Postcards from a Golden Age

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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?

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

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!

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

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

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

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

Kekko Kamen listed under 'Mature Content'.

eBook report: first impressions

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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...

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

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...