Twilight Guardian #2

The Twilight Guardian has gotten an invitation to join a group of “Real Life Superheroes” meeting at a comic book convention. Of course, she worries about the possibility that her arch-nemesis, the Dusk Devil, will take her absence from patrolling as an excuse to wreak havoc, and she wonders about the strange location of the convention — a remote island in the middle of Lake Superior. After collecting a new hoard of comics and partaking in some of the usual convention activities, she gets to meet her fellow hero-wannabes — the Vermillion Claw, Captain Community, the Strong Right Arm of Justice, Wendy City, and Dr. Double-Danger. They trade crimefighting tips, help a stranded motorist, and solve a crime. And once they part ways, the Guardian learns that someone has been following her, and he has a strange offer for her.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I won’t lie to you and tell you it’s an action-packed story, or that it’s not still deeply weird. But I liked seeing the Guardian out of her usual environment. It’s clear that part of what she needs, besides taking her meds regularly, is social interaction and non-superhero activities. Of course, I can’t help wondering why on earth there was a comic convention, complete with large crowds, tons of booths, and a large convention center, on a tiny island that has a normal population of just 220 people…

Avengers Academy #9

Tigra has kicked Striker, Hazmat, and Veil out of Avengers Academy, and now the rest of the faculty have to persuade her to withdraw her expulsion. Meanwhile, Finesse has decided she wants to track down the Taskmaster, who she believes is her real father, and she blackmails Quicksilver into helping her find him. And once they meet, of course they have to fight each other…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Fun action, fun dialogue (especially the sniping between Tigra and Quicksilver), and fun artwork.

Green Lantern #62

Well, the villain kidnapping the ring entities is revealed to be Krona, who has some crazy plot involving using the entities to rid the universe of emotional imbalances. Various Lantern corps members try to stop him and are generally powerless against him. Flash, Batman, and Superman try to convince Hal to work with them after Krona makes his escape, but he goes off with the other ring bearers instead.

Verdict: Thumbs up, but it’s a close one. The story is fine, but it’s not really very noteworthy.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Mark Evanier had this great remembrance of Joanne Siegel, widow of Jerry Siegel, the co-creator of Superman. Joanne died just last week.
• Might be a bit far to travel to, but Monash University in Melbourne, Australia is looking for papers and presentations about female superheroes.
• Scarlett Johansson beats up everyone.
• This video reminds me of my last vacation.
• You gotta appreciate all the hard work these guys did to make this.

Some of you may have been watching news about the craziness in Wisconsin — some of you may not have. It hasn’t been all over the news the way I expected it to be, but here’s a short summary.

Wisconsin’s new governor is named Scott Walker. There are two things he really, really doesn’t like: unions and state employees. So his new budget essentially outlawed public employee unions in Wisconsin and stuck it hard to most state employees, forcing them to pay more out of their salaries for insurance.

Unsurprisingly, this wasn’t well received. What was surprising, however, was that protests took off like a rocket. Thousands of people protested at the state capitol for most of last week. The Democrats in the Wisconsin state legislature pulled a vanishing act to give protests time to sway more Republican legislators away from the governor’s POV.

Since then, we’ve learned that Walker actually cooked the books to make the budget shortfall look worse because he hoped to use against the state employees.

So why do I care about this? I don’t live in Wisconsin, no one in my family lives in Wisconsin, and the budget doesn’t affect comics.

Well, for one thing, I work for the state now, and I’ve worked for the state multiple times in the past. My brother and sister both work for the government, my dad worked for the government, and I’ve got cousins who work for the government. My granddad worked for the government. The idea of a governor — any governor — with a mad-on to screw over state employees strikes me as deeply irrational.

I don’t belong to a union, but I’ve got no argument with ’em either. I like the fact that the unions got us the 40-hour work week and the weekend. I like the idea of minimum wages. I like workplace safety. I like the fact that there’s a check on the power of corporate management. I know there are lots of good businesses out there who’ll bend over backwards to make sure their employees are getting a fair shake… but at the same time, I’ve worked for too many low-down snakes who cheated customers, employees, and everyone else they could. I’m under no illusions that our corporate masters are blameless geniuses who serve only the glory of the Invisible Hand of the Marketplace, a’ight?

