Gone & Forgotten

Defenders Week: Everyone Loves Forcing Themselves on Valkyrie!

noreply@blogger.com (Calamity Jon) — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 14:35:00 +0000

Welcome to Defenders Week here at Gone&Forgotten (By “week” I mean “the next several articles, whether they happen to come out within a seven-day period, but let’s face it, they won’t, so anyway what I mean is here’s a bunch of subsequent articles on the same topic”). It’s Defenders Week (see previous note) because I’ve recently taken advantage of this near-complete Defenders run I’ve had sitting around for forever and a day to sit and read pretty much the whole catalog in a few sittings.

Here is what I basically learned about the Defenders; the entire concept (of a loosely-affiliated team unlike the tight-knit Avengers and X-Men) is a lot more fun and neurotic than an organized team, that Steve Engelhart and David Anthony Kraft clearly wrote the best issues, and – most importantly – EVERYONE LOVES FORCING THEMSELVES ON VALKYRIE.

Valkyrie has the dubious honor of being Marvel’s first “liberated female” superhero, except that she actually was the Enchantress in a secret super magical disguise and was using women’s lib as a tool to trick the female Avengers into turning against their male partners. Listen, hey, I’ve read those old Avengers comics, I’m 100% behind Scarlet Witch and the Wasp slipping Ben-Gay into Black Panther’s speedos, those guys was DICKS.

Anyway, many a years later, Doctor Strange transferred the soul of a woman named Barbara Norriss – who had been trapped in an alien dimension and driven totally bazonkers – into the body of the Valkyroe FOR SOME REASON, from which point on Valkyrie became essentially the first dedicated member of the Defenders.

Valkyrie was supposed to be a new vanguard of female character, was probably a transparent piss-take on Wonder Woman (who’d been lauded earlier by Gloria Steinem and either awkwardly or ironically embraced by the feminist movement even as she was sort of a palsied mess of a character in the Seventies), and was the model of the self-possessed Seventies’ woman – except mostly she just got made out on by all her teammates when she wasn’t looking.

Unsurprisingly, the first guy to take advantage of Valkyrie was then-ex-Avenger Hawkeye, a guy you can imagine eats every meal at Hooters and has a subscription to both Maxim AND Stuff.

Naturally, Val ends up sort of liking the attention, because that’s … I dunno, irony? Base condescending tripe? Something?

Next up is teammate Nighthawk, who has to ruin a nice moment by reminding us all that he’s the privileged son of a billionaire and he can do whatever he wants.

Valkyrie starts to finally get sick of dudes cramming their tongues down her gullet like they’ve got worms on the end of ‘em and are angling for sturgeon in her abdomen. Problem is that this time the tonsil-hockey all-star in question is Barbara Norris’ (that’s Val’s braindead host body) estranged husband and full-time schmuck Jack.

Jack trying to get into Valkyrie’s pants turned into one of the single most annoying subplots in Defenders history – and this is the comic that brought you the elf with a gun (see a later entry) and an evil deer (ditto). Nick Fury eventually showed up to induct Jack into SHIELD, and then ideally shot him on the way back to that magic barbershop where SHIELD used to have their headquarters, and fed his body to the Hulk. I can dream.

Engelhart was hilarious enough to acknowledge that his “Valkyrie trapped in a women’s prison” storyline was directly lifted from exploitative B-Movie dreck, and where would those films be without the warden trying to make it with the fresh meat?

Lastly, Valkyrie ends up hanging out with - as near as I can tell – an extra-nerdy film school dropout version of John Byrne and hanger-on Jim Shooter, meaning that she’s been so soured on all experience with men that she’s just giving up. This doesn’t stop the advances of exciting new villain LUNATIK, whose primary weapon is … LOVE.

Now, see, the thing is, there might be more occasions of dudes getting in cheap tongue-locks on Valkyrie, but these are all the incidents from the issues I’ve read so far. Who else tried to slip her one, do you think – Hulk, Doctor Strange, Namorita? They’re all possibilities, because if I’ve learned anything from the Defenders it’s that … EVERYONE LOVES FORCING THEMSELVES ON VALKYRIE.

Stumbo, the Giant Racist

noreply@blogger.com (Calamity Jon) — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 19:34:00 +0000

I consider myself something of an aficionado of the L-for-R transposition in fictionalized Chinese and Japanese speech. It's a time-honored gag, and whether it's used obliviously for the simple comedic flair of incomprehensibility, or manipulated in the masterful hands of a young Benny Hill, one thing is for sure: It's pretty darn racist.

Rather than dragging out any thousands of Blackhawks or Crimson Avenger panels with which to offend, I bring you what may be the single most egregious use of the transposition, courtesy of an old Harvey Comics story in which Stumbo the Giant has misplaced his diminutive duchy Tinytown, and searches for it in - amidst other places - a hollowed-out mountain where he sometimes keeps stuff. You know, like living beings.

FACT: THERE'S NOT EVEN AN R IN "STUMBO,"SO WHAT THE FUCK STLUMBO???

Crime Was Different Back In The Day (Part 2)

noreply@blogger.com (Calamity Jon) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:22:00 +0000

Once again, this is from Captain Marvel and the Good Humor man

Crime Was Different Back In The Day (Part 1)

noreply@blogger.com (Calamity Jon) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 20:31:00 +0000

From Captain Marvel and the Good Humor Man

Super Friends, After Dark

noreply@blogger.com (Calamity Jon) — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 14:22:00 +0000

I’d mentioned previously that E.Nelson Bridwell, while taking on writing chores for the Super Friends comic (and doing a surprisingly decent job for what was essentially a tie-in to a Saturday Morning Cartoon – Bridwell certainly knew he had here the opportunity to work not only on the Justice League but to do so against a practically clean slate ) indulged in the opportunity to develop a backstory for Zan and Jayna, the Wonder Twins.

The Twins took on secret identities in order to attend school and learn about their adopted world, and in doing so piqued the curiosity of some of their classmates. In Super Friends #29, some of the disguised Twins’ classmates took it upon themselves to discreetly follow the pair after school, to sneakily uncover what appeared to be an aura of strangeness about the two of them. Of course, the Wonder Twins were trained in surveillance and evasion by Batman, and trained in killing dudes by Amazon soldiers, so they just slaughter their classmates and bathe in their blood.

OH NO WAIT, I got distracted. Knowing that they’re being followed (by a different classmate every day), the Twins come upon a plan -a weird plan, I admit – to baffle their classmates. Each day, they lead the pursuing classmate to an alley into which they duck, and by the time the classmate turns the corner, they’ve used their transformative powers to become something weird to blow their minds.

Like, one time Jayna becomes an elephant with butterfly wings and Zan becomes, I don’t know, a spittoon which sings opera. Something useless. Or Jayna becomes a pterodactyl and Zan becomes novelty ice cubes made of blood, I don’t recall, Zan is boring.

And then, the last time, they become the following:

Super Friends. The comic where Jayna showed her tits to some chick. Subscribe now!

Super Friends #11: Never Mind Joker's Boner, Here's The ...

noreply@blogger.com (Calamity Jon) — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:24:00 +0000

It’s pretty clear to me that E.Nelson Bridwell looked at his 1976 assignment to write the companion comic to the popular Super Friends Saturday Morning Cartoon as one fuck of an opportunity. He extrapolated on the premise of the team, worked in references to contemporary continuity in the DC comics universe proper, and featured guest appearances not only from other DC heroes but the occasional oblique cameo from a Marvel character or three. Bridwell also introduced a long-running storyline pitting the Super Friends against an evil mastermind, created what may be the first international and multi-ethnic team of super heroes by the way of the Global Guardians, and created an extensive backstory and developing story arc for Wendy, Marvin and the Wonder Twins. Oh, and also this:

Yes, Superman. You. Uh. You blew that job. One might actually call it a … well, they’d just call it that is what, Superman.

The Red Blazer! Zooom!

noreply@blogger.com (Calamity Jon) — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:38:00 +0000

I have a new favorite superhero, another “Red-“ prefixed Golden Ager who is supplanting the place originally held in my heart by Quality Comics' The Red Bee (“He fights crime with the power of – a BEE! Just one! Which lives in his belt!"). My new guy is The Red Blazer, late of Harvey Comics back in their pre-Richie Rich days of Glamorous Detective Stars, girl commandoes and other utter superheroic bugshittery.

I like the Red Blazer for two reasons: First off, no matter how tacky a red blazer might actually be, it's nothing compared to the collection of Cirque de Soleil castoffs which ended up in this cat's hope chest, to wit:

Secondly, there is his origin story, which conveniently occurs in his first appearance (Harvey's Pocket Comics #1) The origin story serves an important purpose in comics – besides providing motivation for the character, it gives context to whatever it is the holy hell this guy in short pants and a Lone Ranger mask is doing shooting fire from his buttcheeks. Context is valuable. It keeps credulity from being sprained worse than a girl scientist's heel in a 1960s monster movie.

The Red Blazer's story starts in the wide open plains of Wyoming where one Doctor Morgan is returning from his sold-out forty year tour of Mars. Morgan is returning by way of an enormous spaceship that must have had cowpokes and ranchers across three states shitting themselves with a force so profound that it could be emblazoned over the archway entrances to many better universities.

