Society Signatures: Sandman

Well, now that I've gotten an entry from Green Lantern's repertoire for my possible use as a signature saying, I'll call on another mystery man: The eerie Sandman!

What do you have to offer me, Wesley?

Uh ... okay. Thanks. But doesn't that need something else, like "A plane! A lifesaver! No, it's Scipio!"? I mean "A Plane! A Lifesaver!" sounds more like an unfinished palindrome than a signature saying, Wes. Let's try again...


Whoa, sorry, Wes; didn't mean to interrupt one of your opium/absinthe binges; glad I wore the glove. Besides, I'm not really a gas-inhaling, Miraclo-popping kind of guy, so I don't think I'll find that saying very useful.

Don't you have something a little, I dunno, punchier? Something more appropriate for a guy like me, that I can find occasions to say?

Bingo! Thanks, Wes!

Society Signatures: Dr. Fate

Having surveyed offerings from Green Lantern, Sandman, the Spectre, and Hourman, I'm still on my search for a new signature saying.

Next up at bat is the mysterious Dr. Fate, occult master of the ancient mystic arts!

I'm thinkin' Doc's helmet's on just a little too tight, if ya know what I mean.

Okay, gotta hand it to you, Doc; that's definitely mysterious. But I want something more "Dr. Fate" and less "Mr. Wizard".

You take that helmet off this instant, Jack Kirby!

I'm as patriotic as the next fellow, probably more so. But I don't think "Let's go, Americans!" is going to work for me as a signature saying. Particularly not if it requires me to lurch about flanked by beknickered Bowery Boys.

Care to try again, Doc?

If you think it's bad having to play horsey for Dr. Fate when he's feeling spunky, sweetie,
wait'll you get to prison.

That's more like it! An ancient spellification with some Classical reference and a little "ride 'em, cowboy" action? Very much my style.

But I'm afraid for general utility, I'm still going to have to choose as Dr. Fate's entry his statement from last week:


It's hard to beat that for combining the mundane and the bizarre. Plus, I can say it all the time, and all anyone can do about it is smile. Even if I'm staring into a closet when I say it.

Society Signatures: STARMAN!

Starman.

Or, rather,

STARMAN!

Why didn't I think of it sooner? Starman solves all problems. Starman is the ne plus ultra. Starman will supply me with a new signature saying.

In his later years, Starman used to spend weekends dancing at the disco with his Twin Twirling Pick-Axes of Fabulousness. In fact, Kyle Rayner lost one of his girlfriends that way.

That's a fairly fun phrase, but it doesn't really work unless one is spinning a pick-axe in each hand. Try getting on the Metro that way.

Let's give it another try, shall we?

When your life is as DRAMA-filled as Starman's, you develop the kind of nonchalance that classifies an attacking squadron of enemy planes as "some mischief".

Well, that's fine, but a bit generic.

Hm. This isn't what I was hoping for. I need something different. Something special. Something that only Starman could come up with...



Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. End of contest. Not only is

"Hit the ground! This is going to be oomphy!"

my new signature phrase, I hereby offer it to the world. Everyone deserves to be saying "Hit the ground! This is going to be oomphy!". When your spellchecker doesn't like it, just add it to the dictionary, as I just did.

Shut your trap, you stupid bullethead;
it's a Starman-y word.

Sean Helps Us Express Ourselves

The esteemed Sean Whitmore over at the fun-filled Snark-Free has broken ground on discussing the function of superheroic exclamations, such as Superman's inappropriate "Great Rao!" I mean, you know Clark's a Lutheran, what the heck is he spouting Great Rao for? What a poseur. Hick that he is, Superman should be shouting "Tarnation" or "Land's sakes" every time a giant monster threatens Townsville, um, sorry, I mean, Metropolis. If he had said natural stuff like that early on, Lex Luthor would have fallen over laughing while attempting to use his molecular decoupling ray and accidently atomized himself into his constituent elements.

Naturally, as a villain, I'll now steal Sean's idea. Hopefully, this will anger Sean enough to seek revenge, sew up a themed costume off-panel, and repair to a hideout in the abandoned warehouse district, because, you know, there just aren't enough of us villains in the world.

