Warning JJ

J'onn, I'm so glad I caught up with you!

The editors of DC Comics are coming; they're coming to kill you!
I don't think that's going to help, J'onn. They can still see your thought ballo--errr, ah, I mean they can, um, detect you with their telepathy. Besides they've got unearthly powers of their own, and your own powers are so inconsistent that--
Ooh, I was afraid something like that might happen. I don't think hiding going to work very--

Well, you did, but the Skrull-Gumby look didn't really help, I'm afraid.

Their plan is to have the Human Flame will use his fire to kill you and--


Oh, yes, I know they keep removing your weakness, J'onn. But you should know that only lasts until the next time they use you in story.

Dan Didio, Geoff Johns, and Grant Morrison are going to kill you, believe me.

Yeah, it's never enough power, is it, J'onn?

Maybe if you reinvent yourself; you did so well in the comedic antics of the JLI...
Oh, yeah, I forgot; you were pretty much the straight-man, weren't you?

Perhaps you'd better just say your good-byes.
Um, yeah, Mrs. Martian? Don't stay up waiting for that.

Things That Made Me Happy...

in my comics this week.

• Booster's dad: very hot without sleeves!
• Brain-sucking robots.
• For Batman, a nightmare city; for Superman, an invading solar system; for Wonder Woman, a giant robot attack. Very nice; although giant NAZI robots would have been even better.
• "It didn't seem physically possible." Okay, THAT was brilliant.
• Booster's dad's earpiece: creepy and clever.
• Sodam's perspective on Daxam.
• The president of the Robin Fan Club.
• It's always good to see Impulse again.
• Weaponized robot poop.
  
• Calabi-Yau manifolds. Not enough of those in comics, I say.
• Have you ever trying carving a crown with your teeth? Let me tell you, it's not as easy as you'd think.
• Booster's dad's ear: RHOP alert!
• No, in fact, I don't think Catwoman and Batgirl wrestling naked except for their masks in front of a room full of people is exploitative at all. Context, you know.
  
• Clark versus Cat. Winner: Clark.
• Batman thought it out; Superman worked it out; Wonder Woman fought it out.
• The dignity and tenacity of the Penguin; finally, someone remembers who the Penguin really is.
• So that's whose ring it is. I've been waiting for that answer for over 20 years. That makes perfect sense!
• Ah ha; it's all Jaime Reyes's fault!
• Hm. That change in the wind...? Not good.
• Booster's dad's vomit.
• I bet that's when she started to rethink the wisdom of having a tail on your costume.
  
• Sorry; I don't believe that even Brainiac 5 can possibly have a map of Central City.
• The corner of Waid & Weiringo.
• I've never seen a pink-frosted donut that symbolic before!
  
• The Green Lantern Corps showing remarkable wisdom in interacting with a very alien species.
• So... Wonder Woman's attending, what, the Klaw Family Reunion?
• Brainiac the collector.
• The Joker versus the Parademon.
• Spoiler's note. Very classy.
• Forget "one punch"; I'm all about "one word".
• Superman disposing of a pink-frosted donut, sprinkled with symbolism.
  
• "It's Gonna Throw the Car"; I am totally up for all titles/subtitles in this style!
• Clark using superpowers for what they're supposed to be used for: teaching lessons to those closest to us through public humiliation.

Three's a Charm

Today's the day I talk about Trinity!

First, I want to say, I applaud the concept of the DCU trinity. Now, it should come as a surprise to no one who has read this blog for any length of time that I like the idea of a set of characters that anchor (or, perhaps more accurately, "pillar") a literary universe. Things like "trinities", "pantheons", and the like are very mythic, and we love the mythic here at the Absorbascon. It ennobles (enriches? justifies, LOL?) our comics when they have mythic dimension and symbolism. It easier to tell stories that mean something when the characters in them already mean something.

I also like that, for DC, that set is a trinity. That's not really a necessity, you know. For the longest time, DC has actually been a duumvirate, of sorts. As Geoff Johns has the Toyman say in the most recent issue of Action, "You're either a Superman person or a Batman person." The "World's Finest" has been the paradigm DC's operated under since Batman and Superman first appeared together, I suppose.

