I have a midterm today, so in lieu of real content here is simple advice!

The idea of “hero created in response to other heroes emerging, by people feeling threatened by said heroes” is again nothing new. However, the reason it isn’t new is because it’s timeless; it’s the classic human arms struggle (as power struggle) transposed to superheroics, which lends it a sense of immediacy, and it doesn’t have a predetermined ending. Sometimes it ends well, sometimes it ends in tragedy. That’s why it’s a deep well.

When the Legion emerged as a true force in intergalactic politics, there were of course those who felt threatened. Metahuman-level power had always been isolated, and usually culturally specific: Titanian telepathy, Braalian magnetism, Coluan intelligence, and so on. The conflux of the best and brightest from all corners of the galaxy was intimidating; many a military strategist had often wondered how a super-unit of the greatest combatants would serve the United Planets, and now that super-unit existed and was almost totally unaccountable to anybody. Every planet instantly began a new super-agent program, every last one of them in secret.

One planet had a particularly gifted biophysics researcher who thought he had cracked the secret of personal teleportation as a genetically derived superpower. They found a volunteer – an idealistic young captain, honest and compassionate and brave and extraordinarily grounded. They began preparing immediately, and readied the experimentation chamber. When the chamber blew up with the young captain inside, the government killed the program in a flash. It never happened. No evidence remained.

But soon enough, people started turning up dead. Unrelated to the experiment, understand – these were largely murderers, rapists, and the like. All of them stopped in the act. The religious spoke of an avenging angel; the secular muttered of government conspiracies. They were both, in a sense, correct.

The young captain was of course not dead. The experiment had worked perfectly;he could teleport anywhere he wanted, anytime. It was easy. He could even “look” in advance, sense where was safe to land, where he wanted to go (the scientist knew that such an ability would be necessary, lest teleportation be useless without a map of where you wanted to go, preferably with mathematical coordinates). It was flawless in every respect but one.

He couldn’t stop “looking.”

Every second of every moment of his life now, he sees people hurting, assaulting, enslaving, raping, killing other people. And he sees all of it, everywhere. For a given value of “everywhere” that’s rapidly expanding as his ability to “see” grows. Almost anybody would be driven insane by the sheer sensory overload, but the young captain was a man (or woman, actually – gender isn’t important to the character) of exceptional mental fortitude, and discovered that it was possible to retain some slight degree of sanity through action. (If the only way you could keep from going insane was by killing total bastards, what would you do?)

There isn’t an armory in the universe he can’t get into, not a criminal in the universe that’s completely safe (that’s the advantage of total surprise). He stays awake for weeks thanks to pharmacology and willpower because he can’t sleep unless he’s so exhausted that he passes out, not without seeing people violently dying right in front of him, tens of thousands at a time. (If you could stop someone you’ve never even met from being murderered, wouldn’t you feel the need to do it?) He flits across the United Planets faster and faster, never anywhere longer than twenty seconds, usually less than five.

He’s been lucky so far; hasn’t killed anybody who only appeared to be killing someone or doing something as bad. How long before his sanity gives out entirely? (What he’s going through is literally inhuman.) How long before people start blaming the wrong people for his kills? How long before he kills someone important and that fucks up interstellar politics for way more people than he can ever save? How long before some innocent guy just playing “Slaver and Property” with his girlfriend gets two in the head because the Everywhere Man didn’t have enough time to properly assess the situation before heading off to the next galaxy to kill somebody else? Can he really keep his perfect record forever?

Can they stop him?

Should they?

As selected by me, naturally. (I fully admit that there are many that might have been funnier than these to some people, but these were the funniest that were also, I feel, directly parodic of the image or the Archie ouevre itself, and given that Canadian fair dealing law protects parody and not free-ranging satire, etc.)

I’m kind of busy this week, so rather than go into Star Hawkins’ career or talk about his disturbing lady-robot-butler, I’m going to keep it real simple.

Two words: pixie boots.

SIMPLE GUIDE TO SEE IF YOU CAN PULL OFF PIXIE BOOTS:

1.) Are you a ten-year-old boy?
2.) Is your name Robin?

If you answered “no” to either question, you should not wear pixie boots.

Also: tights and pixie boots.

Will asks:

You get a vision of the future – DC is going to make you chief writer on Legion of Superheroes. Three years from now. Before that, you have to make your bones in the comic industry, and destiny says you have to do it with Marvel.

