Blog 2.0

Previously, Commando Cody suggested that Lightning Lad, of the Legion of Super-Heroes, violated the Legion code against killing.   In Adventure Comics # 304 (Jan., 1963), the Legionnaire destroyed the space-cruiser piloted by the interplanetary criminal Zaryan the Conqueror.  Nothing in that sequence indicated that Zaryan had been able to escape the destruction of his spacecraft.

The issue raised by Commando Cody’s charge is . . . why did the Legion of Super-Heroes subsequently fail to take procedural action against Lightning Lad for causing Zaryan’s death---a direct violation of the Legion Code?

In the last session, I reviewed the information regarding the accused, the victim, and the sole witness to the incident, the Legionnaire known as Saturn Girl.  I also reviewed the known facts of the incident.

My one-man board of review now reconvenes to examine the factors which may have had a bearing on the Legion’s failure to prosecute Lightning Lad for his apparent violation.

RESPONSE TO THE INCIDENT.

In the immediate aftermath of Adventure Comics # 304, it’s clear as to why the Legion did not initiate procedural action against Lightning Lad.  He was killed in the same action that caused Zaryan’s death.  Lightning Lad’s actions, however rash, prevented the major death and destruction that the rogue attack would have inflicted on the Earth.  Any indictment of Lightning Lad would have been a mere formality, pointlessly causing disproportionate injury to the slain Legionnaire’s legacy.

In other words, why kick mud on a dead hero?

However, in the ensuing months, certain events occurred which should have forced the Legion to reëxamine the question of Lightning Lad’s violation of the Legion Code.

REPORTED SIGHTINGS.

The final panel of “The Stolen Super-Powers” carried a note to the readers, suggesting that Lightning Lad might one day return.  At the time, there was no way to determine if this was a foreshadowing of actual events to come, or if it was simply a narrative hook to keep fans interested in the series

There’s no question that the memory of the fallen Legionnaire was kept alive for in the scripts for the upcoming months.  The next few stories contained some reference to Lightning Lad’s noble sacrifice.  The otherwise joyful event of Mon-El’s permanent release from the Phantom Zone, in Adventure Comics # 305 (Feb., 1963), was book-ended by grieving Legionnaires visiting the shrine to their dead comrade.

But a mere three issues later brought the most startling remembrance of Lightning Lad, yet.

“The Return of Lightning Lad” opens with an honour guard of Legionnaires draping the Legion’s new official flag over his transparent coffin.  During the solemn ceremony, Bouncing Boy is stunned to see Lightning Lad’s arm twitch.  Cosmic Boy writes it off as a trick of the mind caused by their plump buddy’s deep grief.

Fortunately for B.B., any plans to schedule him for a mental competency hearing are scratched when the other Legionnaires see the “body” move, as well.  They open the casket and haul out a clearly alive Lightning Lad.  Anyway, he looks and sounds like Lightning Lad, but he claims to be unable to remember anything after he was hit by Zaryan’s freeze-ray.

His fellow Legionnaires accept that, but ever the cynic, Cosmic Boy pulls Sun Boy aside and draws a somewhat questionable inference.  Cos suggests that if Lightning Lad’s memory has been impaired, then “his super-power may also have been affected by his death-like experience!  He may have lost his power!”

If he no longer possesses a super-power, Lightning Lad cannot remain in the Legion.  He must be expelled.  Sun Boy is aghast at the idea.  It’s unfair to welcome Lightning Lad back to the land of the living and then, in the next moment, tell him he’s out of the club.  Nevertheless, Cosmic Boy holds firm.

Of interest, with regard to this board of review, is the fact that Cosmic Boy and, at least, some of the other Legionnaires have no problem with following Legion procedure regarding membership qualifications.  Even to the point of coldness---if Lightning Lad has lost his super-power, then he’s out!  Yet, there is no discussion of his apparent violation of the Legion Code by causing Zaryan’s death.

It may have been that the Legionnaires just hadn’t gotten around to that one, yet.  Still, Cosmic Boy was pretty quick on the trigger in raising the matter of Lightning Lad’s possible expulsion.  Saturn Girl was absent for this story; maybe Cos was waiting for her to return, so that she, as the Legion’s leader, could initiate the official charges.

Instead of taking the immediately obvious tack and having Lightning Lad demonstrate his power right then and there, Cosmic Boy and Sun Boy decide to take their revived buddy along on the next few Legion missions and test his power secretly.

Thus begins a coy game of “Does He or Doesn’t He?”---both for the Legionnaires within the fictional tale and for the fans reading it.  Sun Boy becomes convinced that, if called upon to do so, his back-from-the-dead buddy will not be able to cast lightning.  So he decides to cover for Lightning Lad.  Every time L.L. has to use his power, Sun Boy secretly manipulates his own control of light and heat to make it look like their old pal is just as mighty as ever.

The story depicts the action in such a way that the reader cannot be sure if Lightning Lad really is firing off bolts of super-lightning, or if Sun Boy’s machinations are only making it seem so.  The Legionnaires, especially Cosmic Boy, are also sceptical.

In the climax to the adventure, though, to the surprise of everyone, Lightning Lad is able to unleash a barrage of electricity to defeat the villain of the piece!

Sun Boy is particularly astonished.  You see, the reason he was so certain that Lightning Lad was powerless was he had deduced that Lightning Lad wasn’t Lightning Lad, at all!  From various clues, Sun Boy realised that it was Garth Ranzz’s twin sister, Ayla, in disguise.  And, naturally, Sun Boy assumed that Ayla did not have her brother’s super-power.

It all comes out in the last-page wash.  We learn that when Garth Ranzz’s space-flyer was forced to land on Korbal, his sister was with him, and she was caught in the same blast of energies discharged by the lightning-beasts as her brother was.  Both of them had acquired the power to cast lightning.

Ayla, though, had kept her power a secret.  However, after her brother’s death, she kidnapped his body, disguised herself as Lightning Lad, and took his place in the casket, pretending to “come to life.”  In that way, she intended to carry on his work.

In a way, she would.  In her own sex and costume, Ayla Ranzz is inducted into the Legion, on her own merit, as Lightning Lass.

REBUTTAL TESTIMONY.

With the addition of Lightning Lass to the roster, the gloom of her brother’s shadow lifted off the next few Legion stories.  Some fans assumed this was the development hinted at in the final panel of “The Stolen Super-Powers”.  Lightning Lad would, indeed, remain dead; yet, he would “return”, as well, in the character of his sister, Lightning Lass.

Other readers were a lot sharper than that.  At least three of them, we know for sure---Todd Walters, of Ithaca, New York and Steven J. Gerstein, of New Rochelle, New York and Caroline Dove, of Wildwood, Nebraska.

Their letters all appeared in the Smallville Mailsack from Adventure Comics # 311 (Aug., 1963).

Todd wrote:

In issue No. 155 of SUPERMAN, in the story entitled “The Downfall of Superman” . . . you also had Samson and Hercules in the same adventure.  At the conclusion of this story you revealed that Hercules was COSMIC MAN (Cosmic Boy grown to an adult) and Samson was LIGHTNING MAN (Lightning Lad grown up)!  Now, if Lightning Lad is dead, how could there ever have been a LIGHTNING MAN?  Am I correct in assuming, therefore, that Lightning Lad’s death will not be permanent?

Steven said:

In ACTION COMICS No. 289, in the story “Superman’s Super-Courtship”, Supergirl and Superman traveled into the far future and discovered that SATURN WOMAN (Saturn Girl, grown up) was married to LIGHTNING MAN (Lightning Lad as an adult).  Yet, in ADVENTURE No. 304, Lightning Lad died to save Saturn Girl.  So the only possible way for Lightning Lad to marry Saturn Girl is for him to be brought back from the dead.

And Caroline really didn’t pull any punches:

Who are you kidding?  You’ve got all of America’s comic book fans crying their eyes out, grieving at Lightning Lad’s death, except that you and I know that he never really kicked the bucket.  I call the attention of your readers to the story “The Legion of Super-Villains”, in SUPERMAN No. 147, which shows LIGHTNING MAN in one of the sequences.  Since he is our deceased friend, Lightning Lad, grown up, obviously he will be brought back to life.  Right?

If you asked Superman editor Mort Weisinger, he knew all along that he wasn’t pulling any wool over the keen eyes of Legion fans.  And while Mort was known to equivocate from time to time, I think he genuinely did respect the readers’ savvy in this instance.  He responded:

Right!  Ever since we published the story which told how Lightning Lad died, we received hundreds of letters similar to the proceeding from sophisticated readers who guessed that Lightning Lad’s demise would only be temporary.  We did not print any of these letters so that his revival could come as a surprise bombshell. 

Weisinger goes on to explain that the actual shocker wasn’t in the depicted death of Lightning Lad, but rather in the grim and incredible fashion in which he is restored to life---a resurrection which can only take place at the cost of another Legionnaire’s life!

“. . . We defy you to guess which member volunteers to die in his place!” he concludes.

Since the testimony in this session ran overlong, this board hereby adjourns until the next court date, when it will review the final evidence and submit its conclusions.

Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

Clinical psychologist 'examines' Bruce Wayne in new book

Is Batman crazy?

That’s the central issue in a new book by clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, textbook writer, book author, lecturer and certified hypnotist Robin S. Rosenberg, PhD. What’s the Matter with Batman? An Unauthorized Look Under the Mask of the Caped Crusader applies professional criteria to the questions that have always swirled around the sanity of a man whose response to tragedy has been to dress up like a flying rodent.

And Rosenberg is precisely the person best suited to do it. In addition to the curricula vitae listed above, she is also series editor of the “Superheroes” line at Oxford University Press, and editor of the anthologies The Psychology of Superheroes and The Psychology of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

She is also a major Bat-fan, given that she is conversational with terms like “the Dick Grayson era” of Robin, and can explain in depth the differences between Batman’s 1939 origin in Detective Comics #33 vs. his origin in the 2005 film Batman Begins.

So, back to the book: Is Batman crazy?

Well, first, Rosenberg was quick to tell me in a phone interview that psychologists “don’t actually use the term ‘crazy,’” preferring phrases like “diagnosable disorder.” (I assume “nutso,” “bonkers” and “taking the cray-cray train to Koo-Koo Town” are equally off limits, but was afraid to ask.)

Secondly, we have to establish which Batman we’re talking about. There have been a lot of versions of Batman, from Adam West’s campy TV turn to Frank Miller’s aging, ultra-violent Dark Knight Returns. It turns out Rosenberg examines more than one version of Batman at once.

“I focus on an amalgam,” she says. “Basically what I was trying to do was find, in any version, enough symptoms of various disorders.”

Those disorders include Dissociative Identity Disorder, clinical depression, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder and Antisocial Personality Disorder. She also discusses Batman’s guilt, workaholism and occasional poor judgment (hint: Robins).

So is Batman crazy? Well, you’ve probably figured out by now that I’m not going to spoil the book by telling you what Rosenberg concludes. Instead, I’ll regale you with a few of Rosenberg’s Bat-impressions from our interview:

Is Batman messianic, thinking he is so necessary for Gotham? 

“In the film Batman Begins," Rosenberg said, “Gotham City … is basically a mess, and the Gotham police [have] not been able to fix it. So if [Bruce Wayne] can fix it, then he’s justified in his messianic beliefs. … it’s an accurate self-assessment.”

Isn’t his anger a problem?

“Anger can be a very powerful motivator,” she said. “Anger in and of itself isn’t a bad thing. When people who end up becoming doctors or cancer researchers have been motivated because that they were angry that a loved one died of cancer, does that make anger bad? No. … It’s OK to be angry. It’s really important being in control of it … to make it work for you, versus working against you.”

In Batman Begins, it’s implied the Bat-mask is a totem of sorts. Is it?

“I think partly it just depends on the wearer,” Rosenberg said. “[Bruce Wayne] chose the bat, it’s not simply a mask that he’s putting on. It’s a meaningful mask, so it may be when he puts it on there is a totemic-like aspect wishing to imbue himself certain bat-like characteristics. I mean, if he were wearing a princess mask, he might feel a little differently!”

What’s your opinion of the Christopher Nolan films, from a professional psychologist’s perspective?

“Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer … are really good lay psychologists. In Batman Begins … I thought it was absolutely brilliant to have Bruce Wayne as a young child be an anxious and fearful kid, temperamentally. We know a lot about anxious and fearful temperament and here … he fell into a cave of bats and was traumatized by that, and then he goes to the opera [which] has people dressed as bats going up the walls of the stage, and he has a panic attack. And having that … was absolutely brilliant, because that’s the part about his guilt. … He understands that if he hadn’t had the panic attack his parents wouldn’t have ended up in the alley with Joe Chill.

“And they had him master his fear by the technique called exposure, where you expose yourself to what you’re afraid of in a controlled way. And that’s the totem of him taking on the bat as his animal costume. It added a whole other veneer to the Batman mythos, the meaning of his becoming Batman. I thought that was absolutely psychologically brilliant.”

Finally, I had to ask her about a recent Playboy interview, where long-time Bat-writer Grant Morrison made the startling claim that “gayness is built into Batman. I’m not using gay in the pejorative sense, but Batman is very, very gay. There’s just no denying it. Obviously as a fictional character he’s intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay.”

I’m not sure exactly what Morrison meant by that, since he also wrote Batman as a heterosexual. And my own opinion is that when people see gay dog whistles in Batman comics it says more about them than it does Batman, whose adventures were originally aimed at pre-adolescents.

As it happens, Rosenberg seems to agree with me. She dismissed the homosexual charge in her book, saying “writers of Batman stories have stated they wrote Wayne as a heterosexual character.” So what did she make of Morrison’s remarks?

“Here’s the great thing about superheroes or fictional characters in general,” she said. “They’re like Rorschach ink blots. There’s a form to the inkblot, but you infuse a meaning into it. … People bring their own perspectives to the characters, and they fill in the blanks, if you will. Like with comic panels, we fill in what happens from one panel to another. We fill in the back story or the elements of the character that aren’t provided for us. So someone who wants to see certain elements, will see those elements. And there’s not a way to refute it, because that whole point is that the information isn’t there. You’re … filling in the blanks of a structure. I think even Grant Morrison would say that, because from the lens that he is wearing that is what he sees in the blank spots. It’s what he brings [to the table]. You and I don’t see that, we see something else, because of what we bring. … That’s one of the neat things about humans, right? We’re all different!”

And some of us are crazy. But is Batman? Buy the book, and find out. And if you have any suggestions for Bat-stories that can add to the discussion, send them to Rosenberg, and she’ll include them in a second edition.

Art

1. What's the Matter with Batman? examines the Dark Knight's mental state. Copyright 2012 Robin S. Rosenberg

2.  CHRISTIAN BALE stars as Bruce Wayne in Warner Bros. Pictures' and Legendary Pictures' action thriller "THE DARK KNIGHT RISES," a Warner Bros. Pictures release. TM & © DC Comics. Photo by Ron Phillips 

Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics@aol.com. For the full interview, see Comics Buyer's Guide #1694-95.

[Part of our Grant Morrison Reading Project]

Welcome to the second part of my week-by-week look at DC One Million, the JLA mega-crossover from September 1998.  Part 1 can be found here.  Let's jump straight into the Morrison-penned 2nd issue of the central mini-series.

DC One Million #2

There’s a subtext that the future is almost lost thanks to the JLA’s hubris in accepting the honours the 853^rd Century wants to bestow on them. I was surprised, or maybe more like disappointed, when I first read DC One Million, that Batman didn’t want to visit the 853^rd Century to be honoured along with his JLA team-mates. I’ve seen writers argue that comics should give the readers what they need, not what they want, and that’s true here. Batman was actually right. Their duty was to stay where they were needed. The visit to the 853^rd century as proposed seems very short, but it is still too long to be away from their stations, and too ‘far away’ to risk not coming back again.

Of course, if they all declined, there would be no story, but at least we have one good man – possibly the best of them – showing us what the truly responsible attitude would be, and how heroes are often defined by the sacrifices they make.

The Atom refers to how the trip to the future was actually a huge risk that they are now paying for, when he says they need Superman and the Green Lantern and the JLA to cope with the current crisis facing the Earth. Going forward from this, the remaining JLA concern themselves with getting their teammates back from the future, as the first step in addressing the seemingly insurmountable twin problems of the Hourman Virus and Vandal Savage’s bid for world supremacy.

In the Lunar Watchtower, the ragtag remnant of the League, Steel, Zauriel, Huntress, Plastic Man and Big Barda, debate whether or not to try to get to Earth immediately or develop a strategy in the Watchtower. They realise that it’s up to them to save the Earth. They are confused as they aren’t sure what elements of the crisis are caused by Vandal Savage, and what by the Hourman virus.

(Regarding the fog of war, future speedster John Fox also assumes that his time-travel gauntlets were stolen recently as part of Solaris’ plan, but when we get around to reading Chronos 1,000,000, we’ll find out different...)

The Atom hooks up with Oracle and shrinks down to study the Hourman Virus in her bloodstream.

“I don’t usually get this far on a first date”, he quips.

Back in the ‘ground zero’ of Montevideo, some 20th Century superheroes have started fighting with Justice Legion A.  Morrison uses minor ‘science-based’ heroes Firestorm and Ray to make a few points about how many contemporary writers were missing opportunities to make their comics more entertaining and even educational, and less dependent on repetitive punch-em-ups.

It takes J’onn to remind everyone that at the site of a tragedy such as this, they have more dignified and urgent things to be doing than conducting the standard ‘heroes meet and fight’ manoeuvres.

Morrison is having his cake and eating it here, as he’s just had them do just that!

J’onn has an important central role to play in 1998, which is counterpointed by how marginal he seems to those celebrating the JLA in the 853^rd Century. There is some pathos in how both he and Green Lantern are sidelined by that far-future time, especially considering how much we discover that J’onn will sacrifice for the people of Earth in the years between.

