One of the problems with Dr. Strange comics over the past few years decades is that his villains suck. They shouldn’t suck, but what inevitably happens is that they get into a magic duel with Dr. Strange and, because he is the protagonist, he kicks their ass.

Well, to this I say no more.

Shuma-Gorath is definitely in this category, not least because most people are familiar with him thanks to Capcom’s “Marvel Super Heroes” videogame, wherein he got the strangely-cutesy animations and funny tentacle attacks. Fighting-game fans remarked often that he looked like a purple mop. And so, one of the deadliest forces in the entire goddamn Marvel Universe got shoved to the plushy-toy level.

Because Shuma-Gorath is ridiculously deadly, essentially the Marvel Universe’s equivalent of Cthulhu, a dread conquerering alien intelligence trapped in another dimension with hordes of worshippers, with a tendency to corrupt his enemies with his own self-ness. When they first clashed, the only way the Ancient One and Strange were able to defeat it was by the Ancient One’s trickery of allowing Shuma-Gorath to possess him and then relying on Stephen to figure out that now he had to kill the Ancient One. (And the time Dr. Strange pursued Shuma-Gorath into his home dimension and killed it, he started becoming Shuma-Gorath, and had to commit suicide to end the process, later being resurrected, in a sense, by Kaluu the Sorcerer and Enithermon the Weaver – and of course Shuma-Gorath eventually regenerated the damage anyway.)

If he actually showed up in the Marvel Universe, it would be catastrophic on so many levels as to defy description; any chance Strange would have of victory would lie in magical battle so cataclysmic entire star systems would collapse, and Strange himself would not have the slightest chance of surviving anyway. That’s why Strange (and just about every other sorcerer in the Marvel Universe worth a damn) makes sure to pay attention to anything that might result in Shuma-Gorath manifesting in this dimension.

Which brings me to cultists.

Cultists are to guardian sorcerers as peer-to-peer filesharers are to enforcers of copyright; they’re, in some senses, an open-source solution to the problem of “how do we get our evil god to appear before us and conquer humanity without this stupid Sorcerer Supreme ruining things?” Cultists are like ants – individually powerless and easily squashed, but there’s always more of them than you can ever eradicate and you usually don’t know what they’re doing.

You might, with a lot of work, cast a searching spell that would alert you whenever anybody collected multiple components of the Spell of Arrival, but there’s simply no way to magically track Betty when she buys the three pounds of cubic zirconia, Carl when he collects the shards of ancient Greek pottery or Felix when he drains the blood of an entire cow. There’s no way to prevent Steve from evangelizing to his fellow marginalized about the glories of the Great Eye, whose benevolent vision sees all and whose great purple tentacles touch the lives of all believers for the better. And when Henry buys a gun because somebody has to take out the Sorcerer Supreme – well, maybe you’ve got something prepared in advance for the bullets, but the sense of paranoia that it’ll create? There isn’t anything for that.

They’re like ants. But army ants, ceaselessly working towards one goal – your eventual destruction as an inhabitant of Earth. And you can’t ever stop them; you can just slow them down.

Top comment: This isn’t scary. You know who else has millions of followers?

If Shuma-Gorath shows up, all we need to do is give him a reality tv show (”Eye on Gorath”?) and a never-ending stream of paparazzi and we’ll be fine. — Bass

The gods of Ancient Egypt have been mostly very quiet for practically the entirety of Marvel comics history. With the exception of Seth, the Egyptian god of death, they’ve almost entirely been content to sit back and let the other pantheons do the heavy lifting in the Marvel universe. Which, if you think about it, is really kind of in character for gods worshipped by a civilization which largely lived in a desert. You live in a desert, you learn not to exert yourself more than necessary.

Which makes it all the odder that Djehuty – typically known to modern-day sorts as Thoth, but Djehuty was never one to be horribly impressed with Greek nomenclature – should travel to Earth and calmly begin… influencing undirected pagan worshippers to worship of the Egyptian gods. He’s quite effective, in his way; choosing to engage potential worshippers one-by-one or coven-by-coven. What could have been a sales pitch instead becomes a debate or discussion with someone who comes across as the best teacher you never had when you were growing up.