It's been productive and useful in many ways, but it has drawbacks. It's needlessly adversative; you're naturally led to pit one side against the other (at least, if you're Frank Miller, you are). It's also rather shallow. One of the worst faults of the news media is their natural tendency to create or simulate conflict by reducing everything to two opposing sides or positions (whether it's appropriate or not); the world's usually a lot more complicated than that. I can accept shallowness in my news media, but not in my comic books. And it's tediously lacking in variety. When you've got only two basic elements to work with, you just have to compare and contrast them over and over and over again. If you read Superman/Batman you know exactly what I'm taking about. With three basic elements, you can compare and contrast them individually or any pair against the remaining element; that's a huge leap in variety from the one-note two-step dictated by the world of World's Finest.

There's another advantage to a trinity of characters (or concepts, or whatever): it generally feels more stable, more complete. It's no accident that most rhetoric (including the paragraph that precedes this one) tends toward triadic presentation, that we countdown from 3 rather than 2 or 4, that we (particularly Aristotle but excluding Geoff Johns) think of stories as having a beginning, and middle, and an end. If you doubt the stabilizing power of the 3, sit at a four-legged table versus a three-legged one, and ask yourself which one wobbles more.

I also like that the Trinity is Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. Now, that may seem like a foregone conclusion, but like the general concept of a trinity itself, it's by no means a necessity. They aren't the three most powerful heroes in the DCU (although they certainly aren't slouches, either!), nor even the best sellers. Instead, they are the three most culturally significant characters, whose images are most widely recognized and whose meaning is most generally understood. That's appropriate and shows that DC has an eye on more than just its short-term, fanboy interests.

I've heard people complain that including Wonder Woman into a trinity of heroes is uneven, awkward, forced. It's felt that there's not enough substance to her symbolism, that what she represents is unclear, that, currently, she's not their conceptual equal. Perhaps. But even if that is so, that's all the more reason to do it. You can't abandon an important opportunity to put Wonder Woman on the same conceptual level as Batman and Superman simply because... she's not already there! That makes as much sense as when my companion Ken misspoke this weekend, saying, "I can't drink when I'm sober."

I demand Equal Conceptual Rights for Wonder Women. Being included in the trinity will help -- already is helping -- speed up the process of solidifying, elaborating, and publicizing who Wonder Woman is and what she stands for. Even in the first issue of Trinity, we see that her approach to having a secret identity is very different from that of the Last Son and the Dark Knight. Similarly, her interpretation of their shared dream is used to distinguish her from "the Boys". It's my fervent hope that her exposure in Trinity will lead to something I strongly believe she needs, a second title (Sensation Comics, I assume).

In so many ways, "the Trinity" makes more sense than "the World's Finest". Superman, always super; Wonder Woman, super in costume and normal without; Batman, always normal. Superman, with two parents; Wonder Woman, with one; Batman, with none. As I have mentioned before, Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Focus, restraint, and balance. The city, the country, the city-state. Adoption, creation, self-creation. Admiration, fear, respect. Etc., etc., etc. And that doesn't even begin to explore the two-against-one combos: native versus alien, modern versus ancient, male versus female, privilege versus poverty, super versus non-super.

I am all for Trinity, the concept, the choices, and (so far) the execution.

And you?

The Villainous Tarot

Our recent conversation about composing an "anti-Trinity" has brought me back to the idea of villain archetypes.

The idea of villainous archetypes certainly isn't new, or unique to comic books. But when part of your central schtick is "one hero with many foes", then devices that help distinguish those foes become useful. Conceiving of archetypes among villains then helps you create new ones: you can see where the "gaps" are in the hero's villainry and create a character to fill it.

This concept is similar to the Dynastic Centerpiece Model we talk about here. In the DCM, we find patterns between a Dynastic Centerpiece and his or her helpers and supporting cast. In what I will call the Villainous Tarot, there's a set of archetypes that DC villains fall into it, in which, like the Dynastic Centerpiece Model, the members are defined in terms of their relationship to the central hero. The more fully that "Tarot" is filled out, the potentially richer the hero's Rogues' Gallery is.

Filling out the Villainous Tarot isn't a sure-fire thing. If you fill it with crappy villains, then your hero will still have a crappy Rogues Gallery. BUT-- and here's the key thing -- quantity (or, more accurately, variety) is more important than quality. More on that later!

