It’s my birthday today, and thirty-five is not one of the great birthdays: it feels sort of milestoney because it divides evenly by 5, but unlike a “divides by ten” birthday it doesn’t feel impressive in any way, and unlike 25 it is not an awesome number. It is just sort of there, blandly saying “well, you’re in your mid-thirties now, and no mistake.”

Plus, having your birthday be right in the middle of the workweek is exceptionally unfair and I wish to complain to management about that.

Anyhow. Those interested in giving me presents (surely there are some of you) – what I’d hope people might do is also consider buying James Young something from HIS wishlist, since James has done a lot of thankless heavy lifting behind the scenes to keep this blog running smoothly despite configuration issues that make Rube Goldberg machines look like inclined planes in terms of ease of use.

Alternately, you can always consult the Paypal button or my Amazon wishlist. Service resumes as normal tomorrow.

A younger friend of mine saw this and inquired as to what Tombstone was. I naturally had to beat him with a shovel.

My weekly TV column is up at Torontoist.

Once upon a time, there was a book series called “Doctor Who”. (You might have heard me mention it from time to time.) It was based on the then-defunct TV series, and took the show in some fairly strange new directions. Specifically, and I know this is going to sound a little bit crazy, it featured the Eighth Doctor finding out that at some point in his own personal future, Gallifrey was going to wind up going to war with a mysterious unnamed Enemy…a war that future Gallifrey was losing. Different Time Lord factions reacted to this in different ways; the Celestis, for example, planned to flee space-time altogether and exist as beings of pure intellect outside the universe as we know it (something that should sound more than a little familiar to viewers of “The End of Time”) while Faction Paradox…

Faction Paradox was a strange creation. Invented by Lawrence Miles, they were a group of counter-culture Time Lords who revered the two things that immortal guardians of space and time would naturally fear: Death and paradox. They dressed up in skull masks, practiced a peculiar form of voodoo (okay, three things–the technophiliac Time Lords were freaked out by the seeming magic of the Faction) and reveled in creating “safe” temporal disruptions. They weren’t exactly enemies, but they didn’t have much love for the Time Lords, either.

Fast forward a few years, and the TV series comes back. The book line pretty much dies out, becoming a vague, inoffensive adjunct to the show, but due to the vagaries of British copyright law, Lawrence Miles remains full owner of the Faction Paradox concept. He launches a spin-off line of books, set in the Doctor Who universe with the serial numbers filed off (the Time Lords become the “Homeworld”, but the Enemy stays the Enemy because Miles insists he never intended them to be the Daleks.) Surprisingly, these books are quite good. This is the story of the best of them.

“Warlords of Utopia”, by Lance Parkin, is perhaps the highest of all “high concept” science fiction stories; it starts in an alternate reality where Rome never fell, but in this novel, the inhabitants (with the help of Faction Paradox) discover another reality where Rome never fell. Then another, then another, until they have a vast cross-time Roman Empire ruled by a Council of Emperors.

Then they discover all the universes where the Nazis won World War II…

The concept, and the ensuing war, is one of the cleverest ideas I’ve seen explored in science-fiction in a long time. (Full disclosure: I’ve been on a few mailing lists with Lance Parkin over the years, and am on a first-name basis with him, even if we’re never going to see eye to eye on Buffy or the Star Wars prequels.) The book genuinely feels like an idea that someone needed to write a book about, and Lance was just the person to write it. I recommend it to anyone who’s seen the two relevant tropes more time than they can count.

(submitted by Ben Ferron)

(re: this.)

Back when I did my post of the least essential Elseworlds, I had it in my head that I would eventually get around to doing the most essential Elseworlds. I tried a few stabs at the post, but kept running into the same problem, over and over again: even most of the best Elseworlds aren’t really essential.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t good Elseworlds. There are fun, pulpy adventures: JLA: Justice Riders, Superman: A Nation Divided, JLA: Age of Wonder, Batman/Houdini. There are thought experiments draped in superhero clothing, like Superman’s Metropolis or Red Son1 or Superman/Batman: Generations2 or World’s Funnest. There are Elseworlds which use alternate reality to tell stories almost entirely divorced from the meaning of the original characters, like Kal or JSA: The Liberty File. There are superhero epics that almost play more like a good issue of What If…? than as an Elseworld, like The Golden Age or JLA: The Nail.

