– Is it just me, or is DC really trying to have its cake and eat it too as regards Supergirl/Brainiac 5? I mean, if you want the “return” of the “original Legion,” that means they’re all older than teenagers – like, thirtysomethings – which makes a Brainy romance with the still-a-teenager Supergirl problematic, to say the least. So their solution, rather than just scrap the idea, is to go with it and go with the “they met when Brainy was still Supergirl’s age and they fell in love THEN,” which, while certainly homaging the Silver Age and all, is homaging the wrong part of the Silver Age, IE, that which doesn’t work as a narrative when you think about it for more than two seconds. That entire last issue of Supergirl just felt creepy, with Brainy having a total Woody Allen vibe and Supergirl’s attraction to him being written more hamfistedly than when she was supposedly crushing on Hal “God’s Gift To Women! Right? Am I Right?” Jordan back in Brave and the Bold. (Also, I note that they have started teasing Supergirl’s death, so to everybody who said it wasn’t possible in the comments here, HA.)
– Why doesn’t Lee Weeks get more work? His recent arc in Amazing Spider-Man was better than any other artist on that title since the reboot (with the obvious exception of Marcos Martin). But I’m hardpressed to name the last thing he did prior to it unless you go back to the mid-90s.
– What’s the point of the current JLA storyline? I mean, this is a really stupid story idea: Nazis take over the world because they can neutralize the superheroes’ powers. What? I mean, come on. They’re Nazis. Never mind that most modern-day neo-Nazis are more or less inbred retards anyway and thus not the most threatening villains in the world; what’s the point of a future-story that you know, less than a page in, will never happen because the heroes go back in time or whatever to stop it from happening? This comic wants to be DC’s “Days of Future Past” so much it’s practically begging for it, except that it sucks.
– I thought this post from Jim Smith was brilliant. Choice quote: So you have a scene like the one in the Sinestro Corps storyline where Superboy-Prime returns to Earth, and I guess the JLA is out sick because an army of B-listers arrives as the first line of defense, and Wildcat is front and center. My admittedly hasty analysis is that Superboy-Prime’s powers are “rip people’s arms off and burn them to death” and his weaknesses are “kryptonite from Earth-Prime”; meanwhile Wildcat’s powers are “boxing” and his weaknesses are “pretty much anything,” so I’m pretty sure the only things he could do in this fight are “nothing” and “like it.” And indeed Wildcat did nothing for the whole story besides show up. So why did he show up? To remind me he’s a useless character wasting space.
– Quick The Losers movie review: good, solid, unpretentious action flick, but annoyingly sets up a franchise that will never actually happen. Chris Evans is lots of fun, but I still have trouble seeing him as Captain America. Idris Elba needs to be in more things, as does Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Zoe Saldana and the Aisha rework are… well, you get to see Zoe Saldana and she is pretty!
– Okay, I read a fair amount of comics, but how does Angel turn into Archangel? Like, I see that he can basically do that whenever he wants now. How does he do that? What comic did I miss that explains how “guy who can fly” now has the power of instantly turning into “razor-metal-death-wings-guy”? Because before this, it used to be that it took massive amounts of surgery to convert Angel to Archangel or vice versa. I mean, I get that Angel needs a gimmick to be more than Boring McWingybucks but yeesh.
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The Archangel thing happened during the first arc of the current X-Force series. Basically his wings get cut off (again), then while he was recovering he grew the metal ones due to some kind of fail safe left by Apocalypse in his body. Now he can change back and forth with the added bonus of wanting to kill everyone when he’s in metal wing form (since he’s a former Horseman of Death and all).
The JLA thing: because Robinson is a worthless hack who thinks his audience are morons. Always was, always is, always will be, from Terminator Secondary Objectives to Cry for Justice.
The Lee Weeks thing: Huh? He’s been working steadily on several Marvel projects for years, the highest profile being the Captain Marvel miniseries that tied into Secret Invasion. Not only that, he drew Roger Stern’s last Spider-Man story in issue #580.
But WHY? I mean, his feather wings got chopped off again! He doesn’t have the power to grow them back, does he? That would be the Gecko, not the Angel!
So basically what you’re saying is that the reason I haven’t seen any Lee Weeks stuff recently is because he’s mostly doing projects for Marvel that nobody reads? Makes sense.
