My name is John Seavey, and I’m a writer who’s probably best known on the Internet for my series of “Storytelling Engines” columns on ‘Comics Should Be Good’ and my accidentally inflammatory “How To Save Marvel Comics” columns on my own blog, ‘Fraggmented’. Offline, I’m probably best known for my contributions to the ‘Feng Shui’ line of RPGs from Atlas Games…which still isn’t saying much, but hey, it beats being on ‘America’s Most Wanted’.

Somewhere in all that writing, I caught the attention of Mightygodking, who politely offered me the chance to be one of his regular guest bloggers. Speaking as someone who doesn’t get even a tenth of the audience this place pulls in, I jumped at the chance. I’m no dummy, after all. (This may, in fact, be your only point of concrete evidence on this point, and it’s really my word against yours.)

So what kind of posts can you expect from me in my Friday slot? Well, I can usually be relied upon to talk about comics, although you should be aware that I am something of a curmudgeon about the current state of the market (I have at one point suggested that DC should just publish a new crossover every year called, “DC Kills Everyone Who’s Alive and Resurrects Everyone Who’s Dead!”) I also do a good line in chatting about movies, and I can yammer about Doctor Who with the best of them. (I can actually follow a debate about “UNIT Dating”. And “Lives Before Hartnell”.) And sometimes, I just have crazy weird shit that I have to get out of my head, which is really the secret purpose of every blog everywhere. (This is why there are fewer homeless people now. They do their crazy ranting on blogs instead of street corners.)

It should also be noted that I have political opinions. If MGK’s offend you, you’re not going to be any happier with mine.

So that’s me, at least the parts of me that will relate to this blog. Assuming MGK doesn’t shitcan me for such a boring opening post, tune in next week to hear me saying something interesting!

(Warning: Use of the term “interesting” does not guarantee actual interesting content. If content is “Spider-Man: Reign” related, author reserves the right to do the joke about the “Spider-Man” cartoon theme. Author has been known to define “Friday posts” as occurring on Saturday, or even the following Tuesday. If you have serious liver problems, please contact your doctor before reading. If you have extremely serious liver problems, please contact your doctor right now. In case of fire, read this post while using the stairs, not the elevator.)

Some people like to point to that bit in Crisis On Infinite Earths where the Penguin is briefly depicted fighting Firestorm to a standstill as the “waitasec” moment of that series, but it’s not mine. After all, the Penguin is a pretty smart dude and he has umbrellas that shoot people. Plus, Firestorm is traditionally a dumbass.

No, the “waitasec” moment of Crisis for me comes in #10, when Earth’s villains attack Oa in the past to try and save it. (Long story.) In order to stop Krona from viewing the start of the universe and creating the multiverse by accident, the villains try to destroy his lab, and although most of them get conked out early on, three of them – the first Icicle, the first Mirror Master and Maaldor the Darklord – make it to the lab and are about to destroy it, but Krona kills them while they argue about who gets to smash his stuff. No, really.

Now, granted, the fact that he wears ancient-Roman-ish armour and wields a broadsword (and has a Jheri curl) might make him look like a bit of a low man on the totem pole. Heck, on the cover of his issue of Who’s Who he’s squaring off against Madame .44, who has the power of… two guns. But here’s the thing: Maaldor the Darklord wields the entire power of an entire sub-universe. His Who’s Who entry says he is basically omnipotent and that he can “destroy entire galaxies with a thought.” He fought the entire Green Lantern Corps to a standstill more than once.

Basically, he shouldn’t have gotten punked like that.

And here’s the other thing: Maaldor is kind of awesome in a low-rent B-list Vartox sort of way. He’s a full-on godly being who speaks of himself exclusively in the third person (like the Rock!) and hits people with a sword because he can, not because he needs to. He just like slashing people with a sword. It’s how he chills out.

That is a universe-powered being who knows what he likes. He’s due for a comeback.

Top seven boys: Broadway. I was kind of meh on the whole idea of a top seven boys’ performance because there didn’t seem to be any reasonable way to choreo a routine that would showcase all of them equally, so I figured they’d end up just doing a sort of bland bit that would showcase them all equally not-at-all, and I was unfortunately correct about this. I also nailed both Broadway selections for just going with the most predictable options (in this case, West Side Story for the boys). I love the Australian show for tinkering with format, but this is one of their failures.

Issi and Don: “funky street Latin.” This was probably the best Issi and Don have danced together so far: Issi finally had performance quality when not dancing in her genre and Don was dead on the beat throughout and not rushing. Both had a few weak bits – Issi mostly at the start, Don a bit after her – and the confidence was occasionally lacking (Jason’s comments about “finding Broadway versions of yourselves” was actually pretty brilliant) but on the whole this was danced reasonably well for something that’s about as far from being a formal genre as possible.

Jessica P. Ballroom and Heath: contemporary. Killed it, again – which is not surprising because these two have danced contemporary, jazz, one tango and now back to contemporary. I’d really like them to do anything else at this point, but I can’t say this wasn’t good.

Ivy and Robbie: paso doble. Okay, Robbie needs to have facial hair pretty much forever, because it ages him about five years. Actually, since he normally looks about fifteen, maybe ten years. Anyway, Jason Gilkison is brilliant, but even with Gilkison I was skeptical that a prop cape would fly. But it did, because he’s brilliant. This is Ivy’s second paso (I can’t remember the last time one dancer danced paso twice in a single season) and the improvement was massive; Robbie finally danced well enough to convince me that he’s not just a great soloist. That double développé was fucking insane. Fantastic work.

Carly and Kieran: contemporary. Other than Calry maybe overemoting a bit in a couple of sequences, there’s nothing to say other than: yes, another excellent contemporary performance. See, this is the problem with recapping this show: so much of it is just good and there’s nothing for me to say except banana monkey hamburgers and pretend that it is meaningful.

