La Peregrine is awesome. They should bring him back. (Preferably not to kill him immediately.)

Bahlactus once cracked an egg in Reno, just to watch it fry.

Contest of Champions, the first Marvel miniseries, celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary late last year. So I felt it only appropriate to take a look back at it, and see how it might… differ… if published today.

THEN:

NOW:

THEN:

NOW:

THEN:

NOW:

THEN:

NOW:

THEN:

NOW:

THEN:

NOW:

THEN:

NOW:

What the fucking hell is up with PvP?

Look, I’m not so naive as to think that the strip is as good as it was three or four years ago, when Kurtz was arguably at his peak, and when the comic was genuinely good. The art’s gotten worse, Kurtz has gotten lazier, and nowadays it’s actually funny maybe one strip in five, if that. But over the last few months, the comic has just cratered. It has entered that special realm we in the Comic Strip Lookin’ At profession call “worse than Garfield.”

I mean, seriously: “The Jade Fontaine Mysteries?” Really. Let’s just take a look at this in detail for a second: it’s a two-and-a-half-week-long storyline. With not one, but three introductory strips (four if you count the “he’s dead” strip). Half of the strips don’t even have punchlines, which last I heard is kind of important in a gag-a-day strip. (Unless this sort-of-alternate-Rockford Files-reality where Jade is a hobbyist detective is something you find innately funny. Kurtz might. I don’t think most people do.) Most of the punchlines that are there aren’t that good (the CSI gag is worth a chuckle, but the rest… yeah, you’d have to be really generous to call this warmed-over 80s-sitcom hackwork “funny”). The storyline isn’t even particularly clever: it’s predictable and just plain dull.

“Bing, bang, bing, popcorn” is not a fucking punchline.

This is terrible, terrible stuff, and it’s all the more disappointing because this is a comic that at one point was reliably entertaining – not Schulz or Watterson or Kelly, but usually pretty witty and clever (even if Kurtz’ grammar and punctuation were never and have never been, ahem, airtight).

Let me say, firmly, that this isn’t the “why isn’t PvP a gaming comic any more” rant that’s been blustered out a million times. There is no reason that Kurtz has to do a gaming comic. (Indeed, I read his Wedlock strip that he did on Modern Tales a few years ago, and it was better than most of his work on PvP by a country mile, and again, this is when PvP didn’t suck.) There are tons of shitty gaming comics out there, and even a few good ones like Penny Arcade and… uh… okay, there’s Penny Arcade, I guess. If Kurtz doesn’t want to make XBox jokes, there’s no reason he should feel obligated to make XBox jokes.

But when PvP was a dedicated gaming comic, as opposed to the generic kinda-geek culture comic it’s become, it had focus. Not everybody would get the gamer jokes, but those who would could appreciate the quality thereof.

One of the most basic lessons any comedian can tell you is this: the wider you spread your sights, the better you have to be. Comedy is hard, and in order to avoid being banal you have to be able to bring a fresh observation to the table. There’s a reason comics idolize guys like Bill Cosby. If you haven’t seen the documentary Comedian (which is worth a watch), there’s one segment where Chris Rock, in complete awe, recounts to other comedians how he watched Cosby kill two sets, back-to-back, “with no repeats” – meaning Bill Cosby did two killer ninety-minute sets without repeating a single joke, gag or story. I’ve done standup, a few times back in the day, and after doing one five-minute set a half-dozen times got it to the point where I could – well, not kill, but at least entertain reasonably. I cold-opened a few beginner’s shows and managed to successfully warm up the crowd, and I was happy with that – but that was the same set every time, refined over the course of a month or so. That’s not three hours of material, you know?

I’m getting away from my point here, which is that someone like Cosby – or Bob Newhart, or Woody Allen (who did legendary standup back in the day), or Bill Hicks, these guys can/could rock out fresh material in a heartbeat about anything, because they were just that good that they could find a fresh, original take on any subject that crossed their mind. Other people, on the other hand, aren’t quite at that level – so they find themselves a niche that’s unoccupied. Jeff Foxworthy does redneck jokes and good ol’ boy humour. Denis Leary does “common-sense” rants. Sarah Silverman has her “cute Jewish girl who says absolutely dreadful things” shtick. Dane Cook goes up on stage and spazzes out like a fucknut.