Accompanying Morgan is his Martian assistant Kagah, who embraces the beauty of the vast, awe-inspiring prairie by promptly kicking the bucket on his first lungful of Earth atmosphere.

Doctor Morgan takes it upon himself to bury his beloved assistant, which is when random cowpoke Jack Dawson stumbles upon the scene. The cowboy code – and I know this, you may not know this, this is something I know – clearly states that anytime you find a stranger in the middle of the plains burying a dude, you just take him at his word that it was an accident. If you're trying for your “No Body, No Evidence" merit badge, you be an extra good scout and help the guy with his burying. According to the license plates, Wyoming is the “Thousands of Dudes Buried In Unmarked Graves" state.

Dawson's apparent absence of guile also leads him to unquestioningly accept the what I believe to be the utterly insane ramblings of Doctor Morgan, who fills Dawson's ears with some nonsense about returning from space with special magic technology to help mankind be more awesome. This is in spite of having just offed a guy. He must be a hell of a public speaker, this Doctor Morgan.

Morgan goes on to reward Dawson for all his help and faith by slipping him a roofie and stuffing him in the trunk of his intergalactic pedo van.

Dawson awakes, alone, in Liberace's swimsuit, apparently on a cot in the boiler room of Doctor Morgan's spaceship – oh, which Morgan set on automatic pilot and sent hurtling into the path of some space rays. A trustworthy sort, this Doctor Morgan.

The radiation bath – and I'll bet a million dollars that wasn't the only bath Dawson got when he was unconscious – not only gives him the fashion sense of a mime smurf but also the power of “ASTRO-PYRO RAYS." And possibly a rash. The Astro-Pyro rays not only improve Dawson's cornpoke dialect but knock him up the evolutionary ladder “a few pegs," making him “the perfect man." The perfect man wouldn't wear his collar up, I know this for a fact.

From there, the story takes the usual Golden Age vigilante track – Red Blazer declares a war on crime, employs a probably-unnecessary level of brutality, terrorizes some hoboes and generally just kills a whole bunch of fuckers without ever so much as looking back. At the end of the story, Doctor Morgan – whom we last saw wandering off into the empty plains of Wyoming in no particular direction – suddenly shows up on a video monitor to gleefully congratulate his mutated research subject on orphaning all kinds of kids. Go Red Blazer! I like to think that during his off-screen time, Doctor Morgan was off exposing more Martian housemaids and butlers to Earth atmosphere and watching them drop like flies. I bet he found it funny, and still laughs when he thinks of fields of freshly upturned, bumpy earth stretching out as far as the eye can see …

Speed Comics #35 (Not to be confused with Uppers Adventures or Tales of the Amphetamine)

noreply@blogger.com (Calamity Jon) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 14:47:00 +0000

I’ve spent the last few years divesting myself of my gargantuan comics collection – I’ve dropped from 15,000 comics to eleven, so you know I’m serious. If I ever did take up collecting again, though, I think I’d have to make the theme of my collection Comic Book Covers Where Whoa Damn Too Much Shit Is Going On Seriously Now.

What I don’t get about this cover is what the Girl Commando down in the bottom right hand corner is doing with that rifle. Was she trying to break the winch? Because if she did, you know, *bloop* goes the Black Cat right into the acid. “Like I even care,” I imagine her saying, “Bitch dresses like a whore.” *smash*

They're coming in on the whoozis whatzis now?

noreply@blogger.com (Calamity Jon) — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 22:25:00 +0000

(Pep Comics #65, 1948, when it was okay to show picutres of hands holding wieners in comic books ...)

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: The Dingbats of Danger Street

noreply@blogger.com (Calamity Jon) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:52:00 +0000

Note: As with many things, the temperance of time has mellowed my feelings towards the Dingbats of Danger Street (This article's several years old, I believe it's circa 1999 or 2000). They've grown on me in some reluctant fashion, so you can take some (but not all, mind you) of my vitriol with a certain grain of salt. Also, as time has passed I HAVE managed to find artifacts of Kirby verbally bashing Lee, in some uncertain and frankly uncomfortably angry terms. It's a shame, no one wants to see their childhood idols at each others' throats, but it's simply unreasonable to expect a human being to keep all their frustration bottled up forever. Aw well. It doesn't do much to diminish my respect for either of those men ...

Anyway, the article ...

Hey! I'm Red Raven, and I keep bob-bob-bobbin' along! I honestly don't know what I - and about a zillion other forgettable Golden Age characters - would have done if it weren't for Roy Thomas. He brought me back from my sole appearance in my very short-lived 40's self-titled book - and what kid wouldn't fall all over himself to plop down ten cents for the magic and adventure that the title "Red Raven Comics" promises - for a Marvel Premiere story featuring the Liberty Legion! We were such a force for good that we were led by Bucky! A sixteen year old kid!

Anyway, speaking of sixteen year old kids, let me introduce you to four guys too young to drown their sorrows in the Comic-Book Loser Afterlife Bar and Grill (Happy Hour every Tuesday from four to eight, karaoke every Wednesday)...

Oh, I've been wanting to do these fellas for the longest time. I've always been a fan of Kirby's sensawunda boy's adventures, like the Newsboy Legion, and - as I'm sure you've figured - I love really crap comics. And Look! Both at once!

Yeah, I'm hard on this book, but it's pretty indefensible. First off, even though Joe Simon brought us the Outsiders, he did have a great hand at team books back when he and Kirby were an item. Unfortunately, Simon was nowhere near this project when it was green-lighted. Secondly, the book really lacks a clear focus as far as story and characterization - hell, even consistency what with super-villains bounding and leaping and passing gas (and all this without Kilgore Trout penning a word) in the center of an urban slum. So, not only is this not exactly Fantastic Four, I perceive it gets partially derailed by a sort of abortive Stan Lee parody.

The situation between Stan Lee and Jack Kirby really is a bit nebulous, even to the most dedicated insider (which
I am certainly not. And neither are you, so shaddup). Whereas they had a very final split, it was never a very vocal one, at least on behalf of the Man and the King.

By some records, it was a hateful parting between the two old collaborators, but you'd be hard-pressed to find either of them saying a bad word towards the other. Stan has never failed to praise Kirby, and the King's always looked
ahead; he had little to say about past slights, and always an excitement about the future.

The Stan/Jack split plays a big role in this story because of the character, Jumpin' Jack, who bears more than a passing resemblance to Lee. Course, I didn't see much of Lee in the character beyond his Stan 'stache and his Marvel-like moniker, except for an occasional quote that seemed to swipe a little at Lee. Like this one, sparing us any more of Jack's "quotes."

Lest the anal legions come pouring over the ramparts at the omission, I will take a moment to mention Kirby's piercing and flamboyant Stan Lee parody, Funky Flashman. A staple of the Mister Miracle books, Flashman was at once both a model of base human desires used in contrast to the godly
concerns and morality of the New Gods, and an exaggerated caricature of Stan Lee. Blustering, bombastic, deceptive, short-sighted and glory-hogging, Flashman was a constant thorn in the side of the messianic and ever-patient Scott
Free, as well as to Kirby's common clay everyman (and alter-ego, perhaps?) Oberon.

But, as Flashman's schemes wore on, he inevitably ended up (reluctantly, of course) benefitting the common good. Likewise, though he was a well known con man and thief, Oberon and Free tolerated him time and time again. In fact, as I do maintain that Oberon was Kirby's "voice" in these books, just as Flashman represented Lee's, and Miracle constantly kept a peace between the two of them which inevitably resulted in Flashman's humiliation and Oberon's humbling. And then they'd start it all over again. And since Miracle represented the unfettered spirit of man, and he was the peacekeeper between the two of them ... well, what does this say about Kirby's feelings for the Man?

I know a lot of you are disappointed that this review isn't mean yet, but COME ON, we're talking about the KING here!

Alright, anyway, back to the Dingbats.

"Look out for these lovable dum-dums." I didn't write that. "Their parents don't want them! Their friends don't want them! Society doesn't want them!" Heck, I don't want them, but here they are!

I hope you got all the characterization you wanted out of that prelude, cause that's all there was. From those opening words, the comic goes on to present an unconvincing series of idiosyncrasies and unmotivated character traits.

We start with ... "I'm Good Looks! -- Know why I'm laughin'? 'Cuz in a minute there'll be NUTHIN' to laugh about." And boom, that's about it for Good Looks. He doesn't even get the screen time that Tommy got in the Newsboy Legion. Or Proty got in the Super-Pet Legion.

Looks is backed up by the team brute, Krunch, who shops for belts at the same place Thor does.

Then there's the team nut ball, Bananas, who I THINK is supposed to be telling jokes and wise-cracking throughout the book, but nothing he says really makes sense. "Flap off," he tells adult
authority figure Det.Mullins, "Yer jail needs a sweepin'." Uh, okay. And then there's Non-Fat.

