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. :)

Super Strategies For Supermen

The box-office success of Man of Steel makes it easier for me to proceed with this, so ...


I'm flipping a coin to decide...

The thing is...I've seen, read, glanced at and coagulated enough internet ephemera to have pre-concieved notions about Man of Steel, the new Superman film that's now playing...would you like me to share them with you?

Christopher Nolan is in this as "Executive Producer" - that could mean as much as it did when they credited Batman Forever "A Tim Burton Production...of A Joel Schumacher Film", but I've gleamed from what we know about it that this new film is, from a storytelling perspective, borrowing the same themeatic structure/character relationships he used in his Batman trilogy. Here's helpful chart of what I think we're seeing now and could be seeing in the years ahead:

Ra's Al Ghul = General Zod
Rachel Dawes = Lois Lane
James Gordon = Perry White
Alfred Pennyworth = Jonathan Kent
Jor-El = Thomas Wayne
The Joker = Lex Luthor
Bane = Brainiac/Metallo (I'm Sure we'd rather see one over the other)
The Scarecrow = The Parasite

Oops! Did I just give something away, there? Nah.

I flipped the coin. It says "Forget It!"  It's a novelty coin from Nickelodeon that was sold in the late-80s - the other side says "Go For It!"... I'll wait to rent it on DVD and watch it. If it does result in a Justice League movie (which is what Warner Brothers DESPERATELY wants - these things are SO calculated these days) then that's good for them, though I wonder if all this fast-tracking-strategy approach to adapting superhero movies for the big screen only results in more unsold DVDs in the five dollar bins at Best Buy and not truly great movies. Is anyone watching Thor and The Avengers with the same awe that they had watching the first Batman or Spider-Man movies? My guess is that we're all just watching these new films thinking like executives, looking for links to this n' that and checking the end credits for hints about the sequel.

Meanwhile, I bought a copy of Superman Unchained #1, Scott Snyder and Jim Lee's premiere...It's for people who have not read Superman comics in the last decade. Honest. It's fairly well-written (at this early stage, I think Scott has a better handle on who Clark Kent is than who Superman is, as well as Lex Luthor and Jimmy Olsen, but not Lois Lane - and I really don't like General Sam Lane, her father, who always seemed like a ripoff of General Ross from Marvel's Hulk comics). He's dipicted as running a top secret millitary installation that's integrated within a pastoral underground environment - vaguely reminescient of the bases-carved-into-mountains that were shown in the last episodes of  Superman: The Aniamted Series. As for the storyline, It sounds a lot like the "For Tomorrow" storyline the Lee did with Brian Azzarello, what with the army's secret super-soldier (who looks like a revamp of Captain Atom) and Luthor's "Big Tree" scheme reminds me of Rick Veitch's The Question mini-series a few years back, which, incidentally, has the best take on Lois Lane I've ever read in comics. And Superman's deep space rescue reminds me of that Eisner-winning issue of Hitman in which he guest-starred. Then there's that poster page - Jim Lee tried that before with the Bat-cave gatefold page in All-Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder - it didn't really work there, either. Comic books were always capeable of inspiring awe and wonder in the past by doing less; every time the publishers try to offer something new by tinkering with the format, it only accomplishes justifying a mark-up on the price tag. It's pretty, but never super.
                                                   

         

"The Sundry Scribbler - Part 4"

                                              The Adventure of The Sundry Scribbler

                                                                        Part 4

                                                                          By

                                                                Joseph Adorno


 We lay on the crumpled ruins on the ground floor for about an hour, before awakening with a loud and stern "Ahem".

 It was stout elderly woman dressed in a dark overcoat.

 "Mrs. Teague," Sexton Blake observed. "We must apologize for the mess we've m-,"

 "Mess! Mess! Another mess - the last mess! You can clean it all up yourselves!!" She tossed an envelope at him. "I quit - effective immediately!!" She stormed off. Blake reached for the envelope and removed a pince-nez from the pocket of his vest. It was caked with sawdust. He made an attempt to blow off the dust and read her notice.

