So recently John Byrne did a one-off “my version” drawing of Dr. Doom in response to the now-infamous Brian Michael Bendis “bad dialogue” Doom panel from Mighty Avengers #11.
Well, let no man say I don’t give them equal treatment.
16
Apr
So recently John Byrne did a one-off “my version” drawing of Dr. Doom in response to the now-infamous Brian Michael Bendis “bad dialogue” Doom panel from Mighty Avengers #11.
Well, let no man say I don’t give them equal treatment.
15
Apr
I might have mentioned this one before in passing, but since today is my Property exam I’m going to cheat a bit and use it.
There was a bit of a minor fan kerfuffle (nothing along the lines of the recent “that’s not how Dr. Doom talks” kerfuffle, you understand – this is the piddling, smallish sort of kerfuffle) recently regarding Shadow Lass in the most recent issue of Legion chopping an alien monster baddie thing to death with a giant poleaxe. You know, the “wait, Legionnaires aren’t supposed to kill” sort of kerfuffle.
And it’s fair that generally speaking, Legionnaires should not kill, even if they are the mean type of badass Legionnaire, and that generally killing in the pages of Legion should be reserved for extreme circumstances, like when Projectra needs to take care of Nemesis Kid in an old-school manner.
But Shadow Lass interests me, because Shadow Lass is from Talok VI, which is generally recognized in Legion lore – throughout pretty much all the reboots – as a semi-barbaric warrior culture. They’re not the Klingons of the DC Universe (we all know that the Khund are the Klingons of the DC Universe). But the Talokians are pretty direct when it comes to dealing with people they consider enemies. So, although I’m sure Shady isn’t going to go around executing people willy-nilly or even busting out the deadly weapons in a tougher than average fight, I can understand where her response to “oh shit a giant killer monster” is to go all Ripley on its ass.
And Talok is a warrior culture, and every Shadow Champion of the Talokians has died in glorious battle, and…
…wait, all of them died in glorious battle? How’s that again?
Well, it’s simple. See, the Shadow Champion has the shadow powers bestowed upon him or her when they’re selected. And then they have them until they die. (That thing a while back where other Talokians were challenging Tasmia for the shadow powers? Yeah, that’s kind of a ritual. The Talokian elders all know the real deal – that’s why the Shadow Champion never loses to the putzes who weren’t good enough to qualify.) And they have to die in battle –
– because that’s the only way they can die.
See, shadow powers in the DC Universe have a proud pedigree. There’s the Shade, and his evil opposite Culp. And Obsidian. And the thing about shadow powers is this: for some reason – maybe it’s their tie to the entropic forces gradually tearing apart the universe – if you’ve got them, you don’t age. And you’re definitely tough to kill. You tend to heal up from most wounds, although not exactly at Wolverine speed or anything like that.
Now, Talok’s a warrior culture. Warrior cultures tend to have Valhalla-type afterlife beliefs. You get to go to the good afterlife by dying in battle (or by ritualistic “battle”, no doubt, for the aged warriors on their deathbeds). But the shadow powers (which, needless to say, Shady and the other champions have never used to their full potential – the Shade is terrifyingly powerful, you know) make it essentially impossible to die normally in the course of battle, as is well and proper. Which is why most Shadow Champions grow progressively more suicidal as they figure out what they’ve become, flinging themselves into more and more dangerous attacks.
Now, this in and of itself is quite interesting (to me, anyway). But I’ll add on something else: Shady’s going to be needed for an adventure at the literal End of the Universe, temporally speaking. She has to learn to be the last Shadow Champion. She has to come to grips with living forever – something her culture, her entire upbringing, deems abhorrent. Something fundamentally opposite to who she is.
This is where one Richard Swift, Esq. steps in – because when life deals you a bum hand, often the best possible friend you can have is someone who’s already used to it, and who can help you deal with it, get used to it. Possibly also pass on his exceptional sartorial taste. (Well, that last probably won’t happen, much to the Shade’s chagrin.)
NEXT TIME: The biggest badass in the Legion.
14
Apr
Key sentence:
“However, there has been a paucity of research into the possible harmful effects of heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, other chemicals, and disease-causing microorganisms often found in sludge.”
14
Apr
My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.
14
Apr
13
Apr
13
Apr
There is a LOLcat translation of the Bible in progress.
12
Apr
The comments are predictably full of “she should get raped by a bear because she is racist” type stuff and can basically be ignored. For my part, I just felt tremendously sorry for her. She’s taking care of a quadriplegic daughter and she lives a life predicated on hate. I wouldn’t wish that shit on anybody.
11
Apr
Jim Flaherty, the Finance Minister for the Canadian federal government, came to visit Osgoode Hall yesterday (it turns out my law school is his alma mater, which I did not previously know). I went, because if you have the chance to ask questions of who is (not officially, but for all intents and purposes) the second-most important person in your government, it’s well worth the time, especially if you care about public policy.
Quick impressions: he is funny, quick-witted, and with a genuinely folksy air to his demeanour. It is quite easy to understand how he got elected to public office; despite my personal distaste for his politics, he’s very simply likable, and like most Canadian politicians carries with him the wholehearted belief that even if you happen to believe completely the opposite of what he does that meaningful dialogue is still possible. (Stephen Harper, who has a very jerkish public persona, is one of the few notable exceptions to this rule.) After his introductory speech, the first question he got was a rambling tirade from a crim law student who was very angry about Canada’s recent refusal to attempt to extradite criminals being held elsewhere in anticipation of the death penalty (a reversal of longtime standing policy), and although Flaherty, as the Finance Minister, has no actual duties as regards international criminal law, diplomatic sanctioning or justice matters, he still answered the question as respectfully as possible.