He usually leaves these discussion sessions with a few new converts. The question that remains is why. After all, it’s pretty conclusive that gods in the Marvel universe don’t actually need worshippers in the Pratchettian “belief is the food of gods” mode. Nobody worships Thor, after all (certainly not enough people to justify his massive power levels, or else Elvis would be – wait, maybe there’s a story there… no, wait again, it’s a pretty bad one in this context).

If it was any other god, you would assume it was either an exercise in egotism or perhaps simply that they were taking an interest in humanity. But Djehuty isn’t a self-important sort of god, and although he doesn’t dislike humanity he’s not exactly known for being a great advocate of it either. (Although he’s always very polite about it. He’s that sort of god, you see.) Djehuty is more the sort of god to take an interest – or, knowing him, telling someone else to take an interest so he doesn’t have to waste the time – only when he feels it’s absolutely necessary.

So why does he feel that way? What is so dire that it motivates him to do this – and why could something so seemingly inconsequential be so important to such an old god?

For one thing, he’s not actually interested in worshippers either. When Strange confronts him for the first time, Djehuty is very clear about his indifference to whether people worship him or not. (Again: desert. Tends to make you laconic.) He’s getting some worshippers, sure, but that’s going to happen when you are a god manifesting yourself before a small segment of the teeming masses and having a nice chat. He doesn’t mind the worship, but that’s not the goal. Chatting with Strange, he reveals that the point of all these visits is to put information into people’s heads – disguised in the form of stories, but magical implementation nonetheless. And although he doesn’t admit it, Strange is pretty sure that Djehuty has a specific list of people he wants to visit.

And now it is worth remembering that the various pantheons tend to have their own individual characters. The Asgardians are mostly brawlers who like a straight-up fight. The Olympians are hedonists and partiers at heart. The Japanese pantheon is the home of many inscrutable, insincere plotters. And the Egyptians – well, the Egyptians are like those old guys sitting on storefront porches in New England, who like little more than to discuss the fastest way to McKutty or the Great Frog-Walloping of ’43 or how that storm on the horizon sure resembles that squall from forty years done by, the one that trashed the Widow Simons’ home, and maybe it’s time to be getting home to the storm shelter, eh?

And a little more investigation shows that the other Egyptian dieties have done exactly that, metaphorically speaking. There’s a storm coming. Djehuty, for reasons unknown, isn’t running and hiding; presumably he has some sort of plan, executed by unknowing agents he prepares in full. Or maybe the people he’s talking to aren’t the ones who do anything important; maybe his influence on them influences other people differently, and he’s doing the interpersonal version of a triple bank shot (with a skip) on a pool table.

Which begs the question: what is he preparing for?

Top comment: Khonshu is going to kick your ass. — PMMJ

“Like House, but with wizards.”

That’s always been one of my favorite single-sentence ideas for a Dr. Strange series. The problem, of course, is that in the Marvel Universe right now there is a distinct… shortage of sorcerers, wizards, mages and so forth. The Scarlet Witch is crazy and/or depowered, and even before that she was a mutant who accessed magical energy rather than an actual practiced magic-user (which is what you need). Wiccan is also a mutant, although thankfully not insane. Daimon Hellstrom is too pushy for Strange to want to bother with. (Also, sometimes a bit evil.) Jennifer Kale is recovering from a zombie attack. Agatha Harkness is dead. So is Dr. Druid. Brother Voodoo’s skillset is too limited. The second Dr. Druid is green. Dr. Doom isn’t exactly what you’d call “trustworthy.” Man-Thing is a plant. And so on.

(Yes, I did read the most recent issue of New Avengers. Rest assured it will be mentioned eventually.)

Of course, that doesn’t mean there aren’t others more suitable for the job. Sorcerers have a knack of not showing up in top-secret government files; it’s easy to stay off the radar if you’re talented and know what you’re doing. Strange needs a team of “interns,” much like House needs the black guy and the Australian guy and the girl and eventually Kumar. So who does he get?