I don’t understand the current rage at public employees for either existing or for receiving decent wages and benefits. I know some pundits out there think that, if things are tough for private employees, they should be tough for everyone else, too. (But never for the bankers, CEOs, and con artists at the top, have you noticed that? If they get less than their usual multi-million-dollar bonuses, it means the terrists have won. Trillions of dollars to bailout the corporate goons who wrecked the economy, but heaven forefend if teachers or state employees get paid enough to make the payments on their homes.)

So why should comic book fans care?

Because management at DC spent years screwing Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster out of the profits for creating Superman.

Because management at Marvel screwed Jack Kirby out of money, and health and employment benefits for years.

Because management at DC has never acknowledged the contributions of Batman co-creator Bill Finger as much as they did for Bob Kane.

Because DC pushed out Gardner Fox and a lot of their other creators, including Finger, Otto Binder, and Arnold Drake, in the late ’60s because they dared to request health insurance and employment benefits. And I can’t count the number of Golden and Silver Age creators who died, if not penniless, at least a lot less comfortable than they should’ve been.

I’m glad there are groups around like the HERO Initiative, which works to raise money to pay the expenses of creators who are too old or sick to work, but I also can’t help wishing that Siegel, Shuster, Kirby, Finger, Fox, and the rest of them had had a union on their side watching out for their interests.

Sure, it’s not like any budget in Wisconsin is going to allow comic creators to live better lives — this is strictly going to be for the betterment of state employees in the Badger State. Ultimately, it’s all down to compassion and empathy — we root for the underdogs like Siegel and Shuster and Jack Kirby, like Wisconsin’s state employees, for the same reason we always root for the underdogs — because we’re all underdogs. And when the underdogs don’t get crushed by the powerful, it means maybe we all have a chance.

We put our blind faith in business and corporations at our peril. It’s not that business is evil, but the purpose of business is to MAKE MONEY, and too many businesses will choose to prioritize money at the expense of, well, the rest of us. We’ve seen it happen dozens of times in the past, both within the comics industry and outside of it.

I see nothing at all wrong with being able to tell business and the modern breed of pro-business/anti-worker politicians that it’s okay to make wads of cash — as long as they don’t cross certain lines. I think Walker (and governors in other states, like Ohio, Florida… and maybe Texas? We’ll see…) are prioritizing megacorp/pundit ideologies over the welfare of their own constituents.

That’s a dangerous path to travel down, and I’m very happy that people in Wisconsin have been so enthusiastic about supporting their state employees.

We know the routine by now — Friday + Night + Fights = FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Today’s fight is from February 1969’s Detective Comics #384 by Mike Friedrich, Gil Kane, and Murphy Anderson (and reprinted just this week in the previously reviewed Detective Comics Classics one-shot) as Batgirl meets up with some underworld do-badders.

Wow, hats off to Gil Kane, folks. The man could draw the holy screaming heck out of a fight scene!

Tiny Titans #37

For the most part, this is all about bringing Captain Marvel and Mary Marvel into the Tiny Titans universe (Cap Jr. and Hoppy the Marvel Bunny have previously made their debuts). While the Marvel kids make with the “Shazams!” and the “Krakooms!”, the Super-Pets take naps, Mr. Tawny appears as the school’s math teacher, Mr. Mind tries to get into Pet Club, and Psimon tries to discover his own magic word.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Just spectacularly cute and funny. I probably got the most enjoyment out of Psimon’s two pages of trying to figure out a magic word he can use — not to get Marvel powers, he just wants a T-shirt with a lightning bolt on it. And of course, it’s great to see the classic Marvel family back in comics.

