(Yes, it’s a bonus page this week as we start Book Two.)

And that concludes the first “issue” (or whatever) of Al’Rashad: City of Myths. Part 2 will follow immediately. New readers will note that the series is now conveniently located in one entire page, using pre-2000 web standards because that is just how we roll.

For all those of you who kept saying “I am waiting for the trade,” well, this is one full issue of a comic that I wrote and everything, and it was even an oversized issue to boot, so feel free to tell me that I suck worse than INSERT HATED WRITER HERE sweatglands in comments if you see fit.

All kudos to Davinder, who I think is basically putting up a big sign saying “HEY MARVEL AND DC LOOK AT THIS AWESOME SHIT I CAN DO.”

John Leavitt asked me in email

who do you see playing Dr. Strange in 2014?

Benedict Cumberbatch, most recently in Sherlock. He’s got the acting skill to play someone who is (or at least starts out as) a total cock but still make him sympathetic. He’s definitely got the look for the part: add a moustache or goatee and he’s Stephen Strange, just so. He’ll likely be in Marvel’s price range (“kind of recognizable, has talent, but we can get him cheap”). And he’ll be exactly the right age, which defines as “five or six years younger than the character so you can get multiple sequels out of him before it starts looking silly and you need a reboot.”

The only question is if Cumberbatch can do a good American accent, but he’s got time to work on it, doesn’t he?

Over at Gore Sports, they are having their sorta-annual Bash Wars tournament, featuring thirty-two combatants duking it out as determined by voters’ votes. Rex The Wonder Dog is, unsurprisingly, the number one seed in his bracket. This is right and proper. However, he is currently trailing an ordinary housecat who doesn’t even do anything awesome. It’s just a frigging cat. That cat probably doesn’t even speak Polish!

So if you have a Livejournal account, go join the Gore Sports community, and then vault Rex to his proper place, which is upon a throne built of cat-skulls.

Interior, Gambit’s bedroom. The room is lit by candlelight, with a bottle of champagne chilling on ice in a bucket on the bedside table. The bed is freshly made with silk sheets. A stereo is playing in the corner (if we can show the lyrics, it’s Barry White.)

Enter Gambit and Rogue.

ROGUE: There’s just no point, Remy. I know you love me, but my powers are my curse, we both know that. The second ah touch you, ah’ll steal your mind and your powers.

GAMBIT: So you keep saying, ma petite chere…but I’m a gambler, non? I’m willing to press my luck, especially when the rewards…

He leans in.

GAMBIT: …are worth the risk.

Rogue pulls away, but not too far.

ROGUE: Ah, ah can’t, ah can’t risk it…

GAMBIT: You’re not the one taking the risk, amie. I am…

He leans in again, and this time his lips make contact.

GAMBIT: Definitely worth it.

Rogue’s eyes widen in shock. Speechless, she allows Gambit to lead her to the bed. He sits down and pulls her down to him. They kiss again, more passionately and longer this time.

ROGUE: Ah don’t believe it!

GAMBIT: Neither do I, chere. You never expected a man to kiss you but you still wore flavored lip gloss.

Rogue giggles, and the two of them clinch together in a longer, more fevered embrace. Gambit pulls Rogue’s gloves off and takes her hand in his, and then reaches out to undress her further…

Suddenly, the stereo stops.

GAMBIT: Merde!

He leaps to his feet.

ROGUE: What’s the problem, sugah? It’s probably just the end of the CD, and…say, did you hear something?

GAMBIT (fumbling with the stereo player): No! No, ma petite chere fille amie, it’s probably just, um, the pounding of your heart.

ROGUE: No, it sounds like it’s coming from under the bed.

GAMBIT: What? Ahahahahaha! Oh, that’s rich. There’s nobody under the bed!

ROGUE: Who said anything about a person?

GAMBIT: Nobody! You’re just imagining crazy talk, that’s all. Worrying about nothing. Now let me–

ROGUE: That was a thump. Ah distinctly heard a thump.

