Happy Thanks-for-Giving on Thanksgiving! (Part 2 of 2)

This concluding installment is going to read like a turducken, that infamous turkey stuffed with boneless duck and chicken meat - if you're set to have one this Thanksgiving, you might find it dry, tough and tender at the same time...reminds me of the books I read...

Few people know how to handle a turkey without looking like Lupo the Butcher,  so I found a psuedo-helpful instruction guide presented by a familiar face from the past, (Bob Hope!) along with some more wacky turkey day-related festivities, including a turkey made from a Lego Star Wars Imperial AT-AT (can you imagine how easy it would be if a real Thanksgiving dinner made/shaped like Lego bricks? You wouldn't carve it, you would just gently pull the slices apart! ).

In funnybook land, Batman, Superman,  Power Girl and The Huntress make perfect turduckens. I noticed that Scott Snyder has found a way to sidestep present-day continuity by tinkering with Batman's past in Zero Year & Dark City, while his Superman Unchained is shaggy dog turducken that's taken forever to cook. Meanwhile, Power Girl & The Huntress have had their Silver Age origins reinstated, with Modern Age twists - they were the Supergirl  and Robin of Earth 2, which means PG is Superman's Other Secret Weapon (inside joke) and Huntress, in an interesting retcon, was always Helena Wayne. That means that all of her appearances as Helena Bertinelli over the last 26 years or so were in actuality featuring the daughter of Batman & Catwoman of Earth2 living on Earth1, masquerading as the daughter of a slain mob boss(!), working as a schoolteacher by day, falling in and falling out with "uncle" Batman & his "family", becoming Batgirl during No Man's Land, joining the Justice League during the Grant Morrison era,  hooking up with The Question (both in comics and in Justice League Unlimited) and becoming a regular in Birds of Prey. I actually  find this retcon pretty neat, since the "Batman & Catwoman's daughter" hook is still iconic - there's just one problem: it's been two years now; all the loose ends implied by the retcon haven't been addressed yet! Obviously, storylines like Cry For Blood and Huntress: Year One are left hanging in the air, but I don't think it matters - Helena Bertinelli's characterization was rarely consistent and varied with whoever was writing for her: Joey Cavalieri portrayed as mature, but inexperienced;  Chuck Dixon cast her as a "bad girl" action hero, often standing-in as gritty version of Batgirl among Batman's sidekicks; Grant Morrison had fun with her rapport with Batman; Greg Rucka focused on her neuroses; Jeph Loeb & Jim Lee focused on her sex appeal; Gail Simone might have been the first writer who tried to find the rationale behind the inconsistencies; Geoff Johns toyed with reviving the Earth2 incarnation.   Finally, Paul Levitz, who created the character,  resumed writing new stories about her and brought her back and ... held down the figurative "reset" button just a little bit with an identity reveal.

So that's it. I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving. Remember to tuck your fingertips inward while chopping and slicing food - you'll thank me later.

And just like Snoopy & Woodstock, I'll be enjoying my Thanksgiving after you leave. :)

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...