Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: 2001

Note: Keep in mind, I originally wrote this one in early 2002 - Your Humble Ed.

Hello earth-dwelling mud worms, I am MODOK ... no, wait, sorry, the air's a little thin this high up in the stratosphere, and it makes me loopy every now and again. I meant to say that I am the super-evolved 2001 Space Baby, not to be confused with the 2001 New Year's eve baby. First off, I am not a chubby cheeked cherub bedecked in diaper and year-bearing sash whose youthful ebullience seems to portend an upcoming year of renewed hopes and dreams. Secondly, I can destroy your brain with my space rays! BAM! SPLAT! Haha, I love that bit.

Anyway, with the closing days of the year upon us, I bring you
one honkin' big monolith of a weird-ass comic. And speaking of monoliths, I've been meaning to tell you - me and the other super-omniscient mysterious
forces of universal inscrutability must've left about a MILLION of those freaking monoliths lying around your planet, all over the place, just waiting for you to stumble across them and get all evolved and shit. And you dirt-jockeys DIDN'T FIND A SINGLE ONE! I personally put on
in the Mall of America with my own two hands, so I don't know what your problem was.

Anyway, 2001's over, so you lost out. Enjoy not being an all powerful Space Baby, I'm off to peek into the girls' shower on Rigel-4 ...

With the last few days of 2001 looming upon us - and no damn monolith in sight yet, screw you for lying to us, Arthur C Clarke - I thought it was a good time to get on to that review of the comic version of 2001 I'd been telling myself to do all year. SO I hunted down the individual issues - briefly puzzled over why I had three copies of the first ish - and set down to read them, coming across my first crisis of conscience in the history of this feature.

But first, to the backstory ... It's 1976, and Marvel releases the first issue of 2001:A Space Odyssey, with Jack Kirby helming the project. Thankfully not a movie adaptation, the series is actually some sort of thematic spin-off, initially telling stories
revolving around human beings who are suddenly and unexpectedly visited by the Monolith, and later telling the story of a purple robot with stretchy arms - which is SO Clarke's vision for the concept, I bet. Vive le difference.

You KNOW that Kirby had to be drooling at the idea of tackling this project, which admittedly fares a lot better than some of his other work for Marvel around the same period (Anyone want to debate for the Eternals? I thought
not). Here we've got a story about an enigmatic and omnipresent force which visits humans in the midst of important turning points in their personal and social evolution, and MAKES 'EM INTO SPACE BABIES! That's Kirby writ large, my friends.

So I read these things, and it leads to my earlier-mentioned
crisis of conscience - specifically, that they're not that bad. In fact, on more than one occasion, while ENJOYING the stories, I had to remind myself that I was reviewing these to lambast 'em on the site.

Such is my burden.

The stories work pretty well, particularly if you look at them as dipping into the tradition of the pulp era of Science Fiction stories and such writers as Ray Bradbury of Arthur C Clarke himself. The driving theme of the book - for most of its run, until Machine Man appeared and the feel of the book changed dramatically - was of human beings driven by desire and a deep sense of destiny meeting the monolith, and thereby becoming space babies. Vive le space babies.



The series is a fun read almost entirely because it's Kirby at the wheel, but this stuff is honestly not his best. Most hampering to the whole project is the fact that the dialogue keeps swinging back to the monolith, and to how human beings chase larger destinies, and then how eventually they change to space babies. In fact, the story keeps kind of changing course every five pages, I guess to simulate the format of the last few minutes of the film which inspired the stories. On top of that, Kirby had a way of using stilted language to emphasize that you were dealing with cosmic forces, and that way was to be fucking bizarre and confusing and to sort of make you feel small in comparison to the universe by the tried and true method of being largely baffling and non-euclidian.

This book was indeed space baby intensive. It was also, despite the fact that I DID enjoy it in the long run, really-hard-to-understand-intensive. And what made it even more confusing was that I started to read that one ad where Spider-Man and Captain America ride giant toy cars through a fakey net to save the president, or something, and I TOTALLY DIDN'T REALIZE THAT WASN'T PART OF THE STORY! Save us, Cap and Spidey! Break the web that covers Washington DC, and touch the monolith, and become space Spider-baby and space Captain America-baby!

Anyway, besides what can be called "occasionally trying dialogue," it also hurts the story a lot to compare it to the original film and book. When I read about Harvey Norton, citizen of New York 2040 AD, and about how he spends his free time pretending to be a super hero in a live action theme
park, then becomes an astronaut after a disappointing day at Coney Island, and rescues a big headed alien lady from big headed alien men and they go to a place where there's a thing, and then she goes far away and he dies, and he becomes a real super hero and then he gets real old and he dies, and then he's a SPACE BABY ... well, it makes me reminisce about Clarke's moralistic epic, and any comparison drawn is not flattering.

2001-the-comic didn't have much in the way of a regular cast, if you exclude the monolith and - you know - space babies. One issue would feature a clever neanderthal (in Kirby-speak, NEO-MAN) who hunted alone from his pack, the next a Bronze Age warrior seeking domination of a world, and the next CAPTAIN AMERICA AND SPIDER-MAN RIDING ROCKET CARS! VROOOM! All seeking the monolith to push them to the next stage of their evolution ... well, except Spidey and Cap, who sought Hostess Fruit Pies with which to beat villains.

Eventually, the book grows its very own recurring character,
just in time to end the series as a whole.

The series both picks up and starts to fall the hell apart around about the point they decide to change the format, switching it from a charmingly incoherent series about people talking to closet doors into a series about ... well, a Kirby hero. With all the glory and gaudiness that represents. God bless
'em.

Mister Machine debuts, known better to us now as Machine Man and not known to us at all back then whatsoever. The long and short of the story is that Mister Machine is actually military destroying-things-robot X-51, the last one of his project to be destroyed. They have to be eliminated, you see, because they tend to start questioning their purpose in existing, and then start beating the holy fuck out of everybody, making them dangerous. Indeed, I did the same during my first few weeks of Western Philosophy 101, Freshman year.

X-51 is special and totally-not-apeshit-and-killing-everybody because he was taken into the home of Professor Stack, head super-genius (but not space-baby) of Project Create-Robots-That-Destroy-Shit. Prof. Stack gives X-51 an identity, a warm and loving home, a sense of purpose, and a shiny purple jumpsuit. Despite his not-killing-everybody-and-being-apeshit status (and I think that'll be the last time I use the 'joined by hyphens' gag in this article), the military decides that X-51 better be blown up, but good, and begin pursuing him as he rushes into the real world.


Formula abounds as X-51, now calling himself Mister Machine ("I'm in mechanics," LOL) is sort of adopted by a young boy named Jerry, becomes part of a small family unit, and is pursued by an obese Green Hornet lookalike and devil-worshipper by name of Hotline. In fact, the series SO takes a twist away from the 2001 premise that X-51 actually tells the monolith to go jump in a lake, or words to that effect. Well, by
"to that effect" I mean "Not at all like that," but the message is clear:

"The monolith better go soak its head, Machine Man's on the scene!"

So the monolith disappears, Machine Man takes over the book, and there's no longer any reason to call the book by its current name, but we can't change history (We just become phantoms if we go back and try. And if you get the joke, you're a fucking geek). Eventually, Mister Machine ends up fighting - of all things - SATAN, who wants his ... mechanical soul .. .to learn how to ... subvert everyone's will ... and Mister Machine is dissected ... but his body parts attack his captors ... and ... um ... the ellipses represent that I don't understand what the hell is going on in this comic whatsoever.

And this is 2001:A Space Odyssey, the comic book. Much like 2001:The Real Goddamn Year, it started off fine, then made no sense, totally baffles everyone who lived through it, and sort of makes everybody sad until they realize that irony really isn't all that dead. Or at least, that's how I came out of it, you all may have different stories. And those stories may end with
you becoming space babies, which is great for you, but please resist the urge to share ...

•Your sticktuitiveness is your most admirable quality, Roy.
•The Con turns ugly.
•HUG ME, YOU RAT BASTARDS!
•Split!

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Contest of Champions

What do you think of when you think of the Eighties? Big hair? Skinny ties? Family Ties?Awakening to strange, new urges while watching Van Halen's “Hot for Teacher” music video?Well NOT ME, no sir, I think of MARVEL SUPER-HERO CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS!(Haha, no I don't, I think of the Van Halen's “Hot For Teacher” video. Just like you)

Ooooh, it's one of those orange-flavored
chocolate balls! I love those things!

Contest of Champions was Marvel's premiere super-hero gangbang long before Secret Wars and the inevitable, all-inclusive, annual X-Men crossovers. Released in the Summer of 1982, the series was actually originally intended as a Marvel Treasury Edition (you remember those things, don't you? Oversized comics which were largely reprints and stood about half-as-tall as the average comics reader of the day. You could build a tree house with a half-dozen of the damn things and a stapler) meant to coincide with the 1980 Olympics. Or, you know, to replace …

For those of you weak on your Cold War playground politics, the USA (and five dozen other countries, but we're not talking about their self-indulgent comic book crossovers here) boycotted the Olympics, which were taking place in Moscow that year. In return, the Soviets and more than a dozen of their frat brothers boycotted the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Besides upending the playing field in favor of the host countries and earning each super-power enough gold medals at their respective events to make Richie Rich wet himself and fall down weeping, it also sort of soured the plans to release Contest of Champions as an unofficial Olympic tie-in.

"...Flamboyant Atomic Samurai?" Did Sunfire
write this himself?

So the whole thing got re-imagined as this self-proclaimed innovation called a “Limited Series!” There's an eidtorial blurb in the back of the first issue, touting Marvel's ingenuity at bringing the reading public a dynamic new series of comics which run a “finite” number of issues. This is as opposed to those comics which are running an infinite number of issues (PS - I understand that Fantastic Four #309,876,291 will be a special nine-cent promotional issue).

So YAY Marvel ingenuity, YAY dynamic new concepts, YAY - hold I, did I say Dynamic Concepts? I must've, cause to be fair, Marvel's competitor DC had already DONE the mini-series, as early as 1979, when Contest of Champions was only a glimmer in Marvel's editorial eye. The Distinguished Competition (I always hated that smarmy, too-clever moniker) had already released World of Krypton, as well as The Krypton Chronicles, The Phantom Zone, The Untold Legend of Bat-Man and Secrets of the Legion of Super-Heroes by the time C of C hit the stands.

Would ... would one really be better
than the other, Iron Man?

Oh, but wait, those're MINI-series, not LIMITED series! My bad! Carry on, Marvel …

So anyway, enough geo-political swaggering and funny book semantics, this isn't some sort of retarded McLaughlin Group (Actually, yes, yes it is).

C of C comes to us courtesy of the Dudley Boys of early Eighties comic writing: Steven Grant, Bill Mantlo and cruiserweight underdog Mark Gruenwald. This might be a lot of cooks for one stew, but outside of Roy Thomas, I can't think of anyone I'd rather have handling this glorious mess.

After a splash page exposition (and there will be a LOT of splash pages in this thing), letting us in on the fact that cosmic muck-a-muck The Grandmaster and a mysterious peer of his are engaging in a high-stakes game using the super-heroes of Earth, we find ourselves at Avengers Mansion. The local roster of Earth's Mightiest Heroes are about to get swept off, along with the rest of Marvel's superheroic spandex set, to the cosmic waiting room set up by Grandmaster and his pal in the floor-length hoody, but for now they're working out. Wonder Man's lifting weights, Beast and Wasp are jumping around, Vision and Iron Man are jogging …

Hold up.

Comics were stupid before this, and continued to
be stupid afterwards, but this moment of stupidity
holds a very special place in my heart, no doubt.

This one always stops me cold. See, Vision's an android, right? Mechanical, pretty much. So he doesn't really have muscles or a cardiovascular system, so jogging can't do much for him. And Iron Man, that peckerwood's got a robot jumpsuit that does all his heavy lifting for him. Thus I ask: JOGGING? Come the fuck on, people.

Anyway, the Avengers and all of Earth's other heroes are swept up by cosmic rays and transported to the Grandmaster's Cosmic Game Dome (renamed OfficeMax Arena two years ago), and apparently in such a way that it appears to have made the Falcon cry.

What follows is several pages of characters walking around and introducing themselves to each other, and the readers. Since there're so many goddamn super-heroes in this story, we get some wonderful dialogue exchanges, as everyone tries to find an excuse to use each others' names. It goes a little something like this:

Captain America: “IRON MAN, what's happened?”

Iron Man: “I don't know, CAPTAIN AMERICA. THE VISION and I were going to ask MACHINE MAN if he knew!”

Vanguard: “DARKSTAR, URSA MAJOR and I, VANGUARD, of the SOVIET SUPER SOLIDERS would also like to know! Let's ask our friends IKARIS and FIREBIRD!”

Ant-Man: “Sure, NAMOR, SPIDER-WOMAN, HAWKEYE, DR.STRANGE and THE THING were just asking SASQUATCH, RED WOLF, THE TEXAS TWISTER, BROTHER VOODOO and the pre-natal POWER PACK if they had any ideas!”

Iron Man: “And what was their answer ANT-MAN? Or didn't even REED RICHARDS of the FANTASTIC FOUR know?”

Thundra: “I, Thundra, have mighty strength greater than any man's!”

All: (pause)

Thundra: “Uhh … oh, such as THOR, STINGRAY, or … shit, I dunno, THE PROWLER! That guy, in the cape, whoever he is! That's the Prowler, right? Sorry guys.”

Whoops, Hulk farted!

Eventually, Hulk neglects to go apeshit and kill anyone, and the meet-and-greet settles down. Grandmaster and Darth Vader spill the rules, which are that each of them will pick twelve representatives from the gathered heroes of Earth, who will compete against one another in contests to locate the four segments of some big damn magic space-globe. Four segments. So it's best … three out of four, I guess, and in the case of a tie, it comes down to dodgeball.

Daredevil, you ASS!

So we're off to the races, and the entirety of the next issue and a good part of issue three are spent following eight teams of heroes at the four corners of the globe searching for galactic lemon wedges. We start off with Invisible Girl, Sunfire and Iron Fist up against Daredevil, Darkstar, and an aboriginal Australian superhero name of Talisman. You ever notice that Australian super heroes tend to be aboriginal? Considering what little I know of certain problems in that part of the world, I'd be one nervous white Australian if all my super-humans had been here before great-grandpa's ship docked. Imagine if the only folks who could chew steel and spit nuts and bolts in the U.S. were the same folks wondering who the pasty people in the funny hats at Plymouth Rock were …

Anyway, this first battle led me to repeat a mantra over and over in my head: namely, SHUT UP DAREDEVIL! The Man Without Fear is also The Man With Too Much Exposition Going On. His thought balloons, through the course of the story, fill us in that he's no longer in the space arena, Darkstar's a young woman, Sunfire's taking off, having people around confuses his radar sense, he's blind, he HAS radar sense, it's cold in the arctic, his dad was a boxer, the ice confuses his radar sense, the ice no longer confuses his radar sense, the water confuses his radar sense, SOMETHING confuses his radar sense, he has to concentrate, the prize is being lifted from his hands, and SHUT UP DAREDEVIL!

Well ... maybe I wanna

be your friend, baby,

know what I mean?

First round to Grandmaster's team, now we're off to some western Ghost Town where She-Hulk, Captain Britain and El Defensor face off against Sabra, Iron Man and the Arabian Knight. Sabra and the Knight get into a little snit here, because of the historic differences between Israel and … Arabian. Notice, however, that Sabra apparently has no problem being on the same team as BLITZKRIEG, a German superhero actually named after a Nazi war tactic! SURE WHY WOULD SHE??

Anyway, this one's got the hotbed of poltical and social activism at work, which is sort of a theme running through the series - you'll note, of course, the rather famous (as far as this site's concerned, anyway) casual confrontation between Shamrock and Captain Britain on the waiting room floor. Well, this chapter not only has Arabian Knight and Sabra acting like an old married couple, but Arabian Knight and Captain Britain through a few back and forth, and for the heck of it, She-Hulk and Sabra wax on male chauvanism. For an eight-year old, this is heady poltical awareness. Also, it's killing a couple panels before someone gets zapped by mind lasers POW POW BAWOOOM!!!

Arabian Knight colects one for "The Unknown's" team, and we're in China with Vanguard, Angel and Black Panther up against the Thing, Le Peregrine and Wolverine.

What's French for "Tool?" Le Tool?

Now, Grandmaster, he's supposed to be the universe's consummate gamer, right? Like, there's no sentient being in the universe with more strategic and gambling experience under his belt, he really knows how to pick his players and hedge his bets, right? So he had his pick of all of Earth's heroes - Thor, the Eternals, the Inhumans, all the Avengers, Fantastic Four and X-Men - and he chose for his team -- the French guy who can fly, Le Peregrine.

CAN'T THEY ALL FLY? I mean, like, EVERY SUPER HERO EVER? Even the Atom can FLOAT, MAN! Sure, the Unknown picked the Angel, whose sole power at the time was ALSO flight, but why would you need to merely balance out the flying guy? Nighthawk has wing lasers, Dr.Strange can shoot mystic bolts out his ass, Namor's got super-strength, as does Wonder Man and Quasar and and and ... so anyway, yes, Peregrine and the Angel sure do indeed fight one another, and their sole contribution to this match was to get out of the way and let the other four GOOD PICKS do their job.Batroc the Leaper would've been better ...

Anyway, Thing wrecks a Chinese landmark for the sake of the Grandmaster, and we're off to the Amazon where Sasquatch, Captain America, and the wonderfully named Blitzkrieg - who I'm sure was really popular at those international gatherings of super-heroes - face off against Collective Man, Storm and Shamrock.

"...which I will do over here, far away from you two maniacs."

So, yeah, one second. Why exactly, I have to ask, did Grandmaster put the enormous shaggy creature who actually lives and operates in the frozen tundra of Canada - that's Sasquatch I'm talking about - in the fight in the AMAZON, while he sent a blind dude and a near-naked Australian magician to the North Pole? And for that matter, wouldn't the Collective Man, China's national hero, actually have had a home field advantage in the battle in China? Like I find myself asking most Monday nights, WHO BOOKED THIS CRAP?

Collective Man, for you fans of state-controlled birth allowance facts, has a really amusing power for a Chinese national - he's actually five identical quintuplets who can merge into one being. My guess is, you're a set of Chinese quintuplets, you LEARN to merge into one solitary baby boy FAST.

So anyway, besides being a national embarassment for all of Ireland, Shamrock also proves her use by basically dooming Captain America to death, and then grabbing the last magic lemon wedge for the Grandmaster's team! HOORAY! We were all rooting for the Grandmaster the whole time!

We get back to the intergalactic Staples Center where Grandmaster, having won, gets to have his brother The Collector brought back to life, as a prize. Well that's nice. Oh, but it turns out his unknown peer is Marvel's persistent cosmic hottie DEATH, and the only way she'll allow Grandmaster to return his brother to life is if he sacrifices his own life!

This image is ... disturbingly erotic,

and I really can't put my finger on why...

And the heroes of Earth react to this by ... standing back and letting it happen. hey, I'd be reluctant too, probably more than a little pissed off. Imagine, especially, if you're the Eternals or Inhumans, and you got sucked all the way across space just to sit in a room with a bunch of roid-tards in sweaty spandex and the Hulk babbling about kitties or bubble gum or something, and Machine Man's trying to get everyone to sing-along or have a dance party because he's trying to understand our difficult human concept of 'rocking out,' and in the end it's all only to just be sent home at the end. Yeah, fuck you too, Grandmaster, I'm glad you're dead!

So anyway, that is legitimately the end of the story - the super-heroes I guess esort of in their own way if you kind of look at it askew and squint a little .. WON! I guess. Ah, what the hell, it was neat to see Wolverine almost kill whole bunches of folks ...

In the back of each issue, there were abbreviated biographies for Marvel's super-heroic roster of the time, from Acroyear to Wonder Man. Most likely the larvel stage of information available for the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe, which follows a year or so after C of C, the bios are cursory but pretty complete. They've generally got the hero's real name, civilian profession, nationality, very very brief description of their origin and powers, current whereabouts and first appearance. Indispensible stuff for the obsessive comic geek of the day, it was. Take a look here at a sample entry:

H - hold on. Black American? Well ... hey, Black Goliath kind of sounds like a bad guy at first glance, so maybe it's necessary to indicate that the "Black" didn't refer to his character, right? Like, other black heroes weren't identified as ...

Okay, now ... I mean, I'm sure the ethnicities of other super heroes are mentioned. Sure, Golden Girl is listed as Japanese-American, White Tiger is clearly identified as Puerto Rican, and the caucasian heroes must have ...

Oh, now, hold on for realsies.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe #3

The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe - Deluxe Edition

One of my favorite comics of all time is issue three of The Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe - Deluxe Edition. Seriously, it's right up there with that superhero toy catalog comic drawn by the Kubert Academy, so it's got illustrations of velvet Frank Frazetta blacklight posters and Mego Star Trek figures as rendered by Steve Bissette, John Totleben and Rick Veitch.

I like it because it contains - moreso than any other volume of this series - some of the most appalingly horrid costume and character designs I've ever seen in comics. Let that sink in. EVEN BY COMIC BOOK STANDARDS, THESE DESIGNS ARE FUCKING HORRIBLE!

Admittedly, there are some classic designs in there, like the elegance of Daredevil's lines - uncomplicated by an embroidered pleather jacket, for crying out loud - or the regal imperiousness of Doctor Doom. And Darkstar of the Soviet Super Soldiers has a downright elegant, military-esque design - cause I gotta love me the vertical strip down the side of the leg.

But beyond those few selections, this book is amazing. I scanned in ten of the most outstanding freakshows - not all the bad costumes, just the ones which stood out, if you can believe it. I left out guys like the Controller, the Collector, and the Corrupter, who actually looks a lot like Nightcrawler at the Renaissance Fair. I even left out Doctor Demonicus, who is sort of all around - costume, character, gimmick and nemesis (Godzilla) - a total mess.

Cloud

Just so you know, you are indeed looking at what you think you're looking at here: A naked, underaged girl with wisps of tow obscuring her netherparts. If it makes you any more comfortable, though, she later one becomes a naked, underaged boy with cloudy protruberences hovering about his twig and berries. Or maybe the other way around, I can't recall. In any case, what's important to remember is that Cloud is actually for realsies an immense nebula of pre-stellar gasses which took human form to fight crime. Mm-hm, really. A magic box told him/her to do it. Mm-hm.

You know how sometimes I say hate comic books? Well, (A) I do and (B) that's why.

Adds my wife: "Man, that's a killer queef." Bam. haha honey, you win.

Colossus

Colossus is most famous, in comic book circles, for repeatedly nailing a 13-year old girl. Not to worry, he was only 19 at the time! Fuck! Chris Claremont, you retarded fuck. You know, the only time the other X-Men gave Colossus any shit for mowing that particular lawn was when he LEFT Kitty for a woman HIS OWN AGE. They gave him that retarded "You better not hurt her, bub" speech, meaning somehow after committing dozens of acts of statuatory rape and forcibly imprinting all over that kid's psyche, he should watch out for her feelings now...