The Martian Manhunter was obviously highly regarded by the creators during Morrison’s JLA period, but this is perhaps the storyline where they managed to put that respect and affection into the story, and we see why they talked him up so much in the interviews as the moral centre and heart of the team.

The sense of events spiralling out of control on a grand scale is conveyed with scenes of the military and the President discussing the situation, followed by a scene at Vanishing Point where some 90s Linear Men start to panic about how things are going crazy.

General Eiling mentions the Ultramarines he has on standby in the first scene and the Linear Men refer to Gog’s cross-time killings of Superman in Faces of Evil: Gog and indeed they also refer to The Kingdom, the series to which Gogwas apparently a prequel. Just when everything is getting chaotic might seem like a strange point to signpost upcoming storylines, but it does add to the feeling of bedlam.

Reading these pointers to upcoming storylines featuring General “Shaggy Man” Eiling, the Ultramarines, and the Kingdom, they combine to form a reassuring message that we are in the hands of creators who have worked things through, and that this story, complex as it is, is being built as part of an even grander well-conceived architecture stretching over several years. This is very different to the seat of the pants, chopping and changing that has become DC's modus operandi in recent years. That much, at least was better then...

This is the moment that Vandal Savage reveals his hand. We find that Vandal has started putting the members of the Titans group we saw last issue into the Rocket Red warsuits and firing them as remote-controlled nuclear bombs. In fact, the suit that exploded in Montevideo contained Garth/Aqualad/whatever he was called at this juncture. As in sieges and wars of medieval times, Vandal is using the lives of people beloved of his enemies as psychological warfare. Morrison isn’t just using Vandal as a bad man who has been around a long time, but working the experiences, attitudes and tactics that such a man would have acquired during his life into his scenes.

This is top-flight superheroic action-adventure.

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The Batman in the Future strand

“This is so far from my world. More than years. More than miles”

Batman 1,000,000 ‘Peril Within the Prison Planet’ Moench and Guichet/Buscema

Despite declining the honour of being feted in the far future, Batman was ambushed by his 853^rd Century counterpart and his ‘soul’ sent forward to inhabit a body in the 853^rd Century. The members of Justice Legion A are not without presumptuous hubris themselves.

As one of the tie-ins showing the adventures of ‘our’ JLA headliners in the year 852,571, this one has pretty much the same plot as the others. The hero is first talked through their ‘challenge’, then manages to get halfway through it when everything goes crazy and their lives are seriously endangered. Then they overcome the obstacles and realise at the end of the comic that they have to reach the Justice Legion A HQ on Jupiter to hook up with their teammates and save the day.

This Batman comic is much the same. It follows a very linear A to B plot as Batman makes his way through the futuristic versions of his rogues gallery imprisoned on Pluto to reach the Batcave where he can access a Boom-suit to take him to Jupiter. The main difference is that his journey isn’t over yet. The Bat-family suite of titles in 1998 was quite extensive and they have been divided up into two strands. One group of Batbooks follow Bruce’s attempts to reach Jupiter in the 853^rd Century, whereas the other follows the adventures of his Justice Legion A counterpart in the 20^th Century.

Perhaps not a lot happens in this comic, but there is plenty of dialogue and the world of Batman 1m is fleshed out well, with plenty of texture added to the background of Morrison’s story. Morrison has developed the idea of Batman representing Hades, God of the Underworld in his modern pantheon by casting the future Batman as the sole jailor of the cold, dark prison planet Pluto. The cleverest twist on the Batman mythos that Morrison has added is the relationship of Robin the Toy Wonder to his Batman.

There’s feeling and sadness and comicbook fun in this scenario. Only in a superhero comic could an adult scarred by such a severe trauma be accompanied on their adventures by something with the persona of their own childhood, pre-traumatised self. Writers of heavy ‘literature’ would struggle to show how the young victim never leaves the adult survivor, but in comicbooks, both personalities can just drive around in a crazy-cool flying car, having a conversation together.

Viewed from a distance, the plotting of the whole saga is quite careful and controlled. Alan Grant’s script for Shadow of the Bat, in Week One, showed us the origin of Batman 1m intercut with his adventures in 1998. It worked very well as a story-based insight into his psyche and what had made him what he is. However, it says nothing about the bittersweet ‘saving grace’ that Batman 1m was granted, in being accompanied by a robot with the persona of his innocent, younger self programmed into it. The revelations are being measured out week by week. The hand of a single guiding architect on all of the tie-ins becomes more and more evident as we go through this event.

Morrison’s notes are all very well. The origins of Batman 1m and his Toy Wonder add up to a very clever twist on the Batman myth, which also comments tellingly on the whole mythos. The childhood persona of Batman wouldn’t be as well used in a story until Neil Gaiman’s Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader in 2009. Whatever about how great these concepts are, Alan Grant and Doug Moench (and as we shall see, Chuck Dixon), each do excellent work in translating those notes into stories. Alan Grant’s is a more self-contained revenge tale. As is clear from so many of his Judge Dredd stories, Grant would seem to be a big fan of Spaghetti Westerns, and his Batman 1m story is very like a revenge western in that mode. Moench’s linear narrative is less self-contained, but is a fun segment of Bruce’s journey as we accompany him on one portion of his long quest to get off Pluto.

‘Our’ Batman in the 853^rd Century can be followed in Catwoman 1,000,000 and then Robin 1,000,000, before Bruce finally gets to Justice Legion A HQ in DC One Million#3 (in week 4).

Catwoman 1,000,000 Devin Grayson and Jim Ballent (week 4)

I was looking forward to reading this comic as I find Devin Grayson’s personal story of how she became a DC writer a fascinating one, and I was hoping for an opportunity to talk about her work through this DC One Million tie-in. Alas, her input here seems to be quite minimal as she only seems to have supplied the dialogue after Ballent had plotted and drawn the comic, Marvel style. Even then her work is twice removed, as Ballent would have been working from Morrison’s plot notes in the first place.

As for Ballent, I have heard his name mentioned in despatches but my knowledge of his work doesn't extend past his fondness for drawing bowling-ball breasted women. Catwoman 1m’s physique doesn’t diverge from his usual depiction of the female form.

Of course, an artist of Ballent’s school has to be up to the difficult (but, it seems, necessary) task of posing the female body so that her boobs and her butt are both on display. In Catwoman1,000,000, however, Ballent goes the extra mile for Morrison’s project and gives us a single frame where the same woman is showing T&A in 3 of the 4 poses in the frame. You go, Jim!

Catwoman 1m has to get through the computer defences to allow Batman access to the Boom Suit which will take him to Justice Legion A’s HQ on Jupiter. This being an age when information is the most valuable currency, Batman 1m’s burglar foe is a hacker who can break into any programme and steal data.

The linear plot involves the old trope where what we know of as programming firewalls and virus protection are manifested as robots and sealed doors that Catwoman has to get past. Morrison would return to this story set-up with issue 8 of Batman Inc (Vol 1) where Oracle is the master hacker.

What’s amusing is that the terminology for 853^rd Century programming and hacking dated after just 15 years never mind 83,000 years later, with lines like the following - 

‘As quiet as a headnet chatroom lobby’

‘Password accepted. Next screen’

‘a 404 wasteland’

One of Grayson’s non-superhero projects was a mini-series called ‘User’, about a young woman who became obsessed with a computer role-playing fantasy life, so perhaps Grayson was a good choice to write the computer hacker version of Catwoman.  Grayson and Mark Waid were an item around this time, so perhaps Morrison knew a little about her, and plotted this issue towards her interests to some extent.

Robin 1,000,000 (week 4) Chuck Dixon, Staz Johnson and Stan Woch.

This is the final chapter of the ‘Bruce Wayne in the 853^rdCentury’ strand, before he joins his teammates for the rest of the adventure.

Like the others the plot simply involves Batman getting a little closer to the means for getting off Pluto and on his way to Jupiter, the headquarters of Justice Legion A, and in this one he eventually makes it off the planet.

This is a fine little comic. There are some nice lines in it, such as the “More than years. More than miles” realisation which occurs to Bruce here. Batman is also told that “The light of billions more stars reach us than in your day” in a surprising little revelation when he leaves Pluto’s solid ice atmosphere.  Points like this make the science fiction seem more real, and this particular point highlights the themes of optimism and hope that run through the whole crossover.

Doug Moench, Alan Grant and Chuck Dixon are all to be praised how they manage to handle the fresh new concepts while still fitting them into well-crafted stories, full of meaningful character moments. As we shall see in the Legionnaires / Legion of Superheroes issues, a bunch of cool and weird Morrison ideas thrown into a comic do not always a great story make, if you don’t have something in there that engages the heart too.

Robin 1,000,000 is an especially good spotlight on the title character. The Toy Wonder might be Morrison’s single cleverest idea in the whole series. It really illuminates the relationship between Batman and Robin, and cleverly makes what is just figurative – that Robin is the younger, innocent form of Batman - into something that is literally real, and dramatised in front of us.

The little guy makes the ultimate sacrifice for Batman here and gets a rather heart-tugging death scene.

“Dying? Diagnostics gone to black -- Time for a new model --“

“-- Going now -- Back to the headnet.. “

Awww!  Poor little guy!

(I will have more to say on Robin faith in a net-enabled eternal life in my next installment.)

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The Rest of Week 2

(I'll be looking at Man of Steel, Starman, Green Arrow and Legionnaires in future posts.)

Impulse 1,000,000 William Messner – Loebs & Craig Rousseau

"Desperate Times -- A Million"

In this comic, John Fox, the Flash of the Future, teams up with Impulse to stop the Rocket Red suit manned by Jessie Quick from hitting its target.

The comic hits the right plot beats, and the time spent with the characters is pleasant enough, probably helped by the fact that we are in the hands of the regular creative team of the time, and Waid had done such good work establishing the great Flash family set-up and supporting cast which Impulse benefits from.

Reading it as part of a complete readthrough of DC One Million, however, much of the content of this comic is redundant. There is a lot of space given over to explaining the back-story to this issue – essentially all the important plot elements of DC One Million of the first two weeks. Of course, this is to bring regular readers of Impulse, who haven’t bought into the important issues of the crossover up to –ahem – speed. All the background info does highlight what a strange beast DC One Millionis.

Morrison would go on to sell Seven Soldiers of Victory as a modular story that could be read in a number of ways. A reader could follow a particular character or characters as 4-issue arcs, or they could read the issues ‘chronologically’ so that the issues starring the seperate characters are interspliced with each other.

The fact is, however, that Seven Soldiers of Victory adds up to a self-contained story, that sooner or later a reader has to read as a single work for it to all add up and make sense. DC One Million, however, is a truly modular story, that was designed to be enjoyed whether the reader read every issue, or just a handful of them. Possibly a reader might only read Impulse, and still get their DC One Million story’. At the other end of the scale however, there must have been very few readers who bought all the issues of the crossover. It would have cost an outlay of around US$80 at 1998 prices, and involved the reader taking a punt on a huge array of creative teams and comic series that they would already have an opinion on.

(As for seeing a complete 'Absolute' edition of it now, I'd imagine that the cheif obstacle is that the permissions and royalty rates for each and every creative team involved would have to be negotiated, and perhaps the lawyers and administrative costs of that are prohibitive.)

Whereas SSoV was meant to be collected eventually as an artistically complete ‘whole’, DC One Million looks meant to be experienced differently by each and every reader who buys into some or all of it. As many of the issues were, like Impulse 1,000,000, presented as another monthly adventure in a longer series, then the crossover opens out at various points to include whole series, as with Impulse and Starman.

For myself, I only bought the Morrison-penned issues and a handful of other comics that I’d been buying anyway. What I read then was a hyper-compressed JLA story that affected me in two notable ways. First it gave me the same thrill that superhero comics gave me when I was 10, which is quite an achievement. Secondly, it was one of a handful of reading experiences around the late 90s that made me realise that Superman is actually a hugely interesting and worthwhile character with more to his personality and his potential, than just the big dumb boy-scout that The Dark Knight Returnshad painted him as.

Reading DC One Million now (and rereading it over and over for these blog posts), it is a huge, baggy epic that contains so many different storytelling styles and tones, and curious side stories. I also see more clearly the single unifying hand behind it all in some very complex plotting that hit its beats week on week, to tell one long complex story that in one month ‘contained’ the entire DCU of its time.

The bagginess, profusion of styles and untidiness is very Morrison, as is the deceptively well-hidden deeper structure and the ‘fractal’ effect of containing everything about the DCU, including just about all its creative staff, in one story told over one month’s output.

Azrael 1,000,000 Denny O’Neill/Vincent Giarrano

I mentioned last week that this was one of the worst, most insulting comics that I’ve ever read. Perhaps I shouldn’t take it so seriously. It’s clear that the rightly esteemed and venerable Denny O’Neill didn’t take it his contribution to DC One Million at all seriously.

We begin with the reconvened Order of St Dumas bestowing a powerful costume and wings on a blonde, long-haired muscle-brain type much beloved of 90s fanboys. The comedy turns on how stupid this champion of justice turns out to be, but that leaves us wondering how he was picked for the role in the first place.

I guess O’Neill is having fun with what certain Hollywood scriptwriters found to be the central comedic thrust of the Green Lantern mythos. If you give all that power to some guy, what happens if he turns out to be a klutz?

Thus Azrael 1m travels through space and time, trailing chaos and needless death in his wake. At one point he almost gets the original Azrael killed by Two-Face, and then kills a Frixit, which a group of Thanagarian Hawkmen were watching over until it wakes up from its centuries-long sleep. Usually the Frixit goes on a cosmic destruction spree, but just sometimes, if it happens to be a Bodlean Frixit, its awakening hastens an age of enlightenment and harmony. Guess which one Azrael discovers this one was after he kills it?

Finally he gets a lesson on the nature of evil from his Mentor Sister Dumas, whose cod-profundity betrays O’Neill’s hippy Sixties roots.

The more I read this stupid comic about a stupid lunkhead the more it makes me smile. Sometimes comics are just dumb, preposterous stuff that passes 10 minutes of your time.

Denny O’Neill wrote some of the most interesting and ambitious comics DC had produced in the previous few decades, and his stewardship of the Batman titles in the Eighties was assured and consistent, even if some of the directions they took might be frowned on in hindsight.

As O’Neill was such a senior DC figure, it’s hard not to see this Azrael 1,000,000 as a thumbing of the nose at Morrison’s whole project. It just feels so tossed off and dismissive of what DC One Million was about. This sense that I get of O'Neill's lack of engagement, verging on contempt for the project, is all the stranger when we consider that O'Neill was the senior editor of the whole Bat-line at this time and the other Batman comics lock into the overall story pretty well.  Thematically, Azrael 1,000,000 rips right through the central thesis of the whole project: that we can trust people endowed with great power to act for the greater good, and with a degree of responsibility and restraint commensurate with their power.  Admittedly real-life would seem to indicate that those with power tend to be motivated by the heedless self-absorption shown by Azrael here, but still...

I’m only guessing that O’Neill diverged from Morrison’s plot (and probably ignored it completely) to write this comic. It’s hard to imagine Morrison pegging O’Neill, the regular writer of Azrael, from the outset, as the guy to write a comedy issue. It’s a pity O’Neill didn’t give it his best shot, as some great creators were able to harness Morrison’s far-out ideas to their own strengths to put some very fine comics on the shelves in September 1998.

***************************************

That's it for Part Two.  Thanks for reading along.  Hope you can join us for Week 3, where the epic events on Earth, 1998 head towards a resolution.

Honorable Mentions:

Angel: Revelations, 2008: I missed this mini-series when it first came out. I was intrigued by the stylish Adam Pollina art but I was skeptical about an Angel origin story. My first impression was wrong. Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa pens a compelling tale of Angel’s prep school days before he becomes an X-Man. Angel is an intriguing character. He’s the rich kid who has every excuse in the world to be a snob. But he has a good heart and soon finds himself siding with outcasts against the people who should be his peers. The X-Men have often served as a metaphor for teenage angst- the feeling that you don’t really belong in this world and Aguirre-Sacasa does a great job of bringing that to the fore. And, yes, the stylish Adam Pollina art is a lot of fun, though it may not work for everyone.

Dark X-Men: The Beginning, 2009: I’m not a fan of the Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men crossover Utopia. For one thing, I didn’t like the long-lasting story in which Norman Osborn was in charge of American superhero affairs. For another thing, I didn’t like the idea of having the X-Men retreat from their new headquarters on the Marin Headlands to an island off the U.S. coast. It hadn’t been that long since they’d destroyed Cable’s own island of Providence. Plus, it further isolated them from both humanity and Xavier’s dream of peaceful coexistence. Yet, despite my antipathy for the general concept, the crossover yielded a couple of surprisingly good stories. The first comes in this prequel anthology, Dark X-Men: The Beginning. It’s a very simple premise. Norman Osborn recruits a new team of X-Men to help him against the real thing. In each story, Osborn approaches a different character- Mimic, Dark Beast, Cloak & Dagger, etc.- and offers them a place on the team. I admired the way Osborn used a different approach for each character. He tried bribes, coercion, threats and promises. Plus, there was a great story at the end with Aurora called “The One that Got Away.” This mini-series is an excellent example of a putting-the-team-together tale and I admire the craftsmanship even though it’s part of an otherwise unlikable scenario.