 "That's unfortunate," he sighed. "She knew how to make Crab Rangoon the way I like it - that's the kind of experience that comes from a cook who travels abroad; she's the wife of a retired sea captain who lives in Jamaica." He began slapping dust off his shirt and pants. "Very well. Tinker, is it time for us to head off?"

 Tinker - that is, Mr. Blyth, though I'm not sure why he would let himself be regarded with a child's nickname - was in a daze, eventually settling his gaze at the ruins of a badly-beaten grandfather clock, its hands pointing at 6 and 2.

 "We do, sir. The gala is about to begin in an hour."

 "Excellent. We'll make a quick change of clothes at one of my spider-holes and then head off."

 Holmes coughed a cloud of dust. "Gala? Am I to believe that you are the 'expert' hired by the Rajah's court to manage security for the handover with the Sultan this evening?"

 Blake grinned. "That is correct. I initially took the job regardless of its social standing, but my interest has been piqued by the rumored involvement of my brothers, Henry and Nigel."

 "The Blakes," I gasped. "What a vile and ghastly pair!" I bit my lip when I realized who I was keeping company with.

 "It's alright, Doctor," assured Blake. "I'm sorry to say that I'm the ... black sheep of the family. But I also detected rumors that they're in league with Wu Ling and George Plummer of Scotland Yard."

 Holmes raised an eyebrow at the mention of that last name. Plummer is a Detective Sergeant - as corrupt as Inspector Lestrade was not, they had never crossed paths before (and it was possible that Plummer arranged to avoid doing so), but Holmes often wondered when the day would come when he would have to actually work with such a monster.

 He asked Blake a question. "You believe that this teaming of villains involves the trade of the Rajah's diamond mine for the Sultan's ruby mine?"

 "Yes. The Rajah of Pookajee holds a floating court - his ruby mines are exhausted, but his diamond mine is plentiful. The reverse is true for the Sultan of Lugash. The tradeoff has already been made, but the formal ceremony will involve the handover of 300 million pounds each in rubies and diamonds."

 Holmes paused. "The location of this handover gala was not advertised in great detail."

 Blake nodded. "Only 'in London'."

 "Yet, the danger of Plummer's rumored involvement infers that the underworld is well aware."

 "Unfortunately, the location chosen would have informed the underworld regardless."

 "A well-respected, luxury hotel in a neighborhood of ill refute."

 "Precisely."

 "The Jade Lotus."

 "You are the Master."

 "In Limehouse."

 "You are cordially invited to join us. As you once said, 'the game is afoot'."


To be continued...

It's Been A Pleasure...Part 1

The following are Guilty Pleasures in Pop Culture that offer an enjoyable experience in ways that must be explained:


(You'll notice that I wrote 'part 1' in the title. This post will be ongoing and yes, there is a comic book in this list)...


1. Knock Off - In 1997, Jean Claude Van Damme appeared with Rob Schneider in this action-comedy flick set during the Hong Kong Handover, in which the UK took their Union Jack off the flagpoll and let China replace it with their flag, under the proviso that the status quo in Hong Kong remain the same...ish. The muscles from Brusseles played Marcus Ray, a clothing manufacter with a shady past linked to bootleg merchandise. Schnieder played his business partner, an undercover CIA agent who was assigned to keep tabs on Marcus. Paul Sorvino played Schnieder's boss. Lela Rochon played a CIA agent working undercover as ... well, the whole point of the film is a series of double and triple-crosses concerning nano-bombs small enough to disguise as buttons on bluejeans or watch batteries, with Jean Claude being the guy who has to spot the real ones from the fakes (I'm quoting the trailer). The film is the forerunner for the Rush Hour movies, only less leaden and a better ensemble and some really good action sequences and showy camera angles using practical effects. I can watch this anytime.

