Stars And Garters

Warning: SOPA, Canadian-Style!

2012-01-29T20:24:00.000-08:00

Aw crap, here we go again. Just when you thought open internet was safe...

I found out about this from Ragnell's tumblr:

CANADA IS PASSING A SOPA COPY IN 14 DAYS. EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT CANADIAN, REBLOG SO OTHERS CAN SEE THIS....

Here's the attached letter if you're Canadian. Reblog this if you're an American.

The Hostess Fruit Pie Ad That Proved Greg Pak Wrong (And Brian Snell Right)

2012-01-28T19:30:00.000-08:00

There are two schools of thought regarding civilian casualties in the Hulk's rampages:

1. Former Hulk writer Greg Pak contends that Bruce Banner's mind influences the Hulk sufficiently that he subconsciously calculates the contingencies and guides the Hulk to avoid civilian casualties. Consequently, according to Pak, unless the Hulk has been controlled by outside forces, or Banner's mind has been removed, no one has ever died from any of the Hulk's rampages.

And....

2. Fellow comics blogger Brian Snell contends that Pak's contention is complete horse hockey.

Which one is right? Well, in the course of my quarter bin diving, I may have at long last resolved this argument by unearthing a crucial piece of evidence, with the help of.....Hostess Fruit Pies!

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you:

These guys are terrorizing the town? Seriously??? They look like they could be taken out by two guys with a really long rope.

People, there are plenty of neighborhoods here in Chicago where we WISH this was the extent of the gang problem.

They can't buy Hostess Fruit Pies? The horror! THE HORROR!

"You punks stay off Hulk's lawn!"

Ok, now let's watch how Bruce Banner's brilliant subconscious mind works to calculate the complex mathematics and spare human lives...

....by rolling them up inside a ton of asphalt, thus either killing them by crushing their bodies and/or suffocating them, or crippling them for life. (And I don't even want to think about Yellow Shirt's spine there!)

Not only that, but in the next panel he's also sitting on the Asphalt Ding-Dong Roll Of Death (clever product placement there, Hostess!), thereby adding another 1,040 pounds (look it up!) to its already-crushing weight.

Not that it matters to the little pie junkies over there...

"Now we can get all the Hostess Fruit Pies we want!" Another victory for Type 2 Diabetes! Yay!

"Why can't humans be nice", Jade-Jaws? Dude, you just stone-cold killed and crippled a bunch of guys just for playing their radios too loud!

Sorry, Greg Pak, but I'm afraid I have to side with Snell on this one.

Friday Night Fights: Marvelous - Round 10: Why Tony Stark DOESN'T Like Ike!

2012-01-27T01:43:00.000-08:00

For tonight's round of Friday Night Fights: Marvelous, I'm showcasing a battle royale between Iron Man and former President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

No, REALLY!

This unlikely presidential pounding comes courtesy of Strange Tales#2, in a story written and drawn by Tony Millionaire.

I picked a special fight song tonight in honor of one of the Presidents of the United States of America pounding lumps on our Armored Avenger. (Hint, hint!)

For more inaugural ass-kickings, click here. And don't forget to exercise your right to vote!

Ike wouldn't like that!

Friday Night Fights: Marvelous - Round 9: Puck You!

2012-01-20T01:34:00.000-08:00

Tonight's round of Friday Night Fights: Marvelous will teach you an important lesson: It's the little guys you've gotta watch out for.

In this case, the little guy in question is Eugene Judd aka Puck from the Canadian super-team Alpha Flight.

Synopsis: It's a typical afternoon at Corky's Tavern and Mary, the waitress, has her hands full dealing with some obnoxious and "grabby" customers.

Unfortunately for the Gropey Hand Gang there, the bouncer at Corky's also happens to be the aforementioned Puck.

Mr. Judd intervenes, but the punks don't exactly take him seriously.

BIG mistake!

Grabby Guy#2 doesn't take the hint from what happened to Grabby Guy#1, and....

...POW!!!

The above barroom brawl comes from 1983's Alpha Flight#1, written and drawn by Puck's equally feisty fellow Canadian, John Byrne. In honor of the valuable lesson Puck taught those two doofuses, tonight's fight song is this classic by The Georgia Satellites.

For more scaled-down smackdowns, click here. And don't forget to vote.

Now get the Puck out of here!

A Special SOPA/PIPA "Public Announcements"

2012-01-18T05:53:00.000-08:00

***ATTENTION, EVERYONE WHO VALUES A FREE AND OPEN INTERNET! ***

Please take the time to read this post from the Electronic Frontier Foundation about the dangers the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) pose to internet freedom.

This bill may be the greatest threat to internet freedom that you've never heard of. That's because all the major television networks have come out in favor of SOPA and PIPA and have all but blacked out coverage and discussion. Even MSNBC supports this bill, and as far as I know, Chris Hayes' show is the only MSNBC program I've seen even discuss it.

How could this affect your internet viewing? Look no further than this very blog. Take "Friday Night Fights", for example. My posts and those of the other "Fighters" are predominantly based on DC and Marvel scans, and DC and Marvel both support SOPA/PIPA. If they pass, they could potentially block all our sites for posting scans of their books.

Granted, I understand the online piracy problem and the need to fight it. But these bills are the legislative equivalent of bringing armed 50-megaton atomic bombs to a gunfight. They're like blowing up an entire neighborhood to stop a rash of burglaries in that neighborhood.

Support for this bill hasn't lined up along the usual partisan divides, either. Al Franken (D), for example, is in favor of SOPA, while Darrell Issa (R) is fighting vigorously against it. This time I'm actually on Issa's side.

At present, the Senate is going full speed ahead with PIPA, while the House is temporary shelving SOPA. However, without our vigilance, either of these bills could quietly pass in the dead of night. The White House has come out against both SOPA and PIPA. On the other hand, they also originally came out against the NDAA, and we know how THAT turned out.

It's up to us.

Read the info provided in the link above. Then call your Congresspeople and let them know you will not stand for it.

Constant vigilance is the price we pay for freedom. That goes for the internet, too.

A Special Captain America "Public Announcements"

2012-01-17T05:42:00.000-08:00

I was a little late in hearing about this, but after reading about this on David Brothers' blog (via Kalinara's and Ragnell's blogs), my blood is boiling so much that I NEED to address this.

*** ATTENTION, WARREN ELLIS, MARVEL COMICS, AND ALL THOSE ASSOCIATED WITH SECRET AVENGERS#21! ***

Judging by the scene in last week's Secret Avengers#21......

...and especially this panel....

..it's very clear that you are operating under some serious misconceptions about Captain America, heroes, torture, and, well, a lot of things.

So let me enlighten you:

1. Captain America does not condone torture. Torture is one of the most brutal and barbaric crimes in our society. We're not talking mere "Batman dangling a crook from a roof" interrogation; we're talking actual torture. And there's no way in hell Captain America would just stand by and let it happen, let alone order it.

2. Steve Rogers is STILL Captain America, even without his costume. The most common defense of this scene was that Steve wasn't officially Captain America here. Bullshit. It doesn't matter if he's wearing a SHIELD outfit, or a Punisher costume, or even a goddamn clown suit. Steve IS Captain America.

3. Captain America is supposed to represent what America SHOULD BE, not what America IS.
Yes, I know that torture has been one of our country's dirty little secrets that's just been more exposed in recent years. But that doesn't make it right, or what America should stand for. And the whole idea of Captain America is to represent America's ideals, not its dirty reality.

4. Torture isn't as glamorous or effective as you think. Blame the "24" TV show for this common misconception, with all those scenes of Jack Bauer torturing the bad guys to get the vital info he needs to save L.A. from blowing up, or whatever dire catastrophe it is. That's fiction. The reality is that much of the info gained from torture is bad info. Reports showed that the finding of Osama bin Laden may have actually been delayed because of the garbage information gained from using "enhanced interrogation" techniques. Even James Robinson's awful "Cry For Justice" showed the heroes essentially getting nowhere after torturing bad guys for 3 issues. Torture is much more effective in getting the target to give you bad info that you may want to hear just to fulfill your agenda (i.e. "The Iraquis are enriching Uranium").

4. If you say you don't condone torture and then let someone else torture without lifting a hand to stop them, you're STILL CONDONING TORTURE. You can say you're not condoning it until your voice gives out, but if you're content to sit back and let it happen, even if you leave the room, you're fucking condoning it. It's just that simple.

5. Captain America is NOT a fucking coward. Even if he were resigned to the fact that torture was the only solution, he would NOT leave the room and let others do it in his absence. He would force himself to watch it and oversee it, even if for no other reason than to reinforce that it must not happen again.

He doesn't do this:

In Mild, Half-Assed Defense Of Tim Tebow

2012-01-14T05:16:00.000-08:00

It's Tebow Time. For this blog, that is.

Since Tim Tebow and his in-your-face style of Christianity holy-rolled their way into the national spotlight, he's been been a lightning rod for both great praise and great criticism.

I certainly don't get the "praise" part. Frankly, Tebow just isn't all that as a quarterback. Sure, he's had some great last-quarter saves, and he fared particularly well against quarterback/douchebag Ben Roethlisberger and his Steelers, but let's face it: He's nowhere near the same class as someone like Tom Brady or Drew Brees. If and when Brady and his New England Patriots beat Tebow and his Broncos this weekend, it may be a shock to the system of Tebow's more evangelical followers, but it'll be about as traumatic and faith-shattering to me as the sun rising in the morning.

As far as Tebow's style of expressing his faith is concerned, I understand all the complaints and even agree with many of them. First and foremost among them are two points touched upon here by Bill Press.

Here's the first point Press makes:

Jesus said a lot of strong things. But one of the strongest things he ever said was: When you pray, don’t be like those hypocrites who like to stand on a street corner and pray, so everybody can see them.

Somebody ought to tell that to Tim Tebow.

Fair point. He follows that up with an even fairer one:

Now, if you’re one of the silly millions of Americans who loves Tebow’s in-your-face kind of Christianity, consider this. What if he were a devout Muslim, who bowed to Mecca after every touchdown and shouted “Allahu Akbar?”

Somehow, I don’t think we’d be celebrating him as a national hero.

Both of Press's points are right on the mark. While I'm a practicing Christian, all that evangelizing just isn't my thing. That "hypocrites" quote is one of Jesus' signature lines. I've heard that one so often at my church services I've all but memorized it. And I agree wholeheartedly with it. And I've already ranted recently about the double-standards Muslim-Americans face when expressing and practicing their faith, or even existing, for that matter. If Tebow did frequently praise Allah and Mohammed in lieu of God and Jesus, or if he put Quran passage numbers on his face instead of ones from the Bible, would these same evangelical supporters still idolize him...or run him out of town on a rail?

Also, attributing his success to divine intervention because of his faith is troublesome on many levels. It ignores the contributions of the other Broncos, for starters. It also ignores players on the other side of the scrimmage line who may be just as devout. Worst of all, it reduces God (or Allah, or whomever) to an entity petty enough to exert undue influence over sports outcomes. It was bad enough when they revealed the Cigarette-Smoking Man doing that on "X-Files"!

And one final complaint: It's not "Tebowing". It's GENUFLECTING, dammit!

But while I can't get behind all the mountains of praise his supporters throw his way, I can't generate too much emnity toward him, either.

For starters, if you're looking at sports figures to idolize and emulate, you could do much, MUCH worse than Tebow. Like Roethlisberger. Or Joe "Mr. Follow-Through" Paterno. Or Sam Hurd.

Also, it's true that all the in-your-face evangelizing, both from Tebow and his rabid fanbase, gets downright annoying. On the other hand, the "religion has done nothing but harm and if you follow any organized religion, you're a complete fucking moron" talk espoused by the likes of Bill Maher, the late Christopher Hitchens, and many commenters on the internet? Just as annoying. And no, I'm not being some thin-skinned Christian who can't take any criticism of his faith -- one of my favorite comedians is John Fugelsang, who levels criticism at it all the time. Frankly, it NEEDS some criticism sometimes. It's just that Fugelsang, unlike Maher, doesn't stoop to condescension and sometimes even outright bigotry when doing so. Maher's also one of my favorite comedians-- except when he talks religion.

It's also important not to fall prey to the temptation to lay all frustration with the collective sins of evangelical Christianity, Christianity in general, and even religion in general on Tebow's doorstep. Even the rampant "Tebow-Mania" is primarily a product of the media and his rabid legion of fans, not Tebow himself. And let's just say that Christianity doesn't always put its best foot forward. Have you seen the GOP presidential field? It's filled with so-called Christians like Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Santorum (Google him!) who profess their love of Jesus but somehow manage to completely ignore "whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers, that you do unto me", which was ANOTHER of Jesus' signature phrases. Let's face it: Too many people in the world use their religious beliefs as carte blanche to mistreat their fellow human beings, especially women and members of the LGBT community. But it's not fair to lay that all on Tebow. He's just an NFL quarterback, and an average one at that.

Whether you're a Tebow supporter or a detractor, the best advice I can suggest is to look past your pro- or anti- religious beliefs and biases and just see Tebow for what he is:

A second-rate Bobby Douglass.

Friday Night Fights: Marvelous - Round 8: A Helpful Legion Etiquette Tip!

2012-01-13T05:25:00.000-08:00

I won last week's round of Friday Night Fights: Marvelous with my Wild West Secret Six entry, so per tradition I'm posting a Legion of Super-Heroes entry for tonight's round.

Tonight, with the help of Colossal Boy and Element Lad, I'd like to present a helpful Legion Etiquette Tip:

If you find out bad news about Colossal Boy....

...DON'T let him be the last to know!

This special public service announcement was brought to you courtesy of Legion Of Super-Heroes#305 by Paul Levitz, Keith Giffen, and Kurt Schaffenberger. Fight music brought to you by Del Amitri.

For more etiquette lessons, click here. And don't forget to vote!

Friday Night Fights: Marvelous - Round 7: Gail Simone's Revenge!

2012-01-06T01:44:00.000-08:00

For tonight's round of Friday Night Fights: Marvelous, I'm introducing a new potential recurring theme. In past bouts I've introduced recurring themes such as "The Bigger They Are" and "Green On Green" in which the given theme appears more than once in a bout. Tonight's potential recurring theme is called "Gail Simone's Revenge".

Why that name? Here's a little backstory: Back in 2010, DC published a book called "Titans: Villains For Hire" in which Slade "Deathstroke" Wilson killed Ryan "The Atom" Choi, whom Gail Simone had co-created and written years earlier. If that wasn't bad enough, the story, not written by Simone, had Deathstroke kill Ryan by stabbing him through the heart in a double-page spread. Worse, The story had Deathstroke present Ryan's dead body to the man who hired him, Dwarfstar, concluding with a graphic splash page of Ryan lying dead in a matchbox.

This pissed off many of Ryan's fans, leading them to coin the internet term "Minorities In Matchboxes". It also evidently pissed off Simone. But unlike everyone else, she was able to get creative revenge through her writing, specifically through her Secret Six stories.

Tonight's Simonean Schadenfraude comes from one of those stories, Secret Six#24, a single-issue tale illustrated by J. Calafiore, in which the team is recast Elseworlds-style in the 19th Century Old West. Here, Alexandra "Junior" Merkel has sent a team of marauders led by Slade Wilson to kill everybody in the town, including various members of the Six residing there.

Here, Slade encounters Floyd "Deadshot" Lawton.

Floyd draws. It doesn't go well.

Floyd's toast, right?

WRONG!

So Wild West Elseworlds Slade is now blinded. That's the entire extent of Simone's creative revenge on him for Ryan, right?

WRONG AGAIN!

Now it's Bane's turn.

Here it comes.....

Ooh, that had to hurt!

I wish it had been the regular Deathstroke, but it's the next best thing.

You're probably asking yourself: Why did I refer to "Gail Simone's Revenge" as a potential recurring theme? Simple: Because I haven't found the other issue in my comics stash yet.

Tonight's fight music is by ELO.

For more revenge fantasies, click here. And don't forget to vote!

Peaks And Valleys: 2011's Comics

2012-01-06T00:05:00.000-08:00

Another year just bit the dust, so now it's time to recap my favorite and least favorite things about the comics I read in 2011.

I have to warn you: I'm not a professional comic critic, so this list is far from perfect. It's based solely on my limited comic-reading experiences this year. (Otherwise the Ayn Rand comic would be in my "worst" section solely on principle.) It's rather short on indie comics, for one thing. I haven't read Haibibi, a favorite among critics, and, so help me, I still haven't decided which of Mark Waid's "I-Adjective" books I'm going to start reading yet. Another thing about my list is that many really good books will still be excluded in the interest of brevity. Also? My list contains more expletives.

With that in mind, here are the peaks and valleys of my comic-reading experiences in 2011:

PEAKS

Animal Man - One of the DCnU's best books. Hard to believe I'd never heard of Jeff Lemire until a little more than a year ago, and now he's one of my favorite current comic writers. Here he steps up the horror aspect of Buddy Baker and family's story, with amazing results. And Travel Foreman's art and Lovern Kindzierski's colors make a winning combination.

Avengers Academy - Perhaps the greatest gift Ragnell gave me in 2011 was to get me interested in this Christos Gage-written story of these young would-be heroes and their teachers. I have fallen in love with this book and its characters, and I have yet to fall out. Equally amazing is the consistency of style in the art, considering that the book has had three different regular pencillers (Mike McKone, Sean Chen, and Tom Raney) this year. Incoming penciller Tom Grummett will likely continue this trend. If you read one Avengers book, make it this one.

Batwoman - I swear to God, if J.H. Williams' art in this comic gets any more beautiful, people will drop dead from reading it.

Criminal: Last Of The Innocent - This mini from the regular "Criminal" team of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillps was essentially Archie Comics as crime noir. And freaking awesome!