But first, let's take a look at a sample for the Trinity...

	Batman	Superman	Wonder Woman
Mocker	Joker	Prankster	Angle Man
Crime Lord	Penguin	Lex Luthor	Veronica Cale
Opposite Number	Killer Moth	General Zod	Devastation
Twisted One	Two-Face	Bizarro	Silver Swan
Mental Challenger	Riddler	Mr. Mxyzptlk	Dr. Psycho
Physical Challenger	Killer Croc	Parasite	Cheetah/ Giganta
Gadgeteer	Penguin	Toyman
Sexual Challenger	Catwoman	Maxima RIP
Evil Genius	Hugo Strange	Lex Luthor	Dr. Poison / Egg Fu
Manipulator	Mad Hatter		Dr. Psycho

These are just some of the more obvious villainous archetypes. They aren't mutually exclusive (one character may fill more than one role) nor unique (one role may be filled by more than one characters). Nor is there any necessary hierarchy among these archetypes; for various reasons, a hero may wind up with an "archenemy" who's a Mocker (the Joker), an Evil Genius (Lex Luthor), or an Opposite Number (Zoom). Nor are these roles immutable; villains can evolve from one role to another (as Hugo Strange once evolved from Evil Genius to Opposite Number or Twisted One) or occupy different roles as the situation demands (e.g., the Penguin as Gadgeteer or Crime Lord). Role can be usurped; the attempt to create Devastation as an Opposite Number for Wonder Woman didn't stick long-term, and the new "Super-Manazon" that DC appears to be planning will now take that role instead.

And this is why the variety, overall, is more important that the quality. Quality is easy to fix. If a villain in a particular role is crappy, all it takes is one issue to give them an upgrade or make them more interesting. As long as a villain has any recognizability, they can be given a new paint job (e.g., Catman, Egg Fu, Black Hand). It's harder to introduce new villains and make them stick than it is to revitalize them.

When I asked you to come with an "anti-Trinity", you each chosen a different set of villains, and, consciously or not, your choices were influenced by what role the villain plays in that hero's Villainous Tarot. Some of you chose villains with the same role, so that they would all have a common goal to give your team unity. Some of you, on the other hand, chose villains with three different approaches to give your team variety. It's like in Risk, when to get extra armies you can turn in either three of the same card, or one card each from the three different types. Re-examine your own choices with the Villainous Tarot in mind, and see what it tells you!

Just like the Dynastic Centerpiece model, the Villainous Tarot can highlight weaknesses in the mythos of a hero. Try filling in the grid above for another hero. The problems are immediately apparent. Most of Flash's villains are, essentially, gadgeteers (and one trick gadgeteers, at that). Small wonder, then, that they've largely been lumped together what amounts to one threat with a variety of faces ("The Rogues"). No one's taking the role of the Mocker of Green Lantern (except for, you know, me and the rest of the internet). Black Manta has to fill five or six slots in Aquaman's tarot, and if you want to have a serious laugh (or a serious headache, depending on your attitude) try and fill that grid in for Green Arrow or the Martian Manhunter.

The nice part is that, in pointing out gaps, the Villainous Tarot spotlights opportunities. As previously mentioned, somebody at DC obvious thought something along the lines of, "Hey, Batman and Superman each have at least Opposite Number, maybe more; shouldn't Wonder Woman have one, too?" Angle Man's not really Wonder Woman's Mocker, just the closest she has to one; he could be pushed more in that direction, and new villains could be placed in his original roles as Mental Challenger, then Gadgeteer. Wouldn't someone Grimbor-like be an amusingly ironic foe for Wonder Woman, perhaps as an enslaver of trafficked women? Or old villains could be re-purposed to fill those roles; wouldn't Circe be more effective as a Mental Challenger for Wonder Woman, rather than as a tepid Mocker of her values?

The specifics of what is done what role or which character are merely details, and you could make a wide variety of interesting and valid choices. I wouldn't want to see every hero's Rogues' Gallery become cookie-cutter predictable, but I would like to see writers and editor take greater advantage of some obvious opportunities to fatten up their hero's Villainous Tarots!

Riddle Me This: Trinity

Pretend you are the persons writing/editing Trinity.