Sir Humphrey Clarkson, Lord of Wattlesbury-on-Parbeck, wasn’t from a particularly rich aristocratic family. This suited him fine; his yearly income from family holdings and investments was enough to fund his magical studies and travels, and beyond that he lived quite modestly. By 1922 he had mastered Hermetic magic well enough to slow his aging to a crawl, placed his assets in extremely long-term debt instruments (Pater always insisted on maintaining the estate), and faked his death, reappearing as his own bastard son at the funeral with a few skilled magical facial alterations, just enough that there was a resemblance but not so much that anyone would doubt the papers proving his parentage.

He did this about every thirty years and continued study into the Hermetic traditions; as the discipline grew to encompass machinomancy and eventually technomancy, he grew proficient in these emergent arts as well. He occasionally glanced into other magical styles, of course, and probably would have begun advanced study into them – if not for the Incident about ten years ago.

That was when Zzzax, the beast-man of living lightning, went on a rage through a certain chunk of rural England. Now, the fine folks of MI-13, working in concert with S.H.I.E.L.D., captured and reimprisoned Zzzax in short order. But that was unfortunately after Zzzax absorbed the electrocardial life-forces of fourteen Englishmen. Including Sir Humphrey, of course.

However, as you might have guessed, Sir Humphrey did not, in fact, die of this. Any good Hermetic knows the value of preparation – especially defensive spell rituals performed months or years or even decades in advance. His protection rituals interacted with Zzzax’s living electricity in ways as yet unseen. Sir Humphrey’s electrical life-force was indeed absorbed by Zzzax – but equal electricity was siphoned back from Zzzax, which kept him alive.

But the new electricity from Zzzax wasn’t quite the same as his normal bioelectricity – and so, Sir Humphrey found that he had an edge most other magicians simply did not. Namely, a healthy supply of raw, regenerating magical force, the creation of his practiced magical auras colliding with the sheer power of the Living Lightning Bolt.

Of course, this new advantage came with a degree of difficulty, considering that raw magilectricity tends to interfere with fine-tuned rituals. So he went back into seclusion, and continued his studies – but his old, methodical nature of spellcasting and research was, he found, now somewhat unsatisfying anyway. He enjoyed visceral magical experience more and more, discovering at the age of one hundred and twenty-three that he had a sudden desire for adventure. (Whether this is the aggressive influence of Zzzax or simply the result of a traumatic event causing a profound personality shift is a topic for debate.)

All of this? The experience, the impressive research skills, the sudden influx of talent at making things explode, and of course the sheer Britishness (which, let’s be honest, is the sort of thing which Stephen might not himself affect, but would definitely be comfortable with)? Made him an ideal candidate to assist Stephen Strange. But there was one other reason for Strange to select Sir Humphrey, one he didn’t mention when he approached the Englishman.

See, the Zzzax energies combined with the magical energies represented a strange conflux of the real and unreal, almost unprecedented in magic. More on the nature of magic coming up later, but for now, understand that easy access to extant magical energies which are simultaneously normal energies explicable by physics is almost impossible. When Dr. Strange casts the Magical Fires Of Faltoor upon his foes, it’s not normal fire, it’s magical energy masquerading as fire, or alternately it’s regular old-fashioned fire that he transported from somewhere else (like that forest fire he knows is happening in Uganda). It’s never both. Except that in Sir Humphrey’s case, it is.

It would, Stephen believed, prove exceptionally useful as a surprise…

Top comment: He’s not a magical being, he’s a really smart guy who learned how to do this. Ghost Rider might be the bitchinest Gibson Guitar with a custom neck and airbrushed flames on the front, but Dr. Strange is Eric Clapton. — John

April is a busy month for me – final exams and all – so I decided to get most of it done in advance. And you know what that meant, right?

One day, you wake up, and blue is gone.

I don’t mean blue things. The things are still there: bluebells, the sky and sea, various types of whales, the road uniforms for the Toronto Blue Jays, the Thing’s underwear. They just – aren’t blue any more. It’s not that the blue spectrum of light is missing, either. Things that are cyan or magenta are still cyan or magenta; the disappearance of blue hasn’t affected those colours of which blue is a root component. And that’s your first hint that this isn’t a problem science can solve.