Utopia Tie-In, X-Men Legacy 226-227, 2009: This is the other Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men story. However, this particular piece took place on the periphery of the main crossover. Rogue and Gambit have recently intervened in a conflict between Professor Xavier and Danger and now they’re returning to the X-Men. Unfortunately, they arrive right in the middle of a big fight with Norman Osborn’s Dark Avengers. The two heroes quickly focus on protecting the students, such as Indra and Trance. That leads them into conflict with the Dark Avengers and each issue features a classic fight- first Rogue vs. the current Ms. Marvel (actually Moonstone in disguise), then Rogue vs. Ares. Mike Carey does a great job of showcasing Rogue’s powers. He also provides a strong emotional hook. Fighting someone in a Ms. Marvel costume reminds Rogue of her old days as a super-villain. This is just a great fight with a strong premise- save the kids from the bad guys.

Pixie Strikes Back, 2010: Pixie has been one of my favorite characters since she starred in the 2008 Free Comic Book Day one-shot. Kathryn Immonen and Sara Pichelli bring us a fun and inventive mini-series that’s more of a gal-pal tale than it is a solo story. Pixie is joined by fellow teenagers Armor, Blindfold, Mercury and X-23. They’re caught in some sort of dreamscape where they’re normal high school kids, albeit in a high school populated with demons. Anole and Rockslide discover that the girls are missing and call the X-Men in to help. Meanwhile, Pixie’s mom launches a rescue of her own with the Mastermind sisters as allies. There are some fun mind twists as the characters try to figure out what is real and what is not. There are some surprising revelations as Pixie learns about her origins, her connection to this demon dimension and the Masterminds. Yet, best of all, there are some great character moments between the teenage “besties.”

To Serve & Protect, X-Men 7-10, 2011: I didn’t realize it at first but the new X-Men series was designed as an X-Men team-up title. This second tale features a classic team-up with none other than Spider-Man. The X-Men discover a rash of disappearances in New York City and decide to investigate. Spider-Man is working the case as well and they decide to join forces. The initial clues point to the Lizard but there’s a good twist halfway through the story in which we learn that the Dark Beast has actually imprisoned the Lizard as well. Author Victor Gischler plays with timeless X-Men themes like social ostracism and teenage angst. And he does a great job with the wordplay between Spidey and the X-Men. The good-natured insults between Spidey and Wolverine are especially fun and show how those two characters have really meshed since joining the Avengers together. Of course, the real highlight is the Chris Bachalo art. Bachalo is a classic X-Men artist who had recently drawn a Spidey-Wolverine team-up and a Lizard story for Amazing Spider-Man. This story, with its wacky setting and fun set-up is right in Bachalo’s wheelhouse.

You might think I’ve written about every good X-Men story from the past four years. You’d be wrong. I have a few more honorable mentions to go in the last installment of this series. Join me again (please!) for one more (I promise!).

The Best X-Men Stories of the Past 4 Years Part I

The Best X-Men Stories of the Past 4 Years Part I

WEEK THREE

BATMAN #1

Written by SCOTT SNYDER

Art by GREG CAPULLO and JONATHAN GLAPION

Cover by GREG CAPULLO

Variant cover by ETHAN VAN SCIVER

32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

This was just plain awesome.

The story opens with Batman essentially fighting everyone in Arkham, then there’s a wonderful twist I didn’t see coming. Very quickly Snyder touches all the bases to let us know nothing has changed – Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, all the Robins (Dick, Tim, Damian), the Batcave – then kicks off a mystery with a grisly murder, a rich Gothamite who will clearly be trouble, and a direct threat to Bruce Wayne’s life – with Dick Grayson the prime suspect.

Perfect! Beautiful! Bat-tastic! Throw in Capullo’s art, from the Tony Daniel/Jim Lee school, and this is a Bat-book that hits every cylinder and roars out of the cave. There's not a wasted panel, but enough to get us ready for more.

BIRDS OF PREY #1

Written by DUANE SWIERCZYNSKI

Art and cover by JESUS SAIZ

On sale SEPTEMBER 21 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

Something about this series feels ad hoc.

Here’s the description: “One is wanted for a murder she didn’t commit. The other is on the run because she knows too much. They are Dinah Laurel Lance and Ev Crawford – a.k.a. Black Canary and Starling – and together, as Gotham City’s covert ops team, they’re taking down the villains other heroes can’t touch. But now they’ve attracted the attention of a grizzled newspaper reporter who wants to expose them, as well as a creepy, chameleon-like strike team that’s out to kill them.”

That’s pretty much what we get out of the first issue. Black Canary and Starling (new character) are a team (no explanation), and they are outlaws, and they save a reporter hired to find them from the people who hired him because they want to kill BC and Starling (no explanation). One of the strike team somehow kisses BC in the middle of a battle and says that will kill her (and she’s feeling sick by the end of the issue). Babs Gordon shows up and things are tense with her and BC, but she recommends Katana. There’s an explosive finale.

OK, it’s a pretty nice actioner, but it’s depending on us to know who most of these characters are, although they are not the characters they used to be. If Black Canary is a former leader of the Justice League, how long could she remain an outlaw before one of the big guns came to clear her or arrest her? (And they’re in Gotham City, for Pete’s sake.) Who is Starling? No, scratch that. Let’s ask instead, if you’re going to start the show with Starling already a Bird, why not also start with Katana, and explain both of them later? Because this issue feels undermanned, and why drag out the “we’re putting the band back together” scene any longer than you have to?

The art is nice. The action is nice. But the writer depends too much on our affection/familiarity for these people, and not enough time getting us to like them or care about their story.

BLUE BEETLE #1

Written by TONY BEDARD

Art by IG GUARA and RUY JOSE

Cover by TYLER KIRKHAM and SAL REGLA

32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

I was never a big fan of the old Jaime Reyes Blue Beetle title, but this version threatens to make me a believer.

Our story opens “long, long ago” on an alien planet that The Reach has seeded with a scarab. The scarab has taken over a local, and he is annihilating the planet’s population single-handedly. Afterward, one of his supervisors – for lack of a better word – shows up to congratulate Khaji-Kai (his “scarab name” – he no longer remembers his original one) and to drop a little expository dialogue on us to explain what we just saw. The Reach sends out a bunch of new scarabs to conquer more planets, one of which goes to our solar system, but is fortunately intercepted by the Green Lantern of this sector (apparently one before Abin Sur), who damages it. It escapes, lands on Earth, and goes into hibernation. The scene shifts to El Paso in the present, where we meet Jaime, Brenda and Paco, pretty much the same way we knew them before, except Paco is now a dropout and possible gangbanger. Also, we discover right away that Brenda’s aunt is a crimelord (it took us a while in the old series) and she wants the scarab, which is hijacked by three member of the Fearsome Five (Phobia, Warp and Plasmus), who are now members of the Brotherhood of Evil (The Brain and M’Sieu Mallah are mentioned, but not shown). Paco and Jaime blunder into the hijack on the way to Brenda’s birthday party, and by accident the scarab is activated and it bonds to Jaime. The first thing he says is his scarab name, Khadji-Da.

This set-up is pretty much like the old series, except that we meet everyone much faster, and almost everything is thought through much better. For example, all the adults know something’s up with Brenda’s tia, when in the old series some were clueless that she was AN INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL LIVING IN A HEAVILY FORTIFIED AND GUARDED MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR FORTRESS. So I appreciate that Jaime’s parents aren’t complete morons this time. Also, we learn the relationship between the Green Lanterns and The Reach, which I always wondered about before. Also, there’s a lot more Spanish in this series, and although I don’t speak Spanish, I have lived in Texas, and I appreciate the verisimilitude (and I trust I won’t miss any truly important info). Plus, the dropout thing with Paco – some might not like it, but, again, I think it adds verisimilitude (and adds a more interesting subplot). Further, Brenda – who seemed too smart for Paco in the last series – doesn’t seem to view him romantically in this series, but both Jaime and Paco seem interested in her (which makes more sense). Also, a text piece informs us that Jaime will have a lot more trouble controlling the scarab, so he’ll be less Static and more Damage, which is good, because we already have Static. And Spider-Man. And the Teen Titans. And a jillion other smart-mouthed teen heroes.

Overall, thumbs up for a story that keeps all the good parts of the old Blue Beetle while upgrading the coherence and plausibility of Jaime’s world.

CAPTAIN ATOM #1

Written by J.T. KRUL

Art by FREDDIE WILLIAMS II

Cover by STANLEY “ARTGERM” LAU

On sale SEPTEMBER 21 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

This wasn’t bad, but it read like half a first issue.

We open with a rat in an alley, with a pretentious Captain Atom voiceover about how we’re all really animals and stuff. The rat’s eyes glow, and then we shift to the Captain himself fighting an armored villain (new character), which he defeats, but his hand starts to lose cohesion. He goes “home” and we learn he is working with a brain trust in Chicago, led by a Stephen Hawking stand-in (complete with chair and voice modulator), who informs him that he needs to stop using his power or his brain could lose cohesion. However, just then, a volcano erupts in New York City (yes, New York City), and Captain Atom has no choice but to use his powers full out. In the middle of Nate vs. the volcano, we cut to the rat, which becomes a big monster and eats a homeless guy, then we cut back to Atom, who turns red and appears to be losing cohesion.

All right, class, how many mysteries were introduced in this first issue? How many were solved, or even gave us a clue? The first answer isn’t important, but the second answer – zero – is. I simply don’t have enough information to know whether I care about this series or not. I sure don’t meet anyone other than Captain Atom long enough to know if I like them, and DC’s version of Captain Atom has never been a show-stopper. So I’m going to have to read a second issue to know if the story in the first one A) makes sense and B) is interesting. That’s not a very good idea for a first issue.

Still, the story’s title is “Evolution of a Species,” so I imagine Cap’n Atom will go through some changes next issue, so maybe one of them will make him more interesting.

CATWOMAN #1

Written by JUDD WINICK

Art and cover by GUILLEM MARCH

32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T+

Most of this issue is typical – and typically fun – Catwoman caper stuff, and the issue ends with, ahem, a bang.

As with most Bat-books, this issue reassures us that very little has changed. Catwoman is still a thief with a heart of gold and she loves to live on the edge. (Also, she appears to own nothing except kittens and brassieres.) We meet her fence (new character), who seems to have a little personality, which is good, since she’s the only supporting character we meet. Then a situation occurs at the end which appears to have the Internet BROKEN. IN. HALF. But I’m not sure why – it just reinforces something we’ve known since Brubaker’s run several years back, but were never shown in detail. Now we have been, and I think it’s a good idea (for its humanizing effect on another character).

However, I think Winick should have realized the possible implications of the phrase “It doesn’t take long” and made more clear what he meant to avoid the sniggers. Otherwise this was a swell issue that even my wife enjoyed.

DC UNIVERSE PRESENTS #1

Written by PAUL JENKINS

Art by BERNARD CHANG

Cover by RYAN SOOK

32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

Deadman needs to break out of the prison of his original conception, and I’m not sure this story gets us there.

Everything you ever knew about Deadman? Still true. But add that he’s now working toward balancing the scales, in that he has to be a better man in death than he was in life, and when he achieves karmic balance, he can move on. Plus, shades of those he’s possessed are hanging around, and he doesn’t know why. He gets Rama Kushna’s attention to ask her about this development in a pretty dramatic way.

I don’t have much more to say, because not a lot happened here. Boston does try to get in touch with the psychic (“Rose”) at his old circus, but only succeeds in freaking her out. (Try Madame Xanadu, Boston. I hear she’s got a place in the Village. Or Dr. Fate. Or Zatanna. Or any one of the many legitimate wizards, psychics, sorcerers and whatnot in the DCU. A carny palm-reader? Riiiiight. So, since she’s pretty, I guess this is just a clumsy set-up to make her the love interest.) Other than that, it’s a 22-page voiceover pretty much explaining the above. Boston does “possess” a guy, as he usually does, but there’s no telling if he’s a temporary player or potential supporting cast. Maybe he and Rose will become an item.

So, it was OK. But given how often Deadman has failed to hold a series, it really needed to be better than OK. He is by definition a pretty limited character, so he’s definitely a writer’s challenge. I’ll need to see more before I know if Jenkins rises to that challenge or not.

Incidentally, there were some Carmine Infantino swipes/homage in the first couple of pages, which I guess is kinda neat. But if you’re going to swipe, why not swipe from Neal Adams? Just sayin’.

GREEN LANTERN CORPS #1

Written by PETER J. TOMASI

Art by FERNANDO PASARIN and SCOTT HANNA

Cover by DOUG MAHNKE and CHRISTIAN ALAMY

On sale SEPTEMBER 21 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

This issue felt like marking time.

The series opens with an invisible villain or villains literally cutting one Green Lantern in half and beheading another in the Sciencells on Oa. (Pretty graphically.) Then we shift to Earth, where both Guy Gardner and John Stewart learn that they can’t go back to their old jobs (high school gym coach and architect, respectively) because Guy would be too big a liability for a school (as a target for supervillains) and John has been changed too much by being a Lantern. They both return to Oa, learn about the first two deaths (which has now risen to four) and volunteer to take a squad of Lanterns to investigate.

Here’s another book where we learn that virtually nothing has changed. As to the meat of the story – Guy and John learning they can’t return to their civilian jobs – that seems so blindingly obvious on the front end that I was bored hearing all the reasons why they can’t (even though I was aware this was exposition/history for newbies). But I feel like that could have been covered in a couple word ballons and we could have skipped from Page 4 to Page 15 and not lost a thing. And that’s not good.

LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #1

Written by PAUL LEVITZ

Art by FRANCIS PORTELA

Cover by KARL KERSCHL

On sale SEPTEMBER 21 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

It’s not often I complain about too much going on in a book, but this one feels a bit cluttered. But knowing Levitz, this will shake out to be epic.

Legion of Super-Heroes #1 opens with five Legionnaires (Chameleon Boy, Chemical Kid, Dragonwing, Phantom Girl and Ultra Boy) investigating a Dominator-monitoring station which has gone silent. In the course of the dialogue, we learn something terrible has happened, and that everyone believes that the Legionnaires in Legion Lost are dead.  Then we check back on other Legionnaires to discover A) Colossal Boy has resigned and joined the Science Police after the “death” of his wife, Chameleon Girl, B) Earthman is dead, C) a whole bunch of Academy recruits have been promoted to Legionnaire status, D) Mon-El is no longer a Green Lantern, E) Brainiac 5 wants his job as Legion leader, F) Glorith is a Legionnaire, G) Star Boy is a paraplegic, and maybe some more but it was a lot take in and remember. Anyway, we switch back to the original mission, which goes pear-shaped and then a Daxamite attacks.

I find it interesting that Levitz didn’t bother to re-introduce everybody, and I’m rather glad he didn’t – he’s probably as tired of writing introductory Legion issues as I am of reading them. Instead he jumps right in with massive repercussions from an event we don’t know about yet (unless it happened in the final Legion/Adventure issues, which I haven’t read yet), and it’s enough to make your head explode. That’s good, because with a cast that big it doesn’t make sense to pussy-foot around. On the other hand, as I said in my intro, it’s an awful lot to cram into one issue, especially since all of these plot threads seem to be pulling in different directions. Still, I’m definitely coming back for the next issue, when I imagine Levitz wills start to pull it together in ways I don't foresee.

NIGHTWING #1

Written by KYLE HIGGINS

Art and cover by EDDY BARROWS and JP MAYER

32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

This is fine.

We follow Dick Grayson through a night patrol where we learn where he lives now (a loft in the bad part of town), that he thinks he’s better for having been Batman for a year and then he goes on a visit to Haly’s Circus (where he grew up), which just happens to be in town. Then he’s attacked by a hired killer, escapes to change into Nightwing, but the killer beats him as Nightwing anyway – and says that Grayson (he doesn’t realize Nightwing is Grayson) is a murderer. Could this be related to what’s happening over in Batman?

I said this is fine, and that’s what it is – and all that it is. I’ve never been a big Nightwing fan, because I think a glorified acrobat needs more going for him than a clever name. (All the other glorified acrobats -- Batman, Green Arrow, Mr. Terrific -- have some kind of gimmick to explain why they're still alive.)

I understand that in the first issue we’re going to have a lot of voiceovers and references to the past so newbies can learn who this guy is. (Former Batman! Former Robin! Former Circus Acrobat! Parents killed by crooks!) But I wish we didn’t have to. Or if we did, more would happen, so that it’s not just an encyclopedia entry.

I also find it laughable that the hired killer, who sees his prey somersault away, is then attacked by an acrobat who looks JUST LIKE DICK GRAYSON ONLY IN A TINY DOMINO MASK and doesn’t realize they’re the same guy. Must be really dark in Gotham.

Boring. I do like the new threads though. As I teach in my color theory class, warm colors leap out at you, while cool colors recede. So the red is jazzier.

RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS #1

Written by SCOTT LOBDELL

Art and cover by KENNETH ROCAFORT

32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

When I read the description of this book, I thought I wouldn’t like it. Turns out I have a gift for understatement.

Roy Harper is in a Quraci jail (with no explanation), but is rescued by Red Hood, for whom he has been working (again, no explanation). They escape with the help of Starfire, who is hanging out because … oh, wait, no explanation. They go to Martinique, where it turns out that because Starfire is Tamaranean, she apparently has no long-term memory and can only sense us humans by smell, so she’ll sleep with either of the boys, and does. A mysterious woman called The Essence (who looks like a refugee from an Image comic) shows up and says some stuff about the All Caste that apparently she and Jason used to belong to (no explanation), only now she’s banned, and she shows Jason some magic picture of a dead girl in “The Well of the All Caste” so Jason goes to this Well to, uh … avenge her death? Not sure. (And, of course, there’s no explanation.) Anyway, turns out this Well is in the Himalayas, where he finds the dead girl (whom he used to know) and gets jumped by some bad guys.

So, explain again how Koraind’r can’t remember the Titans, with whom she’s spent the last 31 years? I bring this up because Lobdell did, despite this being a potential fresh start. He decided to address and dispense with Koriand'r's long association with the Titans and her sexual history with Dick Grayson, and his method was to make her a brain-damaged blow-up doll -- and play it for laughs. As Rich Lane said below, this makes it impossible for Starfire to have any character growth, and "turns her into a sex toy for anyone who wants to take advantage of that fact." Well said. The misogyny is stunning.

