Does Puck suck?

Imagine you're a popular comic book artist/writer of Canadian descent named John Byrne. Don't worry, this is just pretend. You're pitching your new series, Alpha Flight, to an unnamed editor at Marvel. Your proposed series features a team of Canadian superheroes that have already appeared several times in The Uncanny X-Men. Sounds good, your editor likes it. But wait. You have a new character you want to add to the team.

Editor: "Okay, a new guy. What's his name, what are his powers?"

Byrne: "His name is Puck. He doesn't really have any powers per se, but he's an acrobatic martial artist type."

Editor: "Sort of like Daredevil or something. Why's he called Puck? Is that a Shaekespeare reference?"

Byrne: "Well, he's a little hairy dwarf guy with a misshapen ear that sort of bounces around and kicks people. He wears a black costume... Puck. Get it? He's Canadian. He's like a hockey puck."

Editor: "Stop fucking with me, John."

Byrne: "No, really. Readers will love him. He's been around the block, got a lot of experience, a little bit of attitude. Plus, he jumps around and stuff. Puck, man. Puck!"

Editor: "Umm... I don't know, John..."

Byrne: "Here's a picture of him."

[shows sketch of Puck to editor]

Editor: (Gasp)

Byrne: "What? What's the problem? You don't like him?"

Editor: "Gosh... I don't know what to say, John. Can I see that sketch again?"

Byrne: "Sure. You keep shaking your head; what's the problem?"

Editor: "It just... It just seems kind of stupid, John. Puck. Couldn't you have a polar bear guy, or another Indian or something?"

Byrne: "Look, Puck is on the team or I don't do the book."

Editor: "...okay."

That's probably not what happened, but you see where I'm going with this. Who thought Puck was a good idea? Well, John Byrne, obviously. And you know, when Alpha Flight #1 first came out back in the day, Young Dave Campbell thought Puck was pretty cool.

I think I may have been mistaken.

So I put it to you, Gentle Reader: Does Puck suck? Or is this just a case of a cynical adult looking back with a jaundiced eye on a character from my childhood and mocking said character for easy laughs? Should I go easy on Puck?

Originally Puck was Eugene Judd, a hirsute Canadian who stood about 3'6", tops. He was sprung from jail to participate in Department H, the Canadian government's superhero program that gets cancelled due to lack of funding. Puck was a member of Beta Flight, who were the minor league team compared to Alpha Flight, Department H's heavy hitters. The founder of Alpha Flight, James MacDonald Hudson (aka Guardian) decides to go freelance, and summons Puck to help them in a battle against Tundra, a huge Godzilla-size monster. Puck shows up late for the battle, which is just as well, because what's an acrobatic dwarf going to do against Godzilla? Get crushed, that's what. Puck joins Alpha Flight anyway, and a Legend is Born!

Seriously, would you have Puck on your superhero team?

He's not super strong, he's not super tough (in the very next issue he nearly gets eviscerated by a teamate during a training exercise), and he's certainly not super tall. He doesn't even have a gun or "Puck rays" or anything. Plus, he's named after a hockey puck, for fuck's sake. That would be like The Avengers hiring a non-powered guy with a pointy head and calling him "Football" because, you know, Americans like the football! How long would you expect Football to last on The Avengers? Exactly - Kang or Ultron would fry Football's ass.

Yet, inexplicably, Puck survives and thrives as a member of Alpha Flight. Look, here he is kicking The Master in the head:



That has got to be the low point of The Master's career as a villain, right there; getting brained by Puck.

One of the fundamental problems I always had with Puck, even as a youngster, was that the guy jumped around like a frickin' jack rabbit, but had no super-strength or anything. I know that this is comics and everything, but seriously, how high can a dwarf really jump? I don't know any dwarfs, but I'm betting they can't jump very high. Yet Puck regularly bounces off walls like Spider-Man, kicking people in the chops. I don't know, that's stretching it a little.

According to the good folks at AlphaFlight.net, Puck eventually developed moderate super-strength and nigh-invulnerability. Also, it turns out that Eugene Judd used to be a normal-sized adventurer around the 1900s who tried to steal an evil magic blade called Black Razer, but ended up having to imprison the evil sword's spirit within his body or something - turning him into a dwarf. I'm just guessing, but I bet that wasn't John Byrne's idea - Puck's backstory was revealed after Byrne left the book. Couldn't he just have been born a dwarf? That would've been cooler.

One theory as to Puck's popularity: some people find him sexy. There's a fetish for everything these days. You can't tell me there's not some truck driver somewhere in Minnesota who has pictures of Puck all over his walls. I'll bet there's a newsgroup devoted to naked fan art of Puck. Look at the hairy little bear:



Thankfully, they eventually drew pants on Puck. Really, nobody wants to see that.

So I ask you: does Puck suck? Or am I just being a big meany? Discuss.

[UPDATED: Judging from the feedback I received, almost everyone admits that Puck is kind of goofy, but most have some degree of grudging affection for Alpha Flight's resident "pocket bear." So it looks like Puck does kind of suck, but in a good way. You know what I mean. I should just stop typing now.]

Today on Taser Theatre

Answer for free Ipod! Is this:

1) T.J. Laser
2) Max Lord
3) A robotic assassin from the future sent back to the year 1983 to remove Terri Garr from the timestream.

Today on Taser Theatre

We guarantee our taser will disintegrate an adult male construction worker or your money back!

Today on Taser Theatre

"Step back from my ride, Clyde!"

FORCE WORKS #3 Marvel Comics, 1994

Force Works was an Avengers spin-off created by writing team Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning that never took off, primarily because it blows.

See if this sounds familiar: Some heroes from Earth's main super-team get frustrated with the way things are done in the big leagues, so they break off into a splinter group that plays by its own rules. Operating out of a base full of mysterious technology, our new hero team consists of a couple of "star" heroes, a couple of heroes nobody cares about or has ever heard of, and the team asshole. They pick a stupid name and embark on a series of "radical" adventures before they are cancelled after around twenty issues. Yes, Force Works is basically the Marvel version of Extreme Justice.

