My mon Bahlactus don’ shiv.

1.) Is it just me, or does the cowboy star look uncannily like George W. Bush?

2.) Who, come to think, is also a fake cowboy.

3.) In the Golden Days of Hollywood, “pen” was a codeword for “heroin.”

4.) In 1948, $2.25 was “America’s best value” for a pen? I can get a perfectly good pen now for $2.25; maybe not a fancy one, like the Fineline presumably is, but then again, since when do fancy pens advertise on the back of comic books?

5.) So effectively the actual story here is “how Chuck’s crazy good luck got him in the movies.”

Every so often, I get emails from people saying “they heard” [x], asking for my opinion. Which is flattering, but honestly – I have practically no contacts within the comics industry. (I have a few in film and TV, but no, I don’t know what’s going to happen with Smallville this season. Honestly, I’m happy to get to watch secondhand preview DVDs from time to time. It saves me money.) Besides, most of the time these are just people repeating some crap some person on a messageboard told them which they believed for whatever reason.

On top of that, I’ll add that I personally don’t believe that this particular rumor is true; it just seems too implausible to me. That having been said, I thought it was interesting for discussion as a hypothetical scenario, so, in six words:

“Dan DiDio out; Jim Shooter in.”

Discuss the possible ramifications of this occurring… now!

I have a few more of these stored up but I think resuming the campaign would be… just kind of wrong, honestly. So they’ll come when I am at a loss for content, or I am bored, or I feel like it. I was planning to let them sit for a while, but then this week’s Legion came out. And don’t get me wrong, it is mostly good, in the Jim Shooter sense of “mostly good” (the plot and pacing are excellent, and the dialogue… less so). But it commits one of the cardinal sins of Legion writing, in my book.

These have been commonplace in Legion comics for nearly twenty years now – I’m pretty sure mock-swearing was introduced in the first few issues of v4, the “five years later” era, which was grim and gritty (in the non-mockworthy sense, at least for me), and it’s been a constant presence ever since, right down to Jim Shooter introducing “florg”, “zizz,” and “snoog” in the most recent issue (substitutes for “fuck,” “piss” and “shit,” respectively). “Grife,” one of the earliest, was probably the best, as it’s similar to “grief,” and frequently used in the context where somebody might say “good grief,” but it’s the rare exception to a rule that most of these are kind of silly.I look at made-up swearing as a failure on two levels.

Firstly, from a realism perspective, it just doesn’t work. “Fuck” – in a form recognizable to anybody hearing it today – dates back anywhere from one thousand to thirteen hundred years. “Shit” can be dated back to at least William the Conqueror; “cunt” to Chaucer. Obscenities in other tongues date back similarly long or even longer (“merde”, the French version of “shit”, goes back around fourteen hundred years). Obscenities, more than any other words in any language, tend to linger almost entirely unchanged because they’re so basic and, let us admit it, useful in their way.

Why would this change in the Legion’s time? “Interlac,” you say, but Interlac is a lingua franca, a common tongue, and common tongues almost universally become parasite languages – English right now, French in the Dark and Middle Ages, Mandarin and Cantonese evolving out of a thousand different village dialects coming together. These are languages that steal useful words and use them forever, especially when a major subsection of their userbase used them before adopting said common tongue – like, for example, humans. You know, the race which seeded subraces on all those other planets? Rimborians, Naltorians, Braalians, Imskians – get down to it and they’re all just humans with different genetic heritages, and they all spoke English at their cultural base. We can maybe argue they’d be speaking Chinese instead, but the Legion’s cultural history and background is, let’s face it, pretty damn Anglo.

(Indeed, I see 31st-century Interlac being in relation to 21st-century English as 21st-century English is to Middle English – one speaking the older tongue would probably be unable to understand one speaking the newer, but the person speaking the newer would occasionally understand snatches of what the older-speaker might be saying.)