I'd be more outraged, except that I don't plan to read any more. I'm going to take Lobdell's loathsome treatment of a female character and toss it on the stack of the other stupid stuff in this book, which features a bunch of characters I don’t care about.

SUPERGIRL #1

Written by MICHAEL GREEN and MIKE JOHNSON

Art and cover by MAHMUD ASRAR

On sale SEPTEMBER 21 • 32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

Nothing happens.

OK, Supergirl’s ship arrives on Earth (and plows through to Siberia). Unseen observers make reference to “the Kansas event” and send out a team in big armor to retrieve her and her ship, and make it clear that they can do this despite it being in Russia. Kara gets out of her spaceship, disoriented, and is surrounded by men in armor speaking a language she doesn’t know. They attack, there’s a fight, she discovers her powers and wins. She believes she might be dreaming. Superman arrives and stops the fight.

OK, there’s some good super-action here, but it eats up the whole book and we learn absolutely nothing. We already knew Supergirl was from Krypton, that she’s Superman’s cousin, and that she arrives here as a teen. And when I say "we" I mean new readers and old readers alike, since even non-readers know that much about a character called "Supergirl." If those three things weren't true, they'd have to call her something else -- Hypergirl, or Tip-Top Girl, or Red Hoodgirl and the In-Laws.

So all readers coming to this book already know those three things. Which is all that this book tells us. (Actually less – we don’t actually learn that Supergirl is Superman’s cousin, since they won’t interact until next issue.) Man, that’s not much for my $2.99.

Oh, and Supergirl’s outfit is one of the lamest I’ve ever seen – and Supergirl’s had some pretty lame outfits.

WONDER WOMAN #1

Written by BRIAN AZZARELLO

Art and cover by CLIFF CHIANG

32 pg, FC, $2.99 US • RATED T

With apologies to George Perez fans, this is the best Wonder Woman I have ever read.

A Greek god does something terrible to three girls. A girl named Zola is on the run from mythological creatures. A woman named Diana rises to her defense in a brutal, bloody battle. A god is impaled. A golden key proves to be key. Warnings and implied threats abound. Someone is pregnant with Zeus’s child, and many divine eyes are turning to notice. The god at the beginning closes the book with dire, cryptic muttering. Everything has a price, and the gods are only too eager for others to pay.

This. Is. GREAT! Brian Azzarello calls the Greco-Roman gods the “original crime family,” and we know from 100 Bullets that we’re in for a treat.  Wonder Woman as crime noir? With centaurs? Sign me up!

What is Marvel's fascination with Norman Osborn, formerly the Green Goblin and the Iron Patriot? This resurrected villain has become the face of evil in the Marvel Universe some forty years after dying! From his first appearance, his identity revealed which led to Steve Ditko leaving the book, the drug issues that plagued his son Harry to finally his murder of Gwen Stacy and his own death, Norman has been Spider-Man's most relentless foe and his most tragic during the Silver Age because he had this split personality where Norman forgot that he was the Goblin. But in times of stress, the evil that dwelt within would emerge and his hatred for the Wall-Crawler took over.

Amazing Spider-Man #121-122 should have been the crescendo to Norman's career. He murdered Gwen Stacy only to accidently spear himself with his own glider. Kirk G writes about that here and I added this about his legacy. Mortality had taken Spider-Man's mortal foe and that should have been the end of him. But in the 90s, Marvel brought back the Green Goblin, citing unknown healing powers. No one except the writers was happy about this. Then they had to have Gwen Stacy have an affair with Norman in the past! This was done to justify another Gwen-look-alike in the MU and bolster Mary Jane as Peter's true love. It is beyond the scope of this article to fully explain how wrong that was! And it was never mentioned again!

But Norman was on the brink of madness when he made his big mistake and foolishly revealed himself to be the Green Goblin. This got him arrested for the first time and placed him in Tony Stark's custody who put him in charge of the Thunderbolts, an easily controllable man doing the dirty work.

As an aside, I would rather believe that this Norman was some alternate reality version trapped in the 616 MU and that the true Norman indeed died. It makes me feel better.

After the events ofCivil War, World War HulkandSecret Invasion!, Norman becomes a national hero, put in charge of HAMMER, creates his own Dark Avengers and pushes through his own agenda. He re-christians himself the Iron Patriot and hunts down the real heroes, now outlaws. But he goes too far (naturally) and it all falls apart during theSiegewhere he is captured and discredited. He should have been locked away and forgotten. But he was not!

There was theOsbornmini-series that shows us how Norman escaped the custody of the US government and why he surrendered. That he learned about a cult that sees him as a messiah. That introduced both Ai Apaec, the South American spider-god and June Covington, the Toxic Doxie who are part of his new Dark Avengers. He now commands HYDRA and AIM and truly believes himself to be the destined leader of the country, if not the world.

No longer costumed, Norman is a charismatic evil. People simply believe that he will win. He has no shame and feels he has been wrong and that history will champion him.

I feel that the current Avengers creators have morphed Osborn into a nightmare version of George W. Bush. A totally corrupt version preying on the liberal fears that such a man may return to power, completely disregarding the will of the populus and ran rampant over the world. Certainly in this year of election, the term "Republican Conservative" brings up bad memories and worse possibilities. Again I stress this is an amped up take on Bush, not a commentary of the actual man. But the boldness of Osborn is frightening. He is not hiding. He is demanding that he be restored to power. Was there not a movement to legally allow Bush to run for a third term? The criminals serving Norman gained authority, much like those in the Bush admonistration quoting over and over again: "I serve at the pleasure of the President." They are not responsible and the President is beyond accountability. This is Norman Osborn's dream and an American nightmare!

What do you think?

Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

April 10, 2012: Perhaps it’s all the talk of women’s right on the news, but I just read two comics collections that provide a history lesson on the subject.

The first is Blondie: From Honeymoon to Diapers & Dogs: Complete Daily Comics 1933-1935 (IDW Publishing, $49.99). This is the second and last of IDW’s collections of the earliest Blondie strips. The first volume told the story of Blondie and Dagwood’s courtship and subsequent marriage, while this one collects their days as young marrieds. Many of the elements we associate with Blondie debut, including Mr. Dithers, Dagwood’s boss; Herb & Tootsie Woodley, the next-door neighbors; and the “Dagwood sandwich.”

What struck me about this book was that, despite its age and the era it comes from, Blondie herself comes off very well. Originally presented as a blue-collar bubblehead, she evolves into the brains of the family in this volume (while still retaining her showgirl looks and goofy personality; it’s the upending of expectation that’s funny). Dagwood, who had in the first volume the unearned confidence (and incompetency) of someone who grew up in a cocoon of wealth, remains incompetent in this volume, but without the riches and confidence – and therefore becomes the butt of most jokes. This is essentially the model for the strip for the rest of its run, not to mention virtually every dad in every sitcom on every TV show ever produced. Blondie may not be anyone’s idea of a feminist, but feminists should approve: She is clearly the smart one – and the boss.

Keep in mind that this takes place only a few decades after the Victorian age, when the “angel of the house” model for women prevailed. Sure enough, all the women in Blondie are housewives. But Blondie also takes the position a woman continues to be the head of household even after her husband comes home. This “hand the rocks the cradle” concept is still popular today, and it makes me wonder if it was popular in the 1930s, when these strips ran, or if Blondie more or less invented it.

Whatever the sociology, these strips remain very funny, 80 years later. And that’s what’s important.

Meanwhile, I had the opposite reaction to Showcase Presents: Young Love (DC Comics, $19.99). This collection reprints Young Love #39-56, more than 500 black-and-white pages of material originally published in color from 1963 to 1966.

Frankly, you don’t have to be a feminist to be absolutely appalled by these stories. Aimed at pre-adolescent girls, Young Love featured helpless, emotional basket cases whose only purpose in life was to please – and eventually marry – a man. Notwithstanding that all their men are insufferable jerks, without any responsibilities in the relationship whatsoever. No, these pathetic, self-loathing women set their cap on a fellow, then tearfully abase and humiliate themselves in scene after scene until these selfish men, for some reason, decide to marry them.

Even the girls of yesteryear eventually rejected this philosophy, with romance comics dying out in the 1970s. For my part, I could only digest Young Romance in small chunks. And the only way I got through it was that every time kissing was involved, I pretended the writer meant “sex.” The stories actually make a lot more sense if you do that, because these girls are absolutely fixated on the act of kissing, going wobbly in the knees at the thought of it.

There is one highlight: “The Private Diary of Mary Robin, R.N.,” described in every issue as an “exciting new feature of the life and loves of a beautiful young nurse in a great metropolitan hospital.” It’s just as stupid as the other stories – this supposedly professional nurse swoons over every male in sight – but the art is terrific. “Diary” was drawn by John Romita Sr., the guy who took over Amazing Spider-Man in 1966. He was the first to draw Mary Jane Watson’s face and full figure, and it was this training in romance books that made you believe MJ’s signature line, “Congratulations, tiger, you’ve just hit the jackpot!”

Most of the art – and virtually all of the stories – are unsigned (I’d guess for career preservation). But there are a couple of bright spots, including art by Don Heck, Gene Colan and Bernard Sachs. Mike Sekowsky, not usually one of my favorites, does the best work of his career here.

As for our history lesson, remember this: Blondie continues to last after 80 years, while Young Love got canceled in 1977. Which model do you think women prefer?

Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics@aol.com.

ART

1. "Blondie" Volume 2 reprints the strips from the first two years after the couple's marriage. Courtesy IDW Publishing

2. "Showcase Presents: Young Love" reprints romance comics DC published from 1963 to 1966. Courtesy DC Entertainment

          A decade later, Grant Morrison’s tenure on New X-Men remains one of the most hotly disputed eras for Marvel’s band of mutants.  There are runs that pretty much everyone agrees are great: Claremont and the combination of Cockrum, Byrne, Smith or Romita, or more recently, Whedon and Cassaday.  And there are runs that are widely considered to be inferior: Claremont’s return which preceded Morrison and the Chuck Austen issues which coincided with it.  Yet Morrison’s run is still vigorously debated.  Some fans and critics cite it as a seminal work, holding it up as an example of ingenuity and excellence.  Other fans deride it, pointing out its flaws and complaining about the treatment of certain characters.  The debate was in evidence again recently when Comic Book Resources wrote about 100 great comics of the last ten years (no link, sorry). 

I feel like I’m in a unique position to comment on the controversy as I’ve been in both camps.  I had problems with Morrison’s New X-Men when it was first published and dropped it soon after it started.  Years later, I was able to buy the second half of his run in a trade paperback sale.  With perspective and the passage of time, I found that I appreciated his approach a lot more.  I recently read Morrison’s run for a third time.  It is not as perfect as his supporters would claim.  But it is much better than his detractors would have you believe.  

E is for Extinction

(Issues 114-117: E is for Extinction, Danger Rooms)

Grant Morrison certainly earned the moniker “New” for his tenure on the X-Men.  Everything seemed new: new costumes, new characters, and most importantly, new ideas.  Morrison completely the changed the world of the X-Men and that’s why his work is so divisive, even today. 

The new ideas are, of course, the center of the storm.  Everybody won’t like the same ideas and they won’t like them all equally.  I thought that the concept of secondary mutation was brilliant.  It gave Morrison and other writers the opportunity to increase the power and effectiveness of some of the weaker characters.  And though it took some artists time to get used to the new look, I’ve grown fond of Beast’s feline form.  On the other hand, I detested the idea that Cassandra Nova was Xavier’s twin whom he killed in the womb.  Xavier’s moral authority has been undercut a lot over the years but this absolutely decimated it: Xavier was a murderer before he was born.  It was probably supposed to be clever, but it came across as creepy. 

Grant Morrison is an experimenter, like musicians Tom Waits or Lou Reed.  Some of those experiments are going to turn out beautifully.  Waits and Reed wrote some great songs and Morrison wrote some brilliant comics.  But experiments sometimes misfire.  As much as I like Tom Waits, I skip past more of his songs than any of my other favorite musicians.  I think this is where Morrison’s fans miss the mark.  Yes, he has lots of ideas and that’s a good thing.  But that doesn’t mean that every idea is a good one.  

Two of Morrison’s best ideas were expanding the world of mutants and going public.  Marvel’s mutants had long been a metaphor for persecuted minorities, whether African-Americans, Jews or homosexuals.  But the metaphor was sometimes strained.  After all, there were only a few dozen mutants in the Marvel world, no more a hundred or two.  By expanding the population of mutants, Morrison and other writers were able to build on that central metaphor.  Joe Casey could conceive of international mutant offices like X-Corp.  Chris Claremont could come up with separate mutant enclaves in Montana and California.  And in New X-Men, Morrison’s public demonstrations made more sense with more mutants. 

I also really liked that the X-Men finally went public.  I had been waiting a long time for that step.  It made perfect sense, considering Xavier’s dream of equality and amity.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t as pleased with the execution.  I didn’t like that the announcement was made by Cassandra Nova possessing Xavier’s body.  It was such a strong statement- it was such a momentous step forward- that it shouldn’t have been part of some villain’s machinations.  

I also had a problem with what I can only describe as the ugliness of New X-Men.  Morrison introduced mutants who had deformities but no corresponding abilities, like Ugly Jon who had two faces but no extra powers.  And, as previously mentioned, he initiated developments that were creepy or gross like fetal murder.  Frank Quitely and Igor Kordey introduced an Eastern European industrial style that was a sharp contrast with the sleek style of the Spanish and Brazilian artists who had worked on the X-Men in the previous decade.  Quitely’s first cover on New X-Men 114 depicts characters who are disproportionate and dumpy.  I have since grown to appreciate Quitely’s art thanks to his work on Sandman: Endless Nights and other projects but at the time- and even a little bit now- the ugliness of the art was a real turn-off. 

Imperial

(Issues 118-126: Germ Free Generation, ‘Nuff Said, Imperial)

A couple of years ago, I wrote a list of the 100 greatest characters of the past decade.  As I was compiling the list, I noticed that Grant Morrison had created more great new X-Men than any other writer.  That stands to reason.  He introduced a lot of them during his time on the title.  But it’s not only about quantity.  Morrison came up with the most unusual, most offbeat, most interesting and most distinctive new characters. 

They weren’t all introduced during thus particular stretch.  Beak debuted in issue 117, just after E is for Extinction.  Glob Herman walks through a background in that same issue.  Dust and Quentin Quire won’t show up until issues 133 and 134.  Yet Germ Free Generation was the key moment in introducing the next generation of mutants.  Angel Salvadore appears in issue 118 as a prospective student that Wolverine is sent to track down.  The Cuckoos are there, as well.  Meanwhile, Xorn was introduced in the 2001 Annual and crossed over to the regular title with issue 122.  These are some of the most-loved, most-depicted and most-intriguing characters of the past ten years.

The other strength of Imperial is that it demonstrated Grant Morrison was telling big stories with big stakes.  Readers often want to know that something important is going to happen, that the story is worth reading.  That was certainly true with Morrison’s New X-Men.  We’d already seen that with E is for Extinction when Cassandra Nova’s new sentinels destroyed Genosha and a million mutants.  The high stakes were confirmed by Imperial.  There was the possibility of an interplanetary war as one of the most powerful empires in the galaxy had been infiltrated by one of the most evil minds in existence.  These were stories with tension.  These were stories that mattered.  Even now, years later, I read through these issues quickly because I can’t wait to get to the next one.  

And that’s a good place to stop.  Come on back next week for Part II, concerning New Worlds and Riot at Xavier’s.  Then check out Part III, with Assault on Weapon Plus and Planet X.

Things That Would Have Shocked My 12-Year-Old Self

Oct. 26, 2012: As I may have mentioned a few thousand times, science fiction (and fantasy and horror) were nearly non-existent in American pop culture in the 1960s when I was growing up. The conventional wisdom in Hollywood was that "science fiction doesn't sell," perhaps because all the SF movies in the 1950s were dopey B-movies about giant radioactive insects with really cheap budgets and lousy special effects. Regardless, Hollywood was convinced SF was a loser, and that idea pretty much permeated media across the board.

There were occasionally SF TV shows, but none of them were success stories. Lost in Space and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea became jokes. Star Trek failed after two seasons, and was only extended for an extra year by a coordinated letter-writing campaign. The Time Tunnel only lasted a year. Batman was deliberately silly. 

So for kids like the young Captain, who loved extra-normal stuff, the only good material available was early Universal horror movies (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, etc.) and comic books. Both areas were pretty seriously marginalized, so my friends and I were pretty resigned to being on the periphery of pop culture (and avoided mentioning our passions at school). 

Then along came this thing called Star Wars in the 1970s. And suddenly SF, fantasy and horror were cool. This would have shocked my 12-year-old self. Moreover, Star Wars kicked open a door that hasn't ever closed, and more wonderful stuff has poured through that door so that even now, more than 30 years later, my inner 12-year-old remains giddy with disbelief through each revelation. Here are just a few of my favorite things:

* There is an Element Lad action figure. If comic books were a marginal hobby in the 1960s, Legion of Super-Heroes fandom was a subculture within a subculture. While even our parents could name Superman and Batman, most comic-book fans could be stumped at naming any member of the LSH outside of Superboy. And yet, not only did DC Direct release a series of Silver Age Legion of Super-Heroes action figures, they released the figures in the order the characters joined the team. If that doesn't tickle your fanboy heart, your heart comes from Stone Boy's planet.

