing Boy was rejected once.
3) However, since there are no new female legionnaires between this and Adventure #300 I can only guess that Sun Boy reapplied in drag.
4) Talk about nepotism...

Meme of Eight

2007-06-18T15:09:00.000+01:00

I'm not big on memes, but since Walaka tagged me with this one, I thought I'd give it a go. But I'm not passing it on because that would be way too much like a chain letter, and I'd feel the need to add something like "don't break the chain or your pet will turn an unexpected colour, and your favourite TV show will be canceled on a cliffhanger ending!"

Anyhow, the rules:
I have to post these rules before I give you the facts.

Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.

People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.

At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.

Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

1) I collect cool (anime/goth/scifi/superhero) dolls, but not in any obsessive way, unless you'd consider having twelve goth dolls on your mantelpiece obsessive.

2) Terry Pratchet once gave me a lift in his car. He's a lot less funny in person.

3) My favourite flavour of soda is banana, but I haven't seen one in years. Actually my favourite flavour of most things is banana.

4) I still haven't finished reading Seduction of the Innocent. I'm beginning to think life is too short.

5) I have never seen Gilligan's Island. And not because I don't want to. I've never watched an entire episode of Neighbours either, but that's taken skillful manoevering because it was so ubiquitous on UK TV and I've known lots of people who liked it. I'm vaguely curious about Gilligan because it seems to be part of the American experience and often turns up as a pop culture reference, but it's never been shown on British TV (that I'm aware of). Now I think about it, I could probably find at least a clip of it on YouTube.

6) I bought my first videotape before I had a VCR, my first CD before I had a CD player, and my first DVD before I had a DVD player. I mean I knew I would be getting the player eventually, and it was a bargain/something I'd always wanted.

7) My most hardcore videogame experience was playing Sakura Wars in Japanese (it's an RPG heavy on text that has never been translated).

The oldest comic I own is Wonder Woman #17. That's WW volume one, dated 1946.