I'll contribute a little terminology to the discussion. Things like "Great Rao", let's call those Signature Exclamations. These were big stuff in Silver Age Superman particularly, where even supporting characters got them (Jimmy said "Jeepers!", Perry said "Great Caesar's ghost!", and Lois said "Oh, Mister Grant!")

Signature Exclamations are not to be confused with Battle Cries. Battle Cries are very Marvel. Once of the differences between Marvel and DC is that DC favors Signature Exclamations and Marvel favors Battle Cries.

DC characters live in a world where you and another superguy (who you think is your brother, but isn't) will be playing softball with some boulders in the middle of a field but fail to notice (despite super-vision powers) that nearby is a giant jack-in-box left by gargatuan alien children, until two enormous flame-spouting heads leap out of it attempting to fry off of you the nice playsuit your adopted mother made for you out of old baby blankets. This is a world where one must be prepared to be surprised regularly, so one or more signature exclamations are simply a necessary expedient to make it through the day. You can't say "what th--?" every time someone hits you with an imperfect duplicator ray, you know, or you start to look stupid to the readers.

Marvel characters, on the other hand, live in a world where, because 14,746 superbeings all live on a small island off the coast of New York, you can't even go to the drugstore to get your sick aunt the medicine you can't afford to buy her without running to a battle already in progress that has destroyed at least one city block and more lives than any real-world terrorist attack (but which isn't as good for sales). What's the point of saying "Suffering Spiderwebs!" when no one can hear you, the supertypes being busy hitting one another with flagpoles and mailboxes like a Herolix game, and the normal types being busy bleeding and rotting. For such occasions only a rousing Battle Cry of "Pretenders, Resemble!" or "Exordior!" will do.

Oh, there are some Battle Cries in DC, but they only prove the point. "Titans, Together!" is so cringeworthily Marvelesque that even the animated Titans series thought it too juvenile to use. It was also too hard for Puny Bunny Tummy, or whatever their names are, to sing. And what could be more "Marvel" than the Wolfman-era Titans?

Signature Exclamations must also be distinguished from Denominative Epithets, which drip from the pages of the DCU like drool from the mouths of those who read Even Rude lyrics. The Caped Crusader. The Last Son of Krypton. The Clown Prince of Crime. The King of Conundrums. The Maid of Steel. The Fastest Man Alive. The Emerald Gladiator. The Pinioned Paladin. The Boy Wonder. And, my personal favorite: The Dominoed Daredoll.

Villains, naturally, get their own special prosodical term: the emotionally satisfying Villainous Invectives. "Super-fools!" "Batsaps!" "Puny humans!" "Insolent wretch!" "My fine-feathered finks!" "Pusillanimous ninnies!" "Nattering nabobs of negativism!" Start working these mal mots into your daily conversation and I guarantee that, while you may lose your job, you'll regain your self-respect enough to seek revenge, sew up a themed costume off-panel, and repair to a hideout in the abandoned warehouse district.

Okay! Clear my calendar!

In Saturday's discussion on "What gives a series impact?", the subject of catchphrases came up (and was oddly re-emphasized by last night's TV Land airing of "the Top 100 TV Catchphrases!").

For me, the entire issue took a step up when commenter "Tadwilliams" said:

"(An aside: Jack Benny's signature joke, the "I'm thinking!" joke, seems like it's a tagline, but it's not -- it's a character piece. It works best because we feel we "know" Benny and how lovably stingy he is.)"

Now, I think it's fair to say that Tad knows something about writing (including dialog) because he writes books. Big books. Books so big that, really, if you're not careful, you can hurt someone with them. So I thought a bit extra about what he was saying.

What he's saying about Jack Benny reminds me of the series "Monk". Until I saw a "making of" show about it, I never realized that Mr. Monk has not just one but around seven or eight "catchphrases", and that he says most of them in every single episode. Yet I had never noticed.

Why? It could be simply because I'm unobservant (not a good trait if you're watching "Monk"). But I'd like to think it's because they seem to flow from his character and not vice versa. Because the actor doesn't say them as catchphrases, just as things his character says alot without realizing it.

