Thanks to everyone who voted for me last week — the great news is that I won! Yay! And the great news after that is that it’s time for even more… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle comes from June 2009’s Green Arrow/Black Canary #19 by Andrew Kreisberg, Mike Norton, and Joe Rubinstein. Green Arrow has been captured by some nutbag called Cupid and shackled to a subway track. I must assume that Ollie got captured because he was distracted by Cupid’s costume, which is dumber’n snot, but does show off her cleavage — and that’s the best way to distract Ollie. Anyway, after that, Cupid just adds injury to insult.

I think what bugs me the most about this is that Cupid was a male god. Giving that name to a female character is a little silly, isn’t it?

People, I don’t have much of anything I want to blog about today, so I’m just gonna sit here and deliberately stir up trouble.

What I am about to reveal here is the complete, objective truth.

For example:

Who was the best Green Lantern?

Answer: Kyle Rayner.

No, definitely not Hal Jordan. He’s always been a shallow, generally uninteresting character. “Fearless test pilot” isn’t a personality all by itself, and the people out there who seem to freakin’ worship Hal strike me as some of the weirdest people on earth. Yes, that includes the “Hal’s Emerald Attack Team” fanatics and Geoff Johns. As for the rest of them, Guy Gardner’s generally fun, but he’s mostly a gag character. I like John Stewart, especially in the Justice League cartoons. Simon Baz is too new. But Kyle, the last Green Lantern, uncertain, awkward, crab-masked, completely aware of his own fears, freelance artist with the no-yellow-impurity power ring? Kyle was the best.

Who was the best Flash?

Answer: Wally West.

Definitely, definitely not Barry Allen. Having a crew cut and a bow tie makes him the *worst* Flash. Wally was funnier, cooler, more interesting in every possible way — and of course, he was far, far, far faster.

Who was the best Robin?

Answer: Dick Grayson.

Really, I guess the best answer would be “Anyone but Jason Todd.” Because I really like all of the Robins. But Dick was the first Robin, he was Robin for the longest time, and he eventually ended up being the best possible Nightwing, so I’m giving the circus kid the crown.

Who was the best Batgirl?

Answer: Stephanie Brown.

Not to take anything away from Barbara Gordon or Cassandra Cain, because they were pretty cool, but as grim and gritty as the Bat-verse generally is, it was just plain awesome to get to read a Bat-title every month where the lead character wasn’t an emotionally-crippled basket case. Steph was fun and funny and had the best dialogue.

Who was the best Aquaman?

Answer: Bearded, hook-handed Aquaman.

Because I don’t care who writes him, the clean-shaven, orange-shirted nonentity from “Super Friends” just sucks on every possible level.

Who was the best Hawkgirl?

Answer: Kendra Saunders.

Mostly because I liked the idea of a Hawkgirl who, at least initially, didn’t want to be the back half of “Hawkman and” — she didn’t love Hawkman, and she wanted to be her own person. She was even in relationships with people other than Hawkman. Eventually, she fell in love with Hawkman in a way that felt more organic, realistic, and worthwhile, and that was fine with me. She certainly didn’t deserve to get exit-stage-lefted the way she did…

Who was the best Green Arrow?

Answer: The one with the beard.

I liked Connor Hawke, but he’d never be the equal of his dad. And Ollie without a beard just looks like a dork, so he’s gotta have the ridiculous beard.

Who was the best Hulk?

Answer: Angry green stupid Hulk.

I liked the Professor Hulk, actually. And the Green Scar was cool. Joe Fixit is always fun. But angry green stupid Hulk is the strongest one there is.

Who was the best Spider-Man?

Answer: The Peter Parker married to Mary Jane Watson.

Because Spider-Man isn’t Otto Octavius, and he doesn’t make deals with the Devil.

What are the best zombies? Fast or slow?

Answer: Slow zombies.

To quote Max Brooks: “Ha ha, there are no such things as fast zombies!”

So there we go, friends and neighbors, all the mysteries of life cleared up. Go on about your business, please.

It’s time for the final Friday Night Fights of 2012! Do we have an epic battle between Old Man Time and Baby New Year? Superheroes slugging it out at a New Year’s party? The ghost of Dick Clark beating up whoever’s doing the New Year’s specials nowadays? No! I couldn’t find anything that appropriate. So tonight is Season-Inappropriate Beatdowns on… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Tonight’s battle comes to us from October 1973’s Action Comics #428 by Elliot S! Maggin and Dick Giordano, as Black Canary flips some arrogant dork.