“- I thought this post from Jim Smith was brilliant. Choice quote:”
It doesn’t just happen in comics. When I was a teenager, I ordered exactly one WCW (wrestling) pay-per-view; World War 3, a show that was highlighted by a ginormous stupid 60-man battle royal match featuring just about everybody of consequence in the company at the time and… Hawk, from the Road Warriors tag team.
Now I liked the Legion of Doom/Road Warriors/whatever as a tag team. They couldn’t technically, y’know, wrestle. But they had cool costumes and face paint and generally wrestled really fast, power-move intensive matches against smaller tag teams who made them look scary and big.
But Hawk had no reason to be in a huge battle royal for the World Championship when you had actual main even caliber wrestlers like Hulk Hogan and the Giant in there, too. He was just there because people knew who he was and he was more visually interesting to see jammed in a ring with 20 other guys than a few more generic looking guys in trunks and boots (Sorry, Mr. Windham).
To this day, my friends and I will use “Making a Hawk appearance” when talking about largely unnecessary characters making one or two page showings in comic crossovers.
Sure Hawk had a purpose: he was there to make other wrestlers look good by getting eliminated, because he was still a big dude and his elimination would provide a pop, because regardless of the fact that he wasn’t going to win, he was still a credible physical threat and his defeat could make somebody else look more threatening.
That’s not the case with Superboy Prime v. Wildcat, where Wildcat is just going to get his arms ripped off if he tries anything.
I’ve run into Lee a few times and asked him about how his style has gotten considerably better in the last few years.
He commented that it’s because he’s taking more time, so part of it is that Lee’s just gotten slower which lowers his output. In this week’s letter column for ASM, Wacker’s trying to get him to do some big high profile Marvel project.
“Sure Hawk had a purpose: he was there to make other wrestlers look good by getting eliminated, because he was still a big dude and his elimination would provide a pop, because regardless of the fact that he wasn’t going to win, he was still a credible physical threat and his defeat could make somebody else look more threatening.”
While you *could* book it that way — just like you could use Wildcat in the Dan Turpin role from the Superman: The Animated series episode “Apokolips… Now”, that isn’t how he was *actually* used.
I think the only thing I’ve read by Lee Weeks is the “Tempest Fugit” arc of Hulk he did with PAD a few years ago.
Haven’t seen The Losers yet, but Idris Elba has a new TV series, Luther, starting on the BBC on Tuesday.
RE: ASM art: JR Jr. has had a few brilliant runs in the series as well. Up there with Martin and Weeks. And, I’d argue, Paolo Rivera.
Yeah. The Angel thing tweaks me a bit. Of course, the entire idea of black ops X-men was handled badly, I think. It just felt very hamfistsed and I stopped reading after like the second issue. And this is from someone who will read just about anything with X-men in the title.
And I haven’t read JLA in years. It is a serious shame how plain awful it is. I really like GLC – all of the Green Lantern awesome with none of the Hal Jordan super annoying.
They retconned current Supergirl into original Legion continuity?
Dammit! Just when I was at a place where I could explain almost all of it!
–and when I say “they” I assume I mean Geoff Johns?
I think the mechanism behind Angel’s new wings is the technovirus, which seemed to be what was driving everything in the new X-Force series. And Angel does have an interesting gimmick that almost no one ever takes advantage of. Despite the fact that he is ridiculously underpowered, he is the single best aerial combatant in the Marvel universe. He’s not as fast or strong or laser-blasty as, say, Iron Man, but he can outmaneuver him as a result of having a better understanding of how aerial combat works. This got played up just a few times, mostly during the New Defenders, a book which nobody seems to like, even though it actually had some really great moments in it.
Aren’t Archangel’s wings techno-organic like Cable’s arm? That’s just how Apocalypse rolls. It might also be because of that stupid healing blood thing but that happened when I quit reading.
I always liked Busiek’s take on Angel in Thunderbolts. Angel is one of the most skilled and maneuverable fliers in the Marvel Universe since he spent his high school years dodging missiles and flamethrowers before breakfast.
maybe it was Captain Marvel in a Wildcat suit? Y’know advantage of surprise and all that…
Or maybe it’s just a random cosplayer who got lost on his way to a convention!
