Friday, March 29, 2013

Friday Night Fights: Assassin - Round 10: Don't Give Me Any Static!




It's time once again to feature a fight from the FNF Lightweight Division. Tonight's round of Friday Night Fights: Assassin comes from Action Comics #435 by Elliot S! Maggin, Dick Dillin, Dick Giordano, and Frank McLaughlin. Synopsis: Ivy Town's courthouse has been attacked by mobster Sax Carlin's gang in attempt to spring their boss. Ray Palmer switches to the Atom and comes to the rescue. Here he spots the gang's rooftop radio dispatcher.





Now watch as the Atom gives the bad guy an unwelcome "reception".




Now, that's what I call "static CLANG"!


Enjoy tonight's fight music from Planet P Project.




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Friday, March 22, 2013

Friday Night Fights: Assassin - Round 9: Down In The Muck!




Just as last week's round of Friday Night Fights: Assassin taught you that Batman hates bureaucracies, tonight's round will teach you another important lesson about our Caped Crusader:


Batman will not hesitate to wade in the muck to fight crime and save lives.


Tonight's sewage-infested sioree comes from Batman Family#18 by Denny O'Neil, Michael Golden, and P. Craig Russell. Synopsis: The Gargoyle Gang has stolen a solid gold Quasimodo mask from Gotham Hotel and are planning to escape through Gotham City's sewer system using plans they stole. There are only three problems with this stratagem:


1.) Batman is also chasing them through the same sewer tunnels, at this point managing to subdue the entire gang except their boss.


2.) A freak storm has caused Gotham Dam to burst, causing water to flood those same tunnels.


And what is Problem #3?


3.) This....









How's that for a waste-filled walloping?


The muck-encrusted music for tonight's fight comes from.....Art Carney????





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Thursday, March 21, 2013

My Reaction To This Week's News...

A few of the more frustrating news items from this week:


1. This past Sunday the verdict came in for the Steubenville rape case. The two defendants, Trent Mays and Malik Richmond, were found guilty, putting them among the few rapists to actually get convicted. The two boys expressed remorse....about being caught. Mays apologized profusely to the victim and her parents...merely for filming the rape, not....you know...engaging in it. They both received sentences befitting the severity and evil of their crime of.... 1 and 2 years!


Thankfully, CNN, particularly Candy Crowley and Poppy Harlow, were there to assign sympathy where it truly belongs, as they lamented the ruined lives and promising futures.....of the rapists! Regarding the fate of their 16-year-old female victim? Not a peep. 


And CNN's Rape-Culture-Palooza didn't stop there. There was Ric Simmons gratuitously jacking up the ambiguity levels with this gem


The law has evolved as societal norms have changed. Lots of sexual conduct occurs when one or both participants are intoxicated to some extent. The question that the law needs to answer -- but at times struggles to answer -- is at what point one person's intoxication is so severe that she (or he, in theory) is legally unable to give meaningful consent. Ohio law, like that of many states, sets this line at the point at which the victim's "ability to resist or consent was substantially impaired" by alcohol. But how impaired is "substantially impaired"?


Dude, the girl was UNCONSCIOUS!




And lest the anonymous victim be starved for attention, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News had the "decency" to NOT BLOCK OUT HER NAME in their broadcasting of the closing court statements. No, that shouldn't inconvenience the girl or her family AT ALL.


2. Michelle Shocked gave her audience a short, sharp shock this week by letting fly an anti-gay rant. Which I can honestly say, as someone who's attended one of her concerts and seen some of the typical audience, is the equivalent of Bob Barker opening "The Price Is Right" by exclaiming "Why don't all you old people to just die already?" Way to read your fan base, Michelle!



3. What would a post about media stupidity be without DC Comics? Two more writers, Andy Diggle (Action Comics) and Joshua Hale Fialkov (Green Lantern Corps, Red Lanterns), are casualties of the Nu52 Writing Revolving Door, due to DC's recurring addiction to last-minute revising of their writers' storylines. But the eleventh-hour revision that drove Fialkov away was particularly telling: It called for the death of one of Earth's 5 Green Lanterns. Which one? Why, John Stewart, of course! Because apparently there's a GLUT of recognizable black superheroes in the DC Universe.


