ACCEPTABLE WAYS TO REFER TO THE WRITER OF THIS HERE BLOG

“Christopher Bird”
“Chris Bird”
“Bird” (everybody does this, really, I’m cool with it)
“Mighty God-King”
“Mighty God King”
“Mightygodking”
“MGK”
“Love Muffin”
“Pretentious Loudmouthed Asshole”

UNACCEPTABLE WAYS

“Mighty Godking”

(Look, I know this is partially my fault because of the first top banner I had here, which made it unintentionally look like that was the name of the site. But that horrible banner is gone now and ne’er again will I repeat the mistake.)

So I’m going to be on Team Bloggers for this year’s edition of CBC’s Test the Nation. (It is airing on the 20th at 8 p.m.)

Which doesn’t particularly mean I will become famous or anything, but, you know – it’s fun to be on television! Even if it only is for a few seconds’ worth of airtime.

So watch it! I demand your attention even moreso than usual.

CapnAndy:

Grant Morrison just disappeared into some mystic otherworld, and what’s worse, he took all his notes for Final Crisis with him. In desperation, DC’s given the job to you. Assume that you’ve got to let Countdown and all its myriad spinoffs run their previously planned courses, but then the plot is yours to run as you see fit — how does YOUR version of Final Crisis go?

I don’t want to give away all the details, but let me just say five words: giant banana cream pie fight.

Darthjesus:

Coleslaw – delicious or not?

Depends. There are of course two types of coleslaw: the type made with vinegar and the type made with mayonnaise. This latter is also known as “the demon slaw.”

Adam:

The Bop in the bop sho bop sho bop. Who put it there?

Shep Wooley. Duh.

Greg:

So I’ve stopped reading DC’s main superhero titles. Is it me or is it them?

Maybe you’re just growing up. I mean, you can’t read Batman forever, can you?

No, wait, of course you can read Batman forever. Batman is awesome and will always be awesome. So it’s them!

(Whew.)

El Bastardo Magnifico:

“Remember, remember the fifth of November.” “THIS. IS. SPARTA!” What do you think is the next godawful comic catchphrase that seemingly just won’t die?

“I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me.” There is no way Zack Snyder doesn’t put that in the movie, and no way does it not become lolcatted to fucking hell and back.

Mint Witch:

Have you ever seen Danny Michel live? Have you ever heard of Danny Michel? Would you consider providing floor space for two complete strangers (Americans no less) to sack out upon for a few hours during their epic, cross-North America, quest to pursue that holiest of Grails, the grailest of Holies, Danny Michel, live and in concert? Do you think that it is sane and/or reasonable to consider driving from Seattle to the Tri-Cities for a show?

No, no, answer depends on presence of hot easy chicks, and probably not but so what, respectively.

What are the good comic stores in Toronto? (By good, I mean ones that are well lit and friendly to browsers – and preferably close to U of T.)

Are you up for meeting for a coffee sometime?

1.) The Beguiling near Bloor and Bathurst is probably the most critically popular comical book place in Toronto and has the best independent selection. Silver Snail near Queen and Spadina is probably the most well-known and has the best selection of toys. 1,000,000 Comics on Yonge north of College has very good back-issue racks. And the Hairy Tarantula on Yonge might not be the most well-lit, but when they have their quarterly sales you just can’t beat their prices.

2.) I have no idea, because I don’t go to U of T, but rather Osgoode Hall at York (just named #1 law school in Canada by Canadian Lawyer magazine – we got free cupcakes to celebrate, so SUCK ON THAT UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO WHICH REJECTED ME IN LESS THAN A WEEK ahem).

3.) Sure, although now that classes are in session life is more hectic, but email me when you’ve got a moment and we’ll see.

Day two, mo’ questions. Keep them coming if you are so inclined.

Matthew E.

What are your top five prose books about superheroes (fiction or non)?

