The Killers of Kurdistan, Part 3: Clever Ruses

Speed Saunders has used his dramatic authority powers to seal the building and time-plucks young Adolf Hitler out of Bavarian Infantry Regiment 16 to assist with the investigation of Mr. Trelawney's murder.

"I admire ze orderliness of zis kitchen."
"Focus, Adolf."

Speed then makes a big deal out of finding a "secret panel", which, to me, looks like a decidedly NON-secret panel: a pantry pass-through that allows servants to easily transfer new and used trays to the main room.  But even if it wasn't a secret panel before, it better damned well BECOME one when Speed Saunders says it is.

It opens at his very touch. Like a metropolitan library, or Trelawney.

Sure enough, because it is the will of Saunders, the Death Weapon is Revealed.

It turns out to be a surrealist art installation. Damned surrealists; never trust 'em.

Yes, the hand we saw shooting Trelawney wasn't a human hand at all! It was a mechanical hand, activated by a human hand pulling a string about eight inches behind it.  Because... 

well, honestly, I can't tell you why someone would do that.  Maybe Rube Goldberg or Salvador Dalí was one of the Killers of Kurdistan, and if you think that seems unlikely, remember that so were Tom and Trelawney.

A group of avant-garde art critics debate the semiotic significance of the murder weapon quickly before Adolf can have the Berlin Fire Brigade burn it as degenerate art. Fortunately, Adolf's busy grabbing a maid he suspects of being with the French resistance as Speed Saunders tesseracts directly before her and simply STARES her into confessing, like he does.

Wonder Woman's Lasso of Truth is made of Speed Saunders' beard stubble.

Then she dumps a lot of unnecessary personal backstory like she's Louise Bourgé in Death on the Nile to give an illusion of depth to the mystery.

"I, meanwhile, as the sun extricated itself from the horizon like a gently absconding lover, was applying Ricil to les yeux pour un maquillage complet, harmonieux, y parfait with my newly patented mascara appliqué, remembering the simple days of my childhood with my mother, a widow of La Guerre Mondiale..." 

As a fifth-dimensional being, Speed Saunders has little patience for linear narrative and causality, so rather than listen to Louise drone on, he simply uses his Voice of Authority to command Adolf to shoot the next person he sees outside the window, under the assumption that it will be the guilty party (or at least someone worthy of being shot).

Lots of Adolf jokes to make here and I'm not going near any of 'em.

As it happens, that person is not only Louise's boyfriend but one of the Killers of Kurdistan and operator of the Rube Goldberg Murdering Device.

You'll note that this makes a lovely bookend to the panel where Tom's body is discovered, which is how the story starts.  Golden Age had style.

Let me lampshade this for you.  Trelawney, who is (accidentally) a member of the Killers of Kurdistan and who has known, for years, that they will eventually try to kill him has had in his employ a man with a wardrobe of v-neck tee shirts and a prominent "red crescent" tattoo that is the MARK of the Killers of Kurdistan.  Trelawney may have been an Expert on Eastern Lore but you can see why he needed an Ace Investigator.

An Ace Investigator with a clever ruse...!

"I vill establish an eggsclusive zphere of influence!"
"However you want to put it, Adolf."

Naturally, if Speed Saunders "means to see if something works" then that thing had BETTER work, if it knows what's good for it. So he tesseracts onto Rhett Croissante's elbow and confronts her with his ultimate weapon: his face.

What I wanna know is: how could Louise's boyfriend have named this woman as his boss when this woman doesn't even have a name? "You know... the lady with the red crescents atop her breasts..."

As you would expect, there is no defense against Speed Saunders' face.

"The Veiled Prophetress of the Killers of Kurdistan" sounds like a Dr. Strange villain.

I'm at a loss as to why killing foreign fops like Tom and Trelawney would help her "rival Hassan".  It's clearly some sort of Gypo-Bax situation that I, not being an Expert on Eastern Lore, cannot comprehend.  

For a prophetress, she didn't see the future too well, did she?  Shoulda taken off the veil.  But who could imagine that she'd be identified as a member of the Killers of Kurdistan just because she was wearing their sigil on her breasts, and around her neck, and on her handker-chief, and god knows where else? 

Don't worry about her. Since she's such an over the top foreign femme fatale, Adolf gets her a work-release job fighting against Wonder Woman;
work makes her free.

You can certainly see why Speed Saunders is the star of Detective Comics! There was no time to show it, but I'm convinced that off-panel before he died Trelawney willed his estate to Speed, who just has to patch up that kitchen window and fire Louise before moving in.