However, he’s still a politician. My question to him was this:
Mr. Flaherty, in the 2008 budget, you introduced new federal budget measures to get more E85 fuel stations in Canada – however, given the recent study from the University of Minnesota showing that most form of ethanol manufactured from standard commercial crops contribute more carbon emissions to the atmosphere via their harvest than they remove when used as a replacement for gasoline, would you favour government investment in advanced cellulosic ethanol research, considering that cellulosic ethanol is the only form of ethanol that actually might reduce overall C02 emissions, and cancellation of agricultural subsidies for other production of ethanol?
Flaherty answered the question by saying he was firmly in favour of greater funding for cellulosic ethanol research, but that doesn’t answer the real question embedded in it – and I know full well he knew what the question was, and it’s this:
Mr. Flaherty, we spend three-quarters of a billion dollars annually on subsidies for corn and grain ethanol production – industries that are not profitable without both government subsidy and government mandated use. Now that we know fairly conclusively that corn and grain ethanol don’t work in the way that we need them to work, as they are both energy-inefficient and actively harmful to the environment, how about we spend that money on absolutely anything else that might actually be useful in some way? I understand that just about all of that money goes to Alberta and rural Saskatchewan, which is your party’s electoral base, but come on.
But I didn’t ask that. Mostly because his visit was organized by the Conservative students’ society here at Osgoode, and a few of the members (including the current executive) are friends of mine, and despite the fact that I obviously have political disagreements with them in many areas, they’re principled individuals, and the sort of person I want on the other side of the aisle, and I didn’t want to make them look bad.
But it was tempting to follow up.
Oh, and I didn’t ask him about Bill C-10 (the tax bill throwing on potential removal of tax credits for films containing “offensive” content), because that bill is so offensive to me and many people that I know working in the industry that I would have ended up shouting.
10
Apr
I’m appealing to you – yes, you, the readers! – to answer a simple question: what, if anything, would you consider yourself to be relatively expert in?
I’m not looking for post-doctorate study here or anything. I’m just curious to know what my readership knows a lot about, mostly because there are lots of things I don’t know and I like to write about lots of things, and I’m sure it would be a benefit to all and sundry if, when I decided I wanted to write about, oh, let’s say llama farming, if I could email the llama farmer who reads me and ask him about the everyday minutiae of llama farms, so I don’t get something really basic wrong (“llamas are insects. You heard me. Insects.”).
So spill, people!
10
Apr
Every Thursday, mightygodking.com returns to the pages of Who’s Who, the classic 1980s DC comic book encyclopedia of their characters. Every week, a character shall be judged on the only scale scientific enough that matters: the Rex The Wonder Dog scale of fantasticosity.
Why? Because he is a super-powered Stalin lookalike.
Now, admittedly, this is not quite as cool as a Russian graduate student with no powers who idolizes Stalin and uses Stalin’s image to commit crimes, or the actual Stalin himself as a sorcerer fighting Black Magic Hitler. (And, curiously, with a bit of a speech impediment.) But Stalnoivolk is pretty damn cool, even if he is not at the apex of coolness.
I mean, he does all his supering in a nice suit. Don’t we all often wish that more superheroes just did their jobs while wearing nice suits? After seeing a number of Marvel movies, you begin to appreciate that tights look kind of silly sometimes, and not everybody has to wear them. So let’s give praise to Stalnoivolk for wearing a nice three-piece.
However, Stalnoivolk has also met up with Deadshot, and indeed been out-badassed by Mr. Floyd Lawton. While this is no great crime (after all, being out-badassed by Deadshot is pretty common, because Deadshot is totally badass), it does mean that when assessing Stalnoivolk’s rating, we have to take into account that he is definitely below Deadshot’s tier.
Thus:
9
Apr
The clip autoloads, so I’m putting it behind a cut.
9
Apr
Back in the mid-90s, Marvel had what I thought was the very clever practice of printing on the inside front cover of every issue of every ongoing comic a mini-introduction to the comic – quick blurbs for each of the cast, a short synopsis of what was currently going on in the comic, what happened last issue, et cetera.
Why don’t they do that any more? Why doesn’t DC do it, for that matter? I understand sacrificing potential ad space is a bother, but now that all the pages of a comic are printed on glossy paper (which I dislike, incidentally, but that is neither here nor there), there’s no functional difference between the inside front cover ad space and an additional page of ads elsewhere in the comic. (And it’s not like Marvel and DC are particularly shy about putting additional pages of ads inside the comic.)
Moreover, the inside front cover space is probably the least-read ad page in the comic anyway, because it’s the part you can automatically skip just to get to the good stuff, IE, the story. If there’s a part of the comic’s ad landscape you can reasonably sacrifice, it’s that page.
And a “previously” page just makes sense. It makes the book easier to read for a casual reader. (Imagine how much simpler Secret Invasion would be to read with a “Previously in the Marvel Universe” blurb on the inside front cover. Okay, only a little for that particular book, but even so, it would be more comprehensible to somebody who didn’t know what was going on.) I chose the title of this post for a reason: complex shows like Lost, with large casts and multiple subplots running at any one time (which is something like, for example, any superhero team book ever printed) like to help even regular viewers remember what’s happened before that’s important.
So why don’t the Big Two do this?
8
Apr
Recently the internet has gotten in a tizzle over Brian Michael Bendis’ dialogue for Dr. Doom in Mighty Avengers. Like so:
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