You know, I don't even want to get into criticizing Force Works in terms of story or concept. It just didn't work for me. I usually like Abnett & Lanning's stuff - their recent run on Legion of Super-Heroes was awesome - so they get a free pass. Let's just say that the entire series didn't work for me, particularly because of the rotating artists on the book. Force Works was sort of a weak idea, but the inconsistent art didn't help.

Tom Tenney pencilled the first four issues before he was replaced, and I can see why he was swapped out. The art in this comic book is absolutely ghastly.

A charitable take on the art in Force Works is that Tenney is actually a really bold artist who was trying something new with his work, and people just weren't ready for it. Either that, or I missed the issue where everybody gets a dose of Smilex. Seriously, the art is bad. All the male characters in this book look like grinning, cadaverous freaks.

Behold the psychedelically hideous art of Force Works:



Ladies and gentlemen, the beat poetry of Zombie Tony Stark.

The entire book is like that. I don't even know what to say - art like this completely destroys the story. You can't even focus on what's going on. It's like, "I think they're fighting aliens b-but - why does Iron Man look like that?!!" Tenney draws women slightly better - if you think women should all have long Gandalf eyebrows, that is. Still, they fare better than the male characters in the book, who all look like The Red Skull.

You want more? Check out US Agent, below. What the fuck is up with his mouth? Whose teeth look like that?



I think he should be yelling "Face melt!" I mean, he looks like Bill the Cat. That's a deal-breaker - no crazy-eyed Bill the Cat heroes for me, thank you.

The Mark V Ewok Crusher

I had a link to this in a post on my geek fiction blog (here), but nobody reads that blog so I thought I'd share the joy over here.

Check this out: The Plustech walking forest machine, which is made by a John Deere R&D subsidiary in Finland. Is that the coolest thing ever? Yes. Yes, it is. With technology like this, I give it twenty years, tops, before we have full-on military spider tanks!

Go visit Plustech's site, and watch the video of this thing in action - you'll dig it if you're a geek like me. And I know you are.

Lame-ass villain #5 - Turner D. Century

Mere words cannot adequately convey the deep, profound lameness that is Turner D. Century, but I’ll give it a shot.

First appearing in 1980 in Spider-Woman #33, Turner D. Century was an extreme social conservative who longed for the halcyon days of yore when our society wasn’t corrupted by smut and everyone knew their place, particularly women and minorities. There are plenty of assholes like that in America who either run for office or get their own talk radio shows, but Turner wants to advance his social agenda by fighting Spider-Woman. Go figure.

I should qualify my mockery by saying that Turner D. Century was created by writer J.M. DeMatteis, who I think was going for a creepy/surreal/absurd/insane villain with maybe a pinch of social commentary. The end result, however, is a stupid fucking villain who has a flamethrower umbrella and a flying bicycle.

How scary would it be to fight Turner D. Century? I mean, the guy’s about as threatening as Col. Sanders or the “Pepperidge Farms remembers!” guy.

This is one of those one-punch villains that even the wimpiest superhero should be able to take out in a panel or two, but it takes Spider-Woman the whole damn issue to defeat him. I mean, the writer has to contrive implausible reasons for Turner D. Century not to get his ass kicked right off the bat. I don’t know, maybe Turner D. Century is a step up from some of the clowns Spider-Woman normally fought, like Gypsy Moth (she dissolves clothing!) or The Hangman (he has a rope!) or Daddy Long Legs (he’s got long legs!). I have a feeling if her series wasn’t cancelled, she would have fought villains like Squirt Gun and Potato Bug.

Amazingly, Turner D. Century appears in two more comic books after his initial appearance. Yes, somebody at Marvel thought to themselves, “You know, kids really like Turner D. Century – let’s bring him back! He could be the next Sabretooth!” So he appeared in Marvel Team-Up #120, where he tried to use his “time horn” to kill everyone in New York City under the age of 65. I’m not making that up.

Mr. Century’s final appearance was in Captain America #319, where he met his fate at the hands of Scourge in the Bar with No Name. That’s right, he died on that bar room floor right next to other super-villain greats like Cheetah and Steeplejack. I’m sure children everywhere were devastated.

Don’t worry kids, in five or ten years I predict Ultimate Turner D. Century. You heard it here first.

[EDIT: Thanks to reader Martin for pointing out seanbaby's brilliant Turner D. Century page. Lots of quality scans of Turner D. Century in action as well as seanbaby's usual hilarious commentary. And if you haven't read his SuperFriends stuff, you're missing out.]

X-MEN UNLIMITED #5 Marvel Comics, 1994

X-Men Unlimited is/was a quarterly X-Men title in the tradition of those old Giant-Size comics Marvel used to put out (insert Giant-Sized Man-Thing joke here). X-Men Unlimited was usually an anthology title that featured a different creative team each issue, and frankly, it usually sucked. It reminds me of the old annuals Marvel and DC used to put out with lame inventory stories that never really seemed to fit in with the regular comic book. When I was a kid, I felt that stories like those in the annuals or X-Men Unlimited were apocrypha – since they were outside of normal continuity, they didn’t really matter. And really, in the year 1994 the X-Men line of books were like a pack of bloated, greedy walruses that would miraculously reproduce if you fed them. Sort of like Gremlins. Yes, the X-Men books were like walrus-Gremlins. My point is, for the most part X-Men Unlimited was irrelevant and unnecessary.

Issue #5 was written by John Francis Moore, who also wrote the Star Spangled Banner, I think.* You know, I read it again, and I actually thought the story was okay. Sure, it was an overblown, florid superhero opera, but it’s supposed to be; it’s an X-Men comic. In a nutshell, the story involves Professor X, Forge, Storm, and Jubilee in space, getting all mixed up in an alien insurgency against Professor X’s girlfriend, the Shi’ar Empress Lilandra. Moore focuses on the star-crossed romance between Lilandra, a hot bird chick, and Professor X, who has really been pumping iron.

The art, supplied by Liam Sharpe** and a squad of inkers, doesn’t fit the story very well. Sharpe is known for his heavy metal art, featuring massively muscled, grotesquely vascular barbarians and equally muscular naked she-devils. He worked on stuff I liked like 2000 AD and Death’s Head for the Marvel UK line, and I think he’s fine provided that he’s working on the right project. This clearly isn’t the right project; not a single person in this book gets gutted by a broadsword.

