The Newer 49

So, today we finally got a clearer picture of just what DC is doing after the Big Stall (I'm sorry, I meant "Convergence"), from this interview with Dan Didio et al.:

When June arrives and DC Comics launches 24 new titles while shaking up the status quo on it biggest characters, there will be two major points of emphasis: A new weight on story, and a drive for different flavors.
“We’re updating the line, but selectively,” said co-publisher Jim Lee. “So rather than having 52 books all in the same continuity and keeping a universe that’s tightly connected with super-internal consistency and one flavor, we’ve broken it up. We’ll have a core line of about 25 books that will have that internal consistency and will consist of our best-selling books, but then the rest of the line of about 24 titles will be allowed to shake things up a bit.”
In short, you could call DC’s June (and July; as six of the 24 new titles — Cyborg, Dark Universe, Martian Manhunter, Mystik U, and Justice League United — will debut one month later) a “soft relaunch” of 2011’s 'New 52.'" The New 52 started 52 DC titles over with new #1 issues and a single universe.
Old guard titles such as Batman, Superman, and Justice League will continue—with major changes promised in all three, including an “all-new Batman” who appears armored—and be joined by standbys such as Harley Quinn, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, and more
And there is much excitement over new titles with different points of view such as We Are Robin (a “crowdsourcing” of Robin), Prez (about a teenage girl elected President of the United States), and Bizarro (a title dedicated to Superman’s highly imperfect double).
DC will give readers a massive free sample, with 8-page stories for all 49 books, ongoings and new #1s both, available in May titles. The 8-pagers will also be made available for free via DC’s website and digital partners such as comiXology. DC’s Free Comic Book Day, Divergence, will consist of three pivotal 8-page stories.
“The Batman 8-pager will change the status quo of Batman, the Superman 8-pager will change the status quo of Superman, and the Justice League 8-pager will set up the Darkseid War,” said DC Co-publisher Dan DiDio. “So each one of those will have ramifications, as people will expect.”
After the May 2 Free Comic Book Day, 8-pagers will continue in DC’s books throughout the month. “People [will] get a chance to read these books, see the different styles of art, read the different types of stories, and see how we plan to interpret our characters in a new way,” DiDio said. “And hopefully, in doing so, they’ll get excited about the new books when they come out in June. I think this is a necessary tool, and really so valuable to inform out what we have planned for all these books. It gives everyone a chance to sample them in advance before they hit the shelves.”
And when they do, Lee is confident people will see something different.
“We’re really asking the creators to put story and character first, and really focus is on canon, rather than continuity,” Lee said. “By focusing on canon, which is really the stories that matter, the best stories that we tell with these characters that have really got elevated, that’s the history we want to create around these characters. This is an attempt to re-focus the line, focus on story, and let the creators tell their stories without necessarily being confined by the restrictions of ‘continuity,’ which I put in quotation marks.”
DiDio clarified canon versus continuity.  “Perfect examples are if you look at something like Dark Knight Returns or Kingdom Come, which were outside the realm of our normal storytelling,” DiDio said. “Those stories became so powerful that they started to work their way into the continuity. We still have a shared universe, we still have a shared space where these characters can interact. But the main goal is to allow each of these characters to exist on their own, build their own sense of story, their own sense of direction, their own supporting casts, and their own audiences. And when you do that, you build a much stronger foundation for the DC Universe, and ultimately what happens is that as you start to see what works, you can bring audiences and concepts together to expand and cross-pollinate.”
DiDio said that some of that cross-pollination is built on recent DC successes. “You see a book like Black Canary coming out, which expands out of Batgirl,” he said. “There was a sensibility in Batgirl that people got excited about, so we expand that there. Same thing when we see the success of Harley Quinn, we bring that same team over to Starfire. We want to build on success and build outward.”
“Building outward” can sometimes involve building something that’s not right up your own alley.
“When you are overseeing a line like Dan and I do, you have to realize that not everything is going to appeal to your own personal taste,” Lee said. That’s a challenging part of the job. So you have to trust your editors. You hire your editors for their taste, their relationships, and their ability to curate content. And I think they’re done a masterful job for June.”
DiDio thinks the author’s voice is of greatest import.
“What I looked for in talking to [creators] was point of view, something to say,” he said. “I think that’s important these days. My greatest fear is that everything’s getting homogenized. These people have a hunger for these projects, a real passion. I go to Mark Russell on Prez, and he has a hunger for the story he wants to tell. And he feels he has the vehicle now to present what his concerns and interests are through these characters. And when I hear that passion, I get excited.”
“For every Bat-Mite and Bizarro, there’s going to be a Section 8 and an Omega Men, which are probably the hard-hitting side,” DiDio said. “And we’re going with every shade in between. We have to go out and sell every single title individually. Which is what we want, because each book is its own entity, with its own sensibility.”
“[Writer] Garth Ennis probably last worked at DC…10 or 12 years ago?” Lee said. “Him coming back with a book that is just a kind of dark, humorous take on the DC Universe is, well, Garth doing what you expect him to do. And it’s great to have that kind of tonality back in the lineup.”
And in today’s “synergy” world (Hello, Arrow and Flash TV shows!), DC says they’re guided by their own compass.“The material inspires the TV shows,” DiDio says. “The comics here, they set the tone. They don’t attract the same size audience that the shows or the movies do, and we’re aware of that. But what we do is we inspire the people who create those TV shows and movies to look at what we have and use the material that we create to fill their stories. We have to be the leaders. We can’t follow the other medium. We have to be ahead of everybody else.”
Lee sees a tangential link between the different branches of DC Comics and Warner Bros., but stresses that the tail can’t wag the dog.“When we have a character like Black Canary rising to prominence in the Arrow TV show, rather than trying to mirror what they’re doing there, we just want to produce the best version of that character possible,” he said. “I think most fans realize there are multiple versions of anything they’re watching. I mean, the movies get rebooted, there are different actors, different origins…the idea that there’s only one version of that character has really broken down.”
While so much of the focus is on 24 new titles, DiDio stressed to the ongoing creators that their imperative was to step their ongoing game up…and shake things up there as well.  “Every team was challenged, saying, ‘You’ve got to rise above all these new #1s. You’ve got to do something that makes your book stand out. You can’t sit back. Take this opportunity, and do something cool in the ongoing books right there,’” he said. “We’ve got some major storylines in place. The Batman story is going to play across the Batman books. The Superman story is going to play across the Superman books. The Justice League story is going to have little one-shots and things like that that build around it and support it.”
But DiDio also stressed that a line-wide crossover is not in the cards at this point.
“The last thing we want to do right now is cross over a bunch of books while we’re letting them form and shape and find their audience,” he said. “We spoke to the creators and we told everyone we’re giving them some running room to establish themselves and establish the books.”
For his part, Lee hopes the new establishment looks different from the old.
“June is about breaking down whatever perception people have of DC Comics and the DC universe and really just going for broke,” he said. “We should be doing all sorts of different, crazy ideas.”