Marvel asks you to pitch them a resurrection job on a currently dead title*. Their one rider is that there has to be room for a guest appearance from Wolverine within the first six issues. What’s your pitch?

And he also asks:

Also, as a 90s-raised X-Men geek (who then went back and read a whole load of Captain Britain), I have to wonder: Gambit, Jubilee, Psylocke, Generation X. Any opinions worth posting about?

The answer to your first question is here: Gambit.

I know he’s not popular with some fans, but I like Gambit. He has personality, and that counts for a lot in a genre filled with Heroic Paragon/Grim Avenger/Token Woman/Snarky Second-Stringer teams a-plenty. I like his silly accent (which I like to think he keeps out of preference, since as a truly excellent thief and sneak, he can no doubt switch to the accent of his choice to cover his tracks whenever he likes); it’s fun, like Ben Grimm’s palookaville English is fun. I like that he’s a thief, which is territory not often covered in superhero comics protagonists (you get a lot of mercenaries and guns for hire, but thieves, not so much).

And Gambit has that wonderful combination of silliness and seriousness that has the potential for exquisite rooting-around in the dirty back-corners of the Marvel Universe. Every storyline features a MacGuffin more preposterous than the last. (The Celestial’s Tears! The Cosmic Quintahedron! MODOK clone banks! Et cetera.) Tack on tons of obscure characters now stuck in the world of high-powered superhero crime. (I particularly like the idea of bringing Warren Ellis’s NextWave version of Devil Dinosaur over into proper 616, if only so he can be a crime boss in some city other than New York so there can be a story entitled “Deal With The Devil (Dinosaur).”) Lace heavily with a number of cons, tricks, switches and lies – Gambit’s comic should be a flow of storylines that could be described as “Ocean’s Eleven meets Justice League International, plus lots of weird shit.”

Also: new costume, because the pink body-condom thing he has is truly one of the ugliest fucking costumes in superhero history.

(Jubilee, Psylocke and Gen X can be ground into powder and serve as a MacGuffin. I am not a big X-fan, generally.)

Personally, I think the moment everybody realized this particular post would be about dinosaurs in space with lasers, that I really could have just written “Dinosaurs, in space, with lasers” once, copied it, and pasted it two hundred times and everybody would still be happy. However, I like details, so…

The idea that the dinosaurs had mastery of high technology and just left Earth, rather than going extinct because of a meteor strike or geological shift or disease or anything, is not one that is particularly revelatory in science fiction. I mean, once an idea makes it into an episode of Star Trek: Voyager, you know it’s not going to be particularly original. Heck, one of my favorite sci-fi trilogies, Robert Silverberg J. Sawyer’s Quintaglio series, is all about dinosaurs in space. (In fairness, Sawyer’s books were about genetically modified dinosaurs transplanted through space from Earth to a different planet by super-advanced intelligence assisted by something not unlike God, and who had to undergo their own accelerated Renaissance in order to leave their planet. But, still – dinosaurs in space.)

That having been said, while the idea isn’t new, it is indescribably awesome, as it combines dinosaurs with space (and lasers, of course). The trick is to integrate it into the DC Universe proper.

The First Ones left Earth a hundred and twenty million years ago, when just about every civilization worth mentioning that still exists was in its cradle or not even alive yet. (The Oans were only starting to consider building the Manhunters at this point – that’s how old we’re talking.) They were already brilliant, their natural intelligence enhanced by a primordial telepathic hive-mind, the Oneness, as they first began psychic study before even bothering to consider engineering or technology – and when they did consider those things, they advanced millennia in heartbeats as the wisdom of one hundred thousand First Ones (who, for the record, were much like Tyrannosaurus Rexes, but herbivores and with larger arms – but the same enormous size, because if you’re going to have dinosaurs, I say you don’t puss out and make them human-sized dinosaurs) was brought to bear upon arithmetic, algebra, calculus, physics, quantum calculation, and anything else you would care to name. Sciences fell like dominoes.

Realizing that their species would dominate the planet so greatly that they would endanger all other life upon it, the First Ones chose to segregate themselves – at first only from their home planet, but eventually deciding that the potential for interfering with other species was too great, and deciding to pursue the path of study and solitude. They built ships and went out into the stellar void – far, far outside any habitable galaxy. They collected stellar matter from white dwarves and black holes, re-engineering it into a working, everlasting ultrasun, then created a massive world to orbit it (and a moon, mostly because they wanted tidal patterns so the beaches would have waves so they wouldn’t grow homesick). They cloaked their new system in a cloud of gigatonnes of dark particulate matter, and seeded it with life, and settled down, and studied.

