squidbag

Moments in Comics History, Part 3

Or, My Personal Introduction to the Concept of Gender Dysphoria while Chilling in a Beanbag in Tommy Woodroof's Room.

So, in about 1988 or thereabouts (based on "I had a car" time), I was hanging out one night at Tommy Woodroof's house, which was near the school where we all went and it feels like we might have been waiting on something to happen. The late 80s is well before comics' acceptance into the mainstream, and it predates the Batman movie by one year. (When the Keaton/Nicholson Batman came out in the summer of 1989, Tommy would literally have all of the things. He was a Batman - and DC - guy way before that, though.) Because of this, those of us who had comics would put them in the hands of people who came over to our house. Also, with no Internet or smartphones and no one reading industry buzz, the only way you found out shit existed at all was to have a comic store guy try to sell it to you or to have someone drop you some word of mouth. Tommy's the one who got me to read Camelot 3000 in this way.

Camelot 3000 is a story of a futuristic Earth where aliens are sort of mid-aggressive invasion; they've taken over some stuff, they're poised to do a lot worse, and a resistance is needed. To that end, a young man unearths the tomb of King Arthur, and his Knights of the Table Round are reincarnated in the bodies of people already living. Guinevere's a military leader, Percival's a monster, Galahad's a Bushido Samurai, and so on. The most controversial, interesting, eye-opening, sexy and weird one of these was the reincarnation of Sir Tristan into a woman's body, however. That's him up there on the far left in the tight black pants and short auburn hair. He spends basically the whole series lamenting the state of affairs that has landed him in the wrong body, and nearly commits great evil to get his penis back. His internal dialogue was endlessly fascinating to me, and at least as interesting as the "will they/won't they" with Isolde.

You may recall that Tristan and Isolde have a fairly celebrated romance. When she's reincarnated, her body is also a she. And she still loves Tristan. So, what's the problem? Turns out, there's not one. Tristan and Isolde get back together at the end and it is a definite part of the "happy" endings some of the characters get. (Don't be gross.) For me? This was an introduction to a facet or seven of human sexuality I had never even thought of, much less encountered, and it opened intellectual doors for a kid raised by a tribe of intolerant straight guys who thought all gays were pedophiles. Tristan was male, even if Tristan wasn't. And Tristan could love Isolde - in every way - regardless of equipment. But that headspace was fucking important.

So, thank you, Mssrs. Barr & Bolland and the good people @ DC for broadening my horizons before I even knew I needed them broadened.

Moments in Comics History, Part Two

I never said these (entries about important comic book stuff) would be in any kind of order.

In Drax: Earthfall, Giffen & Breitweiser took a character who had been on the slide basically forever, and made him super interesting and relevant again. Old-school Drax was created by Jim Starlin as a purple-cowled foil/weapon against Thanos, and they kind of jerked him around a lot. To my young reader's mind, he was a boring background part of the space opera, a genre that didn't always fly in comics anyway. Once they made him huge and Hulk-like and stupid, he was insufferable and annoying.

In Earthfall, he apparently (because he's too dumb at this point to know not to) drinks something called singularity drive fluid and survives it and a major crash. This results in a bad-ass redesign and makes him into a hard-as-nails no-compromise killer. For the first time - and you should read the story rather than take my word for it - Drax, and the characters surrounding him had real drama and strife that mattered. And he was kind of terrifying, with a real anti-hero vibe that made him matter again.

It was this version that became part of the Guardians of the Galaxy in the lead-up to Annihilation, and who ripped out Thanos' heart (comics characters rarely stay dead). Unfortunately, for the Bautista movie version, they seem to have melded the denseness of mind with the brutal remorseless killer, and while the portrayal works well in the MCU and I kind of dig it there, it does seem a shame to not have this version on film. It taught me more than anything that you can't give up on characters as long as there's talent and will around to revive them in a way that makes sense.

But yeah, you could easily argue that without this reinvention of Drax, you wouldn't have a popular enough GotG to merit film inclusion on the MCU.

Trumper Villains

So, starting in 2017, I made a bunch of these. I calls them Trumper Villains.

