Before The Comeback Is Set Back By A Rollback...

In New York City, comic book stores reopened under "Phase 2" in June, so there's been time to slowly catch-up on what was postponed over the last few months.

 Months of buying nothing means that what I did buy looks like a batch of books, but had there been no pandemic, I realized I would've only picked out 2 regular-sized comic books a month on average. On one month, I would've purchased 3 regular-sized comic books a month. And the purchases weren't particularly adventurous - it really looks like I'm just keeping tabs on what new adventures Batman and Batgirl are up to.

 I was able to flip through the pricey "extravaganza" issues of Catwoman, Robin, The Flash, Joker and Green Lantern - the Green Lantern one was, surprisingly, the one worth buying, while the rest looked superficial with empty calories. 

Justice League Dark features on-the-rise new writer Ram V. working the script off of James Tynion's plot and is serviceable, if very middle-of-the-road. It'll be interesting to see new storylines entirely by V in the future and how they fare, because the only distinction that made it worth checking out the next issue is that he has a good grasp of pacing, dialogue and characterization.

Now, on to the new Adventures of Bruce & Babs. It was nice that I was able to get the issue of Batman with the Stanley "Artgerm" Lau cover of Punchline, because there was a lot of hype surrounding it, even though her story reads like weak tea compared to the stories that introduced Harley Quinn in Batman: The Animated Series, although, to be fair, I remember not thinking anything of Harley until after Paul Dini wrote "Harley and Ivy" - that episode was her breakthrough, so it's possible that Punchline will probably have her moment in the future, while her first appearance and "origin" (which, honestly, was really sketchy and lacking meat to feel definitive) are just perfunctory things for posterity right now. Like, for example, if Eiza Gonzalez is cast to play her in a movie, then these early books become hot. Right now, it's empty calories. 

Speaking of Batman: The Animated Series, two new comic books were launched to coincide with an expansion to a popular line of toys. Batman: The Adventures Continue and reprints of The Batman Adventures comic book from the early-90s. Ironically, the reprint comic is printed on better-quality paper than either the original issue or the trade paperbacks that reprinted the issue, offered at 79 cents more than the cover price of the original. It's actually a better deal than when it was offered 27 years ago. It's also a good issue that sets the style early. The Batman vs. The Penguin story is told with the same complexity expected of the traditional Batman books, but not the ones sold at the time. With hindsight, the approach in these early issues has more in common with Steve Englehart's 70's Batman comics, but I look back fondly on my memory of reading that 1st issue when it debuted, with the Danny Devito Penguin voiced by Paul Williams.

With Batman: The Adventures Continue, I thought the story was let down by the artwork. Ty Templeton's art style feels pretty basic compared to other artists I've seen work in this "animated" style, which is really just a way of saying it's drawn the way Bruce Timm might draw it, except we've seen him not draw it this way - check out the Mad Love comic book and you'll see his drawing style is more exaggerated, with more influences and a wider frame-of-reference informing what he's doing. If they couldn't get Bruce Timm back, I would've liked to have seen Rick Burchett, Tim Levins or Dario Brizuela try it. Otherwise, the book is a fun, safe bet.

Opinions on Batgirl comics vary wildly. I always rooted for Barbara Gordon to get out of the wheelchair and be Batgirl again, whereas the people who claim to prefer her replacements - Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brow - well, the sales of those books really needed to be there to not make anyone in editorial agree that they were great. Dan Didio's decision (typical of most of the decisions he made to reboot books) to make Barbara Batgirl again was based on sales possibly being better if the character headlining the book wasn't a 2nd/3rd generation character. In the long run, sales turned out relatively the same, but this time the title character is consistent with how she appears on merchandise and television, so you can argue that Barbara wins by seniority and experience, brand-wise. If they replace her again, well, I have one less book to buy, plus I'm still rooting for Lily Collins to play Babs in the movie...

   The resemblance is incredible.