Okay, I don't really get what Non-Fat's role is supposed to be, except maybe he's the team anal-retentive or anorexic or something, and I've got NO idea how that fits into the classic team dynamic (Mister Fantastic, The Human Torch and Karen Carpenter? Rocky, Prof, Red and Callista Flockheart?). His shtick is that he has this hot dog, and he's not letting go of it. Nope. Alright. Oh, but he's gonn eat it too. And he's skinny. And his name is Non-Fat, but hot dogs are pretty much ALL fat.

And and and Non-Fat is pretty clearly MEANT to be black, but instead turns up white through out the entire book (for that matter, I suppose Bananas is supposed to be Asian, judging from his gross caricature. At least he didn't end up with the bright yellow skin so common to Asian characters in the Seventies). I'm not sure if the coloring choice was an editorial edict or a simple mistake, but the effects are eerie; Non-Fat is deeply and reflectively shaded, huge oily pools of blackness stick to his hands and face. And you know, that'd work fine with your usual black character from the Seventies (Black Lightning, Luke Cage, etc), but on a white guy it's WEIRD.

I mean, if I'm wrong, let me know, but why does Non-Fat gets his ridiculous hat in a twist when he hears someone call him "boy?" And why does Krunch warn Bananas not to let Non-Fat call him "Snow White?" It's so puzzling.

So the character concept is weak, and Non-Fat is all about food but he's incredibly skinny, and beyond that, they're all colossal fuckups and have no personality. And somehow they get involved in industrial espionage and capture two super-villains, but I'm not denying you a thing by skipping the content of the story.

But how about this edgy, youth-oriented slang? "We don't want to be hassled..." and "they're hassled by weird characters..." and "Man, reading this book was a real hassle." Also, you have to love that this obviously kids-oriented book starreda group of kids who'd named themselves "Dingbats," a term which, at the time, was only in popular use by middle-age, white Irish-American blue collar television icon Archie Bunker.

Plus, overall, what seems like the majority of the book is given over to the lame storylines involving industrial espionage, the super-villainous threat of Jumpin' Jack and the Gasser, and Det. Mullins either doing the traditional tough-guy comic cop routine or pondering the fates and psyches of the Dingbats, rather than the Dingbats themselves. And in case you didn't catch that, I said there was a super-villain called "The Gasser." THE - GASSER. Let me spell that for you, jee-ay-double-ess-eee-ar, GASSER! One who gasses!

The Next Issue box asked for folks to write in if they wanted to hear the "tragic stories" of the Dingbats. And I'd like to offer a deep and heartfelt thanks to everyone who failed to write in. I liked the Green Team better.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Superboy Spectacular 1980

noreply@blogger.com (Calamity Jon) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:32:00 +0000

Note: This article was written back when Smallville was in its first season, just to give you some probably-not-necessary background. The only difference it made was that I was not yet aware that Kristen Kreuk is an actress only in the same regards that Hitler is some sort of cuddly bunny, and as an actress actually resembled something less like an actress and more like a horrible odor that clings to your curtains and you don't know where it came from but you spray and spray with Febreze and it never gets any better so you replace the curtains finally and the smell lingers on and then it turns out that it's a dead raccoon in the heating vent. Seriously, she is not very good.

Anyway, the article ...

Yo, is it warm in here or is it just me? Anyway, I'm the Man O'Metal as I'm sure you could probably have deduced from my very metal-appearing blue skin and my flaming shoulder which just SCREAMS "metal." Yes, ever since I fell into a vat of molten metal, I've been encased in metal and on fire ... pretty much like would happen to ANYone who fell into a vat of metal. Difference is, I can still wear pants, breathe, and survive.

But neverminding what appears to be the most insane and haphazardly put together Man of Steel, here's a Man of Steel in the making, plus his dog of steel and planet of idiocies. Was that mean? It might just be that MY EFFING SHOULDER'S ON FIRE! Yow! It makes me testy!

What with the WB Network's upcoming "Smallville" TV show, I thought it appropriate to take a look at the kind of young Clark Kent we frankly will never see again. Back before every young Superman had to have a six pack that'd take top honors at the Arnold Classic, doe eyes, artistically tousled hair, and a pouty mug hanging from a set of cheekbones that'd make Linda Evangelista weep, we had a very earnest, round-faced farmkid in a set of fancy pajamas. And a six pack that'd take top honors at the Arnold Classic - jesus, you'd think with all the times Clark visited the "ol swimming hole" with Lana and the kids from Smallville High, they might've noticed that their pet bookworm was built like Lee Haney, only mildly paler.

Anyway, I was recently able to get my hands on a
Superboy Spectacular from 1980, which overall reads like "Superboy's Most Embarrassing Home Videos" - seven "classic" stories, one of which was a brand new fable letting us in on YET ANOTHER chance meeting of the teenage Clark Kent and teenage Bruce Wayne before their adult super-careers. These two kept meeting long before forming the World's Finest team, and each meeting was a triumphant exercise in stupidity, pretty much.

I should stop and point out here that my affection for the superman Family is unchecked: I love me some Superman. I love me some Krypto. I love me some Nightwing and Flamebird, some Supercar, some Bottle City of Kandor and, to a degree that worries my wife greatly, I love me some Supergirl. But Lord,
some of these stories.

The opening tale, for instance, relates the oft-flashed-back-to origin of Superman's costume, which was called during his Superbaby days (I kid not) his super-playsuit. That's right, Superman isn't flying around in his pajamas, he's not flying around in his underwear ... no, folks, he's flying around in the playclothes he wore as a toddler and which were woven from his swaddling blankets. Inspired personally, I now wear footed fuzzy pajamas to the office.

Some people say the Crisis On Infinite Earths was a bad thing, what with decades of admittedly haphazardly assembled canon taking a fucking savage beating in the name of revisionism. Personally, I think that when you've got a secret origin for your UNDERWEAR, you're criminally overwritten anyway. Like, I'm pretty sure the St.John's Bay jeans currently shielding my chair seat from the unfettered superpowers of my ass just came off an
assembly line in Botswana. I don't need to know how the threads were individually unravelled in order to appreciate that these are pretty nice pants.

One of the best parts of these old Superbaby stories, besides the infant Superman's charmingly retarded personal twist on baby speak - "This am not ice cream cone! Me sad! Waaaaah!" - was that Ma and Pa Kent honestly called him "Superbaby." Occasionally "Clark," sometimes "Son," probably - off-panel - they may have called him "Oh please stop beating me with your super fists, I'm sorry I said you couldn't have a cookie before bedtime," but predominantly they refer to their bundle of pride and joy as "Superbaby." I don't know what to make of that, but I think I would have gotten a little bit of a kick out of it if my parents had called me "Humble G&F Editor Baby," myself.

Second story in this tome introduces one of my favorite Superboy villains, the "Kryptonite Kid," and his immensely more brilliant partner ... "KRYPTONITE DOG!" If the odds of Superboy's pet
dog making it to Earth from his random path through space were already long, add to it the factor of a criminal from another planet being sent into space on a deadly experimental mission where he AND THE BULLDOG THEY SENT WITH HIM fly through a kryptonite cloud and gain amazing powers and then go to Earth to fight boy-on-boy and dog-on-dog with Earth's Mightiest Teen ...
in the Silver Age DC Universe, it's about a two-to-one chance. Odds are even in an 80-page giant.

Kryptonite Dog is pretty much the most cruel and amazing villain EVER in the Superman rogues gallery - yes, even more so than Zha-Vam, Terra Man and the Puzzler COMBINED. Don't believe me? Well, dig this ... At one point he maliciously lures Krypto to a tasty pile of bones which he then TURNS INTO KRYPTONITE BONES for NO other reason than to rub it in Krypto's face. He doesn't even fight Krypto, or try to kill him or whatever. He just teases him for not having any tasty bones. Wow! That's some complex motivation for a freaking bulldog, kryptonite or no.

The whole thing ends with Superboy and Krypto getting their impervious asses saved by Master Mxyzptlk, the teen version of ... man, if you can't figure out who he's the teen version of, me changing one freaking vowel in his name isn't going to help.

The absolute winner of this collection is a clumsy and inarticulate "Life On Krypton" story where Superboy uses some kind of mind ray device to recall his infant memories of his home planet. What we learn is that life on Krypton is nothing but a series of unconnected and unconscienably stupid vignettes, and that "Me want ice cream" is still retarded baby speak, even on a world light years away.

Actually, the highlight of this epic adventure into rambling pointlessness is Jor-El's FIRST accidental launching of Krypto into the icy grip of certain death deep in space. That's right folks, Krypton's greatest scientist doomed his boy's favorite pet not ONCE, but twice! The greatest mind on Krypton, folks. Personally, I think maybe Jor-El was just getting tired of finding his anti-grav slippers chewed down the atomic generator, or 'accidents' all over the Phantom Zone controls. Kal-El would've come home from space-school one astro-day to find science-dad saying "We gave Krypto to a family of cosmic farmers, son. He'll be happier there ..." and then a couple days later Kal-El notices Krypto's collar in the garbage on the curb. "Me want dog him no at space farm ice cream! WAAaah! Gargle!" he'd bellow, typically.