Jessie Contemporary and Matt: jazz. Clever concept with a ton of character and danced excellently by both of them. I’d really like to point out that Jessie’s leaping split into the catch by Matt was a total moment of trust on her part, which says a lot about this partnership. (I know that this is a very SYTYCD Judge thing to say, but I’m not saying it about a basic lift but instead about a pretty difficult stunt. I don’t think, as Bonnie did, that Jessie outshined Matt; she had the showier role but Matt danced just as well as she did.

Renee and Phillipe: Viennese waltz. This started out with such pleasant chemistry, and indeed the chemistry was ridiculously good throughout: the looks on Renee’s and especially Phillipe’s faces were so amazingly genuine. In terms of character quality this was probably the best waltz SYTYCD has seen since Mark and Courtney’s in season four of the US show. Unfortunately, the dancing was clunky and clumsy and just plain bad, which was a massive disappointment; if it had been on par with the chemistry this would have been an incredible tour de force.

Jess H. Hip-Hop and Nick: hip-hop. My love for Tiana Canterbury knows no bounds, and especially for choreographing 90s-style hip-hop, which any hip-hop dancer who’s tried it can tell you is insanely difficult, and there were a few stretches in this routine where Nick especially was just falling behind and even Jess was clearly struggling to keep up. This isn’t to say that the routine wasn’t fun and danced relatively well, but in a field this strong it’s unfortunately second-class.

Top seven girls: Broadway. I would like to put “Cell Block Tango” on my list of Music I Never Want To Hear On This Show Ever Fucking Again. That is all.

Probable bottom three: Issi and Don, Jess and Nick, Renee and Phillipe.
Should go home: Issi and Don.
Will go home: Jess and Nick.

The old man lies back in bed. The nurses call him by a name he barely remembers any more, except when his friends use it. The name is meaningless anyway: calling it a fiction would be too kind. It’s a shoddy lie, and nobody believes it now, and as he nears the end of his life he dislikes it more and more. He’s not exactly sure why he dislikes it so, not any more. Things are foggy when you’re in your nineties: everything you know is like a sketch of a photograph you once owned.

Sometimes he sees a woman on the television in his room – it only gets four channels, but what better way does he have to spend his time? – a woman who’s been very successful in her life. When he sees her, he feels, for a brief moment, vindicated. It was worth it, he thinks to himself. This is how he gets through the pain of his body gradually turning off all its lightswitches, of his limbs becoming dusty hallways: vindication.

—

Winston Sligh was thirty-one, a grown man who’s always had a bit of a taste for adventure. A lot of that adventure came by way of the Marine Corps, where Winston worked long hours doing whatever was humanly necessary to avoid combat. The recruiter told him about his duty to his country, but Winston was a practical-minded sort even then and figured that his first twenty-six years had been spent mostly trying to just get by, traveling from town to town looking for work, and his country hadn’t much cared for him then so Winston figured they were square. The recruiter told him about his duty to his family, but Winston’s mother died when he was fifteen and his pop ran out on them when he was three when his little sister died getting herself born, so Winston figured they were square too. Then the recruiter told him about the pay, and Winston signed up on the spot.

Winston went to Guadalcanal five months after the battle of Guadalcanal ended, then to Peleliu six months after hostilities ceased, and finally to the Iwo a mere two weeks after the last shot was fired. He had a knack for finding ways to put himself on the rear echelon of any engagement. Really, often he wondered why he hadn’t joined the Navy, where he figured his various tricks, scams and a skill hencetoforth unknown for forging documents probably would have gone even further. He got his discharge six months early, after catching a lieutenant-colonel having a do with a strapping young corporal in what they believed was secrecy, and set out again to seek his fortune.

A year and some days later, he found himself in the middle of Iowa, broke off his ass again (and recovering from one hell of a hangover), and wondering at the flatness of it all. He asked around, and it turned out the Widow Symons needed a hand to bring in the sorghum harvest, so he went over to the farm that was just outside of Alta and signed up. She liked him on first sight, and him being a former Marine sat well with her as her husband had gotten blown up on Okinawa. Not long after that, he found out the Widow Symons needed a hand for some other things as well, of a more private nature. People in Alta town proper began to speak of him as having done well for himself, although they were never too specific about that. And then there was Myrna’s daughter, Jackie, to whom Winston took quite a shine. She was six, and felt like the little sister he’d never gotten to have, although she didn’t quite look at him as a big brother in her own right but more a replacement daddy.

He felt settled down, and although a shiftless sort such as he would never admit it, he liked this.

Then the ague came.

—

Jackie had the shivers and the runs and was burning up. Dr. McAdams couldn’t peg it, and he was smart enough to check for malaria (not exactly common in Iowa, but she had all the signs) and even that turned up to not be. Dr. McAdams called up an old friend who now taught at the Iowa Hospital School, hoping that maybe academia had some answers. His friend didn’t know, and promised to call specialists who owed him favours. By that time, the little girl wasn’t even coughing any more. She just lay there, too tired to fight it.

And the thing of it is this: Winston knew enough to be sure that it was a conjure. He just didn’t know enough to fix what had been done.

—

Growing up in Marianna, Arkansas wasn’t easy with no daddy, but young Winston got by even though respectable folk thought he was trash because his mother did what was necessary to get by. They called her a whore, but she never was, Winston knew. She took in nigger business, though, when she cooked food and took in boarders, and there was always those who figured that a woman willing to take nigger money was willing to do just about anything else.

Of course, his mother’s friendliness with the niggers meant that Winston was particularly worldly for a boy his age. His best friend, Abraham, was half-black himself on his mother’s side, and Abraham introduced him to Nicodemus, and Nicodemus was the person every young boy really needs: the one who tells you how the world really works.