So anyway, of COURSE this steel-plated pedophile has the dog collar outfit. Let's do a count - Neck, that's one, one on each knee and ankle, that's five, I think we can count the hefty bag plastic ties on his wrists as two ... that's seven ... you've been a bad girl, underage ladies, let Big Pyotr show you some discipline ...

Cottonmouth

Is it just me, or does calling a black guy "Cottonmouth" just SEEM like a racial epithet? I can't get over it ...

You have to love any costume which picks a theme and sticks with it til it dies or Jesus comes back. Cottonmouth's theme is "snake yaps," which he's got on his little purple beret, repeated in the flares on his gloves and boots, and then he's got a big evil snake face on his torso. I wonder if it looks like it's chewing gum when he does situps?

Cottonmouth's power, by the way, is that he can dislocate his jaw and eat you. SWEAR TO GOD! DC may eat a lot of shit for Matter Eater Lad (who I'm pretty sure was a Jerry Siegel creation, so to all his detractors allow me to say "Eat MY matter, you fucks!"), but at least Matter Eater Lad JUST ATE STUFF! Not people! Cottonmouth's OHOTMU-DE page even goes as far as to show a three-panel progressive diagram of his power in FULL EFFECT:

Notice that his little beret is designed to look like a snake with its mouth open. And then he ends up looking like a snake with his mouth open on his own. So what you end up with, at the denouement, is what looks like a big purple snake eating a black guy who's eating Captain America.

Crossfire

This guy's name is Crossfire. His real name is William Cross. I don't know if you can pick up on this really subtle character device, but this guy is really into crosses! It's totally his thing. It's what he does. He loves-a the crosses.

Major points to his nickel-chrome crucifix codpiece. "Protect me, o Lord, from all matter of groin injuries and savage Nut Monkeys, amen!"

Cyclops

Looking ... looking good there, Cyke. Very ... very leadership duds you got there. It's nice that your mom sewed in patches to keep your inner thighs from wearing out so fast.

SPECIAL FUN FACT: This is the only place this costume ever appeared - Cyclops was preparing for a run in X-Factor, and they hadn't quite settled on his new garb yet. This was used as an interim piece. MORE SPECIAL FUN FACTS: As there was an absence of images of Cyclops in this costume to use for his entry, images of Cyke in OTHER costumes were edited to reflect this monstrosity. Except the ones which John Byrne drew. That MEANS something, Gil Kane gets edited but John Byrne don't ...

Dazzler

Can you believe she was headlining her own book in this costume?

I'm no fan of Image Comics, but the one thing they DID do for the industry was put youth-aimed hipster costume and character design into the hands of people who were, y'know, actually young and hip. How many years prior to this were we getting the latest fashions for as perceived by 45-year old suits who had homes in Connecticut? This is why we still occasionally have common street thugs in comics dressed like the Fonz, or Johnny Rotten.

Anyway, nice asymmetry. If there's one thing the kids really like, it's spandex and assymetry. And fingerless gloves. And a headband. Oh, and that red band around her calf, it's not distracting, no-o-o-o-o.

Paul Chadwick didn't design this, did he? I have to punch my copies of Concrete if he did ...

Death-Throws

Man, check it out, just when you thought the Circus of Crime had covered all the clown super-villains you can manage ... These guys are jugglers, by the way. Criminal jugglers. One of them's even apparently a dwarf or something. I'll let you drink them in. Plus, you get a bit of Deathlok, the bugshit cyborg/mummy thing, as a bonus bad costume design up there in the corner...

The Scarlet Cameltoe

Haha, okay, she's actually "Diamondback," your 2001 World Series champs. I like how this costume has been specially created to make her hips and shoulders look enormous, while it makes her head and tits look like floating spheres. Also, nice stilettos. And flared gloves. Jesus, all that pink and sharp angles, you look like a gay street sign, honey.


Doc Samson

Speaking of which, how is it that Leonard Samson is a legitimate psychiatrist, but he doesn't know that he's flaming like a sack of crumpled newspaper? HOLY SHIT, NICE COSTUME MICHAEL JACKSON!

What makes it even better? That ain't short hair - that's a mullet! A corporate Eighties mullet! A coke dealing Yuppie fuck mullet! IT'S IN A PONYTAIL! YOU SUCK!

At least back in his original days, he had a corny retro-kitsch going on. I mean, he still looked like a total tool, but at least he looked like a tool who had a modicum of a sensayuma. Probably rocked out to Nugent in his van with the Frazetta painted on the side, and ten years later he's carrying a celphone and a briefcase and getting sucked off by prostitutes on a trading floor men's room stall ...

And finally ...

Doctor Druid

Only his footed pajames and indigo poncho could take Anthony's mind off of his tragic Male Pattern Baldness ...

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Marvels Unmasked

Your Humble G&F Editor, in his not-so-secret identity (Thanks, This American Life!), maintains hisself an online journal. Although the journal rarely touches on the topics of comics, I DID have an opportunity to dedicate an entry to a much-delayed and generally unintentional review of Marvels, the ground-breaking miniseries from Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross.

Before we get knee-deep in it, I'd like to point out that I considered myself quite a fan of the book, owned both the trade paperback collection and duplicate copies of the individual issues, and had pored over it extensively up to this point. What I hadn't done is take a look at it as hypercritically as I do the poor saps who end up on G&F.

Fatigue, a long weekend and enough alcohol to down a mule deer contributed to putting a new spin on what is arguably Busiek's defining work as a comics writer. It also contributed to the tone of the article. The not-nice tone. I called Busiek some names.

I swear, I'm really not a mean drunk. I just happen to be a bastard when sober.

In any case, the review proceeds, my apologies to Kurt and all offended for the whipping he takes, but the interpretation of the series stands. Ahoy, and enjoy ...

---

Had a chance this weekend to re-read Marvels, the much-ado-about comic which Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross helmed, back inna early 90's or so. It's not exactly Watchmen, or even "The Watchmen of its day," but I suppose it's still correct to call it "pivotal" since it spawned so many superhero stories told from the everyman's perspective (By which I mean "Everything Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid wrote after that, pretty much.")

For those of you who missed out, the book follows photojournalist Phil Sheldon through more'n three decades of living alongside and photographing super-heroes in action. Oh, and being outraged - OUTRAGED, I TELL YOU - at the lack of gratitude felt among the steak-and-potato set for the cape-and-cowl set.

I was impressed as hell when I read this thing the first time around. Alex Ross art aside (though I still think it woulda looked better on newsprint, retro-billy as I am), they did some interesting things - like the fact that Phil Sheldon's photographic portfolio is composed largely of famous covers and splash panels from assorted Marvel titles down the years, thus retroactively inserting him into these famous scenes and making him an essential element to their history. Also, that the mutant girl in issue two or three, I forget, is from this old EC Wally Wood story, but that's neither here nor there.

In any case, rereading it now, I find it pretty weak. Characters are one-dimensional, dialogue is flat, and I think it's inarguable that the whole story could have been told in a single issue. Mostly, though, this story is more of a superhero porno than Hustler comics ever was. If you'd like to see a comic fan whack off over his childhood idols (and adulthood idols, for that matter), this is the series for you.

Marvels spends an inordinate amount of time in abject idol worship. Whereas the dynamic established is between normal human and superhuman, the basic message of this book is "Anyone more powerful, glamorous or ostensibly superior to you should be lauded and glamorized without question or criticism." Or at least, "Fail to question authority, kids, anyone who claims to be working for your best interests deserves your undying gratitude!"

Let's face it, I love me some goddamn super-heroes. But in comic books, not real life, and there ain't no two ways about it. If they REALLY existed - and I'm talking about even established, captured-the-hearts-of-a-nation super-types existing, here - I'd be up in arms about 'em, presuming I found time to leave my bunker.

I mean, why exactly would I be head over heels for masked, anonymous vigilantes whose basic concept of 'justice' involves superceding or downright abusing three amendments to the Constitution? And should I be even more excited about the ones decked out in costumes promoting an ideology, or who represent the interests of a non-populist institution, all the while participating in public displays of force which one could only call "A tad intimidating?"

Top of my head, take Iron Man for example. Metal-headed motherfucker in question is the 'private bodyguard' of an old money playboy billionaire, and the head of security for his pet pocket multinational industrial munitions corporation - you know, the one with all the government contracts for developing weapons to be used by the top secret and wholly unaccountable espionage/anti-espionage agency S.H.I.E.L.D.

And hey, not only is he this corporate errand boy for a war profiteer, he's also a member of an organization which has access to classified government documents worldwide, and on which he serves next to a ranking American military officer and living symbol of the national policy. Oh, but hey, he saved New York from that guy who erases stuff with his magic gloves, so I shouldn't suspect his motives.

Put any of these guys in real-life analogs, and is it any surprise that the hoi polloi in Marvels give no love to the Avengers? Say you had a team composed of a one-man arsenal under the employ of Haliburton, a jingoist military figure, a representative of the same pantheon routinely invoked by batshit neo-Nazis, and then a pair of Westchester WASPs with a trust fund and a federal grant keeping them living la vida Kennedy, all of whom have the power to bust into your secret crime lab-slash-birthday party and arrest your ass ...

At one point in the story, Sheldon yells at superhero detractors in the street, something like "What do you want - THE WORLD TO ACTUALLY END?" Wow, good point Phil, except ... yes, the superheroes save the world from being destroyed, but the folks who're trying to destroy the world are pretty much the flip side of their coin. Even having lost an eye early in the story, I can't believe that Sheldon somehow neglects to notice that there are just as many super bad guys as there are super good guys. Shouldn't a trained, experienced journalist be able to draw from that a notion that the powers and costume alone do not make a saint of every one of these psychos?

But then, Phil Sheldon isn't a character, he's Kurt Busiek's personal science fiction fantasy twin. Sheldon is passionate, respected, experienced and widely-traveled, he's reported from the front lines in Europe, he's waded into riots and natural disasters, he's even sacrificed a part of his body to be 'where the action is.' What better waldo to send into a 'fictionalized world' where nobody respects super-heroes, am I right? Is Kurt Busiek writing a story about heroes and their role in respect to the common world, or is he writing the ultimate foot-stomping fanboy assault against a community which still thinks any man in his thirties who reads "Spider-Man" is a virgin, a loser and a 'tard whose home address leads directly to his parents' basement?

Clue: It's the latter. Phil Sheldon isn't proselytizing to his neighbors and peers, he's yelling at your mom.

Superheroes in comics are a fucking fantasy world, where noble actions are rewarded with glory and warm fuzzies, or at least they are when you tell the story from the superhero perspective. Tell the story from the perspective of the common man, and ... jesus Kurt, why didn't you just ask Ross to draw Sheldon sucking superhero cock. He can start with the C-List, Iron Fist and Ant-Man maybe, then move up to Captain Mar-Vell and Ghost Rider, the fan favorites. Issue four, it's a World's Greatest Superheroes/Largest Gangbang at the Baxter Building! Prince Namor, eh, and you say you're on the list? You're a friend of Magneto, you say? Mister Magnus didn't leave a guest pass for you ...

I sound like I'm angry at the book, which I sort of am. Maybe not at the book itself - which is, at the worst, a pale counter-humanist fable - but at the legacy of "realistic super hero" comics it created, and the collective insult to the intelligence which followed.

Mark Waid is the greatest offender, as the few normal human beings who manage to make their way into his comics (thanks for destroying the best supporting cast in comics, Mark, Flash became so much better when every issue guest-starred every fast super hero ever and a mouthful of pathetic psuedo-science about 'speed forces' ...) do little more than reassure the hero that he is loved, admired and necessary. Rain as much destruction on a city as you like, all the citizens care about is that you saved the day, Fantastic Four! Let's give them a standing ovation, we'll clear the bodies later.

Maybe this sticks in my craw because America, as a mass, seems to be losing its ability to generate even the merest spark of common humanity, empathy or community. Everyone thinks they're goddamn Stone Cold Steve Austin, that they're a loner badass and that common ethics and manners ain't nothing much more than the setup to the joke where they cram a beer can in your eye as a punchline. And when this cavalier irrelevance of humanism starts to infect the escapist fantasy which - in my youth, anyway - is supposed to ennoble selflessness, responsibility, and flat-out heroism in the minds of kids...

Well, man.

And Marvels. Man, Kurt, whatever it is you were trying to do, I have to ask ... "What have you done?"

(Coupla things I wanted to add, but I couldn't fit them in:

First, during Kurt's run on the Avengers, he added this character named Triathalon, who was a member of an Eckanckar-like organization called "The Triune Understanding." and even went as far as wearing their symbol as his insignia. And the crowds loved him. Nice one, Kurt - that'd be like having a Scientologist super-hero with ... whatever symbol a Scientologist would have, the head of L.Ron Hubbard or a dollar sign or something, on his uniform. How do you think the crowds would respond to that?

Secondly, Mark Waid did a Superman story, a few years back, in which Superman is mind-controlled by Braniac, then proceeds to entrap the city and wreck a bunch of stuff. At the end of the story, Superman goes on TV and says "Whoops, I was brain controlled by an alien, everyone, but I'm back to normal now!" and then everyone cheers, and goes back to work without a single one of them ever being concerned that this all-powerful maniac might drop another skyscraper on their heads. Killing tons of people and wrecking stuff is okay if you're a super-hero folks, and also this is why I just couldn't stand Mark Waid.)

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Planet Terry

Battlestar Pederastia.

Planet Terry, along with about a dozen other books, made up one of the first attempts of a major comics publisher (our old pals at Marvel) to create "imprint" presses with similarly themed books meant to attract a wider audience. They messed it up. Big time. More than Impact.

Marvel had already had a great deal of success with their Epic line, a series of creator-owned books aimed towards a more mature audience (which, back then, usually meant 'soft-porn.' But I digress). Rushing to the other end of the scale, Marvel made an attempt to corner the kids market (and we mean corner, inasmuch as several of these titles deliberately aped the successful and popular Harvey line of books - Richie Rich, Casper, etc.).

Star actually gave a good accounting of itself, and survived for something like two years - largely on the strength of their licensed properties. Nonetheless, they're a big joke to comic collectors and fans everywhere - the low and derivative quality of the stories left a lot of fans in the cold, and even kids couldn't get into the amateurish product. Beyond that, the storylines were often a bit on the heavy side - Terry, for instance (along with Irona the Maid, earning some extra dollars during the Summer lull acting as Terry's robotic sidekick Robota), was searching the roughest corners of the universe for his missing parents. Wally the Wizard routinely struggled against demons and devils, and Top Dog was concerned that should the government ever discover his heightened intelligence, they'd -- well, they watered it down, but the implication was that they'd imprison, dissect or kill him. Ew.

Among the other products of the Star line were a comic book version of the popular syndicated strip Heathcliff, toy licenses Strawberry Shortcake and Thundercats, Peter Porker - the Spectacular Spider-Ham (which holds a dear place in my heart), Star Wars' licenses Droids and Ewoks, and probably some others that I'm forgetting but frankly don't give a rat's ass about. Hoo-ha.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Killdozer

"Although I'm CALLED Killdozer, my real name is 'Gene'"


WORLDS UNKNOWN PRESENTS THE THING CALLED ... KILLDOZER

I don't know if you've ever had the chance to catch this ... this movie, but if you did, it probably means that you wake up really really early on Sunday morning with nothing better to do than watch the local unaffiliated station's lame sci-fi movie show. Film stars Clint Walker as some guy who gets harassed by a Bulldozer, and Robert Urich as I don't remember what,because I haven't bothered to watch this heap of failure a second time 'round.

The front cover of this book shows a glaring, sharp-toothed, flame red bulldozer screaming vengeance and lunging at Clint Walker with death in his voice. The book had no scene whatsoever like this ... and neither did the movie. Mostly, it's a bunch of jump cuts and a bulldozer lumbering around while people lamely run and occasionally bellow. The later part, the comic captures perfectly.

I think this must have been one of Marvel's first attempts at an official movie adaptation - I'm sure you've seen those, where the plot and dialogue are condensed in a ratio of one minute of screen time = one panel roughly a sixth of the size of the total page. Official movie adaptations could reduce "Gandhi" to a two-issue miniseries with a backup featuring "Wings of Desire."

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Hansi, The Girl Who Loved the Swastika

NOTE: This article has been on the web since 1997, and I will tell you this; I ain't even responding to any email about it ever again, no matter what. I do this for one simple reason; anyone who gets charged up about this article - positively or negatively - is a fucking idiot and maybe we ought to reopen the camps just for you.

I will tell you, besides the completely misguided "Oh my god you really showed it to the Christians (implicit therein: "...by making fun of a fucking idiotic comic book, PS I have no sense of perspective") folks, who are missing the point just as well as the other folks, I'm pretty exhausted with the "OMG, you clearly hate God, you oppressor you, because you thought this comic was dumb" routine. Some folks would defend a pile of shit trained to rape babies if it had a Jesus fish on the backside of it, this is what I've learned. THIS COMIC IS FUCKING STUPID, and if you feel you need to defend your God and faith or Hansi Ten Va-Voom of whatever her name is, I forget, there've gotta be bigger battles to tackle. And I hope you tackle them in the sarlaac pit, nerds.

PS - This comic is stupid. If you feel you need to reconcile that fact with your faith, I'd suggest you try heroin. Okay, buh-bye, thanks.

Acht Mir Schlessel!

HANSI:THE GIRL WHO LOVED THE SWASTIKA

Yeah, that Hansi sure loves the Swastika. Why, I don't think I've ever seen anyone who loved the swastika more than our girl Hansi. Boy, what a swastika-lover.

This chunky hunk of embarassment comes to us courtesy of Christian comic-book makers Spire Publications, who also brought us Hello I'm Johnny Cash and the comic-book adaptation of The Cross and the Switchblade ("I could kill you..." "Yes, you could Nicky! You could cut me up in a thousand pieces and every piece will still love you..."). Ideally, these stories are supposed to be inspirational and offer lessons in faith to the young reader. And with a cover like that, what kid wouldn't be inspired...?

Here's the story: 1938, the Nazis invade the Sudentenland and whereas everyone ELSE seems petrified and panicked, Hansi's absolutely thrilled that the Nazis have brought BOOKS ... cause they didn't have those in the Sudentenland, apparently. Inspired by that famous Nazi hospitality, Hansi partakes in, and wins, a competition which sweeps her off to Prague to study as a Hitler Youth leader. You go girl.

Now before taking off, Hansi's bedraggled mom reminds her "don't ever forget Jesus." Nonetheless, by the time Hansi's on the train, she wouldn't recognize Jesus if he were sitting next to her, still pinned to his sticks.

Hansi ends up as some kind of Gestapo Candy Striper, taunting injured German soldiers. "I lost MY ideals when I lost my eyes on the Russian front." says one poor kid. "We are nothing," snaps back Hansi, cheerfully, "The Reich is everything!"

Anyway, eventually Germany falls (my favorite line in the whole book "Germany surrendered! The dream ended! The nightmare began!" Unless you were a Jew, Communist, gypsy, homosexual or dissident, in which case, the nightmare had ended - the authors of this book, I can't believe 'em), and Hansi and her fellow nurses or schoolmates or whatever are captured by
the RUSSIANS! And dig this - every night, the Russians invade the barracks of the female prisoners to RAPE THEM - except Hansi, cause ... she's too skinny. I can't make this stuff up, folks. Now, despite hearing that Americans were gum-chewing gangsters (Which is apparently worse than being a tyrant and rapist....), Hansi and the girls make an escape attempt across
no-man's land (all the raped girls get shot to death. Hansi makes it across...the message here?), and then are greeted by Americans --- CHEWING GUM!

Eventually Hansi ends up as a teacher in the Bavarian Alps, meets up with her old love Rudy, and they settle down and get married. Unfortunately, the marriage is rocky until they introduce the Bible into it. Kay, whatever floats their U-Boat. Then, inexplicably, Hansi and her family (kids invisibly appear along the way) decide to emigrate to America, but it turns out to not be
as near as great a place as they'd heard.

Anyway, she sets up some kind of ex-Nazi self-pride Christian study group in various jails around the country. Wouldn't you?

Here's a couple things to consider about this book:

First off, is Hansi really the role model most Christians would want to have? She's the most gullible girl in the world! She believes anything she reads, f'r cryin' out loud. She starts off believing the Bible cause it's the only book she has, then some Nazi gives her ANOTHER book so SHE becomes a Nazi, then she hears the Bible's cool again, so she picks that up, then she hears
America's cool, and goes there, only it isn't .... MY GOD! Plus, the sublimated lesson here is "Read anything other than the Bible, and you'll become a Nazi." Nice, charming. Does that mean if I read Archie, I'll join a bubblegum pop band?

Secondly, Hansi escapes being raped. I puzzled this one awhile - after all, wouldn't it reinforce the wrongness of her abandoning Jesus and increase her reader sympathy if she HAD been raped? But then I got the message that all the girls who HAD been raped had gotten killed - you see, the comic's saying that Hansi could never have been a pure and good Christian if she HAD been. She woulda been tainted. And the girls who'd gotten killed escaping the camp were LUCKY to have been spared living with what was done to them.....

And folks wonder why I'm an atheist.....

• The original title was "Mitzi, the Girl Who Got Her Rocks Off To The Sauvistika"
• Actually, I think they're catching a flight to Amsterdam.
• This phrase alone tells you that this is a Christian comic.
• You can never be too thin or too chaste.
• Candy Sniper.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Karate Kid

"Dr.Venom bade me welcome you to this edition of Gone and Forgotten..."

"I am Jena, villainous lackey with a heart of gold and possible love interest for the hero of the eponymous and godawful story STAR-KING, the backup feature from Amazing Wahoo. I only appeared in the last three panels of the story, and even then I was so strung out on cheap talcum-cut cocaine that I barely remember it at all.

Hell, most of the Eighties are a total blur. I started off as Doctor Venom's receptionist, back when he ran an orthodontics practice in Burbank. We ended up in bed together, and he got me all swept up in his dreams of super-villainy, but he abandoned me on the movie set in Italy where we were doing "Star-King." I kinda let myself go wild, there - did a coupla spreads in European skin mags, ran heroin through the Netherlands. I'm going to night school now, and I've rejoined the Baptist church. I'm trying to find a man who doesn't drink or yell at me."

"Well, enough about me...There's a new comic to review ..."

...except Karate Kid (awww). From DC's on-again-off-again attempts of the Seventies, here's what I believe to be the only comic book featuring a kung-fu artist from the future ... though I expect to be proven wrong.

Our Karate Kid is actually Val Armorr, a citizen of 30th-Century Earth and a member of DC's perennial fan-favorite team book, the Legion of Super-Heroes. Feeling his "powers" don't quite match up to the earth-shattering abilities of his allies -- and how could he compare to super-powered teens who make "zap," "bam," "pow," and "bzzzz" noises with such relative ease -- he hops a Time Bubble and heads for an era where his intensive training in assorted martial arts could be put to better use.

The Boxer Rebellion!

No no, I kid. He goes to (naturally) 20th century Earth* where - instead of having to match up to human-powerhouses like Mon-El, genius intellects like Braniac 5 and energy wielding wonders like Sun Boy - he merely has to compete in the same arena with human-powerhouses like Superman, genius intellects like Batman, and energy-wielding wonders like Firestorm, the Nuclear Man.