…I don’t really have any? I mean, I haven’t gotten around to reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and looking over my heavily loaded-down bookshelf there’s a lot of various fiction (some fantasy, some sci-fi, some just plain ol’ fiction), and non-fiction, and nothing that really screams out “superheroes.” I mean, maybe you can make a case for Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell in a sort of Gaimanesque sense, but…

…oh, wait, the Kingdom Come novelization. Where the hell did I get that and why do I still have it? It kinda sucked, even if it was by Eliot S! Maggin. Still, by default I suppose it is my top prose book about superheroes.

Sage Freehaven:

Squirrel Girl – yea, or nay?

There’s, like, this kind of progression in comics fandom to latch onto relatively obscure and usually weird characters until they get played to death. Squirrel Girl was a while back, MODOK is the current hobbyhorse, Mogo was a bit previous to that, et cetera. I don’t really have a problem with the phenomenon, and Squirrel Girl’s been used well enough in her spurt of ironic popularity to comment on how stupid certain trends in comics are, so I suppose I’ll go with “yea.”

That having been said, I hereby proclaim 2008 to be the Year of Multi-Man. Make it happen, people.

kalyarn:

The Erie Doctrine – the hell?

Oh wait…you’re not from here…

No, but the doctrine, while not technically applicable in Canadian law, is something we’ve studied as we also have a federal system, and it’s one possible solution for determining legal differences between sub-states in a federal system. We don’t use it here, though, because the majority of serious Canadian law is implemented at the federal level (most notably the Criminal Code of Canada) and our Constitution is designed differently from yours. What I get from the Erie Doctrine is that it’s very much the product of a nation where federalism was, at one point, a really big deal to people other than Ron Paul.

supergp:

You’ve posted about American politics from time to time- do you have an endorsement to make? If so, who?

Barack Obama.

I’ve said before that any of the Democratic candidates would be good enough, but there’s good and then there’s best outcome, and that’s Obama. Clinton is simply too moderate and cautious; I think she’ll do a reasonable job, but her first instinct will always be the small move, and right now we need big moves. Furthermore, in the general election Hillary just isn’t going to have coattails – regional Democrats will get no added traction from Hillary the way they potentially can from Obama. More importantly, Obama can be a gamechanger for progressive politics in the same way that Reagan was for conservative politics; he’s really amazing at restating his opponents’ arguments to make them agree with him in much the way that Reagan could do it.

Furthermore, I can’t state enough how transformative simply having Obama as your president would be for your foreign image. A Democrat in general at this point is, I think, a necessity for America to regain credibility – you need to run away from Bush as fast as humanly possible for perception reasons, let alone all the others – but Clinton would just be “good enough,” whereas Obama would be a “holy shit, America did that? I forgot how awesome America can be” moment. I would genuinely love to see you guys have a moment like that again. I’m not even slightly kidding.

And besides, you have to love a candidate who can gracefully comment on his protestors in this manner or who, during a Presidential campaign, finds time to try and help resolve the political and ethnic strife in Kenya.

(John Edwards is done. I’m not happy about it, but he’s done. It’s time to move on, folks.)

Obviously, you’d really like to write LoSH; what would you write if you could write something at Marvel?

The idea of team books generally appeals to me more than “single” books, so I’m going to say Runaways. There’s a whole lot to do there which interests me.

That having been said, I can also think of a lot I’d like to do with Dr. Strange. And on a DC note, yes, Legion, but also Frankenstein. Because Frankenstein is awesome. He fights evil bug-men and speaks in Gothic prose.

Well, turnout for the whole ask me a question thing has been higher than anticipated, so I’m gonna start answering questions now. They’ll all get answered eventually, I promise. Feel free to keep asking in the original post if you missed it, or similar.

CandidGamera asked:

Vic Sage?

I’m sorry, but your question does not match current DC continuity. For future purposes, please use ‘Renee Montoya.’ Thank you.

Bret asked:

Earth-4 Vic Sage?

Rorshach.