Detective Comics Classics

It’s one of DC’s new reprint mini-collections, and it costs six bucks, but I just couldn’t resist a bunch of retro Batman stories. There’s an extremely cheesy Riddler story from 1968 written by Gardner Fox with the Riddler trying to cheat his way through his clues and Batman using detective skills and huge amounts of luck to save the day. There’s a ’69 Batgirl story with incredible art by Gil Kane. And there’s a story starring Robin and Batgirl from ’75, during Barbara Gordon’s short-lived (but not short-lived enough) career as a Congressperson, where the heroes have to fight off a resurrected Benedict Arnold and the Devil, which is everything that a good Bat-Family story should never be.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Yes, it’s just spectacularly cheesy and goofy, and sometimes absolutely idiotic. But I loved it anyway. And the Gil Kane art is so good, I’ll be spotlighting some of it later tonight.

Marvel Adventures: Super Heroes #11

The Hulk recruits the Thing (if by “recruit,” we mean “tries to beat up”) to help him with a conundrum. The Hulk has discovered a Celestial hidden in the countryside and doesn’t know what it means. Ben gives a brief summary (My favorite way to describe the Celestials is “Because Jack Kirby said so.”), then calls in the Invisible Woman to help them figure out what to do with the dormant giant. But the Leader has his own plans for the Celestial. Meanwhile, Captain America and Nova hang out and meet a girl.

Verdict: Thumbs up, pretty much entirely because I thought the bits with Ben, Sue, and the Hulk were so much fun.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Lubbockite Todd Gray, purveyor of fine bloggery at Fanboy Fun, writes about Grant Morrison’s take on Batman. Here’s Part I and Part II, with another two parts still to come…
• It’s never fun to learn about canceled comics.
• I’ve been having some fun with this game. “Audiosurf” is like a racing/block-collecting game powered by your own music collection. It’s a few years old, but it’s dirt cheap!
• I gotta admit — I love reading everything I can about this story. It was great to read about people power in Egypt, and it’s even better to read about it here in the U.S.

Knight and Squire #5

Jarvis Poker, the British Joker, isn’t much of a villain — he’s a bit mischievous, but his villainy is pretty light-hearted and harmless. He even hangs out with the Knight and Squire from time to time. But he’s just found out that he’s dying and has only weeks to live. And he reacts to the news by trying to start up a crime wave of his own. But he’s badly out of practice, and his gimmicks are, again, pretty harmless. So he’s doing more to embarrass himself than to make his name live in infamy. But the Squire deduces that Jarvis is dying, and the Knight decides to let him go out with a final grand hurrah — he warns everyone that the British Joker is about to attempt the Crime of the Century. Invigorated, he sets out to perform the kind of grand novelty crime that’d let him go to his grave with a smile on his face… until he gets a deeply unwelcome visitor from the other side of the pond.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Holy cow, this was fun. Jarvis Poker is such a fun character, and the guest star’s appearance — even if you predicted who he is — makes a really great moment. Next issue is the last one for this series? No fair!

Batgirl #18

It’s a special Valentine’s issue guest-starring that most eligible bachelor… Klarion the Witch Boy?! He’s left underground Limbo Town for our Blue Rafters because his cat familiar Teekl, foiled in his attempts to mate, is now running loose and tearing out people’s hearts. Stephanie gets roped into helping Klarion clean up this mess, and though they’re able to recapture Teekl, he’ll remain out of control unless they can find him another were-cat to mate with. And the only place to find those is back in Limbo Town, where Steph has to dress up as a pilgrim and beat up a magic-using schoolgirl. Ahh, a traditional Valentine’s outing!

Verdict: Thumbs up. It’s a funny story, with some hilarious dialogue and situations. Stellar artwork from Dustin Nguyen. And it’s got Klarion the Witch Boy! We don’t see enough of him, dangit.

The Unwritten #22

Tom Taylor has apparently broken “Moby-Dick.” He’s frozen the novel in time and doesn’t know how to escape, but Frankenstein’s monster clues him in on how to use his magic crystal doorknob — inside a book, he can only travel from one element to another. There’s only one Pequod in literature, but the ocean is in plenty of different novels. So Tom is able to leap from “Moby-Dick” to one of the Sindbad stories, and from there, he meets up with the famed Baron Munchausen. Meanwhile, the puppeteer has decided Lizzie and Savoy are no use to her, so she shows them a perverse little puppet show and sends them on their way. But is it a glimpse into the future?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Listen, any comic that includes appearances by Frankenstein’s monster, Sindbad the sailor, Baron Munchausen, and even more literary heroes is something that you should just accept is an awesome comic.

