Blog 2.0

Last week, I started an article about the best episodes of the television series Lost.  It’s a vacation tradition for me to write about my favorite television series, having previously written about the best of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Farscape and Babylon 5.  This week, I pick up where I left off, starting with the strike-shortened season four.

Season Four

Confirmed Dead: I’m amazed at the way Lost manages to pull me in again and again.  They shouldn’t be able to make me care about new characters this far into their run, especially after taking away the Tailies.  Yet the rescue crew of Charlotte, Daniel and Miles quickly become integral, interesting and favored members of the cast.  I love Charlotte’s combination of fragile confidence.  I love Daniel’s quirks, his scattered train of thought and his brutal honesty.  And Miles fills a much needed niche with his sarcastic quips.  This episode also delivers another punch to the gut when we, along with the survivors, learn of the staged crash site somewhere else.  It’s a reminder that Lost crafts great mysteries and even greater characters. 

The Constant: Only Lost could turn a time travel story into a desperate fight for survival.  Desmond is flashing back and forth in time.  He’s losing his bearings and his grip on reality.  As Desmond grows more frantic, we’re drawn deeper into the central questions of the show.  Are we slaves to fate or directors of our destiny?  Yet Lost always asks those questions in personal terms, rather than academic ones.  Desmond learns how to direct his past and how to root himself in reality.  But the lesson is one of personal sanity and survival.  And the answer is one of meaning and love.  We all need something important, something that will always be there for us, in order to keep us grounded.  For Desmond, it’s his love of Penny.  For Daniel, it’s his connection with Desmond.  It’s a beautiful realization, statement and conclusion.

Ji Yeon: There are a lot of things that I like about Lost.  The way it turns our expectations inside out.  The balance between mystery, drama and humor.  The moments of pure joy.  Ji Yeon combines all of these aspects into one episode.  We witness three stories.  In the present day, we follow the survivors as they continue their quest to connect to the freighter and escape from the island.  In the second, we pay attention to Sun as she gives birth to her daughter after having escaped from the island.  And in the third, we follow Jin as he races to the hospital, giant stuffed panda in tow.  The pure joy comes from the birth of Ji Yeon.  The balance comes through the shifts in scene.  And the surprise comes at the end when we realize that Jin’s story has been a flash back while Sun’s was a look forward.  

The Shape of Things to Come: Ben grew from an enigmatic enemy to one of the most important characters in the series and this is one of his greatest episodes.  He’s not a hero.  Yet even though he’s a villain, he hides a deep love for his daughter and he’s willing to sacrifice himself for the sake of the island.  Perhaps not surprisingly, Ben is at his most profound when he loses.  In The Shape of Things, Ben loses big.  In the course of one day, Ben loses a stand-off with Keamy, his daughter and the island.  Those losses make him more sympathetic and more determined.  Even off the island- in the desert of Tunisia and the cafes of Europe- Ben is devious, vicious and manipulative. 

There’s No Place Like Home, Part I, II and III: Season Four continues the Lost tradition of excellent endings and, apparently, explosions.  We know who is supposed to survive thanks to this season’s flash forwards but we have no idea how they’ll pull it off.  At times, the survivors are spread apart across the island and it seems impossible that they’ll reunite in time.  Naturally, there are plenty of twists along the way.  Sawyer shocks us with a noble gesture.  We’re stunned at the apparent deaths of Michael and Jin.  And we’re pleasantly surprised at the unexpected survival of someone who wasn’t a part of the Oceanic Six. 

Season Five

Jughead: The complex history and mythology of Lost paid huge dividends by this point.  The remaining survivors and their stranded rescuers were bouncing around in time.  Their jaunty journey filled in the chronological gaps and introduced us to earlier versions of key characters.  In Jughead, we meet up with an apparently timeless Richard Alpert and the original Others wearing military fatigues.  Their suspicious nature creates a difficult environment for the cast and some subtle humor for the audience.  Even better, Jughead is the name of a nuclear bomb, adding a significant level of tension and plot point.   

This Place is Death: There are a lot of memorable deaths in Lost, but few were as tender as the scene in this episode.  Charlotte experiences the rigors of time travel more acutely than the others.  She suffers headaches and nosebleeds.  Eventually, her mind seems to jump separately from her body.  Her nonsensical statements are eerie echoes of Alzheimer’s patients who don’t know where they are or what time they’re in.  Despite the urgency of their mission, Daniel refuses to abandon Charlotte.  Instead, he holds her in his arms until she dies.  Daniel is often aloof.  But in this moment, we see the depth of his affection.  That relationship would have been enough to elevate any episode.  Yet that’s only one reason to love This Place is Death.  Jin finds a temple.  We meet a young Rousseau.  Locke turns a wheel.  And the Oceanic Six, the survivors who escaped the island, are finally reunited in Los Angeles.    

The Life and Death of Jeremy Bentham: If Charlotte’s death was one of the most tender, Locke’s death in this episode was one of the most brutal.  It shouldn’t have been shocking- we had known Locke was dead since we had seen him lying in a coffin during the previous season’s finale- yet it was.  This episode focused on Locke’s desperate search for the people who had escaped the island and his bitter failure.  Then, when it appears that he’d been offered hope in the form of an unlikely ally, that ally immediately turned on him.  Locke went from suicidal to hopeful to murder victim in a matter of moments- a sequence of events that surprised the audience with its suddenness and its cruelty. 

LaFleur: As I’ve mentioned before, Lost had fun upending the audience’s expectations.  In this case, Lost placed Sawyer in a different context and surprised us by showing an alternate side to his character.  Sawyer, Jin and Juliet were stranded in the past.  In 1977, to be precise.  They signed up with the Dharma Initiative.  Sawyer took on an important role within the organization as their chief of security, LaFleur.  Additionally, Sawyer and Juliet built a life together of domestic bliss.  It was a new side to Sawyer and something we didn’t expect from the former con man.  Yet the new reality was presented so perfectly that we believed it.  More than that, we wanted to believe that Sawyer could have his happy ending.

Dead is Dead: Ben is often at his best when he’s broken.  And Lost is often really good when it builds its history.  In this episode, we’re treated to both.  The flashbacks fill in the relationship and the rivalry between Charles Widmore and Benjamin Linus.  We see them grapple and connive over control of the island.  It’s fascinating to watch.  In the present, we follow Ben as he’s brought face to face with the smoke monster.  He’s confronted by the vision of his dead daughter and forced to repent of his mistakes.  It’s an emotionally powerful moment. 

The Variable: A lot of things work well in The Variable.  Lost demonstrates its improved use of flashbacks.  Whereas earlier seasons may have focused on a small section of someone’s life, this episode gives us a broad range from the life of Daniel Faraday.  There is a consistent theme in the relationship with his mother, yet we’re shown that theme over the course of many years.  However, this episode is even stronger when dealing with the current events of the time-displaced characters.  Daniel returns to the island with a plan to reset time.  But it’s a big risk.  He proposes that they blow up the island with the nuclear bomb.  Faraday’s announcement brings a lot of elements together and kicks off a strong finishing drive. 

The Incident Part I and II: What’s great about Lost?  The characters.  The constantly changing status quo.  The big events.  The mystery.  They’re all here.  There are questions about time travel, magnetic fields and the nature of the island.  There’s an escape attempt, a fire-fight with the Dharma Initiative and a nuclear bomb.  There’s the shifting allegiances as characters alternately rebuff and embrace Daniel’s plan to blow up the island.  There’s the overt rivalry between Jack and Sawyer, made manifest in a brutal fist fight.  And there’s the intense love between Sawyer and Juliet, exposed when she is mortally injured.  There are also moments of beauty and tenderness, such as the re-introduction of Rose and Bernard, living peacefully by themselves. 

Season Six

LA X Part I and II: We’d seen flashbacks and flash-forwards.  Season six introduced us to the concept of the flash-sideways, or the sideways world.  It was the big mystery of the season.  In the one story, we watched our favorite survivors as they continued to battle the island and each other.  In the other story, we watched what might have happened had the plane never crashed in the first place.  It is fun to see old characters back again like Boone.  It’s satisfying to see so many of our favorite characters get a possible happy ending.  It’s a pleasant mind tease.  And it’s perfectly balanced by the continuing chaos on the island: the revelation that the new Locke is the old smoke monster, Sayid being brought back to life and Ben murdering Jacob. 

Sundown: I’ve had plenty of praise for Lost but I’ll admit that there were things that didn’t work for me.  The whole situation in the temple was one of them.  Yet, for that very reason, I loved this episode.  Locke, aka the Man in Black, and his minions attack the temple.  It’s a full-on assault with plenty of death and destruction.  Our regular heroes are caught in the middle.  Kate narrowly escapes the smoke monster by diving into a hole in the ground.  But others sign up with the Man in Black, having become twisted by their experiences on the island.  