Literature aside, every real person does in fact have pet phrases, characteristic constructions, and favorite words. Not coincidently, the previous sentence contains three of my own:

1. an 'Ablative Absolute' construction ("literature aside");
2. the phrase "does in fact"; and
3. a Ciceronian triadic sequence (always giving three examples of anything you are talking about, arranged in parallel construction).

Each one of those is something that happened to my English writing because of studying so much Latin. So very much Latin. More than Latin than decent people should know.

Anyway, a good dialogist understands this phenomenon and uses it to his advantage. I remember reading a book once (a murder novel set at my college) where alongabout Chapter 3 the author stopped identifying which of the four main characters was speaking. It was many chapters later before I noticed it; you simply knew who was talking by the way they said things. A good writer gives each characters his or her own voice.

A not-so-good writer does not, and its one of those things an editor can't help much with. You can help somebody fix their plot, but if they can't write good dialog themselves, there's not much to be done (other than completely re-writing all spoken words and unspoken thoughts). I remember a good and well-read friend of mine, a talented musician, stage performer, and leader of men (an Air Force colonel, in fact), who was writing a book and wanted me to take a look at it for him with a critical eye. The plot was interesting, but everyone in the book spoke exactly the same way: the same way my friend did, right down to his pet phrases, characteristic constructions, and favorite words.

I finally couldn't help myself when I got to the Vatican scene (don't ask), in which the Pope says,

"Okay; clear my calendar."

After I picked myself up off the floor and started breathing again, I said in a loving and supportive way,

"Bob, the Pope does not say 'okay, clear my calendar',
or anything like it in whatever his native language is."

So great an impact did the event have on me (and some of his other friends) that to this day "okay, clear my calendar" remains one of our catchphrases.

"Catchphrases", I suppose, are the fastfood version of giving a character his own voice, a shortcut. Nor are they an Evil Peculiar To Our Modern Degraded Age. Dickens, for example, is loaded with them; Bah, humbug!

Now, it would be nice if it were possible for DC's iconic characters to speak with their own individual voices. That's pretty hard to do, when so many different people write those characters and when, through much of their history, no one saw a need to give each hero a distinct personality, let alone an individual voice to go with it. Take any old JLA story and draw the word balloons going to different characters; except for references to their powers, it won't make much difference.

Occasionally, a catchphrase will accrete to a character, such as Superman's "Up, up, and away!", Robin's "And how!", or Hal Jordan's "So ... you're a stewardess, eh?". In DC, however, catchphrases are usually confined to Signature Epithets, as we've previously discussed. In Marvel, there's a greater tradition of dialog individuation, but it's usually just hollow ethnic dialects or lumpy archtypes like Brainspeak and Lugspeak. I swear, just reading a conversation between Reed Richards and Ben Grimm makes me wish my eyes were deaf.

Still, in group books, it becomes really painful when all the characters are speaking with the same voice, particularly when you suspect (or know) that it's the voice of the author. In fact, there are a few DC books right now that are suffering from the problem; I'm not going to name names, but I'm not going to stop you from doing so.

All this said, who do you think are DC's best and worst dialogers, judging them with a particular ear toward giving their characters individual voices?

The Shield: Who He Is, and How He Came to Be, III

And now the final segment of the origin of ... THE SHIELD!


When last we left the Shield's origin, Joe Higgins, having discovered the secret of the SHIELD formula, strapped himself down on the Table of Pain and Pleasure for 12 hours to become THE SHIELD.

Forget exploding planets and bats in the study. THIS is an origin panel, people.

With no one to witness it except his faithful sidekick, the Green Chinese Lamp, Joe Higgins transforms into THE SHIELD. Even more amazing, the fluoroscopic rays interact with the chemicals to dye his blank costume into an American flag pattern, to which he need only add stars.

What are the odds?

Joe tests his powers as the Shield using every-day objects you find around the house, such as....

The Flame RoomThe Kodak Insta-matic Machine GunThe Crushy-Walled Room and International Shadows Project InstallationAnd, last but not least...

the World's Largest Open WindowNo doubt a souvenir of his Dad's stint in Cy Coleman's Defenestration Follies of 1940.