Here’s another: most people aren’t even noticing blue is gone. You point at the sky and ask them what colour it is, they’ll shrug. They won’t say it’s blue – on some level they understand it isn’t blue any more – but they don’t notice the difference. Psychics notice. Sensitives notice. Those with the bad luck to have had run-ins with demons or angels or gods notice. But even most of these people won’t understand what’s going on. Most of them will just think something’s gone wrong with their eyes. (Just because you have a heightened attunement to things supernatural doesn’t mean you don’t visit the optometrist.)

And why would anybody take blue away? What’s the point? Put aside the rank impossibility of it for a moment – the question of how exactly something like this happens – and consider that this is a fundamentally absurd act; removing blue without removing its physically affecting properties is in many ways an entirely symbolic act.

Or at least it is to anybody from this dimension. In other dimensions, where the laws of physics are written by a wholly different hand, blue might not be a colour. It might be a power source. It might be a currency. Maybe it’s food. We’re going to a new definition of the word “alien,” so new that our existing understanding of alien-ness becomes insufficient to explain what the thieves of blue want, or if they’re even capable of desiring anything in the first place.

Normally, in the Marvel Universe, this is where you call in Reed Richards. But this isn’t something the Fantastic Four can handle. As smart as Reed Richards is, he still needs to start reasoning from the common ground of natural science he’s occupied his entire life, even if only to distinguish a new Other from our world by the differences. But in a case like this, the difference between the Other and us is the difference between a high C-sharp note and a feeling of remorse.

To fix this – and you know, instinctively, looking at the sky, that the lack of blue is a problem, and one more pressing than just a source of aesthetic displeasure – you need someone who can explain scientifically unquantifiable differences in lay terms that, while entirely inaccurate in any proper sense, still serve to give the listener an accurate idea of the larger issues at hand without driving them insane. It’s a very, very rare skill. Most people who dabble in magic can’t begin to handle it.

But the Sorcerer Supreme can. The Sorcerer Supreme isn’t just a fancy title, but a job description. The Sorcerer Supreme isn’t just a mystic superhero, he is the guardian of this entire reality. It’s his (or her, when that’s the case) job to be able to dive into the deep end of what any human would consider pure insanity and say “the water’s fine, and I’ll be out in a few minutes after I get your wallet,” where the “wallet” is in fact the continuing stability of this entire plane of existence.

And that’s why this is a job for Dr. Strange.

Top comment: My last relevant thought was “You know, if DOOM was the Sorcerer Supreme, he wouldn’t just get blue back, he’d give us colors we never had before.” He’d call them Doom, Light Doom, Doomish Yellow, and RICHARDS!! The Hated Color. — HitTheTargets

I fucking love the Forgotten Villains.

Look at them. These are old-school villains, who know the value of a good maniacal laugh, who know that good henchmen are hard to find but easy to slaughter in a fit of rage, who know that if you haven’t given the hero at least one tiny way to escape from your deathtrap then you just don’t understand the point of deathtraps.

Granted, only Enchantress is still around with any regularity these days and she’s kind of a good guy right now, but the rest of them deserve to make comebacks. Look at their lineup. First, there is Kraklow. Kraklow is a Polish wizard from the 18th century and he knows that proper evil wizards wear robes and have pointy fucking hats and these kids today with their techno-magic and their voodoo babble don’t know how to properly summon a cacodaemon worth a good goddamn. Kraklow is a giant Polish roll of fuck yes.

Then there is Atom-Master. He masters atomic thingies and basically made a helmet that turns him into Firestorm. He goes into combat wearing glasses because what the fuck are you going to do to his glasses that won’t just make him turn you into nitrogen? He is your classic mad-scientist villain and he, too, is awesome.

How about Mr. Poseidon? Okay, so his name makes no sense considering he has no sea-related powers, but he has rings which let him shrink down like the Atom and he controls the horrible Ultivac, the Indestructible Computer That Walks Like A Man (If That Man Were Really, Really Large And Made Of Metal And Computer Parts). Come on, you’ve got to love a guy who calls himself something that makes no sense. Assuming it’s not just his name. Maybe it is his name. Like, he is Dave Poseidon, and he decided, “fuck this name shit, I’m just going to build a giant destructo-computer-man.”

And then there is Chun Yull, the Faceless Hunter From Saturn (that is his entire villain name), who can turn things into bombs just by touching them, so basically he is an eight-foot-tall combination of the Question and Gunfire with Spock ears and orange skin and also he is from Saturn.