My reaction to all this stupidity? I'll leave it to Grand Regent Thragg.




Because sometimes only Evil Freddie Mercury facepalm* is sufficient to convey the degree of fail.


(* Courtesy of this week's Invincible#101 by Robert Kirkman, Ryan Ottley, and Cliff Rathburn.)

Friday, March 15, 2013

Friday Night Fights: Assassin - Round 8: Batman Has No Use For Your Silly Mega-City One Bureaucracy!



Tonight's round of Friday Night Fights: Assassin is a reminder of an important lesson: Batman hates bureaucracies. Especially on Mega-City One.


Tonight's intercompany embroglio comes from the crossover comic Batman/Judge Dredd: Judgement On Gotham, written by Alan Grant and John Wagner and illustrated by Simon Bisley. Synopsis: Judge Death has used a dimensional transporter to teleport from Mega-City One to Gotham City. After briefly subduing Death, Batman accidentally activates Death's transporter and finds himself on Mega-City One, just in time to be arrested by Judge Dredd.


While in Dredd's custody, Batman is interrogated by Psi-Judge Anderson, who wants to dimension-jump to Gotham with the Dark Knight to apprehend the reconstituted Judge Death before he lays waste to the city. Dredd, of course, puts the kibosh on this, insisting that they wait to consult a higher court because Gotham is out of their jurisdiction. Not only that, he insists Batman must serve twenty years in jail for illegal weapons possession (for everything in Bats' utility belt).


Needless to say, the Caped Crusader does NOT take this well.






Make that: Batman REALLY hates bureaucracies!


Tonight's fight music is this bit of lawbreaking loudness from Judas Priest.




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Friday, March 08, 2013

Friday Night Fights: Assassin - Round 7: Killing Him Sadly!



Usually my rounds of Friday Night Fights: Assassin are rather uplifting. You'll find tonight's round, on the other hand, to be a bit of a....downer.


Our featured melancholy melee comes from Plastic Man#26 by Joe Millard and Jack Cole. Here's the lachrymose lowdown: Master thief Phil "Sadly-Sadly" Sanders, while on the run from Plastic Man, auditions for an off-Broadway play and, thanks to the tutoring of the casting director, discovers he can contort his face into a countenance so pitiable that he can make those who look at him feel so sorry for him that they can't resist doing anything he asks them to do.


Once he's figured out where Sadly-Sadly will strike next, the Ductile Detective disguises himself as a nearby security guard, taking special care not to look at Sadly's face. When Sadly strikes at the anticipated jewelry store, Plas makes his move.


And so begins our funereal fracas.




Thus the crowd feels so sorry for Sadly-Sadly that they....


....BEAT THE LIVING CRAP  OUT OF PLASTIC MAN!!!




And so Sadly-Sadly's doleful departure snaps the crowd out of its murderous malaise, leaving them to think they killed our Stretchable Sleuth.


(SOMBER SPOILER: They didn't.)


Tonight's fight music for our dour donnybrook is this mournful melody by They Might Be Giants.




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Or Spacebooger will be very sad!


(Special grim gratitude to Joe Bloke.)


Friday, March 01, 2013

Friday Night Fights: Assassin - Round 6: Pole Position!




For tonight's round of Friday Night Fights: Assassin, we're going to feature an actual assassin, courtesy of World's Finest#244, written by Jack C. Harris and illustrated by the same art team responsible for my previous week's victorious round, Mike Nasser and Terry Austin. The scene is Star City's Inter-City Track Meet, and Black Canary is trying to prevent The Rainbow Archer from killing the event's champion pole vaulter, George Taylor III. (Who happens to be the son of publisher George Taylor, who shares a name and vocation with the Golden Age Clark Kent's original boss at the Daily Star.)


Anyway, Rainbow Archer's assassination attempt fails, but Canary still has to stop him from getting away. But she's too far away to catch him! What does she do?


THIS!




(Love the sound effects!)


In honor of Black Canary "connecting" with the Rainbow Archer, tonight's fight song is from Kermit The Frog.





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