For reasons what I should think would be obvious to people possessed of the standard five and change senses, the idea struck me (and not just me, let's be honest - other folk did variations on this, too, including one fellow who stuck entirely to the Red Skull) to put the words of Resident Chump in the mouths of comic book supervillains, who are, honestly, his inspirations and spirit animals.

I did like, 600+ of these. This one works particularly well, a little known novelty villain known as The Wall, of course, talking about the wall, of course. Perhaps not all of these are as spot on as is this one, but I did dig deep, using Tangerine Scream's tweets, books, quotes from media and his bleak-ass history, such as it is. It's appalling, and I hoped that putting his words into the mouths of super villains would not only give me a creative outlet that I enjoyed (which worked) but also throw his mouthiness into sharp relief, further highlighting the absurdity of thing he said (this worked less well). I underestimated the times in which we were living, and there was just too much bullshit being thrown about and I didn't have a big enough fan. Eventually, my efforts petered out, much like hope and optimism in this country before the giant MAGA Steamroller of Hateful Bile and Ignorance.

But I did this 600+ times first. On the left (if you're on a computer, I don't know how this will work for phones and tablets) there's a photo album down there with the same name as this entry. Go check it out and laugh or cry six hundred or so times in a row. Become exhausted and bemusedly sad. This is being an American now.

Source Material? Aquaman? What?

Aquaman on NPR

I'm getting really tired of shit like this, and in this case, it's NPR who should be fucking ashamed. Take four minutes and listen to this ridiculous air-filler and see if you can figure out what my problem is.

Back? Okay. 

So, after insulting the character, this "examination" of Aquaman begins by letting you know he was created by Mort Weisinger and Paul Norris in 1941. I want you to remember that year, because it's going to come up again later. Also, for those of you playing at home, 1941 is three years after Timely Comics debuted Namor, the Sub-Mariner, who is the only other marine comics character anyone cares about. Anyway, after giving you the quick background that Aquaman is a comic book character, the piece bounces from his cartoon in the 1960s, to the SuperFriends cartoon, to the proto-memes that roamed the dismal valley that was the Interwebs of the 90s to the parodies of things like real memes and Robot Chicken. From there we talk about the HBO show Entourage for awhile and then we jump forward using language as a time machine a full decade to the era of the big superhero film, namely Justice League and now, the eponymous Aquaman. Glen here then sums up with a wishy-washy kind of point about how "the bros won," and what is lost when a character changes so much "in so short a time" by which I think he means 10 to 15 years.

Do you see it yet?

The "point," such as it is, fails to instill what is lost with any meaning. Are we meant to care about the discarding of elements from a character which no longer work when attitudes and mores change? If anything, that's a failure of marketing and commodification, not storytelling. Is it that something inherent to the character is lost during his recent broification? Is he no longer truly Aquaman, is that your point? Your point sucks, Glen. I think you might be a minor fanboy out of his league here. I think you might be someone who has made his collection of things into some kind of badge of authority (despite those big collections I see in the background) without learning anything about a character whose emblem you had inked permanently on your skin. Your piece is a waste of time and space, and it enrages me.

But that's still not the real problem.

The real problem is that your narrative is a complete fiction. You invented an endpoint and then strung together some stuff that happened to make it look like it created that endpoint. The reality is, the Jason Momoa Aquaman we see now is less of a shock to comics readers than it is to people who look at fucking memes because between 1941 and 2018, there was some storytelling happening, some character evolution, even some reflexive referencing of Aquaman's place in the DCU and the joke some people made of his presence, powers and appearance. And you may think that doesn't matter. You may think SEVEN FULL DECADES OF the character's PRIMARY FUCKING MEDIUM in stories doesn't affect this movie version. But let's say there was one good Aquaman story per decade. That's not too much of a fucking stretch, is it? That's seven good Aquaman stories. Seven good stories exceeds the quality output of some successful writers, and is way more than enough to evolve a character. So I think it fucking matters. I think maybe - just maybe - you could not pretend like nothing is happening on the comics page just because you're an ignorant loudmouth dork with a piddly stupid collection. I think you could consider, just consider - shutting your fucking mouth. I hate to go all Dark Fanboy on you, bud, but you failed to respect and so you deserve no respect.