Plus, the four different inkers on the book don’t help matters in terms of art consistency. Marvel must have been on a deadline and farmed out the inks – the inkers on this book range from good to really bad, distorting Sharpe’s pencils. On one page Professor X looks like he had encephalitis or something. It’s not attractive.

Here, Sharpe's tendency to draw everyone like Conan works against the story. I mean, look at the cover (above). Look at Forge, in the lower right hand corner. He’s fucking huge! His shoulder is bigger than his entire head. Barbarian Forge will crush you! Seriously, Forge, lay off the roids, man. It’s not worth it.

Aside from the roided-out X-Men in the book, the most noteworthy thing is how Marvel censored Liam Sharpe’s artwork – because it is TOO SEXY!!!

Seriously, they edited the shit out of this book. As I said, Sharpe is used to drawing naked barbarian people, and the original art that he turned in must have been TOO SEXY!!! Everybody in the book is half-naked, and it was all just too much for The House of Ideas, so they used the time-honored remedy for too much skin in a comic book: Color all the naked bodies! Check out the cover above – you know those Shi’ar women were originally supposed to be all half-naked and shit and they just erased their belly buttons and colored their torsos. Weak!

Check out the panel below. An editor at Marvel must have realized that Jubilee was like, 15, and that Sharpe’s outfits were TOO SEXY!!!. So they just kind of erased all the details on Jubilee’s exposed midriff and breastage and colored it blue! Problem solved. But take a look at the Kree alien girl next to Jubilee, who they established earlier is roughly Jubilee’s age. She’s not wearing a lot, but her rippling nubile body gets spared from the wrath of the editor because… I don’t know. She’s blue? She’s an alien?



Man, what do they feed those Kree? That little girl is ripped!

Let’s take a look at some more brutal and obvious editing. I’ve cut three separate images from X-Men Unlimited #5 into the picture below.

Image #1: Clearly Sharpe had intended for Lilandra to be buck naked, with just a diaphanous scarf covering her. But no! No, that is TOO SEXY!!! Now she’s wearing a black yoga leotard.

Image #2: Again, the Marvel editors save us from too much underage skin. Jubilee’s outfit is TOO SEXY!!! NO! TOO SEXY!!! Erase her belly button and color it purple – quick!

Image #3: Dear God, if they hadn’t colored Deathbird, we would have seen the flesh-colored underside of her pert breasts! TOO SEXY!!! No! NO!!!



A more enlightened mind might find X-Men Unlimited and interesting case study in sexual norms and how far a publisher is willing to push those norms, or not. But I am not enligthened. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this comic, it’s that underage blue alien bodybuilder chicks in Road Warrior bikinis are hot.

* Sorry
** I'm not clear if his name is spelled "Sharp" or "Sharpe."

THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #250 Marvel Comics, 1984

I stole this comic book.

I really did. I'm not proud of it; twenty-one years ago, I stole this copy of The Amazing Spider-Man #250 from the 7-11 near Totem Bowl in Kirkland, WA.

My friend Bob and I had skipped class at nearby Rose Hill Jr. High, slipped through a hole in the fence around the baseball field, and made the short walk up to 7-11. We had some pocket change for candy and had no intention of buying a comic book. But there it was, on the spinning rack by the door: The Amazing Spider-Man #250, a "special normal sized 25oth issue!" On the cover (above) Spider-Man was grappling with the demonic Hobgoblin in the middle of a raging inferno - that looked cool. And in the corner box, The Hobgoblin himself urged me to shoplift this comic: "It's great! Steal it!"

So I did.

I'm sure it wasn't Marvel's intention to promote shoplifting, but I would bet that I wasn't the only kid in 1984 that took Hobgoblin's advice and stole this comic instead of buying it. I'm glad I did, because after I read this, I had to buy the next issue, and track down the issue that came before this, and any Spider-Man with art by those Romita and Janson cats, and anything to do with Hobgoblin, and Green Goblin, and I was hooked.

This comic is part two of a three-part story written by Roger Stern, who at one point or another seems to have written every damn Marvel character ever made. The guy was ubiquitous during the 80's, and while he cranked out his share of mediocre tales (e.g., Avengers #232), this is Stern at his best.

In this story, the evil Hobgoblin is extorting money from a bunch of NYC multi-millionaires and Spidey has to stop him. The Hobgoblin was a mysterious figure who had "inherited" the weaponry and reasearch of Norman Osborn, aka The Green Goblin, Spider-Man's deceased arch-enemy. In addition to the pumpkin bombs and bat glider and other Halloween-motif weaponry, The Hobgoblin possessed a ton of Osborn's notes, which contained some incriminating dirt on the previously mentioned millionaires. He uses this information to extort money from his prey, including J. Jonah Jameson, editor of the Daily Bugle and constant thorn in Spidey's side. What dirt does The Hobgoblin have on JJJ? He has proof that Jameson bankrolled the villain The Scorpion, and possibly that he used to enjoy listening to The Scorpions. I'm not sure which.

One of the great things about this storyline is that The Hobgoblin isn't some twisted psychotic who wants to kill Spider-Man or kidnap Aunt May or any shit like that. No, The Hobgoblin just wants to get paid, and Spider-Man is trying to stop him. Simple as that. I swear, in some books the superheroes just fight an endless stream of foes who hate them or blame them for the death of their dog, or whatever. Like in Tim Burton's Batman movie - did the Joker really have to be the guy who killed Batman's parents? That's bullshit. If you ask me, and clearly nobody is, I think superheroes should be out fighting crime and halting alien invasions and stopping school buses from falling off the Golden Gate Bridge - shit like that. I don't mind the occasional grudge match, but I can't stand it when that's all a monthly comic book is about. Some recent Spider-Man comics are good examples of this.

Think about it, if the purpose of being a superhero is to save people, defend the earth, crush organized crime, etc. and you spent most of your time in epic, city-trashing battles fighting bad guys that have a personal beef with you, what kind of hero are you? You should be solving problems, not creating them.

