Tuesday 10: Lamest Justice Leaguers Ever

Since Tim unknowingly started this Tuesday Ten thing off last week with his rundown of the ten lamest Avengers ever (a pretty impressive list, I must say), I thought it was only fair to follow it up by picking through the detritus of DC's premier super-team, the Justice League. Some of the Leaguers below were part of some of the various Justice League offshoots, (Justice League Task Force, Extreme snicker Justice), but all can fairly be considered members of the Justice League... even if they weren't members for very long.

I'm upping the degree of difficulty just a bit with this list by not allowing myself to include Vibe, who would honestly have to be the worst Leaguer ever. By several orders of magnitude. I'm also not considerding those characters who were played purely for laughs during the Giffen/DeMatteis years (G'nort, Justice League Antarctica) -- the entire point of those characters was their awfulness. So think of this list as "The Ten Worst Justice Leaguers Not Named Vibe And Not Purposely Ridiculous."

(All images below graciously ganked from Ze Ball Breaker Micro-Heroes Site. Go poke around... it's easy to lose hours looking at all the bizarre stuff there.)

Bloodwynd. Much like "Ten Worst Avengers" desginee Deathcry, Bloodwynd's suckitude starts with the grotesque mid-90's name, but surely doesn't end there. Turns out at first Bloodwynd was a mind-controlled Martian Manhunter in disguise, and then we found out that there was a real Bloodwynd who the Manhunter had been mimicking. That Bloodwynd was some sort of necromancer who wouldn't deign actually to do anything for the League on the grounds that he didn't want to disturb the natural order of things. Good thing the "natural order of things" for Bloodwynd was to quickly fade into obscurity. (I'll admit that I kinda dug his costume, though.)

Blue Jay. Is there any chance whatsoever that the name "Blue Jay" ever inspired fear into the hearts of any criminals anywhere? At least the Marvel hero of whom he was an analogue, Yellowjacket, had a name which could terrify bad guys allergic to bee stings. (C'mon... Blue Jay?)

Doctor Fate (Linda Strauss). This version of Doctor Fate makes the list thanks largely to the brevity of her run with the League which, if I'm remembering correctly, consisted almost entirely of the cover of Justice League America #31. I think Giffen and DeMatteis planned to keep her around longer, but events in her own book -- like her death -- scuttled those plans.

Geo-Force. I'm sorry, Brad Meltzer: he's not cool. Horrendous name, worse costume, not even a hundredth as interesting as his late half-sister, the original Terra. Also, I'm pretty sure that he's added absolutely nothing to Meltzer's run on the book, though we still have an issue left, so maybe he'll, y'know, do something seriously amazing then.

L-Ron/Despero. I liked L-Ron, the little robot who served as Maxwell Lord's majordomo during the Giffen/DeMatteis era -- he brought a welcome sense of snarky humor to the book (as opposed to the ridiculous humor most of the other characters brought). I like Despero as a villain for the JLA -- his brutal attack on that same League (featuring the supposed death of Mr. Miracle) was a highlight of the Giffen/DeMatteis run. Putting L-Ron's consciousness in Despero's body and making him a full League member? With a big gun? Seriously, who thought that was a good idea?

Mystek. Perhaps the character herself wasn't lame, or wouldn't have been if she'd been given the opportunity to develop, but she was knocked off almost as soon as she joined up with the Justice League Task Force. Writer Christopher Priest had intended her to be a creator-owned character starring in her own mini-series and had put her in JLTF to build some buzz for her. But DC nixed that mini-series, so Priest nixed Mystek.

Plastic Man. Yeah, you read me right. Plas always felt like an incongruous presence in the League and I never quite understood his continued membership past Morrison's "Godly Legion of Leaguers" roster -- it became "The Big Seven, Oh And Also By The Way Plastic Man." If I had to have a stretchy hero in the JLA, I'd much have preferred Elongated Man, who could bring the funny and had more depth to his character. Guess that's not happening anytime soon, though, is it?

Triumph. DC's version of Marvel's Sentry, but before Marvel got around to creating the Sentry. Triumph, apparently, was one of the original founders of the Justice League, but was removed from the timestream and erased from the memories of everyone everywhere. When he "came back" into the modern DCU, he was, frankly, an asshole. Theoretically, his assholishness was justified, since no one even remembered he'd ever existed -- I'm sure that would have hacked me off pretty good, too -- but it sure made for an unlikable character. In a vaguely ironic final twist on the "no one remembers Triumph" bit, a turned-into-glass-by-the-Spectre Triumph was still in the JLA Watchtower when Grant Morrison destroyed it, presumably destroying Triumph as well... not that anyone, including Morrison, seemed to remember. Or care.

Zan and Jayna, The Wonder Twins. The friggin' Wonder Twins?! In a book called Extreme Justice? Wow, this idea positively reeked of eau du nineties, didn't it? (Dr. Olsen's Fun Science Fact: That feeling in your brain you're getting while trying to reconcile "Wonder Twins" and "Extreme Justice"? That's what we like to call cognitive dissonance.)

