Strange Powder...

You know, Silver Age comics really get a bad rep for being goofy and improbable. It's not fair, it's not right, and it's perpetuated by people who simply haven't read them and just deride them safely from a far.

Here, just take a look at this panel from a 1963 Batman story:

Batman really is kind of scary, isn't he?

Adjusting for the style of the time, that's a dark and dramatic panel, people!  It could be Batman saying he's found Joe Chill, or that the Commissioner's daughter has been shot, or that "you won't have to worry about the Joker ever again; I've taken care of it."  Brrrr.

What is Batman saying in the panel...?

Just try and read that panel in your Batman voice and see what happens.

Strange powder? Larko lamp legend?  Oh, fer #$*(&@#*(....

It's from Detective #322....

That's almost the third or fourth dumbest hat Batman has ever sported.

a.k.a. "The Bizarre Batman Genie!"

Sigh. So much for my thesis about the Silver Age, which was in fact just as stupid and absurd as you think it was.  You know those stories where the cover/splash page promises a certain fantastical scene, but it turns out it was just a metaphor or some grand ruse of the hero's to ensnare some cowardly and superstitious criminals?

Yeah, well, this isn't one of them.  That scene is in the story and that's because Batman actually does get turned into a magical genie.  An extremely jovial genie, I might add.

Admit it; you'd LOVE to see Ben Affleck do this scene in the movie.

  

Naturally, when Batman becomes a genie, his masters are a group of Gotham criminals.   And just as naturally, these criminals -- instead of just asking him to make them unimaginably wealthy -- ask him to help them with their crimes.  Because if these were Gotham criminals of any imagination whatsoever they'd be wearing thematic costumes instead of Rod Serling's old wardrobe.  

I like to think of The Bizarre Batman Genie as one of the stories that finally broke the back of the Silver Age; within six months of this issue, the "new look" Batman (with the yellow oval) was introduced and his adventures became much more grounded.  No less stupid, perhaps, but much more realistically so.

However, the really impressive thing here is the Gotham cops acting as Exposition Officers in the first panel:  

Our bullets, bouncing

off his skin! Nothing can stop

The Batman Genie!

I don't know what you or I might say when confronted with a giant Batman-Genie ripping the roof off a building, but I know darned well we wouldn't have the presence of mind to put it in a haiku!

But now is your chance!  What haiku can you compose to honor the Batman-Genie and the Silver Age madness that created him?

Clip Week 4: The Silver Age

I am out of reach this week for very pleasant reasons. Rather than time-release posts without being to attend to the commentary thereupon, I'm offering a retrospective on some of our favorite topics here. [I've noticed that the labels function on Blogger doesn't always pull everything, which is why I'm not just using that to do so.]

The Silver Age

Krypto's Silver Age
Lois's Mittens
Kryptonite Monkey
Notsoinanimation
Marshalation
Serialocution
Superspinning
Strange-compellification
Foefeosity
Feeding the Ostrich
The Unkillables
In a Single Panel
10 Things Batman Should Never Say
The Name of Fear

Newsaramaboy Prime

Pardon me if what I am about to discuss it already obvious to all of you, and I'm the last person to really catch on. I have always realized that the Infinite Crisis Gang (Old Superman, Alexander Luthor, and Superboy Prime) represented criticism of the degraded,90s-style, Marvelized version of the DCU that has existed post-COIE (Crisis on Infinite Earths, 1985). But it only really hit me yesterday when Julian (one of our Heroclix judges at Big Monkey) pointed out that "Superman Prime" (as presented in the Superman Prime Issue No. 1 special) is Fanboy Outrage personified. Julian called him, "Newsaramaboy Prime".

Like us, Clark (his name is Clark Kent, remember?) is from a universe where the DCU as we know it is just a series of comic book stories.

I'm not saying Clark's an idiot, but ...

he is wearing a Green Lantern shirt and reading a Hal Jordan comic book.
Specifically, it's

Green Lantern No. 163 (1960)
I love the fact that apparently Hal keeps a Babe in Bubble in tow
for when he gets, ya know, the urge.