I mean I'd be embarassed if I was, say, Captain America, leader of The Avengers, and at the end of the fiscal year somebody hands me a spreadsheet that says that out of the 14 property-destroying super-brawls the Avengers were in last year, 9 were a result of supervillains with a grudge attacking the group and only 5 battles were of any actual civic value. Seriously, I don't think The Avengers would be very popular with a record like that. What could you say? "Sorry about the Chrysler Building, but Wonder Man's insane brother The Grim Reaper tried to kill us all again."

Okay, got off track a little bit there. I was saying that I liked the story.

The art in this issue is awesome. No, wait: it's fucking awesome. John Romita Jr, son of famous Spider-Man artist John Romita, pencilled the book, Klaus Janson inked it, and Christie Scheele colored it (beautifully). I am one of the world's biggest JR Jr fans, but I think his pencils are best served when he has a true ninja inker backing him up, somebody like Dan Green or Klaus Janson.

I'm going to geek out here for a second: Klaus Janson is The BEST INKER IN THE WORLD! Seriously, who is better than Janson? Don't answer that: nobody is better. He knows when to lay down a heavy line and when to back off. He always enhances and brings out the best in a penciller's work. I'm not a huge fan of his pencilling, but when Janson inks over an artist's pencils, he elevates the art in the book to that special place I call The Janson Zone. Okay, I just made that up, but it sounds good, doesn't it? The best example of the Janson Zone is Frank Miller's legendary The Dark Knight Returns. I submit to you, gentle reader, that Dark Knight wouldn't have been half as cool if Klaus Janson wasn't laying down the inks over Miller's pencils. The man is a genius.

Check out this page below and you'll see what I mean. This is the last page of the issue, where J Jonah Jameson decides to print his mea culpa admitting that he created The Scorpions. Little does Jameson know, the smoke he sees in the distance is from the big Hobgoblin/Spidey battle, during which all the Hobgoblin's notes and extortion material go up in flames. This page is just... well, take a look. Click to enlarge:



You better recognize: that is some masterful shit right there. The writing, the art, the coloring - everything. That shit is masterful.

I love this comic so much I want to marry it. I am glad that Young Dave Campbell took the low road that one day in 1984 and stole it.

THE X-MEN #32 Marvel Comics, 1967

I am one of those people who often lets my affection for old comic books cloud my judgment regarding the actual merits of the work itself. Everything looks better when seen through the slightly out-of-focus lens of nostalgia. Although it's a proven fact that comics were better when I was a kid than they are today*, I still frequently make the mistake of thinking OLD = GOOD.

That's not a mistake I'll be making today.

This is The X-Men #32. It is older than I am. It is older than my house. It is not a good comic. Allow me to demonstrate why it is not a good comic, and then at the very end of the post, allow me to cop out and make some sort of half-assed argument about understanding art within its cultural context because I don't want to sound too mean.

This book was edited by Stan "The Man" Lee, with art by Werner Roth, who is not to be mistaken for the WWI German ace Werner Voss. It was written by Roy Thomas, who is not to be confused with a good writer. Joking! I joke because I love. Roy wrote a lot of my favorite comics, including a 50 issue run on Avengers and a legendary run on Conan with John Buscema that I cherish. So you see? I have nothing but respect for Roy's writing.

Having said that -- let's make fun of Roy's writing.

The Marvel Comics of the 60's were all weird reflections of Stan Lee's verbose huckster personality, even when they weren't written by Stan. The Marvel books of that era were glib idiosyncrasies that featured dialogue as mannered as a Jane Austen novel and stories as stylized as Kabuki theater.** The comics of that era were produced "Marvel style;" the writer sends a plot of some detail to the artist, who draws the thing and hands the art in to the writer, who then writes the dialogue. When you combine the Stan Lee meta-personality with the Marvel production process, the end results were comics with that unique Marvel style. In the case of The X-Men #32, the style could best be described as "chatty."

Actually, "chatty" is an understatement. Everyone in this comic acts like they're on amphetamines. The X-Men are a bunch of hyper, annoying kids who engage in an endless stream of mindless chatter. It's like Friends, but with Chandler, Joey, two Rosses and one Rachel - all on cocaine. Yeah. Pretty bad. The X-Men as a group simply cannot calm the fuck down and seem physically incapable of not commenting on everything that is going on around them - it's like they all have some weird behavioral disorder in addition to their incredible powers.

Check it out, here's a scene where a biker gang known as Satan's Saints busts into a beatnik coffee joint where our heroes are babbling incessantly. The gang, led by - no shit - a guy named Rocky Rhodes, ride around inside the coffee bar, terrorizing the patrons. This is the world's largest coffee bar, I guess. Anyway, the X-Men defeat Satan's Saints without betraying their secret identities with crafty maneuvers like this (you can click to englarge):



That is a lot of dialogue for an event that might take like, two seconds in real life. I mean, the biker guy has the time to observe, "Yipes! I'm toolin' straight up the table!" while he is riding up the table. The X-Men live in a surreal world where everything but the spoken word moves in slow motion; they can squeeze entire conversations into the time it takes for a glass of water to hit the floor:

[glass drops]

MARVEL GIRL: Scott, look out! Your water!

CYCLOPS: Ooops! Looks like Ol' Butterfingers Summers strikes again! I've dropped my glass of water!

BEAST: Indeed, or young leader is correct! That liquid receptacle will strike the floor imminently! Warren --!

ANGEL: I see it Hank ol' pal! As I'm the closest X-Men, I'll use my wonderful wings to whisk over and save the day! Wha-huh?? I missed--!

ICEMAN: I could use my mutant power to freeze the air around the glass, but the water inside the glass would expand, breaking the glass anyway! What a bind! I can't dope a way out of this one!

CYCLOPS: Perhaps I could fire an optic blast --

[ glass breaks ]

One of the other characteristics of X-Men physics is the ability to hear people talking in circumstances that might otherwise be impossible. You might think it would be difficult to determine if two people were whispering if you were racing towards them on a motorcycle in a room full of screaming people and revving bikes - but not in the world of the X-Men.

