Paul Giamatti voicing Asterix in the English-language version of Asterix and the Vikings.

Brad Garrett as Obelix works quite well, but every time I see Asterix open his mouth I now expect him to say “dubbayooENNNNNNNNbeesee!”

The year is 1958. The month is June. The teenagers of small-town America are filled with a nebulous sense of rebellion against repressive sexuality and social convention. It was inevitable that some business genius would make money off their forbidden longings. A proto-beatnik named Forsythe P. Jones opens his own “escort service,” which involves not only renting himself out to all the women of Riverdale, but wearing any disguise that suits their kinky fantasies. He even tries to expand the business by taking on Reginald Mantle as a sort of junior gigolo, to take up with women who are too scary for the boss to handle himself.

I’ve once again done the embeddable YouTube video thing, but some of the panels are hard to read in this format, so you can also click here to see the story with the original page layouts. (For those who care about such things, Archie comics had a lot more panels in the late ’50s and early ’60s than they had before or after. Sometime in the ’60s most of their artists switched to a rule whereby there couldn’t be more than six panels per page.)

Also, an important principle that Dan DeCarlo followed in his ’50s prime was that girls’ skirts must be flowing in the breeze whenever possible. Riverdale must have been some windy town.

One thing I’ve been wondering for years is whether “It sounds creamy!” was actually a slang phrase of the time or if it’s just a vaguely dirty-sounding substitute for “dreamy.”

Has there ever been a news story as anticlimatic as the revelation that prisoner “suicides” at Guantanamo Bay were probably actually murders? Seriously, is anybody surprised by the idea that Guantanamo Bay had torturing going on at this point? The BBC had a guard tearfully request forgiveness from his former captives just last week, for crissake. All this story does is confirm what most people already knew; you can practically hear Fox News anchors practicing their “you have to torture a few eggs to make an omelet” speeches already, maybe with a side of “and if it’s so bad why hasn’t Obama shut it down yet?”

Of course, this puts that whole “committing suicide was an act of war” rhetoric that was flying around at the time in proper context. At the time I thought it was just stupid. I should have recognized overcompensation when I saw it.

I don’t think any comic book of the ’70s had as much insane shit in it as Archie at Riverdale High. And that’s saying a lot, because we are talking about the ’70s here. But this title, launched in the early ’70s as a home for “serious” stories focusing on academic or athletic issues, packed an impressive number of WTF moments into its bi-monthly issues. You could pick up an issue at random and find: Archie beats up the members of a rival school when they “touch his body with a Central High towel”; a famous painter agrees to paint Mr. Weatherbee on condition that Archie will pose for him in the nude (which he does); Archie infiltrates another rival high school in drag; Archie uses special-effects technology to convince everyone that a kid is actually a superpowered alien named “Nazda.” Many of these stories were also full of floridly melodramatic captions, a possible throwback to Frank Doyle’s early days writing and drawing “Space Rangers” and “Wambi, the Jungle Boy”.

You can make an argument for the higher weirdness quotient of Life With Archie, where Archie spent the ’70s battling Satanic, child-murdering teddy bears, but that title always had fantasy/alternate-universe stuff. But what happens to a kid’s brain when he picks up a comic about high school adventures and is treated to a story like this one, where Betty loses her memory, wanders off and becomes a mud wrestler? And then the only way for Archie and Jughead to save her is for Jughead to disguise himself as a woman, and what is it with this title and men in drag, anyway?

I turned this into an embeddable YouTube video because it’s just easier to post that way. The Hector Berlioz music is just meant to speed the story along and the choice is not of any significance, though I take pride in the fact that the big cymbal crash coincides with the key moment in the whole story: Jughead’s realization that Archie wants him to make The Supreme Sacrifice. Which, as I mentioned, involves drag.

That story pretty much speaks for itself. I do want to point out one thing that has haunted me since young me encountered this in a digest. Understand, I don’t believe in nit-picking the plot holes in anything, let alone comic books. Pointing out every plot hole as if each one is some kind of crippling flaw is almost as bad as pointing out every continuity goof in a movie. All that said:

This previously-unknown kid who goes to the carnival — he has to be a new kid because they couldn’t let any of their regulars willingly go to such a “sleazy outfit” — sees a girl from his school who has been missing for days, maybe weeks. His first statement after recognizing her is “I’ve got to call Archie.” I’m just saying, if this guy thinks he should call Archie before notifying the police… or her parents… or even the principal… then he is so dumb that he probably walked into an open manhole as soon as this story was over. And that explains why we never saw him again.

The other important lesson from this comic is that you can learn a lot about characters from what they say when Jughead throws them Helluva Far™. Betty says “EEP!” like all good-hearted people. Stan Snavely exclaims “AIEEE!,” like some Jonny Quest villain. That’s how we know he’s evil.