Their science grew profound and inexplicable. If they had wanted to conquer, it would have been a simple matter, but their passions lay in simple learning (and banana leaves). They conquered aging, and took pleasure in ideas – and they never lacked for new ideas. They created observascopes to study the universe ongoing, and watched millions and millions of years of stellar history unfold.

And then, one day, about a hundred thousand years ago, one of them died. This was a tremendous surprise, for he had not died in simple accident, nor had there been any warning. He simply lay down and stopped, his bodily functions ceasing in an instant. The mental conversation within the race – now twenty-two billion strong, as they had been for fifty million years – spoke of nothing else. Truthfully, the species was energized by the sudden existence of a problem they needed to solve.

They never solved it. A species that conquered all disease could not defeat this foe. Some theorized that it was the natural reaction of a species to a lack of mortality – bodily functions filling the void created by genius. They tried to recommence breeding, but discovered – much to their surprise – that the species had become sterile, it having been eons since any of them felt the need to reproduce. Vigorous debate ensued as to the next course of action to be tried, as the deaths accelerated, but the First Ones had a new problem: although they were naturally intelligent, their survival demanded that their thought be advanced by their primordial Oneness so they could operate the insanely complex devices that kept them healthy, operated their crops, kept their very world stable.

Every time a First One died, the Oneness was weakened. Every time a First One died, every other one became just a little bit dumber.

They continued to debate and plan even as their intellects steadily shrank. By the time they were no smarter than the average Coluan, about a thousand years ago, a final plan was determined. They invented one last great work: a ship so vast it was larger than most moons. The remaining survivors – about one hundred thousand strong – got aboard it and left their world, already slowly beginning to disintegrate.

All they wanted was to see their home one last time, and to die where they were born.

Unfortunately, it was now occupied. And although the First Ones were a peaceful race, by instinct and creed… they nonetheless knew how to construct and design great weapons. They did not want to use them, you can be sure of that… but they would use them, if they felt it necessary. Because when you only have one thing left to you to do and to want, you want to do it very, very much indeed.

The Legion has to stop them. Or save them. Or both. Or save the United Planets. Or stop the United Planets from destroying them. Or both. They have to find the lost world of the First Ones. They have to make sure that the First Ones destroyed it. Or both. And Brainiac Five has to deal with the existence of an entire race who outclasses his brilliance on a bad day, which might be harder than all of the other things put together…

Why doesn’t Hazard see more use?

I mean, she’s a legacy villain, for starters. The granddaughter of the Gambler. Why hasn’t Geoff Johns put her in a comic yet? (People may read these bits I do each week and think that I have some mad hatred for Geoff Johns, but come on – it’s Who’s Who, the old-school encyclopedia of DC Comics. The Geoff Johns references are natural. Like, for example, if I was doing Thursday Anatomical Mishaps instead, I would make Rob Liefeld jokes.) DC Comics is so about “legacy” these days that you’d expect Hazard to show up all over the place. Or get killed, possibly. DC is somewhat all over the place at times when it comes to legacy-ness.

But on top of that she’s a good legacy villain. The powers and concept (the granddaughter of the Gambler having probability manipulation powers) work. The character notes (she dislikes violence and really only became a supervillain to avenge her grandfather – plus, the only people she really knew in the powers club were all villains) are interesting. The costume is cool. She wears a visor! She has poofy blouse sleeves on her costume and it works!

I mean, come on! She throws dice and alters luck! That is goddamned cool. There is a reason people like Gambit – it is because he throws playing cards and a gambling motif is a good thing for a superhero (or villain), particularly when said character tends to walk the middle ground of super-morality more often than not.

So obviously this is why Hazard has shown up precisely once since her debut in Infinity Inc. (where she was drawn by Todd McFarlane before he became a big-shot comics dude and eventual luxury baseball collector). In that one issue of Wonder Woman where all the female superheroes and supervillains fought each other. She got a panel.

There ain’t no justice, folks!

Also, the Injustice Society in general is cool. Icicle II: cool. The Wizard: cool. Artemis: cool (although her first costume was terrible). The Shade: so cool it is off the charts, even if he would not be particularly inclined to join Injustice-themed leagues, societies, clubs, or social teas. The Fiddler: cool in his way and it’s a shame Gail Simone offed him, but there’s no reason Deadshot couldn’t have felt generous that day and simply shot him in such a way to knock him out and not kill him. (All right, so it’s not likely Deadshot would feel generous. Maybe the Fiddler paid him up front.) That whole Injustice Society story in JSA Unlimited right before Infinite Crisis: way cool. And so forth.