Not-yet-Superbaby's mom Lara is so incensed at Jor'el's attempted canicide, she actually LEAVES Jor-El. Why this gave me such inordinate pleasure, I cannot say, but on some levels it seems to me she probably should've seen the writing on the wall when Jor-El was firing every living creature he could get his hands on into space. "He might have a mean streak," I'm sure she found herself thinking on occasion.

So she ups and takes baby Kal with her, and to help keep his mind off their current troubles - you know, his dog is dead, his dad's fucking insane, the planet is doomed - she takes her beloved boy on a tour of Krypton's recreational marvels, ending in what I THINK is supposed to be comical mischief on the part of Kal-El, but really just comes off as pointless stupidity that filled ten pages the same way a stopped toiler can fill a bathroom. At a "robot showroom," Kal accidentally gets locked inside a robot and almost chokes
to death on robot farts, or whatever was going on. Then mom send Baby Kal on an underwater rocket into the midst of a battle between sea monsters. Maybe to teach him not to climb inside any more damn robots.

But oh, the finest moment occurs when Kal visits the "Hall Of Worlds," where donning a cape and rocket pack, he zooms around among the exhibits of life on other worlds, including a life-size diorama featuring - you guessed it, because you can sense stupidity as well as I can - Kal's future adoptive parents, complete with name tags. Awesome. Good lord.

Getting back to the Crisis On Infinite Earths, briefly, is there even the most die-hard fan out there who honestly thinks it benefits anyone to keep that kind of nonsense in continuity? That kind of nonsense is what precipitates ... bitter and profanity-laden articles like this one. Let's stop the cycle
of hate.

Anyway, more stupidity keeps abounding until Jor-El's public humiliation inspires Lara to return to her man, while along the way Kal inadvertently saves Krypto from endless decades trapped in the cold, unforgiving void. Until the next time it happens.

The next half of the comic wraps up with some pretty standard classic tales from a number of Superboy's creative eras, beginning with one where Superboy rather graphically demonstrates to the town of Smallville why he shouldn't be asked to compete in high school sports like football - in not so many words, but rather eloquently spoken after atomizing a tackle dummy in his demonstration of his gridiron skills, Superboy seems to tell the crowd of hicks: "I'd fucking kill everyone."

Then there's Superboy on a "To Tell The Truth" type panel show, and fighting ANOTHER damn Kryptonian - Last Son of Krypton my ASS, the only Kryptonians who didn't escape that planet's destruction were ones who'd deliberately been tied down to the planet's core, and shot in the fucking face before the explosion. It all ends with the aforementioned meeting of teen Clark and teen Bruce Wayne, one of the small legion of meetings between Superboy and the teen versions of his Justice League pals - remembering that Hal Jordan, Aquaman, and Oliver Queen ALSO met Clark as teens, and so did Lois Lane, Braniac, and for all I know, me.

In closing, though, I leave you with this: Best wishes from Superboy and his friends. You know, like Mxyzptlk, and the Kryptonite Kid who, earlier in that very issue, was trying to kill superboy to death via the loss of his life. Here, he warmly places a hand on Pete Ross' shoulder and smiles
gently. Ah, how time has tendered us all.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Skateman!

noreply@blogger.com (Calamity Jon) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 20:34:00 +0000

HELLO (Head Enlarged Looks Like an Ovum!) I am the artist formerly known as MODOK! (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing!) I was designed by the scurrilous rats at AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics) as part of their many PLOTS (Plan Leveraged to Overthrow Tons of Stuff) for world domination. My role in the secret, scientific army? I'll let you guess. Yes, that's right, KILLING! Heck, it's all I was designed FOR! (Formal Operating Reason)

This started to cause problems during periods when there wasn't particularly anything which needed killing. And at the company picnics? Forget about it! "Hey MODOK, we need a sixth for basketball ... AAAGH, I've been killed! Why are you killing us? Basketball is for playing basketball, not for killing!" and I'd be all "Do I LOOK like a Mental Organism Designed For NOT Killing and Playing Basketball Instead (MODONKPBI)?" No, it was a mess all around.

Luckily, I've been reprogrammed as a MODOHBCRF (Mental Organism Designed Only for Hosting Bad Comic Related Features) ... so, settle back, kick off your in-lines, and ENJOY (Entertainment Now ...um ... no, Naively Just ... um ... Over ... shit, I'm out!)

Sometimes, you get thrown a curve. I returned from San Diego with a big, brassy and beautiful copy of Superman vs Muhammed Ali in my mitts. My intentions were good, as I intended to take this treasury-sized edition of Superman and - neverminding he was the greatest boxer of all time - what amounts to a fragile sack of boxing Earth-flesh, and relate to you in microscopic detail what surely was going to be a four-color anatomical study of Superman putting planet sized holes in Ali's ribcage, merely by forgetting his lines. I expected - nay, anticipated even - a really crappy comic ... and for that matter, it was, like, FIFTEEN TIMES LARGER than a regular comic, so it should be exponentially worse than even the worst comic, right?
Well, damn, it turns out that Superman vs Muhammed Ali is not only NOT a crappy comic, it's a downright GOOD comic. In fact, one of the best I've read in YEARS. Excellent pacing, nice and completely contrivance free plot twists and gimmicks, lots of empathy for ALL the main characters, and Adams' art was at an absolute peak. A four-star project, despite its somewhat flimsy premise.

And as screwed up as this is, the joy of reading a really good comic was almost overshadowed by the realization that what I expected to be a real prize for G&F had slipped out of my fingers. Luckily, while at the Con, I ALSO came across a copy of SKATEMAN, considered by many to be one of the worst comics ever done. One of those many is me, now. Wow. This comic. If a future civilization were to come across only copies of Superman vs Muhammed Ali and Skateman as the last remnants of our world, they'd think Neal Adams was a schizoid maniac, or our god of duality, or Two-Face. Whatever, as far as this book goes, Neal flipped the coin to the scarred-up, "let's make a book that sucks" side.

Actually, there's no clear indication that Adams wrote and drew this. Sure, it's in his style, but Neal oversees a lot of kids who work in his very imitable technique. Of course, Neal's name appears proudly (or, as proudly as possible, given the circumstances) right above the character name, although that could just as well imply Neal's proud ownership of the property. I really should've asked him while at the Con, but I was either drunk or apathetic, I can barely recall from the hazy obfuscation of miles of fanboy-flesh squeezing out all traces of oxygen and good taste.

But to the book! Skateman opens with a blinding action sequence, dropping us unceremoniously smack into the middle of an ongoing story. This is alright because the damn thing's gonna end right on the climax, more about that later.

The very first thing you notice about the book - besides the fact that you're laughing at the idea of a hard-boiled vigilante who kicks people with his roller skates - is that the cover is reproduced on the interior as the splash page. Always a sign of quality, that. Of course, they added dialogue, which includes Skateman's dynamic introductory line in his crimefighting debut:

"Hands off, jerkhole! ... We're forming a union! My foot and your face!"

So, you can see why I love this book.

It goes on from there, Skateman beating the hell out of some faceless thugs and ... of course ... skating the hell out of everything. During a hazy flashback (brought on by taking a damn 2x4 across his mug), we get a glimpse into the complex work of art that IS Skateman.

The story starts with Billy. I forget his last name, honestly, and I neglected to write it in my notes. I'm pretty sure they mention it in the book, but c'mon, I had to read this thing, like, EIGHT TIMES already, so have some pity on me. Anyway, it starts with Billy - a lifelong martial arts enthusiast - coming back from his Army stint in Vietnam to a new career as a - - - wait for it - - - ROLLER DERBY athlete! Yes'm, Billy finds fame, glory, and more as the star of the Roller Derby circuit. Unfortunately, it all falls apart for him when his best friend - and fellow Roller Derbier (what do we call these guys, anyway?) - "Jack" (Way to work those names, gang) is KILLED ... his death possibly owing to Billy's carelessness (but more likely to a gangster plot), Billy retreats into shrieking depression, cared for by his girlfriend Angel.

AND IT KEEPS GOING! Billy also befriends a local neighborhood "Beaner" (his words, not mine, folks) Paco, whom he teaches to "defend himself AND ride a skateboard." Teach what you know, I guess. This starts to help Billy out of his depression, until BIKERS KILL ANGEL! Thanks for being in the Dramatis Personae, hon, we really cared deeply for you as a character.

This sends Billy over the edge, and inspired by Paco's comic book collection, our flaxen-haired derby jockey adopts a disguise to strike terror into criminal's hearts - assuming the criminals live in Venice Beach and are easily scared - SKATEMAN!

Point of order. Here are the three things which have defined your life up to this point: You have studied martial arts for years, you served in the Army during the Vietnam War, and you roller skate. Which do YOU choose as the central theme for your career of masked vigilantism? Roller-skating? You're an idiot, someone please call Daredevil.

Let's fast forward to get through this. Billy is romanced by a girl named Jill, whose "personal brand of rock 'n' roll" - and a No-Prize
to whomever can explain what that means - and slavish devotion touch his
tender heart. Jill gets abducted by bikers, who apparently are in league with migrant workers to bring "shit" (according to the only black man who gets a speaking role in the book - I think he's
Rudy, from Fat Albert) into the country. Billy slaps on a pair of cotton briefs and a scarf around his head and rollerskates FOR JUSTICE, and is aided by a Newsboy Legion of
skateboarders.