Ab Aeterno: This is one of the most memorable episodes of any season.  We’re treated to Richard Alpert’s back-story.  We learn of his lost love, his enslavement and his rescue on the island.  We learn of his conflicted loyalty to the Man in Black, the reason for his service to Jacob and the source of his immortality.  We see him as master and as pawn.  It’s a great story, raising questions of identity, loyalty, immortality and love.  It even manages to raise questions of good and evil without being bogged down by philosophical meanderings.

Happily Ever After: Lost generally does an excellent job of brushing up against the impossible while maintaining a believable fiction.  We believe in characters who talk to the dead, who live forever and who are somehow resistant to electromagnetic detonations.  More importantly, we also believe in the characters and their motivations.  We believe that Desmond would be willing to sacrifice himself for Penny.  We believe in the fierceness of his love.  And we believe in a love that apparently transcends space and time.

The Candidate: The race to get off of the island one last time is on.  Sawyer feints for the airplane in an attempt to throw Widmore off their track before heading to the submarine instead. Unfortunately, Widmore isn’t fooled and his men ambush them at the sub.  In the resulting firefight, Locke and Claire miss the ride.  But that’s only the beginning of the twists.  Locke- who is the Man in Black after all- has sabotaged the sub.  The new peril results in a noble sacrifice and a bittersweet ending. 

The End (I and II): I realize that there’s a wide divergence of opinion on the ending of Lost, with even fantasy master George RR Martin voicing disapproval.  But I think it was brilliant.  The writers had been left with a difficult choice.  They could focus on the mysteries or the characters.  The former choice would have most likely been an uninteresting academic exercise.  The latter choice was emotionally satisfying.  Besides, they had answered many of the critical questions throughout the season.  We already knew the source of the voices, the nature of the smoke monster and so much more.  What we needed more than answers was closure.  And that’s what we got.  Jack’s journey came full circle, famously ending as it had started.  He also sacrificed himself to save the rest, with many of the regular characters escaping the island for good.  And we saw Hurley graduate from being comic relief to the island’s protector.  

All screen-caps are from Lost-Media.com (with the exception of Ab Aeterno, whose image comes from Lostpedia.

When this column debuts, I should be enjoying a family vacation in Italy and France.  I’m taking a break from everything- work, softball, household chores and even comic books.  It seems appropriate that “Fluit Notes” takes a break from comic books as well.  Therefore, in this week’s column and next, I’ve written about one of my favorite television shows.  It’s time to get “Lost.”   

Season One

Pilot, Part I and II: The debut of Lost is one of the best hours of television I have ever watched.  It was mind-blowing.  It was heart-wrenching.  It was immediately gripping, from the opening scene of the survivors on the beach to the closing cliffhanger.  As the audience, we felt the survivors’ desperation and confusion.  I’m still amazed at the brilliance of this episode.  Some of the smart choices included opening in the middle of the story after the plane has already crashed, using flashbacks to show the crash itself and slowly introducing the characters over the course of the episode.  That last item should not be underestimated.  Despite all of the mysteries and conspiracies, the audience cared about Lost with such passion because we cared about the characters.  Of course, there were those mysteries too.  The first part of the pilot included monstrous noises in the jungle and the second part a polar bear running loose on a tropical island. 

Walkabout: Lost had a special talent for surprising the audience.  It consistently defied our expectations.  One of the best of the early surprises arrived in Locke’s back-story.  We knew Locke as the rugged outdoor adventurer.  He was the one who knew how to use a knife and had started hunting food for the tribe.  Yet, to our astonishment, Walkabout revealed that Locke had been in a wheelchair before the accident, that he had signed up for a safari in the Australian Outback and that he had been turned away when the tour leader discovered that he was disabled.  The revelation caught us completely off-guard.  Even better, it increased both our interest and our sympathy. 

House of the Rising Sun/...In Translation: One of the great strengths of the first season was that each episode focused on one member of the ensemble, particularly in flashbacks that filled in their story before the crash.  I wish I could pick every one of those episodes.  They not only introduced us to the characters but they often changed our views of them.  Two of my favorites are House of the Rising Sun (the 6^th episode) and Lost… in Translation (the 17^th).  These bookend episodes focused on the Korean married couple Sun and Jin.  Lost drew us into their story, despite the fact that it was presented entirely in Korean with subtitles.  Plus, by showing their relationship first from Sun’s perspective and then from Jin’s, Lost continued to enrich its characters while playing with our minds.

Solitary: Lost is deservedly acclaimed for its drama and mystery.  Yet Lost also knew to balance their most intense stories with something light-hearted.  Solitary is one of my favorite examples of this.  While one half of the episode focused on Sayid’s brutal past as part of the Iraqi Republican Guard, the other centered on Hurley.  Hurley was often the source of comic relief for the audience.  However, he served a purpose for his fellow castaways as well, bringing levity and joy into a difficult situation.  In this case, he built his own island golf course and invited others to play with some clubs that fell out of the luggage compartment.  It’s an effectively memorable moment, standing out in relief to the rest of the series. 

All the Best Cowboys Have Daddy Issues: This was a pivotal episode for the first season.  Ethan is exposed as someone who hadn’t actually been on the plane.  He abducts Claire and when, Charlie chases after him, he hangs Charlie.  The tension on the island is ratcheted up to eleven.  To this point, they’ve been fighting the elements and the mysteries of the island but Ethan puts a human face on evil and danger.  Plus, as a side effect of the chase through the jungle, Locke and Boone stumble upon a hatch.

Deus Ex Machina: In some cases, I picked an episode because of what was happening in the flashbacks.  In other cases, I chose an episode based on what was happening on the island.  Deus Ex Machina is one of the best episodes for combining the two sides of the story.  In the flashbacks, we find out that Locke was victimized by his father, who asked him to donate a kidney and then left him alone.  In the present day story, Locke and Boone find a Beechcraft aircraft stuck in a tree.  When Boone climbs into it in order to use the radio, the plane crashes to the ground and Boone sustains serious injuries.  Frustrated with the lack of progress and the apparent loss of his friend, Locke experiences a crisis of faith.  He cries out and his cry is answered by… a light from the hatch. 

Exodus, Part I and II: Exodus established a pattern of great season endings.  The central story focuses on Michael’s raft.  He has a plan to sail away from the island and to send help back to the rest of the survivors.  While some survivors express doubts or even opposition, the vast majority place their hopes in Michael’s plan.  The launch of the raft is an incredibly triumphant and joyous moment.  But that joy is quickly dashed when The Others intercept the raft, shoot Sawyer and abduct Michael’s son Walt.  Those two moments demonstrate Lost’s ability to bring us to the heights of joy and to the depths of sorrow within the span of a few minutes.  Meanwhile, the flashbacks depict the various castaways as they gather at the airport for their ill-fated flight.  It’s a beautifully intricate story that carries an unexpected sadness. 

Season Two

Man of Science, Man of Faith: Once again, Lost completely upends our expectations and we love it.  In this case, season two opens with a stranger eating breakfast, riding a bike and listening to Mama Cass.  It’s a completely surreal scene.  And it’s an unexpected pleasure when it’s revealed that this action is happening inside the mysterious hatch.  At the same time, the title of the episode and several of the scenes draw our attention to one of Lost’s big themes.  Jack, the man of science, and Locke, the man of faith, argue about the leadership of the survivors.  Though it seems like we’re supposed to choose sides between them, over the course of the series, the audience and the survivors realize the importance of both science and faith in our lives.

Orientation: At the outset, Lost was careful not to be too weird.  Sure, there were polar bears and smoke monsters but there was always a level of reasonable and restraint.  They were trying to reach a mass audience and weren’t sure how much they could get away with.  In the second season, Lost started to push the envelope.  That meant bigger mysteries and stranger wonders and several moments that were delightfully absurd.  One of the most memorable moments- and therefore episodes- involves Desmond sitting Locke down to watch a Dharma Initiative orientation film.  This is the point at which the conspiracy theories took on a life of their own. 

The Other 48 Days: A hallmark of Lost was the frequent revelation that things were not what you thought they were.  Michael, Sawyer and Jin though they had been captured by The Others when, actually, they had been captured by survivors from the tail section of the same plane.  The Other 48 Days tells the story of the “Tailies.”  It’s a briskly paced episode, taking place at the same time as season one and it makes us care about characters that we previously viewed as villains.  Once again, Lost simultaneously expands our horizons and its history. 

The 23^rd Psalm: The repeated back-stories for the regular characters were losing steam by this point but there were enough new characters to keep the format fresh.  One of the best back-stories from season two focused on Mr. Eko.  The silent strong-man from the Tailies, Eko’s history took startling turns and had a surprising connection to the island.  Eko was a Nigerian guerrilla.  For one job, he and his men dressed as priests in order to smuggle drugs in religious icons.  The job backfired and Eko’s brother, who really was a priest, was mortally wounded.  However, Eko was mistaken for a priest and apparently adopted the role at the end of the episode.  The smuggler’s plane also happened to be the Beechcraft discovered by Locke and Boone in season one.