Nicodemus was probably about fifty, although you couldn’t quite place his age if you tried. (”Makes it easier to get away in a hurry,” said Nicodemus, “if they don’t know how old you are.”) He taught Winston and Abraham and all their friends how to smoke, and how to fish, and how to drink hard liquor (although he never got around to teaching them how to make it properly, and years later one of their friends, a not particularly bright light called Obie, would get himself blown up by a faulty still as a result of this negligence). He told them about how he’d nearly gotten hung twenty years back for a dalliance with a proper lady, and warned them against such fancies. He beat their asses when they didn’t go to school. (”I never got to go to no school,” he’d say, “and damn if your parents ain’t gonna get on my case for letting you grow up to be me, and it ain’t worth the trouble.”)

And he knew hoodoo. He had a book of conjures that he swore up and down was by John Hohman himself. He knew how to make goofer dust which would make dice roll the way he needed them to roll, how to use John the Conqueroo to help a man in the bedroom, how to make a charm from a black cat bone to stop bad mojo headed your way. He didn’t advertise this; he didn’t need to. Word got around when it needed to get around, and Nicodemus had seen what had happen to the rootworkers and mojo men who tried to make a name for themselves.

Abe and Winston found out about his hoodoo the old-fashioned way: by going through his stuff when he wasn’t around looking for pictures of naked ladies. (They were thirteen at the time, tugging it every chance they got, and were willing to risk anything for pictures of naked ladies.) Nicodemus was furious when he caught them going through his belongings, and banned them for a whole week, but they kept coming back and asking after love charms – Winston in particular having figured out that no naked lady was coming anytime soon for a thirteen-year-old piece of white trash and that more direct steps would be needed – and although they never got them, he eventually was willing to teach them a little.

Not a lot. Just a little. Nicodemus kept things close to the vest. But he taught them how to recognize the signs of a conjure that had been done on a person to make them sick. And he taught them one other thing.

—

The night the little girl went to sleep and Dr. McAdams said to Winston – under his breath where the Widow Symons wouldn’t hear him – that she wasn’t going to wake up, Winston went out to the old orchard down the road from the Symons farm with an axe. He passed the Willam farm enroute, the Willam boys chasing one another around for fun, their mother yelling at them to come in already, dinner’s getting cold Roger and George, who raised you hellions? He barely paid attention to them, although they noticed him, a man with an axe walking with purpose not something a seven-year-old would fail to gawk at. When they bothered him about where he was going, he said “Firewood,” nodding at them to go to their mother. They went readily, because a man with an axe telling you to do something has more impact than your mother telling you to do it, even if she’s got an axe. (Your mother probably wouldn’t use the axe on you.)

He found what he was looking for right enough: a stump, with two trees close to it on either side. The trees, once he chopped them down, made excellent seats (albeit a bit sticky from the sap, but he took care of that with a little lighter fluid and a match). He took out a deck of cards and spread them across the stump. He pulled an old candle stub out of his pocket, set it down on the middle of the stump, and lit it. He sat down on one of the seats and said, quietly so as not to offend (”don’t shout him out,” said Nicodemus): “Old Scratch, I got a game for you.”

And then he waited.

He didn’t know how long he waited, not to be sure. Maybe fifteen minutes, maybe a half-hour, but it had been the tail end of dusk when he looked up and there, coming towards the stump, was a grey-haired man in a sharp three-piece gabardine suit. He had a cigarette case in his hand and lifted one to his lips, then stepped forward, bent down and lit it off the candle. After a couple of puffs, he finally looked at Winston, paying attention to him for the first time. Winston looked him dead in the eyes and wished he hadn’t.

“So.” said the Devil.

“Yup.”

“Well, you called me, Winston. I’m here. What can I do for you?”

Winston gestured at the cards, striving not to let his discomfort at being recognized show.

The Devil sighed. “Yes, I figured, but what are we playing for?”

“Widow Symons’ little girl, Jackie, she’s got a conjure on her. I want it gone.”

“So make a counter-charm. Really, this is overkill.”

“I don’t know how. And there ain’t time to go find someone who can do it. My stakes ain’t good enough for you or something?”

A puff on the cigarette. “Not at all. I just wanted you to be aware of any options you might have missed. So, what are you offering?”

“My name against the cure.”

“Your name, eh? Not your soul?”

“Ain’t my name enough?” He couldn’t entirely disguise his irritation at the question, even if this was the Devil.

A shrug. “It is. I’m sorry, I’ve just been playing a lot of people these days who automatically want to go big right from the start. I’m not used to somebody who knows the price of things.” He gestured towards the deck. “Five-card draw?”

“Seven-card stud, showing four. Say, how come you didn’t just appear out of nowhere? I thought that’s what you’d do.”

Stream of smoke out the nostrils. “It’s showy. Seemed a waste of time to do it for you. I can go out and come in again, if you’d like.”

“No, thank you. I don’t want to put you out.”

“Kind of you.” The devil gestured towards the deck again. “So. Seven-card stud, a hundred chips a side.” The chips were suddenly there and had always been there. “Your name, versus the cure for any hoodoo that’s been placed on the girl.”

“Or conjure, or black magic, or any of that.”

“Certainly. Any spell whatsoever. Are you sure this is what you want to play for, Winston?” There was an odd tone in the Devil’s voice. Winston thought about it hard for a second. Nicodemus had told him over and over that the Devil wasn’t allowed to lie, but misleading, implying, or allowing a bargainer to make a mistake, that was all fine.

He thought over his wording again, very carefully, and didn’t see a flaw. He was covered. “Yeah. I deal first?”

“Certainly.”

—

Twenty-five minutes later, Winston was down to eleven chips versus the Devil’s one hundred eighty-nine.

The Devil laid down two cards apiece, then a third face up. Queen of spades for Winston, two of hearts for the Devil. Winston checked the face-down cards: queen and a deuce, both in clubs.