As an aside, all the hispanic people in this book are apparently migrant workers. This alone is just not right. Then all the white people are either bikers or disco dancers. And all the black people in this book aren't anywhere to be seen at all. (Okay, except for Rudy). This is just one of many things that are chronically not right with this book.

Anyway, here's my favorite part of this book:
The thing ends on a climax. Like, the last thing we see is Skateman rescuing Jill from a massive explosion at the evil bikers' hideout, barely keeping ahead of the flame and shockwave, while Paco cheers on from the sidelines, shocked and amazed, and then the word "Finis" is on the page. Boom. The end. No plot strings tied up, no "to
be continued" (Though it pretty obviously was intended to be), no questions answered, no satisfaction delivered.

I'm not sure I have the words to describe how jarring it is to have a story end on the climax. Like, try to picture this; Luke Skywalker flies into the Death Star trench, Vader follows him, Solo ambushes Vader's TIE fighter and Luke drops in the blast that destroys the Death Star ... the Death Star EXPLODES ... freeze on the explosion, roll credits. Boom. The end. Unsatisfying, right? How about - Indiana Jones is tied up at the post, the Nazis open the Ark, they all melt - freeze frame, roll credits. Agh! Or, here's another example: This book sucks.

But Skateman sure doesn't fail to deliver! No, rather than leaving with us with a story which abruptly ends at no logical point, it brings us THREE stories that fail to end in any satisfactory manner.

The first backup is "Futureworld," featuring art by Andy Kubert from back when he used to draw a lot like his father, and less like not any good whatsoever. The story focuses on a post-apocalyptic future where a single brave youth - Korlak - must brave the wastelands and terrible dangers of two panels worth of flying a big zeppelin to get to "The Great Machine."

The "Great Machine" turns out to be an old Nuclear Power Plant, which we know because Korlak exclaims, upon seeing it, "Th-the Great Machine! It lives! A WORKING ATOMIC REACTOR!" ... Of course, in his very next word balloon, he muses "I have never seen such contrivances." Then how did you know it was a nuclear power plant, you dope? Korlak broke kayfabe. The rube.

The next story is "The Rock Warrior," which is what I'm gonna name my first-born. Here's the plot, as figured out following somewhere between the twelfth and fifteenth read: Edgar is a boxer. Om is an inventor. They used to be partners in adventure until Edgar settled down, married, and had a daughter - Angie. Om accidentally drops his new invention - a handheld personal teleporter - while rushing to get some free lunch. The infant Angie grabs the thing and sends her and her father on a wild tour of dangerous spots throughout the universe. Along the way, Angie and Edgar meet the Rock Warrior, Om's twin (apparently fraternal) brother who fights crime with a space guitar. After a near miss rescuing Angie from a death ride in a giant missile, the duo come home, safe and sound.

Now, here's what the story felt like during the first eight thousand exhausting
efforts of making heads or tails of it: This guy with the stripes and this
guy and he has a teleporter, right? Then the baby grabs it and the guy I don't remember who go through time and the Space Warrior plays his guitar
and then they have to stop the missile so they go into space and they fight
it with lasers and then it's over and they're back home and the guy with the stripes, he says "should we tell them" and the baby says "Wok! Wah Wah!"

I hate to admit I enjoyed the whole Skateman experience - Rock Warrior and Skateman more than "Futureworld," just for the former duo's excessive incompetence and insanity - but I get to qualify it by saying I enjoyed it in the same manner as I enjoyed Manos, The Hands Of Fate, or groin injuries on America's Funniest Home Videos. On a final note, Skateman ends with this
line, tacked on to the end of the Rock Warrior story:

"Ok, readers. Do you want to see more of Rock Warrior? It's up to you, then. Write in!"

I can't resist when creative teams beg for support. Needless to say, I have pen in hand as we speak. How many "R"s in "Warrior?"

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Super-Heroes versus Super-Gorillas

noreply@blogger.com (Calamity Jon) — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 20:25:00 +0000

I'm the FACE! Cut off your nose to spite me, that's my dare to you!

Okay, that was the worst joke I could think of right away, but get this, here's an even WORSE joke: Criminals were afraid of me! Yes, that's right, they feared me because my face was horrible and green and awful and obviously a mask, really. Rah! There, I scared you, too, didn't I? Time to give up that life of crime, if I can say so myself.

I like to think I provide an important lesson to all would-be superheroes out there, and that's that you don't need laser beam eyeballs or super strength or a belt full of fancy gadgets to be a REAL Hero ... all you really need, deep down ... is a gift certificate to Spencer's at their post-Halloween clearance sale.

DC Super Special #16 - this thing is the BIBLE of Super-Heroes Battling Super-Gorillas! Which, I realize is a statement dependent on the bible being a book about how monkeys come from space and they conquer us or kidnap our women or solve crimes, in the best of circumstances. Maybe it is about that, like I have time to read the Bible when I've got all these super-ape comics lying around.

"Super-Heroes Battle Super-Gorillas" is a collection of four classic struggles between the forces of justice and the forces of apes. Now, this'll help me cover a good assortment of some classic simian characters who've graced DC's roster over the last sixty years, but it's barely the tip of the huge, hairy iceberg. For instance, it leaves out that gorilla who was made an honorary Marine sergeant in one of DC's
war books. Or Detective Chimp, who was a smart monkey who'd solve crimes his idiot owner would neglect. (Every episode, hewould attribute Detective Chimp's amazing discoveries to pure chance. "By pure luck, Bobo has accidentally mixed the precise chemicals necesary to make this invisible ink visible again!" ... "Bobo's clumsy antics have caused this diary to fall open to a precise
page which describes a likely motive for the murder" ... "Bobo's comical monkeyshines have linked the DNA evidence to the accused and invalidated his alibi, and his monkey chattering sounds enough like testimony to convict the accused for a hundred years!").

And then there's Monsieur Mallah, an enemy of the Doom Patrol, and Congorilla, who was a pal of Congo Bill (Like Arctic Ice Cap Carl would hang out with Arctic Ice Capybara - used that joke before, sorry), and Beppo the super-monkey who shouldn't hold his breath expecting a revamp like Krypto got, plus SO many more. But patience, we have time, and we have more than enough to deal with here.

The book opens with the classic Batman tale "Batman Battles The Living Beast Bomb," which is a title that honestly makes the reader ask some important questions, right?

Scrawny scientist Walter Hewitt creates a device which gives him animal powers (animals have powers?), but it all goes wrong when a gorilla he's shooting radiation at for the purpose of gaining APE STRENGTH ends up getting Hewitt's intelligence instead, AS - WELL - AS mental powers which he uses to command Hewitt to steal things. Like ... whatever a gorilla would want to steal, I guess. Bugs. Bananas. Tricycles.

So anyway, the gorilla invents a bomb that will destroy Gotham City, but not him (they don't explain how) and he wears it like a belt ... or a fanny pack, really ... and fights Batman as the bomb ticks down, and Batman knocks out the gorilla, and then it turns out the bomb slows down the farther away from earth it is (again, don't know why or how), so Batman military presses the big gorilla until the bomb runs out.

Many many many stupid things here. Usually, it's Superman who forgets that he has super powers, Batman and Robin are always right on the spot with whatever gadget they need from their belts. This time, they forget they have belts, and spend some time being amazed that their shorts stay up.

See, Robin shows up to help Batman keep this creature up in the air, and Robin decides to help by ... lying on his back and putting his feet in the air. No, Robin, not now! There's this stupid frigging tree RIGHT IN THE SHOT during most of the fight between Batman and the evil gorilla scientist mental power genius bomb beast, and at no point do Robin or Batman figure out it'd be easier to tie one end of a Batrope to the gorilla, the other to the Batmobile, throw the rope over
a tree branch and pulley him up above the ground. I am so not the world's greatest detective, and I got that!

The next story is "Wonder Woman -
Gorilla," which I guess is what the liberated amazon's name would be if she married Mr.Martin Gorilla. The whole story takes place on Amazon Island, and if you don't think they're
awful concerned about men setting foot on their island home, then you just don't know amazons!

I am so fucking puzzled by this story. I'll keep it short: Space Gorillas come to Earth to get mates, but not gorilla mates! No, human mates! Human
women mates! Why? Because they're unique! So the king of the space gorillas turns Wonder Woman into a gorilla girl, changes her back because he liked her better as a human girl, then changes himself into a human guy with his changing-people ray so he can be a unique mate to Wonder Woman's unique not-being-a-girl-gorilla status, and then Wonder Woman kicks him in the nuts and yanks his underwear up his crack.

Of course, here's why I'm puzzled. They value uniqueness. Human girls are unique. They have a ray that changes gorillas into apes and back again. Solution: Get some damn girl gorillas and make them human. The end. I am matchmaker to space gorillas.