And now look what you made me do, Glen. Defending Aquaman. We can talk about our own, GLEN. You have to earn the deep knowledge, fucking GLEN. Don't walk among us without doing the work, GLEN. You make me physically ill, you poser mouthpiece. This is like Ken Turan, all over again. Or that asshole Tim Hanley.

Moments in Comics History, Part One

In some form or another since the late 70s, I have been interested in comics. My collection has changed size, been used for different purposes, and morphed, and what I read has been all over the place, but the baseline sequential art format combined with ideas of good and evil are ingrained into my thinking and overall outlook.

The first comics "stuff" I remember having weren't really comics. Probably a lot of kids come to things that way. I had the shitty Ben Cooper vinyl Spider-Man costume, and I had these huge die-cut posters of Superman and Batman that would fall off of the knotty pine paneling walls of my room onto me as a slept, vaguely traumatizing me as a kid. Those things were fine and all, but what I really remember are the things pictured at the left.

The Hulk album was a full-sized 33 1/3 record with two stories per side, and I recall it being super melodramatic, but awesome. It predates the show in my memory, whether it does in real time or not, so it was my first exposure to not only what the Hulk should look like, but also sound like and some of the rules for the character. The tragedy comes fully baked into the character, and I was hooked instantly. I don't know who got this for me, but it's your fault, all this comics stuff.

Around the same time, and we're talking me at age 4 or 5 here, I had this Batman book and record. This was a 45, and you actually followed along, unlike the Hulk stories, which were essentially radio dramas, and one might argue, healthier for the developing imagination. Observe the Neal Adams Batman, here. This, before I ever saw the 1960s Batman, was what I thought the Batman was supposed to look like. And the Joker and Robin. I remember absolutely nothing about the content of the story, other than it was fun to follow along with in the book, and it made me want to get more things on records, but more importantly, more superhero stuff.

What will follow on this blog for a while, are some entries that examine some comics moments that have been important or influential for me, personally. Now seems as good a time as any to do this. Our comics creator heroes are aging and dying, and the influence of comics on pop culture has never been more pervasive, even as the format itself becomes arguably less popular. As I, in my job use comics as an early literacy tool and the movie-going public eagerly awaits giant comic book movies every summer, seems like as good a time as any to do this. So get ready for a bunch of comics moments, explained to death.

Stan Lee Eternum Excelsior [STAN L.E.E.]

(Bill Maher is welcome to fuck himself quietly & vigorously in the ass with a broken stick coated with fire ants & hot sauce. Any culture who gets its political thought from a failed comedian should question its literature, but hero myth is not where we start, assholes.)

Everything Must Go!

Well, not everything. But a lot of the really good stuff ABSOLUTELY MUST GO!!

Here's the situation: my current comic book collection, which I have been curating for lo, these last 30-odd years, is now 32 boxes strong and taking up too much space in my house. This is no longer bringing me joy. I have passed along to my kids what they've shown an interest in, and I have purchased as trades the arcs to which I want quick access.  I have cherry-picked some stuff that has emotional value to me, and now... well, it's time for someone else to enjoy the rest. Lying within the boxes, there's a raft of good stuff, some of which is listed below.

I am meticulous. Most everything is alpha-numeric, and it's all cataloged at this link. Everything is bagged and acid-free boarded, and has been taped shut and away from smoke virtually its whole life. There are many complete series and lots of unique stuff. Everything's in decent shape - most stuff is Near Mint.

The Big Two - Marvel & DC are heavily represented, but there's lots of random indie stuff in here, too, and while the late 80s to early 2000s is the focus, there's quite a bit of the older stuff here, too.

I need your help: Spread the word far and wide to those who will appreciate this. eBay's not for me; it's a bloodless community of people who want me to ship like Amazon: free and within 2 days. I'm not going to break it up and do that. Craigslist is super-local, and the inquiries I'm getting all sound like someone wants to kill me and take my essence. I don't want to turn my kitchen into a UPS center or invite a pack of inquisitive strangers to my house. I will, on the other hand, drive the whole collection to someone who wants the whole thing. I will load 32 longboxes into a van and bring them to someone who can get something out of them. We'll have a beer and talk comics. Please take a look, spread the word, find me a buyer. Contact me for prices not listed, or for a lump sum price.

