Friday, September 12, 2008

If This Week Had Been a Comic Book

Recently, I talked about the occasional momentary confusion that major comic book geeks can have when they forget which earth they're on. In effort to help solve this problem, I'm trying out this new feature, "If This Week Had Been a Comic Book". ITWHBACB highlights the differences between our world and the comic book world, by noting how the week would have gone if we were living in the comic book world.


The Birds of Prey would have revealed that a female vice-presidential candidate was, indeed, a genetically altered female canine, under the control of Prof. Milo's female daughter, Monroe Milo.

There would have been no observations of 9/11, not because heroes would have prevented it, but because two such hideous and featureless buildings would never have been drawn by a self-respecting comic book artist to begin with. Except in Central City, where no one would have noticed that they were missing.

Oracle and the Calculator would have joined forces to purge the Anti-life Equation from Google Chrome.

Aquaman -- the real one-- would have used controlled bursts of sea-water to extinguish the Chunnel fire and plugged the holes with giant tortoises until permanent repairs could be made, thus thwarting Vandal Savage's scheme to take over the world by slowing down the European economy.


Hurricane Hannah and Ike would have been redirected by Weather Wizard toward Central City, as part of a plan to rob the Sundoller at the Keystone Coffee Pier, but the potentially incredibly destructive hurricanes would have been dispersed by two miraculously non-destructive counter-tornados generated by Barry "Flash" Allen and Wally "Mid-Flash" West.

The political crisis in Zimbabwe and the Zuma trial in South Africa would have been solved, somehow, by Vixen (with secret help from the Bronze Tiger) and an improbably young and sexy black international troubleshooting U.N. diplomat who was Vixen's never-before mentioned first husband when she was modeling in, oh, let's say, Paris.

Wonder Woman would have led a parade against Sanlu Milk Company.

Wayne Enterprises would have bought Lehman Brothers Holdings, not because of its intrinsic value, but to save its employees' jobs, beating out a bid by Lexcorp, which intended to sell their body parts to scientists on Apokolips and Prof. Milo's female daughter, Monroe Milo.

S.T.A.R. Labs in Central City would have activated its new Large Hadron Collector (because where else would you put something that big?). It would, in fact, have caused an unanticipated disaster such as:
  • the creation of miniature black holes, that would mostly suck in people rather than other matter, which the JLA would stop, and the people, instead of being crushed into their constituent atoms, would have been rescued by Zatanna, Vixen, and Red Arrow.
  • angering a tribe of sub-atomic warriors who use miniature black hole cannons as weapons, whom the Atom would have to defeat.
  • alchemical cascades that spread elemental changes through the surrounding area like a plague, which Firestorm would have to stop.
  • the discovery that "dark matter" is a personified force that would then threaten to consume all bioenergy in the area, which would have been defeated by the JSA, but not before critically injuring the Ray, and, unbeknownst to his teammates, turning comic's only regularly recurring openly gay hero secretly evil. Again.
  • a new color of kryptonite.
  • the re-retro-re-creation of the Multiverse.

23 comments:

Diamondrock said...

It's funny how new mysterious elements always turn out to be sentient, and are either irredeemably evil or mistaken as such.

Anonymous said...

is it ok that I really really want to live there right now?

Anonymous said...

My son and I have talked about how the CERN experiments seem destined to recreate the Great Sin of Krona. . .and we all know how that turned out!

And for a moment, I read the comments about the Ray to indicate that HE was gay, and I found myself thinking, "When did that happen? I really do need a scorecard!" But then I figured out the reference.

Patrick C said...

Ah, if only even one thing on that list was true.

This probably belongs in your other post, but here's a recent example of mixing up real life and DCU. I was doing a crossword puzzle and the clue was "Robin's home" and it was four letters. I started writing "cave" before I realized they meant "nest"

Guys' Guy said...

Wait...you mean none of these things happened this week? Man I need to put down my 13" Nightwing doll and get out into the world and see what I've been missing! Though I could have sworn I saw Aquaman in the news helping out with the Chunnel fire...I mean who would make up giant tortoises plugging the holes??

PJ said...

I'm fairly certain that that first one is actually happening right now.

Either that or John McCain is going to turn out to be one of the various incarnations of Kang the Conqueror.

Josh said...

What am I missing that makes it necessary to specify "female daughter"? Must be something good --maybe Milo has neuter daughters out there? I can't keep up anymore.

Scipio said...