Note that the comic he is reading is from 1960, way before the COIE. It's not even Bronze Age; it's Silver Age. The comics in his reading pile pictured on that same page are also Silver Age. The creative team could have chosen to show him reading comics from as late as the early 1980s, but they wanted to make it pretty darned clear that Clark is an old-school comics reader.

In his original story, he was excited to learn that his comic book heroes were real. But whenever a comic book reader thinks that characters are behaving "off-model" or those characters are replaced by new versions, then they become less real to him.

Except for Vibe, who lives in the hearts and minds of all joy-loving people. Like Santa.

Darned right he's not. The real Firestorm was an utter moron.
This one's great and actually deserves his own series.

Just because Clark is a murderous wacko doesn't make him wrong all the time, you know.

To Clark, these pale copies of his heroes aren't real at all. That explains why he's not so upset when he kills or maims. That, and the fact that he's a crazy punk.

Clark, like many fans of the pre-Crisis DCU, is disappointed that he was asked to sacrifice the world he loved for the promise of a better one, which turned out, in his eyes and by some objective criteria, to be worse.



Note that Clark doesn't say "what happened to Sue Dibny"; he says, "what they did to Sue Dibny". They? Surely he's not refering to Dr. Light and Jean Loring collectively in incidents that took place with many years of timeline between? Nope; that makes little sense. This an example of Clark as a metatextual commenter. It is we who talk about what "they" (DC writers and editorials) did to Sue Dibny in Identity Crisis.

But, like so many of us, Clark's not about to let go, shrug, and say "oh, well". Like us, he's a rabid fan and he's going to stick around to help make the DCU more like he thinks it should be. He won't rest until Batgirl's not a villain, Spoiler has a memorial case, and Vibe comes back from the dead.


Even if he has to rend some characters limb from limb along the way... .

JLA 13: Unlimited License

Along with fixing the problems of the previous writer, Dwayne McDuffie has begun his run on Justice League of America by moving it squarely in the direction of Justice League Unlimited, the animated series he used to write for.

Thank GOD. More power to him.

The Justice League is an amazing concept. But its first 9 years? Crap. I know; I own the Archive Volumes that cover those years. Remember the Super-Duper? I do.

Then the Silver Age JLA ended at the hands of the Joker, who struck at the weakness at its core, the detested Snapper Carr.

The next 14 years were also painfully bad, just in a different, Bronze-y way. I bought lots of those stories when they were first published. Remember Starbreaker? Remember when Young Gerry Conway had Two-Face become the mediary for a trio of statues of Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson that had been animated by the alien Dronndarians? I do.

Then there were the Justice League Detroit and Justice League International. They had their dubious virtues (Vibe and the Martian Manhunter, respectively), but we all knew they were impostor groups. Morrison's JLA had the players, but plot-wise it was muddled gibberish (it was the usual Morrison: all concept, with haphazard execution). Then we spent the next few years watching the JLA be eroded from within to suit the demands of universal crossover, only to be followed the Meltzer run, which was a decompressed Avengers novella written on Superfriends stationery.

In short, the Justice League has pretty much ALWAYS been bad, and gotten away with it because the Justice Leaguers themselves are so popular. Basically, the only time the Justice League has ever been a good story was on Justice League Unlimited, where some people had the crazy idea that DC's best characters deserved good stories. It was literally the best thing to happen to the Justice League in 30 years, and helped point the way toward a new, revived DCU.

So if McDuffie wants to bring it closer to the only bright spot in Justice League history over the last thirty years, I say more power to him, and, frankly, any who says otherwise might just be an idiot.

A Partial List of JLUifications in JLA No. 13 (Can you spot any others?)

1. Replacing Hal Jordan with John Stewart.
Fine on its face: GLs are pretty darned interchangeable. John's a better team player than Hal, anyway.

2. Make a connection between John Stewart and Hawkgirl.
Hey, it did wonders fleshing them out as characters on TV, and face it, they could both use it right now. The Hawkgirl/Hawkman thing is tedious and goes nowhere, our collective barf buckets are still unemptied from the horrid Red Arrow/Hawkgirl thing. I give my personal blessing to John and Kendra.