Lockdown: One of the great conflicts of season two was the battle between Jack and Locke concerning the hatch station.  Their stand-offs resulted in dramatic moments and occasional revelations.  The conflict came to a head in Lockdown.  While Jack and several others try to ascertain their prisoner’s alibi (he claimed to be balloonist Henry Gale), the prisoner manipulates Locke into letting the countdown expire.  The post-countdown chaos results in a black-light revelation for Locke and a secret map to the island.  Meanwhile, Jack confirms that their prisoner is not who he says he is and returns to the station to confront him with the truth.

Live Together, Die Alone, Part I and II: The title refers back to one of Jack’s early speeches.  The survivors have to work together or they will die alone.  That axiom is put to the test in this episode as several survivors pursue their own agendas.  Michael makes a deal with The Others that allows him and his son to leave the island.  Locke makes a unilateral decision to let the countdown expire, resulting in the explosion of the hatch.  By the end of the episode, several key survivors are captives of The Others while the remaining castaways are left on a beach recently devastated by the explosion.  The status quo has been overturned again, keeping both the survivors and the audience constantly on our toes.  Plus, there’s a great Desmond back-story which tells us more not only about him as a character but also about the history and nature of the island.

Season Three

A Tale of Two Cities: I picked the season premiere primarily for one reason: the opening sequence in which Ben’s book club is interrupted by the explosion of the Oceanic Flight overhead.  Like the opening sequence for season two, it’s wonderfully disarming as it contrasts the prosaic nature of everyday life with the enigma of the island.  A Tale of Two Cities also smartly concentrates on only a part of the cast, showing us Jack, Sawyer and Kate in captivity.  The focused attention allows for greater depth and movement in that particular storyline.

Tricia Tanaka is Dead: This is one of my more esoteric choices, as it’s one of the lower rated episodes of Lost.  However, I always like it when Lost balances its tension with the lighter side of life.  Or, borrowing Hurley’s one words, I appreciate it when Lost offers us “a symbol of hope.”  This time, Hurley discovers an abandoned Volkswagen van.  Sawyer and Jin enjoy the beer they find inside.  I enjoyed the gleeful final scene in which Hurley and Charlie successfully start the van after rolling it downhill.  Plus, this episode reveals that Hurley might be able to see the dead- a plot point which resonates later on.  For me, this was the episode that marked the turn-around in an otherwise lackluster season.

The Man from Tallahassee: By this time, the back-stories are wearing pretty thin.  With one exception.  Locke’s back-story had one big huge revelation yet to show: how he lost the use of his legs.  In this episode, Locke’s dad returns for another scam.  When Locke confronts him, his father pushes him through a window and Locke falls eight stories down.  The island action is just as dramatic.  Jack is preparing to leave the island by submarine as his reward for operating on Ben.  Locke intervenes.  By blowing up the sub before Jack can get on it.  Big moments in both sides of the story make this episode one of the best.

The Man Behind the Curtain: Lost had a knack for humanizing its villains and turning them into characters we secretly cheered for.  In this episode, we meet Ben as a young boy.  Up to this point, we know him as the master manipulator, the devious dictator of The Others.  But now, we meet him as a scared little boy, ignored by his father and possibly abused.  We see him grow into the man he would become, eventually betraying his community and murdering his own father.  The contrast between the young Ben and the old Ben is striking. 

Greatest Hits: Former rocker Charlie Pace is the star of season three.  His quest to give his life meaning gave the season direction and poignancy.  In this penultimate episode, Charlie writes a list of the best moments of his life.  It’s a tender list that reminds us of the small joys of life- dad teaching you how to swim- and the giant triumphs- hearing your rock song on the radio for the first time.  It’s one of the best flashback sequences as it directly connects to Charlie’s present state of mind.  Of course, there’s plenty of action too as Desmond and Charlie dive down to the Looking Glass station in an attempt to disrupt an underwater jamming signal.  

Through the Looking Glass: Simply one of the best episodes ever.  We thought we had grown accustomed to Lost’s twists.  But then they turned us inside out with this season finale that featured flash forwards instead of flashbacks.  Of course, in typical Lost style, we don’t realize they’re flash forwards until the end of the episode.  Plus, to our amazement, Jack insists that they actually have to go back to the island.  Meanwhile, the present day story is one of the most poignant.  Charlie and Desmond fight for control of the Looking Glass station.  Charlie manages to reach the offshore freighter on the radio.  But that moment of triumph is quickly turned to tragedy.  Charlie sacrifices himself to save Desmond.  And the offshore freighter is not the rescue ship they believed it to be.  There’s also one of the shows most classic confrontations as Jack brutally beats Ben back on the island. 

All screen-caps are from Lost-Media.com

By Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

Archie’s Kevin Keller is a first in a lot of ways. He’s the first openly gay teenager in Riverdale. He’s the first Archie character to spin off into his own eponymous miniseries. Heck, that four-issue miniseries is itself a first for Archie Comics; they’ve never done one before.

Actually, Archie is hedging a bit on that last part: Kevin Keller #1, which arrived June 15, is also Veronica #207. But that’s a technicality, and probably has more to do with in-house scheduling than any doubts about Kevin, whose name is emblazoned proudly across the top of the cover.

And Archie Comics has a lot to be proud of with Kevin Keller #1. Not only is Kevin gay, he is – thankfully – no-big-deal gay. It’s just an aspect of his character, not the whole of it. He’s a character, not a cause.

That’s the reality most teens deal with it on a daily basis, gay or straight or anything in between. In fact, you could read most of Kevin Keller and drop another new character in his place.

The series is meant to provide his background; the mechanism is two friends from one of Kevin’s previous schools, who drop by and give the Riverdale gang an opportunity to quiz them about Kevin’s past. As it turns out, it’s a background a lot of kids can identify with: Kevin’s an Army brat, who has moved around a lot; he and his two pals were unpopular geeks; the three of them were pudgy, gawky, or otherwise unattractive until they grew out of it; they dealt with bullies.

Where “teh gay” comes into play is the story of Kevin coming out, and it’s a scenario that would be the envy of many gay teens. His parents are understanding, and don’t freak out. His Army officer father even affirms: “I’ll always love you, no matter what. … You’re the best son a father could have.” The only hint of difficulty is a veiled warning from Col. Keller to Kevin about the latter’s plans for joining the military. Could it be a reference to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”? We don’t know yet.

Anyway, that’s probably not the coming-out experience most gay teens have, so it could be criticized as unrealistic. I choose to see it as an affirmation of what Riverdale has always been: The fantasy of an average American town where everyone feels safe, comfortable and wanted.

Surprisingly, Kevin fits snugly into the Riverdale gang more than other late additions over the years, like Chuck Clayton and Cheryl Blossom. He and Veronica share a lot of interests, so he provides her the BFF that rival Betty could never be. The snappy patter between her, Kevin and Jughead is comfortable, and Kevin’s niche seems natural and unforced.

Credit goes to Dan Parent, who created Kevin Keller and is the writer/artist on the miniseries. Parent draws in what used to be the company’s house style, so his work is comfortable, professional and un-flashy. 

Which pretty much sums up Kevin Keller. It’s as good as any Archie comic out there, and that’s saying a lot.

REPRINT ROUNDUP

* I held off buying the new hardback series collecting Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant, because I already have complete reprint collections of that ground-breaking comic strip. But I finally broke down and bought Prince Valiant Vol. 1: 1937-38 (Fantagraphics, $29.99), and I’m glad I did. The reproduction is crisp, and the strips are presented the size they originally ran, that of a newspaper broadsheet. This is how Foster’s gorgeous artwork was meant to be seen, and I have to be careful not to drool on the pages.

* When Fawcett Comics stopped creating new Captain Marvel stories in 1953, the company that reprinted them in the UK tasked writer/artist Mick Anglo to create a similar, substitute superhero called Marvelman. After that eventually ended, the character remained in limbo until Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman famously reworked Marvelman in the 1980s  into an apocalyptic, deconstructionist meditation on power and morality (reprinted in America as Miracleman to avoid conflict with Marvel Comics).

The rights to Miracleman are famously tied up in court, but Marvel Comics has begun reprinting Anglo’s version of the character in its original black and white.  I finally picked up Marvelman Classic Volume 1 ($34.99), and just as I’d heard, these stories from 1953-54 are aimed at kids and are extremely derivative and simplistic. Marvelman Classic might be of value for comics historians, but not for casual readers.

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

O.K., folks---time’s up!  Put down your pencils and hand your papers in.

Actually, I was quite impressed with the posters who chimed in with responses.  Out of all ten questions, only one wasn’t correctly answered.  At least, not with the absolutely, positively proper answer.  However, even that one was kinda sorta gotten right.  I’ll speak more on that anon.