The second reason I don’t like made-up swears is because they detract from the narrative. Yes, I understand the Legion is speaking Interlac, but I’m reading English. Unless the obscenities are entirely new – and using them as obvious placeholders for familiar cusses makes it pretty clear they aren’t – there’s no logical reason that the “translation” should be inconsistent, beyond the demands of the publisher and editorial standards –

– and the reader knows this, because it’s obvious, and it just ruins the suspension of disbelief. It stops being a story and becomes words on paper. “Florg? What the fuck is florg?”

And this comes from someone, as you are well aware, who likes to write characters that swear. But if you can’t write the real thing, then don’t fake it. Garth Ennis did it deftly in Hitman by having his characters use very mild swears (“motherloving”, “friggin’,” et cetera) stand in for the more serious ones the characters would obviously be using instead were it not for publication standards, but even if you don’t want to go that route (and I’d argue that Legion probably shouldn’t), there’s a very simple alternative: just write without using obscenities, be they real or no.

People do it all the time. Really.

2004:

2008:

EDIT TO ADD: Since Teh Mighty Kurtz hisself has seen fit to link back to me, I feel it only fair to mention where I previously did not that I think this works more as a funny unintentional tie-in gag more than anything else (with Brent being exasperated with Cole because Cole is making PvP into a Serious Comic Strip). I don’t think that was the intention at all, mostly because whatever Kurtz’s pros and cons may be, “subtlety” isn’t on the list of pros. (And this is a neutral judgement. Gilbert Gottfried isn’t subtle either, and he is as funny as fuck.)All that having been said, I still stand by the comments made in this post, and Brent’s mouth looks terrible now.

1.) It is kind of pointless to run from a possessed gun. The gun can shoot you faster than you can run.

2.) Guns don’t kill people – demon guns kill cowards.

3.) If you have a fey moustache, it is your own damn fault if a possessed weapon kills you, Mr. Nancy Boy.

4.) There is no sentence fragment so ludicrous that it cannot become a Golden Age comic’s story title by giving it an appropriately large font and an exclamation mark. “The Elephant… MURDERS!” “The Pink Doily of DEATH!” Et cetera.

5.) Psuedo-realistic sound effects were not invented until 1971.

Longtime readers will by this point know that one of the things that interests me most about the Legion of Super-Heroes, from a storytelling standpoint, is the thousand-year gap between the present day DC universe and the Legion setting – essentially using the Legion as a way to play proxy psychohistorian for the DCU in some respects, using it to replay Indiana Jones plots in a sci-fi revisioning in other respects.This one is somewhere in between.

The Keeper of Truths is a very simple concept that can go any number of ways, and it keys off the simple fact that in the DCU, there are at least a few characters present in the 21st century who could show up in the 31st just by having lived that long. When history is uncertain – and after a thousand years with a couple of interstellar cataclysmic wars in the interim, it’s going to be uncertain – having a first-person perspective on things gives you an advantage, if you care to use it. The Keeper of Truths doesn’t particularly; whoever he is, he or she has entered into a solitary existence. But if you can find him or her, they’re willing to chat. (Just because one chooses to be a hermit doesn’t mean one loses sight of basic manners.)

There are a few story ideas I have as regards the actual identity of the Keeper of Truths which I don’t want to give away, so let me just tell you a few people that he or she isn’t:

It’s not J’onn J’onnz.

It’s not Vandal Savage.

It’s not the Shade. (Although I think there’s a really good story to be told involving the Shade and Shadow Lass. Are the shadow powers of the Talokians related to the Shade? I mean, Mikaal Tomas was a Talokian, and a contemporary of the shadowy man. There’s already a potential connection. And are Shadow Lass’s shadow powers like the Shade’s, even if they differ in origin? Is Shadow Lass sort-of-immortal like the Shade is? The more I think about it, the more I think somebody has to write this story, if only because the Starman character base needs to be dug out of obscurity again.)

Heck, maybe it doesn’t have to be an immortal at all. Maybe it’s a stranded time traveler – an elderly Rip Hunter (long, long past the events of Booster Gold). Maybe it’s Extant. No, I’m kidding, I wouldn’t bring back Extant. Or Waverider.