3. Clobbering Geo-Force out of the picture and off panel.
Really, shouldn't that alone inspire you with confidence in McDuffie, even if you've never seen a JLU episode? For the record, an enormous number of DC heroes, many of them quite obscure, were shown to be part of the JLU; Geo-Force wasn't one of them.

4. Assembling an Injustice League under Lex Luthor.
For all those people bitching, "It's been done before"-- yeah, ya think? Heroes fight villains. Groups of heroes fight groups of villains. That's kind of how that works. If you have a problem with that, maybe you should be reading Blankets instead.

5. Actual fight scenes.
Not just a big splash page that's a picture of whole bunch of heroes & villains in mid-fight. You can get away with that in a "timeless" medium like comics, but on tv you need to see a sequence of events. So I mean a battle like you used to see on JLU (and in the tradition of the original JLA stories), where one person attacks using his power, and then another one counterattacks with his powers, and there's a clear winner. More on that tomorrow. MUCH MUCH more on that tomorrow...

The Madness of Queen Jean: The End...?!

When last we left Carter and Ray, they were imprisoned together and wearing harnesses (much like the young gentlemen in that film classic, The Super-Stalag of Space; but I digress).

Love really is blue.

Presiding over their cerulean imprisonment is the madwoman, Queen Jean, who answers the decades long mystery of "Whatever did happen to Phantom Lady's original outfit?"

Ray. Dude. It's been exactly one day. Man up.

So Hawkman and Atom decide to fall for each other... literally. They fake their deaths by falling over a cliff (saved, of course, by Hawkman's wondrous Nth metal).


The shock of seeing her lover plummet to his death breaks through Jean's madness, and she cries out to terrified agony at her loss!

Or not.

Then the Atom frees himself and Hawkman from their anti-theft harnesses using DC-patented silver-age-superscience.

Or simply "stuff like electricity".

Hawkman looks so disappointed when he says, "the harness is free". You know how he likes harnesses; I think he was hoping the Atom was hooking those electric cables to his nipples. Thanagarians are not delicate people.

Then, as they rush to kidnap Queen Jean and make their escape, Hawkman, in an uncharacteristically Morrisonesque violation of the fourth wall, comments on virtually every man I've ever dated...

Hook electric cables to your nipples too much, Hawkman,
and you burn them right off.

And if you don't laugh, I'll cave your skull in with my mace.

Once they reach Queen Jean, her relief at her imminent rescue is palpable!

Or not.

So, rather than using Hawkman's brawn or the Atom's brains, Ray guilts Don Quixote into letting them go with a black belt Emo-chop.

"These aren't the droids you're looking for..."

Frankly, I think Don's just terrified of Jean, and is happy to be rid of her.

So, Ray re-enbiggens them all, and Jean regains her senses


or they cure her.

Or not.

"The Jungle" and other heroclix maps you can buy!

As you may have guessed from reading this blog, Heroclix is a big thing at the Big Monkey Comics stores. In addition to teaching the game and providing a forum for tournies and games, we try to do other fun stuff, like making special pogs, facilitating group orders on custom pogs, and designing special maps for our customers to play on.

Now, you too can share in some of the joy of being a Big Monkey Monkey customer who plays Heroclix, all in the comfort of your own home. Big Monkey Comics is proud to announce that our new line of custom Heroclix maps is now available through Xion Games!

The first three are water or "underwater" maps for all my fellow fans of Aquaman, and I think I've mentioned them on here before. Someday I hope to gather Will Pfeiffer, Kurt Busiek, Tad Williams and me around such a map, enjoying an all-aqua-game, watching the real Aquaman kayo Black Manta, who's just clobbered the Sword of Atlantis. And Ramona Fradon would be there, just sort of having tea and smiling at the little boys playing "Aquaman".

But the next two maps are ones you haven't seen and they are regular land-based maps.


Mercy Reef
Get out your "aquatic" clix! This all-underwater map has a coral reef separating opposing forces, and special rules for navigating its terrain. Take the plunge and visit Mercy Reef!

Sea Levels
For battles at and under the sea, you need "Sea Levels", which represents one segment of the sea at four different depths (The Surface, the Diving Zone, Deep Water, and Sea Bottom), each with its own special rules for movement and terrain. Take your aquatic gameplay to a new level!