First off, kudos to Philip Portelli.  He provided the highest number of correct responses, and he nailed some of the toughest ones on the quiz.  Jeff of Earth-J also submitted the right answer to one of the tougher posers.  One particular question I loaded with a couple of traps, and Prince Hal was the only one to evade them and provide the correct info.

I rather enjoyed Figserello’s advice to the unwary, by pointing out a couple of questions in which the answers seemed too obvious.  And he was right on both counts!  I don’t have a problem with this kind of kibitzing, by the way.  It helps get everyone more involved with finding the solutions.

And now, all of you can unbate your breath because here come the answers!

ANSWERS TO THE SILVER-AGE CHALLENGE---MARVEL COMICS EDITION

1.  Which two super-heroes attended Metro College at the same time, though they never met on campus?

The answer is . . . Johnny (the Human Torch) Storm and Jean (Marvel Girl) Grey!  Johnny enrolled at Metro College in Fantastic Four # 33 (Feb., 1965).  While he hung around the campus long enough to make friends with football star Wyatt Wingfoot, his classroom attendance was rather spotty.  He was still a student there, at least officially, when Jean Grey arrived at Metro in The X-Men # 24 (Sep., 1966), as the dialogue from her first day makes clear.  The two youthful super-heroes never bumped into each other in the student union, though.

2.  Not counting Captain “Happy Sam” Sawyer (or, for the nitpicky, his temporary relief, Captain Flint, either), which regular member of the Howling Commandos was actually a commissioned officer during World War II?

Philip nailed this one right off.  The answer is . . . Eric Koënig!   Koënig was a junior officer and a pilot in the German Luftwaffe when he first appeared in Sgt. Fury # 27 (Feb., 1966).  After getting a good look at the seamy underbelly of the Nazi regime, Koënig defected to England, where he turned in his swastika.  Eric officially joined the Howling Commandos in Sgt. Fury # 35 (Oct., 1966).

Anytime you see a military-oriented question from me, you can bet it’s going to be tricky, like this one was.  But it wasn’t as sneaky as my other question in this quiz about the Marvel military.

3.  On her twenty-third birthday, Janet (the Wasp) van Dyne received her complete inheritance.  How much money did her father leave her?

The answer is . . . three million dollars!  In The Avengers # 43 (Aug., 1967), Jan’s lawyer, Ebenezer Wallaby, gave her the good news that she no longer had to squeak by on a “paltry” $25,000 a year  ($162,000 in 2011 dollars).  Upon turning twenty-three, Jan inherited the full sum of her father’s inheritance.

4.  What Fantastic Four supporting character was based on the star of a syndicated comic strip?

The answer is . . . Willie Lumpkin!  Postman Willie Lumpkin, whose route included the Baxter Building and the offices of the Fantastic Four, first appeared in Fantastic Four # 11 (Feb., 1963).  He became a popular background character, showing up sporadically over the course of the series.

In a sense, though, Willie predated the F.F.  In 1960, Marvel editor Stan Lee and artist Dan DeCarlo created the syndicated comic strip “Willie Lumpkin”, the eponymous star being a letter carrier for the U.S. Post Office.  If you were around then, you still might have missed it, if you blinked a couple of times, because the strip lasted only about a year.

As related by Stan Lee in an interview with Roy Thomas, when he needed a mailman to set the scene for “A Visit with the Fantastic Four”, from FF # 11, he named the character “Willie Lumpkin”, as an in-joke nod to the old strip.

(Many thanks to Brian Cronin’s always-excellent “Comic Book Legends Revealed”, the place where I discovered this fun bit of trivia.)

5.  Speaking of the Fantastic Four, in what branch of the military did Ben (the Thing) Grimm serve during the war?

Yeah, I got sneaky with this one, on a couple of levels.

The natural answer, as Figserello pointed out, would be the United States Air Force.  That’s what Marvel’s biography of Ben Grimm has insisted for the past couple of decades.  But this was a Silver-Age quiz, remember?  And in the Silver Age, Grimm was a veteran of World War II, which ended in 1945.  And the U.S. Air Force did not exist as a service until 1948.

Philip Portelli was canny enough to remember this.  Which is why he replied the Army Air Corps.  Which was also wrong---for two reasons.

The first reason is a technicality.  It doesn’t matter how the song goes.  It doesn’t matter what Grandpa said.  The fact is, by the time the United States entered World War II, in December, 1941, there was no Army Air Corps.  The U.S. Army Air Corps was disestablished on 20 June 1941 and replaced by the U.S. Army Air Forces.

Even so, I wouldn’t have dunned Philip on that kind of technicality.  Philip got that one wrong because Ben Grimm wasn’t an Army pilot.  The answer is . . . he was an aviator in the United States Marine Corps.  This was established in Fantastic Four # 11 and strongly iterated in the tale “Objective:  Ben Grimm”, from Captain Savage and His Leatherneck Raiders # 7 (Oct., 1968).

I didn’t fool Prince Hal, though.

6.  During his ten-century space flight to Alpha Centauri, Major Vance Astro survived by spending the entire time in suspended animation.  When he arrived on the closest planet, he discovered that Earthmen had beaten him there because, two hundred years after he left Earth, man had learnt how to go faster than light.  Who was the physicist who perfected faster-than-light travel and rendered Major Astro’s flight pointless?

The answer is . . . Harkov!  When Major Astro landed on a planet in the Alpha Centauri solar system and emerged from his spaceship, in Marvel Super-Heroes # 18 (Jan., 1968), he learnt from the welcoming committee of Earth descendants that his thousand-year trip had been for nothing, thanks to faster-than-light travel made possible by Harkovian physics.  Aw, man . . . .

7.  The original line-up of Avengers lasted for only the first two issues of The Avengers.  In only one story outside of its own title was this group of five depicted (not counting flashbacks).  What tale was that?

The answer is . . . “(The New Iron Man) Meets the Angel”, from Tales of Suspense # 49 (Jan., 1964).  As Philip pointed out, the appearance of the Avengers in this story is symbolic, except that it does show the whereabouts of the Hulk, Thor, Giant-Man, and the Wasp.  And, of course, Iron Man stars in the tale.

I really wanted to use this as a question, because “Meets the Angel” marks the only time when the original Avengers is then-contemporaneously depicted in any title other than The Avengers.  Even so, there’s a rub.  By the time of “Meets the Angel”, Iron Man had discarded his clunky, all-gold armour for the streamlined red-and-gold outfit.  Yet, as seen in The Avengers # 2 (Nov., 1963), the Hulk had quit the group before Iron Man’s upgrade.

It’s a wrinkle difficult to . . . ahem . . . iron out, since the story clearly treats the Emerald Behemoth as still being a member of the group.  This discrepancy, like so many others, can probably be attributed to the fact that, at the time, Stan Lee was writing virtually every story that appeared in a Marvel comic and no doubt, details got kind of fuzzy.

8.  The international terrorist organisation Hydra named its various departments after animals.  What was the animal name by which its supply division was known?

The answer is . . . a camel, as Jeff of Earth-J correctly pointed out.  The whole menagerie was shown in Strange Tales # 138 (Nov., 1965).

9.  Speaking of suspended animation, when Merlin the Magician awoke after a centuries-long slumber, he decided to offer his services to the President of the United States, as he had to King Arthur.  However, after entering the White House and seeing the Chief Executive, Merlin did not believe the man was the President.  Why?

The answer is . . . because Merlin thought that John F. Kennedy was too young to be the ruler of a nation!  (So did some of the people who hadn’t voted for him.)  You can see for yourself in “Defying the Magic of Mad Merlin”, from Journey Into Mystery # 96 (Sep., 1963).

10.  Of what material was Henry Pym’s blue-and-gold Goliath costume made?

The answer is . . . morphon!  This was not-so-obviously shown in The Avengers # 48 (Feb., 1967).

Upon careful consideration, I realise that, in the question, I should have asked for the name of the material.  Because I failed to be that specific, I have to make some allowance for descriptive answers.  On the basis of that, I’m awarding Philip Portelli half-credit for his response of a “special stretch fabric”, since morphon itself is described as “capable of almost infinite stretching.”

On the other hand, I cannot give credit for the answer of “unstable molecules”, since that description was never applied to Hank Pym’s costumes in the Silver Age.

Looking at the final tallies, no-one who posted answers came up whiffing it completely.  Prince Hal scored with the devious Ben Grimm question.  Jeff of Earth-J was correct in the two---# 3 and # 8---that he answered.  And even Figserello, who chose to respond in a humourous vein, got the Willie Lumpkin poser.

But top score goes to Philip, who correctly answered # 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, and 9.  Along with his half-credit for # 10, that gives him a score of 65%.  Bravo zulu, Philip!  That qualifies you as an F.F.F. in my book.*

_______________________________________________

* Fearless Front-Facer---for you Marvel fans with really good memories.

The other day, I watched part of a Burn Notice marathon.  USA was highlighting episodes of its popular series in anticipation of a prequel movie about supporting character Sam Axe.  It was the middle of the afternoon and I had nothing better to do so I sat down and watched for a while.