GAMBIT: It was nothing! I mean, nobody! I mean–

Rogue gets up and kneels down next to the bed. She peers underneath the hanging bedspread.

ROGUE: Oh mah God! Is that Leech!?!

GAMBIT: I can explain, ma petite chere petite fille petite–

ROGUE: Did you tie him up down there?

GAMBIT: A little, maybe, but it was for us!

ROGUE: When were you going to let him go?

GAMBIT: Um. Depends. You gonna stay the night?

FLAPJACKS: The trailer for the Green Lantern movie is online.
ME: Oh good.
FLAPJACKS: That sounded sarcastic. I don’t get why you’re being sarcastic. This is a comic book movie directed by Martin Campbell starring Ryan Reynolds and Peter Sarsgaard. There is nothing in that sentence you don’t like.
ME: Probably because the word “Green Lantern” was not in that sentence. I am not particularly a fan of Green Lantern, or of things both greenish and lanterny at once. The concept has never appealed to me the way it does to some. I am fine with this. And I especially particularly do not like Hal Jordan, who is the character I hate second-most in comics.
FLAPJACKS: The first being…
ME: Beast Boy.
FLAPJACKS: Why do you hate Beast Boy?
ME: Because fuck him, that’s why.

ME: Oh, god, we’re starting out with Hal Jordan as super-stud.
FLAPJACKS: You don’t complain when Iron Man bags chicks.
ME: That’s because it doesn’t seem like desperate trying when Iron Man sleeps around. But years of DC telling us over and over again that Hal Jordan is hot shit and he totally has threeways with DC superhero ladies like all the time have poisoned the well. That they’re having him played by Ryan Reynolds just underscores the point.
FLAPJACKS: But you like Ryan Reynolds.
ME: Because he’s good at playing “douchebag bro,” whether straight or for ironic purpose. Like, consider Tony Stark again. When Tony Stark wants to bail on a woman he just nailed, he just goes downstairs and tinkers with cars while Pepper Potts and his AI butler shove the girl out the door. It’s a dick move, pure and simple, which makes him sort of admirable in a way because he doesn’t pretend it’s anything but a dick move. Hal Jordan, on the other hand, is passive aggressive. “Hey I’m totally a decent guy, One Night Stand lady, I just have to go fly a plane so I’m gonna pretend I’m not an asshole for ten seconds okay bye.”
FLAPJACKS: You think about this too much.
ME: And now comes poetry about how awesome it is to fly a plane. Nobody in the whole world likes this. Nobody wants to hear about your hobby or your job completing you and putting you at inner peace.
FLAPJACKS: Abin Sur looks kind of awesome.
ME: The spaceship isn’t bad either.
FLAPJACKS: Man they are showing a lot of Abin Sur’s spaceship. That makes me worry. When the awesomest thing they’re showing is the spaceship that blows up in the first twenty minutes it kind of makes you wonder about, you know, the rest of the movie.
ME: The wormhole looks decent.
FLAPJACKS: Oa looks decent.
ME: Sinestro looks… like a horrible CGI experiment gone wrong.
FLAPJACKS: Oh my god he looks like an extra from Delgo.
ME: And the thing is that we know that’s actually Mark Strong. What is up with that? Is this like Avatar where they motion-traced people and then did it all with computers, or is the makeup job just that bad?
FLAPJACKS: I’m not sure. I hope it’s the latter. The former sounds like a horrible idea if you don’t have James Cameron and lots of millions of dollars handy.
ME: Pieface!
FLAPJACKS: I don’t think you’re allowed to call him that anymore.
ME: I bet it’s, like, his college bro nickname. “Pieface! PieFAAAAAACE! I can call you that because of all the pussy you ate.”
FLAPJACKS: Hal seems to have self-doubt.
ME: Presumably somebody realized at some point that Hal’s standard “overconfident asshole” schtick wasn’t a great selling point as a character and decided to go a different route, which is “pretend Hal is actually Kyle Rayner so people may end up liking him.”
FLAPJACKS: You really hate this character, don’t you?
ME: Oh my yes.
FLAPJACKS: That green fist was sweet.
ME: It was.
FLAPJACKS: Oh wait never mind the self-doubt is just to pick up chicks.
ME: That’s our Hal!
FLAPJACKS: Kilowog looks cool.
ME: I wonder if he will say “poozers.”
FLAPJACKS: He had better say “poozers.” If he doesn’t say poozers thousands of angry nerds will storm Hollywood asking for a refund.
ME: Hector Hammond looks decent as well.
FLAPJACKS: You know, for a movie about Green Lantern I was kind of hoping the trailer would show me a few more Green Lantern tricks.
ME: Well, they had to show you that first thirty seconds of Hal flying planes or you wouldn’t know how awesome he totally is.
FLAPJACKS: And the pre-title flash is the “hey ladies look how ripped Ryan Reynolds is” shot.
ME: Cross-marketing!
FLAPJACKS: Oh wait they said part of the oath! Everything is all right now.
ME: Shut up.
FLAPJACKS: But we’re going to go see this, right?
ME: Probably. I think we’ve established our standards are low.

