Our Hero and HIs Priorities

 

Hal Jordan is the hero Coast City deserves.

Stargirl, Season Two: I Hate Stargirl Less

I watched the first five episodes of the new (second) season of Stargirl (which I have not been kind to in the past).  

I'm enjoying it more than the first season, which introduced so many characters, but (literally) wasted a lot of them.  Courtney is still irritating but at least she (and others) seem to be more aware of it.  Cindy ("Shiv") remains (and remains irritating) as Courtney's underwhelming foe, but that shouldn't surprise me since she's obviously designed as an anti-Courtney.  Beth Chapel continues to grow on me as a character and I actually said "I love you, Beth!" more than once out loud (which perhaps her parents should consider doing). I particularly enjoy her unexpected chemistry with Rick Tyler.  Sometimes the show wallows in dated stereotypes, but I give it credit: it often demonstrates that modern teens aren't as trapped by such stereotypes as previous generations were, and the relationship between Rick and Beth is a good example.

The annoying parts remain annoying (I'll get to that in a minute), but the show's gotten darker and more interesting and that helps.  Whereas last season's challenge was definitely a rule-the-country cabal of costumed villains, Eclipso is a cosmic-horror nightmare whom you can't punch into submission.  The show has done a wonderful job with the Shade, which is impressive, considering what a tricky character he is.  He's simply intrinsically threatening and even when he's on "your side", it's not exactly comforting.  Things will get darker still when Jennie/Jade finds her brother Todd/Obsidian, who has darkness powers as well.

Somehow they managed to work Paintball, of all people, into this mix, as an unexpected treat; even though it was a stretch, I enjoyed it.

So, I'm enjoying the main plot.  Meanwhile, the JSA is expanding (Green Lantern's daughter Jade shows up, as does the Thunderbolt and some original members will be popping up) and a new Injustice Society is forming (I'm jazzed for Fiddler Junior, whose actor seems good).  Beth is facing up to the realities of her homelife, Rick is taking an unexpectedly humane approach to an old problem, Cameron and Courtney continue to fail to be a couple, and Artemis's parents give us a surprisingly complex view of parenthood.

I do continue to be annoyed by endless examples of Dramedy Ridiculousness that riddle the show needlessly.  Such as...

There is no internet. Sylvester "Star-Spangled Kid/Starman" Pemberton, the genius who invented the nearly-magical technology of the cosmic staff, is crawling his way across the country, looking for breadcrumbs to locate his former sidekick, Pat "Stripesy" Dugan, including asking Pat's ex-wife who is (of course) a waitress at a diner, like this is an episode of Route 66 (look it up, kids).  Hey, Sly; try Google. Pat didn't even bother to change his name and he owns a business, so you know there is a record of that on-line (and on the Pit Stop's website, and don't try to tell me it doesn't have one).  How did he find Pat's ex-wife if he can't find Pat? Ridiculous.  The ONLY possible save will be if, when he does find Pat, Starman says, "it never occurred to be that you'd be dumb enough not to change your name."  That would be pretty on-model for both characters.

Surprise vacation plans! Uh-huh.  In real life, parents do not spring 'surprise vacation plans' on the children and then react with disbelief when the children are not thrilled.  This is a sitcom thing to manufacture conflict.  It's believable that parents might have a different idea for their children of what constitutes a good vacation, but their IDEA would definitely be mentioned to the children before plans were made.  And the dog would not get a vote.  Ridiculous.  Please spare us these cringeworthy moments that make the family unlikeable.  Also, the kids clearly don't need or want a trip; not being in school is vacation enough for them.  The parents could easily go away for two weeks on their own and let someone look after the kids while they are away.  Besides... those kids are old enough to take care of THEMSELVES for two weeks. I'm pretty sure if you can defeat the Injustice Society, you can manage to feed yourself for a fortnight.

Catholic guilt! Ugh; Yolanda Montez.  I guess she's just going to be the Permanent Self-Doubt Character.  Look, we can all tell that Brainwave is living rent-free in her head somewhere and that's the cause of her headaches. But OF COURSE she's interpreting that as guilt issues for killing him.  Look, I don't mean to dismiss that killing someone, even in self-defense, would be pretty traumatizing for a teenager (anyone, really).  But saddling the Catholic Latina character with this issue?  Like a lot of the characterization choices on the show, it just seems a bit lazy.  Also, the blatant retcon of Mike's vehicular murder of Icicle as an 'accident' so that only Yolanda has this guilt issue was embarrassing.  Apparently the writers finally noticed that what was a joke when Mike did it was supposed to be trauma/drama when Yolanda did it, and I'm not even going address the sexism of that.  