Shapeshifted Martian Manhunter?
Lee Weeks als did the Winter Soldier: Winter Kills one shot halfway through Civil War that i really believe is the best thing Marvel have published in the past few years..
So Supergirl and Brainy’s romance is being backdated to the silver age because Brainy once dated another character of the same name? How does that work?
The JLA thing: because Robinson is a worthless hack who thinks his audience are morons.
Worth noting, this comment comes from somebody who is complaining simply to complain without actually knowing whats going on. The comic in question was JSA (MGK made a typo) and was written by Willingham.
As per the question in hand, yeah JSA is doing a Day of Future’s Past riff. The point of this arc appears to be a way to do character work and explore what a Nazi run DCU America might be like. And to give Superman an eyepatch. (And to put Alan Scott out of commission for the next JSA/JLA crossover, and make Obsidian angst, but I wouldn’t call that a good reason for the story to exist.)
(I would say more, but your comment about JSA seems to imply that the arc isn’t giving you what you want from comics and I’m not sure what it is you do want from comics, except that it’s not quite what I want from comics.)
Your wish is granted! He shall be in Thor, as Heimdall.
The Legion are all thirty-something now?? You know, if DC would just pick one continuity and stick with it forever, I would probably start reading them again.
I only ever bought three issues of the Legion in my life. One had the death of Invisible Boy, which was the first superhero death I ever saw and it really shocked me. Another one had Brainiac 5 and Supergirl running off together, but then she turned out to be a high-tech sex-doll that he built in his sleep. I must’ve really lucked out on picking those issues, because I see those two stories referred to on the internet all the time.
Anyway, I always think of Brainiac 5 together with Supergirl because of that. Maybe the age difference wouldn’t be a problem if she was just the sex-doll and not the real Supergirl.
I thought there’d been some good art in Spider-Man the last couple of years, but most of the last few months have been really awful. I seem to be the only one who doesn’t like Marcos Martin.
Lee Weeks is pretty good, though. You’re right about that.
To Tenken347– Nobody seems to like New Defenders? I never heard that. What’s wrong with these people? New Defenders (under both DeMatteis and Gillis) was one of the greatest series ever!
I’ve said the exact same thing about the JSA story. The whole thing is just so unbelievably pointless. The scenes set in present day are pointless because we already now the nazis will win. The future scenes are even more pointless because they’ll be retconned out of existence instantly once the story is over. Everything about it is a foregone conclusion.
I might be able to buy that the “point” is to show the heroes triumphing in the impossible situation of defeating an oppressive and all-powerful evil empire from out of a point of absolute powerlessness, if this didn’t specifically require them to knowingly and willingly tolerate and even support decades of ongoing, organized mass genocide.
Really, the more heroic (and in-character)thing to do there would have been to just go down fighting.
I really like Warren/Angel/Death/Archangel. I just wish I wanted to read new comics with him in it. I don’t read any X-Men comics these days, but I was interested when he got involved in X-Force. Plus Cameron Hodge? It’s my favorite parts of X-Factor come back. But then I looked at the book and it was hideous. So I don’t buy it and don’t really miss it. Instead I’ve got X-Factor Forever.
Anyway, the strangeness of his wings goes back to 1996’s Uncanny X-Men #338 (I admit I looked it up) when his razor wings suddenly shattered to reveal feather wings underneath. How and why did that happen? Because someone at Marvel decided they should. So the newly created Ozymandias appears and says something about how this was all Apocalypse’s plan. Which was a non-answer Marvel knew the X-fans would accept because they’d been eating up mystery non-answers for years.
So in that context, it’s easy for me to accept that the feather wings he had only appeared to be real and are still the constructs of Apocalypse. So I can also accept that after Wolfsbane ripped off Warren’s wings (X-Force v2 #4), they would regrow as the metal wings and he can control them and switch them to feather. They’re the same wings he can just change their properties. Because honestly now, why not?
Another wrinkle in his switches is that he now is the right skin color with the right wings. When he lost his metal wings he stayed blue. Until he fought the plant monster Black Tom Cassidy who tried to drain his life force (Uncanny #412…I looked that up too) which resulted in Warren being white again.
And don’t forget his secondary mutation: healing blood. Healing blood plus technorganic surgery? Of course he can switch skin and wing types. It’s so obvious!