Maybe it’s Hawkman in his latest reincarnation, remembering a thousand years of previous lives, stuck in a life cycle which Hawkgirl accidentally (or not) skipped. This theory’s awfully workable, not least because unlike a lot of the other characters, it doesn’t matter if DC editorial decides to kill off Hawkman as a sales stunt. Reincarnation, bitches!

(Or maybe R.J. Brande is an much older version of Hawkman. R.J. Brande has to be somebody, I think. Or maybe he doesn’t. Heh.)

Maybe it’s a clone with copied brain patterns of the original, remembering everything that happened to the original right up until his death. Maybe it’s Batman. Maybe it’s Ben Reilly! Okay, it’s not Ben Reilly.

Maybe by this point I’ve illustrated the fun that can be had with uncertain history and a ton of origin possibilities for potentially significant figures, and that was the point of this whole exercise to begin with, and maybe there isn’t a definite identity for the Keeper of Truths.

(I’m lying. There really, really is.)

Way back in the day, there was American Seeds.

And now…

Click on image to enlarge

(I promise this is my absolute last word on anything to do with “One More Day” until, I dunno, they make Spidey gay for Harry Osborn or something.)

One of the basic premises of the Spider-Man reboot with “One More Day” is that the marriage of Peter and Mary Jane, as it stands, doesn’t “work” as a storytelling device, that it impedes the natural flow of the character. This is not an unfair criticism, because for a great deal of the lifespan of the marriage, Peter and MJ’s relationship has almost been a chore rather than something that works for telling stories.

However, that’s not something that’s intrinsically the fault of the marriage itself, but rather the fact that most of the Spider-writers haven’t had any clue what to do with it. There are of course notable exceptions. J.M. DeMatteis’ final Harry Osborn as Green Goblin saga is a big one, using MJ and Peter’s relationship as an excellent grounding point for Harry’s insanity. Matt Fraction’s recent annual, positing Spidey and MJ as an unbreakable team, is even better because it gets right of the heart of what a marriage should be.

But I’m getting away from the reason I started writing this, which is Erik Larsen’s most recent column, wherein, discussing recent Spider-events, he raises a point of comparison:

“And that’s what has happened with Superman — with Lois in the know about the Clark and Superman and married to him — the dynamic has changed and the new dynamic simply isn’t as interesting as the old dynamic. The old dynamic worked — the new one doesn’t.”

This is where one has to respectfully point out that Erik Larsen has, I suspect, taken up smoking crack – because the Supermarriage works well. In fact, it works naturally and uniquely well. And there are good reasons for this.

The Supermarriage works, firstly, because it approaches the concept of marriage from the proper perspective for a superhero comic: as a team-up. Because, really, what is marriage if not the ultimate team-up?

Back in the 1970s, the Bronze Age Superman comics made some startling editorial changes. Lois Lane stopped being a fucking idiot and became quite rightly portrayed as a brilliant journalist in her own right – and capable of recognizing that Clark Kent wasn’t half a bad catch on his own. Both of these elements were reinforced by the very strong hints (indeed, often not so much “hints” as “saying it right out”) in the 1970s comics that Lois had already figured out that Clark was Superman, and that the stumbling block for the relationship wasn’t that she could only love Superman and not Clark, but that she couldn’t accept a relationship with someone who was constantly lying to her, even if it were for her own good.

All of this is why Lois works as an equal partner for Superman. In capable hands, she’s portrayed as a bit smarter than Big Blue, which makes sense – she doesn’t have powers to fall back upon when she gets stumped by a problem. She’s definitely ballsier than he is, and entirely too willing to pick up a giant gun from S.T.A.R. Labs if she thinks her husband is in trouble fighting a giant evil baddie villain person. They’re a team, and that’s the storytelling model, even if Superman gets top billing. (Except in a Lois Lane series, which, come on now, is something vitally needed. She had two-hundred-something issues fifty years ago, for crissake; surely we can get her a miniseries or two now?)

I mean, does anybody write in saying that the Fantastic Four just doesn’t work because they’re a family rather than a bunch of friends?