You must select an "anti-Trinity" of villains to oppose the Trinity of Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman. You may not use the obvious choices (Joker, Cheetah, Luthor), but you may use anyone else, resurrecting them if need be.

Whom do you choose and why?

Falconman?!

With due deference to the Bat-Blog from whom I stole this because I couldn't resist its glory (and to whom I already owe debt for identifying my long-lost Whitman Activity Set!):




I shouldn't find that cart so hilarious; but I do.

Things That Made Me Happy

... in my comics this week.

• Black Adam needs a trip to Mattress Discounters.
• Manhunter + Blue Beetle = Great Happiness.
• "I don't need a translator." Mr. Terrific and Amazing Man are my new favorite comic book comedy duo!
• Nightwing fighting fire with fire.
• Jonah Hex versus One of Those Women From Love & Rockets.
• Hey, I guess it's the modern "Mystery Analysts of Gotham"!
• Ryan Choi was particularly disarming this month.
• Finally getting to see Damage's face. Sigh!
  
• Ramsey's great-grandparents.
• The giant octopus that doesn't do anything.
• Now we know where the spooky lighting is coming from in DC's latest series of house ads.
• Nick, isn't that gun a bit extreme, even for you?
• The Atomic Skull taking a face-plant into wet cement.
• Detective Comics being full of detectives and detecting.
• Esteban's insightful and cogent explanation of the appeal of bullfighting (and most reality tv progamming).
• LOTS of neck-snapping in Secret Invasion! Sigh; I guess you need to read DC if you want a decent decapitation... .
• Jonah puts up with a lot of bull.
• Jarvis's polite request.
• Having Nightwing fight an old Black Condor foe? Ingenious!
• "I'm a giant sea monster of the depths. It's what I do."
• Batman in a Chat Room.
• Dr. Choi's savior. Both of them, really.
• Dylan receives a package, and all that it implies. Shudder.
• Concerning the House Ad for Uncanny X-Men #500: so, do all of Marvel's female characters seem like drag queens, or what?
• Nightwing doing snappy patter during fight scenes... in his head. Why aren't you reading Nightwing, people?
• Todd Rice flying a helicopter makes me hot. Or doing anything else, really.
  
• House of Mystery = the new Sandman.
• Kr'ali Stark...?!
• Fabulous two-page synopsis of Manhunter-so-far.
• "I heard they were developing her for HBO." Priceless!
  
• Batman can't save everyone, particularly not from themselves.
• "This one's on me." Oh, Jonah, you slay me (and most of your supporting cast!).

APPLET NEEDED

I would like an applet for my sidebar, that I can fill with pictures and captions thereto, that will cycle through them randomly upon each refreshment of the page.

Is there such?

Weather for J'onn's Funeral Services

"Hello, everyone. I'm meteorologist Misty Hazen, joining you, my colleagues here at station WFLA, and all citizens of Apex, as we mourn the loss of our treasured hero, J'onn J'onzz, the 'Martian Manhunter'.

"Services will be held for Mr. J'onzz all this week throughout Apex, so that everyone can find time to attend. Let's take a look at the forecast for the week so you can plan accordingly...

"Today the weather will be normal and seasonal, with large earthward meteors expected all over town.


"Tuesday, falling planes are anticipated in the morning,


but in the afternoon, those should taper off...

..and completely disappear by the late afternoon.


"Wednesday should be lovely in the city, with falling meteors,


but prepare for scattered crazy bullets in the countryside.


"Thursday, look for both sudden giant and freak waves in the area of Rainbow Beach.



"Friday could see some serious falling safes...


particularly in Toontown.

"Saturday should be clear, with the possibility of an automotive tornado in the Gawking District.


"Sunday, the weather should return to normal with flaming meteors exploding over mid-town."

"Wishing you all safe mourning,this is Misty Hazen, saying, 'Look to the skies! Keep watching the skies!'..."

Ghost of Bat Toys Past

I want your help figuring out/finding something that I haven't been able to, even with the magic of the internet.

And, when I say "you" I mean you, too.

When I was a little boy I had a Batman toy that I can barely remember, but that haunts me all the more for it. This would be contemporary with the Adam West television show. It was a set of cutboard or paper cut-out figures that stood up by means of a cross-piece in their bases. I think they would have been about 2 inches tall, perhaps.