Ya gotta admit — there isn’t anyone who deserves to get his ass kicked by Black Canary more than Green Arrow. They could do that in every issue for the next decade, and Ollie would still have worse coming to him…

Uncanny Avengers #1

So this was the one everyone was kinda excited about — the comic that kicks off “Marvel Now,” Marvel’s soft reboot/renumbering scheme. Was it worth it?

Basically, we get a bunch of introductions to the folks who’ll be starring in this book. We get Wolverine giving a eulogy at Charles Xavier’s funeral. We get Havok paying a visit to his incarcerated (and unrepentant) brother, Cyclops. We get Captain America and Thor recruiting Havok for the Avengers, and then all three of them dealing with a repowered and mind-controlled Avalanche. We get Rogue and the Scarlet Witch angrily confronting each other and then getting attacked by a new group of villains.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Can I say, first of all, that this is a team that’s much too overdue? One of the things that’s long bugged me about the Marvel Universe has been the seemingly impenetrable wall between the X-books and the rest of Marvel’s comics. Sure, there’s the occasional team-up or miniseries, but for decades, the only X-Men who became Avengers were Beast and Wolverine. It really seemed ridiculous that Captain America never said, “Hey, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Kitty Pryde, and a bunch of these other X-Men are pretty darned good. We should recruit them into the Avengers, ’cause they’re badasses — and it’d help the cause of mutant rights, too!” So, like I said, a long overdue move here, and I hope this isn’t just an experiment that’ll be forgotten in another couple of years.

As for the comic itself, John Cassaday’s art is, as always, outstanding. Rick Remender’s writing is fine, too. The story is probably a bit gorier than some of y’all would rather, with a lot of emphasis on the bad guys pulling people’s brains out of their heads. But I still enjoyed it, and I reckon I’ll pick up future issues of it, too.

Arrow #1

It’s a preview for the comic based on the new TV series that’s going to be airing soon, about spoiled rotten rich boy Oliver Queen and how he becomes an archery superhero.

Verdict: Well, it’s free, and you get what you pay for.

Alright, kiddies, it’s Friday, time for the weekend, and we need some comic book violence to get things started right. Let’s jump right into… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

This is one of my all-time favorites — possibly the most epic battle ever from Grant Morrison’s run on “JLA” — during the “Rock of Ages” storyline, we get a glimpse into an alternate future where the evil New God Darkseid has taken over the world. So from January 1998’s JLA #14 by Grant Morrison, Howard Porter, and John Dell, here’s the all-powerful Darkseid vs. a guy who shrinks and a guy who shoots arrows:

And the coda to that fight, just because it’s a great coupla lines:

Everyone have a great weekend — I’ll see y’all Monday.

Green Arrow #30

Okay, I got this for the “Blackest Night” crossover and for that cool inversion of the famous “Green Lantern/Green Arrow” cover from the ’70s. Green Arrow has been taken over by a Black Lantern ring because he once died and was brought back to life. While his zombie-side tries and fails to kill Hal Jordan, Black Canary, Connor Hawke, and Mia Dearden, the real Oliver Queen ends up watching it all from the inside, mostly helplessly.

Verdict: Thumbs down. At least Ollie wasn’t as uselessly dull as Wonder Woman when she got take over by the black ring in the “Blackest Night: Wonder Woman” miniseries, but it’s still not a very interesting story. I dig the artwork by the awesomely-named Diogenes Neves, though…

Batman and Robin #9

And speaking of zombies, this issue had several resurrected dead people, and it isn’t even part of the “Blackest Night” stuff at all.

We start out with Batwoman, who is, um, dead. She was injured terribly in the cave-in from last issue, but ultimately, it was a suicide, assisted by Dick Grayson. The plan: Batman, the Knight, and the Squire will dig out the buried Lazarus Pit again, and then dunk Batwoman back in it. Meanwhile, the resurrected clone of Bruce Wayne has traveled to Gotham City, where he’s trying to kill Alfred Pennyworth and Damian Wayne, still recovering from spinal replacement surgery. The Batman clone is starting to rot from within pretty quickly, but he’s still got plenty of time to commit low-IQ mayhem. Back in England, Batwoman is successfully revived, but will she and Batman be able to make it back to America in time to save Damian from being thrown off the top of Wayne Tower?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nicely claustrophobic action — can Damian even survive fighting a zombie clone Batman when he’s wearing a neck brace? Great personality work, too. Batwoman’s father has his first meeting with Batman and looks entirely delighted, and it’s great fun read dialogue between the Knight and the Squire. And there are a couple hilarious keeping-the-secret-identity-secret moments — Damian’s mock-innocent “Who ARE all these terrible people?” and the not-heterosexual Batwoman just flat-out flirting with Dick Grayson, partly for the sake of her secret ID, and partly because Dick is, frankly, such an over-confident dork.