* There are superhero movies, and they don't suck. When the Captain was 12, the only breakthroughs superheroes made into broader media were bad cartoons, the aforementioned Batman and reruns of the Adventures of Superman TV show. The Marvel Super-Heroes cartoons of 1965 were simply gawdawful, and the initially respectful Superman, Batman and Aquaman cartoons quickly devolved into Super Friends. The Superman show was wonderful, but it was OLD -- often B&W -- and, let's face it, the special effects were nearly non-existent. The fact that Hollywood pours millions into X-Men, Batman, Spider-Man and Avengers movies is astonishing to my inner 12-year-old, and even better, they're popular. I feel a weird sense of affirmation. Speaking of which:

* My mother knows who Wolverine is. My parents -- and most of their generation -- thought of comics as juvenile pap, and knew nothing about superheroes beyond vague ideas about who Superman and Batman were. But thanks to the movies, even my mother has heard of Wolverine. Wolverine! He didn't even exist until 1975!

* I have a Captain America shield. In the 1960s, I could fantasize about a decent Superman, Batman or Spider-Man TV show or movie because I could imagine -- just barely -- those characters being popular/familiar enough that maybe somebody would put up money for such a movie, and maybe enough people would go so that it wouldn't bomb. But Captain America? He was a back-up series in Tales of Suspense, and during the Vietnam War kids and young adults were turning against pro-war jingoism and deeply suspicious of mindless patriotism. I was a big Cap fan, so much so that I made a shield out of a garbage can lid and tempera paint. But a store-bought shield? My 12-year-old self could not imagine such a thing.

* Iron Man is an A-list character. I loved Marvel Comics in the 1960s, but they were the new kids on the block and virtually unknown to non-comics-readers. And, just like DC, where Superman and Batman were the top dogs, there was an hierarchy at Marvel: Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and maybe the Hulk were A-listers, and everyone else was B-list or below. (And even the FF were a bit sketchy; kids at school and church would generally refer to them as "rock guy," "stretchy guy," "fire guy" and the like.) So the idea that Iron Man might someday be A-list was an alien concept to me; that he would headline an Avengers movie unthinkable. And yet, here we are. God bless Robert Downey Jr.

I could go on in this vein, but Gen Xers are probably yawning and younger readers have probably drifted off. I hope not, though, because the whole point of a forum is to share experiences and perspectives. I am always fascinated, for example, how fellow Legionnaire Chris Fluit views Uncanny X-Men, since it was the best-selling comic book of his youth, while it sold so poorly when I was a boy it was canceled when I was 12. So we are both big X-fans, but in my case it's my love for the underdog, while his experience is almost diametrically opposite! 

So I hope some of you find this amusing, despite the age/experience gap. Because, honestly, I couldn't be more tickled by today's options, and I hope that rubs off!

“The Hulk Vs. the Thing”/”The Avengers Take Over!”

Editor and writer: Stan Lee  Art: Jack Kirby (pencils), George Bell (inks)

My original title for this Deck Log entry was “The Battles of the Century”.  I had intended to cover the notable clashes of the Silver Age.  First on my list of one-on-one battles to review was the epic contest between the Thing and the Hulk, one which stretched across two issues and climaxed with the Emerald Behemoth squaring off against the combined might of the Fantastic Four and the Avengers.

But when I dug out my copies of Fantastic Four # 25 and 26 and re-read that classic combo, for the first time in some thirty-five years, it rapidly became clear that this was a tale that deserved a column of its own, as a true gem, indeed.  Perhaps not as forgotten as some of the other stories I’ve discussed under this heading, but it most definitely should be taken out of storage and dusted off.

Fighting is the crux of all comic-book stories.  Hero against villain.  Americans against the Nazis.  Earthlings versus aliens.  You can dress the plots up with elabourate twists or sharp characterisation, but it still boils down to a fight.  The fans know this.  Take a look at any comics-related forum and see how many threads there are marked “__________ vs. __________”.  Perhaps the purest comic-book story consists of a single brawl between two super-powered heavyweights.  For fans of this kind of story, you won’t find any tale better done than “The Hulk Vs. the Thing”.

Ben Grimm tangled with the Hulk many times over the years, both before and after, but none of those stories came close to the gripping, edge-of-your-seat drama of Fantastic Four # 25-6.

The nuts and bolts of the tale are simple enough to describe.  It opens with a short scene at the FF’s headquarters in the Baxter Building, as the Thing rejects an attempt by Reed Richards to return him to his human form.  It’s a quick bit to establish the fact that the Thing is afraid that Alicia Masters will lose her love for him if he is plain Ben Grimm.  Primarily though, it sets up the transition to the events which will eventually land the Thing in the fight of his life.  In an obvious bit of foreshadowing, the Invisible Girl reads to the others a newspaper account of the Avengers’ battle with the Hulk and the Sub-Mariner (which took place in The Avengers # 3 [Jan., 1964]).

Dissolve to New Mexico, where the Avengers are hot on the trail of the Hulk, following his damage-strewn path.  Ol’ Jade-jaws, after a brief reversion to Bruce Banner (mistakenly called “Bob Banner” by Stan throughout), takes refuge in his secret underground lab.  At this early stage, he is still the brutish, thug-like Hulk, rather than the simple-minded, childlike-unless-angered version which became the standard.  Determined to remain the Hulk permanently, he destroys the intricate gamma-powered equipment with which Banner had been able to change between his two personæ at will.

Seeking to rid himself of every trace of his human alter ego, the Hulk empties the pockets of his trousers.  Among the articles, he finds a newspaper clipping announcing that Captain America has taken his place with the Avengers.  Noting Rick Jones’s absence, the Hulk concludes that both the boy and the Avengers have deserted him.  Enraged at their “betrayal”, the Green Goliath launches himself toward New York, in hundred-mile leaps, to destroy the Avengers.

A day later, at the Baxter Building, the eternally-researching Reed Richards is experimenting with some rare viruses.  One “oops” later, he accidentally infects himself with the virulent germs and lapses into a coma.  Johnny Storm zooms off in the Fantasti-Car in search of a doctor, just as the Hulk arrives in the Big Apple and starts tearing up everything in sight.  Johnny attempts to stop the rampaging monster, but fails, as the Hulk viciously retaliates.

The city is in panic.  The police begin an evacuation of Manhattan and news cameras broadcast the Hulk’s battering of the Human Torch.  Seeing the Torch’s peril on television, Ben and Sue rush to his aid.  Sue’s force field protects Johnny from further injury, but the staggering pressure the Hulk applies to her force field places so much strain on the Invisible Girl that she passes out.

With Reed comatose, Johnny severely injured, Sue unconscious---and apparently every other Marvel hero out of town---it is up to the Thing to stop the raging Hulk.

Like charging bulls, they slam into each other.  The Hulk’s juggernaut might pitted against the Thing’s lesser strength, but keener reflexes and agility.  At first, their relative strengths and weaknesses balance out, as their battle wages back and forth.  Ben’s wisecracks needle the Hulk, making him even angrier, and gradually, the Green Goliath gains the advantage.  This is one of the earliest indications---I’m guessing, the first---that the madder the Hulk gets, the stronger he gets.  One caption, more or less, makes it clear:  “His incredible strength seems to increase during the strain of combat!”

Their mighty clash turns Manhattan into a war zone.  Streets are reduced to shattered pavement.  Sewer lines are torn loose.  A bus is torn in half.  The Hulk shakes a tenement off its foundation to get to the Thing.  Ben rips out an underground electrical cable to zap the Hulk with a million volts of juice.

Through superior tactics, Ben manages to stave off the more-powerful Hulk.  With super-human effort, he ensnares his green-skinned opponent by wrapping him in a suspension cable torn from the George Washington Bridge.  Ben’s great strength is rapidly fading, while the enraged Hulk is getting stronger by the minute.  With a tremendous flex of his emerald muscles, the Hulk shatters the cable and wades into the Thing with a terrible fury.  Ben caves under the withering attack and the Hulk furiously turns to face the terrified citizens of New York.

The Army blasts the Hulk with rifle fire and rockets from hand-held launchers.  The enraged man-monster shrugs it off and bears down on the troops.  On nothing more than determination, the Thing throws himself into the Hulk before the brutish behemoth can annihilate the soldiers.

“It’s amazing!” cries one G.I.  “The Thing must be fighting on sheer courage alone!”

Just when it looks like it is all over for Ben, the rest of the Fantastic Four have recovered enough to come to his aid.  Their wobbly efforts manage, barely, to drive the Hulk off. 

Cunningly, Ol’ Jade-jaws has ducked into New York’s subway system and makes his way, underground, to the Avengers Mansion.  Bursting through the floor of the townhouse, he catches the Avengers and Rick Jones looking.  The Hulk focuses his anger on Rick and before the super-heroes can get their act together, he seizes the boy and crashes through a wall.

Both the Avengers and the regrouped Fantastic Four corner the Hulk with his captive.  Both groups claim jurisdiction over the threat of the green-skinned brute.  But neither team bows out and they wind up inadvertently fouling their respective efforts against the Hulk.  Mocking their ineptness, the Hulk leaps to the top of a partially completed skyscraper, with Rick in tow.

The FF and the Avengers come to an understanding and coördinate an attack on the Hulk before he can harm the youngster.  Despite the combined efforts of nine super-heroes, the best they can manage against the Hulk is a stalemate. 

It’s a gripping climax to a battle lasting forty-some pages---and an odd one, as far as the Fantastic Four is concerned.  Once the Hulk makes his last stand atop the skyscraper's skeleton, the F.F. seems to drop off the scope.  For the last five pages, the Avengers carry the action. 

At last, the Hulk angrily confronts his “replacement”, Captain America.  But the agile Cap easily evades being pounded into jelly.  Unable to land a single blow on the Star-Spangled Avenger, the Hulk’s frustration mounts.  His mood doesn’t get any better when Giant-Man intercedes, alternately rabbit-punching the jade giant, then shrinking out of harm’s way.

The Hulk is totally pissed now, which is never a good thing.

Fortunately, the cavalry has arrived, in the form of the Wasp leading a large column of ants to the fray.  In his Ant-Man form, Hank Pym orders the insects to swarm over their foe.  While the Hulk is plagued by the stinging ants, Rick Jones thrusts a gamma-ray treated capsule into Ol’ Greenskin’s gaping mouth.

To get the ants off of him, the Hulk dives into the near-by Hudson River.  The exhausted super-heroes give up the fight.  What they don’t see is the unconscious figure of Bruce Banner floating to the surface and drifting away with the current.

Still, it’s a curious ending, with the stars of the title taking a back seat to the Special Guest Heroes.  Especially in light of the build-up of the previous issue and a half, pitting the monstrous Hulk against a desperately outmatched Ben Grimm, while the other FFers, sick and injured, try to get it together. 

Instead, it reads like the last few pages of an Avengers tale got tacked on by mistake.

At its forefront, “The Hulk Vs. the Thing” is one long brawl, marked by violence, trickery, grit, and humour.  (Think John Wayne and Victor McLaughlin’s donnybrook in The Quiet Man, taken to the super-human degree.)  But what’s back of it elevates this tale into a true gem.

One of the aspects rarely seen in a Hulk story is the effects of one of his rampages on the public at large.  Outside of including a few panels showing some fleeing bystanders, the Hulk’s battles always seemed to take place in a vacuum.  But here, we see the full force and effect on a city terrorised by the Hulk.  Citizens react in varying degrees of horror, some scattering in wild panic, others rooted to the spot by fear.  We see city authorities responding---marshalling forces, setting up barricades, directing an evacuation, establishing first-aid stations.  The military, when called in, are shown as more than just gun-crazy soldiers.  We witness the planning, the weighing of options, the discussion of how much force can be brought to bear against the Hulk without causing more death and destruction than the menace they have been called to defeat.

And there is damage aplenty.  No desolate countrysides or remote locales here.  The battle between the Thing and the Hulk rages through downtown Manhattan, leaving a swathe of demolished structures and twisted wreckage in its wake.  A dozen city blocks are left without electrical power.

The effect of these interludes is a cinematic one.  It gives “The Hulk Vs. the Thing” the feeling of a superior B-movie from the 1950’s, not that far removed from a minor classic like Them!   Stan Lee’s script accurately portrayed a city as it would respond if such a menace as the Hulk and such heroes as the Thing existed. Nothing is incidental.  The television coverage not only keeps the public informed, but it alerts the other members of the Fantastic Four to Ben’s dire situation.

Another huge plus was the tight unification of the various sub-plots that had been running through several Marvel titles at the time.  This was the benefit of having Stan Lee write virtually all of Marvel’s output. 

DC’s titles were collected into minor fiefdoms:  Weisinger’s Superman family titles.  Kanigher's war books.  Schwartz’s almost everything else.  While each editor’s titles showed consistency to varying degrees, there was very little continuity across editorial boundaries. 

But over at Marvel, Stan’s personal hand in everything created the strong sense of a connected universe.  Sub-plots in one hero’s series carried over if the hero appeared in another’s title.  And so many of those threads wended through “The Hulk Vs. the Thing”.  The impetus for the Hulk’s rampage on New York came from his discovery of the events that took place in The Avengers # 4, which themselves were a continuation of The Avengers # 3.  The Hulk’s destruction of Bruce Banner’s secret underground lab wrapped up a loose end left over from his first, cancelled series.

Another dangling plot element from the first Hulk series was the character of Rick Jones.  Lee neatly segued Jones over to the Avengers title, where the newly revived Captain America took the teen-ager under his wing.  Rather than having no impact on the mythos of the Hulk, we see the Green Goliath actually reacting to such a thing, even if he misinterpreted it.  And it gave a chance for Rick to display his conflicted loyalties, between those to the Hulk and those to the Avengers.  Rick’s presence in the story even afforded Stan the opportunity to make a reference to Bucky Barnes, thereby tickling a Fantastic Four reader’s interest in Captain America and his upcoming series in Tales of Suspense.

The Hulk’s precipitous departure from the ranks of the Avengers in issue # 2 of its series makes it easy to dismiss his Avengers membership as a mere technicality.  But, as FF # 25-6 shows, the Hulk had an emotional investment in his rôle as an Avenger; he is angered that the team replaced him with Captain America and looks on it as an abandonment.  His dialogue with Cap during the battle at the top of the skyscraper makes it clear that Jade-Jaws resents the Star-Spangled Avenger taking his place. 

It was a very natural thing, this resentment.  It implied that, though the Hulk quit the team, he was secretly gratified by the notion that he couldn’t be replaced.  That he was replaced so quickly and by a "glorified acrobat”, no less, rankled the Hulk’s impenetrable green hide.

All of this contributed to the feeling that Marvel’s characters resided in a self-contained universe.  Even the individual titles didn’t matter so much.  A running thread started in one series could continue, or even evolve, in another.  This was a novel idea for comics at the time, and---as Stan Lee was cannily aware---it was the best kind of self-promotion for the Marvel line.  Fans of, say, the Sub-Mariner had to follow more than just Fantastic Four, if they wanted to keep up with what was going on with Namor’s war against the surface world.

One of Stan Lee’s strengths as a writer was his ear for humourous dialogue.  Offhand, his only equal in writing truly funny lines was Arnold Drake.  Ben Grimm’s wisecracks during the battle not only hit that right note necessary for comics-dialogue humour, but it underscored the Thing’s courage.  It invests Ben with a true sense of valour.  His determination and refusal to quit come across as genuine human qualities, rather than just because it’s in the script.  As a character, it is Ben Grimm’s finest hour.

As for the art, I am not as big a Jack Kirby booster as most; I’ve always found his depiction of human anatomy as, shall we say, too stylised.  But there is no denying the raw dynamism and punch in his renderings.  For this kind of story, no-one could present it visually better than Kirby.  Every panel of the fight has movement, power, impact.

Kirby’s prodigious output during Marvel’s early years was virtually the house style for the line.  This bolstered the unified Marvel mythos, in some ways, even more so than Stan Lee’s cross-title plotlines.  Kirby’s art provided a visual continuity that was reassuring to fans as they put down one Marvel comic and picked up another.

If someone were to ask me what the big deal was about the early Marvel Age of Comics, these are the two issues I would show him.

Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

Sept. 18, 2012: Can a faithful movie adaptation of Judge Dredd be made?

One reason I ask this question is because the last one missed the mark so badly. (That was Judge Dredd, made in 1995 and starring Sylvester Stallone.) Another is that I’m not sure a faithful adaptation could work on the big screen, and maybe it shouldn’t be tried.

That’s because Judge Dredd, the English comic-book strip that began in 1977, works on more than one level. One level is straight action-adventure science fiction, which Hollywood does very well. (It’s something videogames do well, too, and a popular first-person shooter Judge Dredd game debuted in 1997.)

1.Karl Urban stars as 'Judge Dredd' in DREDD 3D. Photo credit: Joe Alblas. Copyright Lionsgate.

The premise of Judge Dredd is a dystopic future where atomic war has rendered huge parts of the globe uninhabitable, except for mutant animals and humans. The bulk of humanity lives in walled-off “mega-cities” that cover huge tracts of land, but not nearly enough land – people are stacked on top of each other in city block-size apartment complexes (most with tongue-in-cheek names like “Rowdy Yates Block” and “Ernest Borgnine Block”). And not only are people being driven crazy by the lack of living space, they are also mostly unemployed, as robots do all the work. The combination means that the mega-cities are essentially ungovernable, as people follow fads in a frenzied fashion and occasionally erupt into murderous violence. Virtually all activity is illegal on some level.

Enter the judges, who supply the only law enforcement. They are police, judge, jury and executioner all rolled into one, riding the streets on high-tech motorcycles dispensing frontier justice. And the scariest judge of all is our title character, Judge Dredd, a clone of the first judge whose sense of justice is unwavering, who is absolutely incorruptible and whose sentences – including death – cannot be swayed by any appeal to his humanity.