No More Secrets, Except This One.  The computer that writes CW scripts is simply unable to write them without the Secrets Quadrille:

1. Characters Keep Secrets from One Another
2. That Causes Problems and They Uncover Those Secrets
3. Their Feelings are Hurt, but they Work through Them and Promise "No More Secrets!"
4. Something Even More Important Comes Up, That One of them Has to Keep from the Other(s) for their Safety; Repeat

This was already trite before CW started doing it. In every show. In every season.  Please stop embarrassing yourself and us with this routine.  Reality check: the parents in this show have been letting their children run around fighting supervillains TO THE DEATH.  Not telling them that Eclipso killed a little girl because you 'didn't want to scare them' is laughably unbelievable.  The Shade seems like he's actually interested in protecting the children; you just seem like you're interested in protecting them from the truth. He's protecting their lives; you're protecting their innocence.

Padlock Security. You know, Pat, if you really don't want someone to be able to find S.T.R.I.P.E. so easily, you might at least put it in A BOX.  

Arbitrary School.  Parents cannot simply enroll you in summer school to keep you out of trouble, Yolanda.  You can't flunk History and English without noticing it, Courtney. You can't just make a student take a second entirely different final after they pass one, Ms. Rick's Teacher, without having to justify that to the Administration.  You can't call parents in on the last day of school and tell them their child has flunked and has to go to summer school with no prior warning, Mr. Principal.  And someone really should have mentioned that THERE IS A SUPERVILLAIN HIDEOUT under the school so the building could be closed to clear that out during the summer.

The Carnival of Doom: The Martian Gaslighter

When last we left them, Detective John "Martian Manhunter" Jones and his tagalong, Willy, were following the crooks who'd just robbed the Wonderland box office into the  TUNNEL OF THRILLS.  Let's see what THRILLS the tunnel has in store!

First up: GIANT ELMER FUDD!

That is substantially less thrilling than a giant robot bear. Why not just take a walk downtown?

Phew, lucky for those crooks they have a "ROPE" as part of their "special equipment"!

Dude; Martian-breath.

Oh no, sorry; solved by spinning; silly me.

J'onn has superspeed, you see, but he doesn't have super-reaction time or superfast-perception; that's why all his applications of it
 are static ones like spinning, otherwise he'd kill himself (or others) almost immediately. Seriously.

"Something like that."
J'onn has always had a dry sense of humor.

Willy has now been primed to ignore whatever shenani-martia-gans John gets up henceforth to defeat and capture the crooks.  

Um, J'onn; if it's your Martian form, it's not a 'guise'. "True guise" is an oxymoron. 

Next up: THE HALL OF MASKS!

Nothing says "quality foe able to take on a godlike being like the Martian Manhunter" than "scared in the Tunnel of Thrills".

At least they saved these props to use later when J'onn started to combat the Idol-Head of Diabolu.

Okay, there is a secret exit in the tunnel, so the crooks plan to use it for their escape makes sense.  Unlike what actually happens.
 

This is clearly a special effect and not an actual threat.

I hate when J'onn does this.

Clearly, just more of the SAME special effect. In an amusement park ride designed to be full of them.  What is wrong with these people? They live in a town with giant robot bears and moth-copters, why are they so easily frightened?

That is, when J'onn goes to great lengths for most of a story to stay hidden and then decides at the end of the story that the solution to his problem is... to stop hiding.  

Now would be a great time to jump out of the boat and head for that secret exit, boys.

Turns out that's all J'onn had to do; put on a one-man strobe light show (like the disco queen that he is) to completely FREAK OUT these hardened criminals, who instead of following their escape plan, run out of the tunnel.

Right into the arms of burly Officer Mike Hanson.  Not that I blame them.

Why didn't they assume the images of J'onn were part of the tunnel's thrills? I dunno. Why didn't they use their secret exit? I dunno.  What did J'onn really accomplish with his spook show? I dunno. 

"Good! Because it's my day off!"

It's a Martian Manhunter story.  In a Martian Manhunter story, everything happens for the same reason; to create an opportunity to force J'onn to use his vague set of abilities in some new and unusual way in a different setting. That, at heart, is why the Martian Manhunter never became very popular.  The "Martian Manhunter" seemed more like party game that writers were playing rather than a set of ongoing challenging adventures of a consistent character in a broadening and increasingly detailed world.