Onto a Flash story featuring the "Reign of the Super-Gorilla," starring probably the most succesful gorilla-character in DC's history, the Super-Gorilla Grodd
(That is, by the way, his official villain name: Super-Gorilla Grodd. Imagine how screwed the Man of Steel's secret identity would be if he was required to call himself Super-Man Clark Kent - used that joke before once as well, sorry again)

This story hinges on the fact that Grodd escapes from jail (and the human body he was stuck in - don't ask), returns to Gorilla City (a super advanced
scientific community of hyper-intelligent gorillas hidden in the depths of Africa), where he sees a beautiful young gorilla girl and falls instantly in love. Learning that she's engaged to his arch-enemy Solovar, KING of the hyper intelligent gorillas, he creates a ray that makes himself incredibly likable, thereby stealing Solovar's throne of power, his fiancee, and eventually, the wills of the people in Flash's hometown of Central City where he intends to run for Mayor in a bid to control the world.

Look at that, not one intentional joke in the above paragraph, and see how it still ends up sounding?

Superman fights Titano, the super-ape, in a closing story they had to call "Titano, the Super-Ape," because of a bizarre policy at DC in the 1960's, where every fucking story had to have the name of the villain, the hero's hometown city, or the adjective "Super-" in it somewhere. Like, "The Mirror
Master's Two-Sided Crimes" or "The King of Gotham City" or "Lex Luthor's Super-Plot to Destroy Metropolis." And so on.

I'll spare you the specifics of the story, like how Superman once again cuts off the super-blood-pressure to his super-brain so he can super-be a super-fucking moron and cause great tragedy to befall Metropolis (in this case, by bringing Titano to modern-day Earth from the prehistoric era to which he had been banished), and instead pose this important question: How did Titano get to be a gorilla?

The origin of Titano is that he was a famous chimpanzee who did stage shows (this was the Fifties - chimps could be famous. It's perfectly reasonable that a succesful, well-to-do businessman
could come sweeping into his gentleman's club with a pair of tickets in his hand, just beaming with glee, and when one of his fellows puts down his brandy to ask what the tickets were for, the lucky man could reply happily "I got two tcikets to see the famous Toto the performing Chimpanzee. Then all his welathy, soecity friends would congratulate him on his good luck, and quietly form a seething ball of jealousy and resentment that they'd drown in cheap alcohol and mistresses. Like I say, the Fifties...). For some reason, the government decides to rocket him into space, possibly so as to test the effects of weightlessness on celebrities, paving the way for James Garner, Clint Eastwood and Donald Sutherland to return to space in 2000's smash hit, Space Cowboys, now available on VHS and DVD, check your local retailers. Space Cowboys - Boys will be boys! A Warner Brothers film, directed by Clint Eastwood.

In his hapless orbit, Toto withnesses a meteor of PURE URANIUM crash into a meteor of PURE KRYPTONITE, causing a STARTLING change in him when his capsule safely returns to Earth (and by the way, did you notice that Jor-El, Superman's father from a highly advanced civilization on a futuristic world, was basically incapable of safely sending a living creature into space without its orbit going haywire, meanwhile we "backwards" humans get Toto back, never minding a near-hit collision. Jor-El so tore through his test animals, including the poor, traumatized Beppo, that he resorted to using his SON'S BELOVED PET DOG as a test animal for his rockets! Yo, Jor-El! The ex-nazis the US government smuggled to White Sands figured it out! Here's to your super-advanced technology!)

Anyway, Toto returns to Earth where he undergoes that aforementioned STARTLING
transformation - to wit, he grows to a King Kong size. Now, here's my question - how'd he become a gorilla? Gorillas are not just bigger versions of
chimpanzees, they're a whole different species! It's like, you know Colossal Boy of the Legion of Super-Heroes? Or Black Goliath? When they grow big, they become big humans, NOT giant marmosets, or koalas, or some dopey shit.
How'd Toto's transformation hop the species barrier? Questions abound, readers,
questions abound ...

Okay, also, this very story breaks the rules of physics it established by itself: To wit, Superman, at one point, flies up in a lead suit to fight Titano (The big ape has super-eyes of kryptonite ray shooting, in case I hadn't mentioned that before). Supes flies so fast that the air friction reduces the lead suit to slag. However, earlier, they flash back to Superman throwing Titano so fast the the ape "travelled through the time barrier," which is presumably much faster than it would take to melt lead. Haha. That bit about sending Titano through time was probably just the story Superman told everybody, like how your mom probably told you that your dog went to
a nice farm while you were away at Summer camp.

I have the original comic where the Titano story appeared, as an aside (all these stories in the special were reprints). Neat thing about it is a backup story where Superman dresses up in a devil costume to scare some criminals out of their nefarious plans. Personally, I'd just put my index fingers through the boss criminal's temple, boom, I bet the other crooks'd be pretty much scared out of a life of crime. Anyway, the important thing is that Superman took full advantage of his makeshift Halloween costume to create a devil motif ... i.e., skull cap, sissy Van Dyke, red leotard and cape ... Oh man. And he kept using his fantastic powers to do stuff like create smoke effects, and pretend to become invisible. This was in the stead of using his tremendous super powers to punch everyone unconcious and fly the crooks to jail.

Nothing to do with Super-Gorillas, just a weird aside ...

•Grodd's Got Gas!
•Jesus Christ, Lois! You're right! Why this observation deserves an exclamation ...

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Strange Sports

noreply@blogger.com (Calamity Jon) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 19:34:00 +0000

Splish splash, I've been taking a bath ... a BATH of JUSTICE, that is! I'm Hydroman, the hero who came in convenient buckets for easy carrying!Yes, I fought crime with an arsenal of super-powers as impressive as --- turning to WATER! Yes, DANGEROUS, CRIMINAL-STOPPING water! I could HOP OUT of GLASSES and SOAK criminals ... with JUSTICE! I could drench their shirts and ruin their suede jackets ... with SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY! And if my ability to convert my body into water wasn't enough, I also had ... these nice red shorts! Yes, and also, the spectral power of my boyto- ... partner, Rainbow Boy! So look out evil, you're about to get WET and SHINED UPON ... BY JUSTICE!

Well, folks, what we're looking at here comes to us from the pages of DC Super Special #10, and in this case, I'm pretty sure they mean "special" the
same way the Special Olympics and Seanbaby do. I don't even feel qualified to determine if this was a good or bad comic ... I'm still stuck in the "what the hell were they thinking" phase ...

The short version of this comic is "Super-Villains challenge Super-Heroes to a baseball game." The long version begins with "Ah, I KNEW you wouldn't be satisfied with the short version..."

To elaborate, the scene opens on Golden Age villains and long-time spouses Huntress and Sportsmaster in a ... let's call it "heated" ... discussion about their future career paths. Huntress is considering a switch to the side of good, because "good always wins." After beating her against the side of a doorframe with a tennis racquet, Sportsmaster convinces her to give him the opportunity to prove her wrong by, of all things, challenging the combined forces of good in the universe to nine innings of America's pasttime.

And so they kidnap nine super-heroes and villains and a stadium full of baseball fans. Way to start that path of moral righteousness. I still don't get why the first thing the heroes did after the game wasn't throwing Huntress' tuckus in the pokey for fifty-thousand-plus counts of
kidnapping. Ah well, my rational mind and the trouble it gets me into ...

Luckily, it's easy to kidnap them all, as the opposing forces of good and evil are engaging in several spots of conflict around the globe ... at charity sporting events. Nice theme. The villains encounter the heroes by chance at a variety of sporting events, an exercise which eats up a half dozen pages of story and already bores me to death.

Green Arrow, Batman and Black Canary are all together at a charity bowling event, and say that one to yourself a few
dozen times before you figure out why a pair of billionaires would sponsor the national game of Wisconsin retirees (No hate mail, please, I bowl too. I'm just saying ...). Additionally, among the other sports-themed events attended by the heroes, Kid Flash and Robin are naturally to be found at the horse track. Of course. What sport is more "with it" among the hip kids of today than horse racing? Nothing, that's what. And if you don't believe me, check out X-Treme Horse Racing over on ESPN 2. It'll be on at about 3:15 Wednesday morning.

We catch up with Superman playing with himself ... I'm sorry, I mean "playing A GAME OF TENNIS with himself," using super-speed to cover both sides of the court. What was the Seventies' fascination with drawing the super-heroes playing fucking tennis against themselves? "Look, Flash is running so quickly that he's playing a GAME of TENNIS against HIMSELF!" Great. I can do that too, assuming I have a brick wall handy.

Back to it, Sportsmaster and his confused wife assemble the assorted heroes and villains together in a purloined baseball stadium, give them the low down on the moral dilemma at stake, and make with the "play ball." Uncle Sam plays umpire for the good guys, Amazo for the bad guys, all on Lex Luthor's recommendation. Sure, trust Lex.

This is one of those stories where Superman forgets he has every super power ever plus five more you never heard of, and they're all jacked up on creatine and atomic energy. He keeps getting defeated by the villains' superior "logic." He poses to Sportsmaster the very question I'D ask, namely, why the heroes should bother to play when they could just whompass on the villains. Sportsmaster replies that he and Huntress will see to it that the sixty-six thousand hostages in the sports arena will be kept there "forever," by some undefined and ambiguous
means. Superman sort of shrugs and grabs a pitcher's glove.