Darthjesus:

Are you jealous of my ability, as a US citizen, to vote in the American presidential elections?

Are you disgusted by the fact that I have no intention of voting this year and I am not even registered to vote?

No and yes, respectively. I don’t care about people getting to vote in other countries, not even America, because I get to vote in mine and it is horribly satisfying to make my ticky mark on the ballot (Canada: “we vote old-school”), but I do not care very much at all for people ignoring their responsibility to vote, and that applies to the forty percent of eligible Canadians who always have something better to do. I am all for the adoption of the Australian system, wherein failure to vote is a misdemeanour, not least because most people, when forced to vote, decide to at least marginally educate themselves on the issues.

(Yes, I understand the whole “freedom to not vote” argument and am unsympathetic. If you want to accurately display your apathy or disgust with the system in toto, spoil your ballot like a grownup.)

Andrew:

With all of the big events showing characters such as Iron Man and Wonder Woman in perhaps an unflattering light, comic readers are crying out loudly that everyone in comics are jerks and douchebags. These fans assert comics are no longer fun, and that no one’s a hero anymore. However, between superdickery.com, blogs like the ISB and Dave’s Long Box shining light on just how douchey characters were Back In The Day, and Alex Ross’s anything being derided as Superfriends fanfiction, were comics ever as fun and the characters ever as heroic as the comic readers claim? Or do these fun comics and heroic characters exist only in a make believe past that exists only in the minds of hyper-nostalgic readers who have fallen into Jay Sherman syndrome?

It’s worth noting that Superdickery and the like are applying modern-day mores to comics that are usually more than fifty years old, with all of the different social mores that apply therein. Superman being gratuitously sexist in 1954 when it was understood that wimmins was inferior beings is quite a different kettle of fish than Superman being gratuitously sexist in 2008. It’s not quite apples and oranges, but it’s at least apples and, say, apple cobbler with ice cream.

And Alex Ross gets derided because he has an unthinking hardon for the Way Things Were When He Was A Kid, not because the things in question were bad.

karellan:

Which is better: Old American Gladiators or New American Gladiators?

Too early to call, although the lack of Dick Butkus definitely hurts the new.

James:

Marvel approaches you to write your own 7 Soldiers style event/character revamps. What 7 characters do you choose? Bonus points for why each character/revamp details/high concepts etc.

U.S. 1: The all-American trucker who navigates the weird back roads of Earth 616. He’s been to outer space, he’s fought blimp Nazis, nothing fazes him. “Aw, dammit, not chupacabras again! Git me my shotgun, we’re having us some chupacabra chili tonight!” Deliverance, but with monsters instead of hillbillies and a truck instead of rafts.

Jocasta: A robot who, instead of seeking to become human (one of the oldest tropes in comics and well abandoned), seeks to define humanity through research. This involves fighting bad guys, of course. (You have to preserve the sanctity of your research subjects.)

Taskmaster: The ultimate bon vivant. When you do any new activity perfectly the first time, you have to constantly seek out new and more dangerous exploits just to keep from becoming bored to death; whether it’s scamming S.H.I.E.L.D. or robbing Dr. Doom, he’ll do it just so he has something to fill his Tuesday. (Also, bring back that awesome new costume he got in the early 2000’s.)

Porcupine: The antisocial (but moral) daughter of a deceased supervillain finds his old super-suit. Can she work with her local registration office in a productive and helpful manner? (Answer: probably not.)

Sleepwalker: Rick Sheridan is in a coma, perhaps for the rest of his life, and the dream entity known as Sleepwalker has to navigate the Waking World in ways he never anticipated. The stranger in a strange world scenario played to the nines, with a touch of nostalgic surrealism on the protagonist’s part. Little Nemo meets Stan and Jack.