And all of this is fine (well, except for Dane Cook), because it’s better, in the world of professional laughery, to be funny about something than unfunny about everything. You winnow down until you hit that sweet spot, where you’re as funny as possible with as broad an appeal as possible. Scott Kurtz used to be in that zone, and he sure as hell isn’t now. I can’t help but suspect that it’s because he wants to widen PvP‘s commercial appeal. (Remember when he offered PvP to newspapers for free and pretty much everybody passed? That had to sting, and I wonder if it in turn affected his creative mindset.)

Anyway. Moral of story: “Bing, bang, bing, popcorn” is sucky and I would please like less of that. Thank you.

#32 in an increasingly-innumerate series of thirty:

One of the things that fascinates me about Legion as a concept is that it is one thousand years in the future, and the variance and similarity with which the DC Universe of “today” would reflect upon its future one millennium later would by necessity at least reflect the variance and similarity of our world to the Earth of about one thousand years ago.

Consider our planet around the year 1000 mark. The Byzantine Empire – which nowadays is barely a footnote in most basic history textbooks – is at its height under Basil II. The Saxon dynasties in England are reaching their nadir, and in less than half a century William The Conqueror is going to show up and, well, conquer. In Japan, the Fujiwara regency is going to dominate for another four hundred years. Monasticism – one of the most important tools for scientific advancement until the Renaissance – is only getting going! There’s practically no major works of art being produced at this time that will survive the next thousand years; we’re technically still in the Dark Ages. This world is almost totally dissimilar from what we recognize as modern society.

(Mark Waid, occasionally played up some brilliant aspects of this, such as the renaming of cities. Of course, he also had 20th-century paper-and-ink comic books surviving as artistic artifacts for a thousand years.)

But at the same time, this is the time at which the first major secret societies arose. And come on, secret societies are pretty awesome, not just for their innate sinister (or deus ex machina) story potential, but also because of how they manage to get things wrong as time passes along and they adopt a pseudo-religious reverence for their lyrical misinterpretation of historical record.

And what better subject for a society to form around in the DC Universe than Wesley Dodds, the first costumed super-hero? (Well, depending on which writer you read, that might actually be the Crimson Avenger, but there’s no reason the Illuminated Order Of Scarlet Vengeance can’t be lurking around a few shadows down and to the left, continually feuding with these Johnny-come-latelies who don’t even know what issue of Whiz Comics Spy Smasher first appeared in.)

The Sandymen – or the Righteous Collective Of The Ebon Desert, if you prefer (and they do) – hide in the background of the future, quietly assembling in back rooms to ensure that costumed superheroism can continue to propogate in the brave new universe. R.J. Brande may or may not be a member – although if he is, he probably knows more about the true history of the universe than they do. In the history painstakingly assembled by the Sandymen, the Justice League of Internationalism was founded by Kyle Gardner and Donna Prince, summoning the force of the mystical Black Lightning of H’ronmeer to combat the Seven Deadly Sinistarros threatening to destroy the planet.

But even though they get a lot of things wrong – they also get a lot of things right. They know about Kryptonite, including the effects of Steel Kryptonite (only discovered in 2128, and only seen twice since then) and Translucent-K (an artificial K-compound invented in 2437) on Kryptonians and other races alike. They know the last whereabouts of Brainiac 3.6, and why you don’t go near that black hole (well, why you stay further away from that black hole as opposed to other black holes). They don’t know where J’onn J’onzz is now, but they know the details of his last recorded heroic act (2750, on Khundia of all places).

Inaccurate archives. They’re fun. And they’re more fun when they’re a bunch of principled historian-nerds who are, unfortunately, wrong a lot of the time.

From JLA/Hitman:

One of the things I like about Garth Ennis is that, as a writer, he steadfastly refuses to write slow, lazy arcs around potentially offensive subtopics. What we have here is a fairly subtle and just simply well-written example of this.