Speed Saunders tells you he was right;
John Jones tells you you were wrong.

The Carnival of Doom, Part 2: The J'onzz Corollary

So, the bad guy has engineered a crack in the track of the mechanical horse that John Jones and Willy are riding on at Wonderland, and we listed a few of the, oh, 17 or so reasonable ways J'onn could use his powers to fix the situation so that it no longer threatens (assuming that it really IS that big of a threat).

Of course, J'onn uses none of those, because he never does anything obvious or sensible, or even comprehensible.  Instead, he adheres to the Martian Prime Directive:

"All problems that can be solved by spinning must be solved be spinning."

Galileo said, "Measure what is measurable and make measurable what is not so." J'onn is the Galileo of Martian culture and his motto is, "Spin what is spinnable and make spinnable what is not so."  This is the J'onzz Corollary to the Martian first principle.

Yes. It hardened. Immediately. With no cooling application of Martian breath required.  Sigh.

So, with a child's life at stake, J'onn decides to... do nothing. Not even spin.

Yeah, Willy is wearing the same outfit he was wearing when introduced so... John was on the night shift.

This is not at all the only way to find out, but it is the way that J'onn chooses so that he and Willy can be put in danger again as soon as possible, because, well, his stories are really short. The bad guys oblige.

You could have robbed the box office and left by now.

Dick Dastardly goes to set another trap for John and Willy.

Really? The plane ride is 5 cents cheaper than the horse ride?

It's been a while so you may not remember that planes in Apex City invariably FALL. And amusement park planes are no different.

Second verse, same as the verse.

Again, JJ/MM has to figure out some way to fix the situation without Revealing His Secret Identity. Really, he does this kind of thing every day, you think he'd be better at it.  Obviously the situation calls for Martian breath, because everything you don't solve with spinning you solve with Marshalation.  

I wouldn't call it "super-breath" out loud, MM, or you're likely to get a letter from Clark's lawyers.

So, John falls out of the falling plane and manages to land FASTER than the plane does, rolls away somewhere to change form/become invisible with still enough time to use his sup--Martian breath to guide the plane to safety.  Those planes must have an impressive glide path for park rides.

DO 
NOT
LOOK
at the assembled flock at gawking Apexians forming a unified but many-headed blob in the background, if you ever want a good night's sleep again.

Meanwhile, the crooks are adhering to their strict time table and have robbed the box office, even though John's not dead yet.

Hot pursuit!

"Nothing can stop our getaway through the Tunnel of Thrills!"
You'd think saying it OUT LOUD would make you realize how ridiculous it sounds.

Now that the source of the danger is evident, it's clearly incumbent upon John to ditch Willy, which, clearly, he doesn't because Martians do not think the way we do and besides, you know he's seen all six original "Lone Wolf and Cub" films and has sidekick envy.  

Just spin the kid away, JJ.

To his credit, John THINKS about leaving Willy behind. But Willy is already in the boat and-- somehow-- John is powerless to change this. In the same way that once the mechanical horse track was damaged, John couldn't STOP the ride, he had to go through with it. John can never change or avoid his circumstances; he has to overcome them somehow. My theory is that Speed Saunders and the Martian Manhunter are sort of conceptual opposites and this is one of the reasons I was inspired to visit Apex City again.

Speed Saunders is, superficially, a perfectly ordinary man with no special power or ability.  But he doesn't need them because he has meta-textual authority.  Speed unknowingly controls the reality of his narrative: his hunches will come through, bullets will not hit him if he does not wish it, people will confess if he wants them to, evidence will be deposited on his dinner table, and answers will appear in the closest book if he needs them to.  The world arranges itself AROUND Speed Saunders.

"I shot the fourth wall because I found it inconvenient. You have a problem with that?"

The Martian Manhunter is perfectly extraordinary, with every special power and ability.  But he needs them all because the narrative will always conspire against him.  Meteors fall right next to him, everything around him bursts into flame, his secret identity is under constant threat of exposure, and the writers force him to use his powers in the least simple way possible.  The world arranges itself AGAINST J'onn J'onzz.  

It's always something, isn't it, J'onn?

I think if I wrote Martian Manhunter, I would have Speed Saunders do occasional walk-ons as a visiting detective who unintentionally makes John look like a fool every time he shows up and solves a case while John gets himself trapped in a broom closet.

Anyway, John is now STUCK with Willy as he tries to follow the crooks into the Tunnel of Thrills, so tomorrow we'll see how that goes.

Hint: it will NOT be thrilling.