Despite his timely themes, the Kid actually predates the martial arts craze that raged through comics in the mid-Seventies; he is far less contemporaneous with Bruce Lee's Enter The Dragon than he is with Bruce Lee's Kato ... Karate Kid first appeared in Adventure Comics' Legion feature back in the Sixties.

However, Lee's seminal Enter the Dragon debuts in 1973 and by 1974 martial arts comic books are beginning to flood the market. As Marvel (and several 'upstart' companies) start to find a sufficiently profitable cult success with martial arts-themed books like Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu, DC promotes Karate Kid to his own title while creating another equally short-lived kung-fu book, Richard Dragon.

Karate Kid sure did try, and there's a few things I enjoyed about it. Like a number of DC's short-lived Seventies titles, the Kid got to test his skills out on perennial bad guys Neo-Nazis - in this case, the thinly-disguised snappy dressers in bright red costumes, the NuRike (One-half the calories of a regular Reich)!

Also - and this is wholly the effect of artists Ric Estrada (no, not that Ric Estrada) and Joe Staton - Val's New York is a cartoony, desolate landscape or surreal proportions. Buildings are terrific monoliths in an indeterminate distance, often lonely pillars against a red background unmarked by similar towers and buildings. And the splash panel of issue two is a dreamy Eisner-esque ... well, sort of, I guess ... liquid landscape that peels itself right off the page and into a Riverdance performance. It's bizarre. I kinda like it.

And although the splash page of the second issue promised "Martial Arts Action like you've never seen before!" it actually delivered Martial Arts diagramming like you've never seen before. Perhaps taking its lead from DC's long tradition of adding "scientific facts" to its stories (Anyone here remember "Flash Facts?" or those Planetary Science bits they used to run in Mystery In Space?), KK:the book doesn't actually so much show the martial arts action as it does an occasional diorama explaining the action

*Seems whenever a Legionnaire gets a mini-series, it's to introduce him to modern day 20th century Earth. Valor (nee Mon-El) started off as a twentieth century hero, and although his fan base was created in the pages of the futuristic Legion of Super-Heroes, his series placed Valor in the early Nineties. Cosmic Boy's mid-Eighties miniseries had him travel to then-modern-day America, and Timber Wolf - in a miniseries which ran shortly after Valor's - ends up in San Francisco, also modern day.

• Martial Arts Mayhem At Its Mightiest!
• Karate Comments? They couldn't come up with a better name?

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: When The Legion Was Innocent

When the Legion was young and innocent

Whoa whoa whoa, Mon-El, who the hell was talking about Hitler?

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: The Champions

Stan Lee Presents ... The CHAMPIONS

And stay down!

Actually, the "Champions of Los Angeles," and you can see by them running down a black man that they are indeed authority figures in L.A.

I really suppose this book doesn't belong here - most comic fans remember the Champions at least by name, if not having read the series altogether. Thing is, I was a big fan of this comic when it first came out - and it's sheer "D-List" quality still attracts my attention these days. The team roster included former Avengers Hercules (Marvel super-hero based on the Steve Reeves film version of the legendary Greek demi-god) and the Black Widow, former X-Men Angel and Iceman, and solo star Ghost Rider (to my knowledge, the only super-hero ever based on a common biker tattoo).

Right there is a great reason to love this team - it's got one Greek god, one female Russian spy, two mutants and a demon from Hell! Baby, these ain't your daddy's Fantastic Four! At the time, having a team without five male WASPs and their token girl was like having cake and no frosting. I, personally, loved it. Especially later when they added former Soviet Super Solider Darkstar to the mix, raising the roster to having TWO female Russian spies.And THEN Black Goliath palled around with them for a while, adding a black guy - dude, where have all the angry white men gone? (Black Goliath wasn't REALLY a team member, but he was in three consecutive issues and a cross-over, which totals like 20% of the total run of the Champions, so I'm saying he counts. By that logic, so does Godzilla.)

Along those lines, the Champions' two crossovers make my nose crinkle with hilaritiositude. Usually, crossovers are supposed to happen between a book that sells well, and a book that doesn't sell as well. So I don't know what went wrong at Marvel central, but they actually paired fourth-string book Champions with fifth-string book Black Goliath!! And then and then and then ..... oh, one of my favorite issues from Marvel's history, the Champions actually appeared in third-string liscensed property GODZILLA:KING OF MONSTERS! Bwa-HAHAHAHAHAHA.

Sadly, they didn't live long enough to show up in Shogun Warriors, Micronauts or Werewolf by Night.

Other fondly remembered moiments from the Champions - John Byrne, at the peak of his powers, drew them for a while. Plus, the Champions introduced one of Marvel's greatest villains - Swarm! The man made of bees! See, he was made of bees, and when he'd get angry, he'd shoot bees at you...heh. Also, there was RAMPAGE, the Recession Raider, who was basically a disgruntled-ex-employee-turned-villain stereotype, but with more psychoanalysis. Other great moments of the Champions included ... nothing whatsoever

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Rob Liefeld's Captain America

"Welcome to the First Printing, Chromium cover edition of Gone and Forgotten, February edition, signed and numbered by me, Michael Flagherty..."

"Face front, true believers! Nuff Said! Ha Ha! I'm the good-looking, self-assured 'buddy' character from the truly awful comic The Amazing Wahoo - which you'll definitely see here in the next month or two. Although I look just like the All-American boy, I AM a mid-eighties comic book geek ... so as soon as I'm done here, I'll be off to masturbate to the pictures of She-Hulk in the Marvel Universe handbook. You can also bet your bottom dollar that I cried like a little girl when John Byrne killed off Vindicator in Alpha Flight."

"Enough about me, here's a really cool comic! I bought twelve copies of the first issue, both variant covers, and the signed and numbered copy through Dynamic Forces. It's Awesome! Excelsior!

---

When Captain America throws his mighty shieeeeeeeeld!
All those who chose to oppose his shield must yieeeeeeeld!
And they fight with the white and red or blue
with the blue has the through to the blue on you
When Captain America throo-oows his mi-ghty shieeeeeeld!

Those aren't the real lyrics.

Yes, well, you knew I would get around to it ONE day ... and today is that day! Couple years back Marvel Comics - at the time the market leader in comic book sales - decided to inject some life into properties which they feared were threatening to lose their competitive edge in the face of more 'modern' (and almost by definition, more cruel and less heroic) superheroes being published by such novice companies as Image Comics.

So Marvel lured Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld back to their company (They had left to form the very Image comics company that was giving Marvel the heebie-jeebies).

Keep in mind that it was an experiment. Marvel is a major entertainment company these days, with its multitudinous mitts dipping into television, motion pictures, interactive media, cards, CCGs, toys and action figures, as well as apparel, collectibles, art prints, and ... my personal favorite ... theme restaurants. They have subsidiary companies to handle all of these interests - except for comic books! Comic books are still written and drawn right in the Marvel offices. It's really their only tangible output not managed by a satellite company.

So Marvel wanted to test the waters. They put a handful of their traditional properties (Along with Cap, thus went the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, the Avengers, and a dozen or so auxiliary characters) in a "pocket universe" and left it entirely to the devices of the Lee and Liefeld's respective studios.

The stories were poorly-received, and even the large body of fans who stated that they liked the work had to qualify it as not being the best either creator had produced. But it DID bring new readers to the titles while taking the busy day-to-day management of the books' publishing out of Marvel's otherwise-occupied hands. In those terms, Marvel was thrilled with the results
and has again begun farming out some of its titles.

Ah, but onto the stories. I wish I could spend some time on Avengers, as well as Cap, since Avengers was ALSO under Liefeld's purview - but of the two, Cap is the greatest tragedy. Even before it got out of the gate, in fact ...

Liefeld was committed to drawing the story - Lord knows why - so previous artist Ron Garney had to go. Writer Mark Waid, recently wooed away from DC Comics, has no love lost for Liefeld and 'his ilk,' and so declined an offer to continue scripting the title. Other folks offered a spot on the title included Chuck Dixon and George Perez - both of whom reconsidered and passed on the offer. Reportedly, Avengers re-scripter Jim Valentino was offered to go on after eventual writer Jeph Loeb left the title, but ran into some money disputes with Liefeld's Extreme Studio.

THEN the first issue came out! Wow!

The story, in brief - dreary, fey factory worker Steve Rogers is plagued by dreams, dreams in which he bucks wild on what might be Nazi soldiers, only we can't really tell because their uniforms were so poorly researched. Meanwhile, some damn kid worries about her brother who loves Nazism and has a really stupid hairstyle. Then a size-changing black man gives Steve a "Ford in '72" button, and everybody breaks into a riveting post-apocalyptic dance routine while Steve's wife removes her face to reveal that she is --- Maskatron! Action Figure villain from the Six Million Dollar Man toy line.

And supposedly we're supposed to be freaked out by the tired villainy of an Aryan Superman named MasterMan, and his legions of malnourished idiots.

Right, that's it for the story! Let's check out this "Arte" (A trademark of Extreme Studios, not to be confused with 'Art,' an industry-wide standard of quality not subscribed to by Extreme Studios and its management). Here, one of my favorite scenes, the soon-to-be Bucky (Designed to look a heck of a lot like Carrie from Frank Miller's Dark Knight Returns) confronts her brother and his friend, a tremendously-huge freak ... and no one seems to think this is weird. Check it out, looking at where 'John's' feet would most likely end, his pal is probably buried about three feet in the sidewalk. Not to mention that his gargantuan arms would easily scrape pavement were they ever in a relaxed position. AND on top of all of this, the stoop on which Bucky sits appears to go up about one story, officially making it the largest stoop I've ever seen ... and if that IS the entrance to their building, then having the stairs go up to the second floor kind of defeats the purpose of having first-floor apartments.

Here's another scene where MasterMan works his "crowd" into a furor. Notice, however, that not only did the artist choose to represent the crowd - a crowd numbering, as a whole, about fifty, maybe sixty people - in silhouette only, but he reused the silhouettes ... yes, folks, he just photostatted the same three or four silhouettes and repeated them among the page. That's laziness on an Olympic level.

Here's the best part, though. Captain America's shield, integral to the character's look, is apparently made of silly putty; from panel to panel, the shield changes size in proportion to its assorted wielders - I'm guessing Liefeld's compass is broken on one setting.

So, check this out: In the hands of Steve Trevor's ... no, wait, Steve Roger's dimunitive black stalker, the shield isn't much bigger than a record album, but WAIT! After enduring a surprise attack, Steve's shield fits comfortably in the space between shoulder and forearm, maybe 15 inches in diameter. Steve gloriously swings into high and starts hurting people, and notice that his shield is now as wide as the distance from the knuckles
of his hand to his shoulder - about 2-and-a-half feet in diameter, or so. Then Steve lets fly at some enemy agents, and his shield has ballooned to an impressive FOUR or FIVE feet wide - almost as tall as the guys it's knocking over. But if Steve was worried about somehow storing his gargantuan shield when he gets home - no worries .... It's just as big as a small pizza! Personal Pan Shield!

There's so much more crap in this comic, but I can't go on. Stories differ as to the exact reason why Liefeld's run on this book was ended prematurely, but it all comes down to a messed up product that was an embarassment overall for a number of people involved ... and even moreso for those who shelled out cash money for the product.

---

• "Can't talk now, honey, I have to balance carefully on the invisible tightrope in the middle of our kitchen"
• Steve Rogers eats lunch like a real American - with a SPOON in EACH HAND!
• Steve throws all limbs akimbo whenever his son's right leg inexplicably vanishes into his pelvis. It's family fun!
• What the hell is up with these two?
• 1st Spectacular Issue!!
  

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Godzilla

"Wanna join our gear team?"
Considering the promotional mania which surrounded the release of the fairly reprehensible Summer "blockbuster" Godzilla film, I'm amazed that Marvel Comics didn't offer a bound, hard-cover, collector's edition trade paperback of these original Godzilla comic book stories. Then again, I'm amazed that Marvel hasn't turned half of their female characters into porno comics. Marvel blows my mind, sometimes.

Right about the time that Asian cinema was making its big fad crash here in the States, Marvel opted to cash in on the dough with some thematic books. "Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu" was their ... um ... kung-fu book, and a well-written, well-drawn (The Day Brothers, Paul Gulacy, etc) book it was. Godzilla was their Japanese monster book, and it was poorly written and poorly drawn. Thing is ... same writer on both books! Weird, but not impossible. I suppose mastery at the complex philosophies of Eastern spiritualism doesn't necessarily translate into city-stomping thrills.

One of the delights of the old Godzilla book was that it was completely unafraid of being garish; the cover colors on these things were astounding. Note the above example, featuring bright yellow and red. My favorite was the pea green and deep purple cover which stood out like a bocchilism accident from across the room.

The plot was that Godzilla (monster with a heart of gold) was wandering around the world, foiling the machinations of the gene-freaking Doctor Demonicus (who wore a purple and white costume with a deep blue cape and silver devil horns on his head. How come geneticists of our world don't dress like that?). Mind you, Godzilla wasn't doing it intentionally, but he was smashing Doc's stuff all the time anyway. Alongside this drama, Marvel's superspy organization SHIELD and their not-terribly-Hasslehoffesque leader Nick Fury were flying around trying to bag Demonicus and neutralize Godzilla. The Champions also got in on the act. I still think Godzilla should be an honorary member of the Champions.

Also worth mentioning here: Shogun Warriors - based on the Japanese children's toys - was a contemporary of big G's book, but just as horribly written and drawn. Ick.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Christmas With The Super-Heroes

The first ever audio Gone&Forgotten comes to you courtesy of a plainly horrible holiday offering which comes screaming from the heart of the Seventies - Christmas With The Super-Heroes.


Every Christmas with the Super Heroes starts out as smiles and gifts, but after a few holiday scotches, Robin's demanding a divorce from Batman, Superman's crying on the patio and Wonder Woman's locked herself in the bathroom with a bottle of wine.



Man, good times.

If you grew up in the Seventies, or even the Eighties, you probably had a couple of these albums yourself, either the stand-alone albums or the ones which came with a horribly written comic attached to the sleeve. The art was usually stock, if I remember.

Nowadays, I have more than a dozen of these things - far more than I ever had as a kid, and this includes Reflections Of A Rock Super-Hero, which was this mixed-genre rock concept album that caused you to die of horribleness anew with each track. Then Stan Lee would do a spoken segment, and you'd be soothed back to life, only to be brutally killed again by the NEXT goddamn caterwauling. For more accurate description of this album, please see Dante's Inferno.

But back to this album, what we have are three Christmas-themed stories featuring the Kennedies of DC Comics, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. Appropriately, they all deal with traditional seasonal themes, such as Santa Claus, charity, and nuclear missiles killing the merry fuck out of everything. HO HO HO!

Superman starts us off with "Light Up The Tree, Mister President," which is fun to sing along to "Turn Me On Mister Dead Man" or "What's the Frequency, Kenneth." Jimmy Olsen kicks off the scene, interviewing folks - like this excitable fella from the Pacific Northwest - at the site of the annual Christmas Tree Lighting Ceremony on the lawn of the White House.

Little does Jimmy know that a crazy-ass mad scientist-type has rigged up what is probably the least rational doomsday plan in the history of everything. A kidnapped Jimmy has the plan explained to him - via a series of images on television screens, very helpful for those of us LISTENING TO A RECORD, MAN! - by apocalyptically-obsessed madman genius Thurston Killgore, who probably wouldn't be half the menace he is had he been born "Ted" to Ira and Dianne Shelby.

In a flashback, we hear the once-respected Killgore addressing Congress with a program I believe he called "Operation Enduring Killing Everyone On Earth With Nuclear Bombs Until America Is All That's Left," and not to go all political here but I SWEAR some of the stuff he's bellowing sounds like it came straight from a Rumsfield press conference. Naturally, Congress would NEVER go along with any plan which involved America launching pre-emptive strikes on another country with weapons of mass destruction - right? Right - so they lock Killgore up in the nut pokey and forget about him.

But he comes back with a plan for revenge, based on the following logic - he wants the world to die in nuclear fire, right? Right. But the only man who can launch America's arsenal of nuclear weapons - in this story, that's FIVE - is the President, via the special button in his office. But Killgore has RIGGED the button which lights the Christmas Tree on the White House lawn so that IT launches the missiles when the President lights the tree! AND it explodes one that's hidden in the tree itself! It's DEVIOUS, and only about NINETY-PERCENT RETARDED, since you figure that if he could rig this freaking button to launch the missiles, he could go ahead and do it himself.

Only in comic books are the words "Evil Genius" and "Downs Syndrome" pretty much synonmous.

Fast forward to the end, Superman wins. Beats him up or something. NOW, two things stand out for me in this story. First off, at the same time that Jimmy Olsen is covering the tree lighting ceremony and Lois and Clark are watching Jimmy on WGBS' live feed, the United Nations is unanimously passing a worldwide resolve to ban all nuclear weapons forever. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know the news business, myself ... in fact, I don't even watch television news, or read a newspaper, or in fact know HOW to read OR write, and instead rely on shouting at the keyboard in order to create these articles, BUT ... it seems to me that I'd have at least ONE of my three top reporters assigned to COVER THE GADDAMN UNITED NATIONS BANNING ALL NUCLEAR WEAPONS! I don't care HOW pretty the lights are, man ...


There's no image here because bandwidth is more precious than gold, and these sound files take up enough space. Sorry, folks.

Second thing which stands out is a constant for this album - the sound effects. For some reason, the foley on this thing is flat-out bizarre, particularly when anyone takes a walk. Check out, for instance, this scene where Superman inquires as to the whereabouts of Jimmy Olsen and, upon receiving a clue, dashes across the quad in his brand new cordurouy pants.

Moving on to the Batman story - "The Christmas Carol Caper," this is where the album gets sort of ... unsettling. I was never the world's biggest fan of Batman, and maybe I'm not as hep to the mythos of the guy as some of you out there, but upon listening to this recording I feel I can say with some certainty: THIS IS NOT BATMAN!

Batman is an avenger of the night, a dark and brooding figure, and even at his worst a campy fat man with a stick up his ass. He is not a laid-back bon vivant with a song in his heart and singing telegrams coming in on his telephone! I'm not even 100% convinced that Batman should be answering his own phone, but I DO know for sure that Batman would NEVER say "HOW NICE!" or "SING AWAY", never mind ONE AFTER THE OTHER!!

This story starts off with Batman and Robin chilling at the Batpad on a quiet, crime-free Christmas Eve when the ... ugh ... when the PHONE RINGS AND BATMAN ANSWERS IT and it turns out to be A SINGING TELEGRAM ... OF DOOM!

Now, what I know of Gotham City villains is that they each have their own theme, right? Joker uses comedy-related stuff, Two-Face gets double-gimmicks, Riddler riddles, Penguin gets the arctic, umbrellas and birds, because who else will, right? Well, here's a little known fact - all OTHER non-gimmick Gotham villains are required to either sing or have Christmas related motifs. No, it's true! Why else would both the threatening voice on the phone sing a menacing version of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas" while Rodney The Red Nosed Hitman (I ain't kidding folks) fires away, singing "Deck Them All With A M3 Volley," just before Batman and Robin are almost run down by Maxy the Minstrel Man and Sammy the Southside Santa?

Seriously, the attempted hit-and-run is all Batman's fault, anyway. I'll let him explain, and I'll let you shudder at Batman singing a merry tune...

All this ends at the Southside Mission, where the famous Dr.John - probably not the one you're thinking of - manages his home for rehabilitated hobos. Secretly, one of these hobos is a terrible criminal who's there to kill Batman, which I think everyone should have expected because he refused to sing Christmas Carols with the other hobos. Or, actually, he probably wasn't able to, since I don't think there were more than three voice actors doing this whole record. You could barely afford to have someone interrupt ...

The berserk-ass foley continues to meet my highest expectations. I sincerely wish I had the room to post this whole fourteen minute adventure, as some of this should not be missed - the sound the Batarang makes as it whizzes in midair - that being a sound not unlike slide whistles in a washing machine - or all the hobos' endless Christmas Caroling - ACTION PACKED! At the very least, I can share this much with you - Batman and Robin getting around Gotham via tap-dancing bat-ponies. Sorry Madam!

This all ends with Wonder Woman in "The Prisoner Of Christmas Island." This is probably the least of all three stories, cause whereas Batman's was sort of disturbing and insane and Superman's story was just flat-out retarded, Wonder Woman's story is only sort of obtuse.

Or hey, maybe it's me, I never quite 'got' Wonder Woman anyway. I mean, most other superheroes have a theme by which they abide, you know, Superman is 'Super,' Batman has a bat costume and bat-themed gadgets, Spider-Man has spider powers and Captain America is all about America, and so on. But with Wonder Woman, she's a little harder to define. Right off the bat, she's a patriotic polytheist from Sorority Island, not to mention being a D-Cup golem with a golden bikechain which makes you tell the truth, and who splits her free time between chucking bullets off her wristwatch and talking telepathically to her imaginary airplane. Danant danant dant danant!! WONDERRR WOMAAAAN!

Wonder, indeed.


Thanks to that sound clip and years of idle internet surfing, this is pretty much what Wonder Woman looks like to me, in my mind.

Still, I don't think it's me. Dig this: Wonder Woman's story begins with an Ex-Nazi quisling kidnapping Santa Claus from his North Pole toystore on the orders of the legendary Valkyrie, Brunnhilde. This is a devious plan of the war god Ares, who is introduced to us while arguing with Aphrodite. Meanwhile on Earth, the President enlists Wonder Woman to save Christmas while news agencies around the world report of Santa Claus' sudden absence and orphans cry themselves to sleep at the prospect of a Christmasless winter. So, it's up to our heroine to return the jolly old elf in time to make his yuletide rounds or else the Third Reich rises again, and JUMPING JESUS ORANGUTAN, PEOPLE!! Confusing or not, all I know is that's a lot of myths, archetypes and cliches to pack into a fifteen minute adventure!!

At least they talk pretty in this one. Either that, or the narrator is practicing his sibilants.

Naturally, Wonder Woman comes out on top in this adventure - keep the dirty joke to yourself, friends. Nonetheless, her victory is amazing to me. Sure, in the comic book world, most supervillains may be Downsies, but even the greatest superhero has a greater-than-even chance of being a total 'Tard. Take, for instance, Wonder Woman's musings on geography. I think she means it figuratively. Or, in any case, I can't help but find the way she says this ... oddly arousing. If I start writing erotic fanfic, please stab me in the eye with an icepick, please. Thanks.

Not to be left out, Wonder Woman also gets saddled with profoundly puzzling foley. Specifically, she's off to go cheer up the orphans - presumably by eating a straw hat. And that's what Christmas means to me, CRONCH CRONCH!

---

Transcriptions of the audio files ....

• ... this excitable fella from the Pacific Northwest ...
  Jimmy Olsen: I'm Jimmy Olsen, WGBS TV, can I talk to you for a minute?
  Man: Sure.
  Jimmy Olsen: How do you like Washington?
  Man: GREAT!
  Jimmy Olsen: What do you think of that tree up there?
  Man: FANTASTIC! I'M FROM OREGON!
  
• ... dashes across the quad in his brand new cordurouy pants. ...
  Superman: Did you see where he went?
  Man: Last we saw, he went over to that van over there.
  Superman: Oh, the WGBS Mobile Unit. Thanks. (SFX: Cordurouy pants on the move!)
  