 2. Lena Headey stars as 'Ma-Ma' in DREDD 3D. Photo credit: Joe Alblas.  Copyright Lionsgate.

Because, essentially, he doesn’t have any. There’s the second level of Judge Dredd: self-parody. The creators of Judge Dredd took the Dirty Harry idea, which Europeans don’t admire at all, to its logical extreme. They also incorporated all the clichés Europeans hold of Americans, of gun-crazy cowboys whose solution to everything is ultra-violence.

In short, the judges are not necessarily good guys. Notice, for example, how the judge outfits are vaguely Nazi-like, with a ludicrously large American eagle on one shoulder.  The judges are flat-out fascists, but the irony here is that fascism may be the only solution in this dysfunctional world. So we sometimes laugh at the judges, sometimes admire them, but mostly we dread them – hence the title. That’s a pretty sophisticated underpinning to what on the surface looks like an exaggerated cops-and-robbers strip.

Somehow, I don’t think that aspect of Judge Dredd will appeal to American audiences.

3. Olivia Thirlby stars as 'Anderson' in DREDD 3D. Photo credit: Joe Alblas. Copyright Lionsgate.

But that parody of America is part of the strip’s sense of ironic humor, which is itself part of the strip’s appeal. Sometimes Dredd is a straight-up action hero, but sometimes he’s part of the joke – a joke he can’t get, because he has absolutely no sense of humor. Which is itself played for laughs.

Judges are also barred from having any romantic involvement. So, I ask you, how can Hollywood successfully make a movie where the hero borders on self-parody, where romance is out of the question and where tough-guy dialogue is often ironic? Because in 1995 we got exactly that: an action/adventure movie where Dredd was unquestionably the good guy, where he had a romance with Judge Hershey (who is Chief Judge in the comics) and where there was absolutely no irony whatsoever when Stallone growled Dredd’s catch-phrase, “I am the law!”

These questions are pertinent because some brave movie-makers are making another stab at a Judge Dredd adaptation. Dredd 3D, starring Karl Urban, premieres Sept. 21.

I don’t know what approach the filmmakers have taken – whether it’s straight SF action, or it’s subtly ironic. But I’ll be there, because the trailers look great, the plot sounds interesting and early reviews on Rotten Tomatoes are almost universally positive. Also, Urban impressed me as Dr. McCoy in the recent Star Trek movie, and Dredd 3D villain Lena Headey was terrific in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Plus, the film features Judge Anderson, a popular character from the comics.

I’m looking forward to it all, because I don’t think “can a faithful Judge Dredd movie adaption be made” is the right question. All that matter is whether a Judge Dredd movie can be made that’s both good and entertaining.

We’ll all find out Sept. 21.

Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics@aol.com.

DC surprises on Free Comic Book Day 

May 27, 2012 -- I was pleased to see that DC Comics: The New 52 FCBD Special Edition #1, one of DC's two offering for Free Comic  Book Day (the other being a children's book) had some actual meat in it. I wanted to point out what I noticed, and see if you Legionnaires had any other suggestions or ideas. 

Here we go:

PAGE ONE

These three panels pack a lot of information in them.

Panel 1: The seven earliest human magicians form a council of some kind. The center one is wearing the Shazam! insignia, but I don't know him. (He looks African, or possibly Australian bushman.) The one on the far right looks like -- no kidding -- Super Chief! Behind him is a Japanese man, who sure looks a lot like Samurai from Super Friends (but I'm honestly hoping he's not -- that's just silly). Between the Shazam avatar and psuedo-Samurai is a woman who looks like Isis. There's another Asian, a woman, and a woman with red hair. I'm guessing they represent Chinese and Celtic pantheons, respectively. There's another black man, who is probably African or Mesopotamian. If my guesses are accurate, they would represent the earliest civilizations, excluding South America. (Mayans don't get no love!)

Panel 2-3: We meet "the greatest transgressors mankind has ever known." These three -- "The Trinity of Sin" -- inform us a little of what the "War of the Trinity" will be about in upcoming issues. Prior to this, the only trinity we had known was Batman-Superman-Wonder Woman. Nice to know they won't be the bad guys.

PAGE TWO

Panels 1-7: The first of the Trinity is revealed, and it appears to be Judas Iscariot. He's unnamed, but what they say -- "your greed has forever darkened the world" -- is a suggestion, as is something he says -- "Forgive me as He would!" -- is a likely reference to Jesus Christ. Also the Shazam guy -- Judas calls him "wizard" -- throws 30 pieces of silver at him, which turn into a necklace that we've seen before ... on the Phantom Stranger. To pound it home, Isis says "You will walk as a stranger to man, to witness what greed can do."

PAGE THREE

Panels 1-6: The second member of the Trinity of Sin is unnamed, and in fact his punishment is that he and everyone else will forget his name. I dunno if we're supposed to know who he is or not; he's a ginger and that's the only clue we have. He's arrogant and defiant, if that's of any help. But his face is erased by the wizards, a look we've seen before, on The Question (who wore a mask). This seems confirmed when someone off panel says "You will forever question your identity and forever search for answers you will never find."

Panel 7: The last member of the Trinity is named: Pandora of Greco-Roman myth, whom we have seen skulking about in every New 52 first issue.

PAGE FOUR

Pandora is being punished for releasing all the evils in the world, but doesn't consider herself evil and resents being punished for curiosity. 

PAGE FIVE

Not a lot new here; we see the Red Room again from Justice League where extraterrestrial, unidentified and classified technology is kept and where Cyborg was born. His poor relationship with his father is underscored. Someone makes reference to a Monitor Machine, which seems to function much like the Monitors of Crisis on Infinite Earths. 

PAGE SIX

The Monitor Machine is picking up a transmission from an alternate earth, which we recognize as Earth 2. We see their Trinity (who apparently die in Earth 2 #1) in combat with Parademons, along with Supergirl and Robin (who become Power Girl and Huntress in Worlds' Finest #1). We also get our first looks at the Alan "Green Lantern" Scott and Jay "Flash" Garrick of this Earth 2. Pandora is present but invisible, and thinks "It's not here.

PAGE SEVEN

Argus, a "Bloodlines" superhero in the old 52, is now A.R.G.U.S., identified as a military arm dedicated to fighting superhumans, but they don't tell us what the acronym stands for. We meet Steve Trevor and Etta Candy (the latter is now black and thin), who have NOT been introduced in Wonder Woman so far. Trevor is the head of A.R.G.U.S. and expresses sympathy for the League and distaste for Green Arrow. We hear references to the super-powered teens in Alaska (Ravagers?), Talia al-Ghul and the book we saw in Justice League about the Justice League. 

PAGE EIGHT-NINE

Panel 1: We learn of the Black Room, where dangerous supernatural artifacts are kept. We see a lot of them, and I could use some help identifying them all! Let's see:

I think that's the head of the spear of destiny attached to the bureau next to the Mayan-looking thing. Above that is an ornate chair, someone's throne? That's the original black diamond under the sheet, it looks to me, before Eclipso split it up into lots of little diamonds. There's a dragon skeleton. There's a chandelier made of bones, which could have come from Europe's Sedlec Ossuary, but i may have seen it on the cover to a House of Mystery once, or maybe that was an organ made of bone. I'm guessing the green thing with the "do not ring" notice is the New 52's Green Bell of Uthool from the Demons Three storylines. On the far right is the Haunted Tank, and near it what looks like a half-hidden Red Lantern. There's a longboat hanging from the ceiling, too (Viking Prince?). Some of those papier-mache warriors from China's Hidden City tomb are on the left. There's some red armor, but I don't know whose (Shining Knight?). The symbols and words around the door in the back are part of the Great Seal of the United States, and basically assigns God's approval of new beginnings. There's a half-hidden painting (Doom Patrol's Painting That Ate Paris?). Any other guesses?

Panels 6-9: Pandora arrives, looking for her Box. She references the Spear of Destiny and Black Diamond, which I identified above, and the Seven Spells of Shazam, which I didn't. Conversation indicates that the Orb of Ra (which created Metamorpho) was stolen by an unidentified male. Dr. Mist, who was an Earth-Two bad guy in the Old 52, is the curator of the Black Room, but we don't see him. Pandora exhibits magic guns. She opens her box, which contains a three-eyed skull. Who do we know with three eyes? Could it be ... Despero?

PAGE 10

"The Circus" -- one of A.R.G.U.S.'s special "rooms" -- is mentioned. References are made to Black Orchid and John Constantine. 

PAGE 11

An angry face in the stormclouds watching Pandora. Spectre? Shazam?

PAGE 12

We meet a black Green Lantern. John Stewart?

PAGES 13-16

Lots of capes fighting. We see the Justice League, except Hal Jordan is missing and black Green Lantern is there, fighting Superman. Wonder Woman is punching Mera. Vibe (yes, VIBE!) is vibrating at Flash. Deadman is possessing Black Adam. Element Girl and The Atom (who looks female) are fighting Cyborg. Hwkman is fighting Green Arrow (some things never change).

I have no idea what the fight's about, but it does introduce the New 52 versions of some characters I haven't seen before, like Black Adam and "Atom Girl" and Vibe. Of course, I don't read ALL the New 52, so maybe some of these have already appeared somewhere.

Anyone else got anything?

I wanted to like the new Dynamite series, Kirby Genesis.  It’s written by one of my favorite writers, Kurt Busiek.  It features covers and art direction by the incredible Alex Ross.  And it contains all of Jack Kirby’s crazy creations from late in his career:  Captain Victory, Silver Star and so on. 

               The series started off on the right foot.  There was a zero issue which introduced many of these characters to unfamiliar readers through sketches and short bios.  We met characters like the Midnight Swan for the first time and caught glimpses of new designs for more-established characters like Captain Glory.  

               The story also started well.  Kurt Busiek introduced us to a trio of normal humans: the slightly awkward teenager Kirby Freeman, his gorgeous next-door neighbor Bobbi Cortez and her father, the former cop, Jake.  They were our eyes and ears into this wonderfully weird world. 

Plus, Busiek gave us a reason for all of this weirdness.  Jack Kirby had once contributed a drawing for a NASA.  The drawing was rejected.  But Busiek posed a hypothetical scenario.  What if Kirby’s drawing had been included on the space probe?  And what if all of this weirdness was drawn to our world in response to this weirdness?  It was a simple concept that explained the sudden appearance of so many different aliens at once.  The unusual earth creatures and cultures were the cherry on top, drawn out of hiding at just the right time. 

               Unfortunately, the story hasn’t held together.  Four issues in and the plot is all over the place.  The three main characters are completely separated.  One of them, Bobbi, has been taken over by the strange entity of the Midnight Swan and hasn’t appeared as herself in several issues.  There have been scenes in space and scenes in the past, scenes without any of our supposed point-of-view characters. 

               I understand the desire to capture the craziness of Jack Kirby.  His mind was full of ideas, overflowing with imagination.  But Genesis hasn’t captured it as much as it has become caught up in it.  It’s being tossed around like the inside of a tornado and nothing is holding together.  We still need a lens through which to view the wild and crazy creations of Jack Kirby.  Genesis started out with one, but lost it.  It lacks focus.  It lacks cohesion.  It lacks… unity. 

Back in the Golden Age- not the Golden Age of Comics but the original Golden Age of Greece- the philosopher Aristotle wrote a theory of aesthetics known as the classical unities.  He argued that drama should be unified in three specific ways: action, place and time.  Drama should have unity of action- one main plot with few or no sub-plots.  It should have unity of place- all of the action should occur in a single physical space.  And it should have unity of time- all of the action should occur within a single day.

               Aristotle’s rules for drama can be unnecessarily restrictive.   They certainly weren’t followed by all of the authors in his own age.  However, the classical unities can be important guidelines for creating a cohesive story. 

The unity of time doesn’t have to be confined to a single day or the unity of place to a single setting.  Yet a good story will still follow the principles that underlie the unities.  For example, the musical Rent restricted its story to a single year rather than a single day.  It also took place in one city, New York, and in one neighborhood.  Rent had unity of time and place, even though its unity was a little broader than one day and one location.   Those unities helped the story hold together.  They gave it cohesiveness so that it was one interlocking story rather than multiple stories tacked together. 

               That’s where Kirby Genesis has gotten off track.  There’s nothing holding the story together.  The only unity is that the characters were all created by Jack Kirby.  That’s not enough.  There’s no unity of place- the characters are scattered all over the planet.  There’s no unity of time- flashbacks are taking place in the past and plots in the present are moving forward at vastly different paces.  There’s no unity of action- there’s no one story!  There’s not even a limited set of stories as the series has gotten away from its three central characters.  The series is now balancing six or seven separate stories, some of which don’t even have a tangential connection to the others.

A writer might be able to ignore one or even two of Aristotle’s classical unities.  But when a writer abandons all three unities, the story becomes a jumbled mess.  And that’s the case with Kirby Genesis.  It’s not a story.  It’s a jumbled mess.  And that’s too bad. 

DC’s new 52 debuts in earnest next week.  Justice League #1 was this week’s appetizer.  Next week, the real experiment begins.

            It’s been interesting to watch the reactions since this ambitious endeavor was initially announced.  At first, there was an equal mix of cynicism and enthusiasm.  That tells us more about fandom- and humanity in general- than it does about DC.  There will always be pessimists prepared to declare a new initiative the worst idea ever and optimists ready to hope for something brilliant. 

Then there was an exaggerated mood of disappointment when the actual comics were announced as if some fans secretly hoped that the line-up would be designed individually for them.  I remember one of Captain Comics’ great philosophies: “I don’t like wrestling and I have no interest in wrestling comics but I’m glad they make them because it means they’re making comics for more than just me.”  Some of the new 52 titles that I’m least interested in are the ones that have other fans the most excited.  Good.  I wasn’t going to buy all 52 anyway.

I’ve also been intrigued by the way in which many fans have assessed the new 52 for how well the list has conformed to their own continuity checklist.  In the long run, that’s not going to matter.  The books will succeed based more on quality than whether or not the right character is wearing the Robin mask.  After all, I was prepared to dislike the third Firestorm series because it didn’t star Ronnie Raymond.  But Jason Rusch’s adventures were so good that I was persuaded he’s the better Nuclear Man.   

Yet, without the actual books to talk about, it is fascinating to discuss how these books fit with our own personal notions.

The Superman Family: Action, Superman, Superboy, Supergirl

I’ll admit that I was disappointed when I heard about the back-to-basics approach for Superman.  I grew up with John Byrne’s Man of Steel.  I liked having a Ma and Pa Kent around.  And I had no objection to the idea that Superman wasn’t the first superhero.  Like Babe Ruth or The Beatles, he didn’t have to be the first to be the best.  So I didn’t like the idea that DC was returning to the Silver Age status quo.  It struck me as a move backwards. 

But then I thought about it a bit more.  DC isn’t trying to get old Silver Age fans back.  They’re trying to attract new fans.  Those potential readers would know about Superman primarily through the long-running TV series Smallville.  Jonathan Kent died during that series (and Martha too for all I know).  Plus, Clark was the first hero who eventually inspired and assembled others.  I realized this isn’t about the Silver Age; it’s about Smallville.  That’s especially evident in Action Comics where a beginning Superman hasn’t even adopted a costume. 

They’re still not the choices I would have made (I’ll miss you, Man of Steel) but now that I get what DC is trying to do, I’m much more likely to give this new continuity a chance (say hello, Man of Tomorrow). 

The Batman Family: Batman, Detective, Batwing, The Dark Knight, Batman & Robin, Batgirl, Batwoman, Nightwing, Catwoman, Birds of Prey and Red Hood & the Outlaws

I’ve never been a dedicated Batman reader.  I’ve sampled Batman from time to time but there were always too many titles for me to become fully engrossed in the line.  That hasn’t changed- and it’s not going to.  However, I have been a big fan of some of his apprentice heroes.  On that score, the new Batman line has both a hit and a miss.

  As much as I enjoyed seeing Dick Grayson finally wear the mantle of the bat, I knew that it wasn’t going to last.  So I’m glad that he’s landed gracefully on his feet, back in his own title as Nightwing. 

On the other hand, I wasn’t happy that Barbara Gordon was going back to her Batgirl identity.  Like a lot of fans, I liked Barbara as Oracle.  She proved a lot more effective beating the bad guys with her mind.  And she increased DC’s diversity as a handicapped character.  Plus, I liked Stephanie Brown as Batgirl.  She had earned it after long service as Spoiler and a short stint as Robin. 

But then again, I wasn’t currently buying either Batgirl or Birds of Prey.  And I’m intrigued enough by this new series that I’m planning on buying Batgirl.  I want to see if DC can make it work, even if I think they shouldn’t have done it.  I guess it’s another case of fans saying one thing with their keyboards and another with their wallets. 

Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, New Guardians, Red Lanterns

The Green Lantern line was one of DC’s most successful franchises.  So they didn’t have to change a lot.  They did anyway.  I approve.  I like that they’re being bold, rather than rightfully resting on their laurels. 

Some of the changes are slight.  Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner have traded places, but they’re still both Green Lanterns.  Guy and John now share the lead in Green Lantern Corps (Guy had been the lead in Emerald Warriors).  Kyle now takes over the third Green Lantern title as New Guardians replaces Emerald Warriors in the line-up. 

Other changes are significant.  Hal Jordan has been kicked out of the Green Lantern Corps.  Sinestro has been bonded to a green ring against his will.  And, at least initially, the new Green Lantern title will feature Sinestro instead of Hal.  Is it permanent?  Probably not.  Is it interesting?  Very. 

They haven’t changed everything, of course.  The color spectrum is still represented by other corps, and one of them now receives their own title.  Although older fans claim to hate it, the other corps have been incredibly popular.   Even Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory has been spotted wearing T-shirts from the other corps. 