The Carnival of Doom, Part 1: Peachy Rides

 What's this?

A comic book amusement park? Where? 

We can't be in Star City, because we know what the name of their amusement park is.  Are we in Gotham City? Wonderland would certainly be an appropriate venue for the Batman villain The Mad Hatter!  

But no. You see, I am temporarily overwhelmed with trying to keep up with the godlike Speed Saunders, who, with his reality-bending powers, meta-textual reading habits, and transquartomuralistic lectures, is like the love-child of Grant Morrison and Dr. Manhattan. So I decided to spend some time with a much less powerful, more down to earth character, with more comprehensible abilities and reasoning.

So here we are in his town, APEX CITY, about to attend:

Note: this story contains no actual doom.

And a lower-stakes, less exciting adventure you will never have!

It begins in the office of hardy Captain Harding, the weighty head of the Apex City Police Department, where he and Detective John Jones (the human guise of J'onn J'onzz, the Martian Manhunter) are... being held up!

Judging by the height, it must be Arnold Hugo.

No, it's not Prof. Arnold Hugo; it's just Captain Harding's scamp of a nephew, Willy.

Captain Harding's a big man, and his Willy is quite a handful.

Sometimes I am little torn as to whether early MM stories are more Golden Age than Silver Age, but incidents like this cinch it. MM is clear Silver Age because if this were the Golden Age, the cops would have answered Willy with a hail of bullets and then, though exonerated for their natural (over-)reaction, they'd be burdened with guilt for killing Willy, until the end of the story after they'd tracked down the sidewalk swindlers that were selling kids realistic-looking toy guns, who were REALLY to blame.

J'onn, being a suck up, volunteers to take Captain Harding's Willy in hand to the amazing local amusement park that's never been mentioned before and never will  be again.  Besides, as we've repeatedly established, he never has anything else to do, and like the rest of Apex's citizens, spends most of his time wandering the streets.

In comic books, all white children are red-heads. And brain-dead.  And Jimmy Olsen is their god.

Check your watches; the story says John just got off duty, yet he's volunteering to take Willy to Wonderland for the day, which means... it's the morning and John had the night shift?  Or maybe he means the next day.  Congratulations, you have already put more thought into this story than the author.

Once at Wonderland, they look at the peachy rides.

For you modern folk unfamiliar with retroslang; this is really not how someone would have used the word "peachy".  Willy would not have called the rides "keen".  He would have described the opportunity to go on them as "peachy". "Would you like to go on the rides?"; "Gosh, yes! That would be peachy!" Concrete things are not peachy; only abstracts are peachy. 

Heed my retroslang warning. If you time-travel for any reason to the Golden or Silver Age and use "peachy" incorrectly, the cops will answer you will a hail of bullets, knowing you are an imposter. And they will NOT be guilt-burdened by it.

Those peachy rides include:

The Vertical Geodesic Dome

Sure, it takes a while to climb, but the view of Rainbow Beach is worth it

The Salt Shaker of the Future

Officially, the "NaCl Dispensotron"

The World's Second Largest Roulette Wheel

If you have to ask where the largest one is, then you don't read enough comics.

The rides are nice, I'm sure, but probably superfluous since, as we know, the main thing that Apexians enjoy is simply FLOCKING, and the fairgrounds give them plenty of room to do that. But they do like to gawk, so I guess the rides give them something to gawk at. 

But, despite the enormity of the area and the apparent distance between the two word balloons, it seems that...

evildoers are within earshot!

Uh-oh; that's not peachy at all.

You have to respect comic book crooks; they are COMMITTED. Once they make a plan, buddy, they do not put it off.

Criminals are an orderly, OCD lot.

Delay our heist by a day? Or even just a few hours? Don't be absurd; we'll just kill a cop and a kid; it'll be a great distraction! Besides, do know what a headache it will be to change this in our group planner?  Do you how hard I worked on those Gantt charts, Larry?! This is why I'm the one with the PMP, Larry.

Besides, these guys have "special clothes and tools".  ORLY?!  First of all, you're robbing an amusement park office, not an underwater bank vault. Second... you're in Apex City.  The bar for "special clothes and tools" is pretty high.  Do you have a crime suit that shoots flame and electricity out its nipples? Do you have a giant robot bear? Do you have a thematically-shaped helicopter, headgear, or a special ray-gun?  If not, you may want to think about relocating somewhere more appropriate, like Star City.

Where "a bag of rocks" qualifies as a special tool.

Let's see what their first plan is.