• ... ONE AFTER THE OTHER!! ...
  (Phone rings)
  Batman: I'll get it. Hello?
  Voice: Hello. Is this Batman?
  Batman: Yes.
  Voice: I have a singing telegram for ya!
  Batman: How nice, sing away!
  
• ... Rodney The Red Nosed Hitman ...
  (SFX: Bullet ricocheting)
  Batman: Nyah, missed again Rodney! Ready or not, here I come!
  
• ... explain, ...
  Robin: Don't you think it would be better to go the rest of the way by Batmobile?
  Batman: Oh, I don't think so. With Rudy in jail, we shouldn't have any more trouble. Aaaand it's such a nice, clear night for walking. (Singing and apparently tap dancing) Dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh, da da da da deee, doooo...
  
• ... tap-dancing bat-ponies. ...
  Batman: Now!
  (SFX: Tap dancing ponies kicking up a storm)
  Batman: GOTCHA!
  Old Lady: AAAAAAH!
  Batman: Oh, I'm so sorry madam ...
• ... talk pretty ...
  Narrator: And like a grey-black ghost, her massive engines purring softly in the murky depths, the powerful sub sails silently South with its precious cargo ...
  
• ... Wonder Woman's musings on geography. ...
  Wonder Woman: The ocean is so large and that island so small!
  
• ... eating a straw hat. ...
  Wonder Woman: I'll do my best to cheer them up. (SFX Crunching taps...)

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Fun & Games

Presenting another brief mini-GAF filler piece, originally appearing in your Humble Editor's off-site online journal for the amusement of whatever thirty or forty trained monkeys who've been hooked up to university computers have managed to access by picking corn pellets out of a chute. I bring you ...

Fun & Games! This is a Marvel Comics product released in 1979, and which not only (A) was a constant distraction and a part of my allowance-eating hobby at age eight, but (B) fills an important hole in my "First Issues of the 1970s" collection (Beowulf: Dragon Slayer, Starfire, Ms.Marvel and Hanna-Barbera Presents Scooby's Laff-A-Lympics welcome you!) and (C) I just recently found at my fave local comic shop, Charlie's.

As an aside, Charlie's business card and sign have this sort of austere, antiseptic-future style logo, with his face in the middle of the O in Comics. This bothers me, because when I say "Charlie's," I want it written in swoopy Cheers-like font, evoking the notion of a neighborhood hangout, where the beer is always cold, the music hot, and the twenty-five cent bin not kept on the floor so that my knees hurt when I rifle through it.

And speaking of typography, lookit that lowercase "a" in "and." That is a goddamn designer's nightmare, that's the kind of thing that you mean to fix before production, but you sort of forget until early the day the presses are running, and you wake up scared to death that you forgot to paste the correction over the damn thing, and then you write it off as being just your proclivity to worry, but then you see the cover and OH SHIT THEY REALLY USED THAT HORRIBLE LOWERCASE 'A!' And then you get fired.

Anyway, the magazine's aimed at the lesser intellect of your average juvenile comic reader, i.e. me in 1979. Or now, possibly. Most of the puzzles had to do with trivia brain teasers like "Match the secret identity to the Super-Hero" or "We've mixed up the costumes of fifteen Defenders! Can you tell which costume part comes from which hero?" and even I'd get lost, except that the guy would have Dr.Strange's cloak AND Nighthawk's wings and one of the Hulk's feet.

As an aside, there's a two-page spread in this first issue littered with ugly-ass pieces of typically poorly-designed Marvel super-hero costume accroutement, with instructions to cut them out and paste them to pieces of construction paper, then cut them out again and assemble them on a generic figure in long underwear in order to make your OWN Marvel Superhero! Who wantsta Shockwave code that thing once I get all the disparate pieces scanned in?

Personally, I'm surprised anyone could keep their quiz-taking cool when confronted by the ghostly, splotchy spectre of Stan Lee's grinning maw greeting them in garish, muddied yellow right on the splash panel. Jesus Christ, Stan!

Nu-u-u-u-u-uff Sa-a-a-a-aid!

Outside of the trivia questions, F.a.G (hahaha) also marshalled up a few word finds, crosswords, what's-different-in-this-picture pages (which was always difficult, because Marvel's then-sloppy on-newsprint printing process blurred so many of their pages to the point of unreadability - in fact, that was why I liked Daredevil, I think, cause I got the FEEL of being blind!) and some other traditional brain teasers and time wasters. And inside the trivia questions, it's too dark to read.

I used to subscribe to GAMES magazine, and I'll tell you, I feel I could sit through some of the world's most frustrating puzzlers without a problem. I'[m not sure how I ever found myself with the time to find the 34 iterations of "HULK" in this four-way-mini-wordfind. FINDING ONE SHOULD BE ENOUGH! Also, the real challenge should be finding how often KHULUH appears in this thing, for the cheap Lovecraftian giggle ... here, try for yourself.

I have GOT to get all of these things scanned ... and then we can form a league. And then, later, kill ourselves as retribution for wasting so much time in drawing lines through mazes made up of Dazzler's costume sequins or Nightcrawler's ass-fur or whatever. MAKE MINE MARVEL!

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: The Amazing Wah-zoo

"Steve Engerhalt, I kirr you!"

"Oh sure, it's offensive to have a Chinese character reverse her 'r's and 'l's, but it's not offensive to dress some woman up in peekaboo spandex hootchie outfits? I'm one of the New Guardians, my name's Gloss, and judging by how our writer Steve Englehart scripted the rest of my international cast of colleagues, I'm lucky I don't pronounce my name 'Guh-RAWSss.'"

"You have no idea what this team was like. We were supposed to be the next step in human enlightenment, and yet we were nothing more than a mishmosh of cultural stereotypes performing an unconvincing series of super-heroic acts while mewling like attention-starved teenagers. I hated every second of it. I mean, I didn't go to Julliard for THIS!"

"We had a white South African who was, naturally, a hard-line bigot; we had an Australian aborigine who couldn't talk about anything except her stupid 'Dreamtime;' our Japanese guy become a human microchip, our Jamaican member just wanted to lay back and groove all day long and - oh, get this - we had a flaming homosexual Brazilian guy whose superhero name was 'Extrano' ... that's Spanish for 'strange,' or 'odd,' or ... 'QUEER!' QUEER for God's Sake! We had a gay superhero whose name translated as QUEER!"

"Me? I was a Maoist from the People's Republic of China. I had the personality of cardboard. And thanks to artist Joe Staton, I also had thighs like vats of cottage cheese. Thanks Joe."

"Anyway, I think we're all supposed to be dead or something. AIDS. I seem to remember we all contracted it during a 'very special issue' of our comic. The only TRULY 'very special issue' there ever was of the New Guardians was the one where we got cancelled. It'll never get better than that."

---

The Amazing Wahzoo!

Okay, real short one this month due to Gloss' ranting.

We're back with Solson Publications, this time featuring a title destined to shake a generation to its very core ... an epic which spawned a legend ... the very book wherein Rich Buckler got his kid a job. Yes, it's the ever-so-inappropriately-superlativated THE AMAZING WAHZOO.

This book was a ... what's the word ... it's on the tip of my tongue ... oh, yes, it was a "humor" book. With a wit as keen and sharp as Curly Howard's fat ass, Amazing Wahzoo sought to lampoon traditional comic book super-heroes, comic fandom and day-to-day living. Also, it kind of ripped off Weird Science and it sucked.

The story centers around little Howard Philip Wasnuski (remember aspiring writers; A character with a Polish-American name is by definition a sad sack nebbish) , a sexless geek who dreams of one day being a great writer. His aspirations are good-naturedly supported by his buff, manly pal Michael Flagherty - whom we met a few months back hosting the Captain America section - and crassly tolerated by his lumbering oaf of a father and tupperware-sniffing ninny of a mother.

Anyway, there's a power surge which explosively ejects a REAL-LIFE SUPERHERO out of Howard's Radio Shack Tandy1000 (Inexplicably replete with the sound effect "Epp Epp Epp," which sounds less like a computer and more like a bicycle with cards in its spokes). Howard crams the diminutive, punked-out cartoon midget into his closet, at first, and then his friend Michael's garage. Meanwhile, the deluded Wahzoo, unaware of the bizarre events transpiring, protests loudly at his rough treatment and postulates at great volume about the superheroic duties awaiting him.

And then the book's over and we're all glad.

Solson is such a freaking footnote in the grand scheme of the universe's publishing schedule, let me just clarify a couple of other points real quick-like. Solson's Samurai the 13th sucked. Solson's Reagan's Raiders sucked. Solson's New Talent Search sucked. Solson sucked. Still sucks. Like nursing babies. Like zit-guns. Like Larry Storch trying to appeal to a young, hip crowd by wearing a canary-yellow cravat while hosting "Make Me Laugh." Like Charybdis. Like a Hoover.

Solson is still around, still inextricably linked to Rich Buckler, and these days largely producing a series of how-to books of questionable quality. With titles like "How To Draw Sexy Witches, Wenches and Vampires" and "Hot Bodies Pose File: Women," even the normally restrained Bud Plant can't help but editorialize. To wit: "Rather simplistic with some rather silly comments, these may be more interesting for the sexy pictures than for the actual instruction" and "Although cover-priced $19.95, this is little more than an extra-thick, oversized b&w comic ... don't expect the equivalent of a $20 book, because this is a quicky, grossly overpriced production."

Oh, one more thing about the Amazing Wahzoo. It ended with Star-King. Thank you.

• Mom goes on a rampage, and check out the unnecessary "stat" in every other panel.
• The cover to issue one. That "Dollar Days" sticker on it is a source of pride for me.
  

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Atlas Comics Part One

"This is Gone and Forgotten. I'm KillJoy. I'm your host for
this edition, and I got words for those of you who think Steve Ditko is an
unmitigated genius..."

"Yeah, I was the lead in a Steve Ditko-created backup to Charlton Comics'
E-Man#2, eight pages that seemed to go on for months. The only real consolation
is that I'm not as purely terrible as Liberty Belle."

"This is the first time I've ever actually spoken in print; not that I didn't have any lines in the story, I just couldn't bring myself to read 'em. It was always 'Society has laws,' or 'Crumbs like you think that society owes you..." and then fifteen pages of dialogue from The Fountainhead. I just clammed up and let the poor saps in my Rogue's Gallery take the brunt."

"Oh, those sad dopes: Jungle Jake, Robber Hood, the Flame ... none of 'em ever worked again. Last I heard, Jungle Jake was posing for 'wrestling magazines,' if you know what I mean."

"The gimmick of the book was that the bad guys'd just sit there and cry and weep that society owed them the right to rob people, and I'd buck wild on 'em, and then they'd go to jail. Kinda like Christian Slater, I suppose. Also, there was this idiotic subplot about my secret identity, coz I was supposed to be one of three men: Jud Lah, lawyer, Al Ace, counter intelligence, and the other guy. Like I'd admit to answering to ANY of those names. Gah. Steve Ditko."

"Ah well, who's gonna tell Steve Ditko that we don't NEED another objectivist super-hero, huh? Not me, I got a lucrative second-career selling custom-fitted theatre lighting. It's a hell of a business opportunity. Anyway, let's get on with this month's feature..."

Part One: My Brother, My Enemy

Atlas Comics, ah Atlas - famed predecessor to Marvel, home of Steve Ditko, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, bringer of such wonderful horror, fantasy and monster comics --- oh, wait, we're not talking about THAT Atlas Comics! We're talking about the crummy, derivative comics produced in the mid-1970's by none other than Stan Lee's brother, Larry Lieber.

And BOY, did Larry not us forget it. In his scant few editorials - the entire Atlas line, of course, barely ran four months in 1975 - Larry mentions his admittedly significant contributions to Marvel's history and his connection to his famous brother .... well, we'll say "more than once."

Larry's long history with Marvel (he was a scripter on the first Thor, Iron Man and Ant-Man stories, among others, as well as long-time artist on the daily Spider-Man newspaper strip) gave him some important connections in the mid-70's comic book world . Besides a passel of top-flight artists and writers (Berni Wrightson, Howard Chaykin, Gerry Conway, Archie Goodwin, Larry Hama and more more more), Larry established a professional relationship with Martin Goodman, original publisher and principal financial support for Marvel Comics, back in the day. Martin's son Chip continued their relationship by setting up Larry in the editor's chair for Atlas' ambitious 24-title launch in 1975.

So the brother of a great editor, financed by the son of a great publisher, proceeded to work with the illegitimate children of famous artists and writers to create a bastardized legacy of comics ... well, no, I made that last bit up. But they DID try to launch a line of comics intended to challenge Marvel and DC's dominance (mostly Marvel) in the comic publishing world, and hopefully strike lightning twice by creating a second wave of the great "Marvel Age of Comics."

And more about how they did later ... hey folks, I'm gonna get at least a half dozen articles out of the wonders of Atlas before I'm through! I have to spread the wealth of information out over multiple entries! But if you'd like something to chew on, consider this - by the time I've covered all of Atlas's 24 books, the combined articles about Atlas will have outlasted the company itself by threefold.

Sad.

JOHN TARGITT - MANSTALKER

Atlas was largely unabashed about admitting to its ... I was going to try and find a polite euphemism for it, but the word I'd be looking for is "aping" ... aping of other sources for it's material. In fact, in Targitt's own letter column, Lieber says "...comics and cinema are closely related art forms. For years, comics have borrowed cinematic film techniques, and vice versa. Now ATLAS has carried the relationship a step further, by employing cinematic ideas for the comic medium."

What he means to say is "We crammed BULLITT and DEATH WISH into one comic!"

Targitt is John Targitt, a New York police detective whose wife and kids are brutally killed at the hands of the mob. Targitt decides to take the law into his own hands and visits bloody justice on his family's killers. And thus, a superhero is born, right? Well --- NO!

John Targitt started off as a cop-thriller (Atlas covered all its bases by having at least one comic for every popular genre of the day) and despite what you see in these pictures, Targitt didn't don a super-hero costume until his second issue (featured here on the cover to his third issue), when the previous concept was trashed and the book was turned into a super-hero drama -- now called John Targitt ... Man-Stalker!

This was the "Third Issue Switch," a metamorphosis that affected fully half of Atlas' books (either around issue two or three). Lacking the strong editorial guidance his brother had provided to Marvel, Lieber met flagging Atlas sales with a sudden decision to effect sweeping cosmetic and thematic changes to all existing characters. Targitt was luckier than most, as many character were wholly unrecognizable after the wait between second and third issues -- at least some of the plot strings continued after the genre was abandoned.

Overall, the book was a tragic mishmosh of vigilante cliches, started by writer Ric Ayers and then taken over by Gerry Conway in a story that poorly represented his talents. Art was provided by the very capable Nostrand, reaching for a style that was strangely cartoony considering the subject matter.

All that said, though, I have to admit a shred of affection for a hero who will - without skipping a beat - empty eleven shots from a .357 magnum at point blank range --- into a stubborn doorknob.

I like chicks, boss.

Weird Suspense featuring The Tarantula

Michael Fleischer rears his ugly head over and over again in the credit boxes over at Atlas, not least of which for this book.

The Tarantula, a morbid, grim, stiff story featuring the Count Eugene Lycosa (who looks not a little like Eugene LEVY), a European blue-blood whose family line has been cursed by the evil witch ... um ... Rak-Kosa, I think ... it failed to make an impression ... and now, under the full moon, become some kind of man-tarantula creature.

To feed his inhuman tastes, the Count wanders the seedy streets of America (he's abandoned his native where-ever-the-heck-he's-from) , cornering thieves and murderers and ex-sanguinating them in scenes which possess all the drama of a Berenstein Bears book.

If you're not familiar with Michael Fleischer, he's most famous for being engaged in a high-profile lawsuit with Harlan Ellison, and for not much else. He DID write The Great Superman Book, a compendium of the Superman mythos (a dry, technical tome which holds interests to only the most die-hard of fans ... such as myself, for instance), and assorted comics here and there.

Fleischer was assisted on this book by the underrated Pat Boyette, whose very competent compositions sadly lent little to the book. In fact, I have to wonder who was behind this decision: When Lycosa transforms into the Tarantula, his head and hands are visibly affected, but he continues to wear his fashionable sky-blue Nehru jacket and brown loafers. "What kind of Man-Tarantula reads Playboy?"

On a side-note, what exactly constitutes "Weird Suspense?" "One of these fish is responsible for teaching the hats to sing! But whi-i-i-ich one ... ?" Weird, indeed.

Yep, agile as a cat ...

The DESTRUCTOR

Aaargh, Steve Ditko!

Yes, yes, I know he's responsible for Shade, Dr.Strange, Spider-Man, Creeper, Hawk and Dove, Blue Beetle and the Question ... and I just don't care. For every brilliant character he's created, he's got fifteen of these hyperactive, double-jointed fashion victims bounding around.

I think it was Archie Goodwin who scripted these stories, and - like others working for Atlas - he was working well below his capabilities. Jay Hunter - the former street thug and son of a famous scientist who eventually becomes the Destructor by drinking a super-scientific serum *whew* - actually starts his career with the a terrible line which begins something like "(I'll be) a smasher, a destroyer ... SOME KIND OF DESTRUCTOR."

Destructor? He didn't like "Destroyer?" I don't know about you, but outside of talking about this comic I've never actually used the word "destructor" in any fashion, nor would I want to.

Destructor is largely cut from the Daredevil mold of heroes - besides his tremendous strength and agility, he has heightened senses and heals remarkably quickly from even fatal wounds. In his fourth issue, possibly due to a near-miss with a "third-issue switch," he gets exposed to some kind of radiation that gives him the power to shoot destructive beams from his hands.

This ranks the Destructor in with a very select group of super-heroes who have had TWO origins. Not that it made him any better.

One of the last things that sticks with me about the Destructor is a pair of villains he fought in his third issue; a man-hating animal trainer named The Huntress, and a bare-chested beast-man named Lobo ... who had amorous intentions towards Huntress. Destructor offs the pair of them at the end of that issue, so it never gets developed or resolved, but I thought it was a charming dynamic to add to the story.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: The Greatest Comic Book Cover of All Time!

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Fast Willie Jackson

Kick it to the curb, Willie Jackson style!

Can you dig it? They're COOL, BAD, FAST and TOGETHER! They're the BROTHERS
and SISTERS of MOCITY U.S.A! Yeah, that Fast Willie Jackson is One Bad ----

Just talking about Fast Willie Jackson, this funkadelic, happenin', Archie-ripoff
what came out of Fitzgerald Publications (who?) back in swinging 1976. Word.

Ah yes, and as an Archie rip-off, it had to have the ubiquitous cast of
characters. Assuming the role of the good-natured, slightly lazy, all-American
kid is Fast Willie himself. Taking up the Jughead mantle is JoJo, and Moose
has been replaced by a big, dumb man of color name'a Hannibal! Dee Dee Wilson
is their Veronica - there were not enough pages in one ish to introduce a
Betty, but enough to have TWO "villainous" foils: slick playa and tricked
out sugar daddy Frankie Johnson, and black militant Jabar (Always seen holding
a protest placard and working himself into a sweaty fervor). Adoringly, Pop
was replaced by a Puerto Rican named Jose Martinez. Just about all of the
figures of adult authority, so essential to the elements of an Archie book,
are represented by Officer Flagg, a buffoonish, brick jawed, thick necked
honky policeman (only whiteboy in the whole book, by the way) described in
the Dramatis Personae as "The Man.

I suppose I should get a brief kudos for Fast Willie and Fitzgerald Publishing
out of the way first - an apparent inhouse ad in the book offered a series
of historical magazines entitled Golden Legacy, offered under the heading
"Want To Learn More About Black History?" and prominently featuring a volume
dedicated to the Black Cowboys. The magazines advertised an illustrated
(read:comic book) history of African-Americans, including notable events
which have only gained truly national attention in the last few years (i.e.
Amistad, the aforementioned black cowboys, etc) and several others which,
sadly, are still overlooked in the American consciousness.

But enough of that, cause School Daze this ain't! Besides the essential crimes
of being uninteresting, unoriginal and unfunny, FWJ steeps into tastelessness
with both hands on several occasions. Among my favorite moments include:

• Willie's entire crowd overjoyed at the prospect of having five dollars.
  (Says Hannibal "Hey, Jo-Jo! Willie has a five dollar bill!" Replies Jo-Jo,
  "Cool, man! Er--What's a five dollar bill?")
  
• A not-so-subtle pimp-ho joke going on between Frankie and Dee Dee; It's
  Dee Dee's birthday and, to celebrate, she's giving all her presents to Frankie,
  and fawning all over him. To return the favor, Frankie takes her gifts and
  affection, then heads out the door telling Dee Dee that he's off to go do
  the same thing with another (of his) woman.
  
• The angry young black man (Jabar), while certainly not a shining example
  of young Black malehood (what with his rabid ranting) is a buffoon character
  really for no other reason than his afro-centricism.

I don't even know how to categorize this book; nice try or naive opportunism? Good intentions or shameless grubbing? All I know for sure is that the folks at Fitzgerald weren't really EVIL --- they were just JIVE....

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: The Adventures of Jimmy Olsen Vol.2

So, a few weeks back I picked up my copy of Jack Kirby's Jimmy Olsen Vol 2 - a fantastic book, hands down, for fans of the King of Comics. Jimmy Olsen is possibly my favorite of Kirby's Fourth World books, if just because the imagination behind it was absolutely unbridled, plus it's got that irascible Newsboy Legion tied up in the mix, an they're my fav'rits.

Anywez, with all that said, there's really nothing in here that matches the peak of the Volume One saga, which had to be where Don Rickle's goody two-shoes identical twin popped up in the middle of the debut of Darkseid and the war between New Genesis and Apokolips. The start-off story of this volume, tho, beats all your asses with a stick. To wit:

Jimmy and Clark Kent find themselfs embroiled in the machinations of Count Dragorin, a pasty-faced wampyr who's on a quest for the renegade genius of genetic thinktank Project Cadmus, the mad scientist Dabney Donovan. In tow of the chalk-white Count is a movie-molded wolfman and a passel of like-likenessed famous monsters of filmland.

Their story? Well, dig this: Dabney Donovan is obsessed with creating artificial life. In a fit of questionable pique, Donovan creates Dragorin and all the other residents of their homeworld, Transilvane. Their homeworld, you may ask? Donovan has his own planet on which to make life?

Why yes, yes he does. It's in his basement.

Take THAT, Grant Morrison and your johnny-come-lately The Filth! Kirby has Donovan creating a miniature planet, populated by microscopic lifeforms consisting of an "atomic liquid" structure which casts itself into finalized forms - in this case, movie monsters - sheerly by the persistent use of visual stimuli and suggestion. Donovan ensures that his bacteria-sized beings turn into Universal theme park characters by showing non-stop monster movies against the atmosphere of Transilvane, via those floating movie projectors you're seeing in the picture up there.

To summarize: Amorphic subatomic artificial beings were turned into B-Movie monster clones by a mad scientist who showed late night horror flicks into the upper atmosphere of their schoolbus-sized home planet, accessible by the door at the back of the kitchen. Oh, and I forgot, they transport themselves to the exterior world by special space-travelling size-changing coffins.