2. The Life and Death of Peter Sellers - oh boy. You know the saying, "Never work with your heroes"? I knew what I was in for because I had read the Roger Lewis biography a year before seeing this, which was the source for it, as well as Ed Sikov's more sympathetic Mister Strangeglove, which I had read before the former. I had bought the DVD of this for the nice price of $1.99 last month and never regretted it, because I enjoyed it a lot. However... I must inform you that Peter Sellers, in real life, was an abusive, insecure, paranoid, egotistical, negative, drug-addled and self-destructive man-child who may have only been kind to Sophia Loren (who he was gaga over) and members of his old comedy troop, The Goons, though you'll get an argument from me that he kept them around as little more than his entourage. Once you get over that hurdle, you'll find how the screenwriters and director and the stars of the film (Geoffrey Rush actually becomes Sellers in some places, Charlize Theron and Emily Watson are terrific, Stanley Tucci awesome as Stanley Kubrick) are able to bring this actor to life one more time. BTW, I wouldn't mind seeing Rush play Clouseau in a Pink Panther film. Perhaps that Romance of The Pink Panther which was originally intended to wrap the series and was co-written by Sellers. This is not the only time an artist belied his/her own work with their personality/private life - it seems like just a matter of course, really. What's interesting is I can still watch any movie with Sellers after this. Hey, he was dead before I turned one!

3. Azrael, Agent of The Bat - I wonder if people picked this book up for kick-ass violence and superhero action. If you did, you probably didn't find it at all satisfying. That's because this book, the thinking man's Spawn , was all about a vehicle for Dennis O'Neil to tell stories. I don't think he was conciously aware of it, but over the course of 100 issues, O'Neil was reflecting on how costumed superheroes go through different incarnations and change in order to stay relevant. Azrael's various costume changes were part of the character's evolution: first as an obvious Spawn-wannabe, then a member of the Bat-family, then finally his own man before reverting back to his own form of "AzBat-Man" by choice. A lot has changed in the DCU in the decade since he was killed off, but some characters are too good to stay buried. I'm still surprised how jolly that book was. More like a dark pulp-gothic comedy than average superhero soap opera fare.


4. Victorious - There are many tv shows out there that have what is sometimes referred to as "The secret weapon" - a character played by an actor or actress whose performance makes it the reason to keep watching - often the only reason. Even if, on average, they get less than 3 minutes of screentime when they do appear - if at all! On Seinfeld, it was Wayne Knight as Newman. On Futurama, it was Bender the robot. In The Electric Company, it was Ashley Austin Morris as Francine Carruthers. In Victorious, it is Daniella Monet as Trina Vega. Every time she arrives, she gets the whole joint jumping. When she disappears, we realize how dull the show - an interchangable carbon copy of most teen sitcoms - and its main cast are. In fact, the producers should consider a spinoff: What Was Trina Doing?, which, just like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (or "The Zeppo" or "Lion King 1 1/2", for those of you who don't know), would show what Trina was doing for the remaining 19 of the 22 minutes she was kept offscreen.
It also doesn't hurt that the talented Ms. Monet wears micro-mini skirts and short-shorts in almost every scene she's in. Nice legs. She's 23 and was 20 when the show started. Of course that means that she was 23 when the show started and is 26 now - that's the way it is.

5. A View To A Kill - This was the first James Bond film I remember watching, as well as the first I remember watching in a theatre. In fact, it's actually the only one I've seen in a theatre! But this is not about nostalgia: I still find it to be an entertaining James Bond movie. It's got gadgets, locations, crazy villains (Christopher Walken before he became Christopher Walken - you know what I mean), literal cliffhangers borrowed from silent movie serials, (the finale looks like a scene from The Perils of Penelope Pitstop), some hot greasy-lipped 1980's Bond Girls ("Hey, it's the other mom from That 70's Show!") and Grace Jones, who, well, fans of Roger Moore say he gets bonus points for having made out with her and lived - few men can boast that accomplishment. It's also got an awesome soundtrack by John Glen and the title song by Duran Duran is a perfect Bond theme, even if the lyrics are ... strange. Bonus fact: if you've ever read the Bond spinoff novels by John Gardner, you'd cry deja vu after seeing this film and Never Say Never Again after reading Role of Honor. Video games and Blimps? Yes.

Why Moore Serious?

Commitment is something I like to see in a comic book fan...actually, that's what the publisher would like to see. And the shops. 