Sunburn Beach
Want a nice open map on which aquatic forces can invade the land (or vice versa)? Pit landlubbers against ocean-dwellers at Sunburn Beach!

The Old Cemetery
A graveyard is a spooky place for a battle ... and a tricky one! Special headstone and tomb terrain make for lots of strategy. Will your figures survive "hide and seek" or wind up remaining in ... the Old Cemetery?!

The Jungle
"The Jungle" is a dangerous place, and now your Heroclix games can take place there! With lots of undergrowth (hindering terrain) and trees (blocking terrain), plus the river and the pond (water terrain), the Jungle is a challenge to get around in, let alone fight the enemy. Oh, look out for the crocodiles, gorillas, tigers, boas, vipers that occupy Danger Terrain. And did we mention the quicksand...?


Did I say "regular"? Well, that's a lie, of course. Each of them has special terrain, designed to enliven and give a bit more variety to your Heroclix gameplay. The Old Cemetery has "headstone terrain"; you can occupy it like hindering terrain, but from outside it blocks line of sight. That way, your figures can creep around hiding behind headstones! But the elevated terrain on the tops of tombs serves as special vantage points for attacking (or being attacked!). There's more than you might expect going on in an Old Cemetery.

Our latest map, the Jungle, has "Danger Terrain" which 'attacks' anyone who lands on it and "Elastic Terrain", such as the quicksand that requires breakaway. Beware the boa constrictor because it's BOTH! In the Silver Age, big monkeys came from the jungle; nowadays, "The Jungle" comes from Big Monkey.

Just think how many characters need to be on this map! Adventurer Rex "Metamorpho" Mason. Archeologists Adam Strange, Carter Hall, and Kent Nelson the first. Ray "Sword of the Atom" Palmer. Animal Man, Vixen, Cat-Man, & Bronze Tiger! Changeling & Cheetah! Copperhead and Eclipso! Gorilla Grodd, M'sieur Mallah, and the Ultrahumanite! Killer Croc and Kobra! Green Arrow and Sargent Rock! Poison Ivy and Solomon Grundy! Heck, the whole Suicide Squad, since they seemed to spend lots of time in the jungle... .

Oh, for those who buy the Jungle map, I've made a few special pogs for it. Of course!

You can't see it easily, but Bomba has the Aquatic ability, so he can wade through the river for you. Both he and Congo Bill are legal by the way, because their stats are identical to existing tokens (Bomba is based on Mera, and Congo Bill, with extreme irony, is based on Ken Hale). I'll make some more tokens for jungle characters, if anyone wants them and comes up with good ideas for ones to use.

The little capuchin monkeys below are special tokens you can add to the game. Nobody owns them, they're just sort of 'moving terrain'.

There are three trees on the map that have monkeys pictured on them. A capuchin token is placed adjacent to each of those trees, serving as blocking terrain. You can choose to move one of the capuchins as one of your actions during your turn (although they cannot be "pushed").

Like any token, the capuchins tie up regular figures, so you can use a monkey to run up and base an opposing figure, which must either breakaway or kayo the monkey (but that's bad luck). Of course, they have leap/climb, so your opponent can make them run back at you! Pesky little monkeys!

The Madness of Queen Jean, 4

Okay, so Jean Loring's gone crazy (I mean, publicly, in a way people can't help but notice), Ray's locked her in his bedroom while he explores the rug, and his arm's been mysterious encased in silver. Just another day in Ivytown.

Suddenly, Ray's attacked by Don Quixote and gives us a judo lesson.

They just don't write 'em like this anymore, folks.
Well, except for Judd Winick.

Ray's about to get zapped by Mister La Mancha's argentrifier, when he escapes by de-shrinkifying, which cracks the silver casing on his arms. Upon enbiggenment, Ray discovers...

JEAN LORING HAS ESCAPED!!!

It's such a lovely image. Helmet-haired Jean Loring, in those kicky white boots, lurching around the suburbs of Ivytown, whirling a cigarette stand above her head like a drunk Nancy Sinatra, escaped from her backstage handlers at the LA Pride Festival.

Is "a drunk Nancy Sinatra" a redundancy?