“I’m in for one more.” Winston tossed a chip into the pot.

The Devil’s eyebrows quirked up as he looked at the cards. “All right, I’ll see it.” Another clink as the chip landed beside the other three, and then a new card for each of them: four of hearts for the Devil, jack of diamonds for Winston.

Neither of them checked their face-down cards a second time. The Devil thought for a second, and then said “Check.”

“Check.”

Five of hearts for the Devil, ten of hearts for Winston. “Check,” said the Devil. “By the way, Nicodemus sends his regards.”

“Really? Did he finally lose a game to you? Check.” The mention of his friend made him nervous, but he didn’t want to show it.

“No, he never did. But you must have known that he wasn’t entirely on the up and up. He did crimes, Winston.” Six of spades for the Devil, six of hearts for Winston. “He came about my place in the usual way, you understand. Check.”

“Well, that’s a shame. He was good to me and Abe. Please pass my good word back to him. I’ll raise you two.” The Devil had mostly junk showing; it’d take a pocket pair of kings or aces to beat Winston at this point, unless the Devil had a flush. “You know, he always described you as being a black fella. Does that change from time to time?”

“From man to man. See your two and raise you ten. Are you all in, or do you want to fold?”

Winston needed to know how this hand turned out. “In.” He shoved his last few chips into the pot.

The Devil nodded slightly. “Okay. I’ve got a flush already. Sorry.” He turned his cards up: king and ace of hearts. Winston felt queasy as he revealed his queen. The last cards dealt were the three of clubs and the three of diamonds – meaningless. The Devil stood up and offered his hand.

Winston stood, trying not to throw up, and raised his hand to shake with the Devil. As their hands touched, he felt something pulling at him, and then realized that it wasn’t something pulling at him so much as it was something pulling inside of him, down the length of his arm and out. He looked up desperately into the Devil’s eyes, expecting to see amusement or satisfaction, but the Devil merely looked a bit disappointed. That pull continued, and continued, and seemed to go on forever inside of a few seconds. Then it stopped.

The Devil adjusted his hat. “You gave me a good game, but it’s over. Good luck to you in your future endeavours.” He turned to leave.

The nameless man who had once been Winston Sligh reached forward, grabbing the Devil by his sleeve, hoping that this would work. “Wait.”

—

“…and that’s how I beat the Devil at poker and won myself the way outta that jail.” Nicodemus’ grin stank of homemade cornshine and beets.

Abe was passed out asleep on Winston’s living room couch, but Winston was still listening. “Do you think I could beat the Devil at poker, Nicodemus?” Like all fourteen-year-olds, he assumed the answer was “yes, eventually.” Hence his disappointment when Nicodemus shook his head.

“You’re already a good hand at poker, but playing the Devil ain’t like playing men. You got to be a God-damn genius with cards, and you’re just good, that’s all. And you ain’t gonna get better enough to beat the Devil. You play him and you’re gonna lose, and when you lose against the Devil you lose so big nothing else matters.” Nicodemus scratched his nose. “Why you think I ain’t teaching you my tricks? You’re just smart enough to get all fucked up with ‘em.”

Fourteen-year-old-Winston was unsatisfied. “But what if I ever really need to do it?”

“You ain’t never gonna need to do it bad enough.” Nicodemus paused. “But if you did, there’s one way might work. Never tried it myself – never needed to, being so talented and all. But it might work.” The hoodoo man looked at him, eyes not nearly so glassy as his breath would have made you figure. “You don’t go doin’ this for some fuckin’ candy, or pussy, or shit like that. This only counts when your life is on the line. You promise me?”

Winston nodded as hard as he could.

“Swear on your mama.”

“Swear on my mother.”

Nicodemus nodded. “All right. Not being gifted like myself, this is what you do…”

—

“Another game? I’ve already got your name.”

“You don’t have my soul yet.” The nameless man shrugged. Holding together the knowledge he’d had previously was a little more difficult than he’d been prepared to handle, and trying to remember everything he yet needed to remember was tough. But there wasn’t nothing for that now. “Surely you’re not gonna finish up after just one round?”

“You really want this.” The Devil looked at him calmly. “Have you considered stakes? I mean, really considered them? I think you need to think this over.”

“No need. My soul against my name and the protection we discussed earlier.”

The Devil shook his head. “Too much.”

“Too much?” The nameless man tried not to look afraid. This wasn’t part of the deal. “It’s my soul! A soul’s worth more’n a name, everybody knows that! You can get a name anywhere.”

“I don’t think you quite understand what you gave up yet.” The cigarette case snapped shut, and was tossed upon the stump. “Your soul’s worth more than the name, but less than the two of them together. I’ll not risk both. I have my reputation to consider.” The Devil spread his hands out, a gesture of reconciliation. “However, I’ll give you some consideration. A hundred and fifty chips versus my hundred, for either of them. Fair?”

The nameless man who might have once been named something that sounded like “Bligh” considered it. He wasn’t going to get much better. “Two hundred versus your hundred.”

“One seventy-five, and I don’t normally bargain, but I appreciate your sentiment. Don’t push me further, friend.” The Devil sat back down before the stump. “And this time, we play Omaha style.”

“Okay.” The nameless man took his seat. “One seventy-five versus your hundred. My soul for protection for the girl from spells of all kinds, same stipulations as previous.” The nameless man didn’t say that now he was having trouble remembering all of those stipulations. He was trying to keep other things in mind.

The Devil reached for the case again, pulled out a cigarette, and lit it – not off the candle, but from a lighter that had been in his hand previously and which he had used many times before, the nameless man was suddenly sure. “Are you sure you don’t want to reconsider the stipulations?”

“I’m sure.” No tricks. He remembered that overpoweringly.

“All right.” The Devil glanced down at the table, where two dissimilar piles of chips had been present the entire time they had been here. He reached for the deck and dealt each of them three cards, face-down, and his eyebrow quirked up again.