The subtopic in question here is “Superman is a Christian.” (And, given that he was raised in Kansas, the odds are pretty good that he’s a Methodist. Although, given his emphasis on deeds over words, he might make a good Catholic as well. Really, this sort of thing is fun!)

Now, there’s a long and proud history of the stupidly fake Kryptonian religion in DC Comics, based around Rao, the godly personification of Krypton’s sun, and all of it exists for one reason: people weren’t comfortable writing Superman as a Christian. This is understandable, considering that Superman was created by a couple of Jews in the first place, and that we often recognize that comics history is a gradual, accumulated thing. One of the biggest reasons for this? It wasn’t until the first Superman movie that Smallville was finally and definitively located in Kansas. Prior to that, it was in Generic Rural Location, U.S.A., although occasionally comic writers would hint at its location being in rural Maryland. (Mostly because they wanted it to be somewhat close to Metropolis, which for a very long time was supposedly in Delaware – although, with Smallville unapologetically placing Metropolis in Kansas as well, this might change over the next few years.)

But nowadays, we’re coming up on thirty solid years of Superman being raised in small-town Kansas. It’s become an accepted part of the canon, unthinkable to ditch. Much as in Batman continuity, Arkham Asylum only dates back to the mid-70s, and Alfred Pennyworth being a coolly competent English butler rather than a comic prop only to the mid-80s – these are all relatively recent additions to comics canon, but sometimes, things just stick. Harley Quinn, along with the other minor story tweaks introduced by the animated Batman cartoon, is probably the best and most recent example of something just glomming onto canon in this manner.

In Superman canon, Lex Luthor has only been a ruthless business genius for about twenty years, but it’s stuck just as firmly as Kansas did, and this in spite of the fact that a lot of top-name writers obviously wish he could just be a boring old mad scientist again. (Sorry, but Tycoon Luthor is just an endlessly more interesting variation on the character, guys. Deal with it.)

Now, with that greater detail of geographic certainty placing Smallville more definitively (and if you’re a detail nut, you can not only place Smallville in Kansas, but even give a good geographic guess as to which county it’s supposed to be in), this narrows down the demographics of the Kents. Having Superman exclaim “Great Rao!” as a euphemism for a mild religious blasphemy is cute, but it also served as as a signal that, in previous modes of storytelling, Superman was a generic stand-in. Maybe Smallville was a small town filled with Lutherans. Or Quakers. Or Seventh-Day Adventists. Or Jews. (Okay, Siegel and Shuster aside, Smallville probably wasn’t Jewish.) When Smallville was just an idea rather than a fictionalized location, this was more possible…

…but nowadays, with continuity being what it is, it’s kind of dumb. Superman was raised by a prototypical small-town couple in Kansas. Jonathan and Martha Kent are supposed to exemplify small-town America in every way except for being truly virtuous people, all the better to serve as example for young Clark. On balance of probabilities, the exceptional likelihood is that the Kents are practicing Christians, and given Superman’s personal belief system before you attach a religion to it, that goes for him as well. Besides which, religious belief tends to be inertious, and a conversion to Raoism (or whatever you call it) would require a pretty serious life event for Superman to realistically do such a thing.

(On the other hand, it makes perfect sense for Supergirl to swear in Rao’s name, what with her having been raised in the faith and all.)

So, Superman’s a Christian. Now, a shitty writer would make a big deal out of this. I can just see twenty-two pages from some drama-producer about how Superman’s Christianity makes him a hypocrite, for example. Or, worse, a crossover with Zauriel WHERE ONLY SUPERMAN’S RELIGIOUS BELIEF CAN blah blah blah Armageddon-cakes.

Garth Ennis, on the other hand, plays it as it lays. He doesn’t need to write some dramatic toss about Superman’s angst or anger with God or whatever. He just ends his comic with Superman flying up to the moon to pray for Tommy Monoghan, because Ennis understands that prayer, like all human activity, is ultimately an expression of the self, and doesn’t have to be especially noteworthy. It’s not something you overlook; it’s just something you add, another level to understand the character on. It doesn’t have to be a story hook. It just has to be there.

And that’s why Ennis can write rings around most comic superhero writers when he feels like it.