Superman gets involved by saving the Transilvane-ites from Donovan's "Demon Dog," a pesticide-spewing robot gargoyle scheduled to spit death on the tiny creatures of Transilvane at the hour of midnight. I know, how could I NOT get a scan of that? I guess I'M the REAL monster here ...

Superman, natch, saves them, but both he and Jimmy muse upon the injustice of the Transvilane-ites tiny, ghastly, cinema verite (ho ho). Superman, of cuss, has a plan, and that plan is to show a new movie into the atmosphere of the planet, resulting in ...

...CREATING A TINY PLANET FULL OF HIGH-STEPPING, ALL-SINGIN', ALL-DANCIN', ROOTIN'-TOOTIN' COWPOKE MONSTERS!!!! Holy shit, AND THIS IS WHERE THE STORY ENDS!!!

Man, so, Transilvahoma. How you can read comics and not love the hell out of Jack Kirby, I'll never understand.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Amazing Moments Gleaned From One of the 100-Pg mid-70's DC Comics: Part 2

Amazing Moments Gleaned From One of the 100-Pg mid-70's DC Comics: Part 2

How many internet fetishes can you count in this single page from Superman Family #171?

Let's see, I count Women in Superhero costumes, Women Without Belts, Wet Women in Superhero Costumes/Without Belts, Hot Girl on Girl Action, Hot Girl on Unconcious Girl Action, Girl-Dragging Action, Tire Sucking and Respiratory Fetish. Now YOU try!

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Amazing Moments Gleaned From One of the 100-Pg mid-70's DC Comics: Part 1

Amazing Moments Gleaned From One of the 100-Pg mid-70's DC Comics: Part 1

Shazam #16

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Oh, Good Christ, It's The Power Pachyderms!

Raaaaargh, I am ICEBERG HEAD, and let me show you a little icebreaker I know of. Ho ho, ho ho.

\

No, seriously folks, it's great to be here tonight ... shoving my ghastly and stretched out mug abruptly through the greenish ice of this frozen lake or whatever. Greenish ice? Don't the folks around here dispose of their antifreeze in the proper recycle facilities?

Anyway, my life's been pretty quiet since I last surfaced ... ha ha ... to force Mera and Aqualad to give me tasty Hostess snack cakes. And you know what? THEY DID! You can pretty much force Mera and Aqualad to do ANYthing, cause what're they gonna do to you, spit? Splash? Screw
'em, I wanted pastries and they didn't have a thing to say about it.

Tonight, I bring you a much-belated edition of Gone&Forgotten featuring big elephant superhero idiots! Here's a scientific fact, 'pachyderm' means 'thick-skinned.' Here's another one, "Iceberg Head' means 'has the head of an iceberg.' And 'hack comedy piece' means pretty
much what it sounds like ..."

Comic books, despite what the name implies, are just not funny.

My UNDENIABLE evidence of this is "POWER PACHYDERMS," a 1989 Marvel
one-shot, coming to us discourtesy of writer Roger Stern and artists Adam Blaustein and Jon D'Agostino (Gotta love that Dag!) ... oh, and Tom Defalco had a hand in creating the concept, so kill yourselves now if you'd like to be spared his venomous touch.

Each time Marvel attempts a humor comic, it becomes harder and harder to remember that this was the same company which produced "Not Brand Ecch." Since the days of Charlie America and Spidey-Man, sadly, Marvel's taken a downturn in the humor department. A handful of What Th-!? stories have managed to keep pace, but for the most part, Marvel's humor comics (and hell, most self-referential comic book parody in general) have been sad, sad, SAD amalgams of context-free pop culture references, poorly executed sight gags with origins at the turn of the century, and self-aware jokes which not only break the fourth wall, they stumble through it drunkenly and spill red wine on your carpet before scratching your car on the way out of the driveway. At least Mad Magazine could throw in some useful Yiddish when the formula started getting old, SCHMUCK! DRECK!

The story dribbles over the pages like so: We open on a circus train, wherein the car holding the troupe's elephants falls off the train and rolls down a neglected side-track. Their detour takes them straight through a gamma bomb test site and a completely unconvincing 'comedic' revamp of the Hulk's origins, and two panels later, the elephants on the train give birth to MUTANT
SUPER ELEPHANTS. This takes us up to the end of page three and the better part of the origin, and so far, NOTHING funny has happened ... which is a theme with this book.

The elephants grow into super hero parallels to Colossus, Cyclops, Elektra and Wolverine - and why these four? I have no idea. I'm already asking for a lot given that the name of the book APPEARS to be a spoof of "POWER PACK," but that there are no Power Pack elements anywhere in the comic ... I guess making it a stilted, unfunny parody of one of the most popular X-Men and two of the oft-neglected background characters AND ALSO of a Daredevil character cast through the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lens MUST MAKE SENSE! Mostly to Tom DeFalco, curse his soul.

Fast forwarding through a painful routine where the Pachyderms meet up with martial arts monk versions of the Three Stooges (well, four of them as Curly and Shemp co-exist. And as we all know, basic Physics tells us that if Shemp and Curly were to simultaneously co-exist in the same space, the resultant explosion would destroy all life on Joe Besser) where we’re treated to not one, not TWO, but THREE separate “We’re reading from the script” gags! Yes, not funny the first time, let’s give it two more shots and see what happens.

Past that, the team assembles, forms a crime-fighting organization with their headquarters well established in the middle of a harbor on a dilapidated boat, and go through a series of personal interactions that mock the ever-popular ‘angsty team dynamic’ of the day. Actually, parodying the angsty team dynamic was ALSO a common phenomenon of the day, but did we get parodies of that? No. Thank goodness.

At this point, I still haven’t found a joke in the entire book, despite the fact that the Wolverine character - Rumbo, by the way , L O L - keeps breaking kayfabe by telling the readers that the characters are fully aware of being in a comic, oh the high hilarity of it. We’ve also been through
a half-dozen swipes from ‘famous’ comic scenes at this point, mostly from Frank Miller’s Elektra and Wolverine stuff. Now, I’m actually admitting there MIGHT’VE been some jokes in there, but I have to confess that my taste for humor was absolutely murdered dead a few pages into the book … because they KEPT PUTTING THE LADY ELEPHANT INTO SEXY POSES!
Fucking AAAAH!

Seriously, a peach-colored anthropomorphic elephant WITH TITS strutting sexy over the joint or hopping around naked in the shower … I’m not going to go as far as to say it’s put me off sex forever, but at the very least it’s put me further off of sex with anthropomorphic elephants than I've ever been before. For the time being anyway, winky face, LOL, a/s/l. type ‘1’ if
you like Limp Bizkit.

Now here’s where the book goes wonky, and I sure as hell know what I just said, but I stand by it. The team gets on the case of Clarinetto, leader of the Brotherhood of Evil Musicians and a neo-Nazi, for some damn reason. Apparently feeling they’d drained every bit of life out of the already dead super-hero parody, your creative team turns to POP SINGERS for further so-called lampooning, as the Pachyderms fight weakly-represented clones of Prince, Cyndi Lauper, The Bruce, Willie Nelson and Madonna. And hey, goddamnit, Willie’s been through enough lately, let the man rest.

Even as I’m trying to figure out the POINT of the damn celebrity spoof - what are they trying to SAY here, why THESE singers - the book throws me another curveball as Electralux - did I mention that’s the terribly clever pseudonym for the lady Elektra Elephant? Cyclops’ analog is called Trunklops, so count your lucky stars Electralux - falls into a vat of radioactive MAKE-UP!

Yes, radioactive make-up, in the basement of a Musical Academy … OF EVIL!

So, at this point I kill myself, which is why I miss it when Elctralux becomes ROGUE ELEPHANT, a crap Dark Phoenix gag enhanced by singing snippets of ‘women power’ songs, and then the team decide to beat up the Three Stooges and take their places as all-wise Martial Arts masters, and Rumbo does another fucking self-aware gag about being in a comic. I miss all of that.

I’d love to wrap this one up in a quick summary of sheer derision, but I’m dead, remember? Power Pachyderms did what Kitty Pryde and Wolverine couldn’t. Congratulations, and MAKE MINE MARVEL!

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Daredevil vs Vapora

DAREDEVIL VS VAPORA - RUMBLE IN THE JUNGLE WITH THE FUME OF DOOM!

I have decided that the double-D on Daredevil's chest must stand for DISCO INFERNO, except without the “Disco” part and I don't know what the second D means. This is not my finest hour, as far as the association of meaning to initials goes. And to think, I once took State.

"I have a NAME, Daredevil. It's Henry."

Going all-ll-ll the way back to 1996, we join scripter Mindy Newell, artists Mike Harris and Don Judson, super-hero Daredevil and football fields worth of burning children in a PSA comic brought to us by the caring individuals at the Gas Appliance Manufacturers Association (with a little boost from the Consumer Product Safety Commission, CAN I GET A HELL YEAH FOR MY DAWGS AT THE CONSUMER PRODUCT SAFETY COMMISSION?! COME ON, PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR! THE ROOF IS ON FIRE!).

This book touts ol' Hornhead* facing off against one of those 'embodiments of evil' with which I'm so chronically unimpressed. Making it even worse for her PR agent, the villainess Vapora – called, in the book, “The Fume of Doom,” HAHAHAHA - isn't even the embodiment of something like fear or angst or desperation. She embodies “insufficient ventilation.” To clarify, before we continue, the Gas Appliance Manufacturer's Association produced a book about the dangers of gas. This is like AIM producing a book about the dangers of MODOK.

*As a point of order, only high-ranking officers of the Merry Marvel Marching Society are allowed to call him Hornhead. Enlisted men and civilians should address him as “Boy, what the fuck was with that godawful goddamn Ben Affleck movie, man? I wanted to beat the director's MOTHER with my bare hands.”

The book balances between Matt Murdock defending a landlord who's accused of whatever crime it is you get accused of when you're a landlord and your building sucks and it burns down. Negligent burnination, a class 3 felony, I think. The rest of the book finds Daredevil encountering Vapora – one of the few villainesses I believe to have ever gone around in an off-the-shoulder muu-muu – at the sites of assorted buildings which have burned down owing to the tenants' careless misuse of gasoline. Which basically makes this comic more like “Daredevil vs the Darwin Awards” than anything else.

Boom Boom Boom, Up in My Room!

Like, take this as an example: Halfway through the book, we join a young mother who is cleaning gum off her carpet using gasoline. Oh, and she's left the cap off the ENORMOUS FUCKING CAN OF THE STUFF, which is – by the by – within arm's reach of her toddler's playpen. Yes, I'll take a moment while you draw that map in your brain. I should point out that the gum-removing in question is happening about a foot away from her increasingly dain-bramaged carpet ape, AND THEN SHE SITS UP AND LIGHTS A SMOKE!

I'm not a heartless man, but I can't help but think that maybe her gene pool ending in a greasy smear in a three-bedroom walk-up is probably best for all involved. What's next on her list of nightly chores, lullabye the kid to sleep with a bag of mothballs? Balance the baby on the fire escape railing? If I were Daredevil, I'd forget about the Fume of Doom until I'd made a hasty phone call to Child Protective Services.

"And I enjoy long walks on the beach."

Other folks who're genetically predispositioned to catastrophic self-immolation with errant uses of gasoline include a father taking the tiles off the kitchen floor, and a couple of kids washing their bike down. And if this book has a failing, it is this: I DIDN'T KNOW GASOLINE COULD BE USED FOR SO MUCH STUFF! Getting gum off the carpet? Removing tile? SPRUCING UP MY RAD BIKE?? MAN, note to self, BUY FIFTY CANNISTERS OF GASOLINE ON WAY HOME! I'm gasoline's number one fan, now!

Getting back to it, even our hero himself succumbs to the dizzying prevalence of gas fumes in this story. Investigating the site of one of the deadly fires, Matt Murdock's enhanced senses lock in on the underdressed form of the cackling villain. “It's some kind of vaporous thing – “ he exclaims to the fire official escorting him onto the site, “A Vapora!”

Whoa, a “Vapora?” Nice one, big red. Did that radioactive canister also cripple your sense of not giving things really stupid names?

Not that Vapora's a poet either, as all her dialogue is that rambling, crammed together mishmash of gibberish that passed for “Crazy talk” in comic book shorthand. “DIEdieDIEdiePAINpainDEATHterrorHURTpainPOWER!” and so on. Basically, it all sounds like Superbaby trying to order a LOT of ice cream, REALLY quickly.

Well-played, Counselor.

Daredevil only gets one real shot at Vapora, which doesn't go anywhere in particular except that DD saves a little girl from being COMPLETELY burned alive (Vapora just claims a char-black hand). Frankly, this particular nemesis should've gone to a hero with more ventilation-based powers, like Storm, or Torpedo, or Wolverine with a box fan.

This particular PSA has the SINGLE MOST DEPRESSING ENDING out of any dozen or so I've read. “How's the little girl doing?” asks the landlord, following his Not Guilty verdict on the charge of Excellent Burnination. “Well,” replies Murdock, “They're going to wean her off the respirator ... doctors can do surgery to reverse some of the scarring ... she'll need physical and psychological therapy.”

“But she'll live?” the landlord asks, smiling. “She'll live,” a grinning Murdock replies.

...

"SHIT! We got SMURFS!"

JESUS! Kids in those anti-drug comics NEVER end up this fucked up, and THEY were the ones who made conscious decisions to shoot weed or snort crack or whatever it is you kids do these days! All this girl did was have a TRULY RETARDED FATHER who crossed “While You Were Out” with a Great White concert. For Pete's sake, even that Mitch kid in the Captain America drug story only came out of it with internal bleeding and a coupla cracked ribs...

On the back cover of the book, along with an illustration of Daredevil playing “Keep-Away” from Vapora with a urinal cake, the Fume of Doom (hahaha) herself spouts off official trivia from her upcoming autobiography. “I can travel from room to room, finding an ignition source,” she says, “I'm heavier than air and travel along the ground. I love to leak out into a closed room.” Hey, lady, so do I, but you don't see me bragging about it.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Captain America vs DRUGS!

Captain America vs DRUGS!
SPOILER WARNING: Drugs lose.

"When Captain America throws his mighty shie-e-e-e-eld, all those who chose to smoke lots of weed and snort blow off a hooker's ass must yi-e-e-e-e-eld ...!"

And the red and the white and the blue smoke crack, when Captain America stars in his very own PSA comi-i-i-i-ic! Which he has, folks, back in 1990 Captain America starred in an anti-drug awareness comic produced in cooperation with the FBI.

This is the smartest super-villain in history. He should be running AIM

(Speaking of which, under the Patriot Act, I believe I risk federal prosecution for making fun of this book. Get your "Free Humble G&F Editor" bumper stickers while they're fresh! Or just cross "Mumia" off of your already-existing bumper sticker and write me in, you dirty hippie)

The one-shot is titled "High Heat," which sure makes me want to slap someone. Most likely, that would be Peter David, author of this particular fable. Additionally, I believe this comic was conceived as a challenge between David, Bill Jemas and Joe Quesada – all three create their own PSA comic, and if Peter David's book doesn't convince all kids everywhere to stop using drugs, he's fired. All Jemas has to do is convince kids to eat pizza and drink beer. Quesada's book has been pushed back to 2008, but you still aren't allowed to cancel retail orders for it.

The story starts off on the observer spaceship of the alien Tzin, of whom we only ever see their nasty, caterpillar-lookin' fingers. The aforementioned digits are exclusively shown fussing around with the big, suborbital DirecTV hookup with which they size up the human race.

Planning an invasion of Earth, they wonder whether even their superior alien firepower can overwhelm the indominatable human spirit. "Are you saying it will be difficult," says one of the aliens, "That we shouldn't even try?" No, never give up, silly alien! Where there's life, there's hope, even for all-conquering alien dominators! THAT'S the REAL message of this book.

What are you saying, KLXXR? You've never given up on anything in your life!

Deciding to exploit humanity's one weakness – the habit of sucking down mind-altering substances – the aliens proceed to conquer us by blowing up breweries. No, fucking wait ... they decide to pick FOUR humans, chosen specifically for their unique gifts which will eventually grow to benefit all of mankind. The Tzin will tempt them with drugs to see whether they are strong enough to withstand temptation, or give in and end up managing a Circle K.

The first kid they pick is a rising star little league baseball player name of Mitch, which was hedging their bets to be sure. An athlete using DRUGS? What kind of topsy-turvy world IS this?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mitch jumps at the chance to inhale the sugar packets – yes, to all appearances, sugar packets – offered to him by an overcoat-bedecked stranger. Concerned over his friend's suspicious behavior, Mitch's close pal Keith Wilson* does what anyone would do – he narcs on Mitch.

*Amazingly, absolutely amazingly, this is a black kid named "Wilson" who is NOT related to the Falcon. A first for everything in Marvel comics, a first for everything ...

Cap is really fucking sarcastic.

Inappropriately enough, Keith calls on Captain America to closely investigate this kid who's suspected of taking drugs. I hate to point this out, but Cap never would have existed if he himself had not been an underage kid who took drugs. The Super Soldier Serum ain't Snapple, babies, and the first one's always free. I'd suggest calling on a hero who got his powers from something a little more socially responsible – like radiation, or black magic. Something DECENT ...

In any case, there's luckily no evil or crime anywhere else in the world at the moment, so Cap's swings on by. He happens to catch up with the kid at the point when a drugged-up and befuddled Mitch accidentally wings a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball smack into the batter's head. "My control was off," Mitch pleads over the unconscious body of the clobbered boy, “My head was messed up!"

Parting the already-angry mob, Cap busts in and asks "Want to tell us WHY your head was messed up, Mitch? Is there something you've been putting into it?"

Wow. Cap. Way to incite an already foaming crowd. Cap's terrifically timed bon mot enrages the crowd further, but luckily nearby cops have come to investigate the scene – oh, actually, they had planned on just driving by the public lynching until Cap threw his shield at their heads. Tell me again, WHO'S ON DRUGS HERE?

"...It IS some nut in a Captain America costume!"

After enraging the crowd, Cap takes everyone who's even vaguely sympathetic towards Mitch – his parents, his coach and Keith – out of line-of-sight of the irate mob and Mitch both. Let me say that again – he turned his back on the angry mob, he turned his back on Mitch, and then he hung out with some people who were really into blaming themselves for Mitch's drug problem. ONE MORE TIME: Where was the mob? I don't know. Where was Mitch? I don't know. Where were the people who would happily defend Mitch against an angry mob? Hanging out behind the boys' showers, having a chat.

In one of those twists that make comics such exciting reading, Mitch is wandering the streets and HAPPENS TO RUN INTO THE ANGRY MOB! I guess the angry mob was having coffee together. They invite Mitch to their kaffeklatsch by way of a baseball bat to the gut, which hits Mitch so damn hard that he starts bleeding from the nose! COPIOUSLY bleeding from the nose, hemorrhaging internally! Keep this in mind, because I'm coming back to this ...

Naturally Cap shows up, beats off Mitch's attackers and quips the line that he's as strong as twenty men (because of what again? Oh yes, DRUGS!). Cap then proceeds to lecture a still bleeding Mitch on the foulness of drug use. Except when your country demands it. But seriously, Mitch, no drugs, c'mon man.

I neglected to mention that, earlier on, Mitch had been re-approached by his overcoat-sporting pusher. In a sudden paroxysm of spasming denial, Mitch smacks his pusher in the phiz, knocking off what was apparently a ceramic mask of a human face and revealing the alien features beneath. Mitch actually tries to explain to Cap that aliens gave him drugs, and Cap's response to this is to sort of pat Mitch's head and send him on his way, lesson learned.

"...THANKS TO DRUGS!"

So, at first glance, Cap UNBELIEVABLY decides that a drug-abusing teenager who spins some yarn about drug-pushing aliens just has "quite an imagination," and figures the kid is otherwise okay to walk home by himself. Me, I'd think the kid was probably tripping a LITTLE too hard to be allowed to escort himself ANYWHERE.

But hey, the Living Legend of World War II isn't a chaperone, I suppose. Even if he did drive all the way out to Butt-Fuck, South Egypt in the American Midwest merely to answer one kid's possible suspicions about his close friends potential drug use. And even if he's having Mitch walk home alone through streets potentially crawling with members of an angry mob waiting to whup his ass. AND EVEN IF Cap himself helped rile up that crowd. "N.M.P., CITIZEN! HAWKAAAA!" or whatever.

But ON TOP OF ALL THAT and thinking about it a second time, Cap has let an assault victim who is bleeding copiously from the nose and has just sustained a blunt force trauma to the breadbasket WALK HOME. Okay Cap! That was fucking sugar the kid was sniffing, you know, not radioactive spider blood or Uru or some shit.

Hell, even after Cap finds the shattered face mask of the alien pusher, he just sort of shrugs and heads back to his Americycle or whatever, never stopping Mitch to follow up on what may be an incredible alien conspiracy! Frankly, for all the good Cap did in this one – which was essentially to show up, break up a schoolyard fight and then lecture somebody – he might as well have been your Junior High School Principal wearing really fantastic pajamas.

"Let's leave my wife out of this, Cap."

So thus ends the saga of Mitch, inasmuch as he probably passed out in an alleyway and quietly bled to death halfway home. As for the other THREE specially gifted individuals whom the aliens were planning to tempt and subsequently destroy with their sugary space drugs? I ... I don't know. I'm assuming this was either planned as a much larger book, or a series, or SOMETHING because they just never get mentioned after the first time. And since Cap never investigated the suspicious alien situation, they're probably all dead now. GOD BLESS AMERICA!

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: PSA Comics

The cookie elves have asked the circus
freak to tell you to stay off drugs.

I think I'm speaking without exaggeration when I say that the ONLY reason anyone in my generation stayed off drugs, in school, away from cigarettes, well-fed and unmolested was thanks to the tireless efforts of the Teen Titans. Barred their intervention, I would have been left to the woefully inadequate admonitions of “Bad Dudes,” most likely ending up neither a winner nor bad enough to rescue President Ronnie.

Spider-Man is totally raising the fuck out
of your awareness about the dangers of bull-riding.

Thank you, trend towards major publishers issuing special edition Public Service Announcement comic books to little kids! You kept me out of prison and off the streets, off drugs and high on life! In fact, I don't even live above ground anymore, I have a sub-basement hovel filled to the ceiling with stacks of newpapers and jars of my own urine. I'd throw the stuff out, but Spider-Man once told me that bad men were trying to touch my swimsuit area, and I'm afraid to walk outside to the garbage can on the curb.

To fill you in on my self-indulgent rambling, DC and Marvel (among other publishers) have always been eager to lend their character to comics with charitable aims. The Teen Titans starred in a trio of anti-drug comics, Spider-Man (with Power Pack and - holy fifth-string characters! - Skids and Rusty from X-Factor) and the Hulk have both warned kids about assorted stranger danger, and Superman, Batman and the X-Men have all made their stand against famine in Africa (bravely opposing the intimidating pro-famine-in-Africa lobby). Even the Radio Shack Whiz Kids got in on the act, turning the tremendous processing power of the TRS-80 to the problem of inner-city drug use. I think they solved it, too, I should double-check that issue. I believe the resulting equation recommended hugs, rather than drugs...

"Hi there, nice to meet you, we're Power
Pa -- HOLY JESUS, KID!"