I really don't remember exactly whether there were Batman and Robin figures, but I particularly remember that there was an Alfred, a grandfather clock, and the Hot Line on telephone stand.

Honestly, that's all I can remember, but I've never been able to confirm the existence of this pieces, let alone what they were and where they might have come from.

Can you?

Things That Made Me Happy...

in my comics this week.

• Dr. Hector Hammond, as he originally was.
• Knowledge?! I wanted a leather jacket with my name on the sleeves!
• And they were on sale, too? I suspect Blockade Boy, frankly... .
• Fire stick = cigarette = Libra's staff. Nice.
• That Alfred, in the midst of a raging fire, is still an unforgiving film critic.
• Yeah, I'd probably just wear whatever my closet told me to wear, too.
• "Condition Amber" made me laugh out loud.
• Hal getting hit in the head with a yellow frisbee.
• Oh my god. That's John. In an office. Like... like an architect. Seeing it feels like ... sacrilege.
• Is that the Man-of-Bats shield?
• The perfect cocktail.
• The cover of "Recipes for Revenge".
• Oh, Lex, sweetie; will you kill me if I tell you those pants make you look fat?
• Well, of course he's naked; duh.
• Even at the end, Clark has to scoop Lois.
• Jaime's understated inability to let go what happened. Or what didn't.
• Actually, Mr. Norg, I myself am quite disappointed about his serious interest.
• Rolex Chronoberg?
• Blindingly obvious. Heh. Heh heh.
• Geoff Johns, who is clearly some sort of superhuman, fixing everything about the Toyman in, essentially, one panel. Sheer genius.
• Orion = God of War = Mars = Manhunter = D.O.A.
• "Hit 'em like Napoleon" is the new "Bend it like Beckham".
• It's really hard to overuse the word "orrery".
• I... I love you, Solaris.
• "I'm twenty-two!"
• Okay, who set up those two for a date?! Not E-harmony!
• Hey, Batman's doing "Someone's taking my life apart piece by piece" and "Everything I know about myself is lie" at the same time. Grant Morrison is SO innovative!
• H is the eighth letter of the alphabet.
• That Ocean Master is at the table.
• How is it possible that 1011 doesn't mean anything significant in binary. Morrison so loves speaking binary.
• I dunno--don't children always look like that? They do to me.
• I'm sure J'onn would agree with you, Dan.
• It took me a while to figure it out, but that's the toy train Clayface knocked Batman out with 60 years ago. Nice memory, Grant.
  
• Wait... she kissed JO?! Good lord, it's like Degrassi in the 31st Century!
• Beagle.
• Nasty.
• Air hammers.
• Welcome mat. Heh. Of course.
• Now that's heartburn.
• Dark Side's limp.

Reading by the Light of the Human Flame

Now, it goes without saying that Justice League writer Dwayne McDuffie knows his stuff, so I can only assume that the apparent gaffes and oddities in the most recent issue of JLA are, in fact, coded commentary on Final Crisis and the like. Because his story has the Human Flame in it, and any story with the Human Flame in it must be deep with meaning.


Baltimore? They have banks--with vaults-- in Baltimore?!

Dwayne's being clever here. Instead of overtly saying "the Human Flame is a second-rate loser" he simply places him in Baltimore, making it implicit. Very clever.

Psst, hey, Mike; there's no big tank on your back. The fire shooting out of your nipples is fueled solely by the same thing it was in your first appearance: the imagination of the writers.

By the way; isn't that a little too hot? Conventional oxyacetylene torches run between 3200 and 3500 degrees C; even a frickin' Henrob 2000 model only burns at 3800 C. Imagination is a powerful fuel, it seems.

Mike's self-deception continues, when he tries to pin the blame for his odd moniker on tabloid editors:


To which I can only reply:

LIAR, LIAR, TITS ON FIRE!

A mistake? Certainly not. It's part of showing us how self-deluding the Human Flame is. The Human Flame, remember, symbolizes over-reaching human ambition. And ambition never blames itself for its failures; it displaces the blame on others. "Oh, I didn't give myself my stupid name; someone else did that to me. The press; yes, it was the press!" I bet he even remembers it that way now, having repeated the lie to himself and others often enough. Yeah, if you get sent to prison with a name like the Human Flame you better have a good story to go with it.