Hmmmm... a full half of the entrants on this list come from Extreme Justice, and I can promise you that wasn't intentional. I guess it just shows that Chris Sims (as usual) was right: Extreme Justice might very well have been the worst series DC ever published.

How Do You Take Your X-Men? Unsettling or Astonishing?

There was a metric ton of announcements coming from San Diego this weekend. Chances are if you're into comics, you've seen them all over Newsarama and everywhere else, so I'm not about to recap or deliver much opinion on any of those press releases.

Except one^[1].

To the delight of many, Warren Ellis has been tapped to take over Astonishing X-Men when Joss Whedon's latest arc winds up. That this news was greeted by mass fandom with near-unanimous glee wasn't surprising at all. What surprised me this weekend were the scores of online postings proclaiming, "Oh, Good Christ! Finally, the Scary X-Men we've been begging for!" And if not that, then "I can't wait to see the fetishist uniforms and weird piercings everyone's gonna get. This is the best news ever!"

And if you take the close of Ellis' Newsarama interview from Friday on its own, this is a perfectly reasonable expectation to operate under:

NRAMA: Rounding out this interview, is there anything specific that fans can be looking forward to reading when they read Warren Ellis' Astonishing X-Men?

WE: Oh, the usual, you know. Raping your childhoods, using my position to destroy everything you love, displaying opinions you may not agree with and writing with my own voice and personality. All the things people hate in commercial comics these days. And yet, all the things I am specifically hired for. It's a funny old world.

Me? I don't believe he's serious for a minute. "All the things [Ellis is] specifically hired for", when Marvel Comics is doing the hiring, is to write one of their bread-and-butter titles in a way that will sell multiple copies of each issue without alienating any reader past present or future. He's no more likely to rape anyone's childhood writing the X-Men than he was when he was writing "Dracula gets his balls kicked out" in Planetary.

I wouldn't think there's some strict Warren Ellis Standard Operating Procedure that mandates a "scary" approach to dealing with established characters and (to a reasonable extent) their continuity and history. I also don't think we readers doubt his ability to craft a traditional superhero story without 100% observance of those traditions. So why the rush to assumption that an A-list work-for-hire Marvel Comic will suddenly turn darker or thrust itself in some unsettling direction just because he's writing it? Are many readers simply superimposing his message board quips, social commentary, his novel, or his various posts on topics or images that interest him, over his mainstream work?

I wonder if he's had a chance to sample the online reaction just in his own forum? And if he has, I wonder if it delights him or maybe worries him a little: "JESUS! Do people think I'm 100% depraved?"

Looking past the exaggerated Ellis-speak of the earlier interview excerpt, he seems to be mostly thoughtful and jazzed about getting the keys to Marvel's Ferrari during the rest of his talk:

Warren Ellis:...I want to see what it actually means in the 21st Century. This, to me, is interesting work: to take a sounding of a franchise that has meant so much and so many things to so many people over the years, and to see what else it still has to say; to look forward and see how this badge of X -- which didn't have the cultural load it carries today when Lee and Kirby generated the idea -- can be made to mean.

...So when this came up, and when the degree of creative freedom that comes with it became clear, I thought, why the hell not? I mean, you never get to make your "stamp" on these things, because the franchise needs to keep running and everything gets dug over and re-invented in the end. But I like the technical challenge in these commercial gigs: to bring the property into the era of its production, as it were, and to write stories I'd like to read.

I'm as excited as the next comics fan about the future of Astonishing X-Men, and mostly because Mr. Ellis is striving to "write stories [he'd] like to read". Not because I have this preconceived notion that he'll finally be able to "weird up" some characters that have plenty of weirdness built in already that he (or any other competent, observant, and quick-witted writer) discovered before he typed Page 1.

I'm excited because I can bet on wanting to turn the page as quickly as possible. I'm excited because I'll probably find it maddening to have to wait 30-60 days for the next installment, because the ending of the current issue is so good. Not because I associate "Written by Warren Ellis" with "out there" or "scary".

________________________________________________________
[1]Most of my commentary was part of my post at Warren Ellis' Engine.net. I cross-posted here because as is common in 95% of my message-boarding, my expressed opinion stopped the discussion stone cold dead. I have the suckiest mutant power ever.

Friday Night Fights: Take It Outside, But Be Nice.

Before Civil War, there was Avengers (vol. 1) #168...

Listen to Iron Man, Cap! He's all about "personal privacy" and secret identities!

And that's just the page 7 undercard. Much like Road House, that early action is just the shrimp cocktail in a Five Course Dinner of Beatdown. I won't bore you with the blah blah blahs leading up to Starhawk confronting Michael the Enemy at his house, except to interject that Starhawk comes dressed to rumble and Michael never gets out of his tennis instructor gear.



See? Just like Road House! Starhawk/Swayze's going to take this fight "outside" while never leaving the den:

Unfortunately, carrying your wife around in your subconscious is just asking for a punch in the teeth, and sure enough...