If you have $120.00 saved for this summer, then that means you're planning to buy all 35 issues of Before Watchmen. Does it really matter that Moore had nothing to do with this one? We're all used to reading comics featuring characters written and drawn by writers and artists who are not the original creators. The same goes for cartoons, too. It's argued that Tex Avery and Bob McKimson created Bugs Bunny (the definitive version of the cartoon rabbit that had been floating in Warner Brothers cartoons under the same name) and they've been dead for decades. Should we have stopped reading Batman comics after Bill Finger got fired? Should we have quit reading Spawn when Todd MacFarlane stopped writing and drawing every issue? If we did take that hard line,we'd only accomplish saving money to buy other stuff. Why be Moore serious?

We have a way out - we don't need to feel like we're getting caught, we don't need to wear that long overcoat with the collar turned-up. When the sales numbers come in - actually, they're already in - they'll just show copies ordered by the stores. We're not in the middle, the shops are! We're just reading what we like! If we don't like Watchmen, we wouldn't be reading it, would we? We wouldn't pick Before Watchmen up thinking it will turn gold, now, right? Besides, this is no different from when soap operas would dust off old characters. When All My Children brought Angie and Jessie back from limbo in 2008, nobody complained much, even though it's audience had to be aware that this was an obvious sign none of the characters created in the two decades since those two left were clicking. Did it work? All My Children has been cancelled and has stayed that way since last year.

It won't work. Not because Alan Moore has gone on the record in interviews saying that this is a sign of total creative bankruptcy, or that the "talent" involved is not talented, otherwise they could have done something original and not a prequel to someone Else's story. Watchmen is all about telling a story. I did not get a hankering for a sequel about the Minutemen, because Alan had deconstructed them too well to offer anything more. Ditto the rest of the characters - what's Nite-Owl like in his prime? Ted Kord (Blue Beetle)? Daredevil? Batman? Is Dr. Manhattan more interesting than the Silver Surfer or Captain Atom? How about Rorschach and The Question? Or Silk Spectre and Nightshade or Black Canary or Huntress or The Wasp? It might be interesting to see what an Ozymandias comic would be like, but we've already seen what Alan Moore could do with him... This comic was all about a particular story and it accomplished more than it was meant to already. And I didn't care to read it a second time.

But that's not why it won't be a hit. Look at the teams involved. Two of the books involve artists not known for being fast. Two of the books are written by an egomaniac/windbag. Two of the books are written by someone who is better at one job than another. Two of the books are written by a journeyman. It's a very motley crew. If anyone's saving money on this, it's because only the first issues will have arrived on time.
We're in the middle, aren't we? No, I'd argue we're in the space between the middle. We're interdimensional. The whole thing could be a hit or a bomb and because these are planned well in advance, there's another event planned in the horizon that will get our attention. How did we get here? The past is a different country, they did things differently there... And when mistakes are made, they're in the past. The present is always a new country. And I don't miss All My Children or One Life To Live. Will we miss superhero comics?

Super-Poseable Action Figures Assemble!

I'm going to pretend I've never searched on the internet before. When I do that, I find that I have no clue what the Avengers is about. I think there's a follow-up on stuff from previous movies featuring these characters. There's Scarlett Johansson in tight pleather (check, and I do mean checked), The Thor guy (haven't seen that one yet), the Human Torch guy (haven't seen Captain America yet), the 3rd Hulk (well, I guess we really can avoid those two movies with him), Hawkeye (I saw Last of The Mohiccans), Nick Fury (star of many end-credit bonus scenes) and a lot of extra monsters left over from Wrath of The Titans (in this job market, one must not rest on their laurels). No sign of the Wasp, Ant-Man or Vision and Scarlet Witch (funny how an actress named Scarlett doesn't get to play that character) or Wonder Man, Beast (is Kelsey Grammer busy?), Spider-Man (well, there is a secret scene, but it's not much of a secret) and Spider-Woman (fingers crossed - maybe they squeezed Megan Fox in there).

As for Joss Wheddon - cross your fingers. This is really a big comeback for him after a number of mechanical    sci-fi duds (Firefly, Dollhouse). If you are a fan of those, my apologies. Those DVD boxed sets don't come cheap and are not casual spending, so more power to you. You're a real fan. Seriously, the only real forseeable weakness of the Avengers movie is that it could come off very mechanical and have nothing to say beyond, "Hey, we paid-off all those end-credit scenes, didn't we?"

