In case you haven’t noticed, thanks to the help of Stefan Rivet: the remix of Teen Titans #44 is now up on the site.

To those of you who have asked me if I’m ever going to do another comics remix, the answer is: yes, and I’m about halfway done one right now actually, but my schedule is a lot busier than it used to be. I’m hoping to have it up next week, but no guarantees.

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:

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#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.

Blame Church.

continue reading "It’s entirely possible someone beat me to this, but if they did, big deal."

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.)

 (Blame Churchie.)

Click for larger version with legible small print.

Hannah Llewellyn very kindly emailed me the American Seeds ‘shop after I mentioned yesterday that I’d lost it in the great Livejournal burnup, so I felt it only proper to present it here again.

Now, I’d also like to point out that when I lost my Livejournal, with it I lost an Infiniti FX convertible. So if anybody has a spare one of those lying around, you know. For the site.

For larger version where the smaller text is legible, click on image.

I had honestly thought this lost along with many of the other parody images previously shown on the old Livejournal (the loss of the American Seeds advertisement in particular stings), but it’s amazing what turns up sometimes in an anonymous email, so thanks to whoever saved it.

(Click for larger version where the small text is legible.)

It’s only fair to suggest reading Checkerboard Nightmare.

(NOTE: This was the very last post to appear on my Livejournal before it got nuked – it was up for a grand total of perhaps four hours, so I feel perfectly justified in reproducing it here.)

I’m not planning to do another thirty days of I Should Write The Legion any time soon, but I had this idea last week and it is simply too good not to add to the list, so:

Some background.Once upon a time, there was an exceptionally obscure Golden Age JSA villain called Professor Zobar Zodiak. (See, with a name like “Zobar Zodiak” you are of course seeing the inherent awesomeness of this idea already.) He was so obscure that, prior to a resurrection along with a few other very minor Golden Age villains in an arc of All-Star Squadron in the early 80s, his only appearance was in a single issue of More Fun Comics, in a story entitled “The Man Who Hated Science!” See, Professor Zobar Zodiak was an alchemist, specifically an evil one who found somebody else who had discovered the Four Wonders of Alchemy – the Philosopher’s Stone, the Universal Solvent, the Elixir of Youth and the Secret of Perpetual Motion – and killed him to get said secrets for himself. Also, and I cannot stress this point enough, he was The Man Who Hated Science.Now, the mentioning of the Elixir of Youth should be explanation enough as to how Professor Zobar Zodiak would still be kicking around in the 31st century, but I figure the only thing better than a man who hates science is an entire planet that hates science: a fringeworld on the borders of the United Planets, ruled by the Alchemical Council (with ol’ Zobar in the back, pulling strings), home to many a neo-Luddite and those who never quite got the respond-to-science-with-pitchforks-and-torches gene out of their systems.

I’m not talking about the Sorcerer’s World – that’s something else entirely, and the sorcerers there probably have no problem with spaceships and coffeemakers and the like, because hey, space travel and coffee. I’m talking a dictatorial world ruled by alchemically-inspired fear of the unknown. Somewhere Brainiac Five would be less welcome than anywhere else. (Which of course means when a Legion cruiser crash-lands there, he will be on it.)

It’s good for two or three issues of story. And come on – it really is a fantastic title, you have to admit…