So, it is a little less than one year since Marvel Comics felt the need to reboot or revamp or re-something Spider-Man by having their signature flagship superhero make a deal with the Devil and give up his marriage and totally fuck with continuity.

But was it a good idea?

From a sales standpoint, very likely. Tom Brevoort claims that at this point Amazing Spider-Man is profitable solely on the basis of subscriptions. Even if we assume that Tom Brevoort is a lying sack of shit (nothing personal against Mr. Brevoort, but let’s be honest -as an executive editor for a major comics company, it is more or less his job to be a lying sack of shit), a simple glance at sales figures shows us that Amazing Spider-Man‘s sales have dropped from the general sales range of 90K/issue that the title tended to hang around prior to the changearoo, and now sit at a level of 65-75K depending on who you ask and who’s writing and drawing the comic in any given month. This sounds bad until you remember that the two additional issues of Amazing per month replaced the lower-selling titles Peter Parker, Spider-Man and Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man, which both sold in the 40-45K range by the end of their run.

Bottom line: Regular series Spider-Man comics used to sell about 180K issues per month, combined. Now, a year later, after the big stunt, they are selling more in the neighborhood of 200K-230K. In an industry where every sales trend for just about everything is “slow and steady crawl towards death,” that is a big win.

But is that because they got rid of the marriage? I don’t think it is; I think it’s because they made a big deal about Spider-Man and because comic readers like to buy into a weekly (or mostly-weekly) series, and because they got back to core Spidey principles, IE, not having him be a superstar Avenger with a public identity living in a fancy skyscraper.

Make no mistake: the past year or so of Spider-Man has been a reasonably decent run of comics. Not particularly remarkable for the most part, really; the occasional inspired turn of artwork from a Marcos Martin or a John Romita Jr., an occasional storyline that particularly just works in the way that good Spidey stories can. And it is welcome to see the soap-opera-ish style of plotting the lives of Spidey’s supporting cast return as a storytelling strategy, and equally welcome to see the writers creating new villains (even if they don’t all quite work as well as one might hope).

But really: there hasn’t been anything deeply memorable. The main stories (IE, the main plot, centering around Spidey) have mostly been throwaways of varying levels of quality. The obvious desire to return to How Spider-Man Comics Used To Be is so palpable on the part of some writers that it comes across as desperate; Peter being totally luckless and broke just isn’t cute any more, not when he’s still to all appearances in his mid-to-late twenties. At this point it’s just pathetic, and there’s really no excuse; speaking as someone whose mid-to-late twenties were frankly kind of depressing on the “personal success” front, there are tons of ways to make Peter’s life hard (and I totally believe that Peter should have a difficult life; that’s part and parcel of being Spider-Man) without making him into a slacker bum.

Look at the stories we’ve had and consider this. In rough order we’ve seen:

– the reintroduction of Harry Osborn being not dead and all
– introduction of Jackpot
– the takeover of the Daily Bugle, Jonah’s heart attack
– introduction of the Negative Man
– fighting with Menace (multiple times)
– fighting with Freak (twice)
– that three issue thing with Wolverine and the sorta-devil-worshipping-guy
– Peter becomes a paparazzi, fights Paper Doll
– Spidey deals with the Bookie
– Peter goes to work for Ben Urich’s paper
– “Kraven’s First Hunt,” introducing new Girl Kraven
– “New Ways To Die” – Spidey vs. Thunderbolts
– Jackpot revealed to not be Mary Jane, but instead be… I dunno, just some girl who gets killed because she can’t survive taking MGH to get superpowers
– Eddie Brock becomes Anti-Venom
– Flash Thompson gets legs blown off in Iraq War
– return of Hammerhead
– single issue Punisher hijinks
– and most recently, the return of the Shocker and introduction of Jolly Jonah Sr.

Now, some of those stories were great. Some of them were pretty shitty (Flash Thompson as crippled Iraq vet is one of the most spectacularly dumb ideas Marvel’s had in a while, and the whole Jackpot mess was executed so badly it should stand up for all time as an example of How Not To Do That). But, with the exception of Jackpot, here’s the one thing they all had in common: not a single one of them demanded that Peter be single.