All of these are good comics, and some of them are great ones (The Golden Age). But I hew to the idea that an alternate-reality story should, in some way, serve to illuminate the primary reality by shedding new light on the character. James Robinson’s revisions of the Golden Age characters in The Golden Age, while interesting, don’t really qualify. Superman: Speeding Bullets comes very close, by putting Superman in Batman’s shoes and using the familiar Batman story points to illustrate how Superman and Batman are totally different people and in fact could never be each other, but the third, redemptive act feels forced and unearned, in a “well it’s time for Superman to realize he’s still Superman” way. (It’s a story that needed to be longer, frankly.)

In the end, there’s really only one Elseworld that uses the alternate-reality trope to make a statement about the character it’s supposed to be about. Just one. But it’s one of the best Batman comics ever written, and of “the best Batman comics,” probably the least known.

Batman: Holy Terror isn’t just the best Elseworlds, it’s also really the first.3 I think its early nature is one of the reasons it’s so good; it avoids the formula later Elseworlds would eventually find themselves stuck within4 and just manages to be a compelling alternate-reality story because it dares to consider the fact that in an alternate reality, people make different choices.

In Holy Terror, the world is one where Oliver Cromwell survived the malaria that killed him in the “real” world and lived another decade, long enough to see the Protectorate he had established become firmly accepted. That’s a pretty bold premise, and Holy Terror doesn’t get caught up in explaining the 350 years of history in between then and now; it just sets out the current world, which is a theocratic American colonial portion of the Commonwealth.

In this world, Batman’s parents weren’t killed by a random criminal; they were killed by agents of the state for “seditious” medical behaviour (the comic never explicitly says that Thomas Wayne was, among other things, an abortionist, but it’s pretty clear that he was). Batman, instead of punishing crime, chooses to punish the unjust state. And that lets Alan Brennert make some pretty bold statements about superhero writing and Batman in a 64-page comic.

Firstly, Brennert asserts that superheroism as we know it is more or less explicitly tied to a free society. Costumed vigilantism doesn’t work in a security state. Of course, this is less revelatory a concept after Marvel’s entire output from Civil War through Siege more or less demonstrated, at length, why this was the case, but Holy Terror makes it far more explicit by asserting that superheroes are either troublemakers or assets to any dictatorial regime. Unpowered heroes5 are the former. Powered heroes are the latter, and they’re not simply assets for their abilities but for their very genetic stock, which is both horrific and rings a sinister-but-true note.

Secondly, Brennert explicitly makes Batman a terrorist in this. You can say that Batman is a heroic terrorist, certainly, but there’s simply no way that Batman, in this book, can be construed as anything but. (He even uses the word “jihad” to describe his struggle in his final speech.) That’s a very bold thing to say about Batman and one that, in later years, might not pass editorial muster.

Finally and most importantly, Brennert makes the case that Batman isn’t someone shaped by a traumatic incident, but someone reacting to the society which allowed that incident to happen. In this world, Bruce Wayne has all the resources that he does in the “real” world, but when his parents are killed, he doesn’t become Batman. He trains for it, but eventually abandons the calling to become a priest, and only resumes the idea of Batman when he learns that the state murdered his parents rather than a common criminal – and even then, he is plainly out for revenge rather than justice. Only when he finally realizes the full scope of what the theocratic state has become does he truly embrace the mantle.

This is a fascinating idea of what makes Batman be Batman, because it goes beyond the simple “parents shot -> fight crime forever” motif that most people start at. Most people, when they lose people in a traumatic criminal incident, do not decide to become a cape-wearing vigilante, even in the DC Universe, and Brennert suggests (and indeed explicitly says, in the final page of the comic) that Batman is really no different in this regard: what motivates Batman is not his loss, but the ongoing horror which causes that loss. In the “real” DCU, it’s crime and the continuing breakdown of society. In Holy Terror, it’s a tyrannical regime. This is a much more complex motivation for Batman than “parents dead,” and frankly it’s a superior one.

That’s why alternate reality stories can be truly great: they can take a different setting and use that setting to reveal more about the character’s inner self than might otherwise have previously been visible. Holy Terror is really the only Elseworld to do this so successfully; it’s why it’s the only one that is a must-read on that basis.

(And I just realized that I’ve managed to go through this entire post without mentioning Norm Breyfogle’s art once. Short short version: Breyfogle is, for me, the definitive Batman artist, and this comic is a superlative example of just why that’s the case.)