Shamrock: Molly Fitzgerald is retired. She’s happy. She’s a hairdresser with a young daughter that’s the centre of her life, and the three lotteries she’s won means she never has to do anything she doesn’t want to do. But sometimes life just won’t let you stay retired, and when the Irish government makes it clear that her supernatural good luck is required for the good of the world, she’s pressed back into service – whether she likes it or not.

Gargoyle: Isaac Christians sold his soul for his superpowers, and for what? Now he’s stuck in an Initiative office in Helena. The ranchers think he’s another big city boy, the Hollywood liberals trying to “escape it all” keep inviting him over for coffee, and the survivalists keep asking him to give lectures on the end of the world. What a pain in the ass.

Church had this idea first, but as Sam Raimi once said, “if it’s good, steal it.”

So: ask me whatever question you like in the comments, and I will answer in a post come Friday. As motivation for asking particularly insightful or amusing questions, the question I deem most excitingly fantastic will win, posted through the mail by me, copies of Thank You For Smoking and Just Like Heaven. Yes, that’s right, two DVDs, one of a fairly amusing if slightly flawed satirical comedy and the other a Reese Witherspoon romantic comedy! It’s almost like you’re getting castoffs from my DVD collection!

(Actually, during the Boxing Day sales, I went to a Blockbuster to snag a few used discs and when I got home, in addition to my DVDs, I found them. My guess is the clerk accidentally handed me somebody else’s purchase or something. Either that, or they just really thought I needed more Reese Witherspoon in my life. It is possible.)

So get to asking questions. I wish to be entertained!

Everybody I’ve ever known in military service (or who is a gun nut) mostly agrees that the M16 (and its variants, like the Colt C7, which is the Canadian equivalent) is a piece of crap and that the AK47 is a much better rifle, mostly because the latter is the most reliable gun ever made and the former jams if you look at it funny.

So why hasn’t some gun manufacturer backwards-engineered the AK47, given it a fancy new name that is vaguely sexualized, and made a lot of money? Serious question.

About a month ago I mentioned that I was doing Shovelglove as a daily workout, and a few people expressed interest as to the results.

Well, it’s been a month. My exercise routine, in addition to the Shovelglove routine, is cardio five days a week (treadmill or elliptical trainer at the gym at school – one of the reasons I really started exercising seriously was because of blood pressure, so I do a lot of cardio), with situps three days a week, and a bit of free weights and that pull-up machine that counters against your weight kinda (it is most seriously a nifty application of physics) and leg machines two days a week. So it’s a pretty thorough regimen, although not exactly in bodybuilding land, of course.

Adding the shovelgloving to it has made, frankly, an immediately noticeable difference. My upper body muscles have grown a bit more and are very definitely firmer. (I suspect that shovelglove, being a “lift a little a lot” rather than “lift a lot a little” routine, probably does more to enhance muscle definition as opposed to size.) Right now I’m doing the basic shovel/butter churn/chop wood/bicep curl workout, although I have been experimenting with mixing in the tricep tote-the-bale exercise as well. The first few days, I was straining my lower back a bit, but after I made sure to stretch it out afterwards that wasn’t a problem at all.

And it is a lot of fun to do. The site author is right: fourteen minutes a day is nothing. I usually do it while watching a bit of TV.

If anything, my only complaint is that the ten-pound hammer I have is getting too easy. I don’t want to jump to the twelve-pound hammer too quickly (my disaster sense tingles at the thought) but the ten-pounder is honestly starting to feel a little basic for many of the exercises. When it feels too easy for all of them, I’ll make the jump.

So, yeah – it’s pretty decent, for those of you who were wondering.

…the Ontario government starts blocking your site at work.

Thanks, Dalton McGuinty!

I should really be summarizing Asamera Oil Corp. Ltd. v. Sea Oil and General Corp. right now (it’s as fascinating as you think it is), but…

Mark Kleiman has a point about the imagination requirement for toys steadily dropping, although I’m not sure how grounded it is; after all, interactive talking toys have been practically de-facto for girls and boys alike at least since I was little. (Well do I remember horrific advertisements for various baby dolls which would whine on cue, or piss themselves, or be incredibly annoying until you cuddled them – presumably this was valuable training for the mommies of tomorrow.) Likewise, art supplies with strict guidelines have been around at least since I was a littl’un – and before, considering that really, all that these things really are, are more advanced versions of colouring books.)