The nameless man had trouble remembering things now, but he remembered each of the six hands where the Devil’s eyebrow had done that, each time leading to a big win for Old Scratch. He remembered it because he’d told himself to remember it, over and over again. “Fold.” He said it even before the ante, not even looking at his cards, simply tossing one of his chips over to the Devil’s pile.

The Devil’s expression didn’t change, except for a faint pinch in the cheeks. He wasn’t happy. The nameless man knew that because his cheeks pinched like that when he’d had a couple of junk hands early on in the first game. He’d spent that entire first round of poker losing, and losing, and losing, not because he wanted to lose but because he wasn’t quite good enough at poker to figure out all the Devil’s tells fast enough.

Someone, he couldn’t remember who now, had told him once that this might work.

—

“I’ll simply concede at this point. The ending is academic.” The Devil gestured at his pile of chips: he was down to less than twenty.

“Thank you for the game.” No sense in not being polite, figured the nameless man. “Shall we have another? I ain’t won my name back from you yet.”

The Devil shook his head. “No. You’ve won as much as you can, and that not enough.”

“Aw, come on. No need to be sore.”

“I’m not upset in the slightest. I just refuse to participate in theft. I only take from those who know what they’re doing. Robbing from children, there’s no joy in it for me. How many of my tells do you remember at this point? Less than half?”

The nameless man didn’t want to admit that this was probably true. “Look -”

“No. No. You’ve already wasted your winnings.” The Devil stood, clearly not happy.

“What do you mean? I won. Little -” He suddenly realized he didn’t know her name any more. “She’s gonna get better.”

“She never had a conjure on her.” The Devil actually looked apologetic. It was a strange thing to see on his face. “I kept telling you to think about what you were playing for, man. You kept insisting for protection from black magic, but there never was any black magic – she just got a rare bug the doctors don’t recognize that you thought was a conjure. If you’d simply asked for her to get better, I could do something. But you didn’t.”

The nameless man didn’t say anything. He couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid. Worse, he didn’t know how he’d managed it in the first place, not now. It was all like looking at the world through stained glass.

“I’m sorry. If I could just give you your request again… but rules are rules, especially for me. And I don’t do takebacks.” The Devil laid a comforting hand on the nameless man’s shoulder, then walked out of the orchard. In seconds, he was gone.

—

The nameless man walked on down the road. He wasn’t quite sure where he was going. “Forward” was about all he could manage.

Up ahead, he saw a couple of serious looking men looking jubilant in a quiet way, the sort of way you expect men to whoop and holler when they can’t whoop and holler because it’s late at night and people will complain. They held in their cheering under wide grins and more than a bit of tipple. One of them had a medical bag. As he approached, one of them – a farmhand by the look of him – waved him over. “Hey, stranger. Care to join us? We’re celebrating. It’s been a good night for us.” He waved a flask at him, clearly having already had a few from it.

“Sure,” said the nameless man. A drink would be good. He felt as if he’d had a bad night, although he couldn’t quite explain why.

“It’s a damn miracle,” said the one with the medical bag by his feet. “That fever shouldn’t have broken. She couldn’t possibly have fought it off, but somehow… I don’t know how it happened.” He took the flask from his friend and took a hard pull. “I just thank God that it did. I don’t know what Myrna would have done.”

“Don’t worry yourself over what hasn’t been, Doc.” The farmhand took the flask back from the doctor and handed it to the nameless man. “Here. Hey, you looking for work? We can always use a new hand this time of year.”

The nameless man swallowed down some whiskey and handed it back. “I could use a couple weeks’ work before I move on, I guess…” His attention was drawn by a handsome woman walking towards them purposefully. The doctor grinned, amused in the way that men can be when they’re not the ones in trouble with their better halves, or at least aren’t the ones who’re going to pay for it.

“Myrna -”

“Don’t Myrna me, Winston Sligh. You’ll wake the neighbours if you carry on like this. Who’s this, then? I hope you’re not hiring whoever just walked past on account of being drunk.” She looked at the nameless man critically, as if she recognized something about him – but it was only there for a second and then it was gone.

Somehow, the nameless man felt as if she was important somehow, but couldn’t figure out why. He cast about in his mind for a name, and said the first two that came to mind. “I’m on the road, just looking for work. It’s awful late, ma’am. If you let me sleep in the barn, and maybe offer up some breakfast, I’d be happy to work for you tomorrow.”

She thought about it for a long time, and looked at Winston. “You think he’s all right? It’s late to be walking.”

“Just means he’s in need, Myrna. I showed up late once too, you’ll recall.”

“True enough.” She turned back to the nameless man. “There’s hay bales in the barn. Winston can bring you out some blankets.” She walked away, then, saying only “I’m going to go check on Jackie again” as she left. The nameless man couldn’t help but think that that name was important too, but decided not to think about it muchly.

As he followed Winston out to the barn, the nameless man thought he saw a man in a nice blue suit exiting the house, but he couldn’t quite be sure that the man was out of place, so he said nothing. He felt confused. It had been a long day, he was sure of that.

—

The old man, who’s been unable to ever get proper identification – he tried a few times although he doesn’t remember it any more, and every time he got lost in the shuffle or the system – sits in a bed that’s been charitably donated to him. A couple of friends he made decades ago, long after he moved on from Iowa – he barely remembers Iowa – are the only ones who visit. They feel awkward around him; they don’t really know who he is. Nobody does.

When he sees a woman on the television and feels vindicated, he doesn’t know that Jackie Symon married and became Jackie Kulp, that she had four children and saw three grandchildren before she died fairly young at the age of sixty-three a few years back (breast cancer). He doesn’t know that she was never any of the famous women he sees; he can’t know that. He doesn’t know that she lived a happy life, as lives go, and died surrounded by people she loved.