Right, the story. The story involves the Juggernaut rampaging, Professor X in a coma, the aforementioned Satan's Saints, various romantic sub-plots, and an insane amount of talking. When this baby came out, it cost 12 cents, and it probably took a kid the better part of an hour to read, with all that crazy-ass dialogue. That's money well-spent, if you ask me.

Here's a panel packed with as much dialogue as they could fit in. I think Roy Thomas' philosophy was that if a character was in a panel, he or she should be saying something. I'm surprised that the comatose Professor X isn't saying: "I must break out of this coma - but I can't! God help me -- I can't!"



You see what I mean? That small panel takes like, thirty seconds to read! If you actually read the whole damn thing, that is. But who wouldn't want to take the time to savor such lines as: "If the Professor dies, no amount of power will save that walking powerhouse!" That's good stuff.

Lest anyone think that I'm being too mean, I do understand and appreciate the need to place art in its cultural context. The books of this era were a product of their times, pulp confections served to an eager young audience. By today's standards these books seem unsophisticated, corny, dated. Time moves on, art and culture evolves and changes, and the tastes and style of one era morph into another. It's important to have some idea of where and when a work is coming from in order to understand it. Books like The X-Men #32 were the progenitors of the modern superhero comic, and it's unfair to judge them by today's standards, for we have more sophisticated production techniques and tools available today and our collective tastes have drifted towards more cinematic and "mature" comics. But you have to understand where that shit came from, or else you're just like that punk kid who thinks that Starship Troopers is better than Star Wars because the special effects are cooler. And we all hate that kid, don't we?

Anyway, while I acknowledge that it's unfair to judge old comics like this by contemporay standards, I do it anyway because I think it's funny. That's what we call intellectual cowardice.

This comic book gets extra points for having the old "Shamed by Your English?" ad, which deserves a post all its own...

*You are a fool if you try to tell me that comics are better now than they were Back in the Day - specifically, the 80's. A fool, I say!

** I may have used the kabuki analogy previously; if so, please forgive me.

Hillbilly Fight!

There are few things in life better than brawlin' hillbillies.

MARSHAL LAW TAKES MANHATTAN Epic Comics, 1989

Only a Brit could come up with a character like Marshal Law.

I don't know what it is over there. Is it the water? The weather? The lack of adequate dentistry? Whatever it is, British writers and artists have been creating the most fucked-up comics for decades now. Americans my age grew up reading Spider-Man and X-Men - Brits grew up reading 2000 AD and Judge Dredd. When American comic companies need somebody to write something depraved, they hire a Brit. I think it says something that in gun-toting America, The Punisher is written by an Irish guy. My pet theory is that the more outwardly polite and reserved your society is - I'm looking at you, Japan - the more twisted and subversive your pop culture becomes.

Marshal Law is the creation of writer Pat Mills and artist Kevin O'Neill, two demented people. Law lives and works in a nightmare future America, where he hunts and kills superheroes. You see, Marshal Law fucking hates superheroes. Bad. He slides into his weird bondage/gimp/Rob Halford outfit and mercilessly guns down his prey, who are usually analogs of existing American heroes. That's about all you need to know.

Epic published a Marshal Law series, as well as a number of sadistic/funny one shots and mini-series like this one. In Marshal Law Takes Manhattan, the good Marshal is hunting The Persecutor, a paranoid right-wing Punisher-type who has taken refuge in The Institute, a towering asylum for insane superheroes in New York City. Marshal Law goes to the Insititute and kills everybody. That's the story, which may not sound funny, but trust me, it is a frickin' laff riot -- if you like that kind of thing. (I do.)

During the big climax the crazy-ass superheroes bust out of the Institute when the water tank on the roof bursts. The deranged heroes -all Marvel parodies - blast out of the top of the Insititute skyscraper, plunging towards certain death many stories below. Hilarity ensues.

Here's "Daredevil" attempting to stop his fall with his usual grab-the-flagpole move:



Ouch.

Here are more superheroes plummeting to their death:



I think you can guess how this ends - beautifully.

Marshal Law Takes Manhattan is a transcendent work of fiction that challenges our long-held ideas of violence and sanity and the role that our governments and societal establishments play in defining and shaping these ideas. Who is insane? When is violence acceptable? In the world of Marshal Law the State decides these questions and, with the complicity of other institutions, crafts our very notion of reality in subtle ways, as evidenced by the profusion of seemingly trite signs and graffiti throughout the book. These scrawled messages represent the subliminal ways that the dominant paradigm is continually reinforced and our notions of acceptable/unacceptable behavior are kept in place...

Okay, I'm just fucking around. The big take-home message from Mashal Law Takes Manhattan is: violence is funny.

WOLVERINE & CAPTAIN AMERICA #1 Marvel Comics, 2004

This is one of those comics that I'm a little embarrassed to own.

I mean, this only came out a few years ago. It's okay to drag out the stupid shit I bought when I was a kid, but what about the stupid shit I bought when I was 30? What does it say about me as an adult that I willingly purchased Wolverine & Captain America #1? I mean, look at the cover - nothing wrong with it I guess, but... can't you kind of tell, just by looking at it? It has the feel and smell of a hundred other pedestrian, boilerplate comics you've read before. It's not that it's so bad, it's just that it's so utterly not good. And I willingly spent hard-earned money on this mediocrity, the sequential art equivalent of an episode of The Fall Guy. What does that say about me?

It says I'm an American and damn it, I like medioctrity! Cheap cookie-cutter crap! Pour it down my hungry gullet! Feed me your slop! I'm like a little piggy, rolling in comic book crap!

...wow, sorry.

The story by R.A. Jones pits Captain America and Wolverine against a group of generic comic book super-commandos for control of some mutant superchip or something. Forge from the X-Men and Ms Marvel (sorry, Warbird*) from The Avengers join the fun as plot cogs and expository devices. Forge exists just to tell Captain America about the super-chip and to cobble together a tracking device, and Warbird exists to give Cap somebody to talk to. To be fair, I can’t really comment on the entire four-issue series because I only bought this one issue, but based on reading this, it’s not so good.