Seriously: not a single goddamned one of them. The “Brand New Day” and beyond Spidey is just modern storytellers taking a relatively old-school approach to writing Spider-Man; soap opera plotting, knowing to use the extensive Spidey rogue’s gallery that exists beyond the Green Goblin, adding new villains whenever possible (even if only for an issue to get their asses kicked, but the occasional new ambitious addition is always worth a shot), and keeping Peter in the place of relative hard-luck underdog, the Charlie Brown of the superhero set. Fine and good, but not one element that I just listed cannot co-exist with him being married.

It’s worth noting that for all the foofarah about Peter now being a swinging single again, all that we’ve seen on that front, in an entire year of mostly-weekly comics, is:

– a few issues of mild flirtation with Jackpot (who then dies because she isn’t MJ – thus wasting the only possible point of the goddamned character, incidentally)
– a bit of flirtation with the blonde science girl who has since fallen back into the background
– Harry’s girlfriend throwing herself at Peter for no apparent reason other than to set up iteration X of Harry mistakenly hating Peter
– and a one-off gag in the most recent issue with Peter meeting a supermodel and fucking it up because he is Peter Parker and has bad luck

Now, granted, that last gag was pretty funny. But it’s not like you couldn’t do it with him married.

(I could probably do it more elegantly with a little rework, but fuck it, I’m trying to make a point, not rewrite the issue.)

Moreover, it wouldn’t matter if the Spider-writers had devoted more time to Peter’s lovelife. It wouldn’t have worked. Know why? Because we already know “what’s supposed to happen.” Peter ends up with MJ, just like Clark ends up with Lois and Batman… well, Batman probably ends up alone and/or dead, but let’s not dwell on that for now. Apart from those few super-hardcores who think the death of Gwen Stacy was a mistake and ruined the character, the consensus on “Peter ends up with MJ” is pretty resolute. You can bring back the Black Cat or have him date Silver Sable or introduce the Sexsational She-Spider and it’s not going to matter, because we already know how the story goes and those people will just be placeholders.

(As an aside, the almost total removal of MJ – one of the strongest and most beloved female characters in comics – from the book just seems ridiculous. At a time when comics are starved for female readership, you kick MJ to the curb? MAKES NO SENSE.)

And one more thing: There is now wide consensus that “One More Day” was an atrocious story which led to reasonable comics, and this is true in every sense but one; namely, that whenever the issue of what Mephisto actually did is raised, it just holds itself up like a big fucking red flag. Does Peter remember making the deal with Mephisto? (We’re not sure.) Does anybody remember Peter’s secret identity? (It seems kind of like Iron Man did in that most recent issue of Iron Man where Spidey guest-starred, but who knows. Eddie Brock pointedly didn’t seem to remember, nor did Norman Osborn. I think at this point Marvel editorial is just letting writers handle it however they think best, and thankfully “best” in most cases is “avoid with ten-foot pole.”)

Realistically, one would say “well, it doesn’t matter, comics” except that from a storytelling standpoint, it does matter; the reader can anticipate how someone who knows Peter’s identity will react to Spidey doing stuff as compared to someone who doesn’t. It’s the reason why, back in the day, when Spidey and Daredevil would show up in each other’s comics, that was a big deal; because Spidey knew Daredevil was Matt Murdock and Matt knew Spidey was Peter Parker, and that gave their scenes together added impact. This isn’t an argument for restoring that (with DD’s identity essentially quasi-public now, a lot of that is gone permanently barring a linewide revamp); it’s simply an argument for clarity, rather than, say, teasing the reader with meta-storytelling about whether or not Peter remembers the events of issue number whatever.

So in conclusion, I’d have to say that the reworked Spider-continuity is at best a muddled success, mostly because of core competence on the parts of the creators putting together the competence rather than the new editorial consensus being a good idea (because it wasn’t). The comics themselves have ranged from quite decent to quite lousy. The upside of the high-rate publishing schedule (lots of Spidey and a high degree of editorial consistency) outweigh the downside (staggering creators leads to a lack of sense of continuity; the year’s worth of books sometimes feels more like a lot of issues of Spider-Man’s Tangled Web than the core book).

Which isn’t a decisive answer one way or the other, of course. But that’s what happens when you take an essentially bad idea and try to make it as good as possible.

For months now it’s been the same question over and over again in email. “When are you going to do a parody of Secret Invasion?”