Justice League, Justice League International, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Captain Atom, Fury of Firestorm, Savage Hawkman, Mister Terrific and DC Comics Presents

It’s nice to see Aquaman, Firestorm and Hawkman back in action.  One of the reasons why I loved Brightest Day was that it resurrected so many of these older characters.  Yet it was more than that.  Brightest Day made them relevant again.  I liked the new Aqualad.  I liked that Jason and Ronnie now shared the Firestorm matrix.  I could have skipped the Hawkman storyline, but at least he was alive again.  I always hoped that they would get their own titles coming out of Brightest Day, just as Booster Gold got his own title coming out of 52.  And now, my wish is granted.  I’m especially pleased that they’re going forward with a combined Jason/Ronnie Firestorm.  Their interaction has been a lot more interesting than any previous incarnation.  I would have liked to see a Martian Manhunter title too but we’ll get to that later.

The Flash is the title that reminded me I have my own continuity checklist as much as anyone else.  I like Wally West as the Flash and I’d be a lot more interested in this title if he was the lead instead of Barry. 

            The biggest continuity change comes in Justice League #1 as Cyborg replaces Martian Manhunter as a founding member of the team.  I have no problem with that.  I’ve been through enough ret-cons by now that I no longer bat an eye.  Plus, my allegiance to both characters is about the same- they’re both safely in my top ten for DC heroes.  I’m also intrigued by the new line-up in Justice League International.  It’s nice to see one of the heroes from the Great Ten be integrated into the greater DC Universe, even if their own title didn’t sell well.

The Dark: Justice League Dark, Swamp Thing, Animal Man, Frankenstein, I Vampire, Resurrection Man and Demon Knights

            This section isn’t really for me.  I’m ambivalent about whether or not the main characters belong in a separate Vertigo line or back in the DCU.  I prefer a pseudo-Silver Age Animal Man with the cool orange costume to the warped Vertigo version.  And I’ve never been interested in The Demon. 

            That’s okay, of course.  I’m not the target audience for this and DC should be targeting multiple audiences.  If this reinvigorates interest in Swamp Thing or provides some off beat cult hits like Frankenstein: Agent of SHADE or I, Vampire, that’s a good thing.     

            The one thing I like is the return of Resurrection Man.  That was one of the underrated titles of the late ‘90s and it will be fun to get in on the beginning this time. 

The Edge: Stormwatch, Voodoo, Grifter, Deathstroke, Suicide Squad, OMAC, Blackhawks, Men of War and All-Star Western

The big change here is the integration of the Wildstorm characters into the DC universe.  I’ll lay my cards on the table: I’m all for it.  I’ve read a lot of comments from people who are opposed to the idea.  Some of them simply don’t like the Wildstorm characters.  That’ s fine.  You don’t have to read these titles if you don’t like them.  But these characters have been around for 20 years now and, at a certain point, the complaints sound as ridiculous as old people criticizing rap music.

However, some Wildstorm fans have also opposed the idea.  I’ve seen several suggest that the Wildstorm characters are better off on their own little world.  I strongly disagree.  They’ve been segmented off in their own little world for a long time and it hasn’t been a good thing.  The last series was a great post-apocalyptic tale and it was practically ignored.  The only way for these characters to become relevant again is for them to become part of the DCU.

I’ve heard similar arguments over the years about Captain Marvel, Plastic Man, Blue Beetle and the Freedom Fighters.  “They’re fine in their own world but they don’t belong in the DCU.”  I think it’s ridiculous.  When SHAZAM had his out-of-continuity series in the ‘70s, it was quickly cut back to a bi-monthly and lasted 35 issues.  The in-continuity series in the ‘90s lasted 47 issues.  Ted Kord’s enduring popularity today has more to do with his appearances as part of the Justice League than with any of his solo series.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Plastic Man was given his first ongoing series in almost 40 years after joining the JLA. 

The exposure is good for the Wildstorm characters.  And though I’d rather see him in his own title, I’m fascinated by the idea of putting the Martian Manhunter in charge of Stormwatch.

Young Justice: Teen Titans, Static Shock, Hawk & Dove, Blue Beetle, Legion of Superheroes, Legion Lost

I’m impressed that DC came up with a group name.  This is a very disparate bunch.  In terms of continuity, there are some backward steps, forward steps and corrected steps.

The backward step is Hawk & Dove.  I’m one of the few people on this board who actually likes Rob Liefeld but even I’m disappointed by this class reunion.  Why is DC intentionally trying to revive a minor hit from the late ‘80s?  That seems like a bad idea.  I’d much rather see Dove and her sister as Hawk than retread old ground. 

The forward step is Static Shock.  I know that some other observers think this is another backward step.  After all, DC is reviving another ‘90s concept.  But this isn’t a straight retread.  They’re incorporating elements from the successful cartoon and building off of his recent appearances in Teen Titans.  I’m intrigued by this new title and I hope it does well.

The corrected step is Blue Beetle.  I can’t say that I was an avid fan of the previous series.  I borrowed a couple of trades from the library after the series was already canceled.  But it was very good.  So this is a smart revival.  DC could build on the positive reviews and the good will from the previous series.

There’s also a sideways step in the form of Legion of Superheroes.  It certainly seems like the recently re-launched Legion is being re-launched again simply because everybody else is doing it.  It’s essentially the same creative team and concept as before. 

That’s my checklist.  I know that it won’t match with everyone, or even anyone.  We all have our own opinions about which character should bear which codename and which heroes should be in which team.  Those opinions have been shaped by favorite stories and series of the past.  Then again, it’s always possible that these new series could shape new opinions.  After all, who would have thought in 1986 that they’d like a Justice League with Blue Beetle and Booster Gold? 

“In Mortal Combat with . . . Sub-Mariner!”

Editor:  Stan Lee  Writer:  Stan Lee  Art:  Wally Wood

When fans discuss the classic titles put out by Marvel Comics during the Silver Age, Daredevil seldom comes up.  For one thing, the lead character lacked the flashy super-powers of Spider-Man or the Fantastic Four.  He didn’t even have the dramatic visuals of the Hulk or Giant-Man.  Then, there was the fact that the title never saw any of the Jack Kirby art for Marvelites to ooh and ahh over.

Daredevil did pick up a few points when Wally Wood took over the art chores, starting with the fifth issue.  Wood’s clean, photogenic style was a marked improvement over previous series artist Joe Orlando.  Orlando’s art seemed murky and uneven, making it look like it had been drawn in a backroom someplace, over the week-end, on butcher paper.  (To be fair, a good share of the blame has to go to Orlando’s inker, Vince Colletta, whose scratchy, broken lines always looked like part of the nib of his pen had snapped off.)

Daredevil # 7, when remembered at all, is known for two things.

It was the debut of his all-red costume, which so quickly became his classic look that most Silver-Age readers forgot that he ever wore a different outfit.

Less of a landmark, but perhaps more important, this was story in which Daredevil came of age.  It was here that he transitioned from being a glorified acrobat with a gimmick to a real, honest-to-God super-hero.

The initial premise of “In Mortal Combat with . . . Sub-Mariner!” is much like something that Will Eisner would have come up with.

Will Eisner is legendary among comics creators, and in his case, legendary is no overstatement.  Eisner’s long-running adventures of the Spirit are masterpieces of art and writing that comics professionals are still learning from, some sixty years later.  One of his common devices was to set the derring-do of his two-fisted hero amidst some prosaic aspect of human drama, and it was this aspect that the plot twisted around.

Sometimes, Eisner took his “average joe” concept to a point which bordered on the absurd, but somehow, he made it seem like a perfectly normal event.  Such as his story, “The Dictator’s Reform”, told a few months before America’s entry into World War II, in which Adolf Hitler makes a private visit to the United States.  He goes on a walking tour of Central City, to meet the people and try to convince them that he’s not such a bad fellow.  It’s a loopy notion, but under Eisner’s handling, you find yourself thinking, “Hey, why not?”

More down to earth, but no less dramatic was his “Taxes and the Spirit”, in which the blue-suited hero goes up against the Internal Revenue Bureau.  This wasn’t a wild, over-the-top affair, as it was when DC’s Superman found himself in the same fix.  No, Eisner handled it realistically, when two Internal Revenue agents discover that the Spirit has never filed a tax return.  They aren’t starchy, persimmon-faced bureaucrats fixated on a petty notion.  Eisner paints them as dedicated agents doing their jobs, simply looking for an explanation.

It was just this kind of quirky but perfectly natural action, when you stop to think about it, that formed the basis of “In Mortal Combat with . . . Sub-Mariner!”

The story opens with Prince Namor in one of his usual humans-are-no-damn-good fugues.  It doesn’t help his mood that his Atlantean warlords are insisting on going to war with us land-dwellers immediately.  Namor realises that a war will devastate his people, as well as the air-breathers.  Rather than do that, he settles on another way to get justice for the wrongs committed against the people of Atlantis.

Namor decides to take the human race to court!

A loopy idea, but, hey, why not?

In two shakes of a dolphin’s tail, the Sub-Mariner arrives in New York.  Since an appearance by Prince Namor usually means bad things for the cops, the Army, and local property values, the bystanders give him a wide berth.  Once in Manhattan, Subby heads for the nearest office building and selects a law firm from the tenant directory.  Since this is decades before Angie’s List, he uses the ever-reliable pot-luck method . . . .

“Now for the first attorney I find!  Ah!  Nelson and Murdock!  I’m certain they will do as well as any others!”

Namor announces himself at the offices of Nelson and Murdock, Attorneys-at-Law and states his case.  “I wish to sue the entire human race for depriving us of our birthright!”

He’s not very happy when Matt Murdock tells him there are a couple of problems with that prospect.  First, there’s no legal precedent for such an action, and second, there’s no jurisdictional respondent since no one nation represents the human race.  But as a prince of the blood, Namor won’t be put off by petty details.

When Foggy Nelson explains that petty details are pretty much what litigation is all about, Subby leaves in a snit, leaving a smashed door, a shattered desk, and a demolished wall behind him.

Over the next few hours, Subby rampages through the city, leaving a nice wide trail of destruction so the police and the military can find him.  He wants to be arrested, to force his day in court.  Unfortunately, the authorities have a more permanent solution to the Namor Problem in mind, and they blast away at him with tanks and machine guns.

As soon as Foggy and their secretary, Karen, have gone home for the night, Murdock changes to Daredevil, showing off for the first time his brand new crimson duds.  Snagging a ride from an Air Force spotter plane, DD finds the Sub-Mariner and tries to reason with him.  However, in order to do that, like the old joke about the mule and the two-by-four, first the Man Without Fear has to get the fish man’s attention, which he does by a good jump kick to Namor’s solar plexus.

After that, the negotiations kind of fall through.

DD ducks and weaves the best he can, but Subby finally gets him in the water.  Namor then pounds away at Our Hero.  When he sees Daredevil sinking to the bottom of the river bed, he decides, “I cannot permit one so valiant to die---even though he is my enemy!”  The Sub-Mariner snags DD by the wrist and hurls him back up to the surface.

Two panels later, the prince of Atlantis surrenders to a much-relieved shipload of sailors.

The next morning, using his one phone call, the Sub-Mariner retains Nelson and Murdock to handle his case.  Foggy Nelson shows the command decision-making that makes him the senior partner.  “You’d better handle it, Matt.”

Prince Namor finally gets his day in court, but things don’t go too well for him, or Murdock.  Matt’s opening plea, at which he raises the issue of the Sub-Mariner’s civil suit, gets shot down by the presiding judge.  And the tone with which the district attorney levels the charges against the Atlantean rankles Namor’s royal temperament.

Murdock smooths things over by pointing out that Namor is the supreme monarch of his people, where his word is law, and fellows like that just don’t play well with us regular folks.  The judge agrees, and he calls a recess, so he can decide the most proper venue to dispose of the Sub-Mariner’s case.

While waiting for the hearing to resume, Lady Dorma, Namor’s consort, enters the courtroom and informs her prince that, during his absence, one of his warlords, the treacherous Krang, has launched a rebellion in Atlantis.  That’s it, as far as Subby’s concerned, the trial’s over, and he scatters the half-dozen court officers who try to keep him from marching out.

Matt calms the Atlantean down and persuades him not to throw away his chance to be heard.  Namor agrees to wait twenty-four hours, “but not one instant more!”  The judge, however, postpones the trial for a week, and Murdock has to go down to intake and break the news to the impatient Sub-Mariner.

Subby decides that this legal stuff is all a bunch of hooey and bursts out of his jail cell.  The Army hasn’t been caught sleeping, though.  Armoured units and troops of soldiers line the streets for blocks around the jail, and the bullets and the bombs start flying.  They barely faze Namor, so determined is he to get back to Atlantis and deal with Krang.

Meanwhile, Matt has changed back to Daredevil and locates the commanding officer of the troops.  DD asks for time to handle the enraged Sub-Mariner himself, before anyone else is hurt.  The C.O. thinks Daredevil is out of his mind, but agrees.  Thus, begins one of the most dramatic man-to-man contests ever seen in comics.

Daredevil, armed only with his agility, billy club, and enhanced senses, against a super-strong, indestructible, lightning-quick Sub-Mariner, who’s pretty hacked off, to boot.

Wally Wood’s sleek art depicts the combat in elegant snapshots.  Daredevil somersaulting high over a charging Namor.  Namor streaking high into the sky, towing DD, hanging desperately from his billy-club line.  The Sub-Mariner wrenching a lamppost free from its foundation, swinging it at the toppling hero.

The Man Without Fear is hopelessly outmatched.  He knows it.  Namor knows it.  But DD keeps coming.  He hits the fish man with a wrecking ball, drops a steam-shovel full of boulders on him, then vaults out of his foe’s reach at the last instant when none of it makes so much as a dent in his Atlantean hide.

The Sub-Mariner’s contempt for his weaker opponent gives way to disbelief, and then awe, as Daredevil refuses to quit.  “This is madness!” shouts Namor.  “Does your own life mean nothing to you?  Have you no sense of fear?”

Finally, fatigue brings Daredevil to his knees.  Disdainfully, Namor turns his back and walks away.  With his last ounce of strength, DD wraps Subby with an electrical cord, then---hoping his insulated gloves will be enough to protect him---attaches it to a live wire from the broken lamppost base.  The very air crackles as enough voltage to power a city block courses through Namor’s body and blasts Daredevil off his feet.

When the smoke lifts, Daredevil lies face down on the pavement, nearly unconscious.  But the Sub-Mariner is only dazed.  The Atlantean shakes his head clear, then turns his attention back to the armed forces lined up against him.

Wracked with pain and exhaustion, unable to even lift himself up, Daredevil reaches out desperately and clutches one of Namor’s winged ankles---and then passes out cold.

Prince Namor looks down at his helpless adversary.  Then he takes to the sky and heads seaward.  The Man Without Fear has won his respect.

He won the respect of the readers, as well.

Up to this point, Daredevil had been a costumed character with a gimmick---he’s blind, but makes do with his other senses having been increased to the Nth degree.  Most of the crooks he had fought, Rick Jones could have beaten after one judo lesson from Captain America.

But the Sub-Mariner was one of Marvel’s heavyweights, someone who had fought the Hulk and the Thing to a standstill.  For the first time, Marvel fans saw raw courage behind DD’s lame wisecracks and glibness.  The battle with Namor elevated him from a mere costumed adventurer to a genuine super-hero.

There wouldn’t be many moments like this for the Man Without Fear.  His title would remain a second-tier one, and the plots would stay fairly lightweight, occasionally even drifting toward farce.  And Wally Wood, whose art gave the series such a polished veneer, would be replaced before the end of the year.

But, for this one issue, at least, the man called Daredevil proved that he could hit in the big leagues.

Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

There’s nothing an ink-stained wretch like this reviewer can add to the poignancy and lyrical beauty of Oscar Wilde’s stories. Fortunately, there’s plenty legendary artist P. Craig Russell can add, as he does in The Fairy Tales of Oscar Wilde Volume 5: The Happy Prince (NBM, $16.99).

The award-winning Russell is famed for his beautiful, Raphael-esque artwork, on display in his stunning adaptations of Wagner’s Das Ring die Nibelungen, Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Strauss’s Salome. Russell has even managed a superhero or two, including Marvel’s Killraven and Dr. Strange.

The downside to Russell’s classical style is that it takes a lot of time. As he explains on his text and video blog (nbmpub.com/blog/author/craig-russell), “The Magic Prince” has been staring at him accusingly from beside his art table for eight years, while other projects have taken precedence – and because Russell’s perfectionism wasn’t happy with his initial efforts.

It was well worth the wait. As usual, Russell’s art is transcendent, transporting the reader to a world where even trash dumps have their own textured, fine-lined beauty. And those things that are supposed to be beautiful fairly glow, as if painted in layers of oil like the Old Masters Russell resembles, and not merely ink and watercolor on paper.

Then there’s the story itself, a classic of long standing. Wilde’s tale is that of a “Happy Prince” who was a royal lad who led a life of ease and indolence before dying young. The prince’s spirit now resides in his own gold- leafed and gem-embroidered statue on a tall steeple, where he can see the wretched poverty of his people for the first time. He cajoles a barn swallow into denuding him of his riches and distributing them to the needy, with dire consequences for them both. I won’t spoil everything here, but I will note that this story of heroic altruism and the gap between rich and poor is of special relevance today, where it’s reflected in the Occupy Wall Street movement and presidential politics.

Russell’s work speaks for itself, but there is one thing I can add: Go look for yourself, and see if The Happy Prince doesn’t convince you to take him home, where his message can enrich all who hear it.

Elsewhere:

Ever hear about something all your life, but not understand it until you experience it firsthand? Such was the case of Modesty Blaise for me, a comic-strip character from England whose appeal I didn’t understand until I read a collected volume.