Then it's all over but the finishing move (or in this case, the obliteration/conversion/shredding move):



But then, with a twist Dalton couldn't pull on Jimmy's torn larynx, Evil Tennis Pro makes Starhawk all better.



Be nice, indeed. Next time, Starhawk, leave your missus at home. Bahlactus doesn't dole out the do-overs.


^{Avengers #168, by Jim Shooter, George Perez and Pablo Marcos, 1977.}

Who wants to watch this Watchmen?

Up until this morning, I hadn't believed that the recent rumors and news bits about a Watchmen movie were going to result in the creation of an actual completed film — several directors have been attached over the last fifteen years or so, so the fact that 300's Zack Snyder had been signed to direct didn't mean the movie was really any closer to getting made. But now, in addition to a director, we have quite a bit of an announced cast.

And to say that I'm underwhelmed would be much like calling the San Diego Comicon a "nerd get-together."

What the announced cast of Snyder's Watchmen film says to me: low budget. Or possibly: we don't want to waste our SFX budget on the actors. Or even: we don't want to lose our asses in paying out pay-or-play deals to A-list stars when this thing falls through.

I don't necessarily have a problem with any of these actors as I don't know who the hell most of them are. And I'm one of those guys who remembers names of actors, even little-known ones. This cast announcement feels more like they're gearing up to make Watchmen a made-for-cable-TV movie than a Big Hollywood Blockbuster Feature.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Watchmen:

Dr. Manhattan: Billy Crudup. OK, fine, I suppose. I like Crudup, since he had such a large role in one of my most very favorite movies as Stillwater guitarist Russell Hammond in Almost Famous.

Rorschach: Jackie Earle Haley. Haley's coming off an Oscar nomination for his work as a creepy ex-child molester in Little Children, so I'm sure creepy Rorschach's a part he can probably play well. Plus, bonus points for his already being Rorschach-like: he's a little guy, kinda funny-lookin'.

And there ends our not-quite-big-name cast, as we move on to the "who?"s...

Ozymandias: Matthew Goode. Um, well, he was in a movie with Mandy Moore once, so that's got to count for something. Oh, and he's English, which Adrian Veidt... wasn't.

Nite Owl: Patrick Wilson. Yeah, I got nothin' here. Sorry.

Silk Spectre: Malin Ackerman. She's pretty, I guess, though in a completely different way than I'd always pictured Laurie Juspecyzk's prettiness. Past that, your guess is as good as mine.

The Comedian: Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Hey, look, it's Denny from Grey's Anatomy! You know, the guy who died and left Izzy boatloads of money. (Not that I watch that show. Not since it started to suck, anyway.) Hey, waitaminnit... wasn't the Comedian supposed to be from an entire generation before the main characters in Watchmen?

So all in all, a cast which inspires an awful lot of indifference in me. A director who's more concerned with visuals than story (working with source material that's all about the story) and a cast largely made up of relative unknowns... man, if you'd told me a few years ago I'd be looking forward more to an Iron Man movie than Watchmen, I'd have thought you were out of your gourd. But hell, I might be looking forward to Ghost Rider 2 more than Watchmen at this point.

Thanks, Frank.

Blame/thank Mike at Progressive Ruin.

Lame-ass Avengers Assemble (Or Remain Dead): The Bottom 10

After some exhaustive research (read: marathon bathroom session where my only companion was George Perez' 30th Anniversary Avengers poster), I arrived at a starting point for thinning Earth's Mightiest Heroes & Others Dressed In A Similar Manner.


10. The Swordsman:
That lavender getup is just your first clue that this isn't Marvel's Errol Flynn. He also betrayed the team (and his boy Hawkeye), and got led around by Li'l Swordsman so badly he wound up in the grave. And the gal he so blindly followed didn't realize she loved him back until he was seconds away from death. And after she struck out with every single other Avenger on the roster. What kind of lame tramp could dare play such games with an F-list swashbuckler?

9. Mantis:

This kind.

I think Thor's onto something.

(By the way, all of these panels are from the same comic. Ho, indeed.)













8.Spider-Man:
That's right, I said Spider-Man. Just look at his supporting cast here, symbols of his mundane little problems. How do his regular-guy hangups get any meaningful panels when he's on a team with recovering alcoholics, mutants, gods, demi-gods, and a bipolar Superman?




7. Tigra:
She's furry and bikini-clad^[1]. That's about it. And I bet Jarvis prays for her death every time he has to clean the curtains.




6. Rage:
He stole (and subsequently lost) a quinjet just to impress the New Warriors. Because, y'know, being an Avenger wouldn't be quite enough.


5. The Hulk:
Stan Lee had him off the team by the end of the second issue. Iron Man eventually shot him into space. All because of a silly myth about what "green guys are packing" in their shredded purple jeans.