Allow me to interpret....

DC now perceives some of the mistakes it made in its New52 relaunch and wants to recover from them (without saying "that was mistake").

DC recognizes crossover burnout among readers.

DC recognizes crossovers have been hampering their writers too much.

DC admits that it's not really good at maintaining continuity and that it's probably not that important since readers only care about the stories they really like.

DC realizes that an environment of constant crossovers requires being good at maintaining continuity.

DC recognizes that, on the whole, readers are more interested in good stories than in continuity. Or at least, readers and potential new readers who are not aging fanboys.

DC can't help but notice that its teevee shows are knocking it out of the park for both new readers and long time fans

DC's embarrassed by that, or realizes that it should be.

DC is therefore trying to wake up and stark leading the pack on interpretation of their IPs, rather than just being a farm team for Warner Brothers.

DC comics do NOT set the tone for their characters, but they really need to at least look like they do.

DC realizes that they were wrong to have focused in the New52 on simply producing a variety of genres--all of which had the same tone and style.

DC realizes that they were enforcing that tone and style for the sake of a continuity, which people don't care as much about as they thought.

DC, having watched Arrow and Flash, now recognizes just how easy it is to vary the tone of similar source material and how that variation can be a source of Art that is both more interesting and accessible.

DC realizes that, on the whole, it has too many eggs to put in one basket and that a diverse portfolio is a healthy portfolio.

DC realizes that, some 70 years later, the Golden Age writers were correct in giving each characters its own 'world' to inhabit, creating a shared world for them to interact in only when necessary.


How much they UNDERSTAND all these things remains to be seen....
DC, I will see you on the other side of the Convergence.

Aquaman and the Others

Well, Aquaman & The Others has ended.

Prisoner of War must smell like a platoon of dead guys.

No one is more interested in Aquaman getting his due than I.  So I was very excited for him to get a second title.  He'd never had a second title. Heck, usually he doesn't have a FIRST title.

There are many ways they could have gone with a second Aquaman title.  It could have been an extra-continuity anthology title or an alter-continuity 'for-fun' title; that's worked well, for example, with Wonder Woman, who has one of each (Sensation and Wonder Woman '77).  Imagine a title where you could still read stories about Sub Diego, or Thanatos, or even A.J. Curry; imagine a title where you could watch the Marine Marvels  and Tusky take on Queen Vassa or the Lizard People.  

Or The Brain AND HIS NONSTOP HIGH-PITCHED SHRIEKING

But DC is interested in consolidating Aquaman's brand, not diversifying it.

That's why they choose an actor who looks as much like Aquaman as possible. 

So it makes sense that they would try to establish him as a leader on his own, independent of his royalty.  One can only suppose the model for Aquaman & The Others was Batman & The Outsiders: iconic hero leading a loose group of new or secondary characters with no common background.  It probably wasn't the best model to choose...

The Outsiders were not there to make Batman seem cool or become popular.  Batman defines both those terms already.  He was there to increase their visibility and street cred.  And even that didn't work well.  Metamorpho and Black Lighting, both of whom had history, power, and pedigree to be on better teams (such as the Doom Patrol or the Justice League) always seemed like they were slumming.  Halo? Looker? Geo-Force? Yes; well, we can see how well they've done since then.  

It's the Trinity of Fail!
P.S. Did Looker always fly with her arms and legs spread, crotch/boob first? Because that's a bit on point, even for Looker.

Only Katana seems to have stepped to a new level (specifically, "The Level Where You Can Be Used After the Next Reboot or in Another Popular Medium Rather Than a Forgotten Character Forever Tied to a Well-Meant Experiment of a Previous Era").  

Aquaman & the Outsiders gave Aquaman no pre-established heroes to lead; it wouldn't have worked with with the new continuity.  But it posited that Aquaman, when he found out he was the real King of Atlantis, said... "Hm, no, thanks."  Kind of makes Orm seem like less of a jerk, doesn't it?  Instead Arthur went off wilding around the globe with a disparate band of adventurers whom he met by..
whom he met at...
whom he met when.. .