But he’s definitely right on one serious point. Lego just sucks now. When I was a kid, Lego was goddamned awesome in every way it was possible for little plastic things that were potential choking hazards could be. I remember that every box, every little kit, would have the image of the finished product on the front of the box – and then the back of the box would have at least half a dozen alternate ideas. It was like the Lego people were daring you.

“Any kid can build Lego from the plans. The plans are nothing. Do you see this awesome space interceptor? How did we make that happen with only the bricks in this box? Can you figure out? Can you surpass our creations?”

I’m not even slightly joking – those illustrations on the back of the box were a goldmine. They were imagination triggers, hardwired to the frontal cortex of every little kid who got Lego for their birthday. And they were only the start, of course, because once you started fooling around with the bricks from one set, you inevitably made the leap of logic, the one where you realized that not only could you mess around with the bricks from one set, you could mess around with the bricks from all the sets. Lego was interchangeable in every way that mattered.

And then they started making Lego sets for Star Wars.

Yes, I blame Star Wars for ruining Lego. There are other licensed product lines for Lego, of course, but Star Wars started it all. Take a look at this Lego version of Slave One. It is certainly quite badass in its own way, but it comes with special-use bricks, like most of the Lego licensed product lines do.

The thing about special-use bricks, specifically designed for a given product, is that they’re, well, special – the more specific the use for a given Lego brick, the less universally useful it is. Sometimes this can be economical – I’m thinking here of the early Lego Castle products, where the castle wall segments on their own were much more useful for speedy castle-building than the requisite number of individual grey bricks necessary to build up a big castle would have been, and furthermore reduced the cost of the product. But the castle wall pieces were, still, the basic building block of a big-ass Lego castle. The equivalent to what has happened with Lego nowadays would be entire pre-built walls. Which, sadly, is exemplified here with Hogwarts Castle.

And this is the norm, you see. Check out the Lego B-wing, which has so many custom bricks I’m amazed anybody still calls it Lego. It’s not just Star Wars, either – look at this Batmobile or this really horrific Lego Spongebob Squarepants. It’s crossed over into the non-licensed product as well: look at this Lego shark or this space-tank.

And of course, there aren’t any alternate construction ideas on the back of any of these boxes, which now more than ever are most likely to be the first non-Duplo Lego a child receives (because it’s Batman and Star Wars – I am not so jaded as to pretend that were I a kid, I would not want Batman and Star Wars in my Lego). Why would there be? Suggesting that there’s a different way to build the Batmobile – that ruins your licensing partner’s potential branding. (Up next: Indiana Jones Lego.)

The net effect of all of this is to take Lego from what it was and should be, and just turn it into another crappy line of action figures. Except that this particular line of action figures tends to fall apart when you play with them, so they’re not even particularly good in that regard.

In short: why couldn’t George Lucas just be satisfied with ruining his own products?

UPDATE: I want to make something clear here, because I don’t think I spelled it out properly: Lego for adults is different from Lego for kids. Of course it’s not impossible to build originally with more specialized bricks, but more specialized bricks discourage innovation simply by their very nature – if you implement a higher learning curve to use fancier bricks, less children are going to bother to use them except as directed, and thus the Legos are going to be less imagination-provoking. Yes, it’s wonderful that sites like Brickshelf and other Lego-enthusiast centres are around, and it’s great that there are Lego specialty stores where the staff primarily want to teach kids to “build outside the box,” but the vast majority of kids won’t access those, either because of lack of chance or lack of ability (Brickshelf isn’t kid-oriented, after all).