Here's a little peek into the alternate universe where
I wrote the script to this comic:

PAGE SEVEN

Sportsmaster: Now super-heroes, you will play a game of BASEBALL against our combined villainy! We picked first, you can have Tattooed Man if you want. He's only good for far right field.

Tattooed Man: Hey, shut up, matey!

Superman: And what if we don't play along with your little game?

Sportsmaster: Why, my wife will see to it that these sixty-six thousand baseball
fans stay here for all ETERNITY!

Superman: Hm. Actually, how about I just use my heat vision to tattoo pictures of genitals on your foreheads, and all these nice people can leave through the big doors. (SFX:"BZow!")

So the game begins, and we're treated to what feels like seventy million pages of indecipherable baseball action courtesy of veteran artist Dick Dillin. And if you thought super-heroes looked gay already, try to picture them playing baseball in their little costumes. It's about as gay as two men having sex with each other, and THAT'S PRETTY GAY!

Eventually, the rule about not using your powers gets thrown out the window, and both sides start to slip in a little magic, elasticity, and sharp arrows piercing your braincase. Mind you, even though the basic tenet of the game - not being allowed to use your powers - has broken down, they still CONTINUE TO PLAY THE GAME! It occurs to me that if Luthor is throwing you a cybernetically enhanced red solar baseball stuffed full of Kryptonite bees, you probably have carte blanche to beat him to death with that Louisville Slugger in yer mitts. Why not? It's against the rules? So is using microwave beams to explode Kid Flash's intestines, but does that stop Matter Master? Probably not, I frankly don't remember ... the book gets all hazy around this point.

In one of my favorite scenes in the book, Plastic Man successfully disguises himself as Wonder Woman's magic lasso. Even as a kid, reading this, I remember thinking:

(A) Way to go, Plas!
(B) How did Wonder Woman not notice Plastic Man replacing her lasso right
on her hip?
(C) Why is Plas glowing? Well, as I think about it, rubbing up against Wonder Woman's satin, star-spangled fanny would probably illuminate even the most stoic among us.

Anyway, the thing ends with the heroes winning, and I guess Huntress becomes a super-hero, or not, and I fall asleep. Oh, and the cap to this tale is a
full page of text describing play-by-play action of the baseball game. Fascinating stuff. Lots of questionable editorial decisions (I suspect they worked all of this out on one of those plastic-and-cardboard ball-bearing
tabletop baseball games they used to make in the Seventies. My dad and I
used to play that game, only we never found ourselves flicking the lever and saying "Okay, this one is Doctor Polaris batting southpaw against Superman.")

There are things like Batman taking a walk, and useless-for-shit-all characters like Tattooed Man making dramatic short-stop plays against WONDER WOMAN, who could still hit a grounder like a total girl and end up ripping your
arm off and atomizing your hand if you try to catch that thing. Oh, and "Superman flies out to left field?" What? What about "Superman drills the ball through Chronos' ribcage?"

And we're OUT!

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Mighty Comics

noreply@blogger.com (Calamity Jon) — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 19:26:00 +0000

Hi! I'm Rainbow Boy, and if you think you see me shooting a cascading beam of colors out my ass, brother, are you ever seein' RIGHT! I'm making an appeal to all gay rights organizations to accept me, Rainbow Boy, as the official spokesperson for your group or organization. I mean, come on ... Ra-ai-ai-inbow! A-a-a-asssss! I'm everything you're looking for! And don't be put off by my apparent youth! I'm well over sixty years old, having debuted in the early forties! Now come closer, lemme show you how this rainbow ass power of mine works ... hey, what? Get your hands off me! Hey! Fine, if that's the way you want it, I'm leaving ... but you'll never see another piece of ass like this again ... not one that shoots rainbows!

It's the Sixties, and for fans of the bad comic ouvre, there is only ONE word that drives this decade: Batman. Alternatively, Zonk! Or Pow, Bam, Wap, Zowie, et al.

A lot of comics suddenly found themselves under editorial scrutiny at this time, and dozens more which debuted here angled to distinctly take advantage of the camp grandeur of the Batman television show. There were the Harvey Heroes, featured a few months back, as well as fellow newcomers like the Inferior Five, or nice tries like the second generation Plastic Man. These were a mixed bag, especially compared to the unkillable mainstays of the Archie super-hero line, the Mighty Crusaders.

From the Crusaders, we have here the Web, the Shield and Black Hood, bypassing for right now their fellows Hangman, the Fly, Jaguar, the Comet and many others (Cause I don't have THEIR comics). The whole lot of them debuted in the long-ago-renamed MLJ comics, debuting along their most popular property ARCHIE ... in fact, these superhero stories ran right alongside Archie and Pal's high school hijinx in the pages of Pep. Since then, the property has been liberally passed around, and the characters have been under the guiding hands of at least a half dozen different sub-contractors - to name a few, there's Red Circle, DC's ill-fated (but generally likable) Impact line, and a modern reinterpretation going on back inhouse at Archie Comics ... oh, and plus these guys.

Under the heading of "Mighty Comics," the mid-Sixties Radio Comics (no, not that one) brought back these classic Golden Agers as "Go Go Do-Gooders" for the "Action Generation" to "go ape
over." Liberally mixing in Marvel Comic's editorial style and humanist superhero formula with grade-C Batman tv show camp, they reintroduced these characters to a world consumed by a comic craze.

Oddly enough, this theme should have worked and is, in general, a pretty good idea. See, not only did these characters have a driving gimmick which fueled their super-hero identities - they had a driving gimmick in their CIVILIAN identities. The Shield, for instance, couldn't manage to hold down a job for more than a day at most, and sometimes not even that, hindered by his responsibilities as the Shield. The Black Hood, as officer Kip Burland, was wanted by his fellow officers following what I can only describe as one of the least competent frame-ups in the history of everything. And the Web was accurately described as the "hen-pecked hero," being as it was that his wife pretty much got to lay down the law on his spandex antics, gender-bent Bewitched style.

Getting back to the Black Hood's frame-up just for a second, let me expand on this. In his identity of motorcycle cop Kip Burland, the Hood follows the sounds of gunshots to find his "best pal" Pete Hannigan shot dead in front of a bank. Kip is clocked in the back of the nog while leaning over his dead pal's body, and the bulgy-eyed killer (thereafter cleverly dubbed "Bulgy Eyes") stuffs a few stolen dollars in Kip's pockets and hits the bricks. Kip is discovered by ANOTHER "inseparable" pal, Mark Brodie, who does the math (in the same way a retarded terrier might do the math) ... Kip unconscious + Pete dead + bank robbed = KIP KILLED PETE AND ROBBED THE BANK!

Never mind it doesn't explain how Kip got blackjacked on the back of his head while Pete got shot dead while SITTING ON HIS MOTORCYCLE. Or why the few thousand dollars hastily stuffed in Kip's pockets don't total the amount actually STOLEN from the bank. No, it explains nothing, but WHO CARES, because from that moment on Kip Burland is a wanted man!

I'm serious, man, I didn't leave out a BIT of that hardcore detective work. Well, except that Kip, rather than pointing out any of these glaring indications of his innocence, BOLTS from the scene and begins living the life of a fugitive ...

Moving on to the aforementioned Web, the Bewitched premise is pretty much spot-on. Professor John Raymond is a veteran, semi-retired super-hero who decides to get back into the game. Despite his "rusty reflexes," he becomes "one of the most fab crime-crushers on the current scene," much to the consternation of his fussy and emotionally manipulative wife who threatens him with divorce, infidelity (no kidding. Subtle, but there nonetheless...), and probably refuses to play the sausage game, if you follow.

Naturally, most of her appearances are spent brow-beating her put-upon husband until he either acquiesces to her face
but sneaks out the back for some super-heroing, or cracks under the pressure and shows her the back of his hand. "Bitch!" he yells in one scene, "I done TOLD you once already!"

No, wait, I kid. It almost always ends with a sort of maudlin, gag-like scene as with this one.

And that brings us finally to the Shield, the lovable loser among these recycled heroes, only he's not lovable at all.

Bill-or-Joe Higgins (depends on the story) is the Shield, and also a guy who is all-around apparently no damn good at anything. Except beating people up. For Justice, mind you, but still ... Joe's shtick is that he keeps getting fired from his back-breaking blue collar jobs on accounta the fact that no matter WHAT he's doing, he sees a crime occurring and figures he better change into the Shield and stop it. He's washing windows, he sees a cop being held at gunpoint. He's building a railroad, he sees known criminals drive by. He's cleaning the grease trap at Arby's, he sees someone whizzing in the condiment tray. This is a job for the Shield!

The Shield also got to experience that sort of white middle-class it's- the -Sixties -but -not -the -socially -freaked -out -yet -Sixties American poverty, by which we mean he had a nicely appointed apartment and his only evidence of financial woe was that he was often hungry (which I imagine is because you burn a lot of calories fighting crime) and that he can't afford to repair his television. In fact, if he would just take on a freaking roommate
instead of paying for a three-bedroom apartment on an imaginary salary, he
probably could have made it just fine.