Bringing it back to Spider-Man and MJ now: if we take the rules that make the Supermarriage work, we see that by and large they don’t apply to the Spider-marriage. MJ barely ever gets treated as an equal partner to Spider-Man, and in fact got shoved into a supermodel gimmick that’s not only detrimental to the lovable-loser image of Spider-Man – and if you think a lovable loser can’t have a hot wife in a good ongoing narrative, I’d point out that The King of Queens has been a hit show for how many years again? – but both patronizing and insulting to MJ’s character to boot. “Tee hee I’m a supermodel giggle giggle (*wears lingerie* *makes mock-pouty face*)” isn’t going to win over any new fans, much less bring the old ones on board unless you assume that all the old-school fans are borderline-misogynist losers, which – wait a second…

Seriously, though. If you want the marriage to work as a storytelling device, it’s not hard: you find the strengths Mary Jane has which complement Peter in a team-up sense and allow her to use them. Giving her a job where she makes a lot of money doesn’t count, especially when the job is predicated on her being pretty, because that just implies that Mary Jane is just a set of tits and a nice smile. Besides, MJ being hot doesn’t logically lead to her being rich and successful anyway. There are plenty of hot women who work as bank tellers and Starbucks servers, you know.

MJ’s strengths that complement Peter? She’s more socially adept than he is (Peter Parker, when properly written, should always have that slight anxiety that personifies the grown-up nerd), which means she’s ideal for covering his ass when he’s nearly going to get his secret identity exposed or when he needs to make a quick change. She knows people – even if she’s not famous, MJ should be the sort of person who knows somebody everywhere who’s willing to do her a solid just because they like her. And she probably follows cultural news a lot more closely than he does.

And, sincerely – the Jackpot idea (assuming that MJ is Jackpot and it’s not just a huge Marvel swerve, which it of course could be) is actually pretty good, the one redeemable portion of the whole stupid retcon mess. Even if MJ is an inactive super when married to Peter – she’s still a super.

This is probably going to be the last one of these I have time to do for a while; law school is already starting to ramp back up the intensity metre.

But I’m rather happy with it, and if “One More Day” was just too static and boring to mock, at least “Brand New Day” isn’t, despite thus far having a near-total lack of Peter Parker actually being Spider-Man, and despite Steve McNiven apparent belief that Peter really, really likes running his hands through his hair. (I don’t know what it is about Steve McNiven’s art that prompts me to do these things.)

Not included: the three pages introducing Mister Negative, both because I felt they impeded the remixed narrative and because I don’t want to condemn the creation of potentially interesting new villains.

continue reading "It Was Either This Or Interpretive Dance"

So “One More Day” has come to its entirely predictable and deeply stupid end. The internets are aglow with the sound of fanboy heads exploding in rage. We’ve seen J. Michael Straczynski and Joe Quesada have a very public “civil disagreement,” where each is more or less trying to find the most eloquent euphemism for “what a fucking retard” that they can manage.

(We’ve also learned, incidentally, that “Sins Past,” another Spider-Man storyline which everybody understandably loathed and which JMS took a ton of shit for, was not actually JMS’s idea at all but instead Quesada’s. I wonder if eventually it’ll come out that Quesada had the idea for “The Other” as well, thus giving him the trifecta for What The Fuck Were You Thinking moments as regards Spider-Man.)

We’ve already seen the first eight pages of the “new” Amazing Spider-Man by Dan Slott and Steve McNiven, which isn’t bad, but… it’s kind of like watching a Beach Boys cover band, you know? It doesn’t matter how good they are, because they’re still trying to cover stuff that’s thirty to forty years old, so they sound cliched no matter how talented they might be. (Incidentally, there is no way at this point in the character’s publishing history to have an early-thirtysomething Peter Parker calling Betty Brant “Ms. Brant” without having it sound embarrassing and even slightly pervy.)

Oh, and Harry Osborn is alive again for whatever reason.

But if you think this is stupid? Don’t worry. There’s an obvious, obvious escape route.

continue reading "Let’s Play “Let’s Fix “Brand New Day” Again”"