I'm certain Cecil Castellucci's Batgirl scripts have been all about increasing the suspense and threat with bigger villains, but I have half-jokingly suggested on Twitter that her inspiration for story ideas comes from tropes found in folklore & mythology. This makes her stories more interesting than most of the Batgirl storylines we have had in a long time since the "Batgirl of Burnside" arc, five years ago. Castellucci's first arc, "Oracle Rising" has Barbara re-encounter her first villain (Killer Moth), plus The Terrible Trio - villains that appeared in the previous arc by the former writer of the book, Mairghead Scott, but the real villain of the piece is the evil Oracle android, whose origins have no explanation, but we get visual clues that she might be a construct of Superman villains Brainiac & Lex Luthor as part a line-wide crossover, The Year of The Villain, so, essentially, Castellucci is offering us Batgirl vs. Evil Twin, a common trope in mythology. Unfortunately, there's a huge continuity problem: Castellucci seems to be writing this as if "Oracle" was a sophisticated artificial intelligence system that Barbara employed, akin to the TV series, Person of Interest, which is a huge retcon, since Oracle was just an alias Barbara used when she became a computer hacker, offering Intel/communications/tech support to Batman and the Justice League in the 1990's. Was anyone in editorial aware? Cecil's main Batgirl reference is the  Bronze Age Batgirl comics, which explains the presence of Jason Bard as a would-be love interest in her book, even though he had previously appeared as a villain in Batman Eternal (and within that story, it was Barbara who was responsible for the crippling injury that damaged his leg; she threw him off a rooftop). Anyway, if you can get over these hurdles, it's good, Stan Lee-style superhero spectacle and the art is fabulous.

The next arc in Cecil's run was literally Batgirl vs. A Dragon. In mythology, dragons represent greed - the monomyth of the greedy dragon who collects treasures and virgin princesses and hoards them in his castle or cave, but doesn't do anything with this stuff; he's just a hoarder. The heroic knight has to journey to slay the dragon and recover the dragon/treasure. Well, if Batman can be seen fighting dragons and hanging out with dinosaurs around the same time, then Batgirl can fight a dragon, too. This is also the first time Batgirl is regarded as equal to a Knight in shining armor, a parallel usually reserved for Batman. 

So, we've seen her fight old villains, fight an evil twin, slay a dragon...and then, in the short arc that just wrapped, Cecil has Babs fight another new villain, but it's a villain that's a pastiche of a classic archfoe - Auric Goldfinger.

Okay, not really, the adventure is clearly a parallel of Goldfinger, with KGBeast standing in for Oddjob and Batwoman standing in for Felix Leiter. It's a classic trope in superhero stories to have the hero fight a villain whose schemes ape established pop culture characters from books, movies and TV shows. The Batman villain Ra's Al Ghul was always compared with Fu Manchu and James Bond villains like Doctor No & Ernst Stavro Blofeld. With Batgirl, Cecil Castellucci created a James Bond-style female villain for Babs and, as a bonus, tossed in an underused Batman villain as her henchman and included a team-up with guest-hero Batwoman...who might also be standing in for Pussy Galore in addition to Felix Leiter, since the original solicits for issues 45 & 46 claimed this was going to be a 2-part team-up with Catwoman, but it's possible that character was removed because she appears prominently in the main Batman storyline, so, ironically, inserting Kate Kane in her place makes the Bond analogy even more crystal clear, because in the Goldfinger book, Galore was also a lesbian.

Whether or not my theory is a deliberate approach or a subconscious one on Cecil's part isn't really important, but I found it amusing that it fits well. Her next issue is another trope: an encounter with the Devil:

This issue isn't out yet. I hope I'll get a copy.

I'll wait for the trade to check out what Harley Quinn's romance with Booster Gold looks like...same deal with the Batman Beyond comic book..

How will Poison Ivy & Blue Beetle react to this?

Dennis O'Neil, RIP

We lost a legend over the weekend - Writer/Editor Dennis O'Neil (aka, Denny O'Neil) passed away. A former newspaper reporter, O'Neil began writing comics near the end of the Silver Age in the mid-to-late-60's and became a beloved mainstay thereafter. My introduction to him was a memorable 2-part episode of Batman: The Animated Series he had written titled "The Demon's Quest", which reintroduced to a new generation of Batman fans a villain he had co-created with artist Neal Adams in the 70's: seemingly immortal criminal mastermind Ra's Al Ghul:

 Is it pronounced "Raysh" or "Razz"? That's an old debate...