4. Silverclaw:
If Challenge of the Super Friends was still on, having her as the shape-shifting, animal-emulating, Spanish-accented member would make it awesome.^[2] But this is Marvel Comics, not DC/Hanna-Barbera TV.


3. Dr. Druid:
Even Warren Ellis couldn't polish this hocus-pocus turd. So he did the next best thing: he had the Son of Satan light him on fire and stuff him in a garbage can. And the charlatan (who despite being a reknowned psychiatrist and a mentalist, wound up mind controlled or whacked out most of the time) had it coming. Just look:




There's a tie at the top bottom! It's a dead heat! One is truly dead, and the other has Death in her name. While there's a reasonable distance between these two and the preceding eight, it was impossible for the staff here at JOB to select just one to stand alone.

1. Gilgamesh & Deathcry (tie):
Why wasn't Gilgamesh solving all the Marvel Universe's problems in about 15 seconds? He certainly seemed to have whatever power the job required. Why did Marvel so completely and utterly destroy a character that they took such great pains to establish as immortal? And most importantly, why wasn't he Avenged? Maybe if he'd re-thought that outfit (a little more black leather, a little less mall-kiosk gold)...

Speaking of mall-jewelry, we are all equally scarred by just how long Marvel kept around Deathcry, Warrior-Brat of the Shi'ar. Nothing says "1990's comics" quite like a 30-something male writer trying to sound like a 16-year old girl to better relate to 13-year old boys. Well, that and naming the character "Deathcry".

So, Marvel, feel free to use this list as a guideline for keeping these misfits away from Earth's Mightiest Heroes. If you can't resist the temptation, just bring back the Secret Defenders. Or staple your thumbs to your eyelids until the feeling passes.




_____________________________________________________
[1]I will admit that is a pretty sweet Adam Hughes portrait, though.

[2]You got me--Challenge of the Super Friends would be awesome today no matter what.

If you have to explain the joke...

For those of you might have not quite have gotten Ben's JLA nomination last week (which, um, included me), he was helpful enough to provide us some reference material:

(From 1997's thankfully aborted Justice League of America TV pilot.)

These catastrophes are all caused by "The Weather Man," the baddie played by Ben's nominee Miguel Ferrer, who shows up right about in the middle of the clip. Of course, I think the word "catastrophe" could easily be applied to this production as a whole.

Frank Goddamn Miller

Frank Miller's really just screwing with us at this point, isn't he?



(From the preview for All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder #6.)

Every single mention of Batman in those panels is as "the goddamn Batman." I know that phrase (very intentionally constructed) took the brunt of some Internet mockery the first time Miller had Batman use it, but now... it's just getting ludicrous. I don't think that's Gordon, talking, either — I feel pretty sure that's Miller's attitude toward Batman at this point.

In fact, I'm almost positive that the entirety of Miller's superhero output over the last six or seven years or so has been intended as a giant middle finger directed right at the very people buying his books.

Frank Miller spent ten years or so outside the mainstream superhero market crafting projects he fiercely believed in, books which were successful creatively and, to some degree, commercially: the various Sin City series and 300 especially. Those were books he wanted to do, ideas and characters which germinated from inside his head rather than from one of the comics companies, and his enthusiasm showed in the work.

But for all of that success, all of that time spent working on projects close to his heart... all it seems comics fans wanted to know was when Miller was coming back to Batman.

The goddamn Batman.

So Miller decided to give the fanboys what they wanted: he followed up his legendary The Dark Knight Returns with the god-awful hellaciously atrocious The Dark Knight Strikes Again, a work which was, on every level, an insult to the readers. The storytelling was frequently impossible to follow, increasingly so toward the end of the book, as if Miller realized he had far more story left than pages allotted; the artwork looked as if it were drawn by a Sharpie-wielding ten-year-old and then colored by that ten-year-old's twelve-year-old sister as her first project learning Photoshop. Backgrounds? Why do we need backgrounds? It's much easier to represent The Future with swirly rainbow colors!

Not to mention the fact that the story, which barely made any sense, succeeded mainly in defecating all over many of DC's iconic characters, especially Dick Grayson.

And the thing, of course, sold like crazy. Miller crapped out a project which practically dripped with his derision for the characters and concepts he was using, and he likely made a huge sum of money off of it. I'm sure that whatever deal he cut with DC to produce the long-awaited sequel to one of their most well-loved and profitable series ever, it included a fairly enormous check with his name on it.

So since that project worked out so well, why not continue it with All-Star Batman? And this time, he doesn't even have to draw it, he just has to write it — again, I'm sure, for a hefty sum. Superstar artist Jim Lee picks up the pencils for this series, ensuring that the series is going to be a gigantic hit. Any book with the names "Frank Miller" and "Jim Lee" would sell truckloads, regardless of what character they were working on; putting those two names on a Batman title was almost a license to print money from a sales and marketing standpoint.¹

All of this means that Miller ends up receiving another healthy paycheck (probably plus royalties) for writing a book about characters he now detests, a book which will prove an enormous financial success regardless of the quality of its actual content. Miller cranks out scripts which betray how little he thinks of these characters ² and variant covers which can't possibly take him more than an hour to put together:




The above image might be the single worst cover I've ever seen to any comic, both in terms of execution and in terms of thematic intent. That's, what, either Wonder Woman as a cheap stripper or a stripper in a bad Wonder Woman getup? Either way, it's awful — this from a man who's crafted some of the most memorable visuals in comics over the last twenty years.