Some of the rare stuff:

first appearance of X-23 (female Wolverine) - NYX #3 - $430 (NYX #4 is $55)
first appearance of Venom - Amazing Spider-Man #300 - $375 (#298 is $60)
first appearance of Deadpool - New Mutants #98 - $330
first appearance of Bullseye - Daredevil #131 - $220
Captain Marvel #34 (Nitro) - $100
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 #1 - $50
Marvel Spotlight #32 (first Spider-Woman) - $60
Truth: Red, White & Black: $15
Alias #1 (first Jessica Jones) - $80 (get whole series for $225)
Batman Vol. 2 #1 - $100
Batman: The Killing Joke (1st print) - $80
Flash #197 (Professor Zoom) - $80
Omega Men #3 (first Lobo) - $60
run of Uncanny X-Men (crucial stuff) from 123 to 140: $880 total!

Some of the Runs (in the 32 longboxes):

Watchmen complete 1-12
V for Vendetta complete 1-10
Lots of Midnight Sons-era Ghost Rider, Morbius, Blade
tons of Wolverine (many limiteds and signed stuff)
lots of DC/Vertigo stuff
Many things from CrossGen (defunct company)
Green Arrow from just after Kevin Smith
Daredevil reboot from 2000s
lots of Captain America & Fantastic Four: years long runs of each
plenty of Avengers (and lots of their limited series)
Marvel's Annihilation & Annihilation: Conquest events in TOTAL (Thanos, Guardians, Nova, Annihilus): w/o these, there's no GotG movies...
lots of Hellblazer, focused on Ennis, Ellis, and anybody else worth a damn
Spawn (1st 25 issues)
random issues of Preacher and Transmetropolitan
Sam & Twitch (all of it - Spawn spin-off)
Planetary - first 18 issues
The Authority - first 24 issues
lots of Spidey; Death of Jean DeWolff, all of Kraven's Last Hunt, Web of Spider-Man, etc.
lots of X-titles; Morrison's whole run, Whedon's run, all of the Claremont/Byrne, Jim Lee, etc.
Superman: All of the Death of Superman, the pretenders, Doomsday limited, Birthright limited, Red Son, Man of Steel
Sporadic Kyle Rayner Green Lantern (but a couple of complete limited series)
Terry Moore's Echo - the first 20 or so
DC's Zero Hour: Crisis in Time
DC's weekly series "52" - all of it

The Mall in Your Mind

"I'd like to be a mall."

"Really? And have people going in and out of you all day?"

This is the scintillating back and forth that can ensue when you're on your 6th day together, with very few breaks away, lots (for us) snow on the ground, no school, and minds wandering deprived across landscapes of disconnected weirdness. So, if you were a mall - what would you have in your Food Court?

I would have a Petro's. I can only say this now because I have spent a fucking half hour looking up various permutations of "Chili Cup Mall" and thinking that they were a defunct chain. They aren't, and I am happy. I was describing this to my kids, everything from the "you could carry this thing around the mall like a street taco" to the diagram you see at left, to the magical slurry of chili goodness and saturated corn chips that was left over at the bottom of the cup when you got close to done - man, that is a vivid childhood sense memory. I can only assume (based upon where they are located) that this was a field trip gastronomic adventure experience.

Next to Petro's, I would have an Orange Julius. Orange fucking Julius, man, with powdered egg whites, and they mixed that shit right in front of you, and there were little ice crystals on top of the drink that bumped up against the lid and crackled in the foam. And I hope that they put powdered egg whites in there, but I bet they don't, I bet it's EGG CHEATERS or something like that, just like they didn't used to advertise "GF" on the Petro's sign, and I don't think they used to have pasta/macaroni, either. Yankee tourists.

Near that would undoubtedly be a soft pretzel place, a Chinese restaurant with fucked up name owned by Chinese people, and a Noodles & Co., because we don't really have that where I live, either.

So, carbs. Carb up, motherfucker, and walk my goddamn mall. The mall in my mind plays the Commodores' on endless repeat in a dark hallway with a carpeted ceiling that runs between the Food Court and the fully-functional arcade, where nothing costs more than 50 cents to play, and there's Smash TV and Narc right out front, and lots of shooting and driving games and real pinball machines (mostly ones that have movie and rock band stuff on them) and an endless line (but really it's just a mirror with gold leaf in it) of Skee-Ball machines with plenty of shoulder room between each one. Also? Skill cranes and a couple of awesome driving games that didn't exist when I was a kid.