Now confident in his superpowerhood, the Shield reveals himself to J. Edgar Hoover by changing clothes in front of him. And, no, I will not show you the panels; this is a family blog.

This is followed by an extended sequence of setting a trap for bad guys, then beating the crap out of them and hanging them off flagpoles, in order to reach the Big Bad: Hans Fritz.

As previously mentioned, the action quotient in Shield stories is high, but the level of discourse is not. So when Fritz escapes via a trap door (inGENious!), the Shield has clearly not yet prepared himself with a signature saying (as I have).

"Hey!" Joe, you really are a stupid American swine.

So, Joe simply kicks in the trap door with his famous pointy-toes of justice, then goes skittering along the underground passageway looking for all the world like Penelope Pitstop running from the Hooded Claw:

Then the Shield captures Hans Fritz in one of the great comic book sequences of all time...

First of all, to get out of the passageway, Joe doesn't just remove the exit door with his superstrength. No, no. This is THE SHIELD we're talking about here. To the Shield, there's only one way to deal with such an obstacle:

If Geoff Johns does not at some point reveal that the Shield is related to Hal Jordan, it shall be a tragically missed opportunity.

Follows then the Shield's patented "running leap at a plane taking off" maneuver.

Washington trivia: During the '30s and '40s, there were entire neighborhoods where all the buildings were yellow, orange, and lime because no one could afford any other colors.

The villain, however, is unimpressed and says the Golden Age equivalent of, "So, hang on the plane; whatever, dude." Then the Shield pulls another Shieldtastic trick that ranks just below setting himself on fire and launching himself at an enemy ship:

Props to you, Joe.

Maybe somebody else has done that, but I've never seen it. And did they do it with their legs, while humping a nosecone and snarking? I think not. The Shield rocks, people.

Having captured the men who framed his father, Joe offers his on-going services to J. Edgar Hoover, who accepts, provided Joe passes his "examination". Ahem.

Subtext? What subtext?

And so was born.... THE SHIELD.

Things That Made Me Happy...

in my comics this week.

• Okay, I'll admit it: I didn't know who Charles Bukowski was either.
• Only Cliff Steele would say, "Typical" at that point.
• Yes... what is a human life, balanced against a perfectly cooked omelette?
• Batman discovers that Moscow ain't Gotham.
• "At least they're about how fairness and justice still prevail in the world, and that's important these days." Hear, hear.
• Really, it surprisingly anyone is allowed to build a Ferris wheel or a roller coaster in the DCU anymore, because it's always just a matter of time... .
• Eddie's sex-change shortcut.
• I'm amazed that I've been made to care so much about Kryptonian politics.
• Heh. Now THAT is Artemis.
• The Human Flame versus Miss Army Knife. Guess who wins?
• Whoa. DP kicks butt.
• The Gotham laws about important conversations.
• Lookalikes. In flavors.
• Free will override? Heh. That's the Chief's work alright.
• Alura does her job.
• It's good that someone remembered Jay's friends. But that was a cheap and unnecessary way to do so. I officially disapprove.
• "I eat impossible for breakfast and crap out unicorns!" is my new signature saying.
• Rita and Karen as friends. That makes perfect sense!
• Black holes that negotiate.
• Really, of all the sentences I've read lately, "C'est le chlore, un element chimique gazeux!" was among the least likely.
• Mr. Polka Dot's ironic fate.
• Wow. A riot of Kryptonians is not a pretty thing. Unless it's drawn really really well.
• Kanigher Street, indeed.
• Zummazumma, the Living Doll. Priceless.
• Ah. Banshee. That's makes perfect sense.
• Wow. James Robinson remembers how Ray and Freddy know each other. Impressive.
• Mr. Bateman. Lord, I nearly fell out of my chairing laughing at that.
• I LOVE Copper.
• Say, what you like; it's good to see Congo Bill again.
• I actually had to look up 'furikake'.
• That's from Dante's Inferno, by the way. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter."
• 26-th dimensional hypergriffins. Really, want more do you want?
• I, too, am still unhappy with my fricatives.
• Skelecopter. Priceless.
• "This a job for Superman." If you are not reading World of New Krypton, I call thee fool.