Anyway, speaking of self-deception....

"Anymore"?! "I'm not a glamorous super villain ANYMORE"?!?!?!?!. Mike. Mikey, Mikey, Mikey. You were NEVER a glamorous supervillain. You were never even a super villain at all. You were a presumptuous hermit tinkerer who robbed exactly ONE bank, and the World's Ugliest Bank at that. And it doesn't stop there...

A long time ago? Yeah, and in a galaxy far, far way, I guess. Meanwhile, in this galaxy, you were never in the Big Leagues, Mike. You know who was Bigger League than you?
Cutlass Charlie, who fought the Justice League; Bug-Eyed Bandit, who died in the Crisis; Colonel Computron, who got an entry in Who's Who; the Penny Plunderer, who has a permanent memorial in the Batcave. You, Mike, are not in their league, let along the Big Leagues.


You've never been in a supervillain group in your life, Mike, not even the Secret Society of Supervillains and they took anybody, including Torpedo-Man. No, Mike, you haven't seen this movie. Unless you're being literal and you actually meant, "I watched Challenge of the SuperFriends on the video player at the Apex Prison Library one night."

One more thing to show how far Mike has fallen out of touch with reality:

A police response time of 8 minutes... in Baltimore?! Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! Perhaps if there's a police station next door and there's no reruns of the Wire showing on the tube.

As for the non-professional aspects of Mike's self-deception... well, I'm just going to be kind and completely not mention how Libra goes out of his way to tell all the big time villains that Mike's a husband and father. Who knows, maybe the California Supreme Court on New Earth is just a lot faster than ours, and somewhere off panel a balding, cancer-impaired Joey is pointlessly polishing his unused Kenneth Coles with his old wedding dress and remembering his heyday with Mike in "the Big Leagues".

Oh, by the way, did you notice Mike's new affectation?

TALK TO THE FLAMING HAND!

Now, we all know that the fire doesn't come out of the gloves on the Crime Suit (tm); it comes out of the polyareolar array on the chest. In fact, putting out your hand in front of you while concrete-incinerating flames burst forth from your chest seems not merely pointless, but both unnatural and unwise. It is just a meaningless flourish that Mike picked up from reading too many Fantastic Four comics?

Ha! As if. As we have previously discovered, NOTHING is without meaning when it comes to the Human Flame. He burns brightly with semiotic incension. So, what does this gesture really mean? There are three principal possibilities, which may all be true simultaneously.

1. The "hidden button" that activates the fire-nips is built into the gloves of the crime suit.
2. It's yet another reference to the Hand of Doom imagery that we've seen in DC Universe #0 that will be central to Final Crisis.
3. It presages that Mike will, courtesy of Libra, experience Power Internalization (tm) which will result in scenes where he create spontaneous fire through a classic "zappy power focused along extended arm" pose.

We'll all find out together; after all, it must mean something. It's the Human Flame.

Note that Mike is drawn as, well, hefty. Mike was NOT fat in his original story; you can tell by his head shot at the end of his first adventure that he wasn't a fatty. His "crime suit" was just very heavily padded. It would have to be, to insulate you against some 8100 degrees F!!! I mean, that's hotter than Vixen's pantie drawer.

Clearly, this is not a mistake; DC writers and artists simply don't make mistakes. Jeanette Kahn and T.M. Maple would never stand for it. So I interpret Mike's rubenesquiosity as another sign of his degradation. How fall he's fallen from when he lived in a unkempt wooden shack in the wilds of Florida! Must be all that fine prison food that's fattened him up.

Still, despite being a washed up, overweight loser, he still kicks Hawkgirl's and Red Arrow's patooties. By the way, Hawkgirl and Red Arrow patrolling ... Baltimore? Too perfect. I can just picture Roy field-testing his sodium bicarbonate arrow against the Citrus Gang from atop the Bromo Seltzer Tower or Kendra hurling her mace through walls at the Geppi Museum shouting, "Have you people never even heard of the principles of wayfinding?!"