And last but not least, there is Yggardis, who is an evil sorcerer who happens to also be a fucking planet. Yes, if Mogo were A) evil and B) capable of casting magic spells, he would be Yggardis. Also Mogo would need to get himself a set of colossal metal tentacles, because Yggardis figured out pretty early on that in order to really be evil, you need something with which to make dramatic gestures. Because otherwise, what’s the point of being evil?

Like I said: I fucking love these guys.

Also, they fought the Forgotten Heroes. You know who the Forgotten Heroes are? Animal Man, Cave Carson, Congorilla and the Sea Devils. HOW FUCKING AWESOME IS THIS SHIT?

Top comment: I’d love to see Yggardis take on Mogo while a dozen or more heavy hitters in DCU just watch from space, like “well, what the hell are we supposed to do about THIS?” — Garfield

(It’s the last page of the first issue of Oracle: Battle For The Cowl.)

Top comment: Apparently the RIAA is not kidding around with copy protection. — malakim2099

Top comment: And I bet Mel Gibson’s dad STILL denies that any of this really happened! — Cookie McCool

…is the Blonde Phantom.

For those not in the know, the Blonde Phantom is a Golden Age Marvel comics character from the Timely era. (Of course, comics being comics, she eventually showed up as a middle-aged version of herself in John Byrne’s She-Hulk run, and her daughter eventually became the Phantom Blonde, her successor. Of course, comics also being comics, the Blonde Phantom was eventually de-aged by science or possibly magic. I forget which it was. The point is that she became a hot babe again.)

But she is not just a comics character – she is a tool of the patriarchy. Seriously, reading this comic is like a short lesson in why the women’s lib movement got started in the first place. Granted, Golden Age superheroines always had a weird sexual element to them at the best of times (insert token Wonder Woman comment here), but Blonde Phantom goes beyond that to something that isn’t just “kinda kinky” but instead is just deeply, deeply wrong.

Consider.

This is the Blonde Phantom in her alter ego of Louise Mason, trusty secretary to staunch private detective Mark somethingorother, although I always think of him as “Mr. Manlypipe.” Note the glasses. The little smirk. The bun.1 Louise is your classic overlooked girl, so she rebels against that…

…by becoming the Blonde Phantom! This should be empowering or something!

Well, except that she doesn’t actually fight anybody. What you see here is her standard M.O.: she goes around and, you know, asks people questions. They never seem to wonder “who is this chick in the evening gown and domino mask and why do I care what she thinks,” because that would make sense. I mean, at least when Golden Age Batman asked you questions, there was always the implicit threat of him beating the shit out of you if you didn’t talk.2

And why doesn’t she fight?

That’s why. Because she is a delicate flower. Notice that the thug here is holding her with essentially one hand. This is how much of a wuss the Blonde Phantom is.

Anyhow.

It’s really worth noting how much Blonde Phantom stories revolve around Captain Manlypipe.3 The Blonde Phantom doesn’t really resolve anything; even in her mask and glamour-gown she’s still ultimately just Captain Manlypipe’s assistant. Nothing can change her. It is her preordained place in the history of the world: servile to a pipe-smoking fellow of virile complexion. Isn’t this depressing?

This is about as physical as she ever gets.

And this is how she resolves most conflicts. She runs and she hides from the bad, bad men! Or in this case, man. Singular. Who is unarmed. But who needs weapons to take on the Blonde Phantom? She is a girl, don’t you know.4

This panel in particular drives me nuts. First off, it’s a jar of cold cream, so it manages to be stereotypically feminine just like anything else the Blonde Phantom ever finds or tries to use. (In this particular story, for example, the key clue that tipped off the Blonde Phantom? Was that a lipstick found next to the body of a dead woman was the wrong brand.) And throwing a little jar of cold cream at the Big Strong Hulking Bad Guy is just so stereotypically girly a move – I mean, Golden Age Black Canary is just looking at this and shaking her head. “Why don’t you kick him in the face? Do you need me to lend you Merry, Girl Of A Thousand Gimmicks to teach you how to slug a palooka like this? What’s wrong with you?”

But what’s more annoying than that is what she’s thinking. Again, the Blonde Phantom’s story is all about Captain Manlypipe. Why hasn’t Manlypipe come to save her yet? She was counting on that!