This adventure was atypical of any Batman cartoon or movie we had seen before. More like Indiana Jones, The Spy Who Loved Me or Casablanca. Batman's world opened up.  If your knowledge of Batman came from the live-action movies by Tim Burton, the TV series with Adam West or the Superfriends, you would think this was an experiment, but this did solidify Ra's as a top-tier Batman villain in a way that the comics never did. This episode, plus subsequent appearances in the series became the definitive portrayal of the character and he appeared in more comic book stories by other writers & artists in the decades that followed, including new stories written by O'Neil, like Birth of The Demon, which revealed the origin of Ra's, and Greg Rucka & Klaus Janson's Batman: Death and The Maidens. He also became one of the main villains in Christopher Nolan's trilogy of Batman films, played by Liam Neeson.

I met Dennis O'Neil at BigAppleCon in New York in 2004. I was actually surprised that there wasn't a long line of people to see him, but in retrospect, I recall that this was at a time when people thought the years when he was in charge were creatively limiting and the Bob Shreck-edited era of Batman comics was better, but tastes have changed since then. We didn't speak much beyond exchanging simple, polite dialogue: "Hi - signing books?" "Sure." "Okay...these are great. Thank you. It was nice meeting you!" I was impressed by how simple it was to get an autograph (and he didn't charge for it either), but then again, I had just 5 comics for him to sign (1 Batman, 1 Brave and The Bold, 1 DC Comics Presents, 1 The Shadow, 1 Further Adventures of Indiana Jones), though some artists are known to act as though they're handed everything & the kitchen sink, then whip out their calculator and start carrying decimals. No..."Denny", if I can call him Denny, was professional to the fingertips.

I have my own theory that prototypes of Ra's, his daughter Talia and the enigmatic demonic bubble bath known as The Lazarus Pit made a preliminary appearance in "The Secret of Waiting Graves!" - the first solo Batman tale he worked on with Neal Adams:

This one, along with "Daughter of The Demon!" are my favorites of the Batman tales he wrote. O'Neil's writing reminds me a lot of Stan Lee in that they're heavily influenced by tropes found in genre fiction, but there's an effort to achieve a sense of realism - characters talk and react to things that are happening to them the way that we know people would act in real life, a lot of the action is from a street-level, even in trips to exotic locations. The villains', supporting cast and even the city the heroes lived and operated in would be fleshed out to be less one-dimensional. Gotham City was the only fictional city/location in DC Comics that was starting to feel like a real place. Whereas Stan Lee's plotting style was inspired by soap opera, O'Neil's storytelling was inspired by a combination of his background in journalism, a casual knowledge of Pulp adventure/mystery/horror comics/magazines, and a genuine interest in theories about social issues, folklore & mythology and philosophy, particularly Zen Buddhism in The Question.

 This was a prose paperback.       novel that was published in 2006. It's a nice encapsulation of the 1980's comic book and works as a novelization of a "Question" movie that never happened but could work as inspiration for one.

 Another prose novel - this one retells the origin of Kyle Raynor becoming a Green Lantern, but without the 1990's excess. Under O'Neil's word processor, Kyle's origin is more contemplative and metaphysical - a "vision quest". 

These iconic images from his run on Green Lantern/Green Arrow with Neal Adams still resonate today:

Although he wasn't shy about writing characters with phenomenal powers, like Superman, The Shadow, Shazam and the Justice League, he was more at home crafting stories about characters who he could understand or relate to on some basic level of humanity: Batman, Green Arrow, Spider-Man, Daredevil, Iron Man, The Question, Azrael...someday, the 100+ issues Denny wrote of Azrael, Agent of The Bat will be re-evaluated, because I am convinced that Jean-Paul Valley was Denny's alter-ego, a reflection of his knowledge and thoughts on himself, of heroes & identities and the state of the world, particularly in the late-1990s.

A lot of really great Batman comics were made during the 15-year period in which he was the editor of Batman books at DC Comics...there was a consistent quality to them that we haven't seen before or after in any superhero comics before or after. When he stepped down and retired from editing, he wrote The DC Comics Guide To Writing Comics, a valuable resource when, even today, there are little or no books available specializing in the craft of writing a professional script...and it's his approach to it, really. It's literally a Magnum opus.

The book is out-of-print, but worth seeking. Within the last decade, DC has been compiling reprints of older Batman stories by various writers and artists in lavish hardcover editions under the title of Tales of The Batman/Legends of The Dark Knight. Denny's work with Neal Adams on Batman and Green Lantern/Green Arrow has been reprinted several times, his work on Spider-Man was recently collected in 2 volumes under the  Marvel Masterworks line, but he has told many other Batman tales with other artists that would best be seen again in a Tales of The Batman: Dennis O'Neil series. While it's a pity that it wasn't done during his lifetime, I'm sure that's an oversight that will be corrected soon.