Daredevil - Mark Waid gives Matt Murdock a much-needed lightening up and shaking up with this new series. Waid's Matt Murdock is a man who's been through it all, and is consequently not afraid to face life and live it to the fullest. He's kind of a thinking man's Hal Jordan. Waid puts DD through some truly interesting situations, like having him face off against Klaw, the Master of Sound. He also remembers that Matt is a lawyer, and a damn good one, utilizing his litigation skills even in his costumed alter ego. A truly fresh take on a character who had gotten stale. The beautiful art by of Paulo Rivera and Marcos Martin, which channels Jim Steranko in places, also makes this book a must-read.

Detective Comics: Black Mirror - This story arc introduced me to one of Batman's most fascinating new villains, James Gordon Jr., the son of Commissioner Gordon. It also introduced me to the work of Scott Snyder, now one of my favorites.

Herc - I feel guilty about this one because I jumped on the Herc bandwagon very late. Too late, as it turns out: The book was cancelled this year. But Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente's series went out with a bang, even including an issue illustrated by the great Mike Grell.

Invincible - This book has veered from excellent to merely very good and back this year in the aftermath of "The Viltrumite War", but it has still hit some very impressive highs, particularly the issue where Atom Eve tells Mark about her abortion and the most recent issue's confrontation between Nolan and Allen The Alien.

Jimmy Olsen - This one-shot by Nick Spencer and R.B. Silva brought back Superman's previously-neglected pal with a vengeance. Rather than ignoring or wiping out the Silver Age craziness in Jimmy's daily existence, Spencer and Silva embrace it... and crank it up a few notches.

Morning Glories - Speaking of Nick Spencer: Spencer and Joe Eisma's tale of a mysterious elite prep school has been nothing but engaging. From the heroics of Casey to the no-holds-barred snark of Zoe and Ike to the sadistic instructors, This book has me addicted. Bonus points for including a scene with one of the characters singing Yeasayer's "Ambling Alp".

O.M.A.C. - Who'd have thought a comic with "Dan DiDio" in the writing credits would be in my "Best Of" list, but here you go. Keith Giffen is at his Kirbyesque best here, delivering the best homage to "The King" I've seen in quite a while, as well as some of Giffen's best art since "The Great Darkness Saga". However, I've learned that this book is among the five worst-selling "New 52" comics, which prompts me to ask a question to comics fans: What the fuck is WRONG with you people????

Secret Six - Gail Simone's long-running saga of a rag-tag team of mercenary villains had long been not only one of DC's consistently best comics, but one of the best comics ever. Their swan song in issue#36 was THE best comic of the year.

Star Trek/Legion Of Super-Heroes - This could make my "Best" list on principle alone, but writer Chris Roberson and artists Jeff and Phil Moy are delivering an equally engaging story so far as well.

Superman#714 - No, your eyes aren't deceiving you: I'm actually putting the conclusion to "Grounded" here. At this time last year, I'd listed the "Grounded" arc as one of the worst of 2010. What happened? Chris Roberson happened. Call it "A Tale Of Two Work Ethics". Whereas original "Grounded" architect JMS looked at the transitory nature of this arc and said "Fuck it! I'm doing graphic novels instead!", Roberson used it as an opportunity to channel Elliot S! Maggin. The arc was still less than perfect (thanks in large part to DC shitcanning a vital chapter to placate Islamophobes), but the conclusion was a worthy sendoff for pre-Flushpoint Supes, right down to the Swan-style wink at the end.

Everything About DCnU Wonder Woman Except Her Parentage - Diana's been tinkered with and rebooted constantly, but this time (with the exception I'll get to further down in this post) Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang got it right.

Zatanna - This book was sheer magic.

VALLEYS

Batman: The Dark Knight - Seriously, what supernatural entity did David Finch do a solid for that he keeps getting high-profile jobs like this on flagship characters?

Catwoman#1 - I've been a Bat-Cat shipper since the days of Adam West and Julie Newmar, but their Winick-penned porn-style "tryst" here literally made me ill. Bow-chicka-bow-BARF!

DCnU Costumes - Whose bright idea was it to put the guy who designed Bare Midriff Huntress and Gambit in charge of redesigning the entire DC line? Many of them are overly-ornate messes. Trying to fix the problem of lateness and missed deadlines by making all the costumes three times harder to draw? Good thinking! And why the hell does Superman need armor?

Flushpoint - Where do I even begin with this wretched crossover event? "Ape-Controlled Africa"? The Lois Lane mini-series that didn't actually star Lois Lane? The third-rate snuff-comics Grodd Of War and the Adam Glass-penned Legion Of Doom? The portrayal of Aquaman and Wonder Woman as two steps away from mass murder? How about the conclusion, which portrays Barry Allen as a complete fucking irresponsible idiot and focuses on Barry's relationship with his soon-to-be-deceased mother while completely blowing off his relationship with his wife Iris? This event came off like a bad cross between House Of M and One More Day.

Frank Miller's "Holy Terror" - Riddle me this: What's black and white and made entirely of shit? Answer: This racist, Islam-hating Frank Miller graphic novel. I've grown progressively less fond of Miller's writing over the decades, but I've always maintained my love of his black-and-white work (see: Sin City). Until now. Hard to believe Miller originally intended this as a Batman story. This story features two characters I'll call Not Batman and Not Catwoman hunting down Al Qaeda agents in the aftermath of terrorist bombings, engaging in torture and Islamophobic stereotypes in the process. Even the B&W art here wasn't all that. Some panels did look beautiful, but many others looked like Miller just scribbled diagonally with an ink brush and called it a night. DC and the Bat-Franchise didn't just dodge a bullet by passing on this. They dodged a fucking mortar shell.

Kevin Smith's Bionic Man - Steve doesn't even go under the knife until Issue#4. No, seriously. The dog in "National Lampoon's Vacation" wasn't this dragged out.

"One More Day" Redux: DCnU Edition - Brace yourselves. I've got a lot to say on this one:

Most people looked at Spider-Man's "OMD" and thought it was one of the worst things in comics. Dan DiDio, Geoff Johns, and Jim Lee looked at it and thought "Hmmmm...". Not only did they repeat it, but they cranked it up to extremes.

The worst thing about DC's reboot is how they thoroughly wiped out not only most of the marriages in the DCU (Buh-bye, Clark/Lois and Barry/Iris! See ya in Limbo, Wally and Linda!), but also most of the romantic relationships as well. Now Guy and Tora only had "a few dates", and Barbara and Dick were just a "mutual crush". And Dick and Kory? Forget it. She evidently did.

Exit committed relationships, enter hookups and "friends with benefits" (aka fuck-buddies). Gee, that's just the right message you want to send to a predominantly male readership about the value of women in society, isn't it? And just the right way to attract much-needed female readers, right?

This purging even extended to friendships. Gone were the well-established bonds like the one between Dinah, Barbara, Helena, and Zinda in Simone's Birds Of Prey. The classic Teen Titans, which was like a family, apparently never formed. Even the bromances have been largely erased from DC history. What happened to Ted and Booster or Conner and Tim? Or Clark and Bruce, for that matter?

The effect: As the personal histories of these established characters has been erased, so has much of my emotional connection to them. Justice League and Justice League International have lost their zip for me. The revised history of the latter has been stripped clean of things like Guy's "One Punch" and the Giffen Embassy League in general.

This detachment even blunts my enjoyment of a quality book like the new Birds Of Prey. Whereas I watched the bond between the original Birds grow and evolve over the years, seeing Dinah and new character Starling interact as old friends doesn't have the same effect. It makes me feel like I have to start over. The book is a worthy successor to Simone's version in both story and art, but it just doesn't feel the same to me.

And don't get me started on Superman. True, Grant Morrison's Action Comics and the young Superman in the home-made outfit have grown on me, but even that gets ruined by the title book showing Supes as he is today: a broody loner who sulks in his fortress and pines in an unrequited fashion for Lois, who seems to be doing fine without him. Lois is awesome, but she was before the reboot. Honestly, what did we readers miss out on in the last 16 years by not having Clark single? New and innovative ways for him to mope? I just read a Ma & Pa Kent story in Action Comics#5 that made me want to fight back tears while reading it because it was so deeply personal to me. But it was a story that could have just as easily been told in the old DCU.

And that's the problem with the reboot. Many of the best stories the DCnU's produced could have easily been done without it. Can you tell me with a straight face that the reversal of Barry and Iris' marriage is the reason the new Flash series is so good? I don't think so. The new Flash book works despite Barry's "OMD'ing", not because of it.

It's not a coincidence that most of my favorite DCnU books are either a) largely unaffected by the reboot (see: Batman, Nightwing, Green Lantern, Animal Man, Swamp Thing) or b) starring less familiar or more previously obscure characters (see: Demon Knights, Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE). Batgirl and Wonder Woman are the only exceptions to that rule I can think of.

Maybe it's just that I'm a comic-reading vet, but this reboot seems to have been seriously ill-conceived overall, despite my enjoyment of some of the new books. Proof positive that DC needs more women and/or more Mark Waids at the top.

Red Hood And The Outlaws - In which Scott Lobdell downgrades Starfire from a vibrant three-dimensional character to a douchey-male fantasy. Kenneth Roccafort's "Escher Girls"-worthy rendering of her only made things worse.

Suicide Squad - Just as 2011 gave me new favorite writers in Scott Snyder and Jeff Lemire, it also gave me a new least favorite: Adam Glass. Here, Glass manages to do what should have been impossible: fuck up Suicide Squad beyond recognition. Between the torture scenes that only Dick Cheney could love, the newly-sexed-up Amanda Waller, and Harley comparing her vagina to a clown car, this book was bad enough to drive old-time Suicide Squad fans TO suicide.

The Extras in DCnU's Justice League and Action Comics - The JL extras have included an ad for a fake book as well as some needless sketch outtakes and fictitious personnel dossiers. But that was nothing compared to Action's 8-page Super-Creator Mass Circle-Jerk. Yeah, THOSE were worth the extra buck. "Holding The Line", my ass!

Voodoo#1 - Half of this issue was spent on a lap dance. No, REALLY!

Wonder Woman's Parentage - Bad enough that Diana, whose clay origins were meant to symbolize pure female power, is now given a father, but the father was also Zeus. How. Original. As Ragnell pointed out, Hermes would have made more sense. As I pointed out, Dionysus would not only have been more fun, it would have been more...Azzarello. The one black mark on an otherwise-enjoyable comic.

Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T06:32:00.000-08:00

Friday Night Fights: Marvelous - Round 6: Aerial Combat Lessons, Batman-Style!

2011-12-23T04:00:00.000-08:00

Since I won the last round of Friday Night Fights: Marvelous with my Peacemaker entry, tradition dictates that this week's entry be Legion of Super Heroes related. Tonight, I'm featuring the Legion's resident martial artist, Karate Kid. But this time, he's going against a more unconventional opponent: Batman!

Tonight's mid-air melee comes fom The Brave And The Bold#5, written by Mark Waid and illlustrated by George Perez and Bob Wiacek. Tonight's fight music is provided by System Of A Down.

For more aerial attacks, click here. And don't forget to vote!

Friday Night Fights: Marvelous - Round 5: Blessed Are The Peacemakers!

2011-12-16T01:01:00.000-08:00

For Round 5 of Friday Night Fights: Marvelous, I'd like to offer a tip for all you would-be armed robbers out there:

If you're about to rob a convenience store and you see a big muscular guy with a white fade crew-cut and a tattoo that says "Peacemaker" on his arm, you might want to consider robbing another store entirely.

Here's why:

Peacemaker shows some convenience store thieves some inconvenient truths in Blue Beetle#3, written by Keith Giffen and John Rogers and illustrated by Cynthia Martin and Jeff Moy. Tonight's fight music comes from Molly Hatchet.

For more "peacemaking", click here. And don't forget to vote!

Peace out!

A Special Holiday "Public Announcements"

2011-12-14T00:05:00.000-08:00

***ATTENTION, PEOPLE WHO ACT LIKE THERE'S A "WAR ON CHRISTMAS" AND FEEL RELIGIOUSLY PERSECUTED BY THE PHRASE "HAPPY HOLIDAYS"!***

I have a special request for you:

Stop. Please. Just stop.

Every year around this time it seems like some of my fellow Christians engage in the same ritual Annual Mass Persecution Complex. They believe that, just because some stores, businesses, and people are throwing around the phrase "Happy Holidays" (or even the abbreviated "Merry X-Mas"), that their rights to express their love of Christmas, and by extension their religion, are being increasingly curtailed.

Every year it's the same litany of complaints: "We 're not allowed to say 'Merry Christmas' because it's not 'politically correct'! We have to say 'Happy Holidays' now!" "Our school can't have a Christmas tree; we have to have a "holiday tree!" And the ever-popular "There's a war on Christmas!"

It's a belief that gets reinforced by the likes of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and various Jessica-Simpson-lookalike Fox News anchors.

And it's also complete bullshit.

First of all, the idea that kids aren't allowed to celebrate Christmas in school couldn't be further from the truth. Take it from a guy whose schoolteacher wife has spent the last week busting her ass getting things ready for her class's Christmas party this Friday, after which we're spending the evening at a faculty Christmas party. Not exactly the anti-Christmas sentiment Fox News depicts.

Second, the whole point of saying "Happy Holidays" is that there really are multiple holidays during the time frame. For starters, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day follow Christmas Eve and Christmas Day one week later. Also, and here's the important part, not everyone celebrates Christmas. Some celebrate Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, for example, depending on their religious beliefs. The whole damn point of saying "Happy Holidays" is not to exclude Christians, but to include both them and everybody else.

But the "War On Christmas" believers don't get that. To hear these people talk, you'd think Christians were some kind of persecuted minority group, as opposed to the dominant freaking religion in America. They act like hearing "Happy Holidays" is the same as getting thrown to the lions. They see the inclusion of other groups as the oppression of theirs.

If you're one of these folks, I have one thing to say to you:

You want to talk about feeling "religious persecution"? Try being Muslim-American.

Try sitting through the 2008 presidential election cycle where mere alleged membership in your religion is deemed a disqualifier for the presidency by much of the general public.

Try having had only two members of any of the United States government's three branches with your faith. Ever.

Try being one of those Muslim Congressmen having to witness their fellow House member, Peter King, launch a committee putting your entire faith on trial and claiming it's been "radicalized". (Hint: you'd likely react the way Rep. Keith Ellison did.)

Try seeing a famous comic and movie creator like Frank Miller release a shitty graphic novel misrepresenting your entire religion and stereotyping it by the worst elements in it.

Try seeing a major advertiser like Lowe's (whom I'm now boycotting) fold like a cheap card table to pressure from basement-dwelling bigots who are out to stop a TV show for the "unforgivable transgression" of merely showing people of your faith in a positive light.

Oh, and have I mentioned last year's "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy? How many of you folks pissing and moaning about "Happy Holidays" were the same ones who railed against the construction of an Islamic center, which happened to include a mosque in it, on a site a few blocks away from Ground Zero, claiming its very construction was an affront to the memories of those who died in the collapse of the Twin Towers on 9/11? I'm guessing quite a few of you. (By the way, did you know that, prior to 9/11, there were two buildings directly on Ground Zero that also had mosques in them? You know what those buildings were called? The Twin Towers.)

Still feeling oppressed and put-upon by "Happy Holidays" and "Merry X-Mas"? Here's the world's smallest violin!

Do you have any idea how whiny you sound? Not only to Muslims and people of other faiths but even to your fellow Christians like myself? If not, you should.

Ginning up this whole holiday persecution complex when your religion is practically the default in America doesn't make you look like sympathetic victims. Quite the opposite. It makes you look like poor winners.

And nobody likes a poor winner.

Make it stop.

Friday Night Fights: Marvelous - Round 4: Down In The Trenches!

2011-12-09T05:11:00.000-08:00

For this week's round of Friday Night Fights: Marvelous, I'm going with some good old-fashioned gumshoe action, courtesy of tonight's featured fighter: Tim Trench, P.I.!

Tonight's hard-boiled brawl comes from a backup story in Detective Comics#460 titled "The Cold-Fire Caper", written by Denny O'Neil and illustrated by Pablo Marcos and Al Milgrom.

Here's Tim taking a ride to the mansion of crime boss Lippy Louie to question him about a jewel heist....

Where he is confronted by Louie's hired goons.

What to do? How about...

THIS??

Now that's a private dick who doesn't dick around!

Tonight's fight music comes courtesy of Hall & Oates.

For more bare-knuckle brawls, click here. And don't forget to vote. Because Tim Trench will know if you don't.

Friday Night Fights: Marvelous - Round 3: Action Figure!

2011-12-02T05:15:00.000-08:00

For tonight's round of Friday Night Fights: Marvelous, I'm using another six-inch-tall comic book action hero (I used Marionette last round), but this time I'm going with the ever-lovin' original himself, Darrel Dane aka Doll Man.

Tonight I give you:

Doll Man beating the crap out of some bad guys.

This mite-sized melee comes courtesy of Feature Comics#47 , beautifully illustrated by Reed Crandall.

Tonight's fight music is by Cliff Richard & The Young Ones.

Now go here and vote. Don't make me sic Doll Man on you!

Friday Night Fights: Marvelous Marvin - Round 2: If She Had A Hammer...

2011-11-25T07:46:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Round 2 of Friday Night Fights: Marvelous Marvin! Tonight I demonstrate how size doesn't always matter with my featured fight from Micronauts#20, by Bill Mantlo, Pat Broderick, and Armando Gil (who also inked Round 1's winner - hint, hint.).