There's a kiosk where you can have your name inexpertly applied to anything, and an actual music store. Out front of the music store, there's a display with dinosaurs in a tarpit, and it says "EXTINCT TUNEAGE" and there's 8-tracks and minidiscs and cassingles and shit all in it. And a video display on repeat of the Parental Advisory logo going in flames on a loop. That's right - repeat AND on a loop. Shaddup. There's a bunch of technology stores, and the anchor stores? The big bastards that the mall is ostensibly for? They're just mock-ups. We occasionally drive our 4-wheelers through them and knock everything down. Then we go back out into the mall proper and play glow-in-the-dark mini golf and eat big cookies and buy Chucks from Journeys and books from everywhere and try not to get VD from Spenser's, where it feels like everything has VD on it. There are no nail places, no underwear emporiums, no blouseterias, and no FUCKING JEWELRY STORES, and you can extend a line of credit everywhere, because it's that kind of place.

There's a theatre, and they fucking spell it like that. It's called the Six-Shooter Theatre, and they have six screens and the kids who work it love film and talk like bartenders. Frozen coke comes with free refills, and there's always something playing that's decent and also always something you can walk out of if you don't want to make fun of it. A walk-out will have their money happily refunded if they can say why they walked out. In complete sentences. Don't fuck about - tell us what you didn't like.

It goes without saying that outside of the dark, carpeted, Commodores hallway, that the rest of mall plays 90s rock interspersed with 80s hip-hop and anything else I like, and that there's football and old movies broadcast on monitors around the interior, and roving bands of teenagers find themselves mute when they hit the SnarkMeter® limits. (SnarkMeters® are subcutaneously installed on every teen upon entering. Old people, too. Everybody.) Finally, there are game stores and comic stores fully functioning and raking in profit, an Irish pub at every junction, and cigar dispensaries throughout. The interior aisles are dotted with tables for sitting and smoking and drinking and talking and eating goddamn magical bowls of layered chili stuff that I thought had ceased to exist.

Wonder Woman Unbound: Review

A bad thing is always worse when your expectations are high.

I had been looking forward to Wonder Woman Unbound for a couple of weeks before I got my hands on it pretty much for the same reason any fanperson looks forward to anything with Wonder Woman in it; she can be a great character and she's often underutilized and we should be talking about her more. We should have reasons to talk about her more.

But not like this.

This review will apparently be a minority report: most of the rest of the web is taken with this book, and gives it four stars, giving it high marks for revealing information heretofore unrevealed and dealing with the subject matter in a frank and open way, often incorporating some humor. I do not understand why this is: I found this book to be repetitive, ponderous, pedantic, repetitive, easily distracted (something like 30% of the book is about other heroes and villains used in a kind of failed compare-and-contrast), and while it was filled with a raft of research findings and presentations (and charts and diagrams and goddamn graphs), on almost every occasion, the conclusion drawn from the research was wrong, bad, or too simplistic.

The first part of the book, dealing with WW's origins in the mind of William Moulton Marston goes into details about his life that are not, by any stretch, revelations to either comics readers or students of modern psychology. Everything in the book about Marston can be found in this Wikipedia entry, this Comic Book Resources article, and this background piece on the Personality Profile Solutions website. In short: Marston was one of those brilliant people who hover on the edges of quirky weirdness, so in addition to giving the world Wonder Woman, DISC theory, and the polygraph, he also lived in a successful polyamorous relationship with two women, liked to be tied up, and thought women were not equal with men - he thought they were superior. So he's a controversial guy. None of what can be found in this book is new information - this is all out there, and has been. The only "new" argument that Hanley makes (and possibly the last useful thing in the book) is that Wonder Woman cannot simply be viewed (in her early years) as a feminist icon without taking all the bondage (which is proliferate) into account - to Marston, bondage was about trust, and relinquishing control, and he was personally into it, so it's in a high percentage of stories. However, WW always breaks free, breaks her bonds, and saves the day, so - what was your argument again, Tim?