Dennis O'Neil, R.I.P.

Darwyn Cooke, RIP

Within days, we learned that artist Darwyn Cooke had an "aggressive" form of Cancer and was in "palliative care"..and  come Saturday morning, we learn that he passed away. He was only 53 years old.

He first got attention for his work doing storyboards on Batman: The Animated Series and Batman Beyond. In the former, it was the magnificent recreation of  Batman fighting The Mutants gang leader from Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns in the episode "Legends of The Dark Knight". For the later series, it was the striking title sequence that opened the show. His first comics work was the graphic novel Batman: Ego for DC Comics, which was followed by a major revamp of Catwoman with writer Ed Brubaker that defined the character for the last decade and a half, including the graphic novel Catwoman: Selena's Big Score.

But wait! There's more! A revival of The Spirit. New Frontier. A series of graphic novels for IDW adapting Richard Stark's "Parker" novels. And lots of variant covers. His art style, at first glance, looked like an offshoot of animator Bruce Timm's style, capitalizing on the popularity of the animated cartoons, but Timm was quick to observe in interviews that when he looked at Darwyn's drawings "...there's a little bit of Frank Robbins, there's some Milt Caniff, a little bit of Sickles.." I would suggest that Cooke's characters tend to look self-aware; they seem to behave like actors that know they're being filmed - lots of expressions with eyes, jaws and teeth. A glance at both artists work in comics reveals that if Timm's characters stick to the script, Cooke's actors are prone to ham things up.

His work as a writer wasn't flawless; I found his scripts could be leaden at times - the dialogue and plots don't necessarily fire on all cylinders and payoffs can come off anti-climactic. His zombie Montez storyline in The Spirit had a climax taken from a short Batman: Black & White tale and went off the reservation, as if he was glad he could find an ending to the arc.

But that's just a minor quibble. Cooke loved heroes that were heroic and liked to tell stories he wanted to read. He could be an outspoken critic of popular dark storylines, like Brad Meltzer's Identity Crisis. He despised stories that pretended to be "mature" and "sophisticated" when it was only dragging fictional characters that were once created for children  though the mud. In the last few years, he felt he was typecast as an artist who only dwelled in Silver Age nostalgia and he's not wrong - if he had illustrated Grant Morrison's run on Batman, that definitely daft tenure wouldn't have been so easily discarded. When asked about why he didn't do much work for Marvel Comics  (beyond two issues of a Spider-Man title, a fill-in issue of X-Force and a surreal mini-series starring Wolverine & Doop), he pointed out that he was originally enlisted as the architect for the all-ages "Marvel Adventures" line, before his ideas for creative teams and storylines were completely scuttled by editorial. So he made his name working on DC Comics characters. Not bad.

He was working till the very end, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of the stuff appears posthumously. A comic book variant cover by Cooke on the outside always outclassed the art featured on the inside. When DC had Cooke do variant covers for all their books in 2014 - some featuring characters rendered by him for the first time in print, like He-Man and Skeletor - on the face of things that was a very classy-looking month, but only a few of those books might have had stories people still remember today. They'll remember those covers, though.

Darwyn Cooke, RIP

5 Ways to Write A Martian Manhunter Movie

With The Avengers a rip-roaring success for Disney, fans on the Internet are busy wondering when Warner Brothers will launch a Justice League of America film. They tried before, with George Miller as the director and a script that tied-in to then-current storylines like The OMAC Project and Checkmate, but he had cast too many relative unknowns as the heroes and the script had been rushed into production too quickly.

There's a lot of talk about how c  following the formula Disney-Marvel made to get to an Avengers film would not be possible - Christian Bale is done playing Batman, Green Lantern tanked, Zack Snyder's The Man of Steel  is still a question mark and nobody knows what to do with Wonder Woman or The Flash. So everyone is looking toward the rest : Hawkman, Martian Manhunter, Plastic Man...etc. I want to play, too, starting with the other green guy - not the Hulk, not the Green Hornet, not the Spectre, not Green Arrow, not Green Lantern (he needs a break)...J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter .

I already mentioned in a previous post that I imagined Taylor Lautner as the Martian Manhunter and I haven't been turned off yet by that decision (the character is shirtless and pantless most of the time, so we need a popular young actor with pecs that can carry over 120 minutes). He played Sharkboy, for crying out loud! As for the voice, that's moot. Lawrence Fishburne was the voice of the Silver Surfer, so why not try casting him again as the voice of J'onn? There we go. Actor? Check. Voice? Check.

Also, the powers. MM has a wide range - he's Superman with extra powers, or the Fantastic Four-in-1. He can shapeshift/stretch, become invisible/intangible, has super "breath" (he can blow out any candles on any birthday cake), flight, super-strength,super-speed, "Flame vision" (fire shoots out of his eyes) and is telepathic. He is also a compulsive snacker: he loves Oreo cookies, or any other sandwich cookies (obviously, I would love to see a package of Oreos with J'onn J'onzz on the wrapper. That would be just right). He also may or may not still have a fear of fire...and may or may not still be the last of his kind...I'd rather avoid all that continuity baggage and focus on J'onn as an interesting complete character.

The villains - the White Martians, Scorch (a winged devil-gargoyleish chick with firestarting powers), Bette Noir (an albino vampire, kind of like Batman foe Nocturna, but BN is a vampire, whereas Nocturna was just a glamed-up goth who played like a vampire)...I'd throw the Ultra-Humanite in there because he'd offer a  great visual - an albino ape with a Broccoli-shaped head and the voice of Jeremy Irons. Works for me.
Directors are tricky. I wouldn't mind Brad Bird or Terry Gilliam taking a crack at it - they would find a way out of the rut that a lot of these superhero movies are in - MM  would/should have a different approach to it...

5 approaches...as short as possible.

Film Noir - yes, yes, in this genre, there are no winners, but who cares? In the comics, he supposedly rivals Batman as a great detective, so I would revisit The Maltese Falcon, only instead of a statue of a bird, how about kryptonite? An absorbascon? A talisman of the Bat-God Barbattos? Mercury's slippers? A golden lasso? set-up, set-up, set-up, set-up...

High Noon - how about planting the seeds for the rise of the Justice League with the disbanding of the Justice League International? J'onn has to suddenly put down the cookies and save Earth on his own, showcasing the full range of his powers. I would pit him against Manga Khan, who always seems one step away from the Fourth World  villains of Apokilips... set-up, set-up, set-up...

"It's Like Die Hard But With A Martian Superhero!" - I couldn't resist that old chestnut, but think about it - J'onn rivals Batman in efficiency as well as deductive reasoning. This could be fun. Supervillains only, please. Bank robbers and generic Bond villains need not apply.

Remington Steele - The romantic comedy. He's fronting a struggling detective agency run by an attractive and intelligent, but neurotic P.I. and they go search for that macguffin I'd set up in the film noir pitch. How about Pierce Brosnan dubbing the voice?

Supermax - a few years ago, there was a pitch for a high-concept Green Arrow feature inspired by the TV series Prison Break, in which Green Arrow wound up in a prison filled with DC Comics Supervillains. Sharp-eyed fans might recognize the story played out in Marvel Comics' Thunderbolts with Hawkeye, not GA. Anyway, forget Green Arrow - why not let it happen to J'onn J'onzz? The concept would still work, only it would rise more to the occasion because you had a superhero who could put up a real fight.

Anyway, that's enough from me. It's time Hollywood put the spaghetti in the machine and started rolling. I know a place that sells green paint real cheap.

A Comic Book Rehab Thanksgiving - Issue #1

Ever try a Turducken? That's de-boned stuffed chicken stuffed into de-boned duck, stuffed into a de-boned turkey. I'm not so sure if it's good, or if, like the Chupacabra or Jeremy Clarkson's opinions, we're looking at a creature of myth, something in which sightings have been reported but not truly experienced. Duck meat is tough - just look at Scrooge McDuck - and despite most claims to the contrary, duck meat is not what you order when you want a briskly-paced dinner at a restaurant.

Forget about food, let's talk Comic Book Turduckens. We're talking concept turkeys that have been stuffed with other concepts - superheroes that make you think twice about even trying to read about once because they have totally unappealing and cluttered histories and seemed doomed to stink over and over - they've got their own duck meat in the middle.