The Flash #9

I got dead bored with this title for a while but am gonna give it another shot as they’re starting the buildup to the big fancy “Flashpoint” crossover event. We start out with a character named Hot Pursuit — some kind of supercop driving a superspeed, time-traveling motorcycle — showing up in Central City looking for the Flash. Barry Allen, meanwhile, has been sent out to investigate the dead body of an old man wearing a superhero costume — specifically, the costume of the Elongated Man, though for some reason, Barry doesn’t recognize it. When the body’s fingerprints are identified, it turns out to be a local teen hero called the Elongated Kid. No one knows why a teenager aged into a 90-year-old corpse. On top of that, Barry is avoiding attending a “Flash family picnic,” and his wife Iris is unhappy at him for that. Finally, Hot Pursuit shows up again and busts a window in the crime lab right in front of Barry. When Barry chases him down, Hot Pursuit reveals himself to be (Spoiler Alert, if you didn’t figure out the extremely obvious reveal by Page 2) Barry Allen, trying to prevent “the single greatest time anomaly to ever threaten reality.”

Verdict: I think I’m going to go with a thumbs down. First, it irritated me that Barry Allen wasn’t able to recognize the Elongated Man’s costume — longstanding continuity, confirmed only a few short years ago by Geoff Johns himself, has established that the Flash and the Elongated Man have been close friends for years. It bugs me that Johns is such a sloppy writer now that he can’t even remember something he’d written not that long ago. Yeah, it’s just one small moment in the comic, but it annoyed me enough to completely ruin the rest of the story for me. I’ll give it another issue or two to try to draw me back in, but they better step up their game quick.

Batman and Robin #20

Dick Grayson attends a performance of Das Rheingold which gets disrupted when a guy dressed as an angel plummets 80 stories to his death on the red carpet. The guy’s wings were filled with some kind of glowing yellow substance and his fingerprints and footprints have been burned off with acid. While Batman and Robin are investigating the crime scene, they’re accosted by Man-Bat, covered with some kind of glowing white substance and shouting about screams that only he can hear. And then the glowing white bats show up.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Seriously weird story and starting out very, very interestingly. But I must say, my favorite part of the whole story is the very beginning, with Bruce, Dick, Tim Drake, Damian, and Alfred all settling down with popcorn and strawberry milkshakes to watch “The Mark of Zorro” on DVD. It’s a great, fun moment.

B.P.R.D.: Hell on Earth – Gods #2

This issue is actually set at the same time as the previous issue, but told from the POV of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, and particularly with Abe Sapien as our focus. He and Andrew Devon have it out about the strong disagreements between the two of them over the last few months, the whole team reviews the situation in Texas, with an emphasis on Fenix’s ability to lead large numbers of refugees to safety, and they hear from a borderline crackpot named Professor O’Donnell, who theorizes that the monsters overrunning Texas were also responsible for the destruction of ancient Hyperborea. It all culminates where last issue did, in the ruined football field.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nice to see a little character development getting processed for Abe and Andrew, along with a little more backstory for the Texas situation.

Today’s Cool Links:

• I’m starting to think that the state budget had better be accompanied by mass resignations from the Legislature and the Governor.
• But of course, they won’t be. I’m sort of expecting Perry to react a bit more like the Wisconsin governor, who’s already expressed his preference for having state employees murdered.
• This might be Not Safe for Work, but I still laughed like a loon at the whole list.

Well, I’ve heard how you’ve been spending your weekends, and I’m very disappointed. You could at least try to live it up, instead of spending all your time eating cold biscuits, raking the yard, organizing your underwear drawer in order of colors of skidmarks, and taking glamour shots of your refrigerator. Please try to spend your weekend the right way — with debauchery and sleeping late and running about making the neighbors think you’re crazy… and you can get it all started with a little FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

Today’s battle comes from April 1998’s Quantum and Woody #11 by Christopher Priest, M.D. Bright, Greg Adams, and Keith Williams, as we enjoy a flashback of Eric Henderson taking care of a bunch of racist douchebags.