Now, if I discovered that

JEAN LORING HAD ESCAPED,

I'd call off the FBI manhunts for the Joker and Lex Luthor, signal the JLA, the JLA reserves, the JSA, the Freedom Fighters, and the Sea Devils, recall the 50 Green Lanterns who guard Superboy Prime, and leave a note in a time capsule for the Legion of Super-Heroes (because they are notorious for eavesdropping on our era).

But Ray Palmer is not me. Ray Palmer calls Hawkman.

Fortunately (because this is how comics worked in those days), Carter "Hawkman" Hall just happens to have lying around in his museum a suit of armor identical to the one worn by the Atom's assailant.

See? And you thought Ray was stupid for calling him.

The armor, Carter says, was found in Death Valley and appears to be made of an extraterrestrial alloy. So instead of being in a government lab, being studied, it just sits around in a museum somewhere. Welcome to the Silver Age.

You know who should play Hawkman in "Hawkman: The Movie"?
Josh Bernstein. Josh Bernstein in spandex and a harness.

Naturally, they go to where the suit was found, Ray turns a shrinky-dink ray on Hawkman, then they discover a subatomic city (by this point in his career, everything Ray does is "subatomic", not just tiny; no wonder they named it the Palmerverse), where they are immediately attacked by sentries flying on robot birds.

Why? Mostly to give Hawkman something to do, I suppose. Besides, mechanized birds were kind of a thing in the Silver Age. Remember Major Mynah?

Atom: "Sic 'em!"
Hawkman: "Wait, so, I'm your dog, now?"
Atom: "Silence, beeyotch, or I'll slap you like I did Jean and Hank Pym's wife."

Well, naturally, Hawkman does what Hawkman does, and takes out all the cyberavian sentries.

"Exactly as I hoped--!
The unexpected surge of lift drove him into his companion!"
FINALLY, I find my signature saying.

But what's this? Who does not approve?



No, Hawkman; not "Jean Loring". Rather, it is...

"QUEEN JEAN!"

And what does Queen Jean do to bad little boys and girls?

PUNISH.

Someones appears to have attached the "Trick Shot" feat to Queen Jean, huh? I guess only truly crazy people can fire in a loop-de-loop.

With Hawkman (the muscle) out of commission, the Atom (the brains) immediately gets clocked in the noggin by Don Quixote, who trusses them up in anti-theft devices, and explains that he drove Jean crazy with a crazy-making device (or possibly just by reading her Denny O'Neill's script for this story).

Why drive Jean crazy? Because he doesn't like long trips, that's why.

Next...

after Hawkman and Atom bond while wearing harnesses, doing heavy sweat work, and sleeping in the same cell, they fall for each other (with Josh Bernstein as "Hawkman", and Jake Gyllenhaal as "the Atom").

The Madness of Queen Jean, 3

Where were we? Oh, yes...

So, Ray takes the hysterical, hallucinating Jean Loring back home to his house. Their house. Whatever. It's hard to tell at this point.

Then, because Ray (who's a big geek, after all) is fixed on his new glow in the dark official "One Ring" replica, he dispenses with Jean and her petty manias by relegating her to the Ranting Room.

Really, you may wonder why anyone would stay with Crazy Evil Jean. But she's got a 15-inch waist, Marlo Thomas hair, and when you say, "Go into the bedroom, lock the door, and don't budge until I call you!", she actually does it. I mean, those have got to be worth some serious points.

At this point, Ray does the only logical thing, after locking his raving lunatic of a lover in his bedroom, as if she were King George III.

He shrinks down to explore the rug.

No, really. It's what the Atom does, after all.

The All-New Atom never shrinks down to explore his rug, though. You know why? He has a dog.

But this rug is not only a rug in the DCUniverse, it's a rug in Ray Palmer's house, making it just about the most dangerous place imaginable. Sure enough, just what you'd expect to happen happens almost immediately...

an unidentified beam encases Ray's arm in silver.

Oh, that's silver alright; Silver AGE.

Anyway, then Hawkman gets involved and there are some killer robot bird assassins and Ray and Carter are enslaved in a subatomic world.

More on that later.

