Wow, I’m thoroughly, disgustingly sick. Fever of 100 degrees, headaches, nasty cough, mucus flowing like a mighty river. I think it’s been about a decade since I had a cold like this, but man, it’s sure making up for lost time.

I could barely sleep last night for all the fever dreams. And they were all about comic books. You really should not read comics just before going to bed with a high fever, because you’ll keep dreaming your fever has turned you into the Human Torch.

I’ll try to log back in tonight for Friday Night Fights, but for now, I’m gonna see if I can catch up on my sleep a little.

I’m a sucker for a good comic-strip stunt, so I’m good and jazzed about this — a bunch of comics by African-American and Hispanic cartoonists, all with the identical script, to draw attention to minority issues in comics:

But for one day — this Sunday — 11 cartoonists of color will be drawing essentially the same comic strip, using irony to literally illustrate that point. In each strip, the artists will portray a white reader grousing about a minority-drawn strip, complaining that it’s a “Boondocks” rip-off and blaming it on “tokenism.” “It’s the one-minority rule,” says Lalo Alcaraz (“La Cucaracha”). “We’ve got one black guy and we’ve got one Latino. There’s not room for anything else.”

Plans for the protest began with Cory Thomas, a Howard University grad whose strip, “Watch Your Head,” deals with college life at a predominantly African American university. Thomas, Trinidad-born and D.C.-bred, says he was frustrated by the number of times his strip was turned down by newspapers that didn’t feel the need to sign him up, because, well, they already had a black comic strip. Most editors, he says, only allow for one or two minority strips, viewing them all as interchangeable. Never mind that his strip is a world away in sensibility from the scathing sociopolitical musings of Darrin Bell’s “Candorville” or the family-focused fun of Stephen Bentley’s “Herb and Jamaal.”

So Thomas drew a strip addressing that, and then enlisted the help of Bell. From there, they got others to agree to participate: Bentley, Jerry Craft (“Mama’s Boyz”), Charlos Gary (“Cafe con Leche” and “Working It Out”), Steve Watkins (“Housebroken”), Keith Knight (“The K Chronicles”), Bill Murray (“The Golden Years”), Charles Boyce (“Compu-toon”) and editorial cartoonist Tim Jackson. Alcaraz, who says he found out too late to meet his deadline, will be chiming in on Feb. 11.

I think it’s a fair question. Sure, there are economic factors to consider — most newspapers have been shrinking their comics pages (and the comic strips themselves!) for decades, and they only have a limited amount of space on their pages for what seems to be an ever-growing number of cartoonists with new strips to offer.

But on the other hand, there are a lot of comics pages that look a lot like the one we have here in Lubbock — just about the only non-white face you’ll ever see is Lt. Flap in “Beetle Bailey.” For a country as large and diverse as we got, surely there’s gotta be some room for other kinds of characters, right?

Besides, anything that gets Keith Knight a little more publicity is a good thing, ya know?

 

Batman #673

This is a pretty weird issue, with lots of off-kilter stuff going on, some of it contradicting itself or current continuity. The explanation is that Batman has had a heart attack and is hallucinating almost everything that happens here. He imagines himself undergoing a ritual in a cave in Nanda Parbat, reliving the deaths of his parents, threatening a crime boss, watching his own funeral, meeting up with a creepy monster version of Bat-Mite, and undergoing an extended period in an isolation chamber. In the end, his life is saved… but his rescuer is a guy wearing a Batman costume and armed with a power drill. What the heck is going on?

This issue is getting a lot of attention right now because of one single panel:

 

Explanation: Ever since Jason Todd died, Bats has kept a memorial case in the Batcave that includes Jason’s Robin uniform. A couple of years ago, when the current Robin, Tim Drake, was taking a short hiatus from crimefighting, Batman recruited Stephanie Brown, a friend of Tim’s who operated as a superhero named the Spoiler, as a new replacement Robin. She was abducted, tortured with a power drill, and killed pretty darn horribly by a villain named Black Mask after only a short time as Robin.

Anyway, folks started noticing that Batman hadn’t set up a memorial case for Stephanie. Arguing (correctly, in my opinion) that it would be out-of-character for Batman not to give Stephanie a memorial case, and that her death was part of a long-running and way creepy hostility to female characters in the comics industry, they set up a webpage to advocate for a memorial case for Steph.

DC Comics reacted to this fairly predictably — by screaming, “A memorial case?! B-But she’s a girl!” And that really jump-started a new movement of feminist comics fans who point out that, yeah, girls read comics, and they’ve got plenty of reasons to be unhappy with the way women are portrayed in an awful lot of comics.

That’s simplifying things a lot for brevity’s sake. But the point is that, in this latest issue of “Batman,” writer Grant Morrison just gave Stephanie Brown her memorial case. Sure, it may very well be part of Batman’s hallucinations. But when a writer as important to comics as Morrison says it’s there, and when he’s setting Batman up to be tortured by the same sort of power drill that was used to kill Stephanie, that means it’s not just fans who are agitating for better treatment for Stephanie and other female characters — it means creators are realizing that it’s time to change things up, and that the editors may be realizing that they don’t gain anything by angering their readers, male or female. That alone is a welcome change.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The story’s good, the art is good. Part of me figures that, after a heart attack, getting his back broke, getting shot or stabbed every other issue, Batman should just move into a convalescent home and have a nice long rest. The memorial case issue is, admittedly, a minor part of the story, but it gives the entire comic a feeling that important stuff is going on here. I’m looking forward to the next issue.