Okay; I give up. Are we supposed to know or even GUESS how a Brazilian jungle woman, a cosmonaut who lives on the moon, an aged American super-spy, a middle eastern prophetess, and Hispanic Ragman all met and became colleagues? Let alone why? 

Sure, the same could be said about the Scooby-Doo Gang, but it's easy to figure it out:
they all live in the same bus.

And what a generic group they were.  I'm fond of them as individuals and grew to (mostly kinda) like them in the series.  Their ethnic diversity was nice, but they were pretty clearly a half-baked boy band of stock figures: Jungle Woman, Superspy, Soldier Man, Cosmonaut, Seer Lady, and Mystic Girl.  Not an A-List boy band, either; the Others are more like "O Town".  Nobody seemed care to enough to give them more imaginative names than 'The Operative" and "Prisoner-of-War" (or, for that matter, "The Others").  But what do you expect from Dan Jurgens, the man who created Doomsday The Living Plot Device?

Not that there was anything wrong with O Town, mind you.

Somehow through Aquaman's royalness, this group discovered ancient relics of Atlantis missing for some 10,000 years and then... divvied them up and kept them.  I guess that's how The Law of Sea Salvage works but, those things really clearly belong to Atlantis. Specifically, to its king: Orm.  I guess you can say that since Arthur is really the king, they are his to do with as he sees fit on behalf of Atlantis. But giving them away to auslanders really shouldn't be one of his choices, particularly once he does return to take the throne.   

Perhaps then it's just being consistent when he gives each of the objects to the person who can use them least.  The guy who already lives in space gets the helmet that lets him live in space; the spy who can espionage into anything gets a key that lets him do the same; the lady who has visions gets the widget that lets her see them in HD; the close combat soldier gets shackles that let him force blast everyone away, and the jungle woman who hates ever leaving her jungle gets the amulet that lets her teleport anywhere in the world (or the moon).  Oh, and the king of Atlantis gets the trident that lets you be king of Atlantis.  

It's never really explain, that I could tell, WHY those relics were made and in that form. Okay the key is a key, the trident is a scepter slash magical bazooka; some make sense.  But why did Atlan make chained shackles that go boom? Pretty convenient for a character named "Prisoner of War" to come along, eh?  Why make a helmet that lets you breath in space or underwater?  Neither of those things were really much of an issue, I should think.  I wanted to read the story where Atlan enacted his master plan that involved using each of those items to retake the throne of Atlantis; did someone forget to tell it?

Then at the end of the series, after they have all proven they don't really need the devices to do their thing, and about to go their separate ways again, Aquaman lets them keeps the relics of Atlantic (which, as the series took eleven issue to show, are NOT safe in their hands).

Perhaps at some future point, the Others will blossom again, and more fully.  Many characters and groups have short, inauspicious beginnings that laid the groundwork for later comebacks and revisions.  The original run of Firestorm was just five issues (not counting the story in Cancelled Comics Cavalcade); now Firestorm's on live-action teevee.   

Sweet sweet cetacean lovin'

Sometime it just bears repeating:
Wonder Woman is a very strange person.

GIGANTA!

Oh, Giganta.  Such a complicated history.  She started as a gorilla, turned into a human by wacky scientist. Dr. Zool (who was kind of cross between Niles Caulder and Uncle Dudley).

Is there NOTHING hyperatomic energy cannot do?!

No process that puts you in an animal print dress can be deemed a step UP the evolutionary ladder.

Thanks, in part, to the Super-Friends show, Giganta's origins as an ape were set aside (perhaps in deference to Grodd's feelings), and, taking her name literally, made her a size-changer.  It gave Apache Chief something to do. And, yes, that sentence is intentionally ambiguous.

Quality or quantity? Giganta's choice is obvious.

JLU tried to have it both ways, by making Giganta a former ape, tranformed into a size-changing human by Grodd.  

In 1997, she was conflated with her original creator, Dr. Zool, as "Doris Zuel",  who'd brought her size-changing on by her own experimentation.  A neat idea it was, making her more of an independent person, rather than merely the product of some male.  

Ordinarily, there's nothing that could make me even mention this:

This is The Atom and Giganta announcing their engagement.  Yes, really.

If you don't recognize what that's from, I'm certainly not going to tell you.  If you DO, then you have my sympathies.  But it's interesting background to the real subject of this post:

From Gail Simone's bat-shit crazy "All-New Atom" #3 (2006).

Giganta's drive-in movie date with Ryan "the All-New Atom" Choi, where in she seduces him with her subtle sexy-time haiku.

Don't worry, Ryan.

I really like you. You're sweet

and cute as can be.

What haiku can you compose to honor Giganta and/or the Atom?

In (uncharacteristic) defense of Green Arrow

Oh, Vamien McKalin; I have no idea who you are and don't care, but thank you. You made me laugh and laugh and laugh today.

It started with the  headline:

'Arrow' TV Series: Is It Just A Huge Batman Rip-Off? Yeah It Is'

BWHAHAHAHA!  News alert; this just in: SUN SETS IN WEST.  FISH SWIM. POPE IS CATHOLIC. BEAR SHITS IN WOODS.  DC REBOOT IMPENDING.

My first thought was that this must be some kind of parody article, a la The Onion.  Surely no person who exist in the 20th century could criticize the aboriginal Batman rip-off, Green Arrow, for daring to be... a Batman rip-off.  Heck every CHILD who watched Batman: Brave & the Bold knows that that's kind of the point of Green Arrow.  