Tim seems not to grasp that fictional characters with any staying power - Sherlock Holmes, Beowulf, Dracula, Wonder Woman, Batman, shit - even the fucking Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - are fodder for re-appropriation and reinterpretation. Was Tinky Winky gay? That big puffy bastard didn't even have genitals, but that didn't stop the Pride movement from having some Tinky after Falwell opened his useless yap. Likewise, WW is (or can be) what her fans want her to be. If you read a Batman story you don't like, no one's forcing you to incorporate that story into your conception of Batman. I, for one, think that the Killing Joke and Arkham Asylum are prettier than they are good, and neither is a good representation of how I think of Batman. The same is true of any character - if you don't think Coppola makes a good Dracula, then skip that one. If Gloria Steinem wants to take Women's Lib as an opportunity to re-create and reinterpret Wonder Woman for a new generation, then as long as DC's in on the game, who the fuck is Tim to tell them they did it wrong? Everyone will have their own mind's-eye Wonder Woman, and most of her modern adult fans think of her as Lynda Carter, a strong woman with a lasso on TV fighting for good.

Lynda Carter is mentioned on exactly seven pages of this book. Seven. Seven in like, 220-something. I actually stopped and said, "That's it?!?" out loud. Luckily, I often read when no one's around.

Hanley spends far more time bitching and complaining about various people's lensed interpretations of Wonder Woman, saving an especially vicious fork for Robert Kanigher, who wrote the title for longer than - I think - anyone, and whose worst actual sins are probably that he didn't take writing comic books very seriously and that he had a terrible temper. While not particularly enlightened, these are not original fuck-ups in the world of comics - and Tim knows this. He's a "comics historian," whatever the hell that means now.

Probably the trolliest part of the book is when Hanley exhorts us to step back collectively and re-examine Dr. Fredric Wertham. Wertham, due to his book, Seduction of the Innocent, and his subsequent testimony before congress about the ills and dangers of comics, is vilified by most modern-day comics readers, as well he should be, because he went over the top. Hanley needles us, reminding us that Wertham also did some good stuff - testified as to the harms of segregation, argued against the solitary confinement of Ethel Rosenberg - and that he had done a lot of research, so he might have had a point or two in Seduction. It doesn't surprise me that Hanley is blind to research bias, and can't see how some points of view - homophobia - might chip away at a person's overall credibility, since he later in the book asserts that some women "chose to be lesbians" during the women's lib movement. Tim, Tim, Timmy, Timothy. No, no. Some women may have chosen to experiment with sex or relationships with other women, but they didn't choose to be lesbians because they woke up one tired of the patriarchy. They may have wished that they could do that, but - well, Tim, maybe you haven't been paying attention over the last 20 years or so. It's also possible that you missed this entirely.

So yeah - at the beginning of this pointless murder of trees, Hanley dedicates it to his parents - my advice would be to let them have it. You have better things to do with your life.

Comics sans Comics

Every now and then, media blows up with some sensationalist story out of comic books.

"They killed Robin!" "They killed Superman!" "Rawhide Kid is Gay!" "They killed Captain America!" "Wonder Woman and Superman are a couple!" "Batman's Dead!" "Human Torch Dies!" "Green Lantern is Gay!" "Green Lantern's a Muslim!" "Ms. Marvel's a Muslim!"

These things are all true, kind of. Putting aside how ridiculous it is that a comic book character's sexual orientation or faith (Magneto's Jewish! Did you know?!?) would be news, comic book characters die all the time. Many come back, some do not. All the ones listed above have made it back from beyond the grave. Comics are, by their nature, fantastical and sensationalist - that does not mean they don't do anything else, but these are a couple of their fundamental characteristics. Consequently, there are numerous problems with the way these reports hit the media.

The first real thing most fanpeople notice is the inherently touristy nature of these "reports." We want you to appreciate comics, but the occasional news story isn't going to help you do that, and when you only pretend to care once in a great long while, we curse at you from behind this month's issues. It's nice that you go to Avengers movies now and we actually really enjoy explaining stuff and answering questions (up to a point), but imagine this: There's a TV show that's been on for about 65 years. You've been watching it for the last 35, and have spent time watching all the DVDs of the old stuff, too. You absorb all the information about the show, its creators, characters and spin-offs and you get your kids to check all this stuff out, too. During one episode, the show kills off a major character during the culmination of a plot line that's been unfolding for a year, and the world reacts. How do you feel about the reactions of people who don't watch the show? Do their reactions seem to you to lack punch or credibility? The same analogy can be made using fair-weather sports fans who only support and wear the logo when the team is winning and the world is watching. Again, it's kind of cool to have people care about the stuff you care about, but it'd be even nicer if they could calm down. It's like society needs strategically placed fanfolk behind glass that you could break open when these things happen. That could be a career waiting to happen for some guys I know.