It's intended as an amusing redundancy poking fun at the gender-focus of Birds of Prey.

Anonymous said...

Actually, John McCain reminds of Per Degaton in his later days...

Also, I'd like to think that the Cowboys lost their NFL opener to the Metropolis Meteors 59-0

Anonymous said...

This post actually makes me depressed that super-heroes don't exist.

Mandrake said...

Lately, I've been thinking of what would silver age Batman do to avert all the bad stuff I read on the paper.

SallyP said...

I...I WISH I could live in the DC Universe.

Unknown said...

That was pure genius! As always thank you sir for brightening my day.

H said...

I did find myself thinking earlier in the week that if life were as cool as comics the Hadron Collector would create at least one super-powered being in a freakish and unexpected event. Is there something wrong with me for being diappointed it didn't?

Unknown said...

Oh god, this has to be a regular feature!

Anonymous said...

Well, I'd love to live in the DCU too, but wishing isn't going to make it so.

Take a dip in that radioactive sauna. Splurge on the latest in jet pack technology and invisibility cloaks. Or just go with a simple domino mask and fedora. Then you just, you know, creep around your neighborhood at night looking for trouble. If you push it as the new X-treme underground sport, it could start a superhero craze! Spandex shares will skyrocket!

Great new feature, Scipio. Thank you.

-Citizen Scribbler

Anonymous said...

When ypu say Ray, I think you mean Obsidian.

Scipio said...

No, I mean that RAY would be injured and OBSIDIAN would become evil.

Anonymous said...

I did find myself thinking earlier in the week that if life were as cool as comics the Hadron Collector would create at least one super-powered being in a freakish and unexpected event. Is there something wrong with me for being diappointed it didn't?

It seems to me, if they were trying to re-create the Big Bang, the end result will be new intelligent life, half of which will eventually start killing the other half over who switched on the collider.

Anonymous said...

There would have been no observations of 9/11, not because heroes would have prevented it, but because two such hideous and featureless buildings would never have been drawn by a self-respecting comic book artist to begin with. Except in Central City, where no one would have noticed that they were missing.

Yes, the architects in Central City do have a tendency to build big, ugly, phallic-shaped buildings, don't they? I think it's an edifice complex.

Kris Weberg said...

Eh. We already now what the Large Hadron Collider does in the DCU: it turns obese nerds into Flash's weird friend the Chunk.

But in the spirit of the thing...

* The invasion of Georgia woulda turned out to be a complex game of counterintelligence being played between Amanda Waller and Zastrow with the real object being a cache of long-=buried nuclear-capable Rocket Red suits in South Odessa. Several Conway-era Firestorm villains would have died during the conflict, with Breathtaker's demise (being casually yanked out of his exosuit robes and neck-snapped by Stalnoivolk) being particularly offhanded. Oh, and Nightshade and Tom Tresser would have destroyed the RR suits to ensure that neither Waller nor Zastrow got them.

* Robert Mugabe would be revealed as a pawn of Gorilla Grodd, and his power-sharing agreement would turn out to be a mind-control virus. Luckily, a random concatenation of DC heroes would thwart Grodd, with Batman using a groin attack for the win. And then whoever's in charge of Gorilla City this week would huffily tell all the heroes to go home.

* OJ Simpson's trial would be interrupted by an onslaught of Sportsmaster clones sent by the yet-again-resurrect Council to gain his DNA for their latest effort to replace Paul Kirk as their cloned-up enforcer division. A disgusted Kate Spenser woudl find herself in a multi-sided clash with OJ, Sportstamster clones, and Nightwing, which would have ended when OJ ambiguously sacrificed himself to stop a TNT-laden golf ball from blowing up the trophies on display as evidence. OJ's dying words would fade out frustratingly before he could reveal the truth about either of his famous trials.

* The Joker would embark upon an absurdly homicidal campaign against WB's film and TV segments demanding %90 of the cut on The Dark Knight's success. Among his tricks: Joker enVenomed talk show gift baskets, coating green rooms in radioactive waste, and a giant Oscar Statue with a huge lipsticked-on grin leveling Beverly Hills. At the same time, he'd be threatening to kill one person at random for very dollar below Titanic's gross "his" star feature comes in.

Scipio said...

That is exactly right, Kris; good show.

Anonymous said...

urk! ... gurgle gurgle ... can't ... can't talk ... must ... must ... uhhnnnnhhhhh

[whump]