But, no, apparently the article is in deadly earnest; so great is the need to fill up the entire internet with commentary and listicles that things like this happen.

" However, the tone seems more like that of Batman rather than Green Arrow," complains Vamien.  

Oh, dear, it's lost the true tone of Green Arrow which is...

is...

um...

oh ,that's right. Green Arrow doesn't have his own tone.  He never has  Whatever the era is, Batman sets the tone and Green Arrow follows it.  That's hardly a criticism of ANY character, let alone Bat-manque' Green Arrow.  Batman is the trendsetter or, at very least, the bellwether of tone in every comic book era.  How much more true should that be for a character has always been RC Cola to Batman's Coca-Cola?

"Now, don't act like what I'm saying is not true. Arrow, ever since it came on the scene, has felt like a complete Batman copy, and that is not good."

Well, Vamien, if by 'ever since Green Arrow came on the scene' you mean More Fun #73 (NOV1941), then... sure.  I'm not going to act like what you're saying is not true.  It's not merely true, it's AXIOMATIC.  The only thing that surprises me about that is how much it surprises YOU.  If only the internet had warned you!  If only Green Arrow's wikipedia entry actually said "At the time of his debut, Green Arrow functioned in many ways as an archery-themed analogue of the very popular Batman character". Oh, wait... it does.

And to my one reader who's about to comment that liberal activist Green Arrow of the Bronze Age was 'completely different' from Batman...  That's the same period where Bruce Wayne decided that he was too isolated from the real world, shut down Wayne Manor, moved into the heart of Gotham City, started taking an active hand in the philanthropy of his own charity, the Wayne Foundation, and started the V.I.P. (Victims, Inc. Program) (Batman #217).  No surprise there, since at the time both characters were being re-imagined by the same writer: Denny O'Neil (although he didn't write that particular Batman issue).  In short, Batman became a 'liberal activist' in late 1969.  Green Arrow's renovation as a bearded social activist? Late 1969.  

"The first sign of this Batman rip-off is the amount of Batman villains that have managed to show up in the series. It makes us wonder if Green Arrow doesn't have interesting villains the team of writers could pick from. This is truly not the case because there are several great Arrow villains and other lesser ones who could do well with live-action screen time. This copy-Batman thing took a strange turn when the writers chose to make Ra's al Ghul the main bad guy in season 3 of the show. I nearly threw my cup of coffee because right away it gave me that Batman feeling. It's not like it wasn't known beforehand that he would appear, but seeing it happening was still shocking."

Well, Vamien; you are easily shocked.  In fact, I'm now operating under the assumption that you've never actually READ a comic book, you just see them on the teevee. First, sloughing secondary villains off onto other heroes is one of the things Batman does; he's got extra, after all.  Every decade, new writers try to make new 'classic' Batman villains, but most of them don't stick as well as the ones with a Golden or Silver Age pedigree.  Ra's Al-Ghul, created by Denny O'Neil (see above), is one of those, an updated Fu Manchu who, long-term, doesn't work well enough in Batman's world to really stick.  But, as it often the case, one man's garbage is another man's gold, and Ra's Al-Ghul is a perfect foil for Green Arrow.; arrows, meet swords.  Meanwhile, Batman's with Superman fighting off an invasion by Atlantis.  You can let Ra's screw up Green Arrow's life as much as you want, but Batman's got more important crap to do.

Second, --wait, I'm sorry, I need a minute to stop laughing at "it makes us wonder if Green Arrow doesn't have interesting villains the team of writers could pick from." Um; no. It makes YOU wonder, Vamien.  The show's already using some of GA's best (but still crappy villains) like Merlyn, Clock King, Brick, Count Vertigo, China White, and Deathstroke (who's a Titan's castoff, you'll recall).  I swear I will buy cable again -- for my entire neighborhood-- if they put The Octopus or Bull's-Eye on television.   Who the heck else are they going to use, Vamien? Onamatopeia?! Carmen Miranda?  Starro? Auntie Gravity?

In all fairness... I get it.  The CW show is a marvelous opportunity to individualize Ollie as a hero, and, in that sense, the degree to which he's just aping Batman is a loss of that opportunity.  But I think they've done a good job of giving Ollie his own world, with characters all his own.  The standouts on the show aren't his villains, but rather his supporting cast, so much so that they've been introduced in the comics themselves.  The fact that it's different from Batman's AT ALL is a credit to the showrunners' work.  Stop worrying about whether GA's fighting leftover villains and be impressed -- as I am -- that he's the medium's inspiration for the Flash, the Atom, and Firestorm.  Face: Green Arrow is television's Batman, because, as Gotham has underscored, Batman is currently simply too BIG to fit on television any more.

So.. I think I get the point Vamien is trying to make.

But he's not the person equipped to make it.

Beware of ice-holes

If you're anywhere on the East Coast then you've been experiencing a disturbingly cold week, with nasty precipitation to boot.  This means you are housebound and probably wondering, "Gosh, isn't there an appropriate Heroclix map I could use under these circumstances?"

Well, now there is: 

LAKE GELID

Golden Gilder fans, you are welcome.

Just like the 'Archipelago' map I posted last weekend, this map uses a hex grid rather than a square one, because it's more fitting with a natural, outdoor environment.  In this case that environment is a snowy ice fishing lake.

While you're reaching for your Heroclix figures of Mr. Freeze, Captain Cold, Killer Frost, the Icicle, et al., note the special features and terrain.  Around the lake itself is a wooded path for playing hide-and-seek with your foes.  The ice terrain itself has a special characteristic: any figure that receives 'knock-back' for any reason is knocked back and extra two squares (because slides farther on the ice, of course).  