All he knows, somehow, is that he did the best he could to help a little girl that he knows he loved, and the little girl grew up well. It doesn’t matter if he thinks the little girl is now a TV host or a famous judge or a respected scientist; he thinks all of those things at one point or another. What matters is that he knows, when it counted, he stood up.

At the end, it justifies things.

This is more important to me than a dozen Iron Man sequels.

It’s the blissful expression on Betty’s face, combined with the sheer terror on Archie’s, that really sells the last panel. Her parents are away on a weekend vacation. Jughead is in Shelbyville at a chess tournament. Veronica is distracted, thanks to tipping off Reggie that Archie would be “otherwise occupied.” Moose and Dilton are useless. Archie is all hers, and as she lies glibly to Ronnie, she knows at last the sweet taste of triumph.

Feel sorta dirty.

For those of you who have not been reading Cry For Justice, here is a brief summary.

Green Lantern has a hissy fit about superheroes dying and being ineffective so he quits the Justice League to go form his own Justice League with hookers and blackjack. Green Arrow follows him because, well, that’s what Green Arrow does, or something. The Ray Palmer Atom tortures some guys because they know who killed some guy he knows and he’s gonna find the guy who killed the guy he knows. Congo Bill and Mikaal Tomas team up to find people they think murdered their loved ones (and Freedom Beast!) in a sequence of scenes that barely have anything to do with the majority of the comic and are, not surprisingly, the only even slightly entertaining parts of the whole comic. Green Lantern and Green Arrow beat up a bunch of badguys and then Atom joins them for some reason and then Captain Marvel and then Supergirl show up and they’re angry about… something. So they all have a big team-up. For justice. They capture Prometheus, but it turns out that it was really Clayface² and Prometheus turned Clayface into a bomb to kill all the superheroes, except that he wasn’t expecting Captain Marvel to stop the bomb with magic sorta so everybody lives. Finally they all meet up at the JLA satellite where it turns out Captain Marvel was Prometheus all along and he beats up the Justice League and rips off Roy Harper’s arm, but then Donna Troy beats him up and they catch him. Prometheus is all “well I needed to get to the satellite all along to use it to teleport all of your cities to someplace you’d never find them moo hoo ha ha” and then it turns out whoops his devices don’t teleport anything, they just blow shit up kinda somehow, and he’s all “well, crap, they were supposed to teleport stuff, oh well,” and the superheroes can’t figure out how to deal with bombs, so thousands of people die, including Lian Harper, Roy’s daughter (who is five!) and Prometheus all the time is all “hey if you let me go I’ll give you the disarm codes and people will stop dying.” But basically most of issue seven is the superheroes trying to beat Prometheus and failing miserably and a shitload of innocent civilians die until a light goes on in Green Arrow’s head and he says “hey, crazy idea, how about we just let the villain go free so he stops killing people,” so they do and he does and then, in an epilogue, Green Arrow somehow tracks down Prometheus in Prometheus’ secret otherdimensional lair that nobody else knows about and murders him with an arrow to the forehead and says “justice.” THE END.

No, really.

I honestly have no idea how this comic got greenlit, let alone produced. It’s so bad on every possible level that it’s not even entertainingly bad. You just have to look at it and kind of stare. I mean, I know there are going to be some fanboys who are all “no I want gritty and realistic comics about people in tights who fight crime,” and sure, those have their place I guess, but seriously, this is a comic where they kill off a five-year-old girl for added drama. Who the fuck writes that comic? Who the fuck even thinks that comic is a good idea? How many people at DC must have gotten hit in the head with a sledgehammer to have them all think “gosh, this superhero comic isn’t exciting enough… let’s kill off the cute little girl!” Was it a really fucking big sledgehammer? Because I can literally not think of a single person on the entire planet, who, when asked to tell a story, goes to the “let’s kill a little girl” well. They avoid killing children in slasher movies because they think that it’s tasteless. That’s what Cry for Justice is: it’s the comic book for people who think that slasher flicks aren’t edgy enough.

But killing off Lian Harper (and this isn’t some fanboy vendetta from someone who’s designated Lian Harper as their favorite character or anything – I really don’t care about her specifically, it’s just that they’re killing off a five-year-old-girl in their story for cheap heat and what the fuck, DC, what the fucking fucking fuck) is just the worst sin of a comic book that is so filled with stupidity and hackery that it instills a sense of shock and awe. People thought Ultimatum was bad, and it was really bad, but this is actually kind of worse because Ultimatum was written by Jeph Loeb, who hasn’t written a good comic in forever. Cry for Justice is supposedly written by James Robinson. I say “supposedly” because I’ve heard more than once that a lot of this got, ahem, extensively rewritten by People Who Shall Remain Nameless, and that rather than James Robinson it should say “Alan Smithee” in the “written by” credit. But I don’t know for sure, and frankly Robinson has written so many bad or even terrible comics since his return to DC that he’s more or less exhausted the massive benefit of the doubt he’d earned after Starman and The Golden Age and his other DC work, which is really kind of impressive when you think about it.³ Besides, Ultimatum at least had a reason for existing: to remind people that the Ultimate Universe still existed. I’m not sure why this story exists.

Here are just a few things that annoy me about this comic.

- Mikaal and Congo Bill set out to kill the people who murdered their loved ones, but when they find them (Penny Dreadful and Arak from Helix? Really, James Robinson?), Mikaal suddenly decides that he doesn’t want to kill anybody and then convinces Bill of that in less than a third of a page. This is moronic.

- Prometheus doesn’t seem to know who the Shade is or have any plan for fighting the Shade, but the bomb he built for Opal City is specifically designed to stop the Shade’s powers from fucking with it. This is moronic.

- The Justice League mostly gets beaten up by Prometheus because they decide to fight him in classic “forty ninjas versus one samurai” style, each taking him on one at a time. This is moronic.