Least Likely to Change: Aquaman

I blame many things. I blame Atlantis. I blame King Arthur. I blame the people at DC, all of whom should know better. I blame Aqualad.

But I sure don't blame Aquaman himself.

Oh, how Aquaman has changed. The Golden Age Aquaman was powerful and confident. Golden Age heroes always seemed to have the confidence of experience, right from the get-go. Perhaps that's because, though they were new as heroes, they were still men. Unlike the Earth-8ers, the little twenty-somethings DC keeps giving their titles to, Peter Parker's Revenge Squad against DC. The current Aquaman (whom DC had the nerve to name Arthur Curry, just like the real one) is yet another Young Person Struggling to Find Himself and His Place in a World He Never Made. Golden Age heroes weren't struggling to find themselves; they were struggling to help others. Golden Age heroes didn't live in a world they never made; they made the world, or, at least, re-made it.

Can the current Aquaman punch through a battleship? Does he command the creatures of the sea? Is he as at ease out of the water as he is in it? No, none of the above.

The original Aquaman had only a tangential connection to Atlantis, and owed his abilities to the efforts of his father and his own hard work; to him, Atlantis was "lost", and he made his home in one of their old abandoned temples. Although I'm no fan of the current Aquaman, I'll give his creator much credit for wanting to return those elements to Aquaman. Atlantis, I think, is where everything started to go wrong.

Aquaman "discovered" Atlantis in the Silver Age, and it became both his Krypton and his Metropolis. In short order, Aquaman went from being the King of the Sea, who protected humans from crime and difficult on the ocean, to being King of Atlantis, protecting Atlanteans from humans. It was a fatal error, and one that has slowly poisoned reader's ability to identify with him ever since.

Here's where I share an ugly secret. I have gone on and on the blog about the success and importance of the Dynastic Centerpiece model, woven theories about how it should be applied to characters who don't have it, and criticized writers for not understanding it.

Well, you know what? The Dynastic Centerpiece model killed Aquaman, just as surely as video killed the radio star. His Contextualizing City took over the plots, his Sidekick infected the tone with negativism and powerlessness, and his Female Counterpart (even his infant son!) was arguably portrayed as more powerful than he was. So, long before it had gone so far, that editors and writers decided to scrap the character entirely, he was a pale version of his Golden Age self.

The Bronze and Iron ages weren't any help either. Constant comparison with other heroes on Superfriends damaged his rep, his storyline became a soap opera rather than an adventure, his origin was savagely slaved to magic and porpoises, his involvements in international politics and war became increasingly Namorian rather than Aquamanly, his hand got chewed off, his powers became magical (as did those of his Sidekick), until finally it was such a mess that DC thought it best to let Kurt Busiek try to return Aquaman to some of his original schtick (plus several enormous helpings of Conan's).

For the record, Devon disagrees with me, but only because he's not really counting the current Aquaman as Aquaman, saying that "the real Aquaman will be back", the one who took care of Sub Diego. I'd like to have that kind of faith, but I'll believe it when I see it. DC's blown, even blocked, several opportunities and attempts to bring back the real Aquaman. Oh, he's been sighted (most recently in Alex Ross's Justice), but he until he's the current version of Aquaman and Artie Junior is either his Youthful Counterpart or dead, you won't find me voting for Aquaman as the Least Changed from his Golden Age version...

The Martian Manhunter's Rogues Gallery!

With J'onn's panoply of otherworldly powers, any writer would naturally find the most powerful foes for him, the likes of Despero, Amazo, or Dr. Light.

Or, perhaps not.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present, with comparatively little commentary on my part, the Foes of the Martian Manhunter...

The Dangerous Martian Mandrills

I'm hard pressed to think of anything more "Silver Age" than Martian gorillas.


The Menace of Mothman

Nice hat. Some guys-- one overnight with Killer Moth
and they think they have what it takes to be a supercriminal.

Speaking of which...

The Human Flame

Poor Joey. He loved Mike, despite the Daliesque moustaches and flamboyent outfits.
But the "crime suit" was the final straw.


The Malevolant Mr. Falcon

Uh-oh; now who's going to walk Dynomutt?

And last, and certainly least....

The Human Squirrel
Best. Costume. Ever.