Frank, I don't think anyone would deny that you're a fantastically talented creator — when your heart's in your work. If you don't want to write the goddamn Batman, stop writing the goddamn Batman. I doubt you're in a position where you have to work on this book; if you're doing work you actively detest only for the paycheck, you're doing a disservice to yourself and to the people who're supporting your work from their own wallets. You're nothing but a hack and a whore at that point, and I don't think those are descriptors you want attached to your legacy. Go write and direct movies, go back to your creator-owned work, go retire... just please stop sending out these monthly hate letters to these characters and your readers.

---

[1] What I have a harder time understanding is why Jim Lee's continuing with it. I know that the opportunity to work with Frank Miller must be exciting, but Lee's got to realize that what he's being asked to draw is dreck. It ends up being beautifully-rendered dreck, but it's dreck nonetheless.)

[2] Miller's version of Batman, Superman and the rest of the Justice League seem to live on Earth-Psycho: the first words his twisted version of Wonder Woman speaks consist of her calling a passing stranger "sperm bank."

DC To Marvel: Gimme A Hand With This Can Of Worms, Will Ya?

Allen had a point related to DC's upcoming Final Crisis yesterday:

DC has always seemed to work much more in a cyclical fashion than Marvel has, and I think twenty (or so) years since the last universal shakeup probably means it's about time for the cycle to end and begin again...

Quite true, but why? Why is it always DC and never Marvel that finds itself in that paradox: being in a cycle of trying to break the cycle, where each big shakeup is intended to be the Last Big Shakeup? Look at the titles alone: DC's following up a series called Infinite Crisis (which implies that there is no end) with one called Final Crisis (which implies that there actually is an end, and this is it).

The simplest answer is that DC had a nice little Golden Age headstart on Marvel proper, from Superman's debut in the late thirties until Marvel got their ball rolling with Fantastic Four over twenty years later. Stan and Jack (and later Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway and others) quickly realized this apparent deficit was actually an advantage. They could see the future through DC's innovations and also through the continuity minefields DC blindly strolled into first.

Around the time Marvel began picking up steam with FF and then Spider-Man, DC was putting the finishing touches on its perfectly circular universe. Barry Allen met Jay Garrick, the Justice League met the Justice Society, about fifteen multiversal cans of worms opened wider and wider, and DC found itself having to answer questions they never expected from their audience. An audience that had only gotten older and weren't about to let DC loose from their commitment to continuity.

I bet Stan Lee read "Crisis on Earth-2", went to the office, burned all evidence of his Brand New Captain America concept, and asked Jack Kirby for his thoughts on drawing icebergs.

40-something years after Flash met Flash, DC's still trying to get those worms collected and re-sealed, while some Marvel editor is asking why all those sealed cans are sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

^{"I CAN'T EVEN TELL WHICH SUPERGIRL THIS IS AND I'M FREAKING SUPERMAN!!"}

Will "Final Crisis" Begin the Cycle Again?

As you've no doubt seen by now, DC released their first teaser image for next year's Final Crisis event yesterday. The tagline -- "Heroes Die, Legends Live Forever" -- certainly implies to me some kind of large-scale DCU reboot might be coming at the end of what I sincerely hope is the least line-wide crossover for awhile. It's obviously too early to know what could be coming up in Final Crisis, but I've got some half-assed speculation going on in my head already. To wit:

• I think we can all agree that those Sinestro Corps villains will play into the story in a big way. It's obviously not a coincidental conglomeration of characters, since it just happens to feature the Big Bads of the last twenty years worth of major DC "reboot events." Clearly putting all of them together in one massive batch of evil will mean some bad, bad things for the DCU. In fact, I'm thinking that...
• The result of all of that combined evil will be a sort of Ragnarok for the DCU. DC has always seemed to work much more in a cyclical fashion than Marvel has, and I think twenty (or so) years since the last universal shakeup probably means it's about time for the cycle to end and begin again. My hunch is that most or all of the DCU heroes (and probably villains, too) will die, most in a valiantly manner, showing why they're heroes. (Another hunch: most of this will be kicked off with the death of a character that would seem to be on the "but you can't kill HIM/HER!" scale, showing that nobody will be above the Crisis.) Only Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman will be left standing at the end to face what's left of the Sinestro Corps; having lost everyone and everything, we'll see their true heroism rise as they manage to defeat the bad guys in one final universe-ending gesture, paving the way for...
• A new Earth, possibly a new Earth-1 in the newly-created multiverse. [1] This Earth will differ radically from the current one, rather than simply tweaking a couple of relatively minor points of history. You know how different the new Earth-2 looks from the original (from the one small image we've seen of it in 52 #52)? We're talking that kind of different, at least in some ways. Anything that they want to fix/change will be fair game, creating a "DC Universe for a new generation" or some such. This might be the long-rumored "Ultimization" of the DCU, or this might just be an opportunity for a massive continuity cleanup (hey, Kurt Busiek is the rumored writer for Final Crisis, and he's already proven he can straighten out mucked-up continuity with Avengers Forever). And this new Earth-1-or-Whatever -- that's where we'll get this new brighter, more heroic Earth we were promised we'd get as the result of Infinite Crisis (which we clearly don't have right now). The final heroic sacrifice of the Big Three will somehow imprint on the very nature of the newly-created Earth, and heroism will be brought more to the forefront of the new universe.
  