Superman No. 36: Inscrutable

I understand many things. Quantum physics.  Greek plays.  Modern art. The works of Bach.

You know what I don't understand? This cover:

I'm sure Grant Morrison has planned an unpublished mini-series based on it.

I've been contemplating this cover for 50 years and it remains inscrutable and semiotically inaccessible.  Not even a bursting shell can penetrate its meaning.  I even stared at an original copy in person to make sure there wasn't some foil-based double-imagery built in that I couldn't perceive that had news-stand owners and seven-year-old boys laughing their heads off.  Nada.

Why is Lois Aunt Fritzie?  Why is she holding a tiny hammer like Dr. Maxwell?  Why is Superman dirty-sanchezing an icemaker?  Why does Lois keep bananas in the refrigerator? And on the floor?  Did she label those jars herself? Does ace investigative reporter Lois Lane put up preserves?  Why is Superman in her kitchen? What is he laughing about? Why is Lois angry?  Is that a ham, or part of Lois' latest victim?  Did old-timey fridges even HAVE icemakers?  Why is Superman letting ice cubes spit out and melt on the floor?  Why is there an apple on the floor? Is the apple a surrealist inclusion? Is the entire cover a surrealistic exercise? Doesn't Superman have anything better to do? And how can Lois not realize the man one yard from her nose is her closest co-worker?

If you can explain, you 50 years smarter than I.

Green Lantern Filmation 3: Angry Birds!

When we last left Green Lantern, he’d fallen for the bait set by Sirena, Evil Empress ™, who’d kidnapped some pilot and Hal Jordan’s “Venusian helper”, Kairo, as part of plot to neutralize GL so she can invade Oa.

"Um... you do realize you have no hands, right?"

"Okay. Forget I said anything."

Sirena sends her All-Male Horde of Identical Freakish Yellow Bat-Creatures to attack GL. Meanwhile, Hal and Kairo prepare for battle by girding their loins…

with each other.

Whoa. Um… can I get a “Venusian helper”, please?

You know, this seems vaguely familiar; where have I seen this scene before?

Oh, yes; now, I remember:

Yes, thanks to me (and my good pal and faithful reader, Noah Van Google), you now know that the Ambiguously Gay Duo’s characteristic “flight pattern” is taken from Hal and Kairo fighting the Bat-Creatures of Planetoid Sargasso. You’re welcome. And when that wins you a Trivial Pursuit game, I expect you to thank me publicly.

But it’s okay. I mean, it’s not as if Hal could use his power ring to whip up any number of contraptions that he and Kairo could travel in, or as if he could just, you know, leave Kairo where he was. He has absolutely no choice but to have Kairo snugly ride his butt like that. I guess Sally’s right; GL butts are something special, after all.

Anyway, it turns out that the Identical Freakish Yellow Bat-Creatures can shoot frickin’ zappy beams from their horns; yikes! Score another one for Cartoon Evolution and its proclivity to generate unlikely beings after spending the afternoon at the airfield bar with Hal Jordan. PLUS, the dang things are YELLOW, meaning Hal’s power ring is powerless to affect them. Right?

WRONG! Because this is Filmation, baby; welcome to Earth-F.

Hal decides to show off for the Venusian helper riding his butt (because drunk people love being clever and because Kairo has long beautiful eyelashes), slurring “Wash me t*turn thayruh own beams againsht ‘um!”, and simply bends the freakish bat-creature’s horns back at them.

You just know that young Hal used grab Jim Jordan’s arm and make him punch himself in the face, repeating, “Why do you keep hitting yourself? Why do you keep hitting yourself?” Jerk.

Her freakish horde stymied, Sirena decides to deal with Green Lantern herself, shouting imperiously, “I’ll deal with Green Lantern myself!”. So she activates a miniature magnowave that tunes in on Hal’s brainwaves.

Honestly, that’s impressive enough; just being able to build a device that can detect Hal Jordan’s brainwaves should get her a Nobel Prize, 'cuz that's harder than finding FTL neutrinos.

But then, it gets even better. While Hal stands around smugly preening for his Venusian helper...

“Didja see how I handled those Freakish Bat-Creature? Pretty cool, huh?”

...she takes an outré tack by launching an Angry Bird ™ at him.

...and...

"Stop that pigeon, NOW!"

Thud.

Make sure you watch the actual video; the sound effect alone is worth it. You need to know what the sound of a space owl hitting Hal Jordan in the head is.