Which of course he does. Like he does every time.

And we come to our regular Blonde Phantom denouement: her blowing off Manlypipe, who wants him some Blonde Phantom action, because secretly she wants him to fall for her, Louise Mason, and not some beautiful girl in a domino mask and evening gown who looks exactly like her. Wait, is Captain Manlypipe mentally challenged? Or possibly blind? Because who the hell could not figure out that their secretary was standing in front of them when all that’s hiding her identity is a fucking domino mask? Ahh, Golden Age, you inspired so many and sucked so frequently.

P.S. In the end, Louise and Manlypipe got married, so that just goes to show you that if you rely enough on a big strong man, ladies, eventually he will do the right thing and buy you a large wedding ring and a house and a dog and give you babies!

Top comment: To be fair, the cold cream jar would have been made of glass, and would seem awfully heavy and tough to a little lady. And maybe she was secretly hoping it would shatter and a little cold cream might clear up his condition and he’d have a personality shift and become a good guy. Because, you know, most problems can be solved if you’d just try to be a little prettier. — Cookie McCool

1. A bun is like a chastity belt, but made of hair. [↩]
2. Well, until Robin made his debut, and then Batman had to resort to tickle-fights to get answers. [↩]
3. Yes, I promoted him and gave him an officership in the Navy. Why not? Look at him smoke that pipe. [↩]
4. I understand that Michael Chabon got the idea for The Escapist from Blonde Phantom comics. Okay, no, not really. [↩]

In email:

In terms of internet business models, 2005-2015 will be to comics as 1995-2005 was to music. Discuss.

It’s a cute truism, but not entirely accurate.

Firstly, the key similarity: the market by and large considers the product to be poorly distributed and overpriced. People like comics, almost universally; the failure of the industry is pointedly not the failure of its product but of its marketing, distribution model, and its price point. This cannot be understated: comics used to compete with a chocolate bar at the newsstand.

That sentence contains the two failures of modern comics sales. Firstly: “at the newsstand.” Vastly enough has been written about the failures of the direct market and why we should or should not beat Diamond to death with a stick that I don’t feel the need to rehash it in depth, but the near-total noninteractivity of comics publishers with the larger market is damned near impossible to understand.

I don’t particularly want to reopen the scans_daily debate again, but one thing that always struck me was that its detractors in the wake of its collapse decried the “word of mouth advertising” arguments its supporters upheld as a solid raison d’etre for the tolerance of the community’s theft. It was argued that DC and Marvel put up previews on Newsarama, on their own websites, in Diamond’s Previews catalog, and had store presence, and that this was enough for the purposes of advertising.

The problem with this argument is that if you translate it over to any other product it makes absolutely zero sense. Does Coke say “well, we don’t need to advertise Coke to everybody. It’s there in the store, and we put advertisements in Cola Monthly, and we have a website”? Of course not, because that’s idiotic. You don’t even need to mention scans_daily in this argument because scans_daily wasn’t the answer to the larger problem (as much as its supporters wished it were); it was merely a reaction from the existing market to this failure, and an inadequate one at that.

Every so often some website will put up an old cover of a “crossover comic,” by which I mean not crossing over with an established intellectual property (like that Star Trek/X-Men comic that still makes me wonder), but crossing over with an existing and usually wildly divergent brand: J.C. Penney, Hanes, Post Cereals, that sort of thing. Marvel and DC (but mostly Marvel) would strike deals with these companies to put comics – usually crappy comics, but comics – into the hands of people buying things that had absolutely nothing to do with comics. The logic is of course obvious: if 100,000 people buy Hanes underwear with a Spider-Man comic in it, and one-tenth of them are entertained enough to want to buy another Spider-Man comic or three, that’s a big win for Marvel.

(How often does that sort of thing happen any more? Used to be it seemed like there was at least two or three promotions like that every year; now the only “promotional” comics I can think of that the Big Two give away1 – are the occasional comics Marvel produces for the United States Army for the troops. Can anybody think of any others?)