I saw Persepolis a few weeks ago at a press screening for the Toronto International Film Festival, and last night I watched Superman/Doomsday. And really, there are no two works as spiritually akin as these two are: Marjane’s struggle against patriarchal fundamentalism is, dare I say it, exactly like Superman’s struggle against a giant killer alien hitting him repeatedly with a tanker truck.

Okay, not so much.

Persepolis is much, much better than the book was. This may seem like hyperbole, but I assure you, it isn’t – the dreadful events depicted in the comic take on much greater immediacy when they’re animated and happening in “real time” as opposed to when they’re static images on a page. The comic was interesting, and even involving, but for me it was never really very gripping. (Your mileage, of course, may vary.) The movie, on the other hand, is gripping – deeply so, both when it’s lightly entertaining (Marjane air-guitaring to Megadeth) and darkly oppressive (the secondhand, surrealistic accounts of the frontlines of the Iran/Iraq war). The same cartoony motif that is omnipresent throughout the film both makes the comedic bits funnier and the dramatic bits more poignant (and yes, I realize that you can say the same about the comic, but in the case of the film it’s even more apparent). And technically, it’s a marvel – simple black-and-white animation rarely manages to pull off the degree of liveliness that this flick does. Hell, most colour-animation films aren’t as lively as Persepolis is.

Early buzz has it that France has selected it as their entry for the Foreign Language Film category in this year’s Academy Awards, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it also get a nod for Best Animated Film in a year where thus far its only serious competition is Ratatouille. In short, it’s very, very good, quite possibly great. See it on the big screen if you can: it really is a beautifully made movie.

Superman/Doomsday is a retelling of the Death of Superman saga, pared down with a lot of the extraneous bits removed. Other than Doomsday and a few brief appearances by Kelex, this is a very pure Superman story: it’s about Superman, Lois Lane and Lex Luthor, and the complicated relationships they have, plus a lot of awesome earthshaking violence. Doomsday’s brutality is barely toned down at all – he brutally murders a lot of innocent human beings (although without much blood, to be sure), and later on in the movie Superman’s heat vision becomes genuinely terrifying as he wields it with the precision of a laser. (Well, it’s actually a crazy clone of Superman. I would have avoided spoiling that, but the moment he shows up it is SO GODDAMNED OBVIOUS HE IS A CLONE that I feel fine about it.)

What’s really wonderful about the movie is that, more than anything, this is Lois’ movie – she’s more the protagonist than Superman is, because Superman has a big-ass fight, dies, then is mostly offscreen for the majority of the rest of the movie until the SECOND big-ass fight. It’s Lois who has to deal with her lover being gone, and Lois who goes around trying to find out what the hell is up with Obviously Fake Replacement Clone Superman, and Lois who invades Lexcorp on a mission to discover the truth. (And, in case I haven’t made it clear yet, this is very much a movie about how Lois and Clark are a team, and I’m glad DC is one hundred percent behind that. Unlike certain other companies I could name, Marvel Comics.)

The voicework is pretty good: Anne Heche does a good Lois, Adam Baldwin is perfectly acceptable as Big Blue and James Marsters comes very, very close to matching the level of perfection Clancy Brown achieved as Lex Luthor in the Superman and Justice League cartoons. Not quite as good, but then again Clancy Brown just owned Lex, lock stock and barrel. The animation is generally good, despite the fact that the attempt to give Superman prominent cheekbones makes him look alternately like he’s severely aged or has weird facial scars.

Obviously, Superman/Doomsday isn’t going to be as general-interest as Persepolis is, but it’s a very well-made ‘toon feature and a decent Superman story, so if you like cartoons and you like Superman, you won’t be disappointed.

After my law school classes today, I went to four separate comic stores downtown looking for a copy of Dr. Thirteen: Architecture and Morality.

Sold out. Everywhere. I even called a couple other stores and they, too, were sold out. One store got ten copies (which, for a trade paperback featuring a… no, not D-list, more like U-list or something character, is a lot) and sold them all.

I am just saying.

So, Jim Shooter has been announced as the new writer on Legion of Super-Heroes, and the comicblogotubes have mostly gone berserk with joy.