Synopsis: The Micronauts meet an evil insect-obsessed chemist named Odd John, who uses his mutagen gas to mutate Bug and render the rest of the Micronauts unconscious. Marionette is the first one to wake up, only to find herself facing overwhelming odds.

What a predicament, True Believers!

Q. How will this lone, powerless six-inch-tall woman manage to save her lover?

A: With the help of a normal Earth hammer...

...LIKE THIS!

And down goes Odd John!

Now, that's one dangerous little lady!

Tonight's fight song? What else?

For more micro melees, click here. And don't forget to vote, or Marionette will lay the hammer down!

Friday Night Fights: Marvelous Marvin - Round 1: "WWBD?"

2011-11-18T01:05:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Spacebooger's brand-new bout, entitled "Friday Night Fights: Marvelous Marvin", named for boxing great "Marvelous" Marvin Hagler.

Our first marvelous melee of this bout comes from Green Lantern#58, "Peril Of The Powerless Green Lantern" by Gardner Fox, Gil Kane, and Sid Greene.

Synopsis: The Guardians decide Hal Jordan needs to take a vacation and take away his ring in the meantime. They think this will keep him out of trouble, but remember, this is Hal we're talking about here. So naturally he finds himself taking on an entire criminal gang sans his ring.

How does Hal handle these bad guys singlehandedly without his ring?

Simple....

Eat your heart out, Sally P !

By asking himself "WWBD".......

...which is short for....

"What Would Batman Do?"

And that's what Batman would do.

Tonight's fight music is this "powerless" tune by Nelly Furtado.

For more examples of "WWBD", click here. And don't forget to vote. It's what the Caped Crusader would do.

(Special thanks to Dr. K's 100-Page Super-Spectacular.)

A Question For My Fellow Twitterati

2011-11-15T05:30:00.000-08:00

What's happened to Twitter in the last few days? I haven't been able to post anything, nor can I read any tweets other than the most recent ones. I can't check my settings, reply to anyone else, or even log out.
It's almost like I'm locked out.

What gives?

And more importantly, how do I fix it?

The Penn State University Child Sex Abuse Scandal Pop Quiz

2011-11-12T07:52:00.000-08:00

DIRECTIONS:

Please answer the following multiple-choice questions:

QUESTION 1. You are a graduate-assistant coach at for the Penn State University football team. You walk into a locker room at night and see your team's former defensive coordinator in the process of raping a 10-year-old child. Your reaction is to:

A.) Intervene to stop the rape immediately regardless of your personal safety, beating the living crap out of the child rapist Hooded-Justice-style if possible. Then immediately call the police.

B.) Don't intervene, but still immediately call the police.

C.) Walk away without either stopping the rape or even calling the police. Wait one day before telling your father, who advises you (erroneously) to tell the university's head coach instead of the police, which you do. Do not follow up with said head coach or see to it that he called the police. Continue to coach for the same university, moving up through the ranks to eventually become the receivers coach, without breaking your silence until someone else files charges years later.

QUESTION 2. You are the head coach for the Penn State University football team. One of your young graduate-assistant coaches reports witnessing your former defensive coordinator raping a 10-year-old boy in the school locker room. Your reaction is to :

A.) Contact the police immediately and have the young assistant coach tell them the same thing he told you. Then keep following up with them on their investigation.

B.) Report what the young coach saw to your immediate supervisor and not to the police, then keep following up with said supervisor to make sure he contacted the police and to learn what the police are doing. If said superior hasn't contacted the police, do so yourself. Then follow up.

C.) Report what the young assistant coach saw to immediate superior and not to the police, and don't bother following up with either said supervisor or with the police. Don't discuss the matter with anyone outside of university officials for years until someone else brings charges. Essentially, cover your own ass. Because, hey, you did your part, right?

QUESTION 3. You are in charge of campus security for Penn State University. You learn that one of your former employees, whom you've still allowed keys to university buildings and access to university resources, has been using that access to sexually assault boys as young as 8 or 10 years old on school property. Your reaction is to:

A.) Contact the real police immediately, because this monster must be stopped before he can claim any more victims. Then keep following up with those real police on the status of their investigation.

B.) Conduct a quick initial internal investigation, then contact the police and tell them everything you know.

C.) Do not contact the police at all. Do not alert anyone outside of other university officials. Instead, contact the perpetrator and take away his keys. Not at our school, right?

QUESTION 4. You are a Penn State student. You learn that your extremely popular head football coach has just been fired because he covered up for a pedophile who molested 8 boys, some of whom were as young as 8 or 10 years old, and some of whom would not have been victims if not for said cover-up. Your reaction is to:

A.) Join fellow students in protesting in outrage at the university's cover-up.

B.) Join fellow students in a candlelight vigil expressing sympathy for the 8 young victims.

C.) Join fellow students in a riot in outrage at the firing of your "poor" pedophile-protecting coach.

GRADING:

If you answered "C" to any of the above questions, you FAIL. As a human being.

Friday Night Fights: Prize Fight - "Fight Of The Century": Reed's Got The Magic!

2011-11-04T01:56:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Friday Night Fights: Fight of the Century, the final Prize Fight of Spacebooger's "Smokin' Joe" bout! The rules for this fight are simple: A battle royale between two arch enemies.

And it doesn't get any more "arch" than my two featured combatants: Reed Richards and Dr. Doom. Yes, it's true that Doom is the arch enemy of the entire Fantastic Four, but let's face it: It's Reed he hates the most. And after the countless attacks by Doom on him and his family and friends, the feeling is mutual on Reed's part. Tonight, it's down to these two guys. But neither of them are using their traditional powers/weapons of choice for this round. Tonight, they're both throwing science to the wind and going with something more...arcane.

Tonight's sorcerous slugfest comes from Fantastic Four#500, the conclusion of the "Unthinkable" story arc, written by Mark Waid, pencilled by the late, great Mike Wieringo, and inked by Karl Kesel and Lary Stucker.

Synopsis: Doom has bargained with three demons for sorcerous power and knowledge, both of which he uses to attack the Fantastic Four. He kidnaps Reed and Sue's daughter Val, banishes their son Franklin to Hell itself, and kidnaps and tortures Sue, Ben, and Johnny while imprisoning Reed in an arcane library. He's also captured Dr. Strange who, in his astral form, points Reed to a mystical weapon with the power to defeat Doom.

Trouble is, Reed has no idea what he has to say or do to utilize this magic power. Finally, he figures out that the key is to put his ego aside and admit that magic is beyond his comprehension. And keep doing so.

Which he does...

.....with a great deal of self-flagellation.

Unfortunately, Doom catches on to Reed's "magic words" ploy, and institutes a mystical "gag order".

How is Reed going to get out of this one???

Answer:

Like THIS!

But did you really think I would have a "Fight Of The Century" round with no punches thrown?

Au contraire!

Say it, Reed!

SAY IT!!!

And down, or rather UP, goes Doom!

Tonight's fight music is this little magical number by 70's one-hit wonder band Pilot.

For more Prize Fight "magic", click here. And don't forget to vote!

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T01:30:00.000-07:00

Dire Wraith Style!

Scott Lobdell And The First Rule Of Holes

2011-10-21T17:29:00.000-07:00

Hey, everybody, it turns out I'm a slut-shamer!

Scott Lobdell said so!

In a recent Newsarama interview, Lobdell responded to criticisms of his portrayal of Starfire in Red Hood And The Outlaws#1:

What surprised me was that it almost caused the Internet to melt.   Mostly, what has surprised me has been the very vulgar way that people believe they are coming to the defense of Kori: they hurl words like "slut" and "whore" and expressions too disgusting to repeat here that are only used to demean women.

Lets consider an imaginary woman who has more than one or two lovers. Is it fair to label her with dismissive and derogatory language? Because we disagree with the choices she makes, to do what she wants with her own body? Are we still at a place in society where we're going to call a woman — any woman — names that reinforce gender inequality?

The good thing is that the story has gotten people to talk about issues they are passionate about — and that can only ever lead to a better understanding on everyone’s part.

Judging by that response, it's painfully apparent that "everyone" does not include Lobdell himself, because his words indicate that he has no goddamn clue what the real nature of the problem is.

For starters, he twists logic into a pretzel by acting as if the attacks on his handling of Starfire are attacks Koriand'r herself. That way, he can take legitimate criticisms as prominent as this spot-on article by Laura Hudson, or as obscure as this rambling analysis by yours truly (hence my first sentence), and act as though those critics themselves are the ones with the problem, all the while recasting himself in the role of Sir Scott, Tireless Defender Of Female Honor. And missing the entire point completely. (Ragnell covers this tactic in greater detail here.)

The problem is that, in using this reversal tactic, he sidesteps the real problems, all but guaranteeing that he won't take steps to solve them.

In the interest of helping out, I will attempt to explain to our poor "beleaguered" Mr. Lobdell just what those problems are as best I can.

What are the real problems, Scott?

For starters, here's the version of Kory depicted by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, her creators:

Now, here's yours:

Yes, it's true that your version and the Wolfman/Perez one both have a cheesecake element. And no, the problem is not the simply the idea of a radical departure from Wolfman/Perez. Hell, the Teen Titans cartoon's Starfire was a radical (and more G-Rated) departure from the original. The problem is what the original comics Starfire and the cartoon Starfire share, and what your Starfire lacks:

Love.

Emotional involvement.

In your version, Scott, love, or any emotional involvement for that matter, has "nothing to do with it". In the older comics and even the cartoon, emotion has everything to do with it. It's key to the very core of her character.

A rebooted Starfire who has no emotional involvement is like a rebooted Dick Grayson who's just not that into acrobatics.

But there's an even bigger problem than character integrity, Scott.

The whole damn point of this reboot was that it was DC's Hail Mary pass to attract as many new readers as possible. Thing is, half your potential audience is women. Women who have to deal with sexual objectification on a daily basis much more than us menfolk. Let's be honest here: Like you, I can only witness second- or third-hand at best what women have to put up with in this regard.

Let me ask you a question: What draws you to comics, Scott?

That's right. Fantasy. Escapism.

Same goes for me. And for other male readers. And ...now follow along with me here, Scott... for female readers as well. The problem is, if you're one of those female readers and you see comics where the female characters are portrayed as objects solely for the pleasure of the male characters, the male creators, and especially the male readers? In other words, the same shit they have to deal with in the real world outside comics? That's NOT an escape!

You know what is an escape for them? Power fantasies. Reading about unique, fully realized, heroic characters they can identify with. The kind who aren't there just to be rescued by the male hero, killed off and/or raped to crank up his angst level, or exist only for his (and the male readers') jollies. The kind they don't get often enough in superhero comics, especially now.

Until your "New 52" reboot, Scott, Starfire was one of those characters. Yes, there was a cheesecake element since her inception. But that was never ALL she was, Scott. Until you wrote her.

And that's why you've been getting grief, Scott. That's the hole you dug yourself into. And recasting yourself as Sir Scott, Tireless Defender Of Female Honor while glossing over the real problems only makes the hole deeper.

My advice to you, Mr. Lobdell, is to abandon these deflections and heed The First Rule Of Holes:

When you realize you're in one?

STOP DIGGING!

Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe - Round 12: Messin' With The (Karate) Kid!

2011-10-21T08:44:00.000-07:00

Tonight's the final round of Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe. I won last week's round with my Black Goliath entry. That means this week's entry will be Legion-related. And this week that means....

...Karate Kid kicking ass!!

This martial arts melee comes from Karate Kid#1 by Paul Levitz, Ric Estrada, and Joe Staton. Tonight's fight music comes from Junior Wells and Buddy Guy.

Tonight's lesson? Don't mess with the Kid!

Or with Spacebooger!

Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe - Round 11: Black Goliath Power!

2011-10-14T02:04:00.000-07:00

There was a lot to hate about Marvel's CIVIL WAR event a few years back. Speedball's character was all but destroyed, Iron Man was written as a complete douchebag, other heroes were written completely out of character. And don't even get me STARTED on Sally Floyd! But the worst thing about CIVIL WAR in my eyes?

THEY KILLED BLACK GOLIATH!!!!

THEY KILLED BLACK GOLIATH WITH A FREAKING THOR CLONE CREATED BY REED RICHARDS AND TONY STARK!!!! AND THEY BURIED HIM AT GIANT SIZE!!! IN CHAINS!!!

Yes, I know Bill Foster was technically just "Goliath" when he was killed. Yes, I know he hadn't used the name "Black Goliath" since 1979. And yes, I even know that name was part of an unfortunate 70's trend of incorporating "Black" into the codenames of black superheroes. Despite all that. Bill Foster will always be Black Goliath to me.

Why? Not for any racist reason, but rather because of the very comic I am using for my Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe round tonight. Tonight's gigantic go-round comes from Black Goliath#5, in a story called "Survival!", written by Chris Claremont and beautifully illustrated by Keith Pollard.

I read the third and fourth issues of Black Goliath as a kid back in 1976. With art by George Tuska, Vince Colletta, Rich Buckler, and Don Heck, they were solid but unspectacular. But then came Issue#5, which, thanks in no small part to some fantastic art by Pollard, completely blew me away.

Synopsis: At the end of the prior issue, the Stilt-Man had zapped Black Goliath, his ladyfriend Celia, and her nephew Keith with his untested Z-Ray, apparently disintegrating them completely. However, in Issue#5 we learn that they were not destroyed, but rather transported to the alien planet Kirgar, whose harsh conditions they barely survive. Here, they are befriended by an alien being named Derath, who leads them to one of Kirgar's remaining strongholds, where they find alien technology capable of sending them back home to Earth.

Unfortunately, said stronghold also has a giant robot guardian named Mortag, who promptly kills Derath
and tries to do the same to the three Earthlings. Luckily for them, they have a giant guardian of their own.

(Click to enlarge)

The issue concludes with Black Goliath, Celia, and Keith mourning their dead alien friend and using the alien machinery to get home. And then.....

....the book got cancelled. (Sigh!)

The soundtrack for tonight's battle of the giants comes from Young The Giant. (Natch!)

For more ginormous grudge matches, click here. And don't forget to vote!

All The Best Wonder Women Have Daddy Issues

2011-10-11T13:44:00.000-07:00

*** WARNING: MAJOR WONDER WOMAN SPOILERS!!!! ***

I just read about Wonder Woman's new origin at DC Universe's "The Source".

In DC COMICS-THE NEW 52, Wonder Woman will have a new origin, in which she is the daughter of Hippolyta … and Zeus! In recent interviews, writer Brian Azzarello and artist Cliff Chiang have teased that readers should expect the unexpected in this edgier, horror take on the superhero genre and the king of the gods will ensure that nothing goes as planned for his defiant daughter.

Originally created by the goddess Aphrodite and raised to perfection on the Amazon island of Themiscyra, the newest incarnation of Wonder Woman has a new costume and now a new origin but she remains Wonder Woman. Strong. Proud. Fearless. WONDER WOMAN is the 12th title in DC COMICS-THE NEW 52 to sell more than a 100K copies.

And once again, DC pisses off its Golem-American readers.

Thing is, they also managed to piss off some Wonder Woman readers, including some veteran Wonder Womanologists.

As a big Diana fan and a frequent Wonder Woman reader, I have some mixed feelings on the whole deal.

Let's start with some of the huge red flags here.

1. The father is Zeus. How. Original.

2. The overzealous PR involved in the timing of this release. WW#1 was released less than 2 weeks ago and they're already spoiling WW#3?? This makes me wonder if this move was Azzarello's idea or yet another editorial mandate.

3. It eliminates much of the uniqueness of Diana's origin. Now she joins the the long list of heroes and heroines with daddy issues.

4. By pushing these previously-nonexistent daddy issues to the forefront, this could become yet another case of a writer disregarding Diana's character history to morph her into someone who better suits their comfort zone, a trend that has already severely retarded her evolution over the decades.

5. It elevates Zeus to center stage in the book. This could be troubling if Azzarello makes Zeus a "pet character" who overshadows the rest of the supporting cast. Wonder Woman has been one of DC's more "female-centric" books. Increasing Zeus' panel time makes the book more male-centric. Not that I'm saying WW should have no prominent male supporting characters. I'm looking forward to the reintroduction of a certain blonde-haired colonel as a love interest myself. But Zeus's presence could make it all about him. This could be especially problematic if...

6. It potentially takes precious panel time away from Hippolyta and her relationship with Diana. Let's be frank: Diana's mother has not been treated too well, especially in the last 10 years or so. There's the whole "raped by Hercules" reboot in the 80's, for starters. Then there's the fact that she's been killed off TWICE in just over 10 years. And when she's been alive, she's sometimes been written extremely out of character.

Does Amazons Attack ring any bells???

Courtesy of Ragnell

7. Speaking of the Amazons' origins, exactly how much of their prior history is still intact in the current continuity? This could be the biggest minefield of all. Will DC's Hercules' role be the same as it was? For that matter, will Zeus and Hippolyta's "coupling" be completely consensual? And I'm not just talking potential forcible rape here. I also mean: Will there be informed consent as well? Will Zeus mate with Hippolyta as himself or will he use a false identity? The latter still constitutes rape. If handled wrong, this could cause major problems, to say the least.

8. It erases this story from JLA#54 out of continuity. (Special thanks to Saranga for the scans.)

Actually, scratch that last one. The fact that the story already contained Wally West and a married Clark Kent voided it already.

Still, this may not end badly after all. Remember all DC's excessive overly-spoiling hype over creating a new "lesbian Batwoman"? Eventually, it gave us THIS...

And the most recent series about a superheroic offspring of Zeus? It was THIS....

From Herc#6

Also, there is a bit of story potential here. If Zeus fathered Diana, then that means her very existence gains her a vastly powerful enemy: Hera, Zeus' long suffering wife and queen of the Greek gods.