For those interested, Yank and Doodle are the kid sidekicks of the Black Owl, a superhero who wears blue and red and therefore makes no sense. The Black Owl is a suburban family man and Yank and Doodle are his sons, but Yank and Doodle are not aware that the Black Owl is their father for some reason the Black Owl never adequately explains. This also makes no sense. In fact, the Black Owl is so concerned with keeping his identity a secret from his sons that he actually makes them meet him on the other side of town from their home in an abandoned lot. This continues to make no sense. Also, the Black Owl has a supercar that can transform into a plane, and is not somehow a millionaire of any type but instead basically Ward Cleaver in spandex, which makes the least sense of all.

Ah, Golden Age comics! Thank god Alex Ross was born so that you could be dug out of justifiable obscurity!

The remains of Underground New Beijing.

(from Personal Love #1)

People talk about Golden Age Wonder Woman panels being disturbing, but really, those are nothing. This just makes me feel unclean.

(from Dixie Dugan #2)

Okay, so Santa Claus is a trucker, and he asked Spidey for help. This is because Trucker Santa wants to make sure that kids everywhere get the chance to buy a fishing rod (and it has to be the right fishing rod, so the kids need their dad’s help, because no way would Mom know anything about fishing because she’s a girl) so they can have a chance at winning a million dollars. And the reason Trucker Santa needs Spidey’s help is because… maybe robbers will try to steal the million dollars! And nobody’s better at stopping robbers than your friendy neighborhood Spider-Man! Because the last time he didn’t stop a robber, his Uncle Ben got shot. God only knows whose uncle would get shot if Spidey didn’t stop the robbers this time!

That’s my best shot at explaining this, unless there’s some early Lee/Ditko issue of Amazing Spider-Man I’m not aware of where Spidey goes into extended detail about how much he loves fishing.

Once again, Sarah Palin writes a column saying that the secret to American energy independence is drilling for oil.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the fact that Palin claims energy issues as her particular sphere of expertise just amazes me, and similarly it amazes me that nobody important bothers to point out that, on her professed area of expertise, she is a goddamned idiot.

To be fair, for quite possibly the first time ever, Palin actually includes a few numbers in her screed: specifically, domestic American petroleum consumption. Unfortunately, this does not get her a cookie, because if you’re going to talk numbers about consumption and then say “well we gots to drill more of them wells you betcha,” you need to link it to that other number, which is production.

The United States has an estimated 21 billion barrels of remaining uncollected oil reserves.1 Were it all to become suddenly available tomorrow, the USA’s consumption rate of 19.5 million barrels per day wouldn’t allow it to last long. This is because a consumption rate of 19.5 million barrels per day is also a consumption rate of 7.1 billion barrels per year. So basically, the United States has nearly three years’ worth of oil reserves handy at its current consumption rate.

Of course, that figure isn’t really that meaningful either, because there is still no magic straw given to us by a friendly genie2 that gets all the oil out. Oil wells do not show up overnight. Even if the United States government expedited the leasing process, the oil companies still have to drill exploratory wells, develop a production plan from that exploration, and then install production wells. That’s a six-to-nine-year process to reach basic production.

And even when you reach basic production, you don’t reach peak production that quickly any more, because all the easily drilled oil deposits are now empty. Oil is sometimes in the ground in a big single pool; the Ghawar field in Saudi Arabia, for example, was mostly a big-ass single pool. But the big-pool deposits are mostly gone, so you can’t just stick a well into the ground and get all the oil from a single field. What’s left in the ground at this point is the harder-to-reach stuff: far-offshore fields (which take more than six to nine years to successfully explore and drill, one might add) and land-based fields which are kind of like Styrofoam except instead of air pockets there are oil pockets. These do not produce oil at “traditional” production rates. It will be in the neighborhood of fifteen years before anybody sees more than a relative dribble.

And finally, unless Sarah Palin plans to nationalize the oil industry like some sort of socialist or something, that oil is just going to go onto the free market anyway, where all the other countries in the world – like, say, India and China – will compete for its purchase. And frankly, at this point they can more easily afford it than the United States can.

So to sum up: Sarah Palin’s “drill” plan involves ignoring how much oil is actually in the ground, how quickly it can be drilled, how easily it can be accessed, and the basic reality of the global oil market. And this is where she thinks she is an expert.

Dear Rachel Maddow: please, just take all of this, put your Rachel Maddow style on it, and do a five-minute segment. You can’t tell me you don’t want to make fun of Sarah Palin again. You would be lying if you said that.