Some days I’m very glad that the sum total of my interaction with the DC Universe is through the various cartoons. They’re consistently good, you know.
@Adam
D’oh! I had forgotten about the healing blood Chuck Austen gave him. I’ll go with that since it’s a better explanation than “Just ’cause” or “Matt Fraction still wanted to use feather Warren in Uncanny”.
Lee Weeks did two seperate runs of the Hulk: #40-43 and #77-81.
I can’t recommend the first one. Not because of Weeks (he’s great), but because its written by Bruce Jones.
Well, I sit corrected on the JLA/JSA thing, though the supehero work of Willingham and Sturges have never been any great shakes.
Highly recommended (by me) is the Weeks drawn, Peter Milligan written Wolverine/Punisher miniseries from 2004.
“Because it’s sweet as tits” isn’t the answer you’re looking for, I imagine.
Cheers to that. It’s kinda like when The Flash raced Superman, and won. If you’re going to have a one-trick pony, you better make it a damn good trick. I’ve got no problem with “My super power is flying” in a world where a quarter of the superhero population has some sort of flight-ish power, so long as all the fliers way better than the Lantern Corps or the telepaths or what have you.
Actually, the noun form would be comics “miscellany”, and Ben Schott would like to talk to you if you disagree.
The idea of Angel being “the best flier” is really good, though. Much better than “He can fly and heal people with his blood type and shoot razor blades”, which is kind of video-game-ish. It also gives the artist a lot of room to draw really fantastic aerobatics, and gives us another superhero whose powers aren’t useful only in combat.
Of course they want their cake and eat it too. What else to you do with cake? Just stare at it?
So with the whole Legion/Supergirl thing… does this mean that in 2015 we’re going to have a redux of Crisis of Infinite Earths? 😉
Sheesh.
@Omnibusboy
Apparently you’ve never seen the show “Ace of Cakes,” where 90% of the cakes are neither edible or even technically definable as “cakes.”
Apparently you’ve never seen the show “Ace of Cakes,” where 90% of the cakes are neither edible or even technically definable as “cakes.”
Is this thread going to segue into a discussion about tort reform?
No, Torte reform.
Just curious, did you read the Losers comic before seeing the film? I was pretty spectacularly disappointed in the shift in tone. The comic was a pretty subtle tale of espionage and the evolution of America’s role in international politics. The movie was all “WOO SHIT GONE BLOWN DA FUCK UP!” Idris Elba was a pretty fantastic Roarke though.
Wait, so are JLA and JSA basically doing the same story right now?
Skemono: Which reminds me. Why the heck is Heimdall going to be black in Thor? Especially when Sif is white?!
JSA is doing the “Fourth Reich” story. JLA is doing the “Jade crashes to Earth in a cocoon and everyone is surprised to see her even though they all saw her get resurrected in ‘Blackest Night’ and oh yeah, she’s screwing with her brother’s and dad’s powers somehow” story.
@Someguy – Because Idris Elba’s a great actor. And to be fair, is there any reason an extra-dimensional Alien posing as a sci-fi Norse God has to be Caucasian?
By virtue of being a Norse God?
Hey, it worked in Blazing Saddles!
@Skemono Yep, but just cos the Vikings think you’re a god doesn’t mean you have to look like a Viking. Or to put it another way, given where he came from, Jesus was almost certainly not Caucasian, but it hasn’t prevented generations of white dudes depicting him as such.
And I notice no-one’s getting upset about the fact that there’s a Japanese dude playing Hogun the Grim…
@Paul Wilson: But HIS SISTER IS WHITE. I know Thor is not popular among comics fans for some reason (or at least WASN’T popular with comics fans until JMS) but Heimdall and Sif are siblings. Why the crap are they different races?
And no one is getting mad about Hogun being played by an Asian because he is actually meant to be like Mongol anyway; he’s not actually from Asgard proper. His dress and mustache are meant to get across that he was a foreigner, but Kirby’s art style, which set the basic design standards, wasn’t all that good at drawing Asians that weren’t horrible stereotypes.
Also, the JSA Nazi story just isn’t making sense from several plot viewpoints. OK, the Nazis depower all the various super-characters…and this results in their taking over the US at a political level how? There ain’t that many neo-Nazis wandering around after all.