Y’all have a hellaciously awesome weekend, and I’ll see y’all back here on Monday.

Atomic Robo and the Deadly Art of Science #3

Well, Robo and Jack Tarot tangled with a colossal robot and got trounced, while the robot escaped with a fancy computer. And Robo is on the outs with Mr. Tesla — he’s upset that Robo is sneaking out of the house without permission, and Robo is unhappy that Tesla treats him like a child. Robo ends up moving out of Tesla’s home and moving in with Tarot and his pretty daughter Helen to learn how to be a real crimefighter. And sparks fly — metaphorically — between Robo and Helen. Will Robo reconcile with his creator? Is there a romantic future for a woman and a robot? And who was behind that giant thieving robot anyway?

Verdict: Thumbs up. The romance was maybe a bit unexpected — and really, that was just about the hottest smooch I’ve ever seen in which one of the smoochers doesn’t even have a mouth. So, ya know, good stuff.

Love and Capes: Ever After #1

Mark and Abby haven’t been married long, but they’ve got some major real estate woes. They need to move to a larger apartment, and the landlord of the building where Abby’s bookstore is located keeps raising her rent. All that, plus Amazonia and Darkblade are now dating, Mark and Abby get the grand tour of Darkblade’s mansion, and we get acquainted with the dastardly but presumably sexy villainy of the Menagerie a Trois gang.

Verdict: Thumbs up. A nice story with Tom Zahler’s usual perfectly mixed blend of humor and drama. Great dialogue, cool cartoony art (with really cool coloring), and fun characterization.

PS238 #48

While Argonaut and Moon Shadow are stranded on the opposite end of the galaxy in a depowered spaceship, Guardian Angel, USA Patriot Act, and 84 are roaming around an alternate universe while they try to help Zodon keep Victor Von Fogg from destroying the place. Guardian Angel gets drafted into the Trans-Dimensional Defense Division, a bunch of dimension-hopping police officers, and everyone gets acquainted with the other-dimensional and non-powered versions of Zodon (who specializes in creating extremely lucrative websites) and Von Fogg (who’s a Bieberesque pop star). Alexandria Von Fogg is trying to figure out how to bring down the Headmaster running the Praetorian Academy, and Victor makes his bid for supreme power to try to conquer a whole universe all for himself.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The visions of Zodon’s and Victor’s alternate lives are great, as is everyone’s reaction to the cute kitten video. There’s even heavy-duty comic-book science-fiction gobbledygook that actually almost makes sense, which is pretty good for heavy-duty comic-book science-fiction gobbledygook. As always, great characterization and artwork. Go pick it up, por favor.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Death metal greeting cards? I am SO THERE.
• The vanished literary genius you never heard of.
• Holy cow, Mississippi wants to put traitor and KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest on a commemorative license plate!? If they hate America so much, why don’t they just leave?

Secret Six #30

This is a crossover issue with the Doom Patrol. We start out getting introduced to a junior crime lord whose resources have all come from his recently deceased evil grandfather, then we jump into the strip club where Scandal’s girlfriend works, where Bane is going on a date, despite his complete inability to engage in civil or appropriate interpersonal communications. And after that, we visit scenic Oolong Island, home to mad scientists galore and current headquarters of the Doom Patrol. Robotman is trying to get some fishing in — specifically for a monster fish that used to be a human.

Anyway, after a while, the Secret Six show up — they’ve been hired by the junior crime lord to take over the island so he can have his very own secret volcano base. King Shark makes the first attack when he chomps off Elasti-Girl’s leg. This doesn’t seem to bother anyone much — it looks like she can regrow her limbs, which I didn’t remember being part of her original powerset. Black Alice grows to Giganta-size to fight Rita, Ambush Bug makes with the funny, as do King Shark, Ragdoll, and Negative Man, and there’s a volcano that’s about to blow up the island. To be continued in “Doom Patrol,” if I ever feel like getting that one.

Verdict: Thumbs up. I didn’t know Ambush Bug was in the Doom Patrol. I didn’t know they were based on Oolong Island either. It all helps make a nice, fun story. I still don’t know if I’ll care enough to actually grab a copy of “Doom Patrol,” which I’ve heard mixed reviews of, but who knows?