When all is said and done, you'll have a nicely refreshed Earth-1-or-Whatever (one which will hopefully focus more on heroism and less on the darkness which has pervaded the DCU for so long), with a newly-defined single history (one which will hopefully be explained to us, unlike those minor changes to the current history mentioned above), and a newly-created multiverse where all kinds of other stories can be told. And this will be the last time DC does this kind of thing... at least until someone else is in power in DC editorial 20 years from now and has 20 years worth of continuity cleanups to do.

[1] I'm assuming the multiverse is going to stick around, since DC went to a lot of trouble to set it back up and haven't even played with it properly yet. Plus, they're spending a lot of time during thisCountdown era exploring how it works and what's out there. So the multiverse stays.

Ben Hereby Elects for JLA Membership...

Tim Bought Comics on July 11th, 2007. Here's Proof.

New Avengers #32 -

Remember this Special Guest Reviewer?



What-what does this mean? This month's New Avengers exists to tell us all what-what this means, Danny. And to tell us, and to tell us, and to tell us some more. I thought Bendis was so popular because his dialogue was so nuanced, so subtle, so real. So what the hell's going on here, with my New Avengers being re-titled Parrots on A Plane?

I realize that I'm not much for keeping a low word count either, but Bendis, please: WE GET IT. THE HOOK TO YOUR GIGANTIC STORY IS "WHO CAN YOU TRUST?" I'm not sure we needed to see the New Avengers talking rather than acting for 20 pages, just to make sure every single reader understands the ramifications of Skrullz Iz Everywhere. Wolverine? Luke Cage? Hashing out the issues and asking questions for the less cerebral New Avengers like Dr. Strange, Spider-Man, and even Iron Fist (though, given his stupefaction recounted at the top...)? That doesn't feel right. (And it also doesn't feel like Bendis did it on purpose to show people "acting out of character" i.e. Skrully.)

It doesn't look right, either. I can appreciate Leinil Yu's technique, but the scratchiness of the art is wearing thin with me and its getting hard to tell what's going on, even when there's action on the page. What the hell is Spider-Woman doing exactly with Skullectra's corpse at the end? Is that even a real corpse? It's hard to tell the way the arms are sticking out of the shroud she's in.

I will continue to pick up New Avengers with cautious optimism; there's a cool story to be told, if only Bendis and Yu will show a little more and tell a lot less.

Superman Confidential #5:
This is what comics are capable of when good concepts are plotted and drawn into compelling stories. Darwyn Cooke and Tim Sale continue the Origin Of Kryponite, a story I didn't even know I needed to read. And, it's an origin story that doesn't bog down with dry exposition. True, these first five issues have been crammed with relationship stuff (Superman and Lois, Superman and Luthor, not to mention Superman with himself, Superman and Kryptonite, and this issue Luthor and Kryptonite), but the character building all happens organically in the framework of an ongoing plot. While Bendis and his New Avengers seem to obsess over Where We're Going, Superman Confidential shows us How We Get There.

I bought a few other books, too. Updating soon...

Liefeld Returns to Image; Universe Indifferent

So Rob Liefeld and Youngblood are back at Image Comics, only eleven years after the other founding Imagers told him he was no longer welcome in their Gilded Palace of Overdrawn Hardbodies. (Yes, I know Image has diversified quite a bit since then, but we are talking 1996 here.)

Can someone please explain to me how in hell he keeps finding companies to agree to publish his work? Tying back into my post on lateness from a few days ago, hasn't he demonstrated beyond all doubt a complete inability to meet his professional obligations? Has he finished any of the projects he's begun over the last few years? Most of the Image founders have experienced/created more than their fair share of delayed comics over the last fifteen years, but Liefeld's the one with the most projects which simply never saw market.

I have trouble imagining that Liefeld really still has that many fans. As far as I can tell, he seems to generate more mockery than adulation. It doesn't seem like his work sells all that well when it actually comes out [1]; unlike some of his once-and-future Image mates, he hasn't been able to keep his work Out There on the shelves and in the public eye. I've read what feels like hundred of articles about the return of Youngblood and other bits of Liefeldia over the years, but rarely have I seen the product actually out in the wild. Or heard much mention of it except when those press releases come out.