More Fun (without Green Arrow)

 Our story begins as all the best Green Arrow stories do: without Green Arrow.

And yet people are still booing.

Actor Richard Bright thinks people don't like him any more because his looks have faded, when the more obvious conclusion is that he was always a crappy actor who used to get by on looks.

Certainly not the kind of thing that would ever happen to Green Arrow.

So, instead of honing his craft and developing a second-stage career as a character actor, the inappropriately named Bright decides to go with the Sensational Cure-All of 1942: plastic surgery.

Paul Sloane would like a word with you, Richard, about keeping things in perspective.

Fortunately for Richard, Professor Angel, director of the world-famed Angel Hospital, is eager to help.

"Meanwhile, may I offer you some refreshments? Perhaps some Microscope Under Glass...?"

Unfortunately for Richard, Professor Angel's services are a total scam.

Professor Angel's chipper tsk-tsk smells like a signature saying.  Do we have a recurring GA foe in the making...?!

There's often a point early on in Golden Age stories where all common logic must be thrown out the window in order for the reader to proceed.  As in, what kind of crime can be more profitable than actually running a legitimate plastic surgery business?

"NOW I'm going to get RICH. I have a has-been pretty-boy actor at my disposal!"

So, these imprisoned saps in backless hospital gowns agree to their captor's demands to come up with some half-assed, cobbled-together crimes to make him richer than the owner of a plastic surgery clinic.

What better help could a criminal mastermind want than three random disfigured civilians with zero experience in doing crimes? It's foolproof, I tell you!

The first guy uses his expertise in trucking to help them hijack a rubber tire shipment.

It's the FRAME that really makes the mirror hilarious, like they borrowed it from Apache Chief's bathroom.  How much do you think that whole set-up cost? Less than a truckload of tires...?

Ah, the preferred target of Golden Age heists: SHIPMENTS. If you can't snap a payroll, go after a shipment (actually payrolls ARE shipments... of cash).  Golden Agers weren't lazy like you modern criminals, with your cryptocurrencies and micro-transactions.  They robbed big SHIPMENTS of STUFF, like rubber tires, to sell on the black market. 

Never forget that Two-Face was not above stealing shipments of chewing gum.

Shipments of random products were the cryptocurrency of the day.  And this particular day was during World War II where rubber was in high demand and short supply (what with the Japanazis having taken over most of the rubber-producing countries of the Pacific and the war effort requiring so much rubber for military vehicles and the like).  So, as ridiculous as stealing a truckful of tires sounds to us now, it make more sense at the time. Certainly more sense than chewing gum.

So, obviously the plan is to use the mirror to make the truck drivers think another truck is coming toward them, causing them to slam on the brakes; thus stopped, the truck drivers can be forced to disembark at gunpoint, with the thieves making off with a truckful of valuable tires.  All very tidy, and with no bloodshed!

Oh. Or that instead.

Oh, right; what was I thinking? This is the Golden Age, and body count MATTERS.  

Gotta say; that's an AWESOME scream. Poor Wilhelm!

"This is horrible!" says the guy whose idea it was to lower a giant mirror in front of an oncoming truck on a curvy cliffside roadway.  Some trucking expert he turned out to be; now, I guess, they'll just CARRY a ton of tires away by hand. What a haul!

Gotta admire Professor Angel's sang-froid about (indirectly) causing such a hideous accident and their potential booty lying in a flaming blood-covered heap of twisted metal at the bottom of a cliff; this guy definitely has the makings of a good long-term Green Arrow foe.–

As you may have already guessed, Professor Angel has three stooges to set up the standard Golden/Silver Age tripartite structure of encounters (1. Villain successfully steals and gets away; 2. Villain's theft is foiled but he still gets away; 3. Hero foils theft and captures villain).    This is the first encounter, but, this being a Green Arrow story, he's nowhere to be found and is probably lounging on his sofa watching--

Oh, gods help me...

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").