- Prometheus, after having a super-awesome-bullet that can incapacitate Plastic Man and another that can wound Supergirl and another that can take out Red Tornado and blah blah blahdy blah makes this stupid speech about how Hawkman is “unpredictable” when Hawkman goes into a crazy battle rage, like somehow “unpredictable” can beat shooting bullets at a guy who doesn’t wear body armor or anything. Hey, Prometheus, here’s an idea for you you might want to program into your hyper-battle-computer: they’re called regular fucking bullets. This is moronic.⁴

- Prometheus, who is armed with super-awesome-guns and has absolutely no reason to not kill superheroes – whom he hates, remember – does not kill superheroes when he is shooting them with special bullets that can, presumably, kill them. Why does he not do this? Because if he kills them, then there’s no issue seven! This is moronic.

- The Atom tortures people repeatedly over the course of this series. When Green Arrow objects, the Atom basically says “WELL WE AREN’T FRIENDS ANY MORE.” This is moronic.

- Green Arrow murders Prometheus after spending the entire series saying stuff about how heroes should be heroic and not, you know, torture and kill people. Presumably this is meant to be ironic, and stuff, but clearly somebody had to get revenge for the dead five year old girl and it’s not like she was related to a professional assassin or anything OH WAIT. This is moronic.

- And of course there’s those bombs of his, the teleporting bombs which turn out to not teleport anything but instead just make, I dunno, little temporary black holes or something. See, the heroes can’t do anything about these bombs, because they’re immune to Freddy Freeman’s magic Shazam powers, and they’re immune to Hawkman’s mace (no, really, he says that), and they’re immune to the Shade’s shadow-powers, and when the Flashes try to create a waterspout in the river between Keystone City and Central City so they can get a better look at the bomb that Prometheus put in the river, that makes the bomb… go faster, or something like that. To repeat: Prometheus is such a good planner that he planned for super-speedsters moving away water from a bomb in a river with their super-speed. Nowhere in the comic does anybody suggest “hey, we’ve got a bunch of guys with super-strength, what happens if we just throw the bombs into outer space” but presumably Prometheus planned for that with, I don’t know, an anti-throwing-into-space-device. I mean, if he came up with a device for making water that super-speedsters are pulling away from his bomb into something that makes the bomb go faster, he totally has to have an anti-throwing-into-space-device, right? This is moronic.

I’m just pulling out a few of the high points here, because everything about this comic is so fucking stupid it makes my teeth hurt. The art is bad (the last issue has three separate artists, at least one of whom is below fanart-quality), the dialogue is frequently atrocious on a Manos The Hands of Fate level, and the plot doesn’t just fail to make sense but in fact is actively antithetical to the concept of superhero comics generally considering that this is basically a comic where the superheroes spend seven issues steadily losing, and the big triumphant finish is Green Arrow murdering a guy. And remember, this was supposed to be a Big Event Comic. DC promoted the fuckballs out of this comic. A lot of people thought this comic, which is so stupid that it could have been written by Brick Tamland from Anchorman and made more sense, was something worth publishing.

This is a colossal embarrassment on every level. It’s one of the worst comic miniseries I’ve ever read. Everybody who has their name attached to this should be ashamed for producing such horrendous crap.

1. Pedants about dates: shut up. Nobody likes you.
2. I guess we should be thankful that it wasn’t Everyman again.
3. Actually, maybe the Jeph Loeb comparison is more apt than I originally thought.
4. Also, Hawkman fucking sucks. Fuck Hawkman. Fuck him in his winged ass.

Grace and Nick: hip-hop. Oh lord, they’re bringing in Mary Murphy for the rehearsal vignettes too? How did anybody start thinking Mary Murphy was this popular with fans? Anyway, the choreo by Tiana Canterbury was excellent, but Grace didn’t look that comfortable doing it – which is not to say that she didn’t hit her moves, but I particularly thought she underplayed any portion of the routine where she was supposed to be grinding her hips, and during the “jump-rope” segment she didn’t really look like she was jumping rope. Nick was very strong, which I expected. Mary Murphy screams about the hot tamale train because that is her gimmick.

Carly and Kieran: Viennese waltz. After an interesting sequence during the rehearsal vignette where Carly was expressing her worry about dancing properly to 3/4 time (a sentence I don’t think I will ever come close to writing in describing any other version of this show), Mary Murphy shows up and does she have any advice about this, her specialty? No. *sigh* Kieran’s carriage in this was absolutely perfect. Carly stumbled a bit a third of the way through with her heel catching in her dress. Mary as a judge this time around makes some good points – specifically that Carly’s lines were mediocre, which they were, but also commiserating on the caught heel in the dress, which was nice of her – and at this point, I’m pretty convinced that Kieran is the power player in this couple.

Jess S. Hip-Hop and Doug: jazz. Instead of Mary during the vignette, it’s Bonnie, who says things that aren’t cheap gag lines. (Thank you, Bonnie.) And after two weeks of Doug and Jess being thoroughly underwhelming and clunky and just blah, they finally delivered with a performance that was lively and felt up to the standards of the show. Adam Williams’ mummy-themed choreo was clever and they did it justice, and Jess in particular finally felt like she wants to be here. This was really great fun.

Renee and Phillipe: contemporary. Not much to say about this routine, because it was just so good. Phillipe’s performance in this was arguably one of the best contemporary routines I’ve ever seen a hip-hop dancer perform: strong and confident and the unison was dead-on. Renee was as brilliant as you would expect. Just gorgeous work all around.

Jessica P. Ballroom and Heath: tango. You know, I only just realized that Heath is a dead ringer for a young Patrick Swayze this week? Anyway, Mary didn’t like the routine because she felt Heath wasn’t strong enough, and I can see the argument for Heath not being as good as Jessica obviously but as novices performing tangoes on SYTYCD go, I thought this was definitely in the top third or so: his intensity of character was very good and although there were a few points where he was obviously too tentative in his movement, it was only inconsistency rather than outright failure.