Think of the possibilities there. A pissed-off Hera is pure storytelling gold. Just ask Sam Raimi.

For now, despite my reservations, I'm going to have to trust Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang on this one.

Hey, it could've been worse:

Diana's father could have been Jor-El.

Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe - Round 10: Monster (Society) Mash!

2011-10-07T03:18:00.000-07:00

Now that we've started October, I'd like to use this round of Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe to get an early jump on the Halloween festivities with this monstrous melee from Shazam!#14 titled "The Evil Return Of The Monster Society!", written by Denny O'Neil and illustrated by Kurt Schaffenberger.

In this scene, the Marvel Family (Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr. , and the non-powered Uncle Marvel) square off against the Monster Society Of Evil (Ibac, Mr. Mind, Dr. Sivana, and his two twin children Junior and Georgia Sivana).

(Click to enlarge)

Can the Marvels survive this Wave of Wickedness?

(Click to enlarge)

In honor of tonight's "monster mashing", our fight music is this "cryptic" classic by Bobby "Boris" Pickett.

For more "monstrosities", click here. And don't forget to vote!

DC's "New 52" Rankings - The Second Half

2011-10-03T10:17:00.000-07:00

Here are my rankings of DC's "New 52" books at the end of the relaunch's second half. I'll be using the following key:

All In - I'm hooked indefinitely. Or at least until they change the creative team.

Probation - This book's good enough to buy through the first story arc, based on this issue, but not good enough to give it an "All In". Yet.

Double Secret Probation - This book didn't do it for me overall, but there's just enough going for it (i.e. strong art or a writer with a great past history) to give it one or maybe two more issues before dumping it.

Drop It Like It's Hot - This book is now dead to me. You couldn't get me to buy this at gunpoint.

Look Closer - I may not have given this book a fair shot. I'll check it out again next week. Maybe.

Here are my rankings of the comics that have come out so far:

Aquaman#1 - This book had a lot going for it. Ivan Reis and Joe Prado illustrated the hell out of this one, just as they always do. And there were some great character moments, especially the brief part when Aquaman is reminiscing about his dad taking him to the same diner when he was a kid. Overall this book was very good. But for it to get better Geoff Johns is going to have to overcome some of his bad tendencies. The first is his tendency towards blood and gore, as seen in a restrained-by-Johns-standards scene with The Trench at the end of the issue. The second is his "Aquaman IS Cool, Dammit!" fixation. Johns loaded this first issue with nearly every type of Aquaman joke he could think of. The "Aquaman is a joke" trope was taken to ridiculous degrees here, particularly in the scenes where the local policemen use it 30 seconds after Aquaman singlehandedly flipped an armored truck over his head using only his trident and then leaped away from rooftop to rooftop Hulk-style. Once again, with the exception of Jim Gordon, Maggie Sawyer, Harvey Bullock, Renee Montoya, and the cops in Animal Man#1, the police in the New 52 are as dumb as a bag of hammers. If Johns gets these tendencies out of his system, this book could move its way to "All In", but for now, it's....
Probation

All Star Western#1 - Jonah Hex done Vertigo-style in a Gotham City setting with hints of Ruse and The Kents thrown in. What's not to love? Not sure how long this can be sustained as an ongoing, but I'm perfectly content to enjoy the ride in the meantime.
All In

Batman#1 - I was literally the last man to jump aboard the Scott Snyder bandwagon, but the James Gordon Jr. arc in Detective was enough to get me to buy this. Here, Snyder delivers a great jumping-on point. But Greg Capullo puts it over the top. The only thing by Capullo I'd seen this century was Disturbed's "Land Of Confusion" video, but, except for the design of the Bat-Villains in the opening scene, I enjoyed his work, particularly his depiction of the title character, who looked like a cross between the versions of Bats depicted in Dave Mazzuchelli's Year One, Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns#1, and frequent Capullo collaborator Todd McFarlane's Year Two. The only other tiny complaint I had with Capullo's art was in an NSFW tweet here.
All In

Batman: The Dark Knight#1 - If you can only buy ONE New 52 Batman series....DON'T make it this one! DC apparently has successfully separated the conjoined Good Paul Jenkins and Bad Paul Jenkins twins, and they assigned Bad Paul to co-write this book. This even made Tony Daniel's wretched Detective#1 look almost good by comparison.
Drop It Like It's Hot

Birds Of Prey#1 - The toughest part of reading this comic was pretending the last nearly 16 years of my comic-reading life never happened. I miss Gail, Oracle, Dinah, Helena, and Zinda together like nobody's business. That said, once I divorce myself from the pre-reboot stories, BOP#1 is a strong issue in it's own right, especially the Jesus Saiz art.
Probation

Blackhawks#1 - This was another book that suffered from lack of Zinda, except this one had much less going for it.
Drop It Like It's Hot

Blue Beetle#1 -  I expected this book to be an "All In". It had so many of the pieces: Jaime, the Scarab, Brenda, Mr & Mrs. Reyes, La Dama. But, for the most part, this didn't click. Part of it was that Bedard retold Jaime's origin when the old one was still in perfect condition. The thing I hate most about reboots is having to keep watching the reinvention of the wheel. The problem is that of all the changes made to the backstory, NONE WERE IMPROVEMENTS. Making Paco a dropout gang-banger is a prime example. Making Jaime more sullen to his parents is another. The one change that DID measure up to the last series was the art by Ig Guara and Ruy Jose. Unfortunately, even that bright spot was marred by Pete Pantazis' unfortunate coloring choices. He uses the same dark and muted colors and backgrounds that obstructed Kevin Maguire's art on the Justice League 90's Retroactive book.
Double Secret Probation

Captain Atom#1 - I never picked up either the Charlton Captain Atom or the late 80's series, but based on the books I HAVE seen, I've always liked Captain Atom better in an ensemble cast than as a solo character.
And this book bore that out. Freddie Williams II's art was hard to read here, and Krul's writing didn't sell me.
Drop It Like It's Hot

Catwoman#1 -  I don't always hate Judd Winick's stuff, but in this case I did. Very much. I've been a Bat-Cat shipper since seeing Adam West and Julie Newmar, but never before has it made me want to vomit.
Drop It Like It's Hot .... and then wash your hands very thoroughly.

DC Universe Presents#1 -  Seeing how Sentry: Fallen Sun and that Civil War: Frontline comic with Sally Floyd were two of the worst comics of all time, I had trepidations about Paul Jenkins. But it's Good Paul Jenkins at work here. The thing I liked about this was that this was the first time in a while we got to see Deadman's work in the big picture. Better yet, Bernard Chang has really stepped up his game this year, and this issue continued that upswing.
Probation

The Flash#1 - Before this book came out, this book had more strikes against it in my eyes than nearly any New 52 title. I think that Wally is vastly superior as a character to Barry and has a vastly superior supporting cast (Linda, Jai, Irey, Chunk, Wally's mom), and I HATE the exile of him and his family to comics limbo. Worse, one of the only interesting aspects of Barry's character, his marriage to Iris, has been OMD'd away. And Barry's handling in Flashpoint didn't exactly endear me to him. That said, I liked this book better than I thought I would. Manapul's art was a factor, but a bigger one may have been that he and Brian Buccellato seem to get what John Broome, Robert Kanigher, and Cary Bates got and Geoff Johns didn't about writing Barry: That it doesn't matter whether or not you make Barry's character and backstory interesting as long as you make the things happening to him interesting. That's why he fought guys like Abra Kadabra and the Mirror Master. Look at all the stuff Carmine Infantino, Ross Andru, and Irv Novick drew in Barry's stories (not to mention what Greg LaRocque and Scott Kolins drew in Wally's). The fun of the Silver Age Flash stories was seeing a) what crazy situation Barry got into and b) what crazy-ass super-speed trick he would use to get out of it. Manapul and Buccellato seem to understand the first part, at least.
Probation

The Fury Of Firestorm#1 - Holy crap! I'm still processing how I feel about this one. Clearly the rebootiest of the reboots. Can't accuse Van Sciver, Simone, and especially Cinar of not being creative, that's for sure. Some of the Ronnie-Jason animosity felt forced, and I'm not sure of the whole TWO Firestorms dynamic, but I'm interested enough to see where this goes next.
Probation

Green Lantern Corps#1 -  This book should have been an "All In" as I've been collecting it since before the reboot. I love Guy and John to pieces, and Pasarin's art was nicely detailed. Part of the problem was that it was too detailed in places. Specifically, the gory scenes that bookended the issue. DIAL IT DOWN, DC!!! And that's why I have to downgrade my rating to...
Probation

Green Lantern: New Guardians#1 - Yet another instance of Tony Bedard needlessly retooling a character's origin and making no improvement whatsoever. This time the victim is Kyle Rayner, a character I liked enough to follow through a solo run and on the pre-reboot Green Lantern Corps. Especially aggravating about this issue is that apparently none of the other multi-colored Lanterns seem to recognize Kyle, which flies in the face of the last few years of GL books. Tyler Kirkham's art here wasn't as strong as Pasarin's or Mahnke's in the other GL mags.
Double Secret Probation

I, Vampire#1 - Not sure how I feel about this one. Fialkov and Sorrentino do a decent job here, but I prefer my good guy vampires in the Angel/Spike/Nick Knight vein rather than in the Edward Cullen one. It doesn't help that I'm old enough to remember the old JM Dematteis/ Tom Sutton stories either.
Double Secret Probation

Justice League Dark#1 - My favorite of the Justice League books by far. Any time you can get John Constantine, Zatanna, Madame Xanadu, and Rac Shade on the same team...
All In

Legion Of Super-Heroes#1 - NOW they don't want to reboot the Legion??? Best thing I can figure is that part of the deal of Paul Levitz' departure as DC's CEO must have included some clause giving Levitz complete creative control of the Legion, and he chose to completely blow off the reboot. Bad decision.
Between the dense backstory and this issue's emphasis on less interesting Academy characters like Chemical Kid and Dragonwing, this wasn't the jumping-on point it needed to be.
Drop It Like It's Hot - unless maybe you were reading the book before this issue. (I wasn't.)

Nightwing#1 -    This book hit the ground running.....and swinging....and tumbling....and jumping.  You can see how Eddy Barrows got this gig as soon as you see the first eight pages of the book and the closing fight. The acrobatic scenes just flow and the pacing is lightning-fast. The vllains could stand a little more originality, but a great start overall.
All In

Red Hood And The Outlaws#1 -  I haven't liked Jason Todd since Superboy punched that famous wall, and Arsenal received a full coolectomy after Lian died in Cry For Justice last year. But this book manages to fuck up Starfire beyond recognition as well, turning her from a beautiful and highly emotionally involved alien warrior to an amnesiac emotionally-uninvolved nymphomaniac who doesn't distinguish between her male partners. In other words, a fantasy for douchey guys.
Drop It Like It's Hot.... and then buy some old Wolfman-Perez Titans back issues, some Teen Titans DVD's, and some bottles of tequila. And weep profusely.

The Savage Hawkman - Hate the new Hawkman design. This book was about as accessible as Fort Knox. This did nothing for me, and I loved the Johns/Morales series.
Drop It Like It's Hot

Superman#1 - I've written extensively about my feelings on the Superman reboot, and this comic didn't do a great job of alleviating those concern. Lois remained awesome as usual, even stuck in a producer's role (which I have my reservations about). And Superman, costume aside, wasn't too bad. But Clark was such a mope that I heard the Debbie Downer "MWAH MWAAAHHH" sound effect in my head every time he spoke! And giving Jimmy Olsen a Justin Bieber haircut? WTF??? Also, it seems Perez found a way to conceal the awfulness of the new costume: By drawing most of the figures so small that you can barely make it out. This thing was compressed!! Who's the target audience? Ray Palmer and Henry Pym?
Double Secret Probation - at least until Giffen and Jurgens take over.

Supergirl#1 - This wasn't as dragged out as Kevin Smith's Bionic Man, but it still was pretty padded. The art was decent, though.
Double Secret Probation

Teen Titans#1 - For every one Greg Capullo who hits a home run with the 1994 Image look, there are several others in this reboot like Brett Booth who demonstrate everything WRONG artistically with that period and style. Lobdell's reworking of Tim as a male Chloe Sullivan, right down to the "Wall Of Weird", is interesting, but perhaps it's the only thing here that is. Anyone notice that two of Lobdell's three books had the exact same ending? I don't just mean "stylistically similar"; I mean THE EXACT SAME ENDING! And as an added bonus we got to see the old Kid Flash costume, one of the best non-Lantern outfits in the history of the DCU, replaced with not one but TWO vastly inferior versions.
Drop It Like It's Hot

Voodoo#1 - DC just released a comic in which almost half the first issue is spent on...A LAP DANCE! Are you fucking KIDDING ME???
Drop It Like It's Hot

Wonder Woman#1 - Azzarello's opener wasn't the most exposition-heavy jumping-on point, and I could have done without the horse decapitation, but this was one of the strongest versions of Diana I've seen in a while. And Cliff Chiang hits it out of the stadium with his art.
All In

And one I rated as "Look Closer" last time:

Omac#1 - How the hell did I manage to only pick this up two weeks after it came out? As Siskoid suggested, I might have been put off by the words "Dan" and "DiDio" on the cover. However, this book was Kirby done proud. It's also Giffen's best work since his first Legion run. Scott Koblish may have been a factor in that. I just hope Omac's human side gets a little more autonomy in the future.
All In

Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe - Round 9: The Butler Did It!

2011-09-30T10:17:00.000-07:00

Tonight's round of Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe comes from Batman Family#13, written by Bob "The Answer Man" Rozakis and illustrated by Don Newton and Bob Wiacek. Here, Batgirl, Robin, and Man-Bat face off against The Outsider, a supernaturally-powered villain who is the alternate personality of another member of the Bat-Family.

Who? Let's find out.

(Click to Enlarge)

Why, it's none other than Bruce Wayne's faithful butler, Alfred!

And now, Alfred must face off against his own evil alter-ego.

(Click to Enlarge)

So Alfred flat-out punches his other self off the side of a bridge and kills him. And ol' Alf is none the worse for wear!

And that wasn't even the craziest part of this whole story. This is a story where Alfred, after getting hit on the head two issues earlier, is taken over by a hidden evil personality called The Outsider who hates Batman and his entire "family". Alfred's personality is strong enough to keep The Outsider from attacking Batman directly, but not strong enough to keep him from attacking other Bat-Family members, including, strangely enough, his own surrogate grandson Dick Grayson. He also has spotted chalk-white skin and Mxyzptlk-type mystical powers, which he uses to make Batgirl and Robin's Bat-Cycles come alive and split Man-Bat into a were-jaguar by grabbing the moon from the sky and throwing it at him, after which he attempts to destroy Manhattan by turning all the buildings into giant burning candles. (For the whole story, click here at the Diversions Of The Groovy Kind site. This story also includes art by Marshall Rogers.)

No, really!

Bob Rozakis: Proving once again that Haney and Kanigher weren't the only crazy-ass Bobs working at DC!

Tonight's fight music is by Johnny Mathis.

For more city-melting insanity, click here. And don't forget to vote! Or The Outsider will come back turn you into a were-jaguar!

Some Additional Comic Book Rating Codes I'd Like To See

2011-09-30T07:03:00.000-07:00

So I read DC's response to the Starfire controversy last week....

@DCComics

We encourage people to pay attention to the ratings when picking out any books to read themselves or for their children.

September 27, 2011 10:54 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

...which completely missed the entire damn point.

But maybe they're onto something. Could the problem be that the existing ratings just aren't specific enough?

With that in mind, I'd like to suggest some additional rating codes of my own. The kind that could augment the existing rating codes and give potential readers more warning:

D for "Degradation" - Contains scenes of characters, particularly female characters, in degrading situations.

F for "Fridge" - Contains scenes of a female supporting character getting killed for the sole purpose of increasing the male hero's angst.

GP for "Gore Porn" - Contains excessive shots of cannibalism, beheadings, dismemberments, maiming, exposed entrails, and/or compound fractures, all illustrated in salacious detail.

RTW for "Reinventing The Wheel" - Contains a pointless and needless retelling of a character's origin in which none of the changes are actually improvements.

L for "Lazy" - Contains a story in which a writer and/or artist clearly didn't bother researching character history, geography, or any other subject matter relevant to the story.

C for "Cheney" - Contains scenes of excessive torture porn.

S for "Scoliosis" - Contains pictures of female characters in impossible or extremely painful-looking positions, or with disturbing anatomy, for the purpose of showing off the "sexy".

R for "Racefail" - Contains a jaw-dropping level of racism, racial stereotyping, and/or racial insensitivity.

Any other suggested rating codes?

Women In The New DC: The Good, The Bad, And The EXTREMELY UGLY

2011-09-25T21:30:00.000-07:00

Out of the 40 DC comics that have debuted so far, I give 22 of them a favorable rating ("All In" or "Probation"). Some of the books were fun-filled triumphs. Others were average. And others were among of the worst comics I've ever seen. From my perspective, I'd say the rebooted DC books have been a mixed bag.

However, The operative words in that last sentence are "from my perspective". Said perspective being that of a straight white male.

But when I step back and picture how those same 40 books must look like from a female perspective? Let's just say, the picture looks pretty damn bleak.

I'm not talking the female-centric books or characters that were cancelled, erased, or exiled into Limbo in the wake of the reboot (the original Birds of Prey, the Steph Brown Batgirl book, Power Girl, Zatanna, Scandal and Jeanette in Secret Six) or pre-reboot characters erased or exiled into limbo.

I'm talking about what's replacing them.

Of the 52 titles debuting in September, I counted a total of six female solo books, compared with twenty-six solo male character books. In addition, one additional book, Birds of Prey, features an all-female team. As far as I can tell, the sum total of female writers or artists on DC books this September was Gail Simone.

