Required Reading

Ian Brill has a great post up about Seven Soldiers. Check it out.

On the other hand . . .

I also inexplicably love some characters. There are characters who haven't been in a great book for years or decades or even EVER for whom, for some reason, I have this undue affection. It's hard to explain in most cases. Much of it is a gutteral feeling, maybe stemming from childhood love. For this list, I'm going to exclude characters who are currently in a great book (i.e. Plastic Man) or who pretty much ONLY existed in a great book (i.e. Flex Mentallo). I'm talking superheroes that are in bad or terrible books that, who knows why, I still like deep down inside. I don't have much character loyalty; I don't understand buying, say, Thor, just because Thor is in it. But whenever I hear about the following characters showing up, I hope and pray it's finally going to be good, either again or for the first time.

Anyway.

1. The first one is obvious to anyone who knows me at all. I goddam love Captain I also inexplicably love some characters. There are characters who haven't been in a great book for years or decades or even EVER for whom, for some reason, I have this undue affection. It's hard to explain in most cases. Much of it is a gutteral feeling, maybe stemming from childhood love. For this list, I'm going to exclude characters who are currently in a great book (i.e. Plastic Man) or who pretty much ONLY existed in a great book (i.e. Flex Mentallo). I'm talking superheroes that are in bad or terrible books that, who knows why, I still like deep down inside. I don't have much character loyalty; I don't understand buying, say, Thor, just because Thor is in it. But whenever I hear about the following characters showing up, I hope and pray it's finally going to be good, either again or for the first time.

Anyway.

1. The first one is obvious to anyone who knows me at all. I goddam love Captain Marvel. The real one, not some alien who died of cancer or some bland Jheri-Curl (thanks for the catch, there) nobody. Billy Batson. The kid who can turn into the world's mightiest mortal. His great golden age stuff still holds up, unlike a lot of the big superheroes. The entire Marvel Family is awesome (in theory). Great design, great idea, great adventures, just all around great. Unfortunately, they've been mishandled worse than pretty much any other characters since DC got them. The Maggin/O'Neil stories were good, but it didn't last long. Not even Jerry Ordway, with obvious love, could really make them pop in today's world. I have to think that they can work. I tell my students about them and they go wild. Captain Marvel can work, especially if you don't worry about the grown ups who want him to participate in Infinite Crisis or whatever. Give him to the kids. It's sure fire, I guarantee it.

2. Iceman. Yeah, Alex hates him. And he's not been in a good comic since, uh . . .has he ever been in a good comic? Maybe it's because of that Spider-man cartoon. I have absolutely no reason to like this character at all. He's bland, his powers are silly, he looks stupid, and in thirty, forty years he's had ZERO development. But, still, when I think of favorite superheroes, he comes to mind.

I must interrupt this important list to vent. I just wrote the whole thing, tried to post it, and it was lost. Oh, man. I had ten characters with detailed analysis and explanation. Oh, man. This sucks.

IT HAPPENED AGAIN! I WAS TO NUMBER NINE THIS TIME AND IT WENT KABLOOEY AGAIN! ARRRRRRRGHHHHH!!!! That’s it, I’m moving this to Word for now.

Anyway. Jesus. Here we go.

3. Cassandra Cain/Batgirl. Not even Dylan Horrocks made her work, but I think a uberfighting teenage girl with language difficulties has a lot of potential. It’s just never been met.
4. Longshot. Mullet, glowing eye, vague powers, he’s got a lot of hallmarks of suckitude. Somehow, though, that first Mini was awesome. Art Adams was a big part of it, no doubt. But, unfortunately, this favorite of mine got stuck in the Claremont X-Men, which destroys even Alan Moore characters. Dazzler? Shatterstar? Never happened. Longshot may not ever need to come back.
5. Lorelei. Because I liked Longshot, I loved the “L” issue of the Marvel Handbook. And second grade li’l Joey felt funny in his bathing suit parts when he stared at the Enchantress’ sister. For that, I’ll always be grateful.
6. Thermite. An obscure Squadron Supreme character that I only really liked because he had one of those full-body costumes. It’s the Snake Eyes effect.
7. Timber Wolf. I can’t read the Legion after 5YL, it’s crap to me. And the earlier stuff doesn’t do much either. But I loved wolves as a kid, so I loved Timber Wolf. Take equal parts werewolf, Wolverine, Han Solo, and Superman and you’ve got Timber Wolf. I just got myself all excited.
8. Freedom Fighters/Quality Characters: So weird and bizarre, so charming, so underutilized. I always saw them as the “weird cousins” of the rest of the DCU. The ones they all knew about, but tried not to think about. Sigh. Dead now.
9. Madison Jeffries/Box. OK, awesome robot suit? The mutant power to make it do anything? It’s like Green Lantern, Iron Man, and Robotech had this awesome baby that no one ever really used well. I hear Frank Tieri messed with him recently. A shame.
10. I’m forgetting someone. Stupid blogger and its nosaving and stupid school and its firewalls. What EXTREMELY IMPORTANT CHARACTER am I forgetting? This is driving me crazy. Wesley Dodds? No, he was used pretty well. Oh, I remember. Dr. Fate. The first time I heard of him, a friend brought his action figure to school. He was new, different, and therefore I loved him. Unfortunately, he’s boring as a white person talking about white stuff.