Jessie H. Contemporary and Matt: hip-hop. Travers Ross choreographs very lyrical-ish hip-hop – that lyrical hip-hop he did for Lamb and Timomatic last season remains a favorite, but the downside is stuff like choreographing hip-hop to “Mr. Jones” like he did last season as well, which was a fucking disaster. In short, Travers Ross routines are generally either home runs or major strikeouts. This was one of the latter; the choreo was blocky and rough and impenetrable and I am full-on with Jason in disliking it.

Issi and Don: contemporary. Don had great performance quality and partnered Issi exquisitely, but I agree with Matt that his flaws were distracting – it wasn’t so much the feet for me as it was, of all things, his groundwork. (Mostly because I don’t get distracted by unpointed feet as Matt does.) Issi was actually watchable for the first time thus far this week, so all things considered I’m willing to give this a thumbs up despite the choreo being kind of confusing.

Ivy and Robbie: jazz. And apparently the question of how Robbie would lift Ivy has been answered by mostly having Ivy lift Robbie instead. That having been said, even with Robbie’s obvious issues with being a tiny human being, he’s still better with Ivy than Mikhaela. The choreo wasn’t especially difficult outside of a couple of major tricks (mostly on Robbie), but it was clever and the costuming was inspired, and visually it was extremely entertaining. So I’m saying it was good.

Probable bottom three: Matt and Jessie, Jessica and Heath, Issi and Don.
Should go home: Issi and Don.
Will go home: Issi and Matt.

Are you seriously not going to comment on Paul Levitz returning to Legion? I have no concept of whether this is good news or bad news and need you to tell me what to think (I actually no very little about the Legion at all aside from that period of time I was a Chris Sprouse fan and your own interesting storylines).

And then Lister Sage followed that up with

I would like to know what you thought of the Mark Waid Strange mini that just finished this week.

I mostly avoid talking about the current status quo on these titles – for reasons that I think should be obvious – but since people asked, fair is fair I guess.

On Legion, I am guardedly optimistic but only to a certain extent. The reason to be somewhat optimistic is that Levitz did, after all, write one of the best runs of any superhero comic ever when he was writing Legion – all this time later, it’s still remarkably bold and mature in its outlook, which is a combination that doesn’t happen often. If Levitz can write half as well as he did, it should be a great comic.

If he can write half as well as he did. Noteworthy creators returning to write comics after a lengthy break have a track record that is, shall we say, not good.

If editorial control on the title manages to not be hamhanded, and regardless of the power shakeup at DC I’m not very confident about that, especially with the way the Legion is seemingly being shoved firmly back into the “supporting characters in the Superman mythos” camp.

If he can make this ersatz fanboy’s wish version of the Legion compelling.

I mean, if anybody can do all those ifs, it’s Levitz. But that’s why I’m only guardedly optimistic.

As for Strange, I thought Waid captured the voice and character of Strange reasonably well and up until the final issue it felt like I’d like to see a Dr. Strange series go, more or less. (Ignoring the whole Dr. Voodoo thing, the less said about which, frankly the better.) However, that final issue – eeeeuuuurgh. Giving Casey a Morton’s fork dilemma and then having her actually take a fork rather than solve her way out of it (which is what superheroes are traditionally supposed to do, after all) was irritating, but more irritating than that was writing three issues of “Dr. Strange can barely do magic any more” and then having him heal the fabric of the universe with fucking magic in the fourth issue. I think Doc as “magical sensei who relies on students to do magical heavy lifting” is as good an engine as Doc being the Sorcerer Supreme or equivalently powerful, but you can’t actually do both at the same time, you know?

On the bright side, Waid didn’t actually kill off Casey, but instead consigned her to a distant dimension of some sort, so at least she’s not a girl-in-refrigerator. And other than that fourth issue, the series genuinely was pretty decent. Why do we need Brother Doctor Voodoo again, exactly?

Anyhow. Thok also wanted to know what I thought about Legion of Three Worlds (for which I will delay until I write something about Blackest Night next month) and Stig asked:

Batman is soon to be shunted through time by Grant Morrison in a miniseries where he dons several variant Bat-lawmaker costumes. Given that Batman is a big, popular character who is often in the spotlight, and given that you have shown a healthy interest in forgotten-and-yet awesome classic DC characters…which one would you have take Batman’s place in the trek across the ages?

That story doesn’t work with anybody other than Batman, frankly. Superman doesn’t era-analogize as well as Batman does for a horde of reasons (many of which involve power level) and nobody else in DC’s stable really merits the “myriad multiple versions of self across time and space” storyline because they’re not important enough to merit the treatment. If you did this with, say, Green Arrow it would just come across as wanking. It doesn’t with Batman. Is this fair to lesser-known characters? No, but then again they’re lesser-known for a reason.

I would love to see a variant on the “Why I should write …” series. Specifically, “Why I shouldn’t write …” and give us your worst idea, with the aid of Photoshop, on various comic properties.

It’s not funny or anything, but: the X-Men. The Avengers. The Fantastic Four. Most of Marvel’s major properties interest me not at all in a writerly sense, and I think that’s the only disqualifier for “should I write this.” If you’re not interested in writing the book you’re not going to write it well. This doesn’t mean that being interested in a property is enough to make you write it well (god knows that’s not the case) but it’s the first requirement and I don’t satisfy it for any of those books. (On the DC side? Justice League: barely. Teen Titans: not at all.)

Finally, Thok also asked

I’d like to see MGK’s take on “Why I should write Hitman Jr.”

As someone else once noticed, I had a distinct idea as to what happened to Maggie Lorenzo’s kid.