Green Lantern #27

We’ve got yet another “Aftermath of Sinestro Corps War” issue, but good gravy train, did they ever pack in the extra oomph! First, we’ve got Hal Jordan and John Stewart narrowly preventing Dr. Jonathan Crane, a.k.a. the Scarecrow, from becoming a Sinestro Corps member. Next, we’ve got a pretty bracing philosophical debate amongst the GL Corps about whether a Corps member’s execution of Amon Sur (the son of Hal’s predecessor and recent recruit into Sinestro’s gang) was a justifiable killing or cold-blooded murder. And finally, we’ve got the selection, transformation, and official debut of the Alpha Lanterns.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Really, this one had metric megatons of cool stuff in it. The Alpha Lanterns — Green Lanterns surgically altered into semi-robotic GL-Manhunter combinations who are charged only with enforcing justice among the other Green Lanterns — are plenty creepy, from the unnerving “cosmic surgery” that transforms them to their extremely ominous debut. And man alive, do I ever wish we could’ve seen the Scarecrow with a power ring. That woulda been sooooo cool.

 

Via Blog@: Here’s a nice long excerpt from a new book called “The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America” by David Hajdu. It’s about, obviously, that pretty dang weird period in the ’40s and ’50s when comics were scapegoated for every bad thing in the universe. The conventional wisdom held that crime comics turned kids into juvenile delinquents, horror comics turned them into thrill killers, Superman made them jump off buildings, Wonder Woman turned them into lesbians, and Batman and Robin turned them gay. Some cities actually banned them, and Congress held hearings about them, which definitely didn’t turn out the way the comics industry wanted.

Here’s a short sample from the book:

The hearings on comic books and juvenile delinquency, like the earlier sessions on organized crime, came across as judicial proceedings rather than legislative inquiries. (At the 1951 crime sessions, one senator, Herbert R. O’Conor of Maryland, had accidentally referred to one witness as “the defendant.”) Not just Bill Gaines but the whole of comic books appeared to be on trial, and the phantoms of the crime hearings seemed to incriminate them by association. Foley Square, Estes Kefauver, cameras and lights, talk of murder and bloodshed and vice. Gaines soon realized what had happened. “It was a difficult experience, because all of a sudden you find that everyone you know kind of regards you as a criminal,” he recalled. “There had been the famous Kefauver hearings before this, with criminals and the Mafia, and they were very big. So all of a sudden we comic publishers, and me in particular, find ourselves classed in with Frank Costello and all the other crooks dragged up before Kefauver. Kefauver technically was not the head of the comics committee, but Kefauver was pretty rough on me.”

Gaines, bedridden with stomach pains for days after the hearings, did not return to work until Monday, April 26. Having lost a good ten pounds during the previous week, he invited Feldstein to lunch and found an unexpected benefit of his Foley Square ordeal. The waiters at Patrissy’s seemed especially attentive, and they brought a full plate of biscotti for dessert, on the house. Feldstein supposed that word of the hearings had spread around Little Italy, and Gaines was now presumed to be in with the Mob.

Much more at the link, of course. Go read it all.

What’s that you say? You say it’s Friday night, and you can’t get over your mad desire for mayhem, righteous battle, and wanton face-punching? Lucky for you there’s FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Let’s tune in for all the action from July 2000’s JSA #12 by David Goyer, Geoff Johns, and Buzz, as Mr. Terrific takes on the evil Kobra. Our combatants warm up with a little friendly name-calling:

“Braggart?!” “Sociopath?!” Much too intellectual. Someone get busy with the nose-pulping and elbow jabs, please.

That’s more like it! Yay for nose-pulping and elbow jabs!

 

Captain America #34

Well, I talked myself into getting the issue with the new Captain America. Heck, I didn’t even talk myself into getting the issue where Cap was killed, or the one with his funeral. Don’t know what changed my mind for this one — I probably just gave in to the hype.

For those of you who got here late, the original Captain America, Steve Rogers, was assassinated a few months back. His WWII sidekick, Bucky Barnes, was long believed killed during the war, but he was secretly recovered by the Soviets, brainwashed, and turned into a killing machine called the Winter Soldier. He’s since recovered his memories, but he’s still a lot harder-edged than he used to be. And with Cap dead, Bucky has decided to take up his mentor’s adamantium shield.

Cap’s old archenemy, the Red Skull, has a new plan to destroy America — and instead of pulling the old lame supervillain gags, he’s updating his plans for the new millennium. The Skull has secretly gained control of an international megacorp called Kronas Corporation, and with that, he’s doubled the price of oil and foreclosed on thousands of homes, throwing Wall Street into a tailspin and kicking off a major economic panic. To push things over the brink, the Red Skull sends his minions to steal Wall Street’s gold reserves.

Bucky makes his debut as Cap, and he and the Black Widow rout the bad guys without too much trouble. But Tony Stark (Iron Man, and the current director of the S.H.I.E.L.D. spy agency) discovers that the Red Skull has co-opted and brainwashed some of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s own agents, and they’re going to push the chaos even higher…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Bucky’s very well-written, and they’ve done great work on explaining both why he’s not all that well-suited for the job (not as intensely patriotic as Steve Rogers was, definitely not as athletic or physically overpowering) and why he actually works very well wearing the big white “A” on his forehead (great tactical thinker, knows how to fight against huge masses of goons, knows how to throw a big adamanatium shield). And as for the bad guys, the Red Skull’s plan is wonderfully devious. Using America’s economy against itself? Oh, that one’ll never work, Herr Skull. Uh, wait a minute…

And yes, he uses a gun. But to my surprise, he doesn’t actually kill anyone with it. I wasn’t expecting that at all. I had him pegged as the dark pessimistic anti-hero who goes too far and eventually has to be taken down by his resurrected mentor. So far, things ain’t playing out like that at all. Good — that kind of story was tired and played out a decade ago.

Anyway, like I said, thumbs up. Good story, good art, good dialogue. Marvel did a good job with this one.