            I got part of what I was looking for.  Bruce Campbell was a lot of fun in the role of Sam Axe.  But then again, Bruce Campbell is a lot of fun in any role he plays, whether it’s a star turn in Evil Dead or a bit part in Congo (my biggest complaint about that movie: Bruce’s character died before the opening credits and the movie went down hill from there).  In the episode I watched, Bruce’s Sam Axe prepared to ply his charm on an IRS agent only to discover to his chagrin that the agent was a guy with an androgynous name. 

            I also enjoyed Gabrielle Anwar’s character, Fiona.  But then again, I have a fondness for Gabrielle that dates back to her days as a silver screen love interest in movies like Scent of a Woman, For Love or Money and Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead.  In this episode, she tried (and failed) to intimidate a drug kingpin.  I liked that her character had more gumption than sense.  She was a tough girl in a supermodel body, kind of like Uma Thurman. 

            Unfortunately, I wasn’t interested at all in the supposed lead.  He was boring.  Dull as dishwater.  Dry as dust.  Stiff.  And I realized, despite the presence of Bruce Campbell and Gabrielle Anwar, I wasn’t interested in a series built around a boring lead character.    

            This problem isn’t unique to Burn Notice.  Actually, it’s quite common.  It was one of my bigger complaints about the new Hawaii Five-O (bad writing being the other).  All of the supporting characters were more interesting than the lead.  I was much more invested in Scott Caan’s devotion to his daughter (as well as entertained by his smart mouth), Daniel Dae Kim’s search for redemption or Grace Park’s attempts to prove herself as the rookie cop than I was in the lead character’s stoic grief for his father. 

            This problem also isn’t unique to television.  The first time I remember remarking on this problem was in R.A. Salvatore’s Demon Wars series of novels.  The lead character was a young boy who became a stereotypical barbarian warrior when he grew up.  I was decidedly more interested in the young girl he rescued.  I though the disgraced and drunken monk would have been another better choice- as he intentionally started barroom brawls in the name of “preparedness training.”  I suspect that Salvatore agreed.  Jill, the young girl, eventually became the lead but I had abandoned the series long before then. 

            Unfortunately, Salvatore’s early misstep carried over to the CrossGen comic book.  The comic also focused on the barbarian, while the female co-star and the untrustworthy dwarf were both significantly more interesting. 

            I understand one root of the problem.  There’s always the issue of audience identification.  I don’t mean that all of these leads happen to be white males of a certain age.  That’s a contributing factor.  It is boring when every lead looks roughly the same.  But while that’s an overlapping issue, the problem is a little bit more than that. 

            There’s the idea that the audience won’t be able to relate to the main character if that character is too strange.  So writers tend to set up situations in which the craziness circles around the main character.  They’re the calm in the midst of the storm and we’re supposed to identify with them that way.

            There are some good examples of this, especially in sitcoms.  Bob Newhart was the straight-laced, buttoned-up owner of a small inn in New Hampshire, surrounded by strange people.  Jerry Seinfeld was the relatively normal one in the midst of oddball friends and neighbors.  But Newhart’s put-upon frustration was the humorous heart of his show.  And Seinfeld’s character was also a comedian, whose wisecracks and humorous observations commented on the craziness around him.  Newhart and Seinfeld may not have been as instantly memorable as the brothers Darryl or Kramer but they were at least interesting in their own right.  

            There are some good examples of this in crime and cop shows as well.  In fact, there are two good examples on television currently.  In Bones, David Boreanaz’s Agent Booth has the fewest quirks of anyone in the cast.  He’s not the one inordinately interested in bugs, suffering from an incurable lack of confidence or dealing with a detached academic eye that makes most social interactions awkward.  Those are the supporting characters or, in the latter case, the co-lead.  Yet, even as the normal guy, David Boreanaz is charming and fun to watch. 

The cable-show Leverage is another great example.  The supporting cast is full of fun characters- the wisecracking hacker, the socially awkward cat burglar, the bruiser who hates guns.  Yet the lead character, Timothy Hutton’s Nathan Ford, has the most interesting story.   His grief over his son’s death is more poignant and present than Steve McGarrett’s quiet and often absent grief for his father in Hawaii Five-0.  Ford’s quest for redemption, drinking problem and occasionally off-the-wall ideas make him as intriguing as anyone in the cast.

            There are other ways to get around the problem.  You could invert the idea and make the lead character the odd one, as is the case in Columbo, Monk and Castle.   You could forego a traditional lead character and work with an ensemble cast.  But whatever you do, in television shows, novels or comic book series, you want to be sure that your lead character can hold the audience’s attention.  

By Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

Green Lantern, who gets his first big-budget movie June 17, was my favorite DC Comics superhero as a child. Given the loving care lavished on the character in recent years, he’s my favorite once again.

Hal Jordan was introduced in1959, at the beginning of the space age. He was allegedly based on Chuck Yeager, the legendary test pilot, and everything about him was sleek, cool and hip. He had essentially Aladdin’s lamp on his finger, which could do anything he imagined (except affect things colored yellow) – which was really appealing to youngsters like me, who could imagine quite a lot (especially numerous ways to get around that yellow thing). He was chosen by the Green Lantern Corps for being born without fear, had a really cool job (test pilot) and dated his boss, Carol Ferris.

This guy was just a stud. I may have felt like Peter Parker when I was growing up, but it was Hal Jordan I wanted to grow up to be.

And Green Lantern just got bigger and cooler with every issue. Gradually we learned more about the other alien Green Lanterns, and the little blue immortals in the red dresses who ran the show, the Guardians of Oa. We learned there were 3,600 Green Lanterns in all, each patrolling a wedge-shaped (but potentially infinite) sector of space radiating from Oa, which was in the center of the universe. Two more “back-up” Lanterns from Earth were introduced, one an African-American architect named John Stewart, who was featured in the Justice League cartoon.

Eventually we learned that there had been another Green Lantern back in the 1940s, who bore no relation to the current one except the name. That character was invented in 1940, when creator Martin Nodell was taking a commuter train, and noticed that red lanterns meant “danger” while green lanterns meant “everything’s safe.” Everything’s safe? Bingo! And so a hero was born, who had a green ring that was literally magic. Naturally, Hal Jordan got to team up with his older namesake now and then (who is still around, and still not related to the Green Lantern Corps).

But something happened to the Emerald Warrior. Like in the 1940s, the new guy’s popularity fell off. Maybe he was simply too powerful to plausibly challenge, or there were so many Lanterns he stopped being unique. Maybe his life was too good to be interesting. Maybe that “yellow weakness” was too ridiculous, or aging fans began to realize that being “born without fear” makes you a psychopath, or a short-lived idiot. Regardless, Green Lantern was canceled in 1972, and made fitful restarts over the next few decades. DC tried everything to make the title interesting, like breaking up Hal and Carol (repeatedly). They even turned Jordan into an actual psychopath in 1994, one who murdered a bunch of fellow Lanterns, and replaced him with a young slacker as “the last Green Lantern.”

Fortunately, none of that lasted. A young writer named Geoff Johns – now the Chief Creative Officer at DC – virtually rebuilt the franchise. He managed to explain away that old, stupid yellow weakness and Jordan’s trip on the crazy train by blaming an entity called Parallax, who embodies fear and powers yellow rings. He also invented an entity called Ion who embodies will and powers the green, and then blue, orange, purple, red and violet entities that power five more corps of ring-bearers, all of which together comprise not just the rainbow, but the “emotional spectrum” as well. Johns re-wrote “born without fear” into something more heroic: the “ability to overcome great fear.” He also introduced the creepy idea that rings fly off to find new hosts when their bearer dies – but that also means that it wasn’t the dying Green Lantern of Sector 2814 that chose Hal Jordan: It was the ring itself.

All of this is will be fun to know if you plan to see Green Lantern. The movie’s Big Bad is Parallax, a relatively new creation, along with the huge-headed Hector Hammond, a character from the 1960s (that Johns made nastier). You’ll see a mix of Green Lanterns old and new, from the first one Jordan met, Tomar-Re, to his drill sergeant, Kilowog, to the Green Lantern who went rogue, Sinestro.

And you’ll know that Hal Jordan, played by Ryan Reynolds, deserves his ring – because it will choose him. And after seeing the movie, maybe you’ll want to grow up to be Hal Jordan, too.

Photos
1. RYAN REYNOLDS as Green Lantern in Warner Bros. Pictures' action adventure "GREEN LANTERN," a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. ™ & © DC Comics

2. BLAKE LIVELY as Carol Ferris in Warner Bros. Pictures' action adventure "GREEN LANTERN," a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo by François Duhamel. ™ & © DC Comics

3. MARK STRONG as Sinestro in Warner Bros. Pictures' action adventure "GREEN LANTERN," a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. ™ & © DC Comics

4. (L-r) Kilowog, voiced by MICHAEL CLARKE DUNCAN, and Tomar-Re, voiced by GEOFFREY RUSH, in Warner Bros. Pictures' action adventure "GREEN LANTERN," a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures. ™ & © DC Comics

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

By Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

X-Men: First Class, the X-movie that premiered June 3, has been getting rave reviews. But it can be confusing to anyone familiar with the characters – because it’s not THE X-Men origin, it’s AN X-Men origin.