On the lake are two ice houses (those are huts that people ice fish from, in case you don't know), which are blocking terrain.  There are also three spots with exposed ice holes, a special type of water terrain which are a unique danger.

Any figure that ends its opponent's turn on one receives an action token as if it were the subject of a successful incapacitation attack.  Basically, you fell in the hole and got all frozed. Naturally, you're not likely to move a figure to do this intentionally; more likely your opponent will try to do something on his turn to move your piece over an ice hole (like cause knock-back or use his fancy telekinesis powers to dunk you).  Brr!  That's when you call him an ice-hole.  For obvious reasons, flyers are immune to this effect.

Aquatic figures are also immune (they don't mind getting wet and cold). But they also get a special bonus!  If they start their turn on an ice hole they can 'teleport' to another unoccupied ice hole (which represents swimming under the ice). Tricky!  How big an advantage will this be? It depends on which figures are in play, doesn't it?  

FLAIR!

Let's talk about ....

Superman's new power.

For those who don't know, in the recent "Ulysses" storyline, Geoff Johns had Superman accidentally discover a new power: SUPER-FLARE!

Although Jeremy Rizza would prefer: super-FLAIR.

"Puhlease!  Once I'm done with this place it'll be SUPERfabulous!
That bitch Bivolo will be green with envy!"

It's like an omni-directional unfocused version of heat vision that basically incinerates everything within an 1/8 of a mile.  In Heroclix terms, if Heat Vision is Ranged Combat Expert, then Super-Flare is Pulse Wave.

First off; sure, it's a little crazy.  But for that matter, so is most of what Superman does.  Heat vision?  Wait, light comes OUT of your eyes instead of.. INTO them? How does that even work?  Freeze breath? Wait, you inhale and then, um, draw the kinetic energy OUT OF it, to make it really cold?  What?  Telescopic vision, and micro--well, you get the idea.  Suffice it to say, "Superman can do the Captain Atom blow up thing, without blowing himself up" is probably more consistent with the rest of his powers than superventriloquism.  Sure, why not?

Actually that's more like 'super-weighing'. 

Second: do not let Batman name your powers.  He's not good at it.  Anyone else who saw Superman blow out all the solar energy stored in him in one all-engulfing shock wave would call it what it is: a super-nova.  We've got a word that describes that exact phenomenon that already has the word super in it.  Perhaps Batman thought "super-nova" wasn't a stupid enough name for it and picked something goofier on purpose.  Because making sure that Superman seems cool--let's just say it's probably not one of Batman's highest priorities.

Third; it's only for extreme circumstances because he can't control it. That's good. Because being at the center of a big explosion is one of the ONLY things Shazam has on Superman, and now he's lost that edge.  He's not going to be using it in the middle of Metropolis because that would result in untold loss of life and property damage, which Superman would never do. Except in a major motion picture.

"I am NOT soiling my S on these shoddy hovels!"

Fourth: it robs him of super-powers for 24 hours.  This is so patently absurd that... okay, I love that, actually.  It's completely ridiculous and totally Silver Age science.  Because in the Silver Age, the unit of time for ALL silver-science phenomena is 24 hours.  Aquaman can survive without water... until  exactly 24 hours have passed.  Green Lantern's ring can do anything at all ... until exactly 24 hours have passed, when it shuts down completely.  The effects of Red Kryptonite, though unpredictable, often expire after 24 hours.  Besides, it is such an unabashed set-up plot device!  Superman needs to protect his secret ID for the office physical? Superflare those pesky powers away! Oh but then.... there's an emergency! WHAT WILL HE DO?!

Well, what he's NOT going to is clean under the fridge, that's for sure.

Fifth; yeah, you may not care, but this means Superman needs a new Heroclix dial! One that has an extra power Pulse Wave at his end dial, that double-action pushes him onto a powerless click that has Regen.  Oh, yeah, that'll happen, no question.  And it will be kind of awesome.  

Now THOSE are super-flares.

Driq, is that you....?

I was GOING to write about Superman's new power today.  But everything has to stop when you see this in the news:

Somewhere, Black Hand is laughing his ass off.

During the last few weeks of his life, 50-year-old Puerto Rico resident Renato Garcia took a shine to wearing the costume of DC Comics character Green Lantern after finding it in a bag of donated clothes. Unfortunately, Garcia passed away on Monday because of what Huffington Post reported were “respiratory issues.” Given Garcia’s attachment to the costume, his family was inspired to dress him up as the superhero for his wake held in his sister’s San Juan apartment. Although Garcia didn’t leave any instructions for his funeral arrangements, his family is pretty confident that he wouldn’t mind being last seen in the costume to which he had grown so attached.
Although he presumably didn’t fight crime, Garcia was considered something of a superhero to his loved ones.
“He was always very helpful,” his sister, Milagros Garcia, told Puerto Rican newspaper, Primera Hora. “You beckoned and he was always there.”
According to New York Daily News, posing the deceased upright and in a manner that is representative of their interests is a tradition gaining popularity in Puerto Rico. In 2014, professional boxer Christopher Rivera was propped up in the corner of a boxing ring and dressed in his fighting gear after his murder. The practice isn’t entirely unheard of in the continental U.S. either. Just last year, New Orleans socialite Mickey Easterling specifically instructed her family to make sure she looked just as fabulous in death as in life by displaying her with a cigarette holder, champagne flute, and a brooch emblazoned with the word “bitch.”