Hawkman - This character has had more than one origin, more than one attempt at revamping and reconciling his origin, more than one secret identity, and more #1 issue relaunches than you would think.
First, he was Carter Hall, an archaeologist - lind of a low-rent Indiana Jones. He was in the Justice Society of the 40's and early 50's. In the 60's the concept was re-thought and replaced with Kator Hol, a space cop from the planet Thanagar, who fights crime in a winged outfit (just like Brian Blessed in Flash Gordon, but not as fun). The Winged Detective was a bit of a jerk and a social dud, but his wife was hot, and this incarnartion became the longest-lasting, if not the most entertaining of the lot. He's the one that appeared in The Superfriends, but he was on his best behavior there.

In the 80's Kator the space cop's background was sharply redefined, with Tim Truman's Hawkworld mini-series. But that story hit the big reset button and gave the character a clean slate - what to do with all that continuity from the past two-and-a-half decades? Imagine that the big bird guy in the Justice League was never there? Well, actually, they imagined that Carter Hall, the Indiana Jones Hawkman, was in the League in it's early days, and the jerk with the hot wife that was in your dad's Hawkman comics was a Thanagarian spy, leading up to the Invasion! storyline, which is as memorable as it is now forgotten by anyone under 32. In the 90's they decided to cop-out and came up with Hawkgod, an entity who was Hawkmen of  all Hawkman comics/appearances - seriously, though, this only makes sense if they didn't think anyone was actually reading the comics - and who was reading superhero comics during the collectors bubble in the 90's? Maybe they thought they were on to something.

Within the last decade, we've seen Carter Hall return as a one-and-only Hawkman, and the different origins/concepts/cock-ups co-ordinated  under a reincarnation gimmick that seems to settle issues of continuity with anyone still trying to read or follow his adventures - now if only he had any.

The Spectre - This character reminds me of Spawn, only he seemed to use his powers in more offbeat/interesting ways, but nobody seems to like his secret identity, Jim Corrigan, or if his adventures are too downbeat to want to read for any length, even though it seems to work for Daredevil . It doesn't help that the Spectre is now viewed as a corrupt pasasitic entity rather than a simple loveable, huggable anti-hero, if that is possible. (Kevin Levin11 in Ben10 is likeable, even if at the core he's a jerk and initially a mean sonuvabitch). The Spectre became a turducken when he became then-former Green Lantern, then-dead (they get better in comics) Hal Jordan, and later becoming Crispus Allen, a character from Batman: Gotham Central. So now they've got Green Lantern continuity and Batman continuity (and, in some ways, Spawn continuity) stuffed into a Spectre turkey. What you care to try it?

Supergirl and Power Girl - Superman's cousins became turduckens when their orgins were revamped to satisfy short-term thinking. In this case, it was that Superman (and only 1 Superman - sorry, Superboy)should be the sole survivor of the planet Krypton. Eventually, their origins were reintroduced and their status as Superman's cousins was reinstated, but it's very hard to shake off the turducken tag.

Spider-Woman - Mulitple incarnations, multiple origins (in the Jessica Drew's case, three different origins coincided with eachother and a fourth tried to make them all fit) - this is a turducken by proxy.

The Huntress - there are two incarnations of this character: one, Helena Wayne, is the daughter of Batman and Catwoman on Earth 2. The other is Helena Bertinelli, daughter of some mobster and too many Valerie Bertinelli t.v. movies. Most fans are divided on which incarnation they prefer, and despite a notable attempt to split the difference (in Batman: The Brave and The Bold, the character is seen wearing the Helena Wayne costume with the Bertinelli identity) she's an unevenly cooked turducken. I think her best moments came when she served as a Batgirl temp in the late 90s Batman comics, coinciding with Batgirl's appearances on television in The New Adventures of Batman and Superman.

The Punisher - He's been killed off, he's been brought back as a ghost, (de-boned chicken) given a change of ethnicity (he was curious {black}) killed again, appeared in three feature-length turkeys, (de-boned turkey) fought man monsters with giant boobs, made into a zombie (de-boned duck)... this turducken is still not done!

We're all lucky there is no known quantity of Tryptophan in duck meat, or we'd all drop dead. There's more, lots more, like Ghost Rider - but this isn't a personal turducken - we've all had our share of it sometime, but we don't have to try it. We can chose not to have any turduckens in comics, or at least, not sample them.

For this, I am truly thankful.

Now, excuse me while I get the popcorn, jelly beans, toast and pretzels ready...