Anyhow. Secondly, consider “used to compete with a chocolate bar.” Comics are horrendously expensive, and in some cases needlessly so. A three-to-four dollar price point puts comics out of a lot of hands – especially young hands. And although inflation is part of that, paper quality is also a big issue. Why not print comics on newsprint again? Does anybody really need that shiny, glossy paper that’s in all the comics now?2

This is to say nothing of the Big Two’s current collection strategy, which is insane: release the more expensive hardcover initially and then delay the softcover for anywhere from six months to an entire year after that.3 Hardcovers might be pretty, but they’re for devoted fans because of their increased cost. A sales strategy concentrating on hardcover promotion is one that prioritizes catering to hardcores.

Now that we’ve covered the key similarity, let’s discuss the key difference, which is that comics, unlike music, does not have a good “try before you buy” mechanism. I’m not talking about previews on websites being comparable to Java-enabled song snippets being available before you download an mp3 from Amazon or the like; I’m talking about the radio. (Internet or otherwise.) That’s how most music gets marketed to the listener: the listener hears the song in some context in its entirety other than looking at a list of songs and says “hey, I like this.”

Some might argue that the previews posted to Newsarama qualify as “try before you buy,” but really, that’s not true. You get a snippet of story (usually not even the best part) which is only a portion of a portion of a larger story. Incidentally, this is another scans_daily argument that detractors didn’t understand – the scans_daily folks might have been excessive, but they concentrated on the “good parts,” the heart of the story, or at least what they thought those to be – and that makes for a better preview than the first five pages of a book.4

Try before you buy, when applied to written material, means a library. And no library is going to touch single issues for obvious reasons (cost, preservability, et cetera). Granted, most libraries now have a reasonable selection of graphic novels, but those graphic novels are the ones coming out after the fact. And since for the most part there aren’t library editions of graphic novels, that means they tend to go for trade paperbacks – or material that’s over a year old. Does the radio still play a lot of 2008’s hottest jams rather than play new tracks?

And that’s a huge hurdle that comics has to overcome that music never did. Well, that and the fact that comics have a much smaller audience, thanks to decades of bad decisions, but that’s neither here nor there.

1. Outside of Free Comic Book Day, which is still the most widely underutilized and misused tool of comics promotion currently extant in the Big Two – as opposed to outright nonexistent, anyway. [↩]
2. If there’s a serious market for the glossy paper – hell, use it as an additional selling point for the trade collections. Better paper quality in trades can be comics’ equivalent of commentary tracks on DVDs – an additional sales point for material the audience might already have seen. [↩]
3. The trade paperback of Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes will ship in July of this year, fourteen months after the final issue shipped. [↩]
4. Also consider: movie trailers, which can certainly be excessive in what they reveal, but at least are never boring and always attempt to show how awesome their product is. [↩]

Fifteen reasons why Brain Storm sucks.

1.) His helmet looks like an exotic dildo.
2.) He first attacked the League because he thought they had killed his brother, but in fact, he had accidentally teleported his brother himself, using his own powers – to France.
3.) Seriously, it says that right there. Teleported his brother to France.
4.) It says right in his roundup that he will run away if “threatened with physical harm.” So he’s a pussy.
5.) Why do all villains with mental powers always suck at fighting? Haven’t they figured out yet that being able to throw a good punch is worth at least 1/3rd of a telekinetic bolt in comics?
6.) Dildo helmet.
7.) His name is two words rather than one.
8.) His real name is Axel Storm, so this is Silver Age Example #735 of a guy who couldn’t come up with a good super-name until he took a look at his own name and thought, “well, what can I do with this?”
9.) I know I’m hating on the dildo helmet, but – while we’re discussing sartorial choices, what is up with those shoulder things? Did he decide “yeah, I should look like a 1959 Cadillac, that will strike fear into the heart of all who behold me,” or what?
10.) That having been said – dildo helmet.
11.) His nickname is the “Star-Bolt Warrior,” which makes him sound like one of the toys from Crystar or a similar crappy toy line that didn’t even last one season on teevee.
12.) His failure to recognize that a pencil moustache in everyday life might make you look like Clark Gable, but once you put on a supervillain costume you stop looking like Clark Gable and start looking like Vincent Price.
13.) He invents a floating hoverchair and, rather than becoming rich, uses it for supervillainy. This isn’t, like, Captain Cold or somebody, who invented something that’s basically only good for killing people. He invented an air-chair, for fuck’s sake.
14.) Did I mention that his brother was named “Fred,” incidentally? Because – yeah, what kind of parent names their two children “Axel” and “Fred,” anyway? The type of person who names their kid “Axel” is not going to name their other kid “Fred.” Well, maybe their dad wanted to name the second kid “Diego” or “Slice” or something, and their mom put her foot down and said “this one is Fred, goddamnit.”
15.) In conclusion: dildo helmet.