1. Far more a victory of plotting than one of characterization. [↩]
2. Which is just John Byrne playing around near-endlessly with the idea of continuity more than anything else. Byrne actually is one of the more adventurous users of the Elseworlds idea; his Elseworlds Annual with Superman in-never-revolutionary America is genuinely interesting stuff, even if it fails as a story in many ways. [↩]
3. Gotham By Gaslight predates it, but Holy Terror was the first comic to ever have the Elseworlds stamp on it. [↩]
4. “and here’s Alternate Reality Robin! And Alternate Reality Jim Gordon! And…” [↩]
5. Like Oliver Queen, hung for treason on the first page of the comic. [↩]

Multiple readers have asked that I show support for a democratically elected government in Egypt, and to say that the alternative is not between Hosni Mubarak and Iran II: Radical Islamic Boogaloo. Which is obbviously the case. So here is a pretty decent Youtube making the rounds that sums up a lot of imagery from the Egyptian revolution (does it have a color-coded name yet? Get on that, Egyptians).

Personally, I tend to think that “new Egypt” will probably end up politically resembling Turkey more than anything else, and that would be entirely okay.

Also, the recent CRTC decision to meter internet usage in Canada is bullshit, moneygrubbing of the worst kind. Here is a second Youtube. Featuring George Strombopoulos, who, and I say this as someone who has poked fun at Strombo on a regular basis in the past, is really becoming a national media treasure. The petition of which he speaks is here; if you’re Canadian you should go sign it right now if you have not already.

And if you sat through all that, here is a reward.

(Well, it made me laugh.)

The big problem with One of the biggest problems with One of the many, many vast problems with the 2005 crossover ‘Infinite Crisis’ is the way that everyone acted so wildly out of character. And I do mean everyone: The series started with the premise that Alexander Luthor, posing as his…um, father-ish thing…Lex, has organized almost all the super-villains in the world into a single cohesive group by using their fear of being brainwashed like Doctor Light. Yes, that’s right, Black Adam, the guy who rips criminals in half, is standing up for a serial rapist. Oh, and Captain Nazi and the Penguin are working together on this one, and Psimon has decided he’s comfy being one of the rank-and-file, as has Doctor Sivana, and Chemo is just fine lying in wait until they’re ready for him, and Doctor Psycho has really toned it down to work with the group. Because that’s Doctor Psycho in a nutshell, a guy who’s really capable of restraining his baser impulses when needed.

And the heroes? Batman’s gone completely off the deep end into paranoia, creating a giant satellite to “watch over” Earth’s superhumans and make sure they don’t get up to any mischief. Unsurprisingly, it goes berserk and causes more problems than it solves. (Batman is never held culpable for the many, many deaths caused by his creation, of course.) Wonder Woman has become murderously ruthless (although the collected version retcons away her attempted murder of Mongul by changing the line, “What do you think I was going to do?” to “I was going to tie him up, what do you think I was going to do?” Future collections will change it to, “I was thinking about giving him a guided tour of our headquarters, followed by tea and crumpets and a sincere discussion of the ethical problems inherent in his behavior. Why, what did you think I was going to do?”) And Superman merely waffles, consumed with self-doubt over his hopes at making the world a better place.

Power Girl is captured by Alexander Luthor, and it turns out he’s working with…the Psycho-Pirate! But according to Alexander, he’s not using PP’s emotion control powers at all to influence the heroes! They’re just like that already, because of how imperfect the world is. Using the unbelievably powerful emotion-manipulator to manipulate the emotions of his allies and enemies to help his master plan along, why…it simply wouldn’t be sporting!

Obviously, the whole plot makes a lot more sense if you assume that Alexander is making use of the Psycho-Pirate to keep his army of murderous, treacherous, violent sociopaths from turning on each other, while turning the heroes against each other. But actually, you can go even further than that. Think about the last time you saw Alexander Luthor, Kal-L, and Earth-Prime Superboy, back in ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’. Did they really seem all that hateful, evil, and obsessed with bringing back the Multiverse? Why, no, they didn’t. Was there another character out there who was evil and obsessed with bringing back the Multiverse, one who’d actually tried it once before in Grant Morrison’s “Animal Man” run? Why, yes, I do believe there was.

‘Infinite Crisis’ makes the most sense if you work on the assumption that it was the Psycho-Pirate behind it all. He was the one who planted the seeds of obsession that grew in the exiles from the Multiverse, all in pursuit of his goal of making the universe the way he remembered it. Tragically, he wouldn’t live to see his success, as all his emotional manipulation couldn’t stop Black Adam from squishing his head like a grape. (Look, kids! Comics!) It still has a lot of problems as a series, but at least it makes sense on a fundamental level.

Hoo boy.

You know that Colonel Computron dates back to a certain time: that brief moment of about five or six years when computers were both becoming increasingly familiar to the general public, but were still basically considered to be magic. His computer-suit gives him super-strength and super-intelligence because computers can do anything!