Specifically, it’s the origin of the current X-Men movie franchise, which consists of the three X-movies and X-Men Origins: Wolverine. X-Men: First Class is set in 1962, with Wolverine previously set in 1979 and the X-Men trilogy set in the present. But even that is complicated, as a teenage blonde named Emma who can transform into diamond appears in Wolverine, and a twentysomething blonde named Emma who can tranform into diamond appears 17 years earlier in First Class. We just have to ignore that, or assume there are two blondes named Emma with the same mutant abilities.

(Raven “Mystique” Darkholme appears in both First Class and X-Men, but you can forgive her for not aging, because she’s a shapechanger – in the comics, she may be more than 100 years old. Now that’s a super-power we can all get behind!)

Further muddying the water, Twentieth Century Fox has announced that the next Wolverine movie will distance itself from the X-franchise, which they want to reboot anyway. So this X-Men origin story, as good as it is, may soon be orphaned.

And it certainly bears no resemblance to the comics. There are two good reasons for that: One, if First Class introduced the familiar X-Men in 1962, they’d have been too old for X-Men, X2 and X-Men: The Last Stand. And two, that very trilogy makes the First Class of the comics impossible.

In the comics, the original team debuted in The X-Men #1 (1963) as Angel, Beast, Cyclops, Iceman and Jean “Marvel Girl” Grey. But in the three X-isting X-movies, we saw Iceman and Angel join the team as teens long after the founding of the Xavier School for Gifted Youngsters – so they’re out. First Class also excludes Cyclops and Jean, presumably to avoid having to explain why they didn’t age much in the 38 years that pass between First Class and X-Men. The Beast remains as a founding member, though, which might assuage disgruntled comics fans (and explain why he was essentially in superhero retirement at the beginning of Last Stand).

The movie features Charles “Prof. X” Xavier and Erik “Magneto” Lehnsherr as young allies and friends, before their clashing ideologies lead them into the bloody conflict found in both comics and movies. What would surprise most is that, despite both Xavier and Magneto being introduced in 1963, nothing of their past together was known for decades. It was only in the early 1980s that their shared past was invented, and then revealed over time. For the record, the comics say a guy named Erik Magnus befriended Charles Xavier in the newly created state of Israel in the late 1940s (1982), before we learned his real name was Erik Lehnsherr (1998), before we learned his real, real name was Max Eisenhardt (2008). And he had nothing to do with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

But those aren’t the only changes. The film has cherry-picked an eclectic cast from decades of X-Men comics.

In addition to Mystique and Beast, this class has Cyclops’ brother Alex “Havok” Summers (introduced in 1969), who can fire cosmic energy from his hands. We also meet Sean “Banshee” Cassidy (1967), a mutant with sonic powers who joined the team in 1975. Also included is Armando “Darwin” Muñoz (2006), who can adapt himself to new environments and circumstances. First Class establishes CIA agent Moira MacTaggert, who was a human geneticist in the comics (1976), the significant other of Banshee and Xavier at different times, a staunch X-Men ally and, unfortunately, now quite X-pired.

The Big Bad is Sebastian Shaw (1980), leader of the Hellfire Club, who can absorb and re-direct kinetic energy. He’s allied with the telepathic Emma Frost, who was the villain White Queen for many years, until a series of traumatic 1990s events set her (quite plausibly) on the road to redemption. (Frost gained her diamond powers in 2001, the result of a “secondary mutation,” and joined the X-Men soon after.)

The upshot is that the movies are a clever re-mix of the comics, and both comics and movies stand alone as separate narratives. All of which, I hasten to add, should increase your enjoyment of First Class. It’s the X-Men, after all, where the only constant is change.

Photo Above: January Jones is Emma Frost, a telepath who possesses a diamond-like skin that can cut through glass. Photo by Murray Close/TM and ©2011 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Before Charles Xavier (James McAvoy, left) and Erik Lehnsherr took the names Professor X and Magneto, they were two young men who became the closest of friends. Here they enjoy a game of chess – the first of many they would play over their long and evolving history. Photo by Murray Close/TM and ©2011 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Emma Frost (January Jones) and Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) are powerful mutants scheming to trigger a nuclear war that will result in the demise of humanity – and the ascension of mutants. Photo by Murray Close/TM and ©2011 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Erik Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender, left foreground) and Charles Xavier (James McAvoy, right foreground) lead Sean "Banshee" Cassidy (Caleb Landry Jones, left), Raven "Mystique" Darkholme (Jennifer Lawrence), Dr. Moira McTaggert (Rose Byrne), Hank "Beast" McCoy (Nicholas Hoult) and Alex "Havok" Summers (Lucas Till) in a battle to prevent nuclear war. Photo by Murray Close/TM and ©2011 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

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

As some of you may remember, I used to post blog entries here, shortly after we fist moved to the Ning site. Some of you may have noticed that after awhile, I stopped.  Since no one asked me why I stopped, I assumed that this was not a matter of general interest, and so never offered any explanation for the stoppage.  However, it's something that has been on my mind on-and-off ever since, and so I'm posting today - not, I hasten to add, in hopes of provoking a clamor for me to start blogging again, but instead for the exapnsion of my own understanding.

To clarify - around the time I posted my last blog entry, someone - I don't remember who, and I wouldn't want to seem to be singling anyone out, anyway - posted in the forums their observation that many of the blog entries that had been posted up to that point were of such a nature that they could just as easily have been posted in the forums, and did not need to be posted as blog entries as such.

Now, I don't know that that was aimed at me, but nevertheless, it gave me pause.  I had been blogging on topics that interested me that I hoped would also interest those who read my offerings.  Thinking about it, led to the question - what ought a blog post to be?  What should distinguish a "blog" post from a "run-of-the-mill" forum post?  It seemed to me that many of the blog entries posted on the board could just as easily have been posted in the forums. (Note: This is not meant to disparage any of the other folks who post blog entries - all better writers than I, to a man.)

So, I stopped blogging until I could come up with a satisfactory answer, and since, so far, I haven't been able to do so, I'm bringing the questions to you folks:

What ought a blog post to be?  What should distinguish a "blog" post from a "run-of-the-mill" forum post? 

Avengers Initiative Vol. 1-4: Basic Training, Killed in Action, Secret Invasion, Disassembled

by Dan Slott, Christos Gage, Stefano Caselli and Steve Kurth

There’s a conundrum at the core of Avengers Initiative that the series rarely resolves.  The basic premise is that young heroes are required by the government to train at a special facility in order to become licensed to use their powers.  That mandate arose as a result of the alleged misuse of powers by young superheroes led to the destruction of Stamford, Connecticut.  In other words, young heroes are being trained at this camp in order to keep both them and the public safe. 

Here’s the problem: safe isn’t interesting.  At least, not in stories.  Especially, super-stories.  So everything interesting that happens undermines the very premise of the series. 

This problem isn’t unique to Avengers Initiative.  It plagues every series that purports to train young heroes.  That’s why young characters from New Mutants to Starfleet Academy routinely sneak out and get into trouble away from their respective schools.  But this problem is intensified in Avengers Initiative.  Every issue, we’re told that the purpose of the camp is to keep the students safe.  And every issue, they’re routinely thrown into dangerous situations.  Every issue, we’re told that the students need to know how to use their powers before they go out into public.  And every issue, they either sneak out of the base or are forced into action, betraying the stated purpose of the book. 

The first two stories vacillate between two common plots.  In one set of stories, the students go into action before they’re ready.  Sometimes, they feel stifled by the confinement of the camp and manage to sneak out on their own.  Sometimes, they’re pressed into service by trainers who know they’re unprepared.  This happened as early as the second issue when the students are sent up against Hydra.

In the other set of stories, the students are put in danger when the camp itself is attacked.  This happens frequently.  And it often happens because of internal threats. The same camp where students are trained is used as a prison and as a testing facility.  Prisoners get loose.  Experiments go wild.  And the students are forced to defend themselves in the very place where they’re supposed to be safe.  It may be dramatic.  But it completely undermines the stated purpose of the series.

Some readers have given Avengers Initiative a pass regarding these problems.  They see it as an allegory for problems in the real world.  After all, attempts to keep us safe often backfire.  Government agencies that vow to protect us often fail.  And so on.  I disagree.  Allegorical elements are not an excuse for a broken premise.  Individually, the stories may be exciting.  But taken together, they create a series that is at odds with itself.  