Then comes the half-assed analysis of the thing because, you know, Superman and Captain America belong to everyone, even though you fickle punks decided you outgrew them 20 years ago. So the examination begins: Will it be good for Muslims for a superhero to be Muslim? Yeah, probably. It'll probably be good for everyone to diversify any field - hybrid vigor, people. The thing is - what's the story surrounding it, and how is anyone supposed to properly analyze anything without it? When Marvel killed off Cap in 2007 and brought him back in 2009 - that was a pretty overt statement about American politics and the state of "the dream" as it were, but I think Earth 2 Post New 52 gay Green Lantern got more ink. Why is that? Because you're critiquing the act before it's finished and without the context of the surrounding story. You do that with paintings. You fill in a back story for the Mona Lisa, because it's one frame, one image. Pulling a character or an event out of a story for analysis does not compute. You ought to stop it.

Finally, when these stories hit the news, it's invariably only part of the story. By necessity, one could argue, since it takes years in real time usually for these things to play out. When the media gives you your superhero tourism, though, all you get is the one event: Does the general public know/care that Batman was dead, but now he's not? And that Robin is dead, but not the one they think? Do they know he goes through Robins like some people go through shoes? Ultimately, the biggest problem with this is a problem with news reporting in general: It is only ever part of the story, and usually the most sensational part, the part designed to get numbers / hits / listeners / viewers / ad revenue. And it's annoying.

You want to know what happens in comic books? Hit up your local comic book store. Those folks could use the money and support.

Rank Escapism II: Escape Ranker

School's almost out for the semester. I've written all the papers that needed to be written, and the three exams I still have coming are two open notes affairs and one two-minute speech. I'm not studying very hard, and have instead been working on feeding my brain the equivalent of happiness drugs in the moments I spend being able to read. This is what currently occupies my bedside table, accumulated over the space of about three weeks:

Crooked Little Vein, Warren Ellis' diseased exploration of what constitutes the new mainstream currently bookmarked with the scariest cigar company business card I've ever seen;

Preacher: Gone to Texas;

Cherie Priest's The Inexplicables, the fourth book in a steampunk zombie series and a recent gift from a dear friend;

a Super Hero Squad birthday card from Meredith & Sandy;

a folded program from Max's recent school band performance;

Power Man & Iron Fist #75, with the first visit (I think) to K'un-Lun in it;

Milk & Cheese's Other Number One;

Brian Wood's Channel Zero, a "gift" from Matt Olson;

Marvel Premiere #57 (1980), with the first American comic book appearance of Doctor Who;

The Incredible Hulk: Future Imperfect;

2 DC New 52 Volume Ones - Aquaman: The Trench & The Flash: Move Forward;

3 issues of Popular Science from September, October & November of this year;

Batman: Year One;

JLA: Earth 2;

Obnoxio the Clown vs. The X-Men;

The Big Book of Urban Legends (from Paradox Press) which I wouldn't own if I didn't know Eric;

2 other birthday cards; one from my wife and a handmade one from my kids;

Karlology and The World of Karl Pilkington, because 2 books from Karl stack higher than one;

Modern Manners & the Bachelor Home Companion, both by P.J. O'Rourke and both signed;

30 Days of Night (the 1st one, before they got stupid);

Batman: Under the Hood (volumes 1 & 2);

The Curse of Lono, by Hunter S. Thompson and Ralph Steadman, stolen from a prevous employer;

Sgt. Rock: Between Hell & a Hard Place - Kubert & Azzarello, and finally;

The Chronicles of Harris Burdick - various authors expanding on the stories implied by the Mysteries of Harris Burdick, and a last Christmas' gift from the Silvermen, Becky & Mitch.