No comment from me is necessary here.  But one question:
what superhero costume would YOU like your corpse to be dressed in and propped up in public?

Simple; clean; shallow.

My latest Heroclix map; treads some new ground.

Or, rather...the lack thereof.

It's called

THE ARCHIPELAGO

Sometimes simple and clean is good.  At least that's what I used to tell people when they asked about my boyfriend.

Heroclix maps are actually square grids, but the rules are such that you can pretty much play the game on a hex grid map as well.  I've never made one that way before, but this subject matter seemed to call for it.  Square grids are fine for most man-made environments (such as rooms, buildings, and streets), but a natural environment is better captured by the organic feel of a hex grid.

I'm happy with how this one turned out, and if it plays well, I will look to make similar hex grid maps of natural environments (such as tundra, jungle, desert, or canyon).  Suggestions are welcome.

In addition to the grid, I've designed some special terrain.  The map is all water except for the yellow-bordered "island" terrain, which is treated as elevated terrain for purposes of line of fire.  That means it doesn't impede movement, but it does make it possible to 'hide" from characters on the water by 'climbing' to the center of the island (where in some spots there is also vegetative hindering terrain).  

In addition, the islands are surrounded by the white-washed hexes that represent 'shallow water' terrain.  Shallow water terrain may be treated as regular non-water terrain by non-aquatic characters.

That litotes may be a bit confusing, particularly if you're not a frequent player.  You see, usually when a character enters water terrain it has to stop; then its speed is halved for all subsequent movements within or from water terrain.  There are abilities that let you ignore this effect, such as being a flyer (they fly above the water) or an aquatic figure (they are built to move in the water).  But in this case, the "shallow" terrain itself allows you to ignore the effect.   

But, then why have it be water at all?  Because it's still water terrain, which is relevant to a lot of special powers possessed by aquatic figures like Aquaman and Mera.  Who, believe you me, will be spending some quality time on this map (probably rescuing Green Arrow, who has a propensity for getting stranded).

This map is (another) attempt to find a way to make it easier to play aquatic figures (which there are more cool examples of which each new Heroclix set)  with non-aquatic figures.  For a bird may love a fish, but where will they fight a heroclix battle together?  With this map, each type of figure has its own turf (or surf) and they share the 'middle ground of the shallow water.  

For conversational convenience, I named the islands, taking the names from, well... actual (but fairly obscure) islands, from a variety of cultures, places, and languages.  It sounds much better than "Cay del Lex" or "Otis Bay".  

The Harley Has No Clothes

This is "Harley Quin" Month.  Why I do not know.  Except for the possible reason that sexy-time cupie-doll, cutesy Quirky Girls get straight guys hot and sell books.

Well, someone needs to cry foul on this disturbing violent sexist crap, so I'll do it.  

Hey, kids! Comics!

Harley Quinn is a dangerous, murderous psycho.  There is nothing cute or funny or sexy about that.

Plus, the double standard on this is terrifying.  If DC started treating the Joker, Deathstroke, Lobo -- ANY male villain -- as a fun playful sexy symbol, the public would--

well, honestly, I can't imagine how the public would react.  Because the idea that DC would do such a thing is so ludicrous.

Okay, I get it; I remember the '90s, too, and I watched BTAS.  The FIRST time it was on.  And I read all the comics, too.  I don't dislike the character at all.  She's a great character.  And I get how amusing she could be in the context of the show and those books.  

But she's not in that context any more.  And you know what allowed that context?  In BTAS (and associated comics) Harley never killed anybody.  A crazy crook? Yes.  But she wasn't a psychokiller, and the principal manifestation of her madness was her infatuation with the Joker.

Once she becomes female sexy-time Joker (as she has in the comics)....
well, I don't think it's funny. Or sexy.  It's disturbing, like, "modern Japanese-culture" level disturbing.

Is no one else speaking out about this?

Are you? 

He's a Lumberjack, but it's okay

So, it seems one of TV Supergirl's first foes is going to be *snicker*...Lumberjack.

I can only assume that "The Gang" and John Ostrander were unavailable.

Now, not that the Lumberjack can't be exciting.  He certainly is in this clip (even though a strong Virginian accent--"Ah inTEEND to!"-- doesn't really scream Brother from Another Planet); shivers my timbers, for sure!

Actually, he's being played by this guy, Rory McCann, who's some gigantic actor from Some Other Show I Don't Watch.

That is NOT a 'lumbersexual'.

If  you've never heard of the Lumberjack, well... you're perfectly normal.  He only appeared once, and not very memorably  They can't all be the Human Flame, you know.

He's probably just a 'getting up to speed' villain. I mean, it's not like you'd expect them right out of the box to start with some big, classic Supergirl villain like...

like...

um...

uh-oh.

That IS a potential problem for the Supergirl showrunners, isn't it?  Not only does Supergirl have zero recognizable villains of her own, she pretty much has zero villains of her own at all.  Or even somebody else's villains whom she's been know to fight. In fact--hey, what they heck HAS Supergirl been doing all these years?

You can just "her foes" for yourself, but most of the ones with even a little substances are from elsewhere (such as the Superman or LSH or Batman or Aquaman or the JLA)

Of course this problem can also be viewed as an opportunity to create a mythos around Supergirl, one that will help solidify her in the comics.  Expect to see:

Repurposed secondary supporting characters (such as Jimmy Olsen and Cat Grant: I'd bet dollars to donuts Cat Grant is there).  Flash and Arrow do this a lot (e.g. Felicity Smoak, Cisco Ramone, and Caitlin Snow, all of whom are lesser-known comic characters NOT associated with Flash or Arrow).