I think the answer must come from his boundless enthusiasm for his creations; he may be a truly terrible, terrible artist, but at least he's excited about his work. Borderline obnoxiously so. Making comics obviously completely jazzes him, and that's fantastic -- but it also seems as though he only has so many pieces in his Big Bucket O' Enthusiasm Legos, and to build up excitement for one project he has to take pieces away from another, and once he's lost that initial energy for a project, he lets it drop. Maybe that's not what happens; maybe legitimate reasons, creative or otherwise, pop up and derail every project he touches, but I'm betting it's that loss of enthusiasm which consistently cripples his output.

(I'm not coming down too harshly on Liefeld for that bit of flakiness. I can totally understand that particular affliction; I tend to do the exact same damn thing. But I don't have entire comics companies, and the livelihoods of all of their employees, rising and falling based on my ADD creative whims.)

I think of Rob Liefeld the same way I think of George Lucas, to some degree: he's someone who needs to be The Idea Guy. He should be The Guy Behind the Guy, almost more of an "executive producer" of comic books than one of the actual hands-on creatives. He's got some ideas which could be turned into something good when implemented by more talented, more dedicated people, and he's managed to get some big-name creators to work with him over the years (hell, Alan Friggin' Moore contributed quite a bit to the Liefeldverse). I'm hoping that's the direction he's going in with this new series from Image. That seems to be the case, as Liefeld's only providing covers and letting writer Joe Casey do the heavy creative lifting.

And hey, if he doesn't, at least we can look forward to more press releases late next year touting the return of Youngblood somewhere else.

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[1] I'll admit I don't have any numbers to back this claim up, and I'm willing to be proven wrong if someone can do so.

5 Red Bulls and I Can See Through Time.

I’m not sure people actually like energy drinks (I’d swear Red Bull’s aftertaste is sweetened uranium), but people sure do seem to need them. I’m not too proud to admit that I’ve leaned on a Red Bull here and a Rockstar there to ensure that I’m awake to hear inspiration when it calls. (In my case, that call is the two cats involved in a spectacularly violent booty call at 2 every morning; I could offer no better explanation for the quality of my contributions here.)

So what do we do when the FDA or the WHO comes out with their inevitable Unexpected Doom Alert? Y’know, the “Wow! Never thought Rockstar Zero Carb could do that to a medulla oblongata!” or the, “If your anus explodes suddenly, please drive to an emergency room and instruct the nurse to call 1-800-RED BULL for information” kind of bulletin.

At first, the thought of an exploding anuses pandemic, fueled by admittedly Red Bull-dependent Warren Ellis and his constant flood of output (several monthly comics, a novel, columns for Suicide Girls and Reuters, daily updates on his many websites, blogs, trading posts on his online community^[1]) scared me more than threat of death by zombie.

But the comics industry would save us. They’d do their damndest to put a lid on Warren Ellis and his volatile rectum and soldier along, because they know this: that Red Bull-soaked sphincter could write a decent monthly title on its own. In fact, it's been a long-standing rumor that DC tried to get that anus onboard to fix Countdown, but couldn't come to mutually agreeable terms. And that's a shame.



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[1]I just can't bring myself to call Warren Ellis' Engine a "message board". Newsarama has a message board. Entourage has a message board.

The Day The Music Died

While this isn't technically comics-related, it seems like most people reading this might be at least a little bit interested in the topic, and if you're not... well, tough.

Next Monday, July 15, new royalty rates go into effect for Internet radio stations which will effectively kill the entire 'net radio market. These new rates are upwards of ten times higher than any other type of radio broadcaster must pay (and are retroactive to January of '06), and most 'net radio stations would end up having to pay amounts far, far greater than their profits would allow. The new rates say that stations have to pay 33 cents per hour per listener, so a station with only 5000 listeners would have to pay royalty fees of almost $1.2 million per month to continue broadcasting. And that's for a fairly small station. The asshats at the RIAA got this legislation passed so they could kill 'net radio and make more money for themselves via record sales and larger broadcasters; it looks like their strategy is going to work if something isn't done.

(EDIT: I got my math wrong, or rather, my figures: it's not 33 cents per hour, it's .33 cents per hour. Still, that figure represents far more than the profits most stations make. A station with only 5000 listeners having to pay $12K month in royalty fees is still excessive. But man, doesn't $1.2 million for 5000 listeners sound more terrible and impressive?)

If you ever listen to any 'net radio -- whether that's Radio Paradise or Pandora or AOL Radio or anything in between -- please visit SaveNetRadio.org to see what you can do. Really, at this point "what you can do" means "call your Congressional representative(s) and tell 'em to support the Internet Radio Equality Act."

Thanks, and we now return to your regularly scheduled comics blogging.