Let's take a look at how female characters fared in the New 52 this month so far.

THE GOOD

I've got to be fair-minded. There were some beautiful gems here:

Batwoman - This book FINALLY came out this month. And it came out strong.

Sure, I miss Greg Rucka, and I'm not entirely sold on the prospect of a Kate-Maggie relationship (for reasons which will become more obvious as this post progresses), but all-in-all, this book is wonderful.

Wonder Woman - The big controversy raging over this book was the "pants vs. no pants" debate. Personally, I don't care about that when Diana is depicted as well as this.

The only caveats I have regarding this book are 1) I could have done without the decapitation and beheading and 2) it seemed a little light on dialogue and exposition. Cliff Chiang, whose work was beautiful here, eased the former problem significantly by not indulging in gore porn. Also, not seeing the Amazons raped in the first issue? Major step up from the Perez reboot.

Birds of Prey - Let's be honest. I miss the pre-reboot version terribly. I miss Oracle. And Helena. And Zinda. And how they interacted. And Gail Simone writing them. Thing is, if I step back and look at the new Birds book, I have to concede it's a pretty strong work in its own right. The new girl, Starling, needs a little more to define and differentiate her, but I'm liking her so far. And Dinah? See for yourself.

I'll admit her outfit was in flagrant violation of the Ron Frenz Rule of Costume Design, but it wasn't degrading. Also, as you can see above, Jesus Saiz is at the top of his game here.

Justice League International -

A 5-4 male/female ratio? Not too shabby. Also, notice Vixen's new outfit. Compare it with her last one. I'll wait.

Miscellaneous - We saw the first signs of some of the best female characters making it through the reboot intact. In Blue Beetle, we saw the return of two of my favorite DC women, Bianca Reyes and La Dama. Animal Man brought back Ellen Baker, albeit in a small role in issue#1. An unnamed Caitlin Fairchild was in the Superboy book, without the oversexualization. I've loved Maggie since the Byrne Superman days. And even OMD'd, Lois is still....Lois.

THE BAD

Batgirl - For more of my opinion on the first issue, click here. Suffice it to say:

This?

"Hellooo? Still in the room?" - The killer

Not a shining moment for heroic female characters.

Green Lantern Corps - From a male point of view, this was a solid, if sometimes overly gory, read.

One problem:

Among those featured on the cover? Arisia and Soranik Natu. Among those nowhere to be found in the actual interior story? Arisia and Soranik Natu.

Supergirl - I'll say this for Supergirl#1: It was better than Kara Zor-El's last debut in Batman/Superman#6-10. Trouble is: That's not saying much. The art was good, but the book had two major problems. First of all, the story was decompressed as hell. It was "Supergirl lands on Earth and fights some armored guys". That was it. Normally, when the main story in a #1 is so thin, that should mean writers are cutting away from it a lot to introduce other characters and subplots. That wasn't the case here; the focus was all Kara, all the time. Geez, Hector in The Iliad wasn't dragged out this much. But that wasn't what landed Kara in "The Bad" section. What did it was the costume. That outfit made her look bare-assed in anything even resembling a side shot. Not a good look for a teenaged girl.

THE EXTREMELY UGLY

Fasten your seatbelts.

Mr. Terrific - Meet Karen Starr. Before the reboot, she was Power Girl, one of the strongest heroines in the DCU. After the reboot?

She's Michael Holt's "friend with benefits".

(Brace yourselves: This is going to be a recurring theme.)

Catwoman - We've seen the relationship between Bruce and Selina portrayed many times before, but we've never seen it....

.... as rape fantasy porn.

And let me be perfectly clear: This is NOT A GOOD THING!

"The Cat And The Bat" have had a flirtatious and playful relationship for decades, going all the way back to 1940. I've been a big fan of it going all the way back to Adam West and Julie Newmar. True, they have had more than their share of sexual tension. But their relationship in canon was never sleazy and degrading enough to make the reader want to vomit after reading about it.

Until now.

Congratulations, Judd Winick and Guillem March!

Also: "It doesn't last long"? Too. Much. Information.

I'm surprised March or the letterer didn't add "BOW CHICKA BOW BOWWWW!" as a sound effect.

Starfire - Here's a scene from ~~MAXIM~~ ~~FHM~~ ~~Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue~~ Red Hood And The Outlaws#1:

Yeah, that was a vital piece of the storyline.

Look, I'm not begrudging cheesecake in comics. I'm a huge fan of Mike Grell, for heaven's sake! And, to be fair, there's been a strong cheesecake element to Starfire since Marv Wolfman and George Perez introduced her. The thing is, they still made her a fully realized character. The last Starfire comic I picked up before seeing Red Hood was New Teen Titans Annual#1, in which she fought her sister to the death. We saw the cheesecake, but you know what we also saw? A fierce warrior and a strong, resolute, heroic character.

But here? Scott Lobdell threw all Kory's personality out the window and turned her.....

"Dustin"?

... into a sexbot!

Actually, I take that back. The "Build-A-Friend" robot in OMAC#1 displayed much more agency than Kory does here.

Apparently, DCnU Kory is so unable to distinguish between human males that she'll hook up with anyone. And love, and emotional connection or involvement, ain't got nothin to do with it. Which is the exact opposite of Wolfman and Perez' portrayal of either her or her fellow Tamaraneans. No emotional involvement? Emotional involvement are at the core of her very BEING.

Taking away emotional involvement from Koriand'r is like taking away the desire to help people from Superman. Or taking away bravery from the Green Lanterns.

The Starfire shown in Red Hood #1 wasn't a real character. She was a male fantasy. She couldn't have been more so if she followed each hookup by morphing into a pizza and a six-pack of beer.

Actually, let me correct that: She wasn't a male fantasy. She was a douchey male fantasy. That's an important distinction.

Allow me to clarify: I read Laura Hudson's moving post at Comics Alliance Thursday. It was part of the inspiration for this post because reading it triggered a wide variety of reactions in me. Among those were sympathy, anger, and frustration. But it also triggered something I'll call The "We're Not All Like That" Reflex. A person's "We're Not All Like That" Reflex is a defensive reaction that often occurs when hearing or reading someone's account of a bad experience or series of bad experiences with people in your particular demographic. Example: many Muslims undoubtedly had this reflex triggered after 9/11. Depending on the situation, you may or may not want to stifle this reflex when it hits, as it may or may not be appropriate in light of the other person's bad experience.

In my case, my "We're Not All Like That" Reflex was brought on by my status as a straight male or, more specifically, a straight male superhero comics fan. Let's face it: There are a lot of douchey males in general, and in comics fandom in particular. (Although not all or even most.) They're the arrested adolescents who give the rest of us a bad name. They're the types who do misogynistic things. Like bullying and harrassing women at comic conventions, on the streets, and even online. Like victim-blaming in rape cases or even committing rapes themselves. Or high-fiving each other about their sexual conquests. Or putting women into degrading scenarios. And especially insisting that the comics medium cater to THEIR every fantasy to the exclusion of everyone else's.

They're the loudest, most vocal and, unfortunately, the most memorable. They leave the biggest lasting impression. And worst of all, they also do the most damage to women in their wake. In light of the scope of that damage, it's usually best for the rest of us menfolk to try to stifle that "We're Not All Like That" Reflex, natural and valid as might be, because how those actions affect men's image ranks dead last as far as what we need be concerned about.

But sometimes actually expressing this "We're Not All Like That" Reflex can serve another purpose. It can serve as a reassurance to women that they are not alone in their concern and frustration with the status quo. It can serve to add additional voices to a rising chorus for change. And it can serve to put douchey males and those who pander to them on notice.

Too often, superhero comics have been among those pandering to this "douchey male" demographic, especially in recent years. Couple the rash of women as "fuck-buddies" engaged in emotion-free trysts in the New 52 with the erasure of marriages like Clark/Lois and Barry/Iris, and you can see a trend of arrested adolescence at work. The problem is that, in the case of DC's recent offerings, this mentality reaches up all the way to the top.

Contemplate this: Winick, Lobdell, and the rest didn't just publish these issues on their own as a pirate company. Both Red Hood#1 and Catwoman#1 had to be approved at several levels before they could see print. Editors. Group Editors. CEO's and Publishers. They all signed off on these two comics because they found nothing objectionable in them. If they had found something they felt was too objectionable with the content, at any stage, those books wouldn't have been published. Period.

Just ask Chris Roberson about the original Superman#712.

You may remember Superman#712 as the one that was supposed to feature Superman teaming up with a Muslim hero named Sharif. For mysterious reasons, it was pulled at the last minute and replaced with a filler story about Krypto. On a recent War Rocket Ajax interview, Roberson revealed a crucial piece of the "Grounded" saga that was in that original issue: Superman concluded the issue asking Sharif if it would be easier if Sharif had assumed a hero identity that didn't call attention his heritage, at which point Sharif responded by pointing out that Supes himself, by virtue of his public hero identity, calls attention to his alien heritage. The heritage of an alien race that had recently attacked Earth, no less. See the parallel?

Why was this so important? Because the beginning of the next issue, Superman#713, has Supes announce to Superboy and Supergirl his decision to abandon his Superman identity and just do his heroics anonymously. That's a big decision. But without seeing the inspiration for the move, it looked to readers like Supes just pulled this decision out of his ass.

And so this crucial piece of a 14-part story arc involving one of your flagship characters was sacrificed, and for what? Despite the shifting reasons given by DC, the real answer was obvious: To avoid offending a minority of Islamophobic Americans still sore over Superman's citizenship decision in Action Comics#900.

And yet DC had no such concern about the release of Catwoman and Red Hood. In DC's eyes, Islamophobes were important enough to fear offending, but women, who constitute 52% of the world's population, weren't.

Let that swim around in your heads for a moment. Potentially offensive to Islamophobes? KILL IT! Potentially extremely offensive to women? LET IT FLY!

Look at what female comic fans have to deal with: They have a substantially smaller pool of heroes in their gender to choose from to begin with. Then they have to weed out the ones that don't repel them. The ones without the vacant-eyed stares, porn faces, hypersexualized poses, and impossible anatomies.

And then, when they do find strong, well-written heroines, they have to deal with the harsh reality that their favorites are always one hack writer and/or exploitative artist away from being killed off, degraded, villainized, objectified, hypersexualized, raped, or otherwise abused in really horrible ways. Sure, male characters are also vulnerable to mishandling due to creative team changes, but nowhere close to the same degree female characters are. Without editors and management stepping in to protect those heroines, how well or badly they'll be treated is a crap shoot.

Just ask Sue Dibny.

Or just ask the post-reboot Amanda Waller.

How bad is this problem at DC? Let's put it this way: My last post was a Friday Night Fights entry featuring Planetary's Jakita Wagner. What you don't know is that my entry's original title when I started composing it on Tuesday was "PLEASE Tell Me This Woman's In The New DCU!". After reading Red Hood and Catwoman, however, I changed the title to "Vehicular Assault". Why? Because after reading those two comics, I'm honestly not sure I WANT Jakita in the new DCU if that's how she could be treated. I shudder to think who DC might assign to handle that character besides Warren Ellis and John Cassaday, and how badly she might be treated as a result. I'm that shell-shocked.

And I'M a straight white male, folks. And a longtime superhero comics fan to boot.

Re-read the tail end of Laura Hudson's post to see how drained she was. And she is also a longtime superhero comics fan.

Now imagine an African-American female wanting to read about Voodoo, the sole black heroine in the new DCU with her own solo book. Imagine her enthusiastically going to check out this heroine's adventures....

....and seeing her in "powerful and heroic" poses like THIS.

Or THIS.

If this woman is not a longtime reader, chances are she'll not only shun Voodoo, but shun the rest of DC's superhero books as well. And maybe superhero comics or even comics in general. Including even positive female books like the new Wonder Woman, Batwoman, and Birds of Prey.

Because that's how first impressions work. DC apparently thinks that bad press helps them just as much as good press, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Positive first impressions attract. Negative first impressions repel. And negative impressions are far more powerful than positive ones. That's just a fact of life.

Look no further than the images I've shown you in this very post. Which ones do you think will resonate most strongly in your mind? Especially if you're a female reader?

Books like Red Hood#1 and Catwoman#1 are like a sign that says different things depending on who's viewing it. To douchey males, the sign reads "WELCOME (WINK, WINK)". To longtime fans of those characters (like myself), the sign reads "FUCK YOU". And to women and girls, the sign reads "KEEP OUT".

The DC reboot was the company's "Hail Mary" pass to attract new readers because the existing readership wasn't enough to sustain them.

Actively driving away more than half of that potential audience? That's just bad business!

Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe - Round 8: Vehicular Assault!

2011-09-23T11:06:00.000-07:00

Our humble host, Spacebooger, won the last round of Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe by having Steel hurl his hammer through an ice cream truck. I think I can top that tonight.

My entry for Round 8 comes from Planetary#3, by Warren Ellis and John Cassaday. The team has travelled to Hong Kong to investigate stories of phantom cop who was betrayed and killed by his partner. After they talk to Phantom Cop, who should show up but his treacherous ex-partner, hell-bent on running them all down. However, the dirty cop didn't count on Jakita Wagner.

And how does Jakita stop the car?

Like THIS!

But wait!

Sure, Jakita's strong, but she's diplomatic as well!

You tell him, Jakita!

Tonight's fight music is this crashing hit by U2.

For more vehicular assaults, click here. And don't forget to vote. Or Jakita might get mad!

DC's New 52 Rankings - The Halfway Mark

2011-09-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

Here are my rankings of DC's "New 52" books at the relaunch's halfway mark. I'll be using the following key:

All In - I'm hooked indefinitely. Or at least until they change the creative team.

Probation - This book's good enough to buy through the first story arc, based on this issue, but not good enough to give it an "All In". Yet.

Double Secret Probation - This book didn't do it for me overall, but there's just enough going for it (i.e. strong art or a writer with a great past history) to give it one or maybe two more issues before dumping it.

Drop It Like It's Hot - This book is now dead to me. You couldn't get me to buy this at gunpoint.

Look Closer - I may not have given this book a fair shot. I'll check it out again next week. Maybe.

Here are my rankings of the comics that have come out so far:

Action#1 - I'll be honest with you. Reintroducing the "Urban Vigilante/Throws Crooks Out Windows" Superman reminded me why they ditched that model in the first place. It's like Bill Gates reintroducing his Windows software with all the original system bugs intact. Sure, Supes saved lives this issue, but he also endangered a lot of 'em, too. Leading the cops on a high-speed car chase through the busy city streets? Kind of a dick move! That said, this issue still had a lot to recommend. Rags Morales' art did everything Morrison required. Morrison also threw some bones to Golden, Silver, and Bronze Age fans. (Clark's job here is at The Daily Star and his landlady's last name is "Nyxly", for example.) Best of all, Morrison writes a phenomenal Lex Luthor, no matter which version (All-star, Pre-Reboot, Post-Reboot) of Lex it is.
Probation.

Animal Man#1 - HOLY SHIT! Looks like Jeff Lemire is stepping up the horror aspect, and the Travel Foreman/Dan Green art cranked the creepiness up to eleven. In a good way!
All In

Batgirl#1 - DC erased Oracle and Steph Brown Batgirl for THIS? Only Gail Simone's past track record's keeping me around. For now.
Double Secret Probation

Batman & Robin#1 - A solid issue showcasing the new Bruce-Damian dynamic. MUCH better than Detective's first issue.
Probation

Batwing#1 - Judd Winick + Bland Photorealistic Art + Gratuitously Gory Ending =
Drop It Like It's Hot

Batwoman#1 - Seriously? Have you taken a look at this thing? What else can I give it but....
All In

Deathstroke#1 - Other than a brief fixation on the phrase "Slade's Hypo's", I haven't liked Deathstroke in decades.
Drop It Like It's Hot

Demon Knights#1 - This kind of looks to be a supernatural Dark Ages version of Secret Six. And yes, that is a good thing.
All In

Detective Comics#1 - This was like a Batman story with all the fun sucked out of it. The only reason for picking this book up was to get a first look at a post-Flushpoint Batman solo comic. That plummeting sound you'll hear in October will be the steep dropoff in this book's readership.
Drop It Like It's Hot

Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E.#1 - The art was a little shaky, but I'd recommend this book on the concepts and the characters alone. Ray Palmer has refined his shrinking tech since his "everything but me blows the fuck up after 2 minutes" days. Lemire hits his second post-reboot home run.
All In

Green Arrow#1 - DC's pitch for this series must have consisted of only the words "Fuck it! Let's just use the Justin Hartley Smallville version!". The art team is Dan Jurgens and George Perez, so the book looks really good. But the villains were kind of generic. And nothing else really grabbed me.
Double Secret Probation

Green Lantern#1 - I was reading this book regularly before the reboot, and the only visible sign in this book that the reboot even occurred is the issue numbering. Doug Mahnke in particular has really stepped it up on the art.
All In

Grifter#1 - This actually got me interested. I'm curious how the new "ROM-like" elements of the status quo will work. Cafu's art was really clean here.
Probation

Hawk And Dove#1 - Liefeld. Feeling dizzy...book spinning. I just can't.
Drop It Like It's Hot

Justice League#1 - Meh.
Double Secret Probation

Justice League International#1 - Had a "been there, done that" feel, and the Lopresti art was solid but not spectacular. Still, Jurgens writes a strong Booster and Batman. I'm curoius to see what's still standing post-reboot.
Probation

Legion Lost#1 - You know who else is lost? ME!
Drop It Like It's Hot

Men Of War#1 - I used to like Tom Derenick's art when he started out on the Superman books. He reminded me of Ron Lim. Then he amped up the cartooniness factor and gave his characters slack-jawed expressions that made them look like Amy Adams in Smallville's "Craving" episode. His stuff in Men Of War#1? Dull as dishwater. The story was the same.
Drop It Like It's Hot