Well, here you go.

continue reading "Squeaky Wheel Gets The Grease"

So I was going through a couple of drink-recipe websites and, on a whim, started looking to see if there were any superhero-themed cocktails. And yes, there are. However, the results are disappointing.

For example, the most common recipe for a Batman is grenadine and orange juice. Which, while cute (a nonalcholic cocktail for Batman, very “ginger ale pretending to be champagne”) fails the obvious test of getting drunk. Also, let’s be honest, Batman needs TWO drinks.

The Bruce Wayne: Should be a playboyish, manly cocktail, a la those drinks they keep making up for Bond films.
The Batman: Should be dark in colour and hit you like a freight train.

There are numerous drinks for “Superman,” most of which are shots and a few of which play off the red/blue colour scheme. This seems wrong. A Superman should be a down-homey old-school sort of mixed drink, like a screwdriver or Irish Coffee – something your granddad would drink when he wanted something mixed rather than just a beer or a tumbler of whiskey. But with a single exotic ingredient.

After that there are a paucity of drink options. There is nothing worth a damn called a “Spider-Man,” for example. No good “Iron Man.” (“Pick five bottles from the bar at random by pointing with your eyes closed. Pour half an ounce from each into a glass. Drink. Order six more.”) No “Hulk.” The only “Wolverine” sounds disgusting (two shots of Bacardi Limon dumped into a pint of lager).

There’s one “Green Lantern,” playing off the color with melon liquor, but it seems insufficient somehow. The only “Captain America” seems wrong (Southern Comfort, amaretto, cranberry juice and rum?). A “Wonder Woman” is… well, what you’d expect (a bunch of fruit juices and fruit liquors, seemingly selected at random). A “Joker” has a distinct lack of purple or green.

The only recipe for a Constantine has Zima in it, for fuck’s sake.

Occasionally you find one obviously not comic-inspired that works. A “Fire and Ice,” for example, is quite apropos (half and half of cinnamon schnapps and peppermint liqueur). The “Blue Devil” (Blue Caracao, obviously, with gin and lemon) works too. A “Black Widow” both looks and tastes appropriate (float Blavod black vodka on top of cranberry juice).

Note that not every superhero name works as a cocktail name. A “Donna Troy” would just be a sad, sad joke. In fact pretty much every character who’s ever been a Titan would be a sad, sad joke. If the superhero has “man,” “woman,” “boy,” or “girl” in their name, they’d better be goddamned iconic or nobody will ever order that drink because they will sound like an idiot. (So no Frog-man, Beast Boy or Saturn Girl, for starters.) Cocktail names should be memorable.

But come on, there should be drinks for all of the following, as they would sound right being said in a bar:

Phantom Stranger (far and away number one on the “should be a drink” list)
Oracle
Cyclops
Doctor Strange
Black Bolt
Haunted Tank
Ghost Rider
Shining Knight
Ever-Lovin’ Blue-Eyed Thing

UPDATE: John, in comments, writes

the Dr. Strange should be just a dry martini (gin and not vodka, I think) with an unusual garnish (a la a Gibson).

This sounds almost exactly right to me, although there is an argument that the martini be a vodka one instead given that Strange, while urbane, is still American, and that’s always said “vodka” to me rather than “gin” (which has strong Brit connotations). Of course, taste should be the final definition, and if it is a vodka martini, the vodka should be really good vodka – I’d go with Chopin, but at a minimum Ketel One or Grey Goose, no Absolut or Stoli in a Dr. Strange, thank you very much.

As for the garnish? I’m going to say a thick slice of apple, which only gets used in appletinis (ugh). But I think it can complement a martini very nicely when there’s no sweet liqueur involved – a touch of sweetness and tartness to counterbalance the toughness and elegance of the martini is very Stephen Strange.

Also, calling vodka and Red Bull a “Deadpool” is brilliant. Keep it coming, folks.

UPDATE TWO: From email:

A Phantom Stranger needs to be a drink where one type of alcohol “ghosts” into the second – you know, seems to hang suspended within the first. But I don’t know how to do that.

Well, there’s two ways that I can think of to do that. The first way is to do the opposite of layering – for a layered shot or drink, you pour the heaviest component first, then the next heaviest, and so on. This prevents mixing. However, if you pour the lighter alcohol first and then pour in the heavier booze, it will plunge into the first. Ideally you want a second liquor only slightly heavier than your first, and a colored liquor being poured into a clear one.