Modesty Blaise: Live Bait ($19.95) is the 21st and latest volume in the reprint series by Titan Books of England, with a 22nd due in August. Prior to reading it, the times I’d run across Modesty (a few reprints by Eclipse in the ‘80s, a couple of movies) had not impressed me. After reading it, I gained a newfound appreciation – and an understanding of why this character has lasted since 1963.

The premise is fairly simple: Modesty was a war orphan who survived (and prospered) as a criminal, until marrying (and divorcing) an English lord. (If this seems familiar, writer Chris Claremont lifted parts of Modesty’s story for the origin of the X-Men’s Storm.) Once legitimatized, she retired from the criminal life and now uses her hard-won skills and connections (with the criminal organization she used to head, “The Network”) for the English crown (on occasion) and to help out old friends (more often) and those in need (most often). She is always assisted by Willie Garvin, another ex-crook with whom she has a platonic relationship based on mutual respect.

It’s a nice set-up for adventure, but nothing obviously special – until you read the actual stories. I was intrigued by Live Bait (which includes two other stories, “Samantha and the Cherub” and “Milord”), because of the verisimilitude provided by writer Peter O’Donnell. Modesty’s world is a harsh one, despite it being a comic strip, which deals frankly with subjects like child-kidnap, snuff films and sexual slavery, while utilizing a wide array of real-world (albeit often exotic) weapons, techniques and spycraft.

Naturally, Modesty is sexy and gorgeous. But artist Enric Badia Romero doesn’t exaggerate her charms; like her adventures, Modesty is exciting but believably proportioned.

It is that patina of plausibility that makes Modesty Blaise so much fun. Her adventures seem genuinely dangerous, and rarely have a completely happy ending. Modesty may win the day, but there are always consequences for playing rough.

Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics@aol.com.

We read comics for the action- the fistfights and the big explosions.  We read comics for the superheroes- the bright costumes and the capes.  But we also read comics for the relationships- the romances, the mentors and students, the close-knit team.  Over the years, comics have given us some great friendships.  Here are ten of the best of them. 

10. Gambit and Bishop: In real life, friendships are usually based on common interests.  But in fiction, the most interesting friendships are often the ones that bring disparate personalities together.  Bishop was initially suspicious of Gambit, thinking he was a traitor to the team.  However, even before Gambit was exonerated, Bishop overcame his aloofness.  Gambit’s charm was the perfect counterpoint to Bishop’s sullenness, eliciting a cheerful side and even a sense of humor that we hadn’t seen before.

9. Wonder Man and Beast: This is another wonderfully whimsical combination.  They made a great pair while they were on the Avengers.  However, they weren’t on the same team for that long a time.  Instead, their friendship truly blossomed after they were separated.  Their reunions and guest appearances were always a delight, and something to definitely look forward to.

8. Captain America and Iron Man: This may be a controversial choice as their relationship has been rocky since Civil War.  But that’s what made Civil War so poignant.  Before that, Steve and Tony had been staunch allies and great friends.  Their friendship was defined for me by a series of stories in 1994 and ’95 when Captain America’s super soldier serum was wearing off and Stark Industries was beset by scandal.  The two heroes sat down for a chat in Iron Man #303 and I’ve rarely seen a better depiction of “old friends.” 

7. Dick and Donna: Whether they’re Robin and Wonder Girl or Nightwing and Troia, Dick and Donna have always been great friends.  This is a particularly unique combination in that it’s one of the few male-female friendships.  When all of the other Teen Titans were flirting with Wonder Girl, Robin treated her as a true peer.  They relied on each other.  They helped each other.  And they were there to support each other when other relationships went sour. 

6. Archie and Jughead: When I was a little kid, I wanted friends like Archie and Jughead.  And, to some extent, my friendships in high school and college were a lot like that.  We just wanted to hang out and have fun, eat hamburgers and flirt with girls.  I can see now that their competing interests kept drawing them away from each other.  But I also know that the deep friendships of youth never truly leave you. 

5. Green Lantern and Flash: This is a friendship that spans generations.  It started in World War II when Alan Scott and Jay Garrick would team up in Comic Cavalcade.  It blossomed during the Silver Age when Hal Jordan and Barry Allen became best pals.  And it continued into the modern age when Kyle Rayner and Wally West related to each other as the young kids of the JLA. 

4. Blue Beetle and Booster Gold: They’re arguably the most famous friendship in comics.  At one point, they were practically inseparable.  They came to the Justice League separately, but they gelled as soon as they were on a team together.  They were the perfect comedy team, cracking jokes and creating hi-jinx.  However, the friendship wasn’t always good for their reputations as heroes. 

3. Wolverine and Nightcrawler: This is one of my favorite friendships and it’s summed up for me in a single line on the cover to Uncanny X-Men #172: “Hey elf, don’t forget the beer- W.”  They had a casual camaraderie that was a perfect for hanging out, playing games, drinking beer, joking around and making silly wagers.  But that casualness belied a deep connection.  That line was written on Wolverine’s wedding announcement, singling Nightcrawler out for affection and essentially asking him to be his best man. 

2. Cyborg and Changeling: You never forget your first and Cyborg and Changeling comprised the first friendship that I truly experienced through comics.  Like several of the other combinations, they were a bit of an odd couple.  Cyborg was quiet and stoic.  Changeling was outgoing and comedic.  Yet they complemented each other perfectly. 

1. Black Canary and Oracle: There have been a lot of pairs of teammates over the years and I considered some of them for this list but no one has ever worked together quite like Black Canary and Oracle.  Their relationship surpassed teamwork.  They acted in concert, almost as if they were one person.  That close connection carried over into their personal relationship as well.  They were the best of friends even as new teammates, students and adopted daughters entered the picture. 

Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

Marvel Entertainment announced a new Captain Marvel at WonderCon March 17, a character with a lot of strikes against her. But most fans are cheering.

The major problem is that the character can be confusing. To most folks, “Captain Marvel” means an entirely different character from a different company: Billy Batson, the boy who shouts “SHAZAM!” to become a light-hearted adult superhero in a red costume. He was really big in the 1940s, rivaling Superman in sales.

Which was his doom. National (now DC) Comics, publishers of Superman, sued Fawcett Publications, publisher of Captain Marvel, for copyright infringement in 1940. It appeared to be a weak case to us non-lawyers, based on both  characters having similar powers (although Captain Marvel’s were magical, and based on ancient gods and heroes) and similar civilian identities (Clark Kent was an adult reporter for the Daily Planet newspaper; Batson was a boy reporter for radio station WHIZ-AM). Neverthless, the case dragged on until 1953, when Fawcett settled out of court and got out of the comics business.

With the original Captain Marvel kaput, the name was up for grabs. MF Enterprises used the name for an android superhero in 1966, whose power was to split his head, legs, arms and fingers off his body, to fly off independently and fight bad guys. That’s a really stupid super-power – how do disembodied limbs fly, anyway? – but also really creepy, and that Cap only lasted four issues.

Also in 1966, Marvel Comics decided to appropriate the name for a new superhero from outer space – a captain in the alien Kree military, whose real name was Mar-Vell. That character died in 1981 (and, amazingly, remains dead), but the name was used again at Marvel for his son Genis-Vell (now dead), his daughter Phyla-Vell (also now dead), an unrelated light-based superheroine named Monica Rambeau (now code-named Pulsar), another Kree named Noh-Varr (now code-named Protector) and a Kree historian named Medi-E-Vell. OK, I’m kidding about that last one, but you can see the name gets around.

Before most of that, DC had obtained the rights to the original Captain “Shazam” Marvel, and began publishing his adventures in 1971. Ironically, they were unable to name their Captain Marvel comic book “Captain Marvel,” because Marvel held the trademark. So, while DC could still use the name “Captain Marvel” for the character, they had to use something else for the title of his books – usually “Shazam!” or a variant thereof. Recently, mirroring the actions of Fawcett almost 60 years ago, DC has simply given up on the Captain Marvel name and just renamed the character “Shazam.”

Meanwhile, a supporting character in the original Marvel Captain Marvel series (I told you it’s confusing), got super-powers and her own book in 1977, Ms. Marvel. This character, named Carol Danvers, had previously been an Air Force captain, an espionage agent and Mar-Vell’s girlfriend. When Ms. Marvel got canceled, she got new powers and called herself Binary, then lost those powers and became Warbird, then shifted back to Ms. Marvel for a recently canceled series. And it is THAT character that will once again be Marvel’s Captain Marvel in July.

Another strike against Captain Marvel is that titles starring females traditionally have a hard time in the male-dominated comics landscape. Currently Marvel has no solo titles – zero – starring women.

There aren’t a lot of female writers in comics, either, but the new Captain Marvel has one: Kelly Sue DeConnick, best known for manga translations. On Marvel.com, she described the character this way:

“My pitch [to Marvel] was called ‘Pilot’ and the take can pretty much be summed up with ‘Carol Danvers as Chuck Yeager. Carol's the virtual definition of a Type A personality. She's a competitor and a control freak. … She'll have to figure out how to be both Captain Marvel [ital] and [end ital]  Chuck Yeager – to marry the responsibility of that legacy with the sheer joy being nearly invulnerable and flying really [expletive] fast.”

And the pluses for Captain Marvel? First, the more non-whiny, unapologetically strong women in comics, the better -- as a role model for girls, and an education for boys. Also, Marvel needs an iconic female standard bearer like DC’s Wonder Woman, and what could be better than one with “Marvel” right in the name? Also, the old “Ms. Marvel” handle always seemed a little archaic to me – a throwback to the ‘70s that makes her sound like a spinoff.

Finally, Carol Danvers is just a great character. Like other fans, my reaction to her solo book is “It’s about time!”

Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics@aol.com.

Art:

1. Cover for July's "Captain Marvel" #1, by Ed McGuinness. Courtesy Marvel Entertainment.

2. Cover for July's "Captain Marvel" #2, by Ed McGuinness. Courtesy Marvel Entertainment. 

3. Cover to 1940's "Whiz Comics" #2, the first appearance of the original Captain Marvel. Courtesy DC Entertainment.

4. Interior art for "Captain Marvel" #1. Courtesy Marvel Entertainment.

By Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

They say crime doesn’t pay, but Crime Does Not Pay sure did. Now, thanks to Dark Horse, we can see what made this particular comic book so successful – and notorious.

Crime Does Not Pay began in 1942 at small Lev Gleason publications, co-edited by Bob Wood and Charles Biro, who contributed stories and art as well. It was the first “true crime” comic book, which is to say it purported to relate actual crimes committed by actual criminals, occasionally famous ones like Lucky Luciano and Baby Face Nelson. Of course, reality often took a back seat to fiction when the story called for it, or out of sheer sloppiness. It was a comic book, not a history book!

But fiction or not, Crime Does Not Pay sold like gangbusters, with reports of anywhere from one to four million copies a month at its peak, even when there were dozens of imitators on the stands. The secret was its sheer luridness; covers showed bullets flying, brains exploding, faces pushed into burning stoves, you name it. Given the title, there was always some sort of coda at the end explaining how the criminal was killed or imprisoned, but nobody was fooled that this was a Sunday school lesson, given how the preceding pages would glorify the criminal’s short, fast life full of sex, violence and money. Plus, the word “CRIME” was huge on the cover, with “Does Not Pay” almost an afterthought.

The gusto with which Biro and Wood delivered the goods made Crime a target for censors, and it was a favorite example of such notables as Fredric Wertham, author of the anti-comics screed Seduction of the Innocent. The outrage against comic books like Crime culminated in 1954 with the infamous Comics Code, which nearly killed the industry and definitely put a bullet through the “true crime” genre. Within a year, Crime Does Not Pay and its ilk were out of business.

In a strange coda, co-editor Wood murdered his girlfriend in a style reminiscent of a Crime Does Not Pay story (he bludgeoned her to death with a clothes iron in a hotel room during a long drinking binge). After serving time, Wood was himself murdered, probably over gambling debts.

Which, in a roundabout way, brings us to Blackjacked and Pistol-Whipped: A Crime Does Not Pay Primer (Dark Horse, $19.99). This collection of Crime Does Not Pay tales is the first such I’ve seen, and the cover – a recreation of the style of the day by Pete Poplaski – depicts Wood’s horrific act of violence. The interior contains an introduction by 100 Bullets writer Brian Azzarello; a lengthy foreword by comics publisher, historian and editor Denis Kitchen; and 24 representative stories from Crime Does Not Pay at its most lurid.

These stories are utterly absent any redeeming value, which is probably why they’re so incredibly entertaining. They are the guiltiest of guilty pleasures. But another factor is the talent – not only were the stories short and punchy, but the art was often by the likes of Dan Barry (Flash Gordon), Carmine Infantino (The Flash), Fred Guardineer (Zatara the Magician) and George Tuska (Iron Man).  

And the influence of Crime Does Not Pay lives on, although not in obvious ways. The apex of violence found in 1940s comic books doesn’t hold a candle to what you can see on TV and in the movies today, so we’ll likely never see another successful “true crime” comic book. But supposedly Crime inspired Harvey Kurtzman’s critically acclaimed war comics from EC Comics in the early 1950s, a high-water mark creators are still trying to top. And the host of Crime – Mr. Crime, a ghostly, ghastly figure in a sheet with “CRIME” emblazoned on a top hat – preceded and probably inspired the three punny “ghoulunatics” who hosted EC’s horror comics, which in turn served as models for the legion of horror hosts that have followed.

Which is not to say Crime Does Not Pay was itself wholly original. Mr. Crime was a rip-off of “Mr. Coffee-Nerves,” the corporate mascot of Postum coffee substitute. And the name “Crime Does Not Pay” was lifted from a series of MGM movie shorts which were turned into a long-running radio show.

But who cares? Kids bought Crime for the crime, and the rest didn’t matter. Even in today’s more jaded times, the guilt-free exuberance the creators poured into every bullet and blood spatter is infectious. This Crime pays, with hours of fun.

Art:

1. Blackjacked and Pistol-Whipped is a guilty pleasure from the 1950s. Courtesy Dark Horse Books

 Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics@aol.com

By Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

My introduction to Lee Falk’s “The Phantom” was in comic books, not the syndicated comic strip. Thanks to Hermes Press, you can experience both at the same time.

“The Phantom” is the great grand-daddy of costumed heroes, first appearing as a newspaper comic strip in 1936 in the now-traditional skintight costume, and a mask where white shows where the eyes ought to be. (Superman didn’t appear in his circus suit for two more years, and Batman, with his pupil-less eyes, debuted in 1939.) For the record, The Phantom’s creator intended for the character’s outfit to be gray – Falk even considered calling him “The Grey Ghost” – but a printer’s error resulted in the familiar, albeit impractical, purple suit.

The color was one of the things that mesmerized me as a kid, when I stumbled across Gold Key’s The Phantom, which ran from 1962 to 1966. I wondered: “Why purple?” And also: “Where is he?” Sometimes The Phantom’s jungle adventures seemed to be in India, sometimes Africa. (For the record, the strip was set in India in the 1930s, but The Phantom’s fictional country of Bengali gradually shifted to Africa by the 1960s, and has been there ever since.)

But what’s coolest about The Phantom is the mythology that Falk spun around “The Ghost Who Walks.” The Phantom is actually a family, with the purple long-johns and mission to fight “piracy, greed, cruelty and injustice” passed on from father to son. Given that there has always been a Phantom going back to 1536, even after witnesses have seen a Phantom get killed, a legend has sprung up that he is immortal – “The Man Who Cannot Die.” The current Phantom, the 21st, lives in a cool Skull Cave in “the Deep Woods,” has a loyal army of pygmies with poison arrows, anonymously commands the Jungle Patrol (a law-enforcement outfit) and has never revealed his face to anyone outside his immediate circle. He’s probably the wealthiest man on the planet,  has a wolf and a huge white horse for partners, terrorizes bad guys and is married (as of 1977) with two kids. That’s a very cool gig.

Hermes Press began reprinting the original comic strip in a hardback collection in 2009, and to my delight I discovered that those old strips were vastly entertaining. They’re sort of a cross between a screwball comedy and movie serials – hardly a surprise given their 1930s origins -- whose tone is that of gleeful, barely controlled chaos, a feeling the Indiana Jones movies captured so well. (That also seems to have been the tone attempted in the 1996 Phantom movie with Billy Zane, which I quite enjoyed, even if the critics didn’t.) “The Phantom: The Complete Newspaper Dailies” is approaching volume four, with collections of the color Sunday strips (which began in 1939) beginning soon.

But as I said, it wasn’t those strips that made me a phan. It was, instead, the 1960s Phantom comic book published by Gold Key. Hermes is also reprinting those, with the first volume already out ($49.99). It will be followed not only by additional Gold Key volumes, but also collections from the publishers who followed Gold Key, King Comics (1966-69) and Charlton (1969-77).

I recently read a review castigating the Gold Key adventures as boring. And maybe they are a little sedate, especially if you’ve read the comic strips on which they’re based. But they were fascinating to me in the 1960s, and some of the magic remains.

First were the arresting covers, painted by Gold Key veteran George Wilson – no other comic book at the time had anything like them. The inside art was by journeyman Bill Lignante, who wasn’t flashy but got my attention anyway. For one thing, his Phantom had a very distinctive face, one that eventually would sport a hawk-like nose that had obviously been broken more than once. For another, The Phantom had body hair (as evidenced by the back of his hands). Those were realistic touches other comics wouldn’t dare use for years to come.

If it’s newer stories you want, the current “Phantom” comic strip features the 22nd Phantom being trained by his dad, the one who’s been around since the ‘60s. Dynamite Entertainment publishes various comic books starring the 22nd Phantom as an adult, and those are often released as trade paperbacks.

They’re good, but I’m still partial to the older stories. And thanks to Hermes Press, those ghosts still walk!

Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics@aol.com.