The Moffat Regeneration

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

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

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

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?

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

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'.