That isn’t to say that Avengers Initiative is entirely bad.  The various elements come together for an excellent story with Secret Invasion.  While the Initiative has been training heroes to serve on licensed super-teams in each of the 50 states, the alien Skrulls have been planting secret agents in each of those teams.  Indeed, the entire 50-state Initiative may have been a Skrull plot to spread their agents around the country.  With the third volume, the Skrull’s plans are revealed and the Invasion initiated. 

However, the 50-state teams become the heart of the resistance.  3-D Man, a former camp trainer and now team leader, is able to identify Skrulls even when they’re disguised.  He jumps from state to state exposing the infiltrators, pulling former students and other allies into his battalion.  Along the way, there are some fun guest stars such as the Skrull Kill Krew and some interesting twists.  For example, Initiative trainee Crusader is a Skrull defector and not a spy.

The Secret Invasion story rattles along at an exhilarating speed.  It’s fun to jump from place to place and to see so many heroes.  The near-constant action is a treat.  In addition, I think the series is stronger when it focuses on the 50-state teams instead of the training facility.  Any flaws in the premise float into the background.

Unfortunately, the training camp takes center stage again after Secret Invasion.  Its attacked by yet another internal threat.  It becomes home to villains in training as well as heroes.  And the initial problems are exaggerated.  

As promised, at the end of last year, this Silver-Age Challenge covers Marvel Comics.  Frankly, coming up with ten interesting, suitably difficult, Google-resistant questions proved to be a lot tougher than I expected.  I had set my target time for posting a Marvel quiz for June of this year, roughly six months following my DC quiz, and I felt, certainly, that ten decent posers would occur to me just naturally, in my scheme of thought.

Instead, by the time May rolled around, I had only four worthwhile questions, and for the last couple of weeks, the part of my brain devoted to comics trivia has been working on overdrive.  Finally, yesterday, I came up with the last one.

As I explained in the prologue to my DC Silver-Age Challenge, to me, it’s not enough to simply gin up questions about comics trivia.  Ideally, they should be questions that, when the reader discovers the answers, they should make him think “Wow, that’s interesting!  I didn’t know that!”  Then, there is the matter of technology; a good question should be one that isn’t readily solvable by plugging it into a search engine.  I must have tossed out a dozen or so because of that consideration.

I’m not really sure why it was more difficult for me to come up with ten Marvel-related trivia questions.  I suspect, though, that it has to do with the internecine nature of the Marvel universe.  Where DC’s Silver-Age comics were segregated into fiefdoms, under different editors, over at Marvel, Stan Lee ran the whole show.  And he did the bulk of the writing for the first several years.  Because of that, he was forced to constantly revisit old ideas and spruce them up for new stories.  Few items of information were left unplumbed, and lack of reminder is the very nature of trivia.  That required me to really get down in the weeds to come up with forgotten items that met my criteria.

For those of you who came in late, or passed on the last one, here are the guidelines for tackling the quiz.  All of the questions, and the answers, germinate from the Silver Age of Comics, as I define it. So the only material that counts comes from comics cover-dated September, 1956 to December, 1968. Any answers that contradict mine and are based on information introduced before or after that period will be considered wrong.

Each question has a ten-point value, with no points removed for an incorrect answer. After all, you don't win anything here. The points are for parceling out bragging rights.

And, of course, all of these questions have to do with Marvel Comics.

 All set?  O.K., here we go!  As usual, I’ll start off with a lob . . . .

1.  Which two super-heroes attended Metro College at the same time, though they never met on campus?

2.  Not counting Captain “Happy Sam” Sawyer (or, for the nitpicky, his temporary relief, Captain Flint, either), which regular member of the Howling Commandos was actually a commissioned officer during World War II?

3.  On her twenty-third birthday, Janet (the Wasp) Van Dyne received her complete inheritance.  How much money did her father leave her?

4.  What Fantastic Four supporting character was based on the star of a syndicated comic strip?

5.  Speaking of the Fantastic Four, in what branch of the military did Ben (the Thing) Grimm serve during the war?

6.  During his ten-century space flight to Alpha Centauri, Major Vance Astro survived by spending the entire time in suspended animation.  When he arrived on the closest planet, he discovered that Earthmen had beaten him there because, two hundred years after he left Earth, man had learnt how to go faster than light.  Who was the physicist who perfected faster-than-light travel and rendered Major Astro’s flight pointless?

7.  The original line-up of Avengers lasted for only the first two issues of The Avengers.  In only one story outside of its own title was this group of five depicted (not counting flashbacks).  What tale was that?

8.  The international terrorist organisation Hydra named its various departments after animals.  What was the animal name by which its supply division was known?

9.  Speaking of suspended animation, when Merlin the Magician awoke after a centuries-long slumber, he decided to offer his services to the President of the United States, as he had to King Arthur.  However, after entering the White House and seeing the Chief Executive, Merlin did not believe the man was the President.  Why?

10.  Of what material was Henry Pym’s blue-and-gold Goliath costume made?

Being the sporting fellow that I am, there is no bar to researching the answers.  In fact, it will be at least two weeks before I run the answers.  That should allow plenty of time for anyone to dig out his old Marvel comics and take a shot at it. 

Good luck!

Howdy, Legionnaires!

We've been on the Ning site for a while now, and I think it's time to assess if it's doing all we like, and what improvements we can make. I've had a couple of ideas buzzing around in my head for a while, and I'd like to run them by you.

1) GROUPS

When we started the Ning site, we Moderators were kinda baffled as to what to do with the "Groups" function. They looked to be redundant to the way material would naturally arrange itself in the GENERAL COMICS discussion area, but for all we knew Legionnaires would find some wonderful use for them. So we didn't put any parameters on groups, and just waited to see what would develop.

And some groups developed that seem both necessary and functional, like the one labeled WILD CARDS. The WC gang have a happy, healthy community that doesn't mix much with the comics community, so it stands to reason that they should have a specific place to go without wading through tons of stuff that doesn't interest them. I adjudge the WC group a natural use of the function, and a successful one.

On the other end of the spectrum are the comics-specific ones, which I deem a failed experiment. Take, for example, the WELCOME TO THE (GL) CORPS group. What purpose does it serve? Most people talking about Green Lantern post to the GENERAL COMICS discussion area, and the few that post to the group see their posts gather dust. Worse, what if you're a newbie? The title of the group is misleading ("Hey! I can join the Green Lantern Corps!") and if they went there first, they'd see no activity, and think "this site sucks" and go somewhere else. With all the options available on the Interwebs, we must compete a little for new blood, not turn them away. In my view, groups like WELCOME TO THE (GL) CORPS aren't working -- they're redundant, confusing and may even be damaging to our long-term health.

A group right in the middle is COMICS NEWS. I don't like posting the press releases in groups, because they get so little traffic and it's a lot of flippin' work that I'd like to see get used. It also sometimes results in redundancy, like -- for example -- during this latest DC announcement. I'm putting the press releases up in the COMICS NEWS group, while Legionnaires are posting links to DC's The Source and competing websites in the GENERAL COMICS area. This is redundant, and confusing, for the ordinary Legionnaire. But I can't really post press releases in discussion area, because I post so many a day (on the days I post) that they'd replace everybody else on the "latest postings" feature. The press releases are so numerous, they would simply take over. So groups it is, unless someone has a better solution.

There is one other thing about groups to take into account: the RSS feature. I don't think that appears anywhere else. With it, there's a constant feed of links to stories elsewhere on the web that use the appropriate tags. That's really cool, and I'd hate to lose it ... unless no one's using it. Various Legionnaires have set up feeds in a lot of groups, but is anyone reading them? Would it be better to have all those RSS feeds go into the COMICS NEWS group, and delete all the others? Then it would be one-stop shopping.

2) STANDING STUFF

There are a number of things that need to be up and available at all times, without people having to search for them. Things like Moderator contacts, Rules of the Board and other boilerplate leap to mind. Also posts and columns that answer frequently asked questions or are useful, heavily-researched reference works, like my Roll Call columns for various teams, Chris's CrossGen article, and more columns by the Commander and Mr. Silver Age than I can count. ("When did the Earth-1 Batman start?" "Was it really in the Legion of Super-Heroes Constitution that married Legionnaires had to resign?" "What is a Mopee?" And so forth.)

There doesn't seem to be a mechanism to do that on the home page -- everything rotates off eventually. So once again I'm thinking groups. We could set up a group for REFERENCE or LIBRARY or GO HERE FIRST or BOB'S YOUR UNCLE or -- I don't know, I could use some help naming it. But then any Legionnaire could add something they feel needs to last through the zombie apocalypse, and it would assemble itself more or less organically. And then it would be there for eternity with no time-consuming searches (which I know would help me, and I bet I'm not alone).

Of course with two pages of groups (which seem to arrange themselves randomly), nobody can find anything in the groups if they don't know specifically where to go. Which, again, leads me to the idea of paring them back to -- oh, I dunno, five? 10? Less than a page, anyway, and few enough that you could see ALL of them on an average screen in the groups list on the front page. Nothing that doesn't have a specific need to exist should go away. Then we Mods could close the function's access, only allowing future groups when we all agree to do so.