I mean, let’s be serious: Bionicle, one of the best-selling Lego products ever, is not popular because it offers awesome new ways to build with Lego. It’s popular because they’re action figures. The Bionicle pieces just aren’t designed to do much else other than be Bionicle parts, and while they might not be completely useless in conjunction with regular Lego (“reguLego”?), your average six-to-eight-year-old isn’t gonna grab a Bionicle and think “wow, this leg provides a fantastic cross-brace for that model I’ve been working on.”

…but I have two finals next week (contracts and criminal law) and if I am going to get my A (and C), I need to buckle down over the next few days. So that means less activity than usual. Regular schedule resumes soon enough, believe me.

I put together a little Amazon.ca wishlist, for those inclined to buy me things for Christmas.Which, really, is just about none of you.

There are times I briefly wish I was a teenaged girl. (But then I remember that, honestly, being a white male kind of rules! HOORAY FOR ENTRENCHED SOCIAL PRIVILEGE!)

Barring major mishap, I’ll be appearing on CBC Radio 1’s “Q” program tomorrow afternoon to talk about Christmas specials and why they are all bad.

Just so everybody knows, I joined the New Democratic Party today. This may make a difference to some people, it may not.

Some of you might ask: “Why the NDP? Come to think, why join a political party period?” Consider it the best way I can think of to express the belief that politics in Canada have drifted too far rightward, particularly considering the political proclivities of the nation as a whole – which drifts majority centre-left and has done so pretty much since World War II. This is not to say that I agree with all of the NDP’s party positions – I’m probably a bit more centrist than the party would prefer in a few areas, to say the least. But I am an avowed small-L liberal, and proud of the fact, and there’s only one party in Canada that seems particularly willing to be proud of liberalism along with me. Besides, if there are things about the party that I disagree with, what better place to try and affect those elements than from within, right?

Rest assured I plan to grow a Jack Layton moustache as soon as humanly possible in solidarity with The Beloved Leader.

On my way to school, I take the St. Clair bus (normally a streetcar, but oh well, construction, it happens) to St. Clair West station, where I catch the subway north to law school. It is usually crowded and dense.

Today, outside the station, a black man – say in the range of 25-30 – stood outside, with a stack of pamphlets. I say “pamphlets,” but truly, although descriptively correct, that doesn’t convey the essence of what he held – which were more like photocopied newsletters in appearance if not content. They were labeled “Black History Now!”

And I took one, because I am the sort to read things that are free, even if only for a second or three.

“We prefer a donation.”

I was a bit surprised, but hey, what’s a buck. So I start digging through my pockets.

“It’s just to cover reproduction costs, you understand.”

And my mental bullshit alarm goes off. I can see it’s a photocopied and stapled flyer, basically. Three or four pages. Reproduction costs, maybe sixteen cents total.

“We prefer a donation of four or five dollars.”

And now I know he’s bullshitting me. But he’s doing it with style, and grace, and above all confidence. And I can’t help but admire it, you see, because he’s dressed up in suit with no overcoat, and smiling slightly – but not so greatly as to be overly ingratiating. Even though I know he’s full of crap, I want to give him some money, just for the performance of it.

I can’t help but admire it. “I only got three, is that okay?” Because maybe I admire his panache and sheer balls, but I’m not giving him everything he asks for.

“Three would be fine. How’s your day going?”

“Too damn early.” (It is seven-thirty, which in my estimation is mostly too damn early.)

“Well, you know what they say,” – this, as I hand him the three loonies – “get up early, go to bed early, best way to live.”

“I’m not gonna be going to bed early, though.” This is true – I’ll be reading contract law.

“Well, that’s a shame.” He hands me the pamphlet. “Do keep it in mind if it ever becomes a possibility. I find it makes all the difference. Good day to you, and enjoy.”

He’s a master. I almost want to give him more money. “Thanks, same to you.”

And that is how I came to spend three dollars on five pages, photocopied, of a basic reading list of black history textbooks.