Blinky dildo helmet.

Hippo sweat to be turned into sunscreen. Key part is this:

After analyzing the hippo sweat under a microscope, the researcher found that there were two types of crystaline structures in it – banded and non-banded. He pinpointed that the banded ones were “characterized by concentric dark rings,” which seemed to be the key to the liquid’s amazing properties. “The rings are the result of a structural periodicity that occurs on a scale comparable to the wavelengths of visible light. This means that the sweat is an effective scatterer of light, so that it combines both sun-blocking and sun-screening properties,” Viney stated.

So basically they are saying that hippo sweat is, like, a cloaking device. Which means that hippopotami could be Predators if they ever bothered to get out of the damn river. We are extremely lucky that hippos are lazy.

Also, Leonard Pierce and company discuss what would have happened if Batman’s parents had never been killed.

LEONARD: Reads about Dick’s parents getting killed at the circus and he’s like “I should buy a circus!”

Top comment: Are you saying hippos are hungry? And also, hungry? — Matt

This is mine:

Let’s see what you got, people! In comments, or Photoshop them yourselves and post to your own blog, or whatever.

Top comment: Now do Its vs It’s.

ONLY YOU, MGK, CAN FIX ALL THE INTERNET — Ilan

People have been asking for this guy for approximately since I first started doing these Who’s Who bits, and I feel it is only proper to reward patience (and give into repetitive begging). So:

FIVE THINGS ABOUT VARTOX

ONE. Now, admittedly, at first one might look at Vartox’ clothes and say “my god, this guy is gayer than all of the Village People combined.” But that is unfair. Firstly, Vartox arrived in the Bronze Age, in the early 70s, a time when thigh-high leather boots, a Speedo and a vest with no shirt was the height of heterosexual male attire. Secondly, you have to be beyond manly to wear that with a completely straight face (and sexuality). Besides, Vartox is nothing if not serious about his fashion.

TWO. Vartox is powerful. He is really powerful. He had to be, because he was immediately established as a romantic rival for Superman, as he began a relationship with Lana Lang (whose affection for Superman was, it seems, matched only by her affection for Tom Selleck moustaches). Vartox has approximately eleventy billion “hyper-powers,” the origin of which was never actually explained (not even a lousy two pages of “cosmic rays something something”) and among them, as specifically listed in Who’s Who, is the ability to “project various kinds of energy to do an array of things.”

An array of things.

THREE. Vartox married an alien chick who died when a woman on Earth, her “bionic twin,” was shot and killed. The fact that this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever did not stop Vartox from pursuing the murderer of that Earth woman and bringing him back to face justice on his home planet, by aging him sixty years in a matter of minutes. Superman was apparently just fine with this horrific punishment and lack of any real trial, because, hey, alien guy.

FOUR. Vartox worked briefly as a security guard. This is probably the greatest deal of overkill in a secret identity in the history of comics. Can you imagine being the petty thugs who decided to steal a pallet of toaster ovens from Vartox’ warehouse? Man, it sure would suck to be those guys. He would hit them with his various kinds of energy and do an array of things to them!

FIVE. Vartox makes a cameo in “Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?”, which puts him one up on chumps like the Teen Titans, who have never even been in an Alan Moore comic. (Alan Moore has a secret love of thigh-high leather boots, Speedos, and shirtless vest-wearing.)

Come on. He deserves the love.

Top comment: So what’s the square thing sticking out of the calf on his right boot? Unless it’s specifically cited, I’m going to assume it’s where he keeps his Marlboro Reds because he doesn’t have any sleeves to roll them up in. — ps238principal

Schulz City.

Top comment: In Frank Miller Land, nothing is called on account of rain. — Lord Asteroth