And clearly they haven’t been reading the Evil Overlord checklist, since they’ve kept folk such as Superman and Batman (btw, notice that except for Mr. Terrific, this has way few, y’know, JSA members in the future part than JLA members?) alive for 20 or so years, apparently so they can parcel out the executions for special occasions? No, you genocidal idiots, kill them all asap.
And the hook of the story is how Mr. Terrific is “cooperating” with the Nazis by, 20 years later, telling the story of the JSA’s initial defeat. I dunno, there were a bunch of the Fourth Reich there who could also tell that story…and 20 years is rather a long time to get around to interrogating the prisoner.
Finally, I’m getting really tired of Willingham’s love for (his?) Kid Karnevil character, who shows up in his mainstream DCU stuff about as much and in the same “Damn he’s *so* cool” way as Al Kraven used to show up in Ron ZImmerman’s Marvel stuff. He’s a kid. His whole schtick is “I’m eeeeevil! Really eeeeeevil! And annoying as hell!” And that’s it.
@Someguy Why were Denzel Washington and Keanu Reeves playing brothers in Brannagh’s Much Ado About Nothing?
@Someguy plus the Asgardians are an alien species. The whole thing isn’t hard to handwave if the end performance is good.
Tom, Kid Karnevil is Willingham’s creation I believe and yes he is horribly overused for just being a psychopath kid with daggers. I think the only time I ever liked him was his little bit with the Joker in the Salvation Run series.
As for the JSA thing well, the JSA only have like 4 or 5 groups of villains that they go up against over and over it seems and since they just fought Mordru, Johnnny Sorrow and all the other Injustice Society folk are being used in JSA All-Stars and Black Adam is out of comission/possibly being used over in Titans, that really only leaves Nazi supervillains on the list for them to fight.
And I totally agree that just because all the superfolk lose their powers doesn’t mean the Nazi’s can take control of the country. Not when you got someone like Lex Luthor around who would be all over that shit in a heartbeat.
JLA is doing the “Jade crashes to Earth in a cocoon and everyone is surprised to see her even though they all saw her get resurrected in ‘Blackest Night’ and oh yeah, she’s screwing with her brother’s and dad’s powers somehow” story.
The JLA aren’t surprised to see Jade because she’s alive. They’re surprised to see Jade because she was stuck in a giant green egg and knocked unconscious (which is probably a continuation of the scene in Brightest Day 0 when we see her ring malfunctioning in space; the malfunction could easily lead to the egg around her and then she is drawn back to Earth.) This story line is likely going to connect to the whole “A bunch of mystical types were trapped in stone on Sorcerer’s World in the future” plot thread as seen in recent Legion stuff.
@Someguy “But HIS SISTER IS WHITE. I know Thor is not popular among comics fans for some reason (or at least WASN’T popular with comics fans until JMS) but Heimdall and Sif are siblings. Why the crap are they different races?”
Meet Loki, and his 3 kids by a giantess : 1 Midgard Serpent, big enough to encircle the world, 1 Fenris Wolf, and 1 Hel, Half dead Half Alive, normal size. Oh and his other kid: an eight legged non-giant horse that he gave birth to as giant mare after being impregnated by a giant stallion. And you have a problem with a couple of gods having different skin colors?
Don’t think to heavily about mythology biology. It’ll just make your head hurt ;).
Does anyone else see a parallel between the sci-fi Thor and the lamentable Too Human?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_Human
@Omnibusboy- The saying is derived from the mutually-exclusive desires of wanting to HAVE cake (that is, enjoying the satisfaction of knowing “I am in possession of cake”) and EATING cake (that is, enjoying the satisfaction of consuming delicious pastry). Once you have EATEN your cake, you no longer HAVE it, and therein lies the contradiction of wanting both.
To spite Stormfronters who are really into Thor. Which I mean, I call that a worthy goal.
SOLD.
Ooh, is it too late to fire the guy playing Thor now, and replace him with a bleached-afro Michael Jai White?
I find myself having to agree with pretty much everything Jim Smith said.