Green Lantern #41

Larfleeze, a.k.a. Agent Orange, is the sole possessor of the Orange Lantern. He’s the greediest being in the universe, and he’s taken Hal Jordan prisoner. Why? Hal has a green ring and a blue ring — and Larfleeze desperately wants the blue one. Hal gets him to reveal how he came to have the Orange Lantern — he was once a thief who stole an important item from the Guardians and fled to the planet Okaara. There, he and his fellow crooks found a glowing orange lantern and struggled greedily to possess it. The Guardians and the Manhunter robots tried to stop them, but the orange light was too powerful. In order to get their important box back, the Guardians bargained to let the last surviving thief keep the orange lantern and to never interfere with him, as long as he stayed in the Vega System. Larfleeze ended up having the Orange Lantern all to himself, and now he wants his very own Blue Lantern ring. And he’ll stop at nothing to get it, even if Hal can’t get the ring off his finger…

Verdict: Ehh, kind of a wash. Agent Orange’s story is really less than compelling, and the Guardians’ and the Green Lantern Corps’ battle against Larfleeze’s orange light constructs is fairly pedestrian. But the cliffhanger is pretty good. How the heck is Jordan gonna get out of this one…?

Green Arrow and Black Canary: A League of their Own

A compilation of a lengthy storyline from the “GA/BC” series — this one focuses on the quest to find who shot and then kidnapped Green Arrow’s son, Connor Hawke. With Batman and Plastic Man tagging along to help out, Ollie and Dinah eventually trace the hit to Ra’s al Ghul’s League of Assassins — but Ra’s is dead, so who was masquerading as him? Turns out it was Shado, a Yakuza assassin who is the mother of another of Ollie’s kids — she raped him while he was unconscious. Her son is dying of cancer, and Dr. Sivana offered to cure him, as long as she killed Green Arrow. When the hit went wrong and Connor was injured, Sivana had him and Shado’s son kidnapped and genetically treated with some of Plastic Man’s skin cells. So Connor ends up cured, but he’s completely lost his memory and his ability to shoot a bow. On top of all this, we get Mia Dearden, the new Speedy, out on a date. Will her new beau be able to accept her HIV-positive status?

Verdict: I think I’ll give this a thumbs up, because I was quite entertained by the story. The big problem is that writer Judd Winick put this together from the fragments of two of his signature “Let’s kill a random superhero” storylines — first, he “killed” Green Arrow himself, then after handwaving that one away, he “killed” Connor. One gets the feeling that, even for DC’s notoriously kill-happy editors, they thought Winick needed to be reigned in, so we get this long storyarc trying to get the Green Arrow status quo back to normal. I will say that Winick’s strongest abilities lie in characterization and dialogue, so I very much enjoyed Mia’s date and Connor’s post-coma amnesia, which both felt genuine and charming. And Mike Norton’s art is just grand throughout — nothing real flashy, but solid, beautifully created artwork.

Looks like Friday Night Fights is back on! And you know what that means, right? Right? No, not macramé and lemon cookies! Not feeding the duckies down by the lake! Not going to the mall to buy new underwear! It means FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Our little chunk of violence tonight is from 1997’s JLA #9 by Grant Morrison and Oscar Jimenez. In it, we see the Key, a guy who got his name by digging in his pants pockets, preparing to traverse an interdimensional lock to attain omnipotent power.

 

Sounds like bad news. Perhaps an off-panel Connor “Green Arrow” Hawke can help foil his evil plan to, um, walk through a glowing door?

 

WHHHHUNNTCH! Is there no more joyful sound in all the world than “WHHHHUNNTCH?”

 

Aaaaand… Scene.

Merry Weekend, everyone. May you have several delicious WHHHHUNNTCHes.