My reaction is twofold:

1.) Shooter’s most recent track record – discounting Defiant Comics, which he was producing at a time when he was simultaneously fighting a number of vicious legal battles more or less singlehandedly – as a writer is his collected work at Valiant, and the best way to sum up his stories there would be “excellent concepts and plotting, weak scripting.” With the exception of Archer and Armstrong (which even now remains a very entertaining read), Shooter’s dialogue on the Valiant titles he wrote could, at most, be considered workmanlike – and more realistically, hokey. The ideas behind the comics are uniformly imaginative (you can even say that about the Defiant titles, although those all fell apart rather quickly), which is great – I strongly believe that Legion has to be a comic rooted in Big Ideas.

But it also has to be reliably entertaining, and if I’m distracted by painful 80s-ish dialogue then it’ll have a hard road to run. (Of course, maybe Shooter has upped his game dialoguewise. Also of course, Chris Claremont sure didn’t.)

2.) All the Legion fans demanding that Shooter bring back the “classic” pre-Crisis Legion need to shut the fuck up so goddamned bad. No, seriously. Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up right now. There’s lots you can say about the Waid reboot Legion both good and bad, but the one enormous plus it has going for it, at a time when thanks to the cartoon Legion is better poised then ever to make a return to having a large devoted fanbase again, is that it is new and thusly much more fucking accessible.

And I know whereof I speak: I’ve been a Legion fan since I was seven years old. I literally grew up with the pre-Crisis Legion, and therefore I think I say with some authority that this self-absorbed whiny selfish self-important bullshit is the very worst side of all comics fandom, and please save it for some comic I don’t particularly care about. Go read, I dunno, Manhunter or something, and bitch about how Kate Spencer isn’t the “real” Manhunter.

Your refusal to read new Legion comics because they aren’t the “real” Legion isn’t a point of pride, understand? It’s a kid throwing a fucking tantrum. If you don’t want to read new Legion comics, that’s fine and good, god knows DC makes a shitload of money off you reprinting the Archive hardcovers at X shitload of dollars per pop. But I really, really don’t need to hear about it. If I’m not reading a comic because I think it’s not good, I don’t go around loudly proclaiming “man X-Men used to be so good, back in the day” or whatever.

Seriously. That shit pisses me off something hardcore.

Dave Campbell recently featured a post about non-compelling comics covers, and in the ensuing discussion, a lot of people were particularly confused by this cover. Because nobody knows who the Cosmic Avengers are. This is entirely fair, because the Cosmic Avengers never actually had their own comic book per se. I thought I would explain this horribly arcane cover, as I was the sole person purchasing What If back in the late 90s.

(Yes, it was me. Now you know.)

So. Note the little graphic in the bottom. “Timequake! Part two of five!” This was probably the nadir of What If?, where the writers were so stretched for new What Ifs that they came up with this bullshit adventure story featuring Uatu as various alternate universes MOOSHED TOGETHER. There were also this group of people with clocks for faces, none of whom were the Clock King. But I’m getting sidetracked.

For example, two such universes were:

1.) the one where Wolverine became Lord of the Vampires (by killing Dracula when Storm failed to beat Dracula) and then started taking over the world by turning all the mutants into vampires until a fight with the Punisher and Dr. Strange’s ghost brought Logan back to his senses and he read the Montesi Formula aloud (the spell that destroys all vampires, you see, from the climax of the old Dr. Strange-versus-Dracula stories in the early 80s).

2.) the one where the X-Men lost Inferno and only the last-minute teamup of Rachel Summers, Johnny Storm and Dr. Strange (Dr. Strange shows up a lot in What Ifs) could possibly stop Belasco and Maddie Pryor from taking over the world with a demonically enhanced Wolverine.

In “Timequake!”, these two got smooshed together into an alternate universe where the X-Vampires controlled most of North America, and then Mr. Sinister showed up just before Belasco attacked with his demons and cloned a bunch of new X-Men to fight the demons. (I think. I am a little fuzzy on the details. I remember Boom Boom getting decapitated and that is about it.)