There are a ton of DC’s B and C-list characters I like more than the “big guns.” But still…
Wildcat is the poster child for everything I hate about post-1998 DC comics. The guy doesn’t really offer anything other than an ugly mask and a high tolerance for alcohol, but we’re supposed to think he’s awesome because… well… David Goyer and Geoff Johns liked him when they were writing JSA together. And because Chuck Austen tried to Mary Sue him into having better combat skills, I guess. And that one Grant Morrison JLA story, like, 11 years ago.
Even if we give Wildcat a few bonus points for sleeping with Catwoman and teaching Batman how to box… he’s still an old guy with a motorcycle who doesn’t even wear a bulletproof vest or anything to help explain why he hasn’t died yet. The dude has no business going up against people with guns, much less anybody with decent superpowers.
Especially considering how many times he has gotten limbs broken, been paralyzed, been repeatedly shot and suffered all sorts of injuries that should make it hard to open a beer, much less jump around like he’s the Creeper or something.
And yet there he is, constantly defeating people who shoot beams out of their hands and stuff with his amazing superpower of acting like a jerk in a way that some people perceive as “bad ass.”
If it wasn’t for the fact that the writers cheat in his favor, his “cunning plans” wouldn’t ever work because he’d be too busy bleeding out on the ground to try anything fancy.
Meanwhile, all sorts of characters who are both more interesting and more useful in a fight get short shrift just because the guys currently writing and editing the comics don’t like them or consider them expendable.
I think Wildcat’s a victim of the “Batman syndrome”, which seems to have been the 2000s version of the “Wolverine syndrome” of the 1990s.
Ever since Morrison wrote Batman as being able to take down multiple Superman-level characters in the opening arc of his JLA run, every superteam has had to have a badass with no real superpowers who routinely schools his non-powered teammates. Compare this to the 1990s when every superteam needed a feral berserker with a hair-trigger.
Writers need to realise that Batman and Captain America are the exceptions, not the rule.
Exactly.
Wildcat shouldn’t even be able to school the other non-powered heroes on his own team. They have things like laser guns and blackout bombs.
Wildcat knows at least two or three martial arts and he jumps around a lot. That should make him last about three minutes against anybody tougher than Dr. Mid-Nite. Less if the other guy has an assault rifle.
Especially when you consider that the dude is almost a century old and physically somewhere around sixty.
But Wildcat has a flimsy connection to Batman, so we’re supposed to just turn off our brains and go with the idea that he should be fighting crime instead of… I don’t know… retiring and running a boxing gym or something that won’t get him killed.
Meanwhile, I spent years reading posts on message boards about how Captain Atom, Zatanna, Firestorm and Metamorpho weren’t quite powerful enough to be in the JLA.
You know… despite the fact that Metamorpho could probably defeat the whole JSA by himself, Zatanna can do pretty much anything, Firestorm has godlike control over physical matter and Captain Atom can do all sorts of funky stuff with energy in addition to being superstrong and able to fly.
But they never had Batman teach them aikido, so apparently they don’t rate.
@BrianT: WTF? Metamorpho worked with Batman, and Batman can’t vouch for him? Mor like Bat-Douche. I know he has one of those in his utility belt.
Although it’s most likely because a Metamorpho action figure wouldn’t sell that well.
“Say kiddo, whaddya want?”
“I want Batman! He punches stuff!”
“What about Metamorpho?”
“Who the fuck?”
“Metamorpho! From the Outsiders!”
“Huh?”
“When Batman decided to start his own Justice Jeague, with hookers and blackjack! Well, no hookers… or blackjack… but he had Black Lightning!”
“That sounds racist, Daddy.”
“Well… uh… Oh! How about Halo?”
“Who?”
“The amnesiac teenager with aura powers he picked up in a warzone!”
“…”
“What?”
“…that just sounds wrong.”
“… Fuck it, get the Batman toy, you little snot.”
“Thanks, Daddy.”
“I told ya, I’m not your Daddy. Now sniff this chloroform rag while I get the ball gag ready.”
I just managed to buy Supergirl #52, and I rather liked Brainy being all sad.
Though this is my least favorite part of the retcon so far.
When I read Legion of 3 Worlds, I saw Supergirl in her headband costume and developed a little AU where she follows the founders back to Earth and causes Great Angst for everyone; and a only-vaugely probable solution is cooked up to fake her death.
Problem fixed.