OK, that ought to do it for a while. Who are your unexplainable beloveds?

An anecdote

So I went to my favorite comic shop, Rocketship, yesterday. I was perusing the racks and talking with the fair owners thereof and some foreign person. One of them, I'll call him Mr. C., he was going around recommending books for me to try that I hadn't tried yet. We discussed the fact that Fantastic Four/Iron Man: Big in Japan is frickin AMAZING and not enough people are talking about it. Really, folks, it's GREAT FF stuff, with weird monsters, unbelievably good art, fun moments, everything you could want.

So we keep moving along the shelves and we get to X-Factor. I'm all ready to start making fun of it. Mr. C. points at it and I work up a chuckle.

"This is really good," says he.

"What? Seriously?" I reply.

"Yeah. Actually, yeah." He points out the beautiful Ryan Sook art, can't go wrong there. But, really, the last time I was genuinely entertained by a Peter David book was, hm, X-Factor. There's talk of playing with conventions, that David's annoying habits are reigned in to the betterment of the story, and, yeah, there's that beautiful art. And I've got a soft spot for noir detectives and, uh, Jaime Madrox.

So I give it a try.

And he was right, it was good. A good PAD comic featuring mutants post-Decimation. I can recommend it without reservation, and it makes me feel funny. It's not FF/Iron Man good, but it's good.

Amazing Joy Buzzards continues to thrill and entertain with a slew of guest artists, some that work better than others, but even the least among them gets the job done. You just can't help but love these characters.

Finally got the first two issues of DMZ and Local, and, uh, local boy Brian Wood done good.

Anyway, just basically wanted to talk up FF/Iron Man the amount it deserves and man up and actually admit I enjoyed a PAD book. What a world.

EDIT: I just remembered a PAD-ism that bothered me about this book. He worked in Bill Mumy AND Harlan Ellison into the VERY FIRST ISSUE of his new book. It's like a first year film student that uses all his high school buddies' names in his screenplay. Amateurish and silly.

The rest was good, though.

My Heart Can Feel Hate Too

Joe and Paul think that they can hate superheroes.... Well so can I! Boy can I ever!

1. Mister Terrific.
First of all, before I even get into the problems with both versions, let me point out that you have to be some sort of self-centered prick asshole to call yourself Mr. Terrific. You might as well call yourself Huge Testicles or Captain Richer Than You or Super Man or something. Jeez Guys! Get over yourselves!
Anyway, you have this rich guy who's good at everything. So does he go to Hollywood and sodomize starlets? Does he arm wrestle Errol Flynn? Does he defeat Howard Hughes in greco-roman wrestling on the moon, winning control of the TWA empire, as he pins him? No. He puts on one of the worst costumes ever, and fights crime by making criminals feel bad about themselves.

He doesn't even have gadgets or gimmicks. He just thinks he's awesome. I hate that guy.

Presently, there's some douchebag in a leather jacket, and the second-worst costume ever. He has stupid things on his ears, and what is either a mask that makes no sense, or shitty Prog Rock stage make-up. Apparently he's not only a surgeon (doctors give you drugs, by the way- and Users are Losers), but he's a triathlete or something lame like that. I really don't know. Geoff Johns writes that book, so I'm pretty sure whatever the deal is with the new Mister Terrific, it's lame. I mean, the guy can't even think of a new name. He took the name of some lame whitey from the forties.

Also, he took some of the suck.