You know, all of the millions of times Hal’s been hit in the head? This is pretty much at the top of that list. It doesn’t get better than watching Hal Jordan get hit in the head by an Angry Bird ™. In fact, I’d love to have that little sequence as a GIF that I could use in my sidebar, or in my online forum signatures, or as an image on my digital flicker ring. It would soothe my soul in times of crisis.

Also, props to Sirena for having the presence of mind to develop a radar-guided space-owl cannon for just such an occasion. Ordinarily, I’m a foe of surrealism in superhero media, but nothing provides the element of surprise like a radar-guided space-owl cannon. This is the kind of stuff Grant Morrison has been doing drugs for decades trying to write; back in the day, thin-tied Manhattanites like George Kashdan used to bang this stuff out every day before noon, before they'd even had their fourth martini of the day. Score at halftime: George Kashdan 8, Grant Morrison 0.

With Hal characteristically unconscious…

Dude! I was so wasted last night. I don’t remember a thing we did…!

Sirena’s Freakish Yellow Bat-Minions swoop in and remove his ring.

Without hands.

Somehow.

“Without his ring, he’s powerless!” Sirena exults.

Oh, silly Sirena! Sure, he’s superpowerless…

EXCEPT FROM THE WAIST DOWN.

Never forget that.

NEXT UP: Kairo and the Angry Bird ™ versus Sargassonian architecture!

The Show Must Go On!

The rest of our discussion of "Supergirl vs. The Gang" will be delayed; I'm leaving this morning for New York City to both perform and MC at Carnegie Hall.

Yes, really. If you want to know how you get to Carnegie Hall... well, I'll tell you when I get back.

Anyway, meantime ...

FIGHT SURREALISM,

ONE OF THE SEVEN DEADLY ENEMIES OF COMIC BOOKS!!!

Vol. 2 of Martian Madness

Okay, as previously mentioned, the Martian Manhunter went from weird to weirder when he left Detective Comics for House of Mystery.

Now, I know you all think I'm INSANE ("Mad! So, my colleagues think me mad, eh...?!") for harping on the insidious evil of SURREALISM lurking with comic books, yet surrealism is exactly the new foe that J'onn was pitted against.

There was a certain bizarre logic to it. No one ever had any idea what to do with this ridiculous Martian character they'd cobbled together out of breakfast martinis, deadlines, and old pulp sci fi mags. For that matter, no one ever has. Might as well have him fight equally bizarre and ridiculous 'foes', in a symbolic struggle of classic art versus surrealism, or as a metaphor for humanity's never-ending efforts to impose meaning on a chaotic world. Who better to thrust in unknown and nonsensical territory?


J'onn was no longer fighting crooks in ties or even crooks in stupid costumes.

Even for comic books, that's a stand-out sentence.

Now he fought things like...

evil sentient orchestras.

Pity J'onn's career in Zydeco never took off.

Or bank-robbing genies.


Or really peevish, bioelectric Fruit Loops

Thank H'Ronmeer they didn't join forces with the Sinister Spaghetti-o People.

Or presidential candidate Pat Paulsen.



But it was all a battle against SURREALISM, in a vain attempt to keep its madness confined to the canvas...


See? And you think I make these things up...!

Strange Feelings, with Barry Allen

If you're new to Barry Allen, you may not know that he was famous for finding himself in strange situations... strange even for a DC superhero in the Silver Age.

But even in the strangest of situations, Barry seldom lost his composure, and faced his role as a lightning rod for Silver Age lunacy with remarkable acceptance and equanimity. A perfect example is one of his most famous quotes:

"I've got the strangest feeling I'm being turned into a puppet."
Yes, Barry; that is certainly one of the strangest feelings. But there are others...


"I've got the strangest feeling...I'm being characterized as an enormous geek."

He works in a lab. He talks to himself. About comics books. While drinking milk. With a straw. All this you know before you even see him. What more could they do, put him in a bow-tie?


"I've got the strangest feeling...
I'm under attack from surrealism in comics."

The second you let down your guard, BANG! You're the center of a paranoid delusion about inanimate objects, specifically, the traveling staircases from many a surrealist joke book ("A traveling staircase goes into a bar, and when the watch melted, the chicken died.")


"I've got the strangest feeling...Zahi Hawass is going to kick my ass."

I sure hope Barry has Josh Bernstein's number; now, that's a Brave & the Bold issue I want to see!