So those are my thoughts at present. I think paring the groups back would increase utility and decrease confusion, but I'm reluctant to do so without feedback. And also lots of warning, in case there are posts there that the authors wish to save. And it's possible y'all might be using the heck out of the groups, and I just can't tell, because there's no counter feature.

So sound off, everyone. Not only about groups, but about anything you think would improve the board.

So Legionnaires assemble! And chat mightily!

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic 44-50

by John Jackson Miller and Brian Ching

Once upon a time, Knights of the Old Republic was one of my favorite series.  I was wrapped up in the adventures of Zayne Carrick, the Padawan learner who was framed for murder by his own Jedi teachers.  I was captivated by his forced exile, enthralled by the cast of characters caught in his orbit and mesmerized by his quest for redemption. 

That story came to a stunning conclusion in issue 35.  Knights of the Old Republic did not.  The series continued to follow Zayne’s adventures but it no longer had a focus now that Zayne had cleared his name.  Zayne became a relatively ordinary adventurer.  Perhaps he was more compassionate and moral than most.  But the series missed his former drive and sense of direction.  I eventually gave up.  Not long after that, Dark Horse gave up as well and the series ended with issue 50.

A year and a half later, I decided to read the remaining issues.  I wanted to know how the story was resolved for Zayne and his compatriots.  And I missed Brian Ching’s excellent art.

I’m glad I did.  The final six issues, comprising the “Destroyer” and “Demon” stories, rivaled Knights of the Old Republic at its peak.  Perhaps its because the series now had a definite end point in mind, but KOTOR had a renewed sense of purpose.  That focus gave the stories energy and made everything more compelling. 

So how did KOTOR find a renewed sense of direction?  By shifting focus away from its lead character.  As I mentioned earlier, Zayne Carrick’s story was finished.  He had defeated the conspiracy behind his initial betrayal.  He had restored his name.  He had done everything he set out to do.  However, along the way, he had collected an interesting group of friends.  There was Gryph the con man, Jarael the former slave and Rohlan the Mandalorian exile.  Their stories weren’t finished.

KOTOR shifted its primary focus to Jarael.  She was Zayne’s romantic love interest.  And she had a mysterious past as a former slave and a runaway.  Zayne and Jarael set out to take down the Crucible, the slave ring that had been Jarael’s home for most of her youth.  However, the more their quest moved forward, the more it dredged up questions about Jarael’s past. 

Like the prison lackey who is given a nightstick by the warden in order to keep the other prisoners in line, Jarael had become an overseer of the slave pens.   She was still a victim.  But she had alleviated her suffering by further victimizing others.  The revelations tested Zayne’s attraction for Jarael and his desire to continue the quest.  After all, he had kept his moral bearings even when on the run from the established guardians of law and order.  The revelations also gave greater depth to their rivalry with Chantique, the new Crucible trainer.  She was not merely a slave trainer.  She was Jarael’s darker image.   Plus, the revelations heightened Jarael’s personal story.  She was fighting for more than the destruction of the Crucible.  She was fighting for her own redemption.   In all of those ways, Knights of the Old Republic intensified the emotional impact of their closing story.  These weren’t merely revelations.  They were reasons to become invested in the characters and the story again. 

Meanwhile, KOTOR maintained a secondary focus on the Mandalorian Rohlan.  He had always been a quiet, stoic figure- typical of Mandalorians.  Yet Zayne and the others knew that there had to be more to Rohlan’s disgrace and subsequent exile. 

Rohlan’s back-story became entwined with the Mandalorian scientist Demagol.  Demagol was the Star Wars equivalent of Joseph Mengele, a scientist who conducted cruel experiments on sentient subjects.  This also intensified the tension and interest in KOTOR.  Zayne and his allies weren’t trying to fix any ol’ mistake.  They were squaring off against one of the biggest villains in the universe and tackling some of the deepest moral questions. 

Demagol’s history neatly crossed over with Jarael’s, bringing the two plots together for one gigantic conclusion in which anything and everything could happen.  There were mistaken identities and big guest stars (Darth Malak and Saul Karath from the KOTOR video game made key appearances).  There were revelations and confessions.  The fights had emotional impact.   The outcome was uncertain until the very end.  And even the lead had a vested interest, due to his strong friendship for one character and romantic affection for the other.

By Andrew A. Smith

The bid by Archie Comics to become a bigger player in pop culture keeps expanding, buttressed this month by the first comprehensive history of Archie and the company that bears his name.

Craig Yoe’s Archie: A Celebration of America’s Favorite Teenager (IDW, $49.99) isn’t going to surprise anyone. But it is a handsome book that fills in the basics.

Yoe, a comics and pop culture historian, does yeoman work here in clean, concise prose. He covers the company’s 1939 founding as superhero publisher MLJ Magazines (the name derived from the first initials of founders Maurice Coyne, Louis Silberkleit and John Goldwater), and its later transformation into Archie Comics, when that character, who first appeared in 1941, became the star. He provides summaries of the main Riverdale residents, and biographies of each of the major editors, writers and artists. He devotes a couple of pages each to big Archie spin-offs, like Little Archie and The Archies cartoons, band and records. He mentions some of the lesser lights, like Josie and the Pussycats, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and various fads.

It’s a handsome book, with a die-cut cover of the famous three-on-a-soda scene that the United States Postal Service recreated as its representative Archie stamp. The reproduction, even of 70-year-old stories, is top-notch.

But don’t expect any surprises; Yoe toes the company line. For example, the acrimonious debate over who created Archie isn’t even mentioned, with all credit going to editor Goldwater and none to writer/artist Bob Montana or presumed early writer Vic Bloom. The company’s aggressive role in the formation and perpetuation of the Comics Code, long a thorn in the side of comics fans, is only given a few perfunctory nods.

And so forth. But, really, I didn’t expect much more than that. This is just a starting point for examining Archie Comics, and it is very welcome.  Archie: A Celebration is a fine – and fun – addition to any bookshelf, for fans and casual readers alike.

REPRINT ROUNDUP

* Frank Frazetta, known to most people for his 1960s and ‘70s Conan the Barbarian paperback covers, also drew a lot of comics. Vanguard Publishing seems determined to reprint them all.

The latest volume in Vanguard’s Frazetta library is White Indian ($49.95), a strip that appeared in various Western comics published by Magazine Enterprises from 1949 to 1953. It featured Dan Brand, a Philadelphia socialite during Revolutionary War times who ends up being trained by Native Americans, gains a sidekick named Tipi and runs around the frontier in a breechclout. Brand, who is heroically proportioned and amazingly competent at everything, mostly arranges peace between Indians and settlers, while fighting frontier bad guys like “bad” Indians, bootleggers, gun-runners and Tories.

This is pretty clichéd stuff, of course, not to mention historically inaccurate, incredibly implausible and more than a little insulting to Native Americans. But we’re not here for the stories – we’re here for Frazetta’s art, which does not disappoint.

By the time of the famous Conan paintings, Frazetta had become unique in style and technique. But in these earlier works, you can see his influences, which include Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon), Hal Foster (Tarzan) and possibly Joe Kubert (1940s Hawkman). Frazetta’s muscular male figures in action are consistently breath-taking, and emphasized to the point of homoeroticism. Frazetta’s backgrounds and animals are equally lush and impressive, so the entire package is page after page of stunning eye candy.

The back of White Indian is fleshed out with stories from other publishers of the era from a variety of genres (including Western, war and Viking) and a series that called “Heroic True Life Stories” from 1952-53 Heroic Comics. Presumably these stories are included because they weren’t numerous enough to carry a volume of their own and/or White Indian didn’t fill the necessary pages.

* Marvel Masterworks: Atlas Era Strange Tales Vol. 4 ($59.99) is the first volume to reprint Strange Tales from after the imposition of the draconian Comics Code of 1954, and they are almost painful to read. As comics historian Michael Vassallo says in the foreword: “What’s noticeable is how tame these post-Code stores immediately are. There is no serious conflict, no death, no destruction and no violence. Just Code-scrubbed blandness.”

Especially objectionable is when a sad or serious story has a clumsily pasted-on final panel that puts the “bad” ending on another planet or dimension or something. This is fascinating from a historical perspective, but pretty tough slogging for a casual reader.

Art from top:

Archie: A Celebration of America's Favorite Teenager is a basic overview of the character and the company that bears his name. Courtesy IDW Publishing

In 2010, the USPS released this Archie stamp

White Indian collects the strip by legendary artist Frank Frazetta that ran in the early 1950s. Courtesy Vanguard Productions

Marvel Masterworks: Strange Tales Vol. 4 straddles the era when the Comics Code of 1954 was introduced, and contains stories on either side of that division for comparison. Courtesy Marvel Entertainment

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