So, back to this issue. The Cosmic Avengers are the Avengers from an issue of “What If” where the Kree blow up Earth, and the Avengers (who were in space, you see) fight a guerrilla war against the Kree for the rest of the comic until they, you know, win and stuff. And in this comic, the Cosmic Avengers fight the Guardians of the Galaxy, who I believe are not the canon Guardians but the Guardians from a What If where the Guardians were formed in the 20th century rather than the 30th.

Simple, huh? And people wonder why this book got cancelled!

I think if Roy Thomas were to read the previous passage aloud, his erection would be massive enough to generate gravity.

So now that I’ve officially started law school, I’m expected to start thinking about what sort of legal philosophy I’m going to support.

This is really remarkably easy.

This one.

When in doubt, I believe the only legal tidbits you desperately need to know in order to serve effectively as a dedicated lawyer are all evident in the career of Tenzil “Trust Me, I’m A Senator!” Kem – member of the Legion of Super-Heroes, defeater of Pulsar Stargrave, destroyer of the Miracle Machine, three-time winner of the Bismollian Mita-Yum Toxic Baking Championship, voted “5817th Most Sexy Humanoid” by Playfem magazine and, lest we forget, an actual honest to god lawyer person.And what is the Kem school of legal thought?

1.) International Law Is Easer Than You Think It Is.

2.) Always Have Your Court Strategy Thought Out Ahead Of Time.

3.) Exclaim! With Exclamation Marks! And Point At People! And Always Make Sure Everything You Say Makes Your Client Look Less Guilty!

4.) When In Doubt, Go With The Insanity Defense.

5.) When The Insanity Defense Doesn’t Work, Trick The Evil Judge!

and most importantly

6.) Lawyers Get Maaaaaaaad Booty.

How can I go wrong?

This is what happens when somebody tells me that something unproven is a certainty and I disagree.

In this case the email in question said “the reason there are so few DC movies is because nobody wants to see anything but batman and maybe superman. wonder woman never gets made because she sucks. green lantern and flash are too complicated, so is justice league. and nothing else would make their money back after they made it. you can’t make a movie about elongated man or guys like that.”

I disagree, and my argument is thus:

But I am sure that the varied talents of the comics blogospheric fandom (which needs a shorter name – I nominate “the Crunklehood”) can make the point even better. So my challenge to all of you is thus: better my visual argument. Do up a mock poster for the movie you wish DC would just make already. Or Marvel, why not (although given Marvel’s releasing schedule I’m pretty sure Rocket Racer is on tap for 2012). Photoshop it, draw it, do a Claymation trailer, whatever. Email me your link and I’ll put it up here.(Also, a valuable lesson learned: making Question’s no-face is goddamned hard to do.)

Brainiac Five normally does not have the patience to dabble in events of mere fisticuffsmanship, but, to show willing, he is participating. He also kindly requests that people stop bothering him about this now.

Bahlactus makes you dizzy like the twister made Dorothy, if you think you can beat him you in the minority.

On the right: Cal Thomas!

Perhaps there will not always be an England. An exodus unprecedented in modern times, coupled with a record influx of foreigners, is threatening to erode the character of the land of William Shakespeare and overpowering monarchs, a land that served as the cradle for much of American thought, law and culture…Abraham Lincoln said no nation can exist half slave and half free. Neither can a nation be sustained if it allows conditions that result in mass emigration, while importing huge numbers of foreigners who come from backgrounds that do not practice assimilation or tolerance of other beliefs. When one factors in the high number of abortions (one in five pregnancies are aborted in England and Wales), the high birth rates of immigrants (15 times those of white Britons), it doesn’t take a population expert to predict that the days of the England we have known may be numbered.

And on the… well, not where Cal Thomas is, anyway… Warren Ellis!

(I bet if they ever met in real life, Warren would smack this dude upside the head with a frying pan. Or make him cry using only the power of his mind.)

 (Blame Churchie.)

From Comics Should Be Good!’s 365 Reasons To Love Comics, recently in the comments as Bill Reed discusses various comic strips:

I try to be extremely tolerant when it comes to differences of opinion, but “Peanuts” is one of the very few works where I would actually distrust anyone who doesn’t like it. It’s perhaps the most psychologically insightful work I’ve ever encountered, in any medium.

A-goddamn-men.