The second way is to make a cloudy drink by taking something you don’t traditionally shake (such as a cream liqueur like Bailey’s or Amarula), making your recipe and shaking it. The cream liqueur will dissipate. However, this can just look gross rather than cool if you mix it wrong.

Both tricks require a reasonably experienced bartender, though. I can do the first, but not the second, so I am leaning towards the first method. Off to look at layering charts!

UPDATE THREE:

(suggested in email, and I’m pretty sure it works)

Phantom Stranger: Chilled cocktail glass. Pour 1 oz white Curacao into glass. Pour 1/2 oz white creme de cacao into the white Curacao, making sure not to smooth out the pour by bouncing it off the side of the glass or a demitasse spoon. Garnish with either an orange slice or a sliver of shaved chocolate. Serve immediately.

Hoo boy.

See, nowadays the kids, they make fun of Penance or Red Hulk when they want to make fun of stupid superhero character concepts. But back in the day? We had the Red Bee.

The Red Bee, a superhero whose power was that he had trained bees. Really. That was it. I know, I know, it sounds awfully dismissive to mock this guy with his bees; after all, the idea of training bees is by itself rather impressive, when you think about it. Somehow, the Red Bee can control whole swarms of bees! That is, in a low-key way, really rather impressive. I mean, Granny Weatherwax had to work her way up to doing that.

(Well, presumably he could control whole swarms of bees. The question of how he controlled the bees is as yet unresolved. Even Who’s Who seems willing to concede that it is possible and even likely that the Red Bee did not in fact have any bee-control powers per se, but instead was just a guy running around with a lot of bees.)

However, the problem is that while controlling swarms of bees might make you a great behavioral scientist or perhaps an up-and-coming honey magnate, as superhero powers go it is not the most impressive trick one can get, is it? If you are the Red Bee, twenty feet away from some gangster when he pulls out a gun, and you pull out your swarm of bees, the gangster can just shoot you and then the bees will presumably go find something more interesting to do with their time than sting the gangster to death. Because they are bees. They will establish a hive somewhere and then begin pollinating flowers. Because that is what bees do.

(And again, we do not know that he controlled the bees as such. But come to think, even if he controls the bees, where does he keep the bees? A swarm of bees is not exactly compact unless you cram them all into a little box and crush/smother them to death. And in the few Red Bee appearances I have read, he kept multiple swarms of bees on his person. Then again, maybe he just throws clumps of dead bees at people and hopes that they panic and scream “OH MY GOD BEES” and don’t notice that the bees are dead.)

Now, in fairness, the Red Bee always gave a good accounting of himself, right up until he got killed. Like, in All-Star Squadron, he joined Uncle Sam’s reformed Freedom Fighters and journeyed to Earth-X (the fabled Alternate Earth Full Of Nazis), where he fought Nazis with bees! Until some Nazis shot him. Of course, that was pre-Crisis. Post-Crisis, we don’t know what happened to the Red Bee, although in a James Robinson Starman story the ghost of the Red Bee revealed that he got his ass kicked and presumably killed by gangsters, possibly after he fought them with bees. James Robinson also wrote The Golden Age, wherein the Red Bee gets killed in one panel by the bad guy. (No idea if he fought that bad guy with bees.) This makes James Robinson notable for managing to kill the Red Bee twice. Even Roy Thomas never did that, and Roy Thomas was Geoff Johns before Geoff Johns was Geoff Johns.

(Hey, I just noticed that the Red Bee is a district attorney in “Superior City.” Man, in the DC Universe, what the hell kind of city calls itself “Superior City?” You’ve just got to believe that it’s, like, the DCU equivalent of Newark or Toledo or something, a smallish-to-middle city with Big Hopes And Big Plans For The Future. You want to go to the home of the state’s second-largest bottling plant? Superior City! Where do you think half the nation gets their shoelaces from? Superior City! It’s a good place for families and for people on the go! Superior City: Better Than Ever, Every Single Day!)

I dunno. On the one hand, the Red Bee definitely deserves a low rating; I mean, the costume alone (horizontally-striped tights? Pirate-shirt sleeves? Pink and black and red?) should merit close to a zero. And then there’s the whole “bee” thing. But on the other hand, he’s just so completely and utterly insane that it’s almost admirable. This is a guy who decided to fight crime with bees. The “new” Red Bee that they introduced last year is just your typical mutated insect/human crossbreed, boring as sin. That’s not a Red Bee anybody wants to read about; people want to read about the classic Red Bee, just because – fuck, if a writer can come up with a reason that makes sense for the Red Bee’s existence, that would be like pulling Excalibur from the stone, you know?