One last observation: while the team line-up may look like a nod to the ebb and flow of the Avengers roster over the years and the plot outline may be a nod to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's  issue #1 of the series,  it reminds me of  Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen:

Mina Murray: Black Widow
Captain Nemo: Iron Man
Doctor Jekyll/Mister Hyde: Bruce Banner/Hulk
Allan Quartermain: Captain America
Invisible Man: Hawkeye  (a stretch? Maybe not...in recent years, Clint Barton had gone into hiding as Ronin after his supposed "death" - plus, they're wiseacres)

Well, we know the heroes will win in the end - because they have a Hulk...and a very relaxing luxury office, with a built-in, self-serve drinking bar.

Pinketty, Panketty, Poof!

It's not unusual to find issues of Wizard: The Comics Magazine in the half-dollar/dollar bins. On two occasions I've found issues that were still in their original bag - the first "special"/annual and an issue from 1998, which was opened, but still had a free chromium trading card that it offered - a picture of She-Hulk and Fairchild (Gen13)drawn by Jason Pearson.

Last week, some collector let go of his/her collection and the bulk of it was tossed into the half-dollar boxes at this particular store in NYC ("No names?" Yes, no names) and there were a bunch of Wizards from the magazine's heyday in the 1990's. The magazine had been around since 1992. The title is a holdover (or hangover) from the original concept: a mascot named Poof the Wizard, who would appear on the cover of every issue. When Gareb Shamus, the magazine's founder, learned that his cronies had suggested that name to have a laugh (Poof is slang for homosexual in the U.K. and Australia), the little cartoon wizard lost his chance at the spotlight, but the title of the magazine and 1st issue cover and copy had already been set and "proofed"! The solution? For the first few years, the cover of Wizard would show a comic book character holding a purple flag or cloth with white stars on it. Anyone picking up a copy expecting fantasy role-playing game tips was no doubt confused.

I recall Warren Ellis once remarked in his old column at Comic Book Resources (a website I am not affiliated with, though we have the same initials and I do lurk around on their message board as Joenosleep) that if you're on the Internet, you don't need to read Wizard. If you do, that means you're picking it up for the price guide. I would like to argue that there was a time when this was not so - between 1998-2001, Wizard was actually witty and informative. This might have to do with the fact that the "collector's bubble" had burst - huge print runs of comics published in the early 90's became worthless clutter as the publishers either blew deadlines or churned out bad comics. There were a lot of comics published by wannabes, could-have-beens and neverweres - all "Buy Me! This book is Hot!" and Wizard and Comic Buyers Guide and Hero Illustrated were the cheerleaders, rallying for these losers. Hot comics were hot not because the stories were good, but because they anticipated an event, or came bagged with a free trading card or had a shiny cover and the demand for this junk was considered hot. Ren and Stimpy #1 came bagged with an "Air Fouler" (air freshener-get it?) of either Ren or Stimpy - instead of packing both, you had to buy two copies - and guess what? Ren was harder to find! People cared about that!

And then it was over. The little guys weren't making money - just filling up their homes. Comic Shops went out of business - except for the worst ones, where the boss owns the building and can afford to run the store as he pleases, or shops that changed their name and appear to be "under new management", until you spot the old owner in the back of the shop.Wizard was last man standing when the bubble went "poof".

Anyway, I picked up Wizard #80, from 1998. The cover had the Hulk fighting Wolverine (one of the silliest recurring brawls in comics - the equivalent of watching a chess match with just two Kings standing on the board). The cover story was a countdown of the nastiest brawlers in superhero comics. Some of the pages had been torn from this section, so I assumed Wolverine was #1, while Azrael, Orion, Hulk made appearances. Azrael...the thinking man's Ghost Rider. Or Spawn. Or Death Scooter...