Cast-off secondary villains. Just as Batman offloaded Ra's Al-Ghul to TVArrow and Starman bequeathed the Mist to TVFlash, so too some secondary villains from someone else's rogues gallery will be appear as hand-me-downs for Supergirl.  Most likely candidates are lesser Superman villains, since there's no Superman tv show to save them for and they won't rise to silver screen.  Female villains would be especially useful, so expect to see Livewire and Silver Banshee.  

Reimagined native villains. What few villains that are really Supergirl's are likely to be spruced up for teevee. Simon Tycho, for example, is a recent villain native to the Supergirl stories. I would expect him to appear in some form.  Perhaps Satan Girl?  Oh, and Bizarrogirl, because there is no way they will pass that up.

What do YOU imagine they will do for Supergirl foes?

Fantastic Foreshadowing

I'm often mystified by what outrages the internet fanbase (and by what doesn't).  Seldom has that been true than by the underwhelming response to the recent trailer for the forthcoming Fantastic Four film.

Perhaps it just Marvel fans I don't understand.  Face it: the Fantastic Four is one of Marvel's more ludicrous IPs.  Its extremely Kirbyesque archtypes are as subtle as bricks, underscored by their embarrassing 'battle cries', their incessant squabbling, and the fact that their principal adversary is the most laughable exercise in self-parody ever created by comics (evil scientist/evil wizard/evil European tyrant/evil semi-cyborg/evil vengeful college roommate/evil drama queen Doctor Doom).

There are no amount of stories that can make me take THAT seriously.  And I'm afraid of acid-scarred attorneys and unstable clowns.

And jeez can they YAK. Doom's self-referential monologues, Reed's longwinded scifibabble, Ben's needless nonfunny earthy commentary, and Sue's endless inner monologues of suppressed self-doubt are the stuff of periphrastic legend. All they do is TALK, TALK, TALK.

You tell 'em, Doctor Doo-, er, I mean, Dr. Domino.

And the goofy powers.  Stretching? Being on fire?  Being a big rock guy?  Invisibilizing? In the DCU, they'd be in the Doom Patrol, at best.  Or the Legion (like, say, Elastic Lad, Sun Boy, Blok, and Invisible Kid).  The main thing they've got going for them is Sue's force fields (very cool) and Reed's genius. (which are basically Brainiac 5 as a married couple).

Marvel-fans like to talk them up, like the FF are so all-revered-n-stuff for having put Marvel and superteams on the map.  Yes, that's true; they did that.  But don't lie to me or yourselves, Marvel-fans; you don't really 'revere' them. You don't like them or their comics and you haven't for a long time.  You abandoned the FF for the X-Men about 1000 years ago, and never looked back.  

Until you see a movie trailer that tries to give them exactly the dignity that the didn't get in their previous film versions, Something that emphasizes the awesomeness of science and the unknown, like the original Fantastic Four was intended to do.  Something that gives them an iconic significance for the general public who've not spent the last 40 years taking Victor Von Doom seriously.  Something that dares to realize that 'superhero' isn't a genre, its a mode that encompasses other genres, such as a science fiction.

THEN suddenly you decide no longer to remain unseen as a "FF-Fan", are up in elongated arms about the trailer, flame on about it on the internet because it's clobbering time.

The truth is you don't care about the Fantastic Four.  What  you care about is the implication that, after several years of rejoicing that the general public was starting to embrace the goofiness of comics thanks to Avengers, Captain America, Guardians of the Galaxy, etc. somebody finally decides, "yeah, no, we need to sober this crap up a bit before we take it to the general public".  You're mad because instead of praising geekdom as normal in the media, this trailer points at your cosplay out and says "not what we're going for, sorry."
Me? I'm finally interested in the Fantastic Four and I think a lot of other sci fi fans will be too.  We hope to see you at there at the cinema.

James Olsen, Underwear Model

This,  apparently, is the actor (Mehcad Brooks) playing Jimmy Olsen in the forthcoming Supergirl series.

Suddenly, the Jimmy Olsen Fan Club makes a LOT more sense.

So, what's wrong with this picture?

Hint: it's not that this guy isn't a white guy with red hair and freckles.

Because, after all,  these guys (although white) don't really have the red hair and freckles thing going that (visually) is always what made Jimmy Olsen recognizable either!

Except maybe that first guy.  He was fairly Olsenesque.  Which is now a word.

I don't care whether Jimmy Olsen is black. Or has red hair or freckles.

I care that he seems like... Jimmy Olsen.

Jimmy Olsen was frankly, a geek. He was a stand-in for the comic book reader, a Superman fan but one who got to hang out with Superman. He had an unreasonably high opinion of his own abilities and his biggest power was lack of foresight.   Jimmy Olsen was a mess, but he was a mess that readers could identify with.  Was he a little goofier than you? Maybe.  Was he occasionally smarter at some crazy Silver Age last minute idea that save the day? Probably.

But Jimmy Olsen was not an underwear model who's two inches taller than Superman>

I'd really really like to identify with that.  But I can't.

ALL they had to do to make this work smoothly was NOT make him Jimmy Olsen. Make him Richard Malverne, who actually WAS Supergirl's love interest.  

Supergirl needs a man like this in her story (don't we all?!).  But she deserves her own, not one borrowed from her cousin's storyline for the sake of name recognition.  It's one thing to do that on the Flash with the likes of Cisco Ramone and Linda Park; it's quite another to do it with Jimmy Olsen, who's know to the entire viewing public.