Marvel Super Hero Squad Spectacular #1

Well, the Beyonder is in town, and he’s in his bizarre Elvis-inspired costume from “Secret Wars II.” This does not bode well at all. He decides to kidnap a bunch of superheroes and supervillains and make them fight each other for his own general amusement, so he grabs the Super Hero Squad, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and Speedball, as well as Dr. Doom’s crew. Then there is a lot of random hitting while the heroes try to figure out how to make it back home. Meanwhile, crime is out of control with the heroes gone from the city, but Power Man, Iron Fist, Cloak and Dagger, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver step up to help keep the city under control, so Ms. Marvel inducts all of them into a Substitute Super Hero Squad. All that, plus Reptil does some stuff.

Verdict: Thumbs down. Seriously, you bring in the Elvis-Beyonder, and you’ve pretty much lost me from that point on. The rest of it was too frantic, too jokey even for a joke-filled all-ages comic, and just generally irritating.

Today’s Cool Links:

• Not really a link, but definitely worth mentioning: There will be a meeting this Friday, February 11th at 7 p.m., for volunteers and organizers for the upcoming Lubbock Comic Book Expo. The meeting will take place at Awesome Books, 3009A 34th Street. Please show up and help make the Expo another great success!
• Awesome animated short of classic-style Superman.
• This video game, based on artwork by animator Michel Gagne, looks insanely cool.
• I absolutely endorse this rendition of the National Anthem.
• Have I mentioned lately how very, very much I dislike Rick Perry? Looking at a $15 billion budget hole, and he wants to show off by cutting peanuts. What a showboating failure we’ve got running the state. I wish someone would zero out the budgets for the most useless and destructive state organizations — namely, the Gov’s office and the Lege itself…

Hellboy: The Sleeping and the Dead #2

Well, Hellboy is trapped in a basement with a monster that’s part zombie, part ghost, part nursery-rhyme-quoting little girl, and he’s not doing so well. The monster can knock him around easily, but she turns insubstantial everytime Hellboy throws a punch. Meanwhile, the vampire who created her and turned her big sister into a vamp gets mad when he finds out that Hellboy killed the older vampire, so he sets a horde of zombies after a couple of investigating B.P.R.D. agents. Can Hellboy figure out a way to stop all this? Or is his usual punch-first-ask-questions-later methodology going to release the monster into the world?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nicely done story that flips between punchathon violent to understated creepy. Best place to find stories like that is, as usual, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy stories.

iZombie #10

Gwen finally goes to see Tricia Nakagawa — a girl who knew her when she was still alive — to let her know that her deceased mother still loves her — and discovers a secret she was not prepared for. Spot discovers that Ellie’s new talent of shoehorning her soul into other people’s bodies might be useful for helping his grandfather. Horatio and Diogenes have some serious trouble with the vampires. And Galatea’s plans get progressively nastier.

Verdict: Thumbs up. But this is a series that’s starting to look like it’s mired down in soap-opera plot developments that never lead to any resolution — it’d be nice to see some plot threads start getting tied down here and there.

Sir Edward Grey, Witchfinder: Lost and Gone Forever #1

Edward Grey, former Witchfinder for the British government, has gone walkabout in the American West. He stumbles into a mostly lawless town with a destroyed church. He ends up gunning down a lot of the locals in a saloon gunfight and gets escorted out of town by a frontier scout — who probably just saved him from getting beaten to death by the rest of the folks in town. The scout reveals some of the town’s past — a mysterious incident that cause much of the population to vanish, leaving only some sort of magic circle etched into the floor of the church. So what’s behind all this? And why do so many people want Sir Edward dead?

Verdict: Thumbs up. Nice beginning for a new storyline — and I like the idea of moving the very British Witchfinder into a more rough-and-tumble environment.

Today’s Cool Links:

• The proposed Wonder Woman TV series sounds like a great big bag of Epic Fail.
• Best no-parking sign ever.
• Stuff like this makes me laugh.
• Ragnell wonders why the same plots are getting used over and over.