1. CIA World Factbook, following from World Oil and Oil and Gas Journal. British Petroleum’s most recent publicly available statistical analysis – in 2007 – puts it at 30 billion, but most consider that an outlier. [↩]
2. Genies hate the Middle East for bottling them, so clearly they would be on America’s side. Well, if they existed, anyway. [↩]

(cover of Justice Traps the Guilty #50)

I am pretty comfortable with whatever people might think of me in most circumstances, but I am still compelled to make this perfectly bloody clear: I did not purchase a copy of Glamour with my own money. My wife and I have moved into a new apartment, and whoever lived here before us apparently did not forward his or her (I do not make assumptions) subscription. At one point we were basically camping at our new place, and there was a period of time where that Glamour was the only reading material in the house apart from the ingredients on the Special K. So I read it, and I will fight to the death any man, woman, or child who derides me for doing so.

Now, you may have never read a copy of Glamour, so you might think of me as a sort of explorer; the guy who went into the uncharted Amazon so you didn’t have to and reported back what he found (answer: small, delicious frogs).

I am here to tell you that Glamour Magazine is weird.

First off, the cover copy says “Finally! Answers to All Your Questions About Sex and Love.” For realsies, Glamour? It took 70 years of continuous, monthly publication, but as of the November 2009 issue, they have finally answered those last, nagging questions on the subject; with nothing more to be said, I am sure this final issue will become a collector’s item.

No, look, whoever decides what the big, bold, main cover copy will say for Glamour decided to simply mention that they will be answering questions about sex and dating. I would be quite fascinated to see what else is in that copywriter’s portfolio. The June 2005 issue of Playboy: “Photos of Naked Women Inside!” Consumer Reports, August ’07: “Reviews and Comparisons of Various Products Available for Purchase!” The award-winning February 2004 Newsweek: No images, just bold white text on a black field stating “CURRENT EVENTS.”

Anyway.  Moving on. So, Scarlett Johansson is on the cover, right? And there’s a little “About the Cover” blurb near the front of the magazine as you’d expect, but they do not tell you who this person is and why you should read about her. No, they just assume you already know. Instead, they tell you what kind of makeup she’s wearing, how much it cost, and who did it for her. It’s like twenty lines of small type! And in the back there is an entire page dedicated to approximate prices of the clothes everybody is wearing. But I’m not sure that the young single mum who buys Glamour in the supermarket can afford a $75 T-shirt (no matter how many fuzzy pompoms it’s covered in), and wouldn’t rich people have a more exclusive source? Isn’t there, like, a special, platinum-level internet for the wealthy and famous? (Fun fact: Platinum Internet actually is a system of tubes.)

And then there’s the celebrity fragrances. Man, I don’t understand this either. Reese Witherspoon has a fragrance. All of a sudden that price page at the back seems almost sane to me.  Because I guess you could see something Reese Witherspoon is wearing and want to buy it too, or think her makeup and hair are really done well and look up who did them. Maybe you could even find out where she learned how to act and do that too, if you really admired her or something. But here’s the thing – I have no idea what Reese Witherspoon smells like, and you probably do not either. None of the media through which you experience Reese Witherspoon includes aroma capabilities. What about watching Election makes you think, “Gosh, I bet she is a fantastic perfumer”?

But the most odious thing about this magazine was the feature on plus-size models, featuring a nude (but strategically covered) photo spread. Let’s leave aside the condescending-sounding copy accompanying the photos (“Oh. Wow. These Bodies Are Beautiful” is actually how the title of article is punctuated. Jeez guys, try not to sound too excited or anything). Let’s even leave out that none of these women are really even all that plus-sized. No, what I want to call Glamour out on is the self-congratulatory tone they seem to feel entitled to for daring to showcase *gasp* size 12 models. They devoted six pages or so to women of a so-called “average” body type … with the other two hundred and forty devoted to the same kind of superthin models as usual, and acted as though they just tore down the Berlin Wall. This does not impress me, Glamour. This is the fashion and body equivalent of “Um, actually, I’ve got a co-worker who’s black and I’m very friendly with him…”

And the real kicker about this whole thing? And the reason why the guy who usually writes about mainstream superhero comics is bringing it up?

This magazine costs $3.99.

Do you see? I have spent this blog post tearing down this magazine that is totally not even marketed to me, but even chock full of 246 pages of crap and ads that I cannot distinguish from the articles, it is probably still a better value than 22 plus ads pages of Dark Avengers of Cry for Justice at the same price. I understand Glamour going for $3.99; like I said, they have an itemized list on how much all the dresses and makeup cost.

I just hope they’ve got Brian Michael Bendis decked out in Louis Vuitton for all that.

Animals with Lightsabers.

I really need to learn whatever scripting language I need to learn so I can make a single-idea-website generator and then make a billion dollars from it somehow.

I’m not sure how I make the billion dollars precisely, but I know it involves Richard Branson, a jar of Vicks VapoRub, a blender, and a pair of antelope.