So now we're on the same page, and that page probably includes a pudgy white kid in a striped shirt crying while Spider-Man holds his shoulders and says “Tommy, you have to understand that it's not your fault!” I'm sure you got your hands on these yourself, somehow, either via a well-meaning adult authority figure who likes to say “I think these kids consider me to be pretty 'cool'” and make air quotes when he says it, OR you swiped a copy from the library and read 'em with your delinquent friends while you lit up.

Originally, this article was going to try and be a comprehensive overview of ALL the major PSA comics, but I ran into two problems. First off, if you think I'm going to make fun of a comic book about molested kids, you're nuts. What the hell kind of captions am I supposed to slap together for THAT? “Hey retard, did your daddy touch you? Haha, FAG!” If you're feeling so all-fired giddy, why don't you write up a couple hurtful paragraphs, blog it, and then sit back and watch the hate mail roll in. I get more than enough vitriol for just not liking Secret Wars II ...

For a South American anti-landmine comic,
Wonder Woman was re-costumed in a more
modest fashion. I'm amused by the idea that
kids couldn't learn about landmine safety if
they were otherwise confronted with Wonder
Woman's Amazon rack.

(Still, I would've loved to fit a “Touched by The Angel” joke in here somewhere. Ah well ...)

The second problem is that there are about a million of these things. I honestly thought there weren't more than half-a-dozen. As I hunted down copies after copies and documentation of these books, I began to wonder how so many kids could still be sniffing glue and starving in Africa. I mean, fuck, how many times do you have to be TOLD, junkies? The Living Legend of World War II is not used to repeating himself!

Even Storm and Luke Cage got to do one, although they take a back-seat to Spider-Man in their PSA comic about the dangers of smoking (Hell, they barely even got on the cover, first time around). Actually, looking at it a little more objectively, I believe the comic is less about smoking hazards and more about how Marvel doesn't have any prominent black characters who can stand on their own merits. Unlike DC, who has that guy who's the fourth or fifth most popular Green Lantern, and then also there's Spawn, who I was surprised to discover was black under the shadows, the mask and the facial scarring. JESUS, how deep do you feel like burying the brother, McFarlane?

Sorry, I'm getting off track here ...

Fun fact: Spider-Man stars in more of
these things than anyone else. Which is
why he tackles such bullshit topics as
"Literacy," a topic no comic book has any
damn right addressing.

Although their hearts are largely in the right place, I never felt these comics were a good idea. Beside the fact that half-naked vigilantes who routinely beat the tar out of mental patients in fetish gear are probably not the IDEAL spokespersons for a sane, safe, law-abiding existence – although, I could be wrong. Perhaps those anti-drug seminars they used to hold in our high school auditorium would have packed more of an impact if the attending officers had been decked out in Mardi Gras beads and bike shorts, and hauled in a wino to pummel – superhero comics are notorious for reducing even the most complex problems into black-and-white matters.

Super-heroes thrive on the morality play, which makes super-hero comics particularly well-suited to warning kids against the hazards of trying to conquer the world. As far as pinning drug abuse or worldwide famine on an individual super-villain or monster goes, I'm not so assured.

It's already a pretty spurious premise that any PSA comic is going to spark a turnaround in any of the serious issues they address, which is why the stated purpose of these books is to inform and raise awareness. Problem is, are we really raising awareness of an issue by blaming its cause solely on some mythical villain?

This poster promotes a Superman comic
which raises awareness about land mine
safety. Any joke I can make here about land
mine safety is pretty much talking shit from
a guy who lives in a country NOT COVERED
WITH LANDMINES!

(I'll take a parenthetical aside here for a moment to fill you in on a peccadillo of mine, before it rears its ugly head. Both the X-Men and the Superman-Batman team appeared in comics benefiting African famine relief charities. One was titled “Heroes Against Hunger” and the other was called “Heroes For Hope,” and no matter how often I remind myself, I keep switching those up to make “Heroes for Hunger” and “Heroes Against Hope.” Happens consistently. This is the same berserk mental twitch which makes me call any of the Star Wars sequels – assuming for some reason I feel compelled to precede it with its episode number and whatnot – as “Star Trek,” and why I constantly, unconsciously call those films “Star Trek: The Phantom Planet” and “Star Trek: Night of the Clones.” HONESTAGOD!)

In the X-Men:Heroes Against Hope book, the mutant heroes ultimately discover that the famine in drought-struck Ethiopia was being caused (or at least exacerbated) by this alien monster who fed on human suffering. OH, SO HE'S THE GUY! Gut him out hollow, would you Wolverine, and let's get back to punching the Toad in the phiz.

Take, for instance, the well-intentioned Captain Awareness comic, which is certainly trying its hardest for a very worthwhile cause. However, as the tale within the pages unfolds, it turns out that incidents of rape are actually caused by a big smoky monster which possesses men's bodies and makes them do bad things. Whereas I appreciate the sentiment that my gender as a whole is so inherently pure of heart and free of ill will that it takes an all-powerful ethereal being of gross malevolence to turn even the most sociopathic brute into a rapist, I DON'T THINK THAT'S REALLY THE PROBLEM!

"Jesus kids, I'M FLYIN' HERE!"

This trend is sort of endemic to the super-hero genre as a whole, which often makes villains out of 'embodiments' of emotional or metaphysical states, as well as the occasional elemental and whatever the heck it was Speedball was supposed to be in relation to kinetic energy. OH WAIT, why the hell didn't SPEEDBALL DO AN ANTI-DRUG COMIC? That's automatic GOLD, Marvel! “Don't do me, kids, I'll ruin your life. Say no to me.” IT'S GENIUS!

So the super-hero universes abound with what tend to appear to be normal folk in fright masks and aerobics gear, but who are secretly the universal depository of all the universe's sense of sorrow, hate, apathy, anger, bigotry, what have you. Now me, I'm a dyed-in-the-wool, bleeding heart tree-hugging Leftist, but even I support executing THESE fucks. “So, this is the universal embodiment of all hate in the universe? There'd be no hate without him, am I getting this right? Okay, pardon me, Punisher, may I borrow this?” Boom, problem solved. And here I thought it took a deep understanding of the nature of man and his role in a wide and unresponsive universe to salve the wounds of the human condition, when all you really have to do is beat the guy in the Danskins to death with a crowbar.

Believe it or not, this book is about minorities
in the engineering field. Who are building
enormous, terrifying Tyrranosaurotons, or
something. I agree that this issue needs more awareness.

At least none of these books had the paucity of good taste to create an anthropomorphic embodiment of child molestation. Not that you really have to, since Marvel's currently doing a pretty good job of BEING that themselves. (Don't believe me? Hey, when was the last time you saw an eight-year old girl with a gargantuan rack and pillowy pudenda? Try X-Men:Phoenix. Like your eroticized juveniles a little more photo-realistic? No Trouble at all! And then there is, of course, the latest mutant title, X-Ploitation of Minors! Marvel! Because NAMBLA only lets you hump little boys!)

Which makes it a shame that the PSA comic trend has died down, or at least seriously put the brakes on in the last ten years. Because we sure could use a comic warning kids to stay away from anything Marvel president Bill Jemas has a hand in ... ironically, in fact, I think reading any single issue of Marville will pretty much take care of that right out of the gate.

(Hey, here's some fun: So far, not counting this one, there are nineteen paragraphs in this article. Guess how many of them will generate an angry piece of hate mail. Whatever you guess, it's two less than actually will.)

Bonus Image (I ran out of room in the article): Here to teach you about bicycle safety, it's Spider-Man and Ghost Rider. You know, Ghost Rider. The self-immolated guy with no skin whose motorcycle is on fire. That guy. He's here to teach you about wearing kneepads.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Superman 2001

SUPERMAN 2001

COCK-BLOCKED!

Personally, I can't even remember what Superman was really doing in 2001. For all I can remember of the last fifteen years of mucking about they've done with the big guy, he was either dead, revived, reincarnated, mulleted, electrified, split in two, evil, emotionless, cloned, too big, too small, stuck in the past, stuck in the future, crazy, mind-controlled, married, divorced, over-powered, de-powered, wearing a funny hat, getting his ass kicked by Batman, learning to snorkel in the Bahamas, eating marzipan cakes in a locked bathroom and weeping, or possibly all of the above at once.

As an aside, if you ask me what has defined Superman over the last fifteen years, I honestly would have to reply "I have no idea what's going on with him from day to day." And it's true - back in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies, it didn't matter HOW alternate a future or HOW imaginary a story to which we were being treated, Superman was Superman. They had some stories which featured his descendant in the 24th century or something, and it basically looked like Superman with a weak chin and a Hitler haircut. If we went to a parallel world where Superman was a villain, he wore a little black mask along with his regular costume. Since the Crisis, Superman's changing costumes, powers and appearance at the drop of the hat. I blame the action figure market.

See? See how his skin reflects the laser?
Check it out. You see yet? I'll keep doing it, see?

But hey, that's beside the point! We're going back to the Golden (or, actually, Bronze) Age of 1976! More specifically, we're going back to Superman #300, the self-proclaimed "tricentennial" issue of Superman - My, he's come far since 1676 - and an imaginary tale which moved the Superman mythos up a few decades.

"Just imagine," the cover begs of us, "The MAN OF STEEL coming to Earth as a Baby TODAY -- -- and growing up in the world of TOMORROW!" (i.e. several years ago). Cary Bates and Elliot S! Maggin provide the writing and Curt Swan and Bob Oksner do the drawing on what is actually a very good story of the era - which doesn't mean it's free from silliness, oh no. Oh no no. God bless it.

I'm sorry, I meant to say "Me
am rocket zoom bang double
Ice Cream Cone GARGLE FAAAAART!!!"

The story opens with the same, familiar stirrings of the traditional super-origins. Jor-El - Superman's father and evidently Krypton's worst public speaker - responds to Krypton's violent dissolution by packing up baby Kal-El in more fabric than all three of Michael Jackson's kids combined, and shoving him in an atomic dildo headed straight for Earth. And so far, even with my overwhelming shame at the cheap Michael Jackson joke, nothing much different from the traditional here.

Now here's where the story gets ALL FUTURISTIC AND ULTRA-MODERN NOW, JUST YOU WAIT!

Soviet and American radar pick up the trace of Superbaby's cosmic bunting, and make a mad dash to beat one another to the oceanic crash site. After an I'm-not-kidding and totally-awesome action sequence, the ship is claimed by mustachioed Special Secret Operative Agent or something Lt.Thomas Clark! Hey, waitaminnit, CLARK? You don't suppose...

The ship is taken back to a secret government bunker where scientists attempt to blast baby Kal-El's face right off, there's some super-toddler hijinx, and for ONCE goddamn Superbaby can actually speak proper English and not that insane Bizarro-shit he used to go on about. "Me am shoot in rocket boom space eat cosmic bang-bang happy double cake ice cream cone WAAAAAAH!" Oh no, this time it's speaking every language on Earth fluently and knowing syntax, and where's the fun in that, I ask you?

Awww, I love you too, little French Superbaby!

Also, I think it puts the finger on Ma and Pa Kent for not hooking Superbaby on Phonics the first time around.

Superbaby is code-named "Skyboy" and raised by the U.S.Military, so you know he's going to grow up completely straight in the head, right folks? Eventually, news of his existence leaks out, causing a terrible increase in Cold War tensions. This is capitalized upon by an unnamed third-world country whose flamboyant and middle-aged major-domos have world conquest on the mind. They arrange some computerized tomfoolery which makes the US and USSR believe that the other country is launching a nuclear attack, believing that in the ruined aftermath, they'll be able to pick up the pieces and take over. Enjoy your glowing hunk of scorched soil, gentlemen, you're both assholes.

Oh, and did I mention that this brief US/USSR exchange happens in 1990? We were so young, once.

By 2001, Milton-Bradley's boardgame favorite takes on a scope of horrifying
proportions. C-17? YOU SANK MY BATTLESHIPS, IMPERIALIST DOG!

Anyway, "Skyboy" takes it on himself to stop every nuclear missile and space laser in existence, then following the death of his military mentor - General Kent Garret HOLD IT, KENT? OH. MY. GOD! That's AMAZING! - disappears into an anonymous existence, which takes us into the futuristic world of the twenty-first century.

Now, no offense intended to these guys - many of whom are my artistic heroes - but Seventies' comic book artists had no business drawing the future. Most of these guys barely knew what the present looked like, for crying out loud.

Swan's always been one of DC's exceptions when it came to a modern look, though, and he was damn good at giving his characters contemporary fashion and style. I think the problem came to him - in this story specifically - when he was called on to design a future world of advanced technology, BUT not render it in such a way that it looked exactly like the future of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

So now he has to achieve a delicate balance of ju-u-u-ust the right moderation and tweaks and finesse and nuance and - oh, I'll shut up, it looks like the Legion of Super-heroes future. Except they didn't call everything "Cosma-Ice Cream" and "Super-Clothing," and that everyone's wearing three-layered pantsuits instead of really ugly Underoos with their home planet printed on the jerkin, or whatever. The Cosma-Jerkin. Fucking future.

Some of you may be too young to recall, but this actually IS what the internet was like back in 2001...

There's no greater comedy dollar than the "What did they think the future would look like wayyy back in the past" comedy dollar. Or "Comedo-Cred" or "Econo-Humor-Unit" or whatever. Cosma-comedy-dollar. In any case, let's take a look at ... THE STARTLING WORLD OF THE FUTURE!

For one thing, we're no longer watching television, but Tri-Vision! Which I think means that the future is offering us a triple dose of Univison, and that Mexican show where all those forty-five year old guys and tanned super-models dress in ridiculous school uniforms and pretend to be in grade school. Sadly, for my household, we only watch El Clon and CMLL/AAA, so we're screwed.

Siegfried and Roy 2001, evil foreign putzes.

A thousand Cosma-points for accurate predictions to Bates and Maggin though. Clark no longer is a reporter for a major metropolitan newspaper or even broadcasting giant WGBS, but is an anchorman for a "24-hour news network" made possible by the "around the world ... huge communications linkup."

The prediction of the cable news scene here didn't actually tell us whether Clark was working for any PARTICULAR news network, but since he wasn't obscured behind the scrolling equivalent of a James Joyce novel OR was gleefully muckraking with a smarmy political slant, I figured it wasn't CNN or Fox News. Judging by the fact that Clark is filmed in a full body shot and is DEAD-FUCKING-BORING, it's either E! or MSNBC. Your choice.

Another accurate prediction made by the Bates/Maggin team was that there'd be a frothy mocha available on every street corner. Or MOKA, sorry, let me get my notes straight as we get back to the story.

The aforementioned gaudy third-world nation, still helmed by what appears to be an elderly gay couple, strikes upon a brilliant plan, assuming that you're judging brilliance by comic book standards. On New Year's Eve, 2001, they send a four-armed android to perch on the clock above Times Square and declare that he his-own-bad-self was not only responsible for saving the world from total destruction back in 1990, but that he now demands their allegiance. Oh, and that his allies Frappe and Latte would be joining him shortly.

WERE! YOU! LISTENING?!

Amazingly, the world BELIEVES HIM, right off the bat. Gullible fools. Is that too harsh, you ask? Hell, I'm just quoting the MAN! Superman reads the dupes of Earth the fucking riot act while he turns MOKA into styrofoam peanuts.

ctually, his outright verbal abuse is meant to inspire folks to not look to 'heroes and false gods' for the answer to their problems, which Metropolis' citizens adhere to by erecting a ginormous Superman statue in the middle of Times Square.

As for the fashion nightmare that WAS whatever retirement home-turned-third world nation it was, they had their plans foiled AGAIN by Superman, and thus ... quit, I guess. I dunno, they didn't follow up on it.

Frankly, they're not the worst villains I've seen in Seventies' comics - In a SHAZAM! I was reading recently, Captain Marvel repulsed a world-conquering effort by a bunch of guys who lived in a city suspended by wires above a mountain chasm. Turns out if you, I dunno, cut a few of the wires supporting their nation, they tend to calm down. At least Future-Siegfried and Cosma-Roy had the good sense to quit while they were ahead, in the world of 2001 ...

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #208

Over the weekend, I was reading a copy of Superboy (and the Legion of Super-Heroes) #208, one of those giant-size comics loaded with reprints. They had a story in the very back titled something like "The Evil Hand of the Luck Lords," which is about as obtuse a title as humanly possible, really.

Anyway, it's actually an above-average story for the era, and the Curt Swan art is some top-of-the-game stuff, hands down. The story centers around the often luckless Legionnaires - trust me, even the X-Men take a back seat to the Legion, in terms of hardship and loss. Members keep dying, losing body parts, getting abducted or going nuts, it's fucking endless - suddenly getting clued into some universal trend of good and bad luck of which they're sure they must be part.

Adolescent thoughts began to wander as to the ineffable mysteries of the universe, and specifically as to whether members may have brought bad luck on themselves by making unintended, unlucky portents. For instance, just before Lightning Lad went on to single-handedly fight the skyscraper-sized atomic whale monster from space which claimed his right arm, he stepped on a planetoid with his left foot, and of course that's why he probably barely escaped with his life from a monster that's like twelve Hulks riding Godzilla. BAD LUCK!

Anyway, where I'm going with this: There's a scene where the assorted bad-luck Legionnaires get together and commiserate about their respective problems, and they think to bring visual aids. Seriously, check this out:

Duo Damsel thought to bring three statues of herself, to teach the kids at home about basic math. What's really killing me is Bouncing Boy, who lost his super-bouncing ability (I'm not making this up) and chooses to showcase the fact by bringing a photo of his formerly fat ass. I fucking love this. He looks like the futuristic Jared. (Also, check out Star Boy looking forlornly at his show-and-tell item. "I -- I brought this interesting rock I found.")

Bouncing Boy and Duo Damsel are at it again, here on the cover.

At least Duo Damsel's is some sort of memorial to her dead triplet self, I really don't think Bouncing Boy needs to remind everyone how fat he used to be. "Hey guys, remember when you left me at that buffet because I was face-down in the egg salad and I couldn't hear you shouting at me to get my lard butt into the minivan already? Remember? I brought a picture!"

So anyway, at some point, Lightning Lad decides to seek out the mythical Luck Lords on his own, making this declaration:

But when we look at the Legionnaires he actually chooses to take with him, notice who's missing:

Hey, Duo Damsel's there! And all she has is the power to be most guys' fantasy! Why did Bouncing Boy get left out? I suspect several key panels were left out of the story for editorial reasons. I have recreated them as I suspect they must have originally been penned:

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Hostess Heroes Featuring The Incredible Hulk

It was a hard and unforgiving time for everyone's favorite four-color icons, the late Seventies and early Eighties. It wasn't uncommon to see such varied characters as the Absorbing Man and a giant Flea from space fighting over a warehouse store of delicious cupcakes, or the Mighty Thor choking a Korean convenience store owner against the Doritos display, just to demand an unopened case of Fruit Pies.

Yes, the Hostess Snacks ads of the Seventies, just the tip of an iceberg of addiction which left Robin turning tricks in Crime Alley and Superman weeping in group therapy at the Betty Ford clinic while Braniac's skull-headed robot ship brazenly molested the Daily Planet building globe with none to stop him.

For a brief period during the transition between decades, comic characters were used to hawk Hostess Brand snack foods, from Superman to Spider-Man, from Richie Rich to Josie and the Pussycats, from Captain Marvel to Captain Marvel, full-page ads for INCREDIBLY BAD-FOR-YOU FOOD which still remain a favorite memory of many of us Bronze Age Babies.

Along with Batman, Spider-Man and a rare other few, The Hulk is one of the grand-daddies of the Hostess Heroes, his appearances filling volumes (you know, considering the ouvre). In this inaugural Hostess Heroes article, join your Humble Editor on an overview of a pastiche of pop culture mishmash so corny, it could as well be Quentin Tarantino's HULK SMASH Volume One …

The Incredible Hulk and the Green Thumb – This one starts as so many of the Hulk's trademark adventures, with the jade giant lured into the seemingly benevolent clutches of a mad botanist and her enormous, retarded produce. This used to happen all the time. In fact, I think that's how he first met Wolverine.

"Cousin Betsy, The Plant Lady" attempts to induct the Hulk into her jewelry-thieving trio of anthropomorphic plant-villains, charmingly named Mari Gold, Rhoda Dendron and Artie Chokes. I get that Artie, you know, can choke you, but I'd hate to see Rhonda dendron even a kitten.

The particular irony of this little adventure is that the Hulk didn't dislodge Cousin Betsy's stash when he's nanny-slapping Artie Choke …

"Yeah, don't worry about me, I'll just let my
spine get -- shattered -- augh -- enjoy those pies,
you fucks!"

The Incredible Hulk Versus the Roller Disco Devils
I guess if I were to call one super-hero to take care of a roving gang of roller-disco punk-asses who're breaking noise pollution laws, I'd call the Hulk. This is primarily because I'd be counting on old jade jaws to crush their spines to jelly and send them screaming to Hell. Seriously, I hate roller-disco.

Apparently, whatever city this is has a statute on the books which makes it illegal to prevent the purchase of snack foods by means of creating a public nuisance. I'm sure it's true, I saw it on Law&Order.

Seems funny to me that no parent in their right mind would think of allowing their children out on the streets while someone's out there dancing on roller skates, but they're okay with the kids cavorting in the immediate presence of a huge, green mongoloid who can roll asphalt like the Sunday paper.

Also, check out Hulk's hand-sign in the last panel. "HANG TEN, PUNY HUMAN!"

The Incredible Hulk Changes His Mind
Say what you want about the Hulk, he's at the very least a character so iconic that it's actually worth documenting the scenario in which he changes his mind! I don't think even Jesus gets so much as a verse where he ponders aloud "Well, on the other hand …"

But then again, let's see Jesus sell a fruit pie.

Speaking of miraculous children sent from heaven, I personally enjoyed seeing Hulk shake the baby tree in this episode. Must be late in the season, the kids're just dropping from the branches.

I'm sort of baffled by the logic introduced here, wherein strangers will NOT be intrigued by the presence of cup cakes leaping over a bush. Benevolent or no, why they don't go see, you know, who's hucking cupcakes or, more importantly, WHY they're hucking cupcakes, it's beyond me.

My real advice to Hulk is, if he wants to be alone, that maybe he should get out of the fucking park, genius.

The Incredible Hulk and the Ultimate Weapon
If one thing above all others makes this particular weapon ULTIMATE, it's that it is completely bugshit out of control and will destroy everything forever. That's about as ultimate as it gets. I suppose it's fairly true that, once everything else is destroyed, that last man on Earth whom so many ladies have said they won't sleep with will be thinking to himself "Man, that weapon sure is ultimate."

Where do you think they got the Santa's-
Bag-sized order of Hostess snacks? Sam's
Club? Probably Sam's Club.

By the time Hulk wraps up both his destruction of the weapon AND his incessant personal martyrdom – well, stop DOING them favors, Hulk! – the scientists who created the weapon are already distracted by a big pile of Hostess Fruit Pies. I think that takes the mystery out of how this machine ended up going berserk in the first place. These guys have a tetch of the ADHD …

The Incredible Hulk and the Twins of Evil
I'm guessing Wendigo and the Abomination are fraternal twins, or maybe they're just really tight with one another and they like to pull that "Brother from Another Mother" routine.