Mister Terrific#1 - Smart lead character. Stupid storyline.
Drop It Like It's Hot

O.M.A.C.#1 - I didn't pick it up initially, but I may not have given it a fair chance.
Look Closer

Red Lanterns#1 - Spend money on this? Are you KIDDING ME? Ed Benes art? "HUUUURRRRGGGKKKHHH!" as the catchphrase? Dex-Starr alone just isn't enough, folks!
Drop It Like It's Hot

Resurrection Man#1 - Abnett and Lanning have not only picke up where they left off in the 90's, but they also have added an intriguing new wrinkle. Dagnino's art, while not quite as good as Jackson Guice's, is still impressive enough.
All In

Static Shock#1 - Good setup. I especially liked that Virgil's working with Hardware. McDaniel's art is an acquired taste, though, and I'm concerned that Rozum just left.
Probation

Stormwatch#1 - Intrigued by the idea of Jack Hawksmoor and J'onn J'onzz teaming up, as well as the idea of the moon attacking with really big sharp claws. Sepulvera seemed to be going with a "Mike McKone meets John Cassaday" look with the art and didn't quite measure up to either master. And what I hate about reboots is having to watch the reinvention of the wheel. Apollo and Midnighter are just meeting? Really?
Probation

Suicide Squad#1 - Between the torture-porn and the newly-sexed-up Amanda Waller, the only way this book could have been a bigger "fuck you" to John Ostrander is if the book were actually titled "Fuck You, John Ostrander!".
Drop It Like It's Hot

Superboy#1 - Kon-El has seen better days (the Johns/Manapul Adventure Comics run, PAD's Young Justice, and, of course, the "Kesel run"). Scott Lobdell's origin story was average. RB Silva's art, on the other hand, was pretty sweet and sufficient reason to give it another chance. Even Silva can't make those DCnU Teen Titans costumes not suck, however.
Double Secret Probation

Swamp Thing#1 - I haven't read a Swamp Thing comic with any regularity since Rick Veitch left. Any Swamp Thing book has big shoes to fill. Those shoes are named Len Wein, Berni Wrightson, Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, and John Totelben (who now has his own hotel chain post-reboot, apparently). Snyder and Paquette weren't quite up to that level, but they were good enough for me to give this book a few issues.
Probation

I'll Tumblr 4 Ya: ESCHER GIRLS

2011-09-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for the debut of "I'll Tumblr 4 Ya", a new sporadic (as always) feature where I spotlight a tumblr that I really enjoy viewing and encourage you folks to read it. Today, I'm focusing on "Escher Girls", the new tumblr from Ami Angelwings, in which Ami showcases pictures of female comic book characters in impossible and/or ridiculous poses because the artist needed to give the readers fan service, anatomical considerations be damned.

Too often, our heroines are drawn to look like they've been sneaking into Ralph Dibny's Gingold stash, with anatomies that seems to indicate a lack of internal organs and body poses which would indicate severe chiropractic difficulties. There is a veritable gold mine of material ripe for ridicule, and it's great that Ami is able to mine it and fill a niche.

Well played, Ami!

And here's one, on me.

This one's the cover of Buffy The Vampire Slayer#3, drawn by Jo Chen, featuring Willow. Who knew witchcraft could look so painful?

Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe - Round 7: Validation Stamp!

2011-09-16T06:43:00.000-07:00

Well, I won last week's round of Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe with my Casey Blevins entry, so this round it's Legion of Super-Heroes time.

Tonight, I'm giving you a 30th Century clash of the titans, courtesy of Adventure Comics#366 by Jim Shooter, Curt Swan, and George Klein. The two biggest powerhouses of the Legion and the Fatal Five go head-to-head: Superboy vs. Validus.

(Click to enlarge)

Superboy, you've just been VALIDATED!

Tonight's fight music is this stomping good classic by The Brothers Johnson.

To get stamped at the door, courtesy of our favorite bouncer Spacebooger, click here. And don't forget to vote!

All In All, It's Just Another Diss Of "The Wall"

2011-09-15T16:05:00.000-07:00

Charles Dickens' classic "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" line could apply very well to DC's recent reboot books. In the 3rd official week of the revamped DCU, some books I've seen hit the shelves have been examples of everything that's right with modern DC comics, while others have displayed everything that's wrong with modern DC comics.

The good? Jeff Lemire hit back-to-back home runs with Animal Man#1 and Frankenstein, Agent of SHADE#1. Paul Cornell's Demon Knights#1 was every bit as good as expected -- ESPECIALLY since it gave us a NON-RHYMING Etrigan. Batman & Robin#1 was so well-done it washed the foul taste of Tony Daniel's Detective#1 book out of my mouth. Batwoman#1 FINALLY came out..... and blew me away. Morrison's DCnU Luthor impressed. Resurrection Man#1 not only came back strong, but has introduced a very intriguing new wrinkle. In Green Lantern#1, Doug Mahnke was at the top of his game and Hal was....pure Hal. Even Superboy#1 gave us some sweet RB Silva visuals. And wait, I actually give a damn about Grifter again? How did THAT happen?

But the peaks were matched by some major valleys. Justice League#1 was a big decompressed "meh". Batgirl#1 was a rare Gail Simone misfire. The aforementioned Detective#1 which badly mimicked "Spawn". Superman's new armored V-necked costume.... the horror! And...Liefeld.

And then there was what happened in Suicide Squad#1.

Luckily, I didn't actually waste money on this comic. I just skimmed it. The first red flag for me was the artist change from Marco Rudy, an up-and-comer whose past work has shown JH Williams-like potential, to someone named Federico Dallocchio, who wasn't bad but kind of generic.

As for writer Adam Glass, this book was everything I expected it to be based on seeing his Flashpoint: Legion of Doom mini: A doubling-down on the edginess and gore of Simone's Secret Six but with none of its humor, panache, or distinctive characters. Glass went especially heavy on the torture-porn with this issue. This was a comic only Dick Cheney could have loved. All that was in service to an unoriginal "twist" at the end and a last-page surprise reveal.

*****SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!!*****

The mystery character pulling the team's strings is....

Amanda Waller.

Who, in DC's rebooted "New 52" universe, now looks like this.

The problem? Well, before the reboot, she looked like this.

Somehow she's gone from a short, stubby, heavy-set middle-aged black woman to a slender statuesque 20-something woman with the same hourglass figure sported by 99% of the adult female characters of the DCU.

Maybe this is just a fakeout. Maybe this is some kind of "Surrogates"-esque alter ego Amanda is using for yet-to-be-revealed purposes. But if it's for real, I'm not sure what the hell DC was thinking with this change. Were they trying to sexualize her in an attempt to pander to younger male readers? Were they trying to make her conform to Angela Bassett's look in the Green Lantern movie? If so, why de-age her as well?

Whatever the cause, the effect was to strip away a major piece of what made Waller unique. She could just as well have been Vixen in that first panel above. And for what? Whatever new readers this may gain will be offset many times over by longtime readers repelled by this new sexualized Amanda. Many of them will be female readers, a demographic that DC's given some recent lip-service to but has yet to fully engage.

Essentially, DC gave Waller a substantial coolectomy.

Older DC fans have had to face more sacrifices and concessions from the DCnU than from an Obama-Republican Congress negotiation. Not only has Superman received the "One More Day" treatment, but so has Barry Allen(!). Secret Six and Stephanie Brown Batgirl? No more. Wally West? Limbo. Longtime curmudgeon Ollie Queen has been traded in for the Justin Hartley version.

And now we have to accept a young and thin Amanda Waller to boot.

Not cool, DCnU! Not cool!

Why Batgirl#1 Didn't Sit Well With Me

2011-09-13T08:50:00.000-07:00

***WARNING: MASSIVE SPOILERS!!!***

Life can balance out in weird ways sometimes.

In my most recent Friday Night Fights entry, I sung the praises of a new comic heroine in the person of Morning Glories' Casey Blevins, who impressed me with her intelligence and tactical skills last week. But then the next week comes along and I read about a veteran comic heroine, one who's been around for 44 years, who severely disappoints me.

Sadly, I'm talking about Barbara Gordon, formerly Batgirl, formerly Oracle, now Batgirl again.

From the moment that DC's reboot announcements began, one of the first announced changes was Barbara's return to the Batgirl identity. This seemed a questionable move from the start for several reasons:

1. It sacrificed of a powerful and inspiring wheelchair-bound role model in the form of Oracle, a most profound loss for those living under similar conditions.

2. It sacrificed Oracle to shoehorn Barbara into a role that already had two perfectly good characters (Steph Brown and Cass Cain) available to fill it.

3. Whereas Steph and Cass fit a unique niche (teen Bat-heroine) during their tenures, Barbara's reclamation of the mantle creates a new redundancy: Now, we have two mature twenty-something Bat-heroines, both with red hair, no less, swinging around Gotham.

4. It seemed yet another example of a DC Comics' recent unfortunate trend toward regressive storytelling: Writers, editors, and publishers so nostalgic over the versions of the (usually white and male) legacy heroes that THEY read when they were young that they demote, exile to comics limbo, or even kill off the NEWER (and often more racially diverse - see Cass, John Stewart, or Ryan Choi) versions of those same legacy characters in order to bring THEIR ONE TRUE versions of the legacy heroes back.

5. It didn't seem like a logical progression for Barbara. Barbara with her legs fixed wouldn't go back to being Batgirl; she'd just become Oracle with working legs. At this point reverting to Batgirl would be a step backward, especially with Steph available.

Still, for all those hurdles, the book still had one major thing in its favor: Gail Simone. Even better, Gail Simone writing Babs, a combination which had worked beautifully for years on Birds Of Prey.

For those of you who might not have guessed, I am a huge fan of Gail Simone, going all the way back when she wrote "You'll All Be Sorry" for Comic Book Resources back in the day. Since that time she's written The Simpsons, Deadpool (pre-overexposure), and two great runs of Birds of Prey. She's also written the solo books of two little-known characters named Superman and Wonder Woman, producing some of the best stories for each of them this century. Best of all, she wrote Secret Six, closing out that book last month with perhaps the greatest single comic issue of 2011.

With that in mind, you can see how, despite my reservations over Babs' reboot, I'd still be inclined to buy this book anyway. In terms of comics reading, I'd follow Gail Simone into hell.

Which brings us to Batgirl#1. And the conclusion that I should choose my words more carefully.

Batgirl#1 wasn't as bad as a trip to "the fire down below". But reading it presents me with a pretty daunting test of faith.

To be fair to Gail, not all the book's flaws were her fault.

Let's start with that outfit.

And here I thought Steph Brown's first Batgirl outfit was too busy!

If this costume and the other ones I've seen in the DCnU are any indication, someone at DC, namely Jim Lee, has a MAJOR "ridge" fetish. Barbara's new costume has more ridges than a family-sized bag of Ruffles!

This outfit is in flagrant violation of the Ron Frenz Rule Of Costume Design:

The Ron Frenz Rule of Costume Design is a simple one. Don't design a comic book costume too ornately. With every costume you design, always do so so that, if Ron Frenz were ever to draw it, it would look cool.

This is NOT meant to be a knock on Ron Frenz at ALL. His style is just geared towards simple designs, not ornate ones.

Therefore, if he can make your costume look basically the way you designed it, then you passed the test.

I also mention Ron Frenz here because some of the art made me wish Frenz had drawn the book. Or at least made me wish that actual artist Ardian Syaf had tried to emulate Frenz' style. As opposed to trying to reproduce panels from Spawn....

Wait a minute! Eye slits? Batgirl doesn't have eye slits!!

A lot of readers are taking Gail to task in their reviews for not providing any explanation of how Babs regained the use of her legs in the first issue.

I'm not one of them.

Why? Perhaps it's my familiarity with Simone's work in particular and with serialized comics in general. It's intended as a mystery, folks. You'll learn more as the story progresses. Simone does raise some interesting questions, such as why Babs is keeping her wheelchair in her new digs and why she says "what the wheelchair does for you" instead of "what the wheelchair did for me".

My bigger concern is how the reboot affects her time as Oracle. This first issue seems to give the impression that her Oracle tenure never happened. If that's true, that seems an awfully big "screw you" to Oracle fans. However, the operative word is "seems". Maybe her Oracle tenure is still intact in some abbreviated but as-yet-unrevealed form? Only future issues will tell.

I'm also a bit worried as to how the reboot affects Babs' time as Batgirl. Maybe I'm nit-picking, but this line disturbed me:

Wait a minute! "Batman's star pupil"? I thought Babs was self-taught!

Every problem I've mentioned up to now seems perfectly and easily fixable with some refinement. And that's how it was for me with the book.

Until the last two pages.

Here are the final panels from the third last page.

So, Batgirl faces off against this issue's bad guy, named "The Mirror", and she........

......freezes up.

Ok, so Babs recovers from her bout of PTSD in time to save The Mirror's intended victim, right?

Right??

WRONG!!!!

So, in other words, Batgirl makes her return with the heroic feat of.....

.....watching an innocent fall to his death, and then letting the killer get away.

Finally, we have the single common thread that seems to be running through the rebooted DC titles.

No, I'm not talking about the mystery woman, whom I hereby call Hoodie Harbinger. I'm talking about how, with the exception of Jim Gordon and the cops in Animal Man#1, all the police in the DCnU......

.....are complete morons!

Pop Quiz: You're a policewoman in a Gotham City hospital room. You just witnessed a hooded killer push a hospital patient out of a hospital window, and the killer is still in the room. You're holding a loaded gun. Also, the killer is still in the room. Do you:

A.) Shoot directly at the killer, who, by the way, is still in the room?

Or

B.) Pull your gun on the costumed heroine who was unable to stop the killer who, in case I forgot to mention it before, is still in the room?

But the handling of Batgirl herself was the bigger misfire here.

Look, I can get what some of Gail may have been going for here. Babs is no stranger to PTSD. In fact, that's a huge part of what originally led her to quit being Batgirl even before her Killing Joke injury. I'm old enough to remember Cormorant back in the 80's. Dealing with PTSD with the added burden of eidatic (photographic) memory can be one hell of a hurdle. I watched a fascinating TV special on people with eidatic memory a few weeks back, so I can see how that could be a rich characterization mine to explore.

The problem is that superhero comics, and this comic issue in particular, may have been the wrong setting to explore it. It's all in the context.

This whole reboot idea is essentially DC's equivalent of a Hail Mary pass. Its objective is to draw in new readers. In the case of the Batgirl book, there's also the added burden of satisfying fans who had to deal with the demise of Oracle, who's been an integral and unique female character in the DCU for several years, and the exile of Stephanie, who was coming into her own in the role.

There's also the context of the relative scarcity of female solo books (I count six, as opposed to 26 male solo books) in the New 52. It's important for those books to sell and appeal to a wide variety of readers of both genders.

In the context of all those factors, having your heroine freeze up and let an innocent man die in your first issue may not be the best way to hook readers into coming back for more.

I guess the big question hanging over this first issue is "Is this relaunched Batgirl series WORTH jettisoning both Oracle and the Steph Brown Batgirl for?"

And honestly? Judging by this first issue? My answer would have to be "No".

However, the answer to my next question, namely "Will I buy the next issue?" has to be "Yes".

Here's why:

All may not be lost here. Simone is likely intending this story arc as what Roger Ebert once called the CLIDVIC, short for "CLImb from Despair to VICtory". In other words, it's the old "tear 'em down to build 'em back up" formula.

But my real reason for coming back to the book boils down to this: This is written by the woman who gave us Secret Six. That buys a HELL of a lot of faith and trust. That's enough to keep me in. For now.

Will that be enough to keep other readers in? That's the biggest question of all.

Remembering 9/11.... And Learning

2011-09-11T04:51:00.000-07:00

Amen, Cap!

(From Captain America#1, by John Nay Rieber and John Cassaday.)

Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe - Round 6: Mighty Casey!

2011-09-09T09:42:00.000-07:00

If you enjoy strong, well-written new female characters, you're really going to love tonight's round of Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe, as it showcases a name I hope will become more familiar to comic readers in the future.

That name? Casey Blevins.

At the mere age of sixteen, Casey's already got everything you want in a heroine: She's highly intelligent, a strong leader, and a master tactician. Also, she can kick ass if you cross her, as tonight's round will demonstrate. And, as icing on the cake, she's from Chicago.

In my comic-shopping last week, I took advantage of the Flashpoint-related lull in DC books to get acquainted with a new indie title via trade. I picked up the introductory Morning Glories trade by Nick Spencer and Joe Eisma. Unlike Flashpoint#5 and Justice League#1, which I also bought that week, this book did not let me down.

Morning Glories is the story of Morning Glory Academy, a prestigious but mysterious ans sinister prep school. Much of the book's focus is on six new students. One of them is the aforementioned Casey.

Tonight's scholastic scuffle takes place in Morning Glories#5, written by Spencer and illustrated by Eisma (who tweeted me back last week after I sang the book's praises). Here, she interacts with her fellow Academy student and resident bastard Ike.

Without spoiling things any more than I already have, I can only say: Ike had it coming.

Tonight's fight music comes from another "Mighty Casey" from Chicago, Marty Casey.

For more academic altercations, click here. And don't forget to vote!

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other: Captain America Edition

2011-09-06T08:28:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen! It's time to play...........

ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER!

Our category for today is......

"Captain America vs. Godlike Adversaries"

Which one of these things is NOT like the other? (Click scans to enlarge.)