2. ICEMAN
Ice is pretty easy to break. And also, it melts. If you put Iceman up against The Supervillain Duo Flamethrower and Claw Hammer, he'd be over. And those guys suck.

Also, fuck him and those Ice Slides. I never bought into those things, and if there is, in fact, some way to make that shit work, there would be hunks of ice falling out of the sky onto people all day. Not in MY city, you Mutie Asshole.

Let's examine his costume; okay, boots and snow, then just ice. Ice. All over his body. Just ice. That's not a costume, that's performance art.


3. DOC SAMSON
He has a new book coming out from Marvel, by the way. Excuse my while I go roll my eyes for a while.


4. GAMBIT
I know it's fairly common for people to pick on Gambit, but if a lot of people hate him, that's only because he's so goshdarned easy to hate. He has a stupid dialect, always witten by someone with Claremontine habit of finding a few steretypical linguistic tics and using them ad nauseum. He has stupid hair, a horrible costume, and he fights with a stick even though his mutant power involves throwing things. Let me re-iterate here.... He basically creates grenades, yet he chooses to fight people up close, right next to them, with his stick. That's just bad tactics, folks.

I hate "sexy" characters in general, but Gambit and his hard-on for all the female muties is downright creepy. In the mire that has become the X-books in the past ten years* or more, I have completely lost track of Gambit. And for that, I am grateful.


-a

*I would admit to really enjoying Morrison's run, but since you can't say you like anything that Morrison writes without someone saying that all Morrison fans are slavering drones, I will just not mention it.

Hey, Bloggers!

Come vote! Chris Tamarri (distant ancestor of Johnny Tomorrow), the brain behind Crisis/Boring Change has started what I think could be a cool idea. He's taking a poll of comics bloggers about the "best comics of 2005," sort of the way the Village Voice does for music. So if you're another blogger (and you're not a FIWOTT), go on over and vote.

Superheroes I Hate

I'm feeling a bit negative today, I don't know why. I only read the comics I know will be good, so it's not that. Just a mood thing. My man period.

But I'm going to feed my own negativity and finally post the superheroes I hate. I've been wanting to rant about this for a while. It's embarrassingly nerdy and petty, but, by gum, it's what I feel. So here we go.

1. Green Arrow/Hawkeye: brash "iconoclast" with a bow and arrow. I hate that. It's stupid. Swords are cool in certain situations even in modern times. But bows and arrows are dumb in a superhero setting. And why do the guys who shoot them have the same stupid personality? Oh, they clash with authority! That's so awesome! Except they clash with authority in ways only authority-fearing nerds could imagine. "OOOH BOOTS ON THE TABLE!" I hate these stupid characters.

2. Photon/Captain Marvel/Pulsar/Whatever: Nobody with Jerry Curl should ever be seen again, let alone be called "Captain Marvel." This stupid character seems to have a rabid cult following that I'll never understand. Bland character, stupid powers, awful costume, is there anything appealing about this character at all? The answer is no. She is stupid.

3. Wally West: Ultimate Mary Sue character, to get ubernerdier. He was once a square mid-west guy, even conservative. Then he was a money-loving womanizer. But then Mark Waid wrote him (pretty well, mind you) and he became Mark Waid. Geoff Johns gets him and he's a blue collar workaday guy. He works on that cartoon as a comic relief fellow, and that's kind of how Morrison seemed to use him. But the fact is he's so bland that every writer has to put some part of himself into him. Also, running fast is a stupid super power. And "speedster" is a stupid word that I often can't believe even exists. Because Barry Allen was in the JLA then all the sudden every superhero universe needs a bunch of dorks who run fast. It's stupid. I hate it.

4. Now that you mention it, I pretty much hate all the Wolfman-era Titans. Even if they were neat before, he turned them into whiney soap opera characters and they've never recovered. Dick Grayson, ugh. Raven, zzzzz. Cyborg, snicker. Starfire ROLLEYES. Arsenal, plop. (I don't know what that last part meant.) But look at them, they're all these touchy feely talk about your emotions types and it makes me want to cut off my anus. I hate them, mostly because as the cartoon and cartoony comic has shown us, these could be fun characters, if only Marv Wolfman never decided to write soap opera Marvel stuff at DC.

5. Jean Grey: Stay dead, crapface.

That's it for now. I'm sure I actually hate a lot more of them. Discuss why I'm right.