Everything New is Old Again

The Marvel Universe is rebooting.  The Archieverse is rebooting.  The DCU is, well, 'converging', if not exactly 'rebooting'.  It's hard to tell what 'rebooting' would mean in the modern DCU any more..  Rebooting, in the DCU, is no longer an event, it's an on-going state of being.

Whether hard or soft, universal or partial, continual or sudden, premature or long long overdue--

the comics-based universes are all rebooting.

Comics aren't alone in that; many other fantastical properties, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, The Terminator, and, of course, Little Orphan Annie, are being rebooted whether YOU think they need it or not.  Leprechaun reboot?  Absurd! How could one hope to improve on the Leprechaun series!?

I mean, what are they smoking?!

I have certain friends and fans who are, frankly, fed up with reboots. On the one hand, I feel their pain.  When you've invested so much (time, energy, emotion) in a literary universe, it's sad to feel like it went to waste.  Characters you cared about, that meant something to you are suddenly reset at square one, or completely re-imagined, or in limbo, or flat-out nonexistent/impossible.  Particularly if  you were with them during a period where they had a lot of character development to which you were committed and liked. But, as I was moved to say to one of them:

"If you want character development, don't read comic books."

It's ironic, really, Given that some comics, and the characters born in them, have been going strong (more or less) for some seventy years now, there's no better venue for carrying out long-term character development. Very very very long-term.  In fact, longer than most humans get for character development.

But that can't happen and if it does it's generally terrible (q.v. "Gasoline Alley"). So instead, such characters live in an ephemerium, an eternally renewed present that adjusts its past accordingly.  Retcons-- and reboots when retcons are just not enough-- are built into the very genre.  For example, do you know the original reason the brilliant surgeon Dr. Ekhart wasn't available to repair Harvey Dent's face?  He had been captured by the Nazis.  That's not really an evergreen element in an origin story.

For some people, this sort of thing is a downside of comics (and things like comics).  They want to see Wally's kids grow up and Dick marry Kory. Or Barbara. Or Mary Sue.  But for me, in the final analysis, it's an upside of comics.  Whenever a character's story takes a turn you really don't think it should, one that just changes things too much, or goes too far, or is just, well dumb, you can wait it out, knowing that eventually time will erode it away.  It may be a large and imposing castle of a story... but it's still made of sand, all of which time will at some point push through the hourglass.

UNLESS....it becomes part of the myth.

Did you read Scott Snyder's "Death of the Family" storyline, about the Joker wanting to rid Batman of the encumbrance of the rest of the Bat-family?  One of its plot points was the Joker doing 'call-backs' to highlights of his career in fighting Batman.  Problem is, this was pretty much only the second Joker story since the New52 reboot.  Plus, how many times could the Joker have encountered Batman in the "five years previous"?  So a vague reference was made to poisoning the reservoir (something everyone just feels that the Joker has done, even though no one has read a story where's he actually done that and the closest thing is the time Cesar Romero turn Gotham's water supply into strawberry jam)

If there is an exception to Rule 41, it's Chief O'Hara covered in jam.

and another to killing Henry Claridge (the Joker's first victim, in his first story).

"If ya gotta go...go with a smile!"

But other classic Joker stories -- the Joker's utility belt, the Jokerfish, killing Jason Todd -- gone, really.  Only shooting Barbara Gordon remained, and that was only because that's part of HER story, not his.

These things stresses out those who do not truly embrace the mythic nature of DCU denizens.  They aren't 'characters'.  Characters have development; characters have continuity.  Batman; the Joker; heck, even Jim Gordon; they are now myths.  Your 'version' of them, the one you remember most fondly, the one imprinted on your brain during whatever your formative reading experiences were: THAT is a character, around whom specific stories were told.  But characters only become mythic when there is more than one version of them.  The Batman of  "Brave & Bold' animated, or the Stupid Bronze Age Batman, or the Adam West Batman, or Tim Burton's Batman-- they may not be YOUR Batman, but that doesn't make them as less "Batman".

Each of what you think of as a character is actually only an instantiation of the platonic form that is the myth.  Each of the stories you read with, say, 'Batman versus the Joker', is just a different way of presenting their conceptual conflict.  This is when things REALLY get interesting, when the characters become more that just literary people and become literary concepts.  Something like Star Trek, for example, was epic almost instantly; but didn't become truly 'mythic' until the Abrams reboot where Kirk/Spock/McCoy/et al.  were finally 'freed' from the actors who created the roles (regardless of how you feel about the reboot otherwise).

This is the aspect of comics (and similar pop culture lit) that I find most interesting and in which I find most value. And, in the long run, it's well worth stories that you love being excised from continuity.  Stop viewing continuity as some sort of Comics Code Seal of Approval, without which a story has no meaning.  Stop pretending that you can no longer enjoy a story if it's no longer "in continuity" or that you can no longer enjoy continuity if it doesn't contain a particular story.  Don't get so hung up on particular characters that you can't enjoy the myth that underlies them.

Go back and read how Milton Fine became Brainiac or how They Saved Luthor's Brain.

I just LOVE that story.  One of the ballsiest Superman stories ever.  And it was NOT a hoax, NOT an imaginary story!

Then get ready for a whole new set of stories that will be told after Convergence.  You are allowed to enjoy them all.  Don't be mad that 'continuity' (whatever THAT means) isn't large enough to contain all the stories you love.  Rejoice that there are SO many comic book stories and characters that you love that there is simply no continuity large enough to hold them.