A. Versus Michael Korvac

Avengers#177

B. Versus Infinity-Gauntlet-Powered Thanos

Infinity Gauntlet#4

C. Versus Beyonder-Powered Dr. Doom

Secret Wars#12

D. Versus Skadi And The Serpent

Fear Itself#5

If you guessed "D", you're correct.

If you guessed "none of the above", you're Matt Fraction.

Feel Good Image Of The Week!

2011-09-02T09:48:00.000-07:00

I'll level with you: It's been a downer of a week on several fronts.

On the comics front, we said goodbye to the old version of the DC Universe. Not only that, but the books that gave us our first glimpse of the new DCU, the time-changing Flashpoint#5 and Justice League#1, came out this week and were...well.... huge disappointments. Not only that, but they featured cameos by a mysterious hooded woman whose presence seems to be the, uh, harbinger of yet another -- yawn! -- companywide event.

The news hasn't been much better on the economic and political fronts.

After the stock market's harrowing roller-coaster ride this past month, we just learned that the economy created zero net jobs in August. Worse, that sits just fine with one of our two major political parties (the one that starts with an "R"), the leading members of whom are willing to drive the economy into a depression or worse, as long as it helps them unseat our current president in favor of one of their numerous rival presidential candidates.

And let's talk about those Republican candidates, shall we? The only one of them willing to publicly state his belief in evolution and man-made global warming is Jon Huntsman, and he's getting clobbered as a result. In contrast, Rick Perry, who doesn't believe in either, is actually rising in the polls.

President Obama will be announcing a jobs plan next week. Thing is, Speaker John Boehner and the Republicans have already obstructed Obama on the speech date alone. You can tell they're going to be an absolute bastion of cooperation about the actual content of the bill, don't you think? And worse, our president seems to have forgotten that the word "compromise" also means that his side actually needs to RECEIVE something.

Oh, and Dick Cheney's doing a book tour when he should be doing jail time.

In light of all that, we really need something to lift our spirits. With that in mind, here's a guaranteed pick-me-up:

HERCULES WITH A BAZOOKA!!!

This "feel good" moment was brought to you by Herc #6.1, courtesy of Greg Pak, Fred Van Lente, Mike Grell, and Jeff Huet. I purchased this comic this past Wednesday, and let me tell you, it was the only non-trade comic I picked up this week that didn't disappoint me. (I say "non-trade" because I also picked up the first Morning Glories trade and loved it.)

See? Don't you feel better already?

Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe - Round 5: Bouncing Boy Vs. Orion The Hunter... No, The OTHER One!

2011-09-02T09:28:00.000-07:00

I won last week's round of Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe, and longtime readers of this blog know what that means: that my next round must somehow relate to the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Therefore, tonight's futuristic fracas comes from 1973's Superboy And The Legion Of Super-Heroes#199, written by the great Cary Bates and illustrated by the late, great Dave Cockrum. In this story, Bouncing Boy (aka Chuck Taine) is forced to fight for his life against Orion the Hunter.

No, not him.

I'm talking about this guy.

Apparently, one of his chief tactics is to stun his prey into a state of dizziness and nausea with his ensemble. The crew-cut and pigtails alone are making me reach for the Dramamine.

Unfortunately for Orion, Bouncing Boy is made of sterner stuff and doesn't go down that easily.

Therefore.....

....Let the hunt begin!!

Hey, Chuck! You gonna take that from a guy who goes out in public looking like that?

Luckily, the answer to that last question is "No".

It seems that Chuck had a good reason for "chucking" himself into that icy underground spring.

Take THAT, Pigtail Boy!

In honor of tonight's loser, the featured fight music this week is by yet another Orion the Hunter.

For more bouncing brouhahas, click here. And don't forget to vote!

Justice League Of "Meh"

2011-09-01T17:51:00.000-07:00

(***WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS!!!***)

When it comes to selling products, including yourself, to other people, making a good first impression is key. Yesterday, we got our first look at the rebooted post-Flashpoint DC Universe with the release of Justice League#1, and let me tell you up front: This book did NOT make a good first impression.

Not to say it was horrible. The book looked good. Jim Lee drew solid versions of Batman and especially GL, while his Supes cut a powerful figure despite the new costume. And Johns wrote competently enough. It was...barely average.

Problem is, when the book in question is DC's intended flagship title written by two of their biggest name creators, as well as the reader's first introduction to a revised continuity that DC is betting all their marbles on, "barely average" doesn't even come close to cutting it. First issues, especially ones with as much riding on them as this one did, need to grab you and hook you in. They need to be special, and distinguish themselves from what has gone on before with both the character and with the genre in general. They need to be creative and original.

Mark Waid's recent Daredevil relaunch is a perfect example of a #1 issue which accomplished all of those things.

And the new Justice League#1 is a perfect example of a #1 which accomplished none of them.

How did the issue fall short? Let me count the ways.

Let's start with the pacing, which could charitably be called "glacial". This thing was more padded than Christine O'Donnell's resume. The first twelve pages was Batman and, six pages in, Green Lantern (Hal) fighting something I presume is a Parademon as well as the Gotham police. That's followed by 2 pages of Bats and Hal engaging in a (figurative) pissing contest, and then 3 pages of them failing to stop the aformentioned Parademon from setting off a bomb in the sewer system and getting away. Then we got 4 pages featuring an un-Cyborged Vic Stone and his daddy issues. Finally, there's 3 pages of Bats and Hal going to Metropolis to look for Superman, only to find on the last page -- Surprise! -- Superman. Better yet, a Superman who hits people first and asks questions later. My hero!

This might have been fine if the book's title had been The Brave And The Bold Starring Batman and Green Lantern, but the book's title was Justice League, and it's supposed to star all 7 of the people on the cover -- and even that's only half the lineup. So by issue's end, only four out of the seven members on the cover, not to mention the fourteen members in total, actually appeared, and only three of those four actually interacted with each other. And of those three, one only appeared on the last page. Holy false advertising, Batman!

To be fair, maybe Flash, Aquaman, and Wonder Woman were too embarrassed to appear after Johns completely threw them all under the bus in the last issue of Flashpoint, which portrayed Barry as a selfish incompetent who carelessly endangered the timestream just to save his mother while depicting Arthur and Diana as being one Barry's-mother-retro-save away from becoming genocidal monsters.

And while I'm mentioning Diana, let me say that her absence, as Brian Snell pointed out, really emphasized how male-dominated this issue was. JL#1 was -- how shall I put it? -- a sausage-fest. The only females to even appear in the book were an unnamed pom-pom girl and the mysterious hooded lady who's supposed to be in all the New 52 books. Together, they appeared in a grand total of 3 panels in a 24-page story. Male-exclusive stories aren't necessarily all bad -- see "Reservoir Dogs" -- but they're not exactly conducive to getting women interested your product. And when the whole stated point of your reboot is to draw in new readers, excluding half your potential readership is, well, counterproductive.

Speaking of counterproductive, let's talk about some of the artistic choices of Lee and colorist Alex Sinclair. I've got no problem with detailed and finely-rendered art. Some of my favorite pencillers include George Perez, John Byrne, and Gary Frank, who specialize in the stuff. But Lee's art was so busy here that it was often difficult to see what the hell was going on. He wasn't helped by Sinclair, whose colors here were extremely dark and muted, with the exception of Supes and also Green Lantern and his constructs. In the case of the latter, the constructs should have stood out in perfect contrast to the dark Gotham, but Lee and Sinclair surrounded them with an array of unnecessary lighting effects so distracting that I had to strain my eyes to make out what the constructs even were.

But the biggest failing of the book? A staggering lack of creativity, particularly by Justice League standards. Look at the League's extensive history, including some of the villains they've faced and the settings they've been placed in over the team's 50+ year history. In terms of sheer creativity and weirdness, their Silver and Bronze Age adventures rivaled those of the Fantastic Four in the same era. Look at some of the creatures that artists Mike Sekowski and Dick Dillin drew over those periods. We had such menaces as Starro the Conqueror, the Appellax Aliens, Despero, Dr. Destiny, Amazo, The Unimaginable, The Warlock of Ys, Korge, the Key, and the Construct, just to name a few. Then in the 80's we had the Giffen League with such colorful characters as Rumaan Harjavti, Manga Khan, and Mr. Nebula. Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, and Mark Waid continued this tradition in grand style with the Hyperclan, Wonderworld, Julian September, Mageddon the Anti-Sun, and the Cathexis.

The Justice League is at its best when it gets downright weird. Look at the reprint in the recent Justice League 70's Retroactive. The villain of the story was Cary Bates, for heaven's sake!

Now contrast that with Johns/Lee rebooted Justice League. Who is the big bad in this story? Darkseid. Yawn. What's happening next issue? Why, a Superman/ Batman fight! Never seen that before! Except for "Hush". Or the Miller Dark Knight books. Or "Red Son". Or....you get the idea.

Also, look at the conclusion where Bats and GL are in Metropolis to find Superman. Lo and behold, who races by in a red and blue blur and attacks GL? Superman. Johns would have scored at least some creativity points by revealing the blur to be Wonder Woman. Or Bizarro. Or Mxyzptlk. Or...anybody else.

But that's not how Geoff Johns rolls. And that's the problem.

Johns can be a very capable writer. But all-too-frequently in recent years, his work has felt.... rote. By-the-numbers. Formulaic. One of my all-time favorite Batman scenes is in Kevin Smith's Green Arrow run where he's taken Ollie back to the Arrow-Cave and remembers the Arrow-Car. He turns to Ollie and says "My God, man, did you ever have an original thought back then?" If someone in the future were looking at comics circa the 2008-2011 period, he could very well ask the same question of Johns.

And that's not what Justice League needs. For the League to continue to grow, the only direction it should go is forward. Unfortunately, the League stopped really going forward after the Joe Kelly/Doug Mahnke run.

If I had to pick a writer to steward the League into this new era, I'd pick someone with a fresher perspective than Johns. Someone like Nick Spencer or Chris Roberson.

Nothing against Darkseid. He was the big bad in two of my favorite all-time story arcs: the Legion's "Great Darkness Saga" by Paul Levitz and Keith Giffen, and JLA's Morrison-penned "Rock of Ages". But let's face it, any new arc that isn't at least as groundbreaking as those two arcs will be viewed as "just another Darkseid story". Unfortunately, that's precisely what I foresee Johns delivering in this arc.

Maybe I'm being premature. Even Giffen/Dematteis and Morrison, as great as they were, didn't really hit their stride until at least the 2nd issues of their relaunches. Maybe Johns should get at least that benefit of the doubt. But not for very long.

You see, reboots and new #1 issues are a double-edged sword. They can provide a perfect jumping-on point.

But they can also be a perfect jumping-OFF point.

Johns, Lee, and DC would do well to remember that.

Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe - Round 4: Room With A View!

2011-08-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

Tonight's round of Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe comes to us courtesy of JLA#1,000,000 by Grant Morrison, Howard Porter, and John Dell.

Synopsis: Justice Legion A, the JLA of the 853rd Century, is attacking the 1990's JLA Watchtower. Each team has split up to tackle their opponents. Here, John Fox aka the 853rd Century Flash has somehow been led into a strange, unidentifiable room. The red, yellow, black, and flesh-tone color scheme looks....familiar.

(Click to enlarge)

Lava lamps! A circular bed! An iris-shaped doorway! Lightbulb-lined art displays! And Huntress, to boot! Now that looks like a swingin' shagadelic pad that even Austin Powers would envy!

But what's the strange secret of this mysterious talking, changing room?

(Click to enlarge)

Plastic Man -- Coolest. Insides. EVER.

But, wait! Notice where the gym's entrance is in relation to our Ductile Detective. So that means 853rd Century Flash would have entered the "mystery room" through Plastic Man's....

...that "iris door" was his....

Some things are better left unsaid!

Tonight's fight music is "In My Room" by Yaz (aka Yazoo).

For more feng shui fracases, click here. And don't forget to vote!

"Nice Guy" Finishes Last ..... In Poetry!

2011-08-25T15:12:00.000-07:00

And the "Worst Reworking Of A Martin Niemoller Poem" Award goes to....

......THIS GUY.

(Courtesy of Ami and later Thom.)

Some guy named Joe Tom Collins felt so beleaguered by his role of "Nice Guy" that he compared his plight to that of a Nazi Holocaust survivor. Worse, he cannibalizes this poem by an ACTUAL Holocaust survivor to do it. Here's Joe Tom's version:

When the Feminists came for the Rapists,

I remained silent;
I was not a Rapist.

When they locked up the stalkers,
I remained silent;
I was not a stalker.

When they came for the Players,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Player.

When they came for the men who they got bored of,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a some one they were bored of yet.

When they came for me, the nice guy,
there was no one left to speak out.

If Black Lantern rings really existed, I'd want one to land on Martin Niemoller's grave so that he'd rise up from the dead and slap the shit out of this clown.

Man, I don't know where to start:

1. Feminists have a standing army with law enforcement powers? When did THIS happen? Do they also have laser satellites?

2. Given #1, wouldn't punishing all the rapists while sparing the non-rapist men be a GOOD THING?

Look, Joe-Tom-Whatever. It's a simple equation: More rapists locked up = Fewer rapists on the street = Fewer women, children, and even men raped = Safer living conditions = Win.

Without rapists, there would be less general distrust of the rest of men, which might help even YOUR chances of getting a date or even just talking to women. See how that works? And that's just covering the purely selfish end alone. Got any female loved ones, Joe-Tom? Sisters, mothers, platonic friends, whatever? Any whom you might worry about? Think how not being afraid would benefit THEM, too. You worry less about their safety, and they worry less about their safety, because they ARE safer. Win-win all around.

If all the rapists in the world got locked up, provided they received due process, I wouldn't be silent. I'd be yelling "Drinks are on me!!!"

3. Ditto for stalkers?

4. The continuum he uses (rapists=> stalkers=> etc.) completely misses the point of Niemoller's original poem. Take it from a fan of the original poem: Me. A few years back, I had even begun writing a post (since aborted) titled "First They Came For The Manga Collectors" in response to the arrest of Christopher Handley. Here's the thing: The whole point of the poem is that every group on the continuum is unjustly targeted for prosecution and/or persecution when in fact they have not harmed or threatened harm to anybody. It works for Handley's case because his manga collection did not harm or exploit actual children, yet he was prosecuted as if it had.

But rapists and stalkers? They ARE inflicting or threatening harm on others. And if you sympathize or identify with them, you might as well tear up your "nice guy" card, because you're NOT a real one.

Also, compare the punishments that Niemoller and Handley received versus the "oppression" that poor put-upon Joe Tom has to undergo. Niemoller spent 7-8 years in Nazi concentration camps. Handley went to jail. Being called a whiner, or being told "let's just be friends" or even "get lost, creep"? Not the same! Not the same!

5. Oh, I get it! The original poem is about NAZIS, and he's railing about FEMI-NAZIS! Just like Rush Limbaugh! Sounds like he's been dipping into Limbaugh's Oxycontin stash, too.

6. I notice the succession is rapists, then stalkers, and then it jumps straight to players. What about batterers, molesters, serial gropers, and sexual harassers, to name a few categories that are worse than "players"? Totally omitted. Falling down on the job there, Feminist-Army-In-Joe-Tom's-Head!

7. Being a player is ILLEGAL now? Really?

8. Also, why are "Rapists" and "Players" capitalized, but "stalkers" isn't?

9. By the way, he couldn't come up with a better tumblr design than the "facebook" template? How imaginative! No wonder women find him boring.

10. Speaking of which, using Joe-Tom's own internal logic, wouldn't "the men ~~who~~ whom they got bored of with" and "the nice guy" be ONE AND THE SAME??

11. Another thing women like? Guys with a grasp of spelling and grammar. You might want to employ the "spell check".

12. To prove that even a stopped clock gets the correct time twice a day, there's an actual kernel of a valid point in Joe-Tom's post. Men DO tend to get unfairly stereotyped too frequently. Even the attached cartoon itself about "nice guys" is rife with unfair generalizations and assumptions. (Any guy who makes the "nice guy" complaint is spineless, manipulative, and has weight and hygiene issues? Really?) However, Joe-Tom: Your bitter, misogynist, meandering screed? REALLY. NOT. HELPING.

Look, I get it. I wasn't always married or blessed with a steady girlfriend. The single world can be a frustrating and often less-than-equitable place..... for all genders. And, being only human, we all, men and women, have vented our frustrations with the opposite sex (or the same sex) on occasion while we were single, often while heavily consuming liquor and/or food. I'll be frank: Many guys, myself included, have visited the "women don't like nice guys" castle at some point when they were single. The operative word, though, is "visited". The problem is when you live there.

Judging by his tumblr, not only is Joe Tom living there, he's also adding annexes. And they're clearly not up to code.

Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe - Round 3: FNF-- Seinfeld Style!*

2011-08-19T10:31:00.000-07:00

Tonight's entry for Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe features the type of fight that only Jerry Seinfeld could love. Here we have 1984's Alpha Flight#6, written and drawn by John Byrne. Here, Alpha Flight's Snowbird goes head to head with the great beast Kolomaq.

And with that, Kolomaq engulfs both himself and Snowbird in a blinding snowstorm. Pay attention to that last part, because it'll be very important in understanding what happens next.

As you can see above, John Byrne is a talented artist who packs a lot of detail in his art. Historically, he's been quite the workhorse, taking on writing, pencilling, and sometimes even inking multiple monthly books at once, rarely needing a fill-in or missing a deadline. Whatever flaws Byrne has had either as a writer or an artist, you can't fault his work ethic.

So what was the deal with THIS???

In the above page, Snowbird transforms into a great white bear and attacks Kolomaq.

No, really! You'll have to take my word on it!