Is this not the weirdest political season you’ve seen in a while? It seems particularly unusual for us Texans — when was the last time that we actually had a say in helping to pick any of the nominees? Usually, the candidates have been narrowed to one-per-party long before the Texas primary hits. But this year, we’re still in play. Seems to make a lot of people much more interested in the presidential race than normal.

We’ve already had ol’ Bubba in town to talk up Hillary’s candidacy. Right now, Obama’s currently disappointing a lot of folks who were hoping he’d come to town, too. So right now, everyone’s thinking about matters political. And hey, I’m a shameless attention hound, so I figured I’d hunt down nice presidential-themed comic covers for your amusement.

 

Ya ever wondered who various superheroes would vote for? I figure Wonder Woman would be endorsing Hillary, right?

 

Captain America’s got a military background — I figure he’d pull the lever for McCain.

 

Green Arrow? While he hasn’t run for president, he did get elected as mayor of Star City not too long ago. I think he’d definitely be a Kucinich supporter, though I’m sure he complained that Kucinich was a bit too conservative for his tastes.

 

Hey, good ol’ Prez Rickard, the 18-year-old president from the old ’70s DC series. I’m betting Prez would write in whoever was running as the Green candidate. Crazy ’70s hippie weirdo presidents…

 

Yeah, the Savage Dragon was briefly the president. Who would he support in this election? Definitely the Greens. Get it? Get it? Oh, man, I’m hilarious.

 

No reason not to let the villains in on the act. In DC’s continuity, Lex Luthor actually got elected president of the U.S. back in 2000. He wasn’t considered too bad a president either, though he eventually got booted out of office after turning supervillain. As for who he’d vote for? I figure Lex would write himself in. Crazy megalomaniac ex-presidents…

 

I think I’m the only person in the world who liked the “Emperor Joker” storyline that ran in the Superman comics a few years ago. Sure, he’s not exactly presidential, but being an all-powerful emperor counts for something, I guess. I’m not sure the Joker would think any of the candidates were crazy enough for him. Maybe Alan Keyes. That dude’s craaaaaaazy. Maybe Huckabee, if he keeps talking up that garbage about making America a theocracy…

 

Whoa, looks like Superman’s endorsing Obama.

So who are your picks for the nation’s top job?

UPDATE: Can’t believe I forgot Howard the Duck!

I figure Howard would vote for Mallard Fillmore or Andrew Quackson…

 

Green Arrow and Black Canary #1

In the wake of Oliver Queen’s death, Black Canary is dealing with her grief by beating the snot out of bad guys as brutally as possible. In fact, she’s also keeping Ollie’s body preserved in a big glass tube — she’s convinced it’s not really Green Arrow. Everyone thinks she’s nuts — everyone except Batman.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s got a few problems — Black Canary is mostly an observer of other people’s detective work, and Green Arrow barely shows up at all. But the detective work is pretty good, and the big secret is fairly well done. Cliff Chiang’s artwork is just drop-dead gorgeous, too.

 

Green Lantern Corps #16

There’s a lot of stuff going on in this one. There’s the Battle of the Planets, with Mogo, the Green Lantern planet taking on Ranx, the crazy Sinestro city, Kilowog fighting Arkillo, a monstrous Sinestro Corps member, Sodam Yat, a Daxamite GL, wreaks havoc inside Ranx, and members of the Green Lantern Corps and Sinestro Corps fighting each other everywhere. Things look bad for the Lanterns until the Guardians of the Galaxy change their governing laws to allow Lanterns to kill Sinestro Corps members.

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s pretty chaotic, and there are tons of characters — but I’m impressed that we still get treated to some good character moments. That’s hard to do with that much stuff going on.

 

Green Lantern #24

Meanwhile, on Earth, the Sinestro Corps War continues as the bulk of the yellow-ringed fearmeisters lower the boom on our big blue marble. They’ve got most of their heavy-hitters in the battle, including Sinestro, Superboy-Prime, the Cyborg Superman, and Parallax, still possessing Kyle Rayner’s body. Parallax actually swallows up Hal Jordan when his ring runs out of power, but the other Green Lanterns have a plan to save both Hal and Kyle.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Some of the dialogue is really, really hokey, and the plan to get rid of Parallax is a bit, um, stupid. Still, some nice ring-slinging, some decent plot-advancement. I’m looking forward to more of this — it’s the best crossover series DC has had for a long time.