The art by Tom Derenick is superheroic, but the facial expressions are limited to grimacing and bug-eyed screaming. The characters have a weird tendency to look like hairless monkey-people. Since I don't think Derenick was trying to draw the characters as hairless monkey people, I think this has to be viewed as a shortcoming.

Let’s take a look at the comic itself, shall we?

In the panel below, Professor X and Beast are in the X-Men Mansion, chatting about the newly discovered superchip. Forge is present, but isn’t visible in this panel. Beast suggests that they take the superchip to the Avengers Mansion for further analysis. No, Beast doesn’t want to take the superchip to The Fantastic Four, he wants to take it to The Avengers. I guess if the X-Men did the logical thing and flew the superchip to Reed Richards, the book would be called Wolverine & Mr. Fantastic, and that sounds stupid, doesn’t it? Anyway, a simian-looking Professor X agrees and tells Forge to take the McGuffin – I mean, superchip – to The Avengers, and to be quick about it!

Since when did Professor X start plucking his eyebrows like that? That’s creepy, he looks like RuPaul or a Vulcan or something.



Please take note that Professor X urged Forge to haul ass. So of course he decides to walk to the Avengers Mansion. No shit, on the very next page (below) we see Forge strolling down a country lane. Where the hell is he heading, to his grandmother’s house? Forge, the Avengers live in New York City! Hop on a bus at least if you don’t want to take the Blackbird! I’m not sure if this weirdness is the result of bad writing, or a miscommunication between artist and writer, or what. Maybe they just wanted to make Forge look like a total idiot.

Weirdly, Bad Guy Cyborg Commandos #213-216 have anticipated that Forge would walk from Westchester County to Manhattan with the vital superchip, and have set up an ambush along the way. Behold:



Later a battered Forge appears in the Avengers Mansion. I guess he crawled the rest of the way to the Mansion.

You see, it’s shit like that. I don’t know, maybe I’m being anal, but how do you publish something like that? It makes no sense. If that happened in a movie you would die laughing, but in comics stuff like this gets a pass. I mean, an editor could have caught that, the whole Forge walking to New York thing. You could have dropped a caption in there that says, “Two hours later, in Central Park…” and that could have at least explained where Forge is. Maybe a thought balloon that tells us that Forge took a cab into the city and was taking a shortcut through the park on his way to the Mansion. Something. Anything. It’s shit like that that makes people regard comics as a lower form of media. It’s slack.

Anyway, Wolverine shows up and fights this rocker chick, and more stuff happens, and then it ends. Unless the remaining three issues of the series did a complete 180 in terms of story, art, imagination, and coherence, I don’t regret my choice not to pick them up.


*I’m going to do a whole post some day on how Ms. Marvel is a better name than Warbird.

THE WEST COAST AVENGERS #27 Marvel Comics, 1987

I actually have two copies of this hilarious comic book; one that I bought at full price and one that I got from scrounging in the quarter bins at the old Comics Dungeon in Seattle under the watchful eye of the crazy old Jack Elam-looking owner. I had to get this comic because look! -somebody defaced the cover with adolescent word ballons! Admit it, it's funny when superheroes swear.

There's another thing that's funny about West Coast Avengers #27 - the whole damn thing! This is hands-down one of the goofiest comic books I own. It's a ridiculously retro funny book from writer Steve Englehart, with layouts by Al Milgrom and finished art (and I use the term loosely) by Mike Machlan. It's a throwback to an earlier age, when comic books were intentionally stupid. You know what I'm talking about. This comic is just dumb. I mean that nicely; just because it's dumb doesn't mean I can't like it.

Here's the story: Hawkeye gets jumped by the Zodiac and replaced by an L.M.D. (Life Model Decoy) imposter. Mockingbird is grappling with a terrible secret - she killed some guy or something. Tigra and Moon Knight flirt in the woods. When the fake Hawkeye acts out of character, Mockingbird figures out the LMD is a fake, and she and Tigra beat the shit out of it. Little do the Avengers know - Tigra has been replaced by and LMD!

That doesn't sound so bad, does it? Ah, but it's all in the execution, or lack thereof.

Here's the first page of the book - from page one you know you're in trouble! Hawkeye walks down a road in LegoTown USA, being stalked by a dozen brightly colored supervillains that he fails to notice. His name is Hawkeye for God's sake. Maybe he's been drinking, I don't know.

Wait a second. They busted up the villains' cattle auction? That must have been a gripping yarn. What kind of low-rent bad guys do the West Coast Avengers have to fight, anyway? Next issue they'll go after bologna smugglers or those people that sell purebred puppies in WalMart parking lots. I mean, the regular Avengers fight Kang.

Hawkeye is replaced by Sagittarius, a robot imposter! He infiltrates the West Coast Avengers compound, but he's acting a little strange. For instance, he turns Mockingbird down when she offers to give him a "massage," which leads us to this panel:

"Sure!" Hank's down with whatever.

We take a side-trip into Subplot Land and catch up with Moon Knight and Tigra, who are both out roaming around in the woods at night because "once the moon gets into your blood, you have to love it!"

Wait, I thought Virginia was for lovers. Now I'm confused.

Note to writers: when writing a mystic nocturnal warrior, try to avoid having him yell "Good grief!" It's not very butch.

There you have it, folks: West Coast Avengers #27. Goofy as hell - and I think the world is a little bit better off because of it.

The Uncanny X-Men and The New Teen Titans Marvel / DC Comics, 1982

Before the stupid Marvel vs DC crossover and the stupid Amalgam stories blighted the comic landscape with their stupid stupidness, there was this inter-company crossover from the real Golden Age of Comics, the Eighties. I am referring, of course, to The Uncanny X-Men and the New Teen Titans, a one-shot published by Marvel and DC featuring their two most popular superteams. Yes, hard as it may be to believe, there was a point when Wolfman & Perez’s New Teen Titans was just as hot as The Uncanny X-Men. You see? That’s one of the many reasons why the Eighties ruled.