"I've got the strangest feeling...
I'm in a Katsushika Hokusai painting."

Now, that is one classy swipe.


"I've got the strangest feeling...
I should be wearing a red handkerchief in my back pocket."

Who knew that Barry had given the FFA (um... that's...Flash Fans of America, for you kiddies) its slogan, "If you can't fit a keyhole, make it fit you"?

Pep 5: The Enchantment Under the Sea Dance

Okay, at first I tried to believe that the action on this cover is supposed to take place underwater. Because I see, um, ship-ish looking things. And air bubbles.

Oh, the heck with it! This can only be interpreted as a fractured surrealist landscape colored with a variegated miasma of pastels. It looks like someone put the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers and R. Crumb in a blender with some art chalk, and then dipped an issue of Captain America in it.

The Shield has a rudder up his butt, bringing new meaning to "hard to port!", and is blowing off his right foot with a torpedo, surrounded by negative-space-infused textual elements, and ambiguous shapes that could be salmon or submarines, propellers or women's hats, streams or banana leaves, pontoons or hot dog buns.

These illusions disillusioned me; how could our hero, The Shield, participate in such a patent and aggressive display of wicked Surrealism, the Enemy of All That is Good in Comics? And then it hit me, like a torpedo exploding on my shinbone:

The Shield is FIGHTING. The Shield is fighting back surrealism!

Phew! NOW I can sleep tonight!

The Shield: Destroyed By the Worst Villain of Them All

We've spent lots of time talking about how boss the Shield was, and how keen it is that he's returning.

But I bet you've been wondering how a fantastically cool character like The Shield met his end. Was he killed by a villain, like his colleague, the Hangman? Did the company that published him fold?

Well, both, in a sense. He was "killed" by the worst villain in all of comicdom. And not outright. No, he was slowly poisoned by his treacherous foe, evanescing into limbo. And his publisher did fold... to the pressure toward cheap titillation of teenage hormones.

Yes, the Shield was undone by that most terrifying force in the four-color world, the symbol of solipsism, the scion of sensationalism, the shill of thrill, the sultan of the surreal:

ARCHIE ANDREWSEverything's Archie, you know.

Archie, as long-time readers of my blog will know, is my bete noir, symbol to me of the opiate power of comics used evilly to warp the perspectives of readers, lulling them in a dazed state in which the always unhinged Archieverse opens it jaws of surrealism to swallow up their every sense of hope, meaning, and being, subsuming them in the All That Is Archie.

What red-blooded American can look at these words and fail to weep?

"Dusty is almost heartbroken at having to leave you boys and girls we have come to know and love so much -- and me, well, I don't feel so good myself."

My gods, it's like watching Bambi's mother get shot in an endless video loop!

Even in defeat, the Shield is gracious, calling Archie a golden lining. YES; the gold lining the pockets of the cynical sharpies who sold you out, Shield. Who sold out patriotism for pre-pubescent pandering! Who sold out your war against America's enemies for teenage teases in tit-tightened sweaters, and sweaty-palmed punks who think of nothing but slaking their gross apetites for fresh girls and grilled flesh, stuffing it all down the insatiable maw of ... Archie.

But the Shield's grace cannot hide Archie's omnivorous evil:

"he's made himself famous from the Atlantic to the Pacific, in fact in every corner of the world (!!!!)"

Because... Everything Is Archie. Shudder.

"He's going to take over the Shield G-Man Club and call it the Archie Club. ... Take it away, Archie."

Of course he's just going to ...take it over. And rename it after himself. Everything Must Be Archie. Whatever it is, whatever you want; take it away, Archie. How can people prate on about feckless incompetent amateurs like Darkseid when there's ARCHIE, for pity's sake?!?!?

Through the existential horror, I can barely bare to read Archie's words, for fear they might sap my will like a Riverdalian anti-life equation.

"Think of taking over so many hundreds of thousands."

Yes, you automatically belong to Archie. Turn over the cards that represent your former identity; surrender yourself to Archie. In exchange for your very soul, we will imprint upon you the Mark of Archie, so that all may known that you are of the Body, that you are one with Landru/Archie.

My gods; the little bastard even stole his COSTUME.

Everything's Archie

I understand the multiverse. I understand hypertime. I understand dog behaviors, ancient Greek poetry, subatomic theory, Jungian archtypes, Silver Age science, and the popularity of Tony Danza. Such is the power of my mind that, with a bit of application, little is beyond its understanding.

Riverdale, however, is far, far beyond my comprehension.