Grant Morrison can revamp Batman all he likes, but he’s not going anywhere near the Red Bee. And that deserves a little something extra.

Incidentally, in that James Robinson story, the ghost of the Red Bee was all depressed because he was a loser and a lousy superhero, so the other dead ghost heroes all said “no, you tried your best and we think you’re great for that.” You just know they were snickering into their gloves when they said that.

All I do when I look at these guys is think of the Smurfs. Except, you know, in space. It’s mostly the “there’s only one girl, and with the exception of the leader they all look the same” thing, you know? Instead of wearing red trunks rather than white, the leader (who is named Lyle) has blonde hair rather than brown.

Maybe there’s one that wears glasses and constantly tells everybody “Lyle says that when we fight the Space Trolls of Planet Blorkon, we should fly in zeta formation.” “Lyle says that if you keep your laser in good shape, it’ll keep you in good shape.” And then the other Knights of the Galaxy get pissed off and kick him out an airlock, and he says something hilariously self-pitying.

I am willing to lay odds that at some point in their comics run, they fought an evil space wizard who had an evil space cat. I am not kidding in the slightest about this.

Of course, the Knights of the Galaxy are not three apples tall and do not sing as they travel from place to place. (Well, actually, who knows, maybe they did sing. It was the Silver Age.) They do not each have their own etoseric specialty. There is no Knight of the Galaxy who is particularly good with tools, nor any Knight of the Galaxy who is unceasingly vain (and probably gay), nor any Knight of the Galaxy who is a psychotic mad bomber type. So they are obviously not Smurfs.

Obviously.

I mean it.

Also, man, are they incredibly Aryans of the Future or what?

The Legion has a time machine.

So why is it that the only place they ever go, ever, is the present day DC Universe? Surely there are all sorts of other places they can go?

It doesn’t have to be Shadow Lass, of course. “Talokian” just sounds kind of like “Connecticut,” and I like bad wordplay sometimes. And it doesn’t have to be Camelot, either. (Although more opportunities for the Legion to meet up with Etrigan are, in my book, always to be wanted. Mostly because Etrigan is bad-ass, and rest assured I am fully on board with Etrigan being an evil bastard rather than a heroic demon, because the former is awesome and the latter is kind of dorky.)

But there are options aplenty. Anybody who has ever watched an episode of Doctor Who knows this to be true. Pick an interesting historical setting. For style points, make it one with some strange thing that has never been explained, and explain that strange thing (preferably in a convoluted manner involving Brainiac Five blowing something up in the name of Science). The Tunguska Event, for example, is suitably mysterious (we think it was a meteorite, but we can’t be sure), and involves a large explosion, so there’s one right there that comes pre-suitable.

But wait! How about “how did the Aborigines get to Australia?” (Nobody knows.) Or “where’s the Ark of the Covenant?” (Nobody knows that either, except possibly for a few people and they aren’t telling if they do.) Did the Legion get involved in the quiet, subtle feud between Belisarius and Justinian? Did they at some point run into the Comte de St. Germain? (Actually, he probably made it to the 31st century. Seeing as how he is the Comte de St. Germain and all. Hey, maybe he’s R.J. Brande!) Do they know what happened to Judge Crater? Maybe he was a monster of some sort. Maybe they were responsible.

All of this should not be taken to transplant the Doctor’s storytelling model onto the Legion – nor, for that matter, Booster Gold’s, considering that Booster has the “hero who travels through time and fixes things” niche and I don’t think anybody should mess with it or make it redundant. No, the Legion doesn’t travel through time and do heroic things proactively. For them, it is entirely reactive – the Legion just has a knack for getting shoved to the ass end of time by some horrendous cosmic force and having to deal with that. (I mean, come on, their greatest foe is called the “Time Trapper.” That is kind of a hint.)

And of course, time travel doesn’t have to be limited just to Earth, and the Legion knows about the dangers of time travel and not altering the flow of history and blah blah blah responsibility-cakes. Imagine shoving them back to the Dominion homeworld just before the invasion of Earth (the one with the Khund and the Thanagarians and the Gil’Dishpan, not the one just recently in the 31st century with the robo-virus). They’ve got a front row seat at a decimating event in Earth’s history, but a necessary one. Think there might be conflict?