For me, as a kid growing up in the era of Miami Vice and The Evil Soviet Empire, this comic was pure geek bliss. Written by Chris Claremont in his prime and drawn by Walt Fucking Simonson, X-Men/Titans had everything my young comic-loving mind wanted, and none of what it didn’t. The story was pretty straight-forward: after some initial confusion, the two teams unite to face the combined threat of Darkseid and Dark Phoenix, with a little Deathstroke the Terminator thrown in for good measure. The Eighties Claremont was a master at juggling large casts and keeping things fairly accessible to new readers, and X-Men/Titans is a classic example of what Claremont does (did?) well. Every character gets a little time in the spotlight, and all their powers are introduced through cheesy expository dialogue that could only exist in comics. You get to see Wolverine fight Deathstroke, so that’s a plus.

I know I’m not alone when I say that I find Claremont’s current stuff a little underwhelming, and I think his mannered dialogue and writing style can verge into self-parody… but come on, you can’t tell me you didn’t dig all those Claremont stories back in the day. Deep in your jaded heart, don’t you hold at least one of those old comics dear, like a secret crush you occasionally, wistfully remember? Wolverine: Alone? Days of Future Past? The Trial of Magneto? The Mandarin/Psylocke/Wolverine storyline? What about Omega Red? Come on, you know you love Omega Red!

Perhaps I’ve gone too far. Omega Red clearly sucks.

What am I even talking about? I totally got off track…

Right. X-Men/Titans. One of the great things about this book is that unlike other inter-company crossovers, they make no attempt to explain how the two teams from different universes meet up; the reader is just supposed to shut up, have fun, and not worry about it. So in this comic there’s no inter-dimensional war or crisis or merging of realities or any of that shit. No, that would take up valuable panel space. Here’s how Claremont deals with the issue:


I think that’s brilliant, and kind of cheeky.

And take note that since the panels above are the first time Cyborg appears in the story, Claremont throws in a quick bit of exposition so that the reader is suddenly up-to-speed. “His name is Victor Stone – Cyborg – a cybernetic organism… a super-powered synthesis of man and machine. He’d rather be human.” Come on, that’s good shit. This is the sort of storytelling that’s out of vogue in today’s era of wide-screen and decompressed comic books. I’m just throwing this out there, but I think a lot of the writers today feel that such time-honored comic book conventions are too goofy or low-brow or something, which is kind of a shame. The kids, man! Think about the children!


I'm going to start talking like that:

"Who ordered the pepperoni special?"

"I... David Campbell!"

The art kicks ass. What do you want me to say? It’s Walt Simonson, dude. He rules, he always will rule, he’s great, end of story. Actually, the one thing that I noticed about the art? Almost no sound effects. I’m used to seeing Simonson’s distinctive blocky Thor sound effects, but here they’re used sparingly.

Reading this comic again brought back warm, moist feelings of childhood.* I leave you with a passage of florid dialogue from X-Men/Titans to remind us all of the sweet fabric-softener scent of that Golden Age, of lost youth:

Kitty Pryde: "You!! You're the thing from my nightmare! You're real!"

Darkseid: "I am indeed! Adults deny me, but children know me for what I am. That makes them dangerous, and worthy to be cherished, for in their innocence lies the universe's salvation, and in the loss of that innocence, my ultimate victory!"

Don't let Darkseid win, people. Go read an old comic book today.

*I have no idea what the fuck I'm talking about.

Lame-ass villain #4 - The Cheetah

Real name: Esteban Carracus
Occupation: Professional criminal, pimp, chica magnet
Identity: All the ladies, theyknow the Cheetah. All the ladies, they love the Cheetah.
Place of humiliating death at the hands of Scourge: "The Bar With No Name"
Marital status: Single, baby. Single
Known relatives: Nothing those bitches can prove, my man.
Group affiliation: The Cheetah runs alone
Base of Operations: Various and sundry nightclubs in Dade County, the back booth of a Denny's.
First appearance and origin: Captain Marvel #48. Yes, Captain Marvel actually fought him.
Final appearance: Captain America #319
Famous taglines: "You dancin'?"
"You like fur baby? Run your fingers through the Cheetah's chest."
"They say the Cheetah is fast, but there's one thing I like to do slow..."
"Is your dad a thief? Because he stole the stars and put them in your eyes, baby."
"America is like a big chicken, just waiting to be plucked."
"Would you like to meet the Little Cheetah?"

CAPTAIN AMERICA #318 Marvel Comics, 1986

This issue kicks so much ass.

Captain America #318 was one of the ten thousand issues of the book written by Mark Gruenwald. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think he consistently wrote Captain America for nine or ten years. That’s insane. Nobody works on a book for that long these days. Okay, Dave Sim. And Erik Larsen. Anyway, it’s rare. Too me, Gruenwald’s Captain America is the definitive interpretation of the character. I'm a big Gruenwald fan. I’m not saying the man didn’t write any stinkers. Sure, nobody liked Cap-Wolf or the Superia Stratagem. But for the most part Gruenwald delivered old-fashioned adventure stories on a monthly basis that you wouldn’t hesitate letting your little nephew read. You never had to worry about Cap sodomizing somebody with a jackhammer. Yet.

This particular issue is part of the ongoing “Scourge of the Underworld” storyline; Captain America hunts a serial killer(s) who is slaying low-level supervillains with armor piercing bullets. After every murder, the disguised Scourge would always bust out with his tagline, “Justice is served.” If you were to ask why he said that, I’m guessing the answer would be: “ I thought it was just a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before you popped a cap in his ass.” Anyway, for months the Scourge killings were a subplot in Captain America and a few other books, I think. A disguised Scourge would miraculously show up out of nowhere and shoot some lame villain like Death Adder or Basilisk. The storyline reached a bloody crescendo when Scourge, disguised as a bartender, infiltrated a meeting of supervillains at The Bar With No Name and gunned them all down. The Scourge story allowed Marvel to get rid of some of their supervillainous deadwood – the body count included lame-ass villains like Turner D. Century, Cheetah, and Steeplejack. For a full list of Scourge’s victims, go here. I bet every geek was upset about at least one of Scourge’s killings: “Aww, man! They killed Hammer and Anvil! That’s bullshit!” Me, I was kind of pissed that they killed off Commander Kraken; I always liked him.