My free comic on Free Comic Book Day, you see, was the Archie 65th Anniversary Bash. Light. Fun. Cheery. Or so I thought ... !

But first -- kudos is deserved by the publishers of Archie Comics, who (unlike all the other companies, I believe) actually created a comic specifically for the event with the sole purpose of introducing to firsttime readers the essential characters and elements of their line. If all companies did that, FCBD could be more focused on introducing comics to new readers rather than giving free comics to old ones.

So what if it looks like it was written and drawn in a day? They still did it. The Archie Comics group doesn't rely on the fact that its stuff has been around for 65 years; it knows there's always a new child who's not yet read an Archie book, and aimed its offering at them. No wonder the Archieverse remains strong.

Strong, but mind-boggling. Take for example, the Mysterious Box of Nothingness:

Some sort of indicia box whitened out to prevent resale? That's what they'd like you to think...!

Or does Archie's excitement over his bash have a corporal manifestation so prodigious and pronounced that an enormous bowlderizing box is required to obscure it? It would certainly explain the fervency of Betty and Veronica's dedication.

Or is it a visually symbolic commentary on the emptiness at the heart of the Archieverse? "Archie is hollow," the box says, "composed only of literary boundaries of plot that contain no meaning, no continuity, no core."

This interpretation is certainly reinforced by the impossibly achronal appearance of Li'l Archie beside his teen counterpart: "Archie is beyond time and space. Archie is the empty centerpoint of a null zone where all normal reference systems are negated." Spooky, huh? I think Archie's in league with Supergirl.

Only the Null Box allowed me to perceive the meaning of the panel below. I read it several times with a vague feeling of disorienting unease, but after several hours of zen-like contemplation of the anti-space circumscribed by the Null Box I finally noticed what was bothering me...The Bobbsey Twins. The Bobbsey Twins were created in 1904 and their books were published with diminishing popularity up through, say, the 1970s. That was 30 years ago-- in OUR universe. What kind of highschooler today would naturally refer to the Bobbsey Twins? Why is this fella, Beaucoup Hairgel or some such, talking about the Bobbsey Twins as if anyone is going to understand?

Because the Archieverse, the Null Box says to us, is not bound by time and space, only by its own plot devices and narrative needs. Like Shazam's Rock of Eternity, the Archieverse is equidistant from all points of space/time; the Archieverse is the home of God/Archie; everything really IS Archie. Shudder.

Remember Josie & The Pussycats? Long tails, and sharps and flats? Yeah, I thought I did, too, with their cute little pussycat costumes. Until I realized....
The---the tails. The ears. Oh, ye gods of Olympus, they're REAL.

Aahh! The Pussycats aren't wearing costumes, they're some sort of nightmarish hybridized catwomen, like the illicit offspring of Mary Marvel and Tawky Tawny! And ... no one seems to notice. It's incomprehensible...!

And it gets worse.

Okay, there's apparently a band called "The Veronicas". Kind of weird, but no weirder than there being a band called the "Archies", I guess. But, wait, wait ... the "Veronicas" ...

are real.

I -- I don't understand. I can't -- Are they real people comic-bookized to promote themselves? Are they a fictional group being portrayed by live actors? Are they ambitextuals? And, hey, how could the Archies have had a number one hit when they aren't real? My understanding of reality -- it breaks down when confronted with the Archieverse. The nature of God/Archie is beyond the scope of the human mind.

Thank goodness, here's a familiar face: Sabrina the Teenage Witch. Nice, safe, familiar Sabrina. But, what's she doing in this panel? Why, she's -- she's imagining her own forthcoming makeover as a Manga character.
She is actively metacommenting on her own transtextual conversion into manga; it's mind-boggling! And to her it's .... SIMPLE. NOoooo! Et tu, Sabrina?


Wait a minute. I think I get it now: The Archieverse is some sort of plot to break down the barriers between the real and the unreal, crippling the minds of our youth, possibly explaining the moral and psychological decay of society since Archie's arrival in popular culture.

Of course! The erosion of the fourth wall, the impossible dreamlike imagery, the intentional violation of the concepts of space/time and identity; the Archieverse is comics' most insidious nest of SURREALISM.

But who could be responsible for this deceptive madness, this threat to the sanity of society?

It's been obvious all along, staring us right in the face:

SALVADOR DALI,
SINISTER SUPERVILLAIN OF SURREALISM

Someone call the Boy Wonder!

Archie and Dali attacking your sense of reality, personally.