Oh, and once upon a time... Kevin Smith was cool! That's right! Before he became too fat to fly in a passenger jet, he was just the guy who made "Clerks", "Mallrats", "Chasing Amy" and the soon-to-be-released "Dogma", of which all anyone remembers is that it had Salma Hayek doing a pole dance (she did that a lot in her early movies - hmm, maybe Freida would've won her Oscar gold if it had a pole dance on museum scaffold). He had gotten attention for writing a rejected script for what eventually became Superman Returns, a film which became a cautionary tale in Hollywood for what happens when too many executives become too many cooks. The interview featured in this mag seemed to portray him as being on the rebound, hinting at his upcoming work relaunching the Daredevil comic book with Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti (Who knew this assignment was going to change the next decade of superhero comics? It seems so long ago..) and his work on Green Arrow (which landed with a thud, but it brought Oliver Queen back from old fart heaven, so go figure), and most interesting, but maddeningly - I wish this was something he had done - a film based on The Question.  When asked which characters he would like to direct a film about, he suggested this character and mentioned Dennis O'Neil's comic book series, that Hub City was like Sin City - fascinating. Can you imagine adding the Huntress to that mix? I hope the years of donuts and cannibus haven't wiped this idea out of his brain, because it's very good. He also gives Batman Forever a good poke in the ribs - "..that scene where he's like "I quit, Alfred. Batman no more. I'm like, 'Are you high?' Batman's desire for justice would never allow him to do this." And he plugs his N.J. comic book store - this was actually an ordinary shop; the Jay and Silent Bob's Secret Stash shop came almost a year later.

There were features I liked and missed when they were taken away - "Report Card"/"The Skinny", "We Read It For You", "Good Reading", "Thumbing Off", "Famous Firsts" and, in time for April Fool's Day - "Bad Readin'", "Famous Worsts" "Top 10 Comics" - all dedicated to reviewing comics and letting us know if any of this stuff was good.

When did this renaissance end? Around the same time the X-Men and Spider-Man films began production. Joe Quesada and Bill Jemas were running Marvel and using a lot of gimmicks to plant their feet. DC had Jeph Loeb and Joe Kelly boasting about their Superman comics, Bob Schreck was running the Batman comics with big stunts, like "Bruce Wayne: Murderer". J. Michael Strazincski was writing the adventures of a character that he wanted us to believe was Spider-Man - anyone who disagreed needed to "...get out of their parents basements." Joss Wheddon was getting his pop culture crown fitted. Grant Morrison slipped on the pop culture banana peel and achieved his own nirvana. Alan Moore became a wizard himself. Neil Gaiman and Todd MacFarlane butted heads over old comics. Leggo my ego, it was time to throw down.

And then there was ... boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom ... a giant monolith appeared from out of the sky ... BENDIS! Seriously, on his message board, Brian Michael Bendis would sign his posts like that. Oh, but he was cool at that time, too. Now he just looks like Kristin Davis' hubby on Sex and The City

So, if you perchance see any dusty issues of Wizard lying in a half-dollar bin somewhere, from 1998-2000, please don't laugh - those are actually my cup of tea.

A Comic Book Rehab Carol - Part 6

"Change..."

 A draft made the window blind slam the window with such a clatter, I had awakened  to see what was the matter. I had slept on the couch, fully-clothed and with cap, as if I had not taken a long winters nap.

I opened the window and shouted out into the streets, "What day is this?"

An old woman walking her toy dog replied, "huh?"

Never mind, I thought, returning to my couch. I found the remote, turned on the tv, searched the program guide, and what did I see?

December 23.

I had not missed it! Well, actually, I missed the 21st, which was the day the new books arrived at the comic shop, but that means I had not missed the 28th! There was time! Time to check for holiday sales and new comics, if any! And I will be looking forward to it this time! For this time, I know the spirits will have a surprise in store for me...

You see, that night I spent was not a mere fool's errand - I had made the universe of comics and the comic book marketplace a BETTER place. The spirits took stock of the error in their ways and change would trickle down from within.

And then they will come back. Not today right away, but in the days, months and years ahead, a new joy will be found in the now-happy medium, one built on solid entertainment, honesty, and care.

And Big Boobs, of course.

And as I joined the grinning old man wearing enormous sunglasses in riding with him in his Ferrari to enjoy the fine Burbank sunset that day, we shouted,

"Merry Christmas to all! Excelsior everyone!"


THE END 

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...