The issue begins with Death Adder of the Serpent Society crashing his Serpent Saucer or whatever in The Bronx. To make a long story short, he flags down a cab which happens to be driven by Scourge in disguise. Don’t ask me how Scourge managed to know to show up at that exact point in space and time, because I don’t know. Scourge pops a cap in Death Adder’s ass and says “Justice is served.”

Next we’re introduced to the roller-skating villain Blue Streak, who visits The Bar With No Name, an underground hang out for supervillains. There he chats with Firebrand, a lame Iron Man villain who is freaked out about the Scourge slayings. Firebrand is having a Lame Villains Club meeting at the Bar and wants to know if Blue Streak will come, and maybe bring a salad. Blue Streak rebuffs Firebrand – “I ain’t a joiner.” – and takes off.

For me, the best part of the comic is the part when Captain America, who is traveling “anywhere in this great old country I am needed” in his bad-ass van, needs to take a piss, so he pulls over at a rest stop and bumps into Blue Streak coming out of the john, whistling a merry tune. They’re both out of uniform, but Cap recognizes him. “Aren’t you Blue Streak?” Cap says. And then the fightin’ and chasin’ starts. I for one think that is brilliant, the urination thing. How many times have you read a superhero comic where the hero has to pee? Not only does Cap have to drain the main vein, a novelty in and of itself, but it’s actually important to the plot. Thank God that Cap drank that Thirsty-Two Ouncer earlier, otherwise he would have never bumped into Blue Streak in the first place!

Captain America and Blue Streak change into their respective costumes between panels and start fighting. Wisely, Blue Streak decides not to hang around and he takes off. Cap follows him: ON HIS FUCKING MOTORCYCLE!!! And check out Cap’s great new headgear – he’s got a Peter Fonda helmet with a visor.

Here’s a sample of the action. Imagine generic truck commercial rock when you read this:

Fortunately Cap damages one of Blue Streak’s jet boots, so he’s able to keep up with the villain. There are all manner of twists and turns in their pursuit, which I thought was handled pretty well, actually. Except for the part where Cap blocks a shot from Blue Streak’s gauntlet laser with the shield on his back while he’s riding his motorcycle – that’s not happening. Even Blue Streak comments on it: “How’d he do that? Deflected the beam with his shield strapped to his back!” Yeah, I don’t know either, Blue Streak.

The chase ends when Blue Streak fakes his death by making it look like he crashed through a guard rail and off a cliff. Captain America, being the nice guy that he is, climbs down the cliff to see if Blue Streak survived. I am sure by now that Cap has to piss very badly.

Up on the road, Blue Streak flags down a trucker – only it’s not a trucker, it’s Scourge in disguise, who just happens to be driving down this road at this exact time, I guess, looking for hitchhiking supervillains to kill. Blue Streak climbs up into the cab, oblivious to the danger, and the truck starts off down the road. Then, (and this is a fantastic sound effect) pumSPAK Justice is served, baby. Justice is served.

Hey, you know what else is served? Quality American superhero entertainment. You’re heart has become cold and dead if you can’t appreciate a little Captain America now and then.

A big Passover peace-out to all y'all

Up, up, and oy!

Passover greetings to all my Hebrew friends.

(Image from Heeb, The New Jew Review #3)

How I love thee, Suicide Squad

Suicide Squad was spawned from the 1987 mini-series Legends (which I will get around to reviewing/mocking at some point). Written exclusively by John Ostrander, the book had a consistent vision and “through-line” that you don’t see too much of anymore in today’s age of reboots and revamps.

I liked Suicide Squad because it had a (relatively) sophisticated and cynical approach to politics, crime, and punishment and often tread a moral grey area between the few “good guys” on the team and the “bad guys.” Plus, it was more hardcore and lethally violent than any other comic books, so it scored extra points with me. The Squad (actually called Task Force X) was a group of incarcerated super-villains who would go on secret government missions to work off their sentences. They were based out of Belle Reve prison in the swamps of Louisiana, and went on all sorts of deadly assignments with explosive bracelets clamped to their wrists to keep them in line. The great thing was they actually used the explosive bracelets! In one issue, Squad draftee Slipknot tried to sneak off during a fight and boom there goes his arm. Comedy.

The Squad had a revolving membership of costumed villains, many of whom got killed. You always new if there was some new or dorky villain on the team that he was going to get shot up. The Ferret? He won’t last ten pages. There were a few major characters that you knew weren’t going to get killed – but you were wrong! Rick Flag, team leader? Yeah, he dies. His girlfriend, Karen? Dies. What's-his-name, the cool helicopter pilot? Dies. Ravan, the bad-ass Kali-woshipping assassin? Oh, he totally dies. Everybody died in Suicide Squad! There were a couple missions were almost everybody died. I loved it.

The cast was made up of 2nd tier characters that were kind of disposable. Led by a hard-ass beaureaucrat named Amanda “The Wall” Waller, the Squad had a couple of good guys like Rick Flag, Nightshade, and Bronze Tiger, who were basically brought on to ride herd on a bunch of super-thugs. The main bad guys were Flash villain Captain Boomerang, a craven but devious Aussie; Batman villain Deadshot, a cold blooded sniper with a really cool but impractical costume; Duchess, an amnesiac villain from the planet Apokolips; Count Vertigo, a Euro-trash noble with “vertigo” powers; and Batman villain Poison Ivy, the poisonous plant chick. Other villains rotated in and out of the Squad like The Penguin, Captain Cold, and The Parasite, and a ton of other 3rd rate villains who were killed with impunity.

Here's a typical moment of bondng between the characters:


That's what we call tough love.

The series was eventually cancelled after losing some creative steam, but Ostrander rode that bastard for five and a half years, and although there were some missteps along the way, page for page Suicide Squad was one of the most consistently entertaining and engaging comic series EVER!

In the future I’ll review/gush over individual Squad issues, but I grow weary of making fun of bad comics and just wanted to give Suicide Squad some props.

What the world needs now...

... a big Bat-hug!

I can't remember where I found this picture, but it rules.