Plus, he looks godawful. Carmine Infantino was always the Silver Age artist who felt like he wanted to start the Golden Age over again: just look at his character designs. Other than the modern Flash costume, they are mostly terrible: either garish and ridiculous (Trickster, Pied Piper, Top, Rainbow Raider) or minimalist and dull (Heat Wave, Weather Wizard, Mirror Master). He only hit the sweet spot occasionally, with Captain Cold or Abra Kadabra, and Colonel Computron is far, far away from the sweet spot; on the page he manages to be just a big boring barely-articulated silver suit.

Of course, this means that, being a pathetic lame villain best relegated to the backbins of comic history, Colonel Computron was brought back multiple times, although eventually they just started calling him “Computron” because, I don’t know, maybe that was less pathetic if you looked at it the right way. I’m pretty sure he got killed off in an issue of Checkmate. I’m sure that made the comic FIVE TIMES AS THRILLING.

Over at Balloon Juice, Mistermix has a complaint about somebody waxing poetic about the virtues of Groupon:

Groupon sells coupons, not invisible condoms or no-hangover martinis. I have no doubt that Groupon can be quite profitable, but coupons have been around for a hundred years. Groupon competitors will spring up, just as they have in the real world. Retailers are going to get skeptical about whether coupon shoppers are potential return buyers or actual skinflint cheapskates, just as they have in the real world.

That’s not really a fair comparison. Traditional coupons are valued and printed on the basis that a certain percentage of them (I remember reading a while back that it was less than one in four) will be used, but have to account for the possibility that they will all be used, which is why most of them offer a relatively low rate of savings (usually about 12-20% of retail cost, although occasionally you get lucky and get a coupon for 20-30%).

Groupon, however, values its discounts on the basis that everyone who buys into it will use it and pays in advance for the privilege; it’s not a coupon so much as it is a floating group purchase rate in which anybody can participate, and most sellers working through Groupon are lowering their profit rate but not eliminating it entirely on the basis that selling more stuff to more people for less profit individually means more profit overall, especially if even a small fraction of them become return customers.

Groupon is simply more efficient than coupons for all parties involved, which is why the speaker’s sentiment – while florid – is reasonably accurate.

This post bemoans the gradual death of the original-property roleplaying game and blames it, in part at least, on licenses and the prevalence of licensing over original story content. And I think he’s right to bemoan the death of original roleplaying settings; I love Deadlands and Rokugan and Theah1 for the awesome settings they are. I like tweaky old Shadowrun, despite the fact that playing it required about a million six-sided dice, and I can even spare a kind thought for the World of Darkness.2

But licensed games aren’t the reason original roleplaying settings have gradually died out. Original roleplaying settings have died out for a very simple reason: roleplayers, as a market, aged. Midway through the 1990s, the replacement rate of old RP gamers by young RP gamers started dropping, and it’s never really reversed trend despite numerous attempts to revive the hobby among young people.

Here’s the thing: old gamers mostly don’t want a new, dramatic setting. They want what they know, both in terms of rules systems and in terms of settings. That’s why the D&D revivals – third edition, “3.5,”, fourth edition, and Pathfinder3 have been the truly important releases of the past decade. Steven Long’s list of “major RPG releases of the past five years” misses things: the Gamma World rerelease, the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying rerelease, Shadowrun’s 20th Anniversary Edition, and so forth.

And if the RPG market has aged ungracefully and grown more hostile to anything they don’t know already – and I think there’s pretty good evidence that that’s the case – then what can an RPG publisher rely upon to generate new customers? The answer is simple: licensed product. Licensed product offers publishers the opportunity not only to get wary older roleplayers’ attention by offering them rules for intellectual properties they’re already familiar with and like, but is also the best remaining way for those publishers to attract outside attention from non-roleplayers, by offering them a gateway. Most of those non-roleplayers will never buy anything but the licensed product, of course, but so what? They still bought it.

And if you’re looking for original roleplaying settings – well, not to get all Doctorow on you or anything, but it’s just moved. It’s all on computers now. Look at Bioware’s output of the last decade: Jade Empire, Mass Effect, Dragon Age. Any one of those could be a pen-and-paper RPG book setting, and a detailed and enjoyable one at that. Look at games like Arcanum, Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3. There’s really no shortage of options. Now, granted, these are computer RPGs and therefore inherently inferior to pen-and-paper RPGs in that the game master doesn’t have to cheat horribly to get players back on track with his plot because the computer will do it automatically, but the point remains.

1. 7th Sea! WOOOOOOOO! [↩]
2. Although not that World of Darkness 2 thing, which took all the grace of the WoD’s well-deserved and well-wrought ending, and completely threw it out the window. [↩]
3. AKA “I Can’t Believe It’s Not 3.5.” [↩]