In any case, they totally put Hulk's ass through a table. It's not for me to cast aspersions on the Hulk's assertion at the end of the tale that a bellyful of fruit pies is going to tip the scales in favor of anything except a larger waistband on his big, purple shorts, but I think he'd be better off with a tummy-full of PCP and a bazooka. Honestly, I don't think Hulk gets stronger the higher his cholesterol level rises.

It's also nice that we got to see a followup to the earlier tale wherein Hulk implied he might change his mind again in the near future. Surely, he did, cause where he once wanted just to be left alone, now he just wants to fight fair. Oh Hulk, you are large and contain multitudes.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: The Death of Captain Marvel

The Death of Captain Marvel

As a bit of background, Captain Marvel is one of Marvel's lesser luminaries, weighing in on the scale of characters who've had their own titles or feature slots somewhere behind Ghost Rider and the Sub-Mariner¹, if only because no one's ever optioned a movie about Marv². He debuts in the tail-end of the Silver Age as a mish-mosh of prior superhero origins³ - As captain of an invading alien army bent of dominating Earth, he is overwhelmed by the great potential in the human race and turns on his masters (a la Silver Surfer). Changing his native name Mar-Vell (No relation to Kal-El, except the obviously intentional name-alike) to Captain Marvel (See that three asterisk dealie for this one), he becomes first Earth's protector and then protector of the Galaxy (a la Green Lantern) after the death of his girlfriend (a la everyone).

Although handled pretty well - albeit largely as a lesser Silver Surfer and mostly for a handful of "relevant" science fiction stories in the seventies - he's pretty much a background character, until his untimely death promotes him to Marvel Comics' first spandex-suited saint.

Like most of Mar-Vell's better adventures, this story was written and drawn by Jim Starlin. A lot of folks love Starlin and brook no shit about him, so forgive me when I say he's one of the most unintentionally hilarious creators to ever step into the field. What other creator, for instance, would have the awe-inspiring audacity to replace Jesus and Mary with a space-faring superhero and Grim Reaper in a reproduction of Michelangelo's Pieta? Jim Fucking Starlin, that's who!

The book is a retelling of the life of Captain Marvel, made particularly poignant by the good Captain having discovered that he's suffering incurable cancer. He got it from when an exploding super-villain made him stop up a leaking cannister of nerve gas with his bare hands, which is how most folks get it.

Again, it's largely a well-done story, with Cap's final hours being spent peacefully in the company of friends and family, although he DOES get to fight intergalactic space phantoms in heaven at the end. At one point, the heroes of Earth are recruited to find a cure for cancer. This is where the hilarity starts (if you don't count the cover, I suppose). First off, the damn heroes are left to explain why none of the super-geniuses in their midst ever thought of trying to cure cancer before. Their answer? They kind of don't have one.

So, lacking a good excuse, they take to the labs. At least until Cap dies, at which point they walk away and never try to find a cure for cancer ever again. I mean, why should they, Captain Marvel's dead, right? Right.

This scene kills me:

What kind of help do you imagine Thor's offering there? I mean, yes, I know his alter-ego is a doctor (ahem, A GENERAL PRACTITIONER OR SOMETHING, FOLKS!), but come on, that's Don Blake. This is the God of Thunder, and I have it on good authority that his usual means of solving a heady conundrum is to do something as understated as drinking all the seas.

"Mayhaps I might smite yon cancer with mine mighty enchanted hammer, friend Beast!"

"No, Thor, cancer's ... cancer's too small to hit with a hammer, sorry."

"Mayhaps the elves of Diggendoggenheim may forge a TINY HAMMER with which to smite yon foul rot!"

"Look, your heart's in the right place, but really ..."

"I could strike the cancer with lightning! Or, oh wait, how about I drinks it under yon table! Arf arf arf!"

"You ... Listen, you already suggested that ..."

Surprisingly, the brain trust up there fails the hell out of curing cancer, and Marv dies, surrounded by his comrades and loved ones.

Hold it, hold it, back up. Who invited the Hulk to a funeral...?

¹ That's "Sub-MARiner," not "Sub-MaREENer." Stan always gets that one wrong.

² Swear to Zod, that's what his pals in the Marvel Universe call him. Even if it does lessen confusion between him and Captain America, it's weak.

³ He also debuts as the first superhero I've ever heard of created just to take advantage of a court ruling, to wit:

Since the 1940's, National Periodical (publishers of the Superman books) kept Fawcett Publications (publishers of the original Captain Marvel, the one in the red suit who says "Shazam" all the time) in and out of litigation over perceived similarities in their two flagship characters. The real problem, of course, was that Cap shared some superficial similarities to Superman, AND was far more popular in terms of circulation and merchandising. That's how lawsuits are born.

By the time it was all resolved, National (now DC Comics) effectively OWNED the original Captain Marvel (Fawcett had largely gone under in the meantime, and DC bought their former rival out, although litigation over OTHER Fawcett-related issues continues to this day), much to the delight of fans. Rushing to put Cap back in the funny papers, DC gets stopped by relative rookie publisher Marvel, who take DC to court to prevent the possible brand confusion over a comics company other than Marvel using "Marvel" in a book title.

The end result is Marvel won, DC had to refer to Cap and his associates under the umbrella term "SHAZAM," and Marvel - figuring what the fuck, why not? - creates their OWN Captain Marvel character. Hell, they even created their own version of the Marvel family, altho it's populated almost exclusively by dames, minorities and homos.

Additional fun-fact: The original Marvel Family consisted of dames, gimps, fatties, hayseeds, micks, geezers and beasts of the field.

Extra Additional fun-fact, just to confuse matters altogether: Okay. So. The shtick was that DC couldn't directly refer to their Captain Marvel as "Captain Marvel" on any cover or advertising. They could, if they wanted, call him 'Captain Thunder,' which was Cap's ORIGINAL name when he was scheduled to debut in Flash Comics #1. Turns out there was already a Captain Thunder at another company, and DC was publishing Flash Comics, so Thunder became Marvel, Flash became Whiz, and then in the Seventies DC used "Captain Thunder" as the appellation for a thinly-veiled Cap homage, so they couldn't reuse it for the revival, if they'd wanted to. Meh. I still like the beefy, retarded Cap better than the spacey one with the untamable mane.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Daredevil #311

I've been reading Daredevil since I was seven years old - it was, in fact, the first comic I ever bought with my own money - and in the intervening years since 1953 or whenever that was I have learned to ride the tumultuous seas of Daredevil's ever-fluctuating quality.

The rule on Daredevil is that you usually have to ride out two or three years of really truly horrible stories to get to six or eight months of the book blowing your mind. Can't be helped, what with the creative teams changing every three months or so, back in the old days ... so for every Miller and Mazzuchelli page you got, you had to sit through a heaping handful of Micah Synn or the Beyonder ... for every Ann Nocenti, there's Joe Kelly or J.M.DeMatteis to deal with.

So, with that in mind, I bring you one of my favorite Daredevil covers of all time, coming straight from one of those prolonged periods of crap. I uncovered it while packing off some of my comics to exile at the storage unit, it is Daredevil Volume one number 311 ...

In case you're doubting it, you are indeed seeing a chalk-white Matt Murdock lynching a black man right up in your face. And there is NO getting away from that black guy, he is being about as lynched as you can get, right on up in there.

And here's me seeing that for the first time as a kid :O

But seriously. Man. That's really raising the anti-hero stakes. Wolverine, you need to get in on this ...

The part you probably can't see is that "Man" in "The Man Without Fear" has been scratched out and, in obnoxious purple crayon, been replaced by "Zombie." That's right, it's "The Zombie Without Fear." And then the Voodoo Queen or whatever is laughing so that the title is all but obscured by her busting up, which I totally sympathize with her for because, man, "Zombie Without Fear" is pure LOL juice.

Also, please note that this issue DOES bear a Comics Code seal, only it's facing forward and apparently doesn't see any of the horrible nonsense going on behind it.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Camera-Smashin'!

Camera-Smashin'!

I swear, the greatest thing to happen to comics this year is the DC Showcase Presents line (or as I like to call it, the DC Strange World's Brave and House of Finest Showcase Mystery and the Bold Presents Adventures Blue Ribbon Digest, or failing that, DC Essentials), the book series which not only brought us the entire original Metamorpho run in all of its glory, but just recently produced the Jimmy Olsen collection (under the somewhat confusing "Superman Family" banner, meaning I guess I'm waiting a long time for Nightwing & Flamebird stories, or that arc where Krypto saved a guy's nephew from drugs).

If nothing else, I finally got to read the backstory on this panel I'm sure most of us caught via SuperDickery - Jimmy Olsen descended upon by what is surely his nemesis, a robot trained specifically to smash his camera. This robot must have seen Jimmy coming from a mile away.

Still, I found the overall story a little flat - Jimmy and Clark visit a strange island yet populated with dinosaurs seeking a reclusive scientist who seeks to protect his island's secrecy by making sure all cameras are smashed by well-trained robots. Also, this guy can build (and train!) robots but he writes on their chests with a sharpie. He cuts corners.

Anyway, in the long run, I was inclined to make what I felt was a more satisfying explanation. It goes like this:


Excelsior! Now where's my No-Prize?

(PS - This is one of those rare occasions where I pimp the ol' Cafepress shop; want to warn the world that you're a robot who will smash the hell out of their camera? It's only fair if you do.)

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Superman Meets the Quik Bunny

This is slightly better than this one other cross-promotional
book that I own, Superman Meets The Press.

In lieu of the other prominent 1980's food-mascot-teaming-with-super-hero comic I'd WANTED to review – that being Frank Millers Kool-Aid Noir “The Dark Knight Returns, OH YEAH!” – I bring you instead what I think can only be accurately described as “a depressing newsprint abortion,” Superman Meets The Quik Bunny.

"By Rao, I am choking this down and it tastes
bitter, as bitter as ashes ..."

It must be said, before we go on, this kind of thing offends me - and I'm not easy to offend, when it comes to comics. I sat through Hal Jordan going from essential icon of the DC Universe to crazy nutball in the world's ugliest metal tuxedo to a dead guy to a dead guy in footed pajamas, and all the time I just chuckled like Fred MacMurray and thought "Boy, are they going to have to eat a lot of shit to bring this guy back to the status quo in ten years."

I sat through Jim Starlin's THE END, this Summer's event of choice for Marvel Comics, in which EVERY SUPER HERO IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE DIES … AT LEAST THREE TIMES! And I just laughed. A lot. I mean a really whole lot.

I know, it's some kind of
goddamned Moon Man
language ... aw, fuck it,
let's bomb his shit all up
in this piece.

So seriously, it takes a Secret Wars 2 or an IronJaw to drive me nuts, and yet the mere mention of a cross-promotional team up between Superman and some international chemical conglomerate food-hucking mascot sends me into a tizzy. You know why? Because SUPERMAN'S A LEAD CHARACTER, BABY! And my proof: Superman Peanut Butter!

Superman ain't here to help sell your chocolatey-ass milk, rabbit! Superman makes his OWN chocolate milk, and he does it out of space dust and magic wishes! You ain't got NOTHING on imaginary potential Superman Milk, fool! GO HOME, RABBIT! GO HOME!

This opus to brand collisions and paean to the phrase “Quik Thinking” is brought to us by writer Mike Carlin and artists Carmine Infantino and Dick Giordano. Because, of course, who else would? For the record, in their respective times, both Infantino and Giordano arguably each held the post of “Most powerful individual at DC Comics.” I bet that made them cry a little, as they put the final artistic flourishes on a bedraggled rabbit twisting its ears in orgasmic delight while it sucked back what appeared to be beige motor oil.

Right, Quik thinking, got it, very funny.

And also, seriously, I hope you don't get sick of “Quik Thinking.” Seriously.

The story starts commonly enough, what with Superman chasing down an antisocial stage magician in pajamas. In this case, it's Flash baddie The Weather Wizard, whose costume – green bodysuit, flared collar, pixie boots, golden sash – helps him cut a figure slightly less intimidating than the Quik Bunny hisself.

It's like some junior version of the Ethnic Super Friends, only everyone's wearing pants.

While the Wizard is pouring torrential rain down on the city of Metropolis, four plucky kid geniuses are busily constructing a super-robot treehouse off in the suburbs somewhere. The multicultural and gender-balanced Quik Qlub – That's Ronnie, Patty, Maureen and Miguel, which sounds like a Protestant family of three and their gardener – apparently do all this at the behest of their manic mentor, the Quik Bunny, who rushes in once all the hard-work is finished and turns on the TV. Yes, they have a TV in their treehouse. Patty built it. She's a genius.

Jesus, Ronnie, could you be any less cool?

Chancing upon a newscast of Superman's life-and-death battle against moisture and a fey Mister Greenjeans, the Quik Qlub begin to fear for Superman's safety – possibly because they're idiots, or maybe they have Weather Wizard confused with a black hole or God – and rush off in their transforming magic clubhouse to offer assistance. And chocolate milk.

Luckily, Superman enjoys a long tradition of humoring pathetic, weak-ass fucks who try to join him on adventures. “Sure, Robin, you mutt! Let's you and me stop Braniac!” and “I can stop Mordru .. er, but only if Triplicate Girl and, um, hey, Invisible Kid come along! Seriously, I won't be able to do it withoutcha, you crazy guys!” So with gentle but firm rebuffs, Superman slows down long enough to be visible to the human eye and lets the Quik Qlub tag along.

Right, we GET it, thanks.

I suspect this inclination on Superman's part is half fatherly good nature, and half that he knows the Weather Wizard couldn't even beat the Quik Bunny. And he's RIGHT!

So while the Weather Wizard is throwing hurricanes and tornadoes around the nation's capital - his strategy, by the way, is apparently that if he throws enough tornadoes at Washington D.C., he'll be allowed to run the place. Wh ... what? - and making it snow in Egypt and what-have-you, the Quik Qlub follow around in their big happy schoolbus of delight while solving mazes and word puzzles and whatnot along the way.

If there's a paucity of content in some high school history text, possibly, yes.

Whereas it's pretty enlightening stuff - I, for one, learned that the easiest path to the Great Wall of China is via the Canals of Venice - I sort of ended up confused. Then again, it's my own fault, as I'd decided earlier on to deliberately make-believe I was reading a sequel to that Superman/He-Man team-up promo comic, and I kept waiting for Quik Bunny to make with the Sword of Eternia and Battlecat and so on ...

The whole story wraps up in China, where Weather Wizard's been making it hail, and oh man, the Chinese hate hail. Seriously. They must, otherwise WHY WOULD HE DO IT?

Amazingly - or actually NOT amazingly really, if you think about it - the Weather Wizard is outgunned and outclassed by the Quik Bunny, who quickly fashions a lightning-attracting Quik Bunny metal decoy, and sets it up on the edge of the Great Wall. When the Weather Wizard zaps it with electricity, thinking he's striking the Quik Bunny himself, he instead ... somehow gets walloped himself, I think. The science seems to wear a little thin on the inner thigh around this point of the story, but from what I gather, the Weather Wizard is kind of a puss and then he's dead and thank you Quik Choclate Mouthwash, you've saved something from the forces of whatever!

OKAY. WE GET IT.

Then it's back to the Qlubhouse and all its horrible, dark secrets for a celebratory chug of powdered chalk dust and a hearty Kryptonian backslap, bringing to an end another exciting occasion wherein Superman slowed down long enough to let nitwits like the Quik Qlub, the Radio Shack Whiz Kids or Jimmy Olsen fart around and let super-criminals go on massive sprees of destruction and mayhem. I like me some Superman, no doubt, but I think the guy's priorities are a little screwed ...

Well, I'm thinking you're the devil ...

Bonus Images!

• I can never say this enough - Just because this is the internet, you KNOW that someone is masturbating to this image.


• It's always about YOU, isn't it?


• Here's a Superman for you to color! Seriously! Come on! I fucking dare you!

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Wonder Woman #211

I'm dragging out one of these 1970's 100-pg giants from DC, big four-color tomes which are eternal sources of joy in my life. Seriously, just looking at the cover on one of these babies cheers me up, whether it's the beloved chock-full-of-reprints Shazams or even the I've-never-even-read-it Unexpected (What's in that book, anyway? 'I picked up the fishbowl and – WHOA, there was a hundred dollar bill under it!'). I don't know if it's the hard-to-find reprints or the delightfully jumbled cover design or the striking, gate-like letterhead or just how much better a hundred-page book feels than a 22-page pamphlet (or whatever the current cynical appellation for regular old comic books happens to be), BUT I LOVE 'EM!

The gay jokes are getting pretty played out
on my end, folks, so I'll let you run with this
one yourselves.

That being said, though, I'm reviewing Wonder Woman #211 here and it makes me want to switch to the hard drugs.

I suppose I should get this out of the way first: I hate Wonder Woman and I'm sorry she has the vote! I've sort of documented my reasons in other forae, but chief among what I think of as Wonder Woman's many faults as a character is that she just seems sort of sloppily applied.

She's a mythical amazon, but she ends up fighting giant communist eggs and amorous space gorillas, or something called Mouse Man which was apparently a dude in a yellow mouse costume complete with fuzzy ears and nose. She's a character from Greek legend who wears an American ensemble. And, you know, whenever they ran out of story ideas, they just swiped whatever just happened in Superman last month.

Worst of all is continuity. I understand that Robert Khaniger's era as editor was the worst for this particular fetish for the past, but it kind of doesn't get any better anywhere else. In fact, the storylines are slapped on here so sloppily that I'm taking it upon myself to rate each stories' inconsistencies via a powerful, text-based Continuity-Meter. The internet is a wonderful thing.

"I came to WIN!

Even as we tear into this, I don't want to sell her short, because Wonder Woman is actually a very complex character. I say this because her shoes have an origin. In fact, everything she owns has a freaking origin, as revealed in this 100-pg Spectacular documenting How Amazons Shop.

I also like to think of this issue as the Volcano versus Iceberg 100-pg Spectacular! I have never SEEN so much hot (or cold) Volcano-on-Iceberg action in my short life! I'm going to try and keep track of that, too. Not like I did with the Contest of Champions scores and all ...

Story by story, let's go:

Sur-r-r-re you will!

Maniacs of Mercury – If you read enough Wonder Woman, you'll notice that some themes start to develop. For instance, there's the eternal 'Men from a world once fairly balanced between the genders suddenly get a wild hair and oppress all their women, and also Wonder Woman if they can.' The rider to this is usually 'Then Wonder Woman beats them and gives women ALL the power on the planet, and the women say 'Oh boy, we'll TOTALLY be fair in ruling over the men' which you know is total bullshit.'

Which is what the first story in this book is about, as I'm sure you figured. The fun all starts with Wonder Woman and her superhuman sorority sisters collecting cosmic matter from inside the safety of the invisible jet, via BASKETS ON STICKS! If it's any more logical, the sticks are VERY LONG. Oh, but from their coloring, I believe the baskets are also invisible. I imagine that must help.

Anyway, some classic nonsense occurs which draws the invisible jet into a collision course with the sun, which freaks out the Amazons because apparently they don't have a problem floating through the freezing, airless void with the windows open and their diaphanous togas on, but god forbid it gets HOT.

Rather than sizzle alive, the ladies end up on the planet Mercury, ruled by the cruel King Celerito (trans: 'Little Celery') who – along with his doughty, carrot-topped male cohorts – have conquered and enslaved their once-equal female cohorts. They did this by tricking them into doffing their super-powered sandals and going barefoot. I think that might be a metaphor.

After trying to kill Wonder Woman with a forklift (Olé! Actually, I'm lying, it was a steam-shovel), Celerito is handily overthrown by the Amazing Amazon and stomped to death by his planet's women like in the ending to the Stepford Wives.

Continuity Meter: According to the dial, we're only hovering at 'stupid'
Volcanos vs Icebergs: 0-0

This is ... This is ... Someone spent a LONG time
working out the perspective for this shot. I SIDE
WITH QUEEN ATOMIA!

Mystery of the Atom World – Wonder Woman sure swears a lot.

Here's the Wonder Woman drinking game: Every time she exclaims 'Suffering Sappho,' 'Merciful Minerva' or 'Great Hera,' you take a shot. By page 5, you'll be on your ass. Heck, on the third page of this story, she busts out all three in three consecutive panels! Language, Wonder Woman, language!

Anyway, I'd probably be swearing too if I were caught in this boner of a story. Wonder Woman discovers a sub-atomic world ruled by the evil Queen Atomia, who would have been here sooner except it took SO LONG to think up a name for her!

Inside the magenta-skinned tyrant's realm, we discover that protons are actually tiny, cruel women and neutrons are equally tiny (but not cruel) blue robots. Electrons are apes I think, and the strong and magnetic forces of the universe are actually midgets and lobsters. Beyond that, it gets a little theological for me, and all I can really say for sure is that Amazons are in serious need of a physics lesson.

Wonder Woman, your ... your foot is swearing
vengenace. Does this happen a lot?

So Queen Atomia somehow shrinks our gaily-garbed golem into pint-size, along with a handful of her Amazon amigas, and transports them to her miniature kingdom with the plan of turning Wonder Woman into a 'super-powered proton' which will be sent back into our world and wreck stuff. Rather than a life of subatomic servitude, Wonder Woman THINKS REALLY HARD and it makes the blue neutron robots go nertz and smash up the evil kingdom. Adults wrote this story, try to keep that in mind.

Continuity Meter: In the early coupla captions for the story, we're told that Wonder Woman is investigating the site of an atomic bomb test in the middle of the Pacific. However, Wonder Woman is (a) wearing a spacesuit, (b) is crawling down a barren crater and (c) is doing all this against a backdrop of stars. On the following page, an upward-rocketing Wonder Woman flies up into a clear-blue sky.

I'm no scientist, but either two different stories collided violently, someone changed the script after the first pages were drawn, or that brief bump almost broke the needle on the Continuity Meter ...

Volcanos vs Icebergs: 0-0, but the Volcano threatened to eat the Iceberg's children at a press conference.

How can you tell? IT'S INVISIBLE!

The Origin of the Amazon Plane –This one starts with the notorious Waterfront Gang making a 'fortress' out of a carnival Ferris Wheel. Which is to say that they were sitting in the cars and shooting wildly. I'm not really sure what their plan was, or who put it together, BUT GIVE THAT GUY A RAISE!

As a point of order, a Ferris Wheel makes for a lousy fortress. For one thing, it's pretty much wide-open, no matter how much you hunker down in the seat. Secondly, no matter how fast you're traveling, anyone chasing you can just draw a bead from the cotton candy machine and plug you between verses of 'Let Me Call You Sweetheart' on the mechanical pipe organ. This being said, this Waterfront Gang pretty much has everything to lose and nothing to gain.

No small surprise then that Wonder Woman up-ends the wheel-bound owlhoots and drops them off – criminal carnival attraction and all – in the local penitentiary. My mental image of this is hundreds of hardened convicts getting really excited that they now have rides! I bet they have to trade cigarettes for tickets, though.

All this mildly retarded hullabaloo leads Diana to reminisce about the origins of her invisible robot plane, because you don't think she pushed the thing to jail, do you? (Also, Invisible Robot Plane is only one adjective short of being the next big internet fetish. Farm, that's the adjective it needs, Invisible Robot FARM planes' ... HOT TEENAGE Invisible Robot Farm Planes ...)