I leave you with this shot of the cover to Black Hood #50. You can't see it terribly well, but check out the tank on the "hoodcycle" there ... not only does it feature a lovely portrait of the Hood himself, but you can just barely makeout the handwritten "Hood Cycle" next to it. This is what we had before Lo-Jack.

Classic Gone-and-Forgotten: Secret Wars II

noreply@blogger.com (Calamity Jon) — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:26:00 +0000

"Yo yo yo, check it out, boy-eeee! We're
representin' from the Golden Age, don't front or you will know our rage, patriotic boy toys from the Forties, chug our forties, and the ladies like to suck it cause we taste so sweet, take it Dandy!"

"Yo Yank, you know my glock goes ackackack, and all you sucka DJs betta step back back back, when we busta rap even the japs know it's like When Animals Attack!"

"I'm DJ Yank, y'all. Gimme your thanks, y'all. I take it to the bank y'all, with my homie, you call him 'Dandy.' and he say 'Hooop! Dere it is!'"

"Hoop! Dere it is!"

"Peace out, y'all."

Here it is, finally, the followup to Marvel's wildly succesful Secret Wars miniseries, brought to us by then-editor-in-chief Jim Shooter - the man famous for being able to say "The last thing this industry needs is another superhero comic" and "I'm writing a new superhero comic" in the same breath, and G&F alum (for his thick-necked brushstrokes on Kitty Pryde and Wolverine), Al Milgrom.

Props where props are due department, Shooter may never go down as one of the great writers of mainstream comics, but he'll always be at the very least one of the more dependable workhorses. Usually, you can depend on him for an entertaining story, often a very well-done story, and only occasionally a terribly awful bad nine-issue miniseries. Al, as mentioned earlier, is a heck of an editor and cleanup inker, but inexplicably was allowed to pencil this, ANOTHER high-profile Marvel miniseries which would've benefitted from a gentler touch. Young Steve Leialoha, a current fave of mine, provides halting and seemingly confused inks.

The story picks up on what no man can call an "unresolved plot thread" without breaking into riotous laughter - or bawling in horror. The Beyonder, an omnipotent being peering into our universe by means of a spontaneously generated cosmic peephole, kicks off the original Secret Wars series abducting Earth's greatest heroes and villains and having them play out the plateau of their eternal morality play for him. In this sequel, his curiosity about humanity left unsated, he ventures to Earth in a human disguise. hoping to learn about us by living among us.

Abstractly speaking, it's an interesting enough premise for a story ... a being of virtually limitless power and no moral barometer to speak of is driven to Earth by his one human characteristic - curiosity - to learn by walking among them what it is precisely that makes humanity so unique. It's a very Seventies story, very Green Lantern/Green Arrow, except that if Denny O'Neil had been writing it, it would've wrapped up in twenty-five pages, and the kicker would've been that the alien ends up finding happiness and contentment being a hobo.

Sadly, this thing is a plodding brickhouse of overdone monologues and tiring existentialism.

By contrast to Secret Wars I, where the mightiest heroes and viallins on Earth fought a cataclysmic war of mythic proportions, Shooter brings us in the sequel such riveting scenes as: A television cartoon writer gaining trememndous destructive powers and blowing up a McDonald's, the Beyonder destroying the earth, and it gets fixed immediately (that happens like FIFTEEN times or something), and the Beyonder looking at all the STUFF he has. Over and over again.

I'm not one of those guys who thinks every book needs to have a fight scene, but I do consider myself something of a fight scene snob in that I want any fight scene I DO see to at least be ... any good at all. Whereas this book did have three battles per issue, or thereabouts, they all went like this: (A) group of super heroes leaps out from behind a billboard, parked car, toaster oven, etc (B) they whup on Beyonder for about two or three panels and then (C) Beyonder basically yawns and walks away.

Boom, THREE TIMES AN ISSUE! And theoretically all the heroes of Earth had been alerted to the Beyonder's presence, and to the terrible destruction he could cause, but rather than - say - make a plan or come up with some inexplicable scientific gadget to defeat him ... you know, the stuff they do every issue of their own comics and have done since the beginning of time ... they just like to leap out from behind the bushes and try to jump on his head. It's about as effective as putting a flaming bag of poop on his doorstep, except that this way the Beyonder doesn't even get POOP ON HIS SHOES!

To illustrate this point, let me recreate a particular scene for you: The Beyonder hooks up with Boom-Boom*, a character who debuts in this series though eventually ends up with X-Force. Boom Boom separates from him at some point and rats him out to the Avengers. The Avengers gather their whole roster, Dr.Strange, and the Fantastic Four. They jump out of the bushes and stumble over each other for four panels. Then the Beyonder walks away, and they LET HIM GO despite being there to defeat him in the first place.

But wait, there's more. Noticing that the Beyonder seems a little depressed, the heroes decide to ask Boom-Boom if she knows why, only she's slipped away in the confusion. So they write her off.

That's right, using only the amazing power of her OWN TWO LEGS, she left the scene of the battle which only lasted about a minute and a half, meaning she is CLEARLY lost for good. How could the heroes possibly hunt her down knowing that she's gone a full HUNDRED YARDS or more away from her last known location!? If only someone there had some kind of super-advanced armor which could track people, or was a super-brilliant scientist who could create a vanilla-pudding sensing hemmorhoid pillow using only a tin can and a plastic spork, or was the GODDAMN MASTER OF THE MYSTIC ARTS and had an ALL-SEEING
EYE AMULET right on his goddamn lapel!

This is only one of dozens of scenes that actually had me yelling at this comic book. Not just shouting in frustration or incredulousness, but also trying to force it out of existence using only my voice, like that one groovy black Legionnaire. I used persuasion where I could. "Staples! Jesus Jumping Cats, how can you stand to hold together a book this awful? Fall apart! Now!" and "Paper, you dishonor your noble tree ancestors by holding onto this image. I demand that you reject the ink that created it, NOW!"

It didn't work.

Also weighing the book down like a pork-stuffed redwood log were the endless FLASHBACKS and RECAPS. Lord, you really didn't have to worry about missing the original Secret Wars story, because they recapped it for you ... in every issue. Okay, that's not precisely true; they stopped doing it around the fourth or fifth issue ... at which point they offered recaps of the previous issues of THIS miniseries. Hell, sometimes they went for the threepeat and would recap the first series, the previous issues of this series, AND any important events from any of the eight hundred CROSSOVER
books they did. If you buy one Marvel comic in 1985, make it Secret Wars ... because it blows the plot of every other book they produced that year.

The thing also failed to follow the "show, don't tell" rule of good comics - "failed" in the same sense as when you say something like "The pilot failed to adjust his trajectory and crashed his missile-laden jet first into the children's hospital and then smack dab into the main gasline for the town." The average panel in this book is anywhere from one-third to THREE-FOURTHS dialogue, and at one point there becomes such a critical struggle between
allowable text space and cramped art that the hand-letterer gives up and they have a typography machine add in text in a smaller typeface to several panels.

Not that every word was pure gold ... far from it. Most of it was sort of endless, over-obvious mewling about the varied state of the human condition - some of it sounding all the world like Steve Ditko grabbed the pen and wrote a few pages. Other parts would be the heroes or narrator taking a moment to describe what was happenin before their very eyes. No kidding. Lots of "Look out, he's shooting energy beams" and "those shards of glass are coming right for us!" ... stuff that the artist should've been able to represent without the writer feeling he had to mention it.

To wit: Captain America explains, as the Beyonder
vanishes in a flash of yellow light, "He disappeared!" Yes, thank
you Cap. You roided out imbecile.

I swear there's more to loathe, but to document every failing in the book would be to REPRINT this book. Suffice it to say, the heroes unveil their boots of clay as they make a resolution to actually go kill the Beyonder (say it with me ... "!!!"), and then end up changing their mind, because he turned himself into a baby. That the heroes, all of whom abide by that hoary old comic standard, the Code Against Killing (could be worth fifteen points in Champions), decided to off the super-omnipotent being but then change their minds when it's a super-omnipotent alien BABY being kinda puts
a lie to any moral standard they're supposed to represent. Mind you, if these had been TEXAN super-heroes, that baby would've been frying in an electric bassinet before we had time to blink.

There's so much more in this series, like the fact that it was the awakening maternal instinct of the female heroes who kept the good guys from killing the Beyonder baby, or how the Beyonder comes to earth and ends up looking like a white Michael Jackson (that was back in the days before "White Michael Jackson" was such a redundancy), or how ONCE AGAIN Stan Lee pops up in a guest shot in a book we review (And why is he always so evil?)

Enjoy Byrne/Austin here ... and suffer the inside art

*Boom Boom makes her first appearance in Secret Wars 2 #5. I called Bob Rozakis night and day at his home number, trying to figure out how much a mint edition copy would get me. He would just say stuff like "Professor Zoom, the reverse-Flash, is Eobard Thawne" and "Man-Bat #1 is worth thirty cents in good condition" and "Leave me alone or I'll have you arrested."