Of course, you realize that Hawkgirl's wings aren't what keep her aloft; the Nth metal in her costume does that. The wings just let her direct her flight. So she wouldn't fall if she had to abandon her wings. Clearly, it's more meta-meaning from McDuffie: the Human Flame of amibtion has the power to topple the superhero gods from the altars on which they've placed themselves, a foreshadowing of the fate of you-know-who (because I've already read Final Crisis #1, ya know!).

That's one last strange "inaccuracy" in this JLA story. I've read the original Libra story -- after all, DC just republished it this month in the DC Universe Special : Justice League-- and there isn't the slightest intimation, suggestion, or clue that Libra is an alien, let alone an alien "warlord". I mean, what's up with that?

Arcs De Triomphe

Ten "Arcs" that Most Superheroes Must Endure Even Though Almost None of Them Should

• The Year In Space
• A Shadowy Figure is Deploying All My Enemies Against Me, in Sequence
• What Do You Mean I've Been Replaced?
• And That's Why I Need This New Costume!
• My City Has Been Destroyed
• Well, Then, I'll Just Operate WITHOUT Official Sanction
• Someone's Taking Away My Life, Piece by Piece
• I Must Reclaim My Life, Piece By Piece
• I Never Thought of Myself as Leader, But Now I Have to be
• You Mean, Everything I Knew About Myself Was a Lie...?!

Pistolfist

Consider asking your local comic book store to try PISTOLFIST from BlueWater Comics; we're trying it here at Big Monkey.




It's about a runaway slave in early America who dons a mask to fight for freedom. And, c'mon; you can't beat Benjamin Franklin as a supporting cast member: "I caution you again, sir, do not address me as 'Chief'!"

Pistolfist #1
Author(s): J.S. Earl and David A. Flanary, Jr
Artist(s) Andres Guinaldo
Cover Artist(s): 2 covers: Joel Robinson and Mario Gully
How precious is your freedom? Would you fight for it? Would you dare to die for it? Set amidst the American Revolution, this critically-acclaimed series follows the saga of a mysterious, masked runaway slave whose destiny is helplessly entwined with that of a famous, yet frail, Benjamin Franklin. Inspired by true characters and events, you’ll soon discover why fans and fellow creators alike have chosen to “rev it up!

Oh, and for those of you who are budding costume designers (Hi, Jeremy!), there's a contest to design a costume for a modern day version of the character. Oh, make sure it has pilgrim shoes; I just love the pilgrim shoes.

The Eyes Have It

As I've mentioned before, and more than once, the real reason I pick on Hal Jordan so much is to try to mask and defuse my utter terror

of him.

For Hal Jordan wields the most powerful, the most terrifying weapon in the entire DC Universe:

THE EYES OF HAL JORDAN


The Fourth Wall means nothing to Hal Jordan.

You see, he knows you're watching him.


And, it's okay, because...

because he likes to be watched.


And -- although it's best if you don't think about it -- it works both ways.
Yes. Hal Jordan is watching you, too.

Though he tries to convince you he can't really see you...


When he turns his transquartomuralistic vision on you the reader, it sucks your soul out of your eyes.

Your soul is a mere power battery on which he charges his spent and empty sense of self-worth.


"In brightest day,
in blackest night,
no reader shall escape my sight

let those who worship Marvel's might
beware my eyes,
both left
and right!"

Every year at the annual Klordny party, Hal used to slay the entire Corps with his dead-on impersonation of Tomar-Re.And Hal loves to slay the entire Corps!


"Great Guardians! From either angle..
...I'm just as beautiful!"


In this panel, Hal tries to blame last night's debauchery...

on poor Liberace.


"My GOD, my thumb is beautiful!"

"And to think...they gave Flash a museum...!"


"Now, Hal, using the doll...show the court where Flash touched you."


"Highball" Jordan? No, no...

"Eyeball" Jordan.


"Let's see what was it I had to do before leaving town. Oh yes, now I remember..."

"Kill and eat my neighbor, Mr. Johnson!"


"Did you know that my power ring can make you forget anything I do to you, Sally P? Even when it involves energy-construct aardvarks, like it did last week?"


He only makes it look easy. He actually has a daily routine of Extreme Eyercise to keep his peepers perfectly poppable.


Ladies and gentlemen, the Eyes of Hal Jordan!