Zudacomics Begins

"Oh, the demon monkeys that live in my hair will have their message heard!"
-Patton Oswalt

You can say this for DC: they're no longer slavishly imitating Marvel's blueprint for success outside of print comics. No sir, The Used-To-Have-A-Cool-Bullet-Logo's not about to piss away their scarce R&D dollars on stupid crap like motion pictures featuring second-tier characters. (Not that there isn't an Atom screenplay floating around somewhere that practically shits out Oscar statues.)

No longer content with burying Marvel in the So Very Late, They're Almost Early Comics market^[1], DC wants to break new ground in the Cheap New Talent Stripmining arena:



Zudacomics^[2]. 21st century comics on a 19th century budget.

Hard to believe, given how many words I've burned just to set this part up, but my thoughts on this launch are quite succinct: It looks, smells, tastes, and announces its presence just as Marvel's/Bill Jemas' aborted Epic Comics did a few years back. And I'm now groaning with frustration, just like I did then.

Just like I was with Epic, I'm excited at the potential of Zudacomics.com as a herd-thinner of wannabe Brubakers, Bendises, Bagges, and Brothers Hernandez. When faced with a more wide-open submission process, many would (hopefully) realize: I can't actually prepare or deliver a winning pitch on demand. I never got past the 'what if Wolverine was gay?' stage. What was I thinking?
And then these masses would return to their day jobs, passionately enjoying the comics of their choice and lighting up message boards and writing blogs about how crappy Zudacomics are.

And just like with Epic, I sadly resign myself to the near-certainty that Zuda will fold under the weight of thousands of early denial-ridden submissions (not to mention the deluge of e-mails from DC/Time Warner Legal) before it posts the second or third strip. And thus, the zombie/western/Manga/post-apocalyptic/rave culture webcomics hopeful escapes a much-needed silver bullet for his silly little balloon.

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[1]Once Marvel "Superboy-punched" Daredevil vs. Bullseye: The Target, they really only had Ultimate Hulk vs. Wolverine to grapple with All-Star Batman & Robin The Boy Wonder, The Authority, Wildcats, Action Comics and Wonder Woman. If this sounds like a wholly different post, that's because it is. By thousands of other people on hundreds of other sites.

[2]Have they explained this "zuda" thing? Is it a product of some arcane marketing technique, like naming Toyotas things like "Corolla" and "Celica"? Or is the first available title going to chronicle the adventures of Zudaman, from the planet Krypton 2.0?

On Lateness (Mine and Others)

Sorry we haven't been around much the last week or so -- I was on vacation in Florida, and while you might think that vacation would be a fantastic time to do some heavy-duty comics blogging, the fact of the matter was I didn't feel like doing much of anything that required much mental effort. (Please save your "this blog couldn't require much mental effort" jokes, thank you.)

I'm also seriously behind on reading other comics blogs. My RSS reader has hundreds of posts for me to work through just under my "comics" label, but I hope to catch up on that over the next few days. Hell, Caleb at Every Day Is Like Wednesday by himself had something like 25 posts for me to get through. Damn you people and your consistent blogging!

Speaking of Caleb: as I'm trying to catch up, I'm finding a couple of good reads out there, including Caleb's post on how editorial should handle the late-shipping-comics epidemic which lines up pretty well with my views on the subject. For special projects, fill-ins aren't an option; would anyone really want to see an issue of All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder by the fill-in team of, say, Fabian Niceiza and Mike McKone? Those guys could probably craft a really solid Batman story I'd love to read in one of the regular Batman books, but people buying ASBaRtBW do so mainly because of Frank Miller and Jim Lee -- they're not looking for just an out-of-continuity Batman story, but rather a Batman story by Miller and Lee. And that's totally cool by me. I'm willing to wait for creators I like, though I'll admit the year between issues of ASBaRtBW was juuuust a little ridiculous.

The line from Caleb which most got me nodding my head in assent:

The first thing you do is that you only hire professionals with strong reputations of meeting their deadlines for the creative rosters on these books.

Bingo. Why would DC, for instance, hitch their Wonder Woman wagon to a writer they know has a time-intensive day job (Allan Heinberg) which will have to take precedence over side-project comics writing, exponentially increasing the likelihood of lateness? It's not like Heinberg's run on Young Avengers, as much as I liked it, was known for its punctuality. And they followed up that mistake by effectively wasting best-selling author Jodi Piccoult ("best-selling novelist" being another time-intensive day job) by asking her to write the book when it's in the middle of a nightmarishly bad crossover event. They've finally done what they should have done in the first place: bringing in Gail Simone, a professional who's repeatedly proven she can consistently bring in quality scripts on time. (Plus, c'mon, Simone on Wonder Woman's a no-brainer. Perfect fit.)

Anyway, Caleb's got much more to say on the subject than I've got time for right now, and I agree with most of his opinions on this topic, so go read his post. Go. Now. C'mon, shoo, get off'a my porch.

That "80 Candles" Crap Isn't Funny, Nazi!

Happy Birthday to JOB Much Favored Son Jason Hurt. The only relationship this post has with comics is that Jason probably owns about 10,000 of them.