Above, Snowbird-as-a-bear grapples with Kolomaq, causing them to tumble off some sort of embankment. The freefalling causes Snowbird to panic and transform directly into an owl. Unfortunately, she's forgotten the customary step of changing into her human form first, causing the transformation to be excruciatingly painful.

At least, I think that's what happened.

Snowbird flies back up to the top of the cliff and changes back to her human form, only to confirm that Kolomaq is still alive and daring her to attack again.

Honest!

Snowbird attacks Kolomaq in her human form, causing the great beast to stagger and fall. But before she can ascertain his condition, Kolomaq shoots a dozen ice daggers at her.

No, I'm not making this up!

After all that, Byrne can't possibly give us any more blank panels, right?

Right?

WRONG!!

So Snowbird carries out her grand plan of goading Kolomaq into attacking her with all his might. In the process, he also unleashes his attack against the nearby cliffside as well.

(I think.)

And now.... The CLIMACTIC FINISH!!!

LLLLLet's get ready to RRRRUUUMMBBLLEE!

(Literally.)

What's happening now?

Oh, look. More blank panels!

Apparently, Kolomaq's attack has weakened the cliff base.

And that means.....

...FALLING ROCKS!!

And lots of them!!!

Ok, who actually won this fight?

Well?

Oh.

Glad you could explain that, Snowbird. Otherwise, it might have been really confusing!

And there you have it, folks: The fight about....NOTHING. Eat your heart out, Seinfeld!

Tonight's fight music is the latest song by Mike Doughty, "Na Na Nothing".

By the way, the front page of the comic indicates that the comic came out during what Marvel called "Assistant Editors' Month", in which the assistant editors all filled in for the main editors. That explains a great deal.

For more fights about something, click here. And don't leave your vote blank!

(*Apologies to Brian.)

Happy Birthday, Lois Lane!

2011-08-17T11:17:00.000-07:00

According to Sue at DC Women Kicking Ass, today is Lois Lane's birthday!

Lois Lane holds a special place in my comics heart. Some of my earliest Silver and Bronze Age comics memories were of her Silver and Bronze Age solo adventures as well as her appearances in the Superman books. I particularly liked the Bronze Age period, where she relied less on Superman to rescue her and really got to shine. She was kind of a pioneer female character, not unlike a comics version of Kate Hepburn, treading into waters where few women tread.

I have to say, though, that my favorite era for Lois was during the late 80's and much of the 90's. That was when Byrne rebooted and chronicled the Supes franchise, and also later when he handed it off to the likes of Roger Stern, Jerry Ordway, Dan Jurgens, and later Louise Simonson. And here is when Lois really got to shine. She wasn't afraid to stand up to anybody, even Luthor. As good a reporter as Clark was, Lois was clearly better.

We got the Super-Engagement. I remember the issue where Clark revealed to her that he was Superman, and how she reacted in a completely realistic and believable way. Then came the Super-Marriage. Lois learned to accept the ups and downs that come with being married to the most powerful superhero on Earth. Yet throughout that time she didn't lose her uniqueness and become just another stock love interest. Lois was a strong presence in her own right, and often proved to be a didactic character in Supes' life.

Unfortunately, Lois has gotten the short end of the stick the last few years. She was separated (geographically) from Supes for most of the New Krypton storyline, and then got shunted to the side once again in "Grounded". She made more appearances in SUPERGIRL over that period than in any of her hubby's books. Paul Cornell's Robot Lois got more actual panel time than the genuine article.

Even the current Flashpoint mini with her name in the title short-changes her on panel time. "Lois Lane And The Resistance"? Ha! Issue#2 read more like "Grifter And The Resistance", with Lois relegated to a mere guest star in her own mini.

Also, it often seemed like some at DC didn't get what marriage entailed. I'm a relative rookie at marriage (just passed the 2-year mark this week), and even I can see where DC has messed up over recent years. For example, in Winick's "Decisions" mini, we were supposed to believe that Lois wouldn't know her husband's political beliefs. REALLY?? And as much I enjoyed the Chris Roberson chapters of "Grounded", let's be honest: the "Grounded" arc wouldn't have EXISTED had Supes had confided in Lois like an ACTUAL husband would do with his wife. It seemed that many modern writers and editors wanted to avoid dealing with the Super-Marriage like it was Virus X. And now, thanks to the DCnU Reboot, it's gone.

I agree with Sue: Of all the female characters who deserve a solo book in the DCnU and didn't get one, I'd put Lois at tthe top of the list. In that spirit, I'd like to pose a question to you folks:

What creative team would you want on a Lois Lane solo book? And why?

The rules? Merely that the suggested creators be currently alive.

I have a few of my own:

1. Gail Simone (W) and Nicola Scott/Doug Hazlewood(A). This one's a no-brainer. Gail's not only a wonderful writer, but she's the go-to person for strong female characters. She even handled Lois and Superman masterfully during her too-short Action Comics run. Nicola has been one of DC's top artists over the last decade with her work on Secret Six, Wonder Woman, and especially Birds Of Prey. And Doug? He's one of the best inkers in comics, as readers of Animal Man, Superboy, Adventures Of Superman, Flash, and the aforementioned Nicola Scott books will attest. No matter how good the penciller he's teamed with, their art always looks substantially better with him than without him.

2. Greg Rucka (W) and Jamal Igle/Jon Sibal (A). Greg's Lois on Adventures of Superman was one of her best portrayals in this century. It got frustrating how his caring and compassionate but still fiercely independent Lois was appearing in Adventures at the same time that Chuck Austen's cold and neglectful Lois was appearing in Action. It was like watching two different people. Needless to say, Greg's version was the better one. Like Nicola Scott, Igle has been one of DC's best artists over this last decade. Unfortunately, like her, I see no sign of him in DC's New 52.

3. Ed Brubaker (W) and Sean Phillips (A). This one's my wild card pick. Granted, Brubaker would have to tone down the language and the violence more than in "Criminal". But crime noir seems like a natural setting for our favorite woman reporter. Their latest "Criminal: Last Of The Innocent" is essentially ARCHIE as a crime noir. If Archie can work in that format, so can Lois.

Any other writer/artist combos you can think of?

Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe - Round 2: Bringing Down The Man Mountain!

2011-08-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

Round 2 of Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe comes from Power Man And Iron Fist#62, written by Jo Duffy and drawn by future Superman artist extraordinaire Kerry Gammill.

In this corner, we have Maggia enforcer Man Mountain Marko.

And in this corner, we have Daniel Rand, aka.....

....... IRON FIST!

Let the fight commence!

But Danny Rand doesn't go down that easily.

Now for the big finish....

Uh-oh! Looks like Fist is toast, right?

WRONG!

Ouch! That looked really painful! But did it work?

YES, IT DID!

In honor of this mountainous melee, tonight's fight music is "Mountains" by Prince and the Revolution.

To see more mountains turned into molehills, click here. And don't forget to vote! And by all means, feel free to join the party with your own entry next week. We could use the company!

My Favorite Scene In Time Masters: Vanishing Point

2011-08-11T09:50:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of The Guacamole Lantern (by way of Ragnell)

And you, Hal, have no brain.

Booster is totally fucking with him, of course. Booster, like his JLI buddies Guy Gardner and Ted Kord, is smarter than he lets on.

Hal? Not so much.

Reason#774 To Hate Barry Allen's Resurrection

2011-08-11T08:34:00.000-07:00

If Wally West is in limbo, then so is this guy.

Meet Chester Runk, aka Chunk. Another casualty of Johns and DiDio's ongoing Barrygasm.

P.S. No, he didn't kill them.

We'll miss you, Chunk!

(This Chunk retrospective courtesy of Flash#18 by William Messner-Loebs, Greg LaRocque, and Timothy Dzon.)

This Week's "Gee, Thanks For The Heads-Up, Jackass!" Award Goes To......

2011-08-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of Zeke

....Standard & Poors.

Yes, that's the same S&P that gave all those mortgage-backed securities an AAA rating. You know, the ones that crashed our economy? Also the same S&P who kept the AAA rating intact while Bush and Dick "Deficits Don't Matter" Cheney ran up the debt with 2 wars, tax cuts, and an unfunded prescription drug plan.

Spidey Derangement Syndrome

2011-08-05T13:06:00.000-07:00

Meet Miles Morales. According to this story in USA Today, he's the new Ultimate Spider-Man, replacing the Ultimate version of Peter Parker, who was killed off in "Ultimate Fallout'.

Miles' co-creator, Brian Michael Bendis, says he was inspired by "Community" star Donald Glover's recent tweet campaign to get a screen test for Peter Parker in the latest Spider-Man movie. (Which is living proof that your efforts can still foster positive change, even if it's not the positive change you originally intended.)

Not surprisingly, this was a hot topic on the blogosphere.

Adding kerosene to the fire was The Daily Mailer's headline misinterpretation of this quote by Miles' artist and co-creator, Sara Pichelli:

"Maybe sooner or later a black or gay — or both — hero will be considered something absolutely normal."

Which the Mailer's headline turned into:

Marvel Comics reveals the new Spider Man is black - and he could be gay in the future

Fecal matter, meet rotary oscillator. Let the shitstorm commence!

Me? I think many people are overreacting to this.

First, it's not even the regular Marvel 616 canon; it's an Ultimate book.

Second, I'm a hell of a lot more upset that the powers-that-be had the 616 Peter Parker make a deal with the goddamned devil just because they didn't want to write him as married.

Third, I don't exactly have a drought of white male heroes, including the 616 Peter, to identify with.

Fourth, and most importantly, I like the idea that Miles is half Hispanic as well as half black for personal reasons. Because he shares the former trait in common with my wife. And because I have nephews who are predominantly Hispanic and are fellow geeks. And now they have another hero who shares their heritage. I should also mention that my wife teaches a at a predominantly Hispanic school with a minority African-American population. That's a lot of present and future potential readers who just found a more relatable hero.

Many on the Net felt as I do and expressed it. Many other internet denizens went apeshit crazy. Much in the way that Barack Obama's ascent to the presidency caused many white Republicans to develop "Obama Derangement Syndrome", the news of a half-black/half-Hispanic Spider-Man has caused an outbreak of something I can only call Spidey Derangement Syndrome.

Some of it's simple fanboy/fangirl geekery: Essentially, Miles is like Kyle Rayner or Ryan Choi, a new character taking the place of a long-established character in the latter's superhero identity. That's understandable. I'm not immune to it. My posts on the Superman reboot are proof of that. I love Spidey, too. I get it.

But some responders' problems with Miles ran deeper.

USA Today's comments section was full of remarks that Miles looked like Obama or Tiger Woods, as well as many complaints about a "politically correct" or "PC" agenda. Obama comparisons by the ton, including speculation that Miles would be a community organizer. The usual crap.

Here are some comments captured by the "I'm Not Racist, But.." blog:

Larry Doherty from Larry's Comics tweeted this gem:

:

Ha-fucking-ha, Larry.

And, of course, no summation of apeshit crazy reactions would be complete without hearing the two cents of the man whose name is synonymous with "apeshit crazy". Yes, I'm talking about Glenn Beck. The man who somehow tied this news to some kind of conspiracy led by Michelle Obama. Whatever, Glenn!

The reactions weren't all bad. We had this touching commentary from Sue at DC Women Kicking Ass, as well as this hilarious lampoon from Colbert. Very many reactions were positive.

But too many echoed the sentiments like this:

I find this whole "Woe is me, I'm a white person" trip extremely annoying. And I AM a white person.

I remember Dennis Miller making a joke like this once about whites now technically being a statistical minority a few years back, ending with "And let me tell you, I am SICK of dealing with 'The Man'!!" But Miller was just joking. Some of these guys take the "poor oppressed white people" schtick seriously.

If you're white and you actually believe this, then allow me to respond with the words of Livia Soprano.

Take it away, Livia!

OH, POOR YOU!!!

Exactly!

Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe - Round 1: Hal Shows His Ambidexterity!

2011-08-05T07:54:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the first round of our latest Friday Night Fights bout, Friday Night Fights: Smokin' Joe!Tonight's socially-conscious skirmish comes from Green Lantern/Green Arrow#76, "No Evil Shall Escape My Sight!", by Denny O'Neil and Neal Adams. Synopsis: At the urging of his pal (and self-righteous dick - I'll cover that in a future post) Green Arrow, Hal Jordan attempts to convince slumlord Jubal Slade to abandon his plans to evict his tenants and replace his tenement with a parking lot to make a fat profit. Jubal, humanitarian that he is, essentially tells Hal to sod off.

And then he orders his goons to throw Hal out.

BIG mistake.

I've got to give Hal credit here: He could attack these two thugs with any of a thousand ring constructs. But instead, he just uses his hands.

BOTH of them!

Tonight's fight music for this two-hand takedown is none other than "With My Own Two Hands" by Ben Harper. (No relation to either Roy or Jim.)

For more two-fisted tussles, click here. And don't forget to vote!

And while I'm urging you all to vote, I'd also like to take this moment to invite you to join the party. You can read the tail end of this post to get the rules for this bout. Now is a perfect jumping-on point, because the more rounds you enter in this bout, the better chance you have of winning at least one round and being eligible for the Grand Prize in the final Prize Fight. The more, the merrier, folks!

Things We Learned From The Debt Ceiling "Negotiations"..

2011-08-03T12:54:00.000-07:00

We learned that hanging teabags from your hat, walking around in groups of roughly 100, yelling really loud, and carrying badly misspelled and often racist protest signs gains you instant respect in the Beltway.

We learned that some guy named Grover Norquist, whom nobody has ever elected, somehow currently calls all the shots for one of our 2 major political parties and one of our 2 legislative bodies in Washington.

We learned that Congress, particularly the conservative members thereof, find it an easy routine matter to pass clean unconditional debt ceiling increases when the President looks like this.....

and even this...

.... but suddenly find it impossible to even consider without extracting a pound of flesh when the President looks like this....

Gosh, I wonder why that would be?

We learned that the GOP may have watched "The Town", but the true cinematic inspiration for their behavior during President's Obama's term came from this film:

We learned that many voters and, more troublesome, many Congressmen really don't understand what the debt ceiling really means, nor do they understand the consequences of default. Too many seemed to conflate raising the debt ceiling with increasing spending itself, failing to realize that raising this ceiling only authorized us to pay for obligations we've already incurred, not to incur new ones.

We learned that President Obama has apparently learned many of his negotiating skills from this guy.

"Me begin negotiation by taking high bid off table."

We learned that Obama and the Democrats can't frame an issue to save their lives. They've let the Republicans define the issue almost from day one. The very fact that last year the President and Congress formed a deficit commission, rather than a jobs commission, is proof of that. Too often Obama and the Dems echoed the right wing's talking points rather than advancing their own. For example, Obama has echoed the GOP's use of the word "entitlement" when describing the Big 3 programs (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid). Let me tell you something about the word "entitlement". Too often it's used as a dirty word when, in fact, the opposite is often true. Many things are entitlements because we're genuinely entitled to them. These programs are a classic example. We've paid into them for decades on the promise that we'll reap the full benefits of these payments upon our retirements. Paul Ryan's plan would essentially prevent us from reaping this full benefit. It's like buying a car: Say you sign an agreement to pay $10,000 for a fully functional vehicle. Suppose you pay the full $10k, only to have the dealership inform you that the car you're getting won't have a carburetor, an alternator, one of its tires, and two of its doors, and that you'll have to purchase those parts separately from the original contract, with no refund of any part of your original $10k. That's what the GOP has planned for the Big 3. That's how Obama needed to explain it more frequently with his bully pulpit. Of course, even greater use of the bully pulpit and better framing may not have done as much good as you'd think because of our next discovery....

We learned that the so-called mainstream media, with very few exceptions, won't call the Republicans out on anything. If I'd heard the "both sides are just as bad" meme one more time, I would have vomited. It's like reporting a 100-0 football game as a tie. The Republicans created the "crisis" by refusing the clean increase, period, and they could have gotten us out of it at any time by simply agreeing to the routine increase. But good luck getting most of the media to actually report that. Also good luck getting them to stop treating the Tea Party like a separate party, rather than what they actually are, which is "bad cop" to the mainstream GOP's "good cop".

We learned that the Republican Party defines many words differently than the standard Webster's definitions. For example:

Bipartisanship - Democrats and Republicans working together to do everything Republicans want

and

Deficits - Something to be completely ignored during Republican presidencies and harped on relentlessly during Democratic ones.

We learned that progressives are the modern-day equivalent of Cassandra in Greek mythology, in that A) they can usually predict the future with stunning accuracy and B) nobody fucking listens to them. Gosh, who could have predicted that giving in so much on the tax cuts in 2010 would embolden the GOP to hold future votes hostage? Besides, well, anybody?

We learned that extreme right-wingers have no problems with terrorists in our government, as long as they're not Muslim and are pushing for things they like. And if saying "Give us what we want or we'll crash the world's economy!" isn't terrorism, then I don't know what is.

We learned that the current Republicans pride themselves on being the more businesslike of the two parties, but have forgotten some very basic business fundamentals. Nowhere was this more evident than their obstinate refusal to even consider revenue increases in reducing the deficit. Many of them even signed pledges to the aforementioned Mr Norquist to never do so. Imagine you're a CEO of a large corporation. Now imagine informing your shareholders at a board meeting that you've signed a pledge to never increase the company's revenues? How long do you think it would take before the board voted for your immediate dismissal? Five seconds? Ten?

We learned that the only tax pledge any politician should ever sign is this one.

We learned that one of the biggest problems with our political system is that a major chunk of the voting population has a much easier time naming all the Kardashian siblings than naming their Congressmen or any of the nine Supreme Court Justices.

We learned that liberals sitting out general elections to teach the Democrats they should move to the left is AN EXTREMELY STUPID FUCKING IDEA.

At least I hope we learned that last one.