You know what Batman did in this issue of Detective? He and Robin went to the State Fair, where they boarded a rocket ship ride, which turned out to be real, then went to the planet Tora where he led a revolution against a dictator, while giving two depressed Earthers new leases on life.  Because he's Batman. Meanwhile, omnipowerful Martian J'onn is trying to surviving a mechanical horse ride while babysitting.

Oh, okay; they're going to kill the Martian Manhunter with a mechanical horse.  Is it a giant one designed by Prof. Ulixes and filled with Greek soldiers? Does it breathe Greek fire?

Oh, THAT'll do it.

Good luck with that, Dick Dastardly; I doubt that would even kill WILLY.  How fast do such things go?  What is this, Final Destination 3?

Naturally, J'onn even SEES the trap in advance. Wouldn't want him to have to strain himself.  Besides he needs time to come up with some ludicrous solution to his problem.

"How can I, with my panoply of superpowers, avert a crack-up, without giving away my identity to little Willy?"

Let's see, J'onn, it's hard to remember what powers you are supposed to have at any point but if NOTHING ELSE... you could FALL off the horse with Willy, taking the brunt of the fall yourself. You can do that without even being Martian.  

I know you can't fly. Can your Martian vision melt the rails together yet? Maybe you can't do that yet.  With a bit a Martian breath (which you can direct with unerring accuracy) you could probably just lift the horse past the crack.  Or you use your legs (or Martian breath) to slow down the horse as it approaches, passing it off as a failure of the ride.  

In fact, now that I think of it, there is only one way, one power that could be of absolutely no use to you whatsoever in addressing this situation....

Aerial Espionage, Part 3: I Thought You Were Rather Dumb

When we last left Speed, the timbers of the burning, exploded house were falling all around in the basement, where he lay trapped by his bonds.

But, in the interests of time, Speed willed away his bonds in between panels, or just silhouetted out of them.

Escaping through the house is impossible because Speed says so.

One must not let soot besmirch the Face of Judgement.

So he escapes through the cellar window, which you'd kind of think would have been his first instinct anyway.

What do you mean "how am I to chase them?"
Use the Speedmobile. Your car is parked outside, you JUST told Kelvey that while you were tied up. Did they evaporate it? Did that, too, happen off panel?

For some reason we mere readers are not privy to, Speed's Speedmobile is not available to him, even though he drove there in it.  But, you know, I'm okay with that, because it gives us this, one of the most perfect Speed Saunders panels of all time.

I really want Old Speed Saunders to start showing up in random modern stories and doing things like this. Not as a way of contributing to any story, mind you.  Just as comfort food for my soul.

An authority figure approaches Speed out of the blue; Speed takes command of him by identifying himself and begins giving him absurd orders with zero further explanation.  It's sublime.

It's like Speed is practicing for a beat poetry competition.

"Watch for spies along the road." Yeah, you can recognize spies because they are the ones carrying goldfish.  The mad god Saunders continues his reign of absurdity at the railroad station as he exercises authority over a train conductor WHO CANNOT POSSIBLY KNOW HIM.

I mean, he's not even wearing the white fedora.

The mad god is, well, mad now and Major Kelvey's larger typeface won't save him from Speed's power of performative utterance as Speed prepares to STATE his way to victory:

EMPHATIC PUNCH-YOU-ATION!

Through force of will and impending deadlines, Speed generates another safeybelted authority figure to take charge of Major Kelvey, because that's not the kind of thing you can leave to train conductors, snazzy though their uniforms may be.

I don't really know what "parcel post" is, but I know it exists on a lower level of reality.

Speed descends to the lower level of reality that is "Parcel Post" where he finds the escaping goldfish along with their accomplice:  THE COLONEL!

Apparently, his name was "Jacks", although this is the first time we learn it.

Okay, sit back in your chair and prepare for THE SPEED-EXPLANATION.

Don't worry; nothing you do will help it make any sense.

If Fred Guardineer had drawn this, all fish would have little black marks on them. Everything would.

Spend some time thinking about how hard it would be to paint coded message on goldfish; now, continue and watch as Speed summons a police car from the ether.

"And all you had to do was train the goldfish to stay in the right order. Why, with several characters per fish, you would only need several hundred fish to send a coherent message. I'm surprised the boys at IBM haven't started using them in their differential engines."

Once Speed explains it all to you, don't just you feel stupid?

"I was going to tell you so at the time, but I didn't know your name."

It ends, as it so often does: with us learning that Speed was just guessing, but it turned out okay because naturally...

he was right.