The mood ... is about ... to change!

Anyway. Wonder Woman is sent by her mom, the reigning MILF of Fantasy File Island, on a series of Byzantine quests to recover the three pieces of her amazing invisible robot plane. Invisible TELEPATHIC robot plane! She finds the cockpit (for the first time in her life) tangled in the carnivorous leaves of an man-eating, undersea plant, which raises the question of how exactly a plant develops a taste for human beings when it's at the bottom of the freaking sea (Answer: Amazon dopes and their never-ending pearl diving for invisible telepathic robot farm hot teenage virgin planes etc etc).

Directed by engraved instructions upon the body of the plane segment (Was ... was the lettering invisible? How did she read it?), Wonder Woman then retrieves another segment from the bowers of an electric tree - I guess trees can do that - and then the bowels of an active volcano, which brings us to the first round of VOLCANO VERSUS ICEBERG – in which Diana uses the iceberg as a toboggan to retrieve the tail section. And maybe the black box, explaining exactly how the hell the thing got into this situation in the first place. Oh, I'm sorry, I mean invisible black box ...

Anyway, It's a good thing she won her invisible plane, because otherwise she would have had to settle for an odorless go-cart.

Continuity Meter: Compared to the other stories, this one reads like the World Almanac.

Volcanos vs Icebergs: 1-0, Iceberg just didn't have the stamina.

Athena makes exceptions for total tools.

Wonder Girl Amazon Teenager –I've read this one a few times, and I still can't tell if it's about Wonder Woman as a teenager or Wonder Woman's teenage sidekick Wonder Girl. I mean, I know it SAYS it's about Wonder Woman about a teenager, but if that's true then the story is FIVE HUNDRED TIMES MORE RETARDED THAN IF IT WASN'T ... and it was already pretty retarded.

Teenage Diana and Hippolyta – Wonder Woman's slender Nordic mother from the Greek Myths - are watching the GROWN-UP Diana performing super-deeds as Wonder Woman via some big-ass HDTV which sees into the future. You follow that so far? If not, you'll want to start diagramming the rest of this.

Teenage Diana grows envious of her grown-up self's awesome costume, and so begs her mother to let her have one of her own. Because you don't get nothing for free on Amazon Island, it's decided that (surprise) Diana has to perform THREE DANGEROUS FEATS to earn the right to wear a costume of her own.

Accompanied by useless tool Ronno the merboy, Wonder Girl has to tangle with, among other things, a 'cannibal clam.' Technically speaking, a cannibal clam is just a clam which eats other clams. Frankly, it doesn't sound that menacing. Worse for Diana are the mythological Roc, a big swordfish and – oh, hey, VOLCANO!

In the end, Diana has a star-spangled skirt, an eagle-emblazoned blouse and a magic lasso apparently similar- but not indentical-to her modern day lariat. Oh, and unfortunately, Ronno the merboy found out where she lives and he watches her from the shrubs sometimes when she undresses to shower.

Mostly what I learned from this story is
that Amazons have a Suggestion Box,
for crying out loud.

As an aside, and being a Superman fan myself, I like to pretend that Ronno is actually the awkward, emotionally immature younger version of Ronal, the sonofabitch merman doctor who stole Lori Lemaris from Superman. I know he ain't, mind you, but I just feel for those big, blocky Wayne Boring Supermans who used to pine along the bay.

Continuity Meter: After this story, the Continuity Meter began crying and told me it's never known love.

Even disregarding the is-she-or-isn't-she dilemma with the dual Wonder Girls (and my thanks go out to this hearty fellow who's taken it upon himself to take a stab at explaning Wonder Woman's berserk-ass teenage incarnation-slash-sidekick paradox), I'm surprised this story didn't set the Meter on fire.

One of the integral elements of Wonder Woman's origin is that she competed in an immense tournament for the right to be the Amazons' ambassador to Man's World, and furthermore that she did so ANONYMOUSLY and AGAINST HER MOTHER'S WISHES. And yet, here's Diana and Momma Hipp cheerfully gazing into the star-spangled, invisible jet-setting future of our little lady tyro.

So, basically, Hippolyta is really good at faking surprise, this is what I've learned.

Volcanos vs Icebergs: Still 1-0, this was sort of a team-up between Wonder Woman and Volcano. Volcano was better written.

Dunh-dunh-dunnnnh!

Winning of Wonder Woman's Tiara – Does every single article of her clothing have an origin (For the answer to that, skip ahead to the next-to-last entry)?

Here's the skinny – Wonder Woman's tiara, which she explains is the symbol of her status as princess among the Amazons, goes up for grabs! See, apparently, she also must compete against all the other Amazons for the right to wear the tiara. Which symbolizes her status as princess. And she's a princess cause her mom's the queen. And the tiara is symbol of that. But ... she ... could not have ... princess.

Anyway. Heaven forfend this should turn into yet another story where Wonder Woman undergoes three tremendous trials in order to pad out her wardrobe, oh no. No, in THIS story, Wonder Woman undergoes three tremendous trials AFTER also participating in a bunch on athletic competitions with the other Amazons. And she has to do this EVER DAMN YEAR! You think taxes are bad ...

In addition to the suggestion box, Amazons also have competing newspapers.

In the end, against all odds AND after dousing a volcano with an iceberg, Wonder Woman gets her tiara back. This seems to me like a lot of work to get back something you had when the whole mess started.

Continuity Meter: I swear, I don't even know anymore.

Volcanos vs Icebergs: 1-1, it's sudden death!

Wonder Tot and Mister Genie – I've said it before and I'll say it again, I can hardly express how much I hate Wonder Tot and Mister Genie. This is a hatred for the ages, and it burns so bright that I would frankly make a better villain for Wonder Woman than, say, I dunno ... Angle Man. The guy who was really into angles. I don't even know anymore.

Oh good, now he's dancing. This just gets better and better.

Anyway, this is one of those horrible Wonder Tot stories starring the apple-cheeked Amazonette committing acts of marauding mischief on an unsuspecting world. This time around, it actually leads up to the origin of Mister Genie, which is as good a reason as any to declare DC Comics a part of the Axis of Evil.

Wonder Tot gets 'banged' out of bed ... I'm not kidding ... by a strong gale, and then surfs the currents for awhile, ending up on an island of golden apple trees (Golden Apples on trees, that is to say...) protected by a serious-ass dragon who is not there to play around with your ass. GO DRAGON! I'm with you!

Unfortunately for my sense of good taste, the mighty sprite flings the dragon to kingdom come (Seriously, look for him in book three, page seventeen*) and then floats off to find a strange desert island, where a treasure chest captures her attention. Opening it, she frees the poor, belabored Mister Genie from millennia of imprisonment, only to find the genie to be a wrathful entity who intends to imprison his liberator for an equal amount of time.

Besides being an apt metaphor for our current troubles in the Middle East, Mister Genie's strict 'Imprison Wonder Tot Forever' policy really appeals to me.

Gosh, she sure is adorable ... DIE! DIE! DIE A
THOUSAND DEATHS! DIE!

Sadly, he's a dope, and falls for a little ventriloquism. Wonder Tot lives, and she and Genie become best pals, chasing down a distant star to use as a clasp Wonder Tot's beret. I hope it collapses her noggin. Or, alternatively, I hope anonymous space aliens come out of nowhere and shoot at them, WHICH DOES HAPPEN. I additionally hope they enter some time anomaly which causes Wonder Tot to grow up into Wonder Woman, though I don't know why, and also that actually doesn't happen, and then she goes back to normal.

Hopefully, you now see why I hate this stuff.

Lastly, Wonder Tots sound delicious.

*Dumbest joke I have ever made.

Continuity Meter: Remember during the confusing Wonder Girl story, I mentioned that one of Wonder Woman's integral origin elements was that her mother didn't know her own daughter was competing in the trials to become the Amazon's ambassador to Man's World?

Okay, well, in THIS story, someone needs to explain to me what the hell's going on when even her OWN MOTHER calls baby Wonder Woman 'Wonder Tot.' WONDER TOT. That strangely seems to imply some knowledge of her daughter's future career, which she really shouldn't know. Meh.

Also fucking up my Christmas is the fact that baby Wonder Tot has a golden lasso already. Once again referring to the above Wonder Girl story, the lasso is one of the objects for which teenage Diana must quest. Maybe she lost her old one. Maybe Wonder Tot's was the Fisher-Price 'My First Lasso' or something. I dunno. Anyway. Retarded.

Volcanos vs Icebergs: 1-1. Still. I'm running out of jokes for this.

Secrets of Wonder Woman's Sandals – Boy, just like a woman to have an origin for her shoes, am I right fellas? C'mon, back me up here, this guy knows what I'm talking about, this guy here. Hey, nice tie fella, someone guess your weight?

Seriously though, it's starting to get ridiculous. You think there's a secret origin of Wonder Woman's magical Amazon underwear coming down the pike? Did she have to endure three mythological challenges in order to get her Ortho-Tricyclene refilled? WHAT MANNER OF BEAST DID YOU DEFEAT IN ORDER TO GET THAT HILARIOUS REFRIGERATOR MAGNET, WONDER WOMAN?

Or maybe I could just wear my New Balances, mother.

So Diana is brought barefoot to stand before her mother, the Queen, who sets her daughter out on a challenge to get some damn shoes on. Good thinking, Hippolyta, she's gonna catch a cold running around like that.

High on my list of personally hilarious moments is when Diana – again, I mention that she's barefoot – ponders aloud as to what accroutement exactly her mother implies is missing from her ensemble. Just a thought, honey: Shoes. You're not Doc Manhattan, you know.

Hippolyta takes Diana to an Amazonian telephone wire, over which a pair of diminutive sandals has been flung. I'm not kidding about the diminutive part, they're teeny-tiny, for rilla. The Queen then explains that these sandals are magic sandals which reflect upon the courageous deeds of their owners, and grow appropriately. This is called 'the hard sell.'

I guess I'm not following this. Apparently, the shoes grow in size every time the wearer (assuming she can wear them, I suppose. You need ti-i-i-i-iny feets indeed) performs some marvelous deed. Wonder Woman's been around for, like, sixty years or something, and I'm thinking a week's worth of battering Egg-Fu senseless with his own handlebar mustache would be sufficient to get those things to proper size. By now, they ought to look like clown shoes, and require a passel of smaller amazons to carry.

Maybe it's a comment on how freaking lame Wonder Woman's villains are, how it's gonna take years for those sandals to grow. In any case, she wears boots now, I think that explains everything.

So-o-o-o anyway, immediately upon hearing the caveat associated with her crime-fighting bunny slippers, Wonder Woman – I say this with all due respect – promptly begins bitching loudly about how long it's going to take for some catastrophe to come along and require her delicate touch of justice. At which point a volcano explodes under Amazon Island. Happy Birthday, Diana.

So Wonder Woman saves the island, resulting in one shoe getting all big and the other staying tiny. Please keep in mind that this is the emotional crux of the story, whether or not the shoes get big. It's very dramatic.

In the end, Wonder Woman whups ass on some other menace, I specifically forget what it was, and then her sandals are normal size. This one had me on the edge of my seat, worrying that her footwear might be uncomfortably small. It was the thrill of a generation, these freaking sandals.

What sticks with me in this story is the possible moral dilemma inherent in deed-relative morphing shoe sizes, that being a situation where you'd avoid doing good deeds just because your shoes are finally broken in. I mean, if you had to protect an island from an undersea volcano just to make your shoes fit, don't you think you'd let a kid get run down by a bus in order to keep 'em there?

Continuity Meter: Okay, not precisely continuity, but rather a large contradiction in the premise of the story. Wonder Woman's told that she can't go be the Amazon Champion of Man's World until she has her magic shoes, but how else is she supposed to go perform courageous deeds? Ah, to hell with it, let's bring in volcano.

Volcanos vs Icebergs: Iceberg on a technicality, the volcano's mistake was fighting a war on two fronts, just like Hitler.

The Mirage-Mirrors - This one ends with an ALL-NEW story, which makes it EXTRA ALL-STUPID, which I suppose is fine. Fine for Wonder Woman, fine for the era, fine for comic books, how smart do we really want these things to be in the first place?

Sorry baby, NO FAT CHICKS!

Remembering that Wonder Woman is a mythological Greek champion imbued with the might and power of a half-dozen gods of legend and who has entered the modern world in order to fight for the rights and freedoms of all people under glorious equality, you won't be surprised to find out that she spends most of this story chasing men and looking like a fat balloon.

The brief of it is that Diana, man-crazy and predatory, is dying for some attention from otherwise-lovestruck Col. Steve Trevor, who won't stop blabbing about Wonder Woman's pulchitrudinous patriotic package. Abashed by her alter-ego attracting more affection than her dowdy done-under day disguise, our Amazon princess does what any ditzy dame from a sixties sitcom would do and goes blubbering off to momma for some adroit advice.

Man, how does Stan Lee DO that?

Anyway, Hippolyta - leader of a nation of self-sufficient Amazon warriors whose legendary escapades predate the birth of Christ - fills her daughter in on a sneaky, passive-aggressive little manipulation of her own making. BE PROUD, WARRIOR WOMAN! Seriously, I'll spare you the stupidity – particularly since Comicon Pulse covered it straight - but suffice it to say that Hercules was better off.

On Momma's advice, Wonder Woman turns up the flirt on Col.Steve, accompanying him to a seaside carnival. Okay. Little does Steve know, though, that Diana has rigged up a series of magic funhouse mirrors around the joint. Trust me, this is all an important part of the plan.

Judging from Superman's mighty creepy leer, I'm guessing he has other plans too...

The magic mirrors transform Wonder Woman first into an elongated, giraffe-necked freako, and then into an ovoid mass of feminine blubber. STILL PART OF THE PLAN!

After foiling an overcomplicated carnival-robbing scheme of the Angle Man – again, that's the guy who really likes angles, and in this case, obtuse and overwrought angles which make everything really difficult when all you really needed was to approach the ticket counter with a gun, ahem – Wonder Woman returns to normal, only to find Steve REPULSED BY HER FLESH! STILL! PART! OF! THE! PLAN!

Apparently hungry for woman, ANY woman, Steve rounds a corner at full tilt and almost mows down Wonder Woman in her civilian identity of Diana Prince. Practically tripping over his own engorged rod, he begs for a date, only to have Diana reveal that she's already got a date with Superman. Who's right there. Meaning Trevor not only lost his erection, he lost it so fast that it sucked his testicles up his spinal column. Lesson learned. I guess.

And there it is. At the end of these eight million stories, each one weighing in at forty-five thousand pages, I can honestly say that my opinion of Wonder Woman has changed completely. I thoroughly hate her now. I'm standing over the burning ruins of the Continuity Meter and canceling my order for the Volcano vs Iceberg PPV, and just weeping softly while remembering how I had to endure three terrific trials to buy these steel-toe boots of mine down at Target.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Spider-Man and the Not Ready for Prime Time Players

LIVE! From New York, it's ...

Before we get started, there are two things I'd better cover: First, yes, I know the Avengers met David Letterman in the pages of their own comic, thanks, please send no mail. Also, by way of a pre-emptive sequel to this review, let me summarize that particular comic: Hawkeye says "WHAT?" a lot and then there's a big doorknob.

Second thing is that I ALREADY KNOW that many of you fine, comic-reading folks out there like this issue. Some of you LOVE this issue. Hell, kids, I too help comprise this legion of the probably-should-be-ashamed-of-yourselves of which we are all part. But I put to you that this task I've undertaken - this thankless task … this unrewarded task … this really, really stupid task - of cussing at crap comics is often one of sacrifice.

HELL! SHIT! DAMN! FUCK! How's
THAT for swearin', Samurai?

Today, for instance, I sacrifice my juvenile glee at seeing Spider-Man - arguably a true counter-culture icon of the fictional four-color forum - teamed up with the hallmark of cocaine culture's rebel comedians, and trade it in for pointing out that the whole affair is wrapped up in a comedy comic penned by Chris Claremont.

I really can't stand any mainstream Marvel attempt at humor. I know there are some comics out there which do humor well. I mean, of course there's always Milk and Cheese, Sam and Max, and - to pimp an Ape-Law native who's also doing the 'pair of idiots in situations far beyond their control' routine - Hsu and Chan, not to mention the regretfully unfinished Eye of Mogombo, about which I often have tumultuous, fevered dreams of desire...

Even other mainstream companies have occasionally hit the nail on the head, although the words "mainstream" and "comedy" usually mean "Julia Roberts trips on something." For its time, Ambush Bug was a riot, as a for instance, and Dark Horse and Image have hit a few comedy goldmines, the latter's bitterly self-parodying "Stupid" notwithstanding.

But Marvel? Oh Marvel, your wise-cracking superheroes are sort of grimly admirable, not hilarious, and you should stick to them. It's a whole other matter when we're discussing the abysmally unforgivable Power Pachyderms, the well-meaning Slapstick (sorry, James), and, say, THE PANEL IN THIS VERY COMIC WHERE THERE ARE TWO OLD GUYS NAMED STADTLER AND WALDORF IN THE SNL AUDIENCE AND HO HO THE JOKE IS IT'S THE OLD GUYS FROM THE MUPPETS GET IT HA HA THE MUPPET GUYS ARE REALLY REAL OLD MEN IN THIS COMIC THAT'S VERY FUNNY RIGHT??

Bill Murray reacts to his loss to
Sean Penn in the Best Actor category
at the 2004 Academy Awards...

I'm not kidding, but it's what we get when Chris Claremont pens a comedy (You know, the first rule of comedy is timing, so what kind of timing does a guy who routinely writes dialogue where single sentences are trisected into multiple word-balloons have in the first place? When Storm asks "Are you hurt" - new balloon - "From your great fall" - new balloon "Peter?" and Colossus answers "Only" - new balloon - "my pride," - new balloon - "Friend Ororo," then there's little chance of mistaking it for an Abbot and Costello routine).

So, yeah, here we have Marvel Team-Up #74, written by Chris Claremont and tackled with a Herculean effort by Bob Hall and the fabulous Marie Severin. Right out of the gate, my admiration for the artists in this particular issue could not be higher, I'm planning on naming my first two kids "Bob Hall" and "Marie Severin," or assuming I only have a single child, "Bobarie Severhall."

Seriously, you may be able to give them a little shit for some of the likenesses drawn in this issue, but barring anything else, you need to give it up for their Jane Curtain. Holy socks, their Jane Curtain looks more like Jane Curtain than Jane Curtain does. Their drawing of Jane Curtain is currently enjoying a career in film and stage which dwarfs Jane Curtain's career, and Jane Curtain often turns to the drawing of Jane Curtain for stage advice. Please look for the drawing of Jane Curtain on the next Inside the Actor's Studio.

Probably doin' you up the butt, as near as I can tell...

As for the issue itself, our story begins with a harried Peter Parker ushering his "Why does he stay with that fickle bitch" of a love interest, Mary-Jane Watson, through a greasy New York deluge on their way to a Saturday Night Live taping. Everything's already going wrong - as usual - for Spidey's schmuck of an alter-ego, and the only thing which could make it worse would have been if they were going to see the Dick Ebersol-era SNL…

Meanwhile, in the backstage area of NBC's famous Studio C, SNL's Not-Ready-For-PrimeTime-Players gather around John Belushi's dressing room to watch the fat load wrestle with a ring which won't come off. "I told you not to guzzle that last Six-Pack," quips not-yet-doughy castmate Dan Akroyd, as though presaging Akroyd's plummet from the pinnacle of "Actually being funny."

And yeah, it's six-packs that was Belushi's problem. Woodward said as much.

Anyway, the ring which torments Belushi - which he believed to have come from an admiring, overseas fan - was apparently misdirected mail intended for an agent of the criminal Silver Samurai. That agent's name? J.B. Lu-Shi. See, the comedy, it never stops …

I had some joke about the SNL cast-members
being all strung out, only I had, at the time,
confused the term with "strung up," and now
the joke doesn't work. Just like the actual joke
in the comic didn't work, either.

So the Samurai collects his gang of hired goons under the very stage on which not only the SNL regulars are performing, but also Marvel Comics publisher and the show's guest-host, Stan Lee. During his monologue - oh, my sides - he quips that everyone thinks being Marvel's head honcho must be wonderful, "but have you ever had a story conference with the Thing?" I find myself imagining that it couldn't be worse than one with John Byrne.

The Samurai and his lackeys prowl the set, looking for the cast member they believe is in possession of this ring - secretly a personal teleportation device. Under Samurai's orders, they are to keep a low profile, lest their presence bring down a torrent of New York area super-heroes. Mind you, that they then proceed to abduct the cast members of New York's most prominent, national live event RIGHT ON CAMERA possibly counts as a tactical error.

To the story's credit, Samurai DOES mention that he swore an oath to retrieve the ring by midnight, which happens to be when the show ends broadcasting. Why he didn't swear to retrieve it by, say, 12:05, I dunno. Ah, the inscrutable Oriental mind …

So anyway, in between the occasional transcription of SNL gags, Spidey - having coincidentally witnessed one of Samurai's goons take down an NBC page, which is a gag I bet David Letterman wishes he'd thought of first - and the Players themselves (many decked out in Marvel Superhero costumes for skits during the show) end up cleaning up on the goons. Belushi even manages to get his Samurai character in on the act, which I suspect is how the Silver Samurai got picked for the antagonist of this story in the first place. I bet they were rolling on the floor in the Marvel editorial offices.

You're letting me down, man.

The one routine which baffled me - okay, not counting Dan Akroyd dressing up as "Mad Dog Mulcahy, the Killer Colonel of the Crimea." I'm no SNL/Second City historian, but I have NEVER heard of this character or routine, and I can only wonder at its origin - has to do with Garrett Morris dressed up as Thor. Cause hey, I'm not alone here in immediately thinking "Oh man, IT'S JIVE THOR! GO GET 'EM, GARRETT! ROCK 'EM LIKE YOU ROCKED ANT-MAN!"
But instead, he's talking inept Asgardian. Goddamnit, I wanted to hear Jive Thor call someone a "mortal turkey" and then threaten to "put mighty Mjolnir upside yo' face, honkey." Yet another dream laid to rest in a dusty quarter-bin …

Also, dressing up like Ms.Marvel puts meat on Laraine Newman's thighs. I guess I finally see the appeal of that weird-ass boot-cut.

Suggested what? THE ANAL SEX IS WHAT!

Anyway, following an abortive attempt to capture the Silver Samurai, a soft-shoe routine with Stan (how much fun do you think Hall and Severin had with over-rendering Stan's horrible toupee? Lots, from the look of it) and a weird denoument at a nearby bar where it's implied that some guy in the SNL audience was trying to bang Mary Jane up the can or something, we end with a gag so absolutely horrible that I think it might have been the cause behind John Belushi's self-destructive behavior.

All in all, the gentle glow of nostalgia and sacred cows of both Spidey and the classic SNL cast notwithstanding, the whole issue feels a lot like a real Saturday Night skit - it's too long, it doesn't seem to know where the ending's supposed to go, and Garrett Morris got a shit part. Next time around, I'll be on the lookout for the Captain America doing the Lumberjack song, or Wolverine killing Penn&Teller.