“Batman, Incorporated”, huh? Well, it sounds like an interesting idea, and Grant Morrison does have a pretty good track record in comics…but I think it might run afoul of the Five-Year Rule. What’s the Five-Year Rule, you might ask? Well, it’s actually more of a guideline than a rule. But roughly, it equates to, “The success or failure of any change to a comic book ‘status quo’ is roughly equivalent to the degree of recognition the book has from a fan who hasn’t picked it up in five years.”

To give some examples: I’m a fan of, say, Spider-Man. I haven’t read the series in a few years, and I decide to step into a comics store and browse the latest issue on the stands. I pick up a copy of “Amazing Spider-Man”…and Spider-Man is a Starbuck’s barista named Ben Reilly, with no sign of MJ, the Daily Bugle, Aunt May, or anything else they recognize. I shrug, and put that comic back on the shelves. Maybe I come back in another year, maybe I don’t.

Or I’m an X-Men fan. I’ve been away for a while, and I pick up an issue…the team is headquartered in San Francisco instead of the X-Mansion, and Cyclops is the team leader. But there are still characters and sub-plots I recognize, and the basic concept–mutants protecting humans from world that fears and hates them–remains more or less intact. I decide to pick up an issue for old time’s sake, and who knows? I might even get hooked again.

Or I’m a Hulk fan. I pick up an issue of the book, and the Hulk is red and smart and uses guns. I roll my eyes, since as an established comics fan I know that it’s probably just a gimmick and the real Hulk will come back soon.

But you get the basic idea. The further away the series gets from that mental snapshot the fan takes of “what the series is like”, the less chance that they’ll come back to it. Iron Man has machine-controlling powers due to a techno-virus called “Extremis”? Um, okay, we can kind of see it. Iron Man as a teenager from an alternate timeline who has to wear the armor to stay alive due to fatal injuries he sustained in battle with his future self? Check, please! The concept of a series has a lot less elasticity than writers, editors, and even established fans think. (Admit it, you all felt a subconscious feeling of relief when Bruce Wayne came back as Batman, didn’t you?)

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You think I’m boring, and my column “eats”. 🙂 No, seriously, you’re wondering about the Silver Age. Surely, turning Green Lantern into a space cop and the Atom into a shrinking scientist and Hawkman into a different kind of space cop and the Flash into a different kind of scientist…that has to violate the Five-Year Rule, right? But the difference is, back then those characters didn’t have a fanbase to speak of. Comics were a different animal back then, one without a devoted group of long-term fans who would follow a series for years. The Silver Age revamps built their fanbase from scratch, something that comics have a lot more trouble doing these days without a newsstand distribution system. It’s something that comics companies might bear to keep in mind during their next reboot.