Ok, normally I wouldn't bother to link to a Mark Steyn column here. But how can I resist when the column starts by recapitulating the many superhero identities of Hank Pym?

I always liked Hank. It's a shame he's been handled so badly.

Because I just know there are people on my friends list who need to see this:

Behold, Velocitoaster!

According to this interview with Jim Starlin, his upcoming miniseries set on the distant planet Rann will include:

NRAMA: There’s a lot of players floating around in this, so many that even I couldn’t keep track. Who are the main players involved in this story?

JS: Adam Strange, Comet, Hawkman, Bizarro, Animal Man, Starfire, Tigor, Chief Justice Max, Tyrone, Starman (Prince Gayvn), Lady Styx, Deacon Dark and two surprise characters. But the big news is that we will be bringing back and revamping a character from the golden age of Greek philosophy. No, don't ask who. You have to read the series to find out what philosophical oldie we're reviving.

Ooo-kay... :)

Mark Evanier reports that one of my favorite comics writers, Steve Gerber, died last night from pulmonary fibrosis.

A fellow who seems to have about as much time on his hands as I do at the moment has compiled a list of the Top 20 Comic Book Weapons. I don't know that I necessarily agree with him about all of them, but it's a pretty good run at the topic.

So I read the latest issue of DC Comics' 52 yesterday, which focused on Ralph Dibny, a character who I rather like and who I think has gotten a rough deal lately.
( Spoilers inside... )

Apparently, Lynn Johnston isn't quite ready to end For Better or For Worse this year after all.

On the other hand, after today's strip, I'd say that Paul is toast. Good. Toldja so. :)

I went back to work today although I'm still recovering from this weekend's food poisoning episode.

Now, the thing about food poisoning is that it gives you the remarkable opportunity to spend a lot of time on the toilet. For me, this means a chance to catch up on my reading. Thus, in the past few days I've read all of the current comics that had piled up to be read and have annihilated the back issue stack, reading through everything I had of Beyond, The Maze Agency, 1602: New World, Kurt Busiek's Conan, and so on.

It was with some pleasure then that I found that the subscription edition of Heinlein's The Door Into Summer had arrived today, as I needed something to read. Now, this book is one of my favorites and a fast read, so I'm already well into it. And I reached the point where Dan -- in the far-flung year 2000 -- had to take a trip downtown to find a 24-hour branch of his bank so he could get some money.

Of course, in the real far-flung year 2000, he would have gone to an ATM. Could Heinlein have predicted that in 1956? Maybe. He certainly predicted many other things, including AutoCAD, although he called it Drafting Dan.

But he missed totally on the idea of having cash available on nearly every street corner if you had your card with you.

So -- not just Heinlein! -- what are the everyday things that we take for granted that our science-fiction writers of the mid-20th century never would have imagined?

catalana is back from Germany and will be listening to the 11 out of 16 mixes that I posted for her. Katie is fussing, apparently because she wants to be held (which shouldn't be a great surprise), and daisy_knotwise and I have seen the first five episodes of Heroes which I recorded some time back and -- unfortunately! -- the last two minutes of last night's episode.

The nice thing about being a Legion of Super-Heroes fan watching this series is nicknaming the characters. I mean, there's Duplicate Boy, Saturn Lad, Flight-Ring Kid, Dream Boy...

And what I can't cover there, I can mostly get from the X-Men: Professor X, Wolverine (who appears to be split between a couple of characters), the Vanisher...

Of course, the way that Marvel's been treating the Professor lately, I'm not sure if he's not supposed to be the guy in the glasses. But call me in another half-dozen episodes.

And skip the spoilers, ok? :)

Seen on the signboard at Pappadeaux's Seafood Restaurant:

Swamp Thing, You Make My Heart Sing.

And I'm sure he makes everything groovy too.

If you've read For Better Or For Worse for a while, you're probably aware that the strip will be ending before too long when Lynn Johnston's current contract with the syndicate ends and she retires. So I've been watching carefully as the author moves the characters around the board like chess pieces to get everyone into the position she intends to leave them in when all is said and drawn.

Elly's sold the store and is thinking about a comfortable retirement with John. Of course, when April heads off for college, the Patterson homestead will be much too large for them. But that's ok, because Michael and Deanna are going to be in desperate need of a place to move into with their two children before too long, not just for space, but to get away from the neighbors from hell, even if it means giving up the landlord from heaven. So I expect that they'll be buying the place eventually as John and Elly move to a condo or apartment.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth is -- I'm pretty sure! -- about to be dumped by her boyfriend, Paul, in favor of the new teacher and old friend of his up in Mtigwaki. Heck, he didn't want to move to Toronto anyway. And Anthony, Elizabeth's old boyfriend, has now been thorougly dumped by his cheating wife, along with baby daughter. In contrast to the previous time when they spoke, Anthony's now got his head on straight -- I recall the reader complaints at the time -- so the previous barriers to their relationship are all about to go bye-bye.

And today, Elizabeth's off to Gordon's car dealership, because she needs a car. Of course, Anthony's working for Gordon, so I'm just betting they'll be running into each other shortly.

Knight takes pawn, check.

Sure, Moore wrote Watchmen. And Marvelman. Or Miracleman, depending on when you first got to read it. And they're fine stories. They aren't the problem -- although I suppose Marvelman could be dropped into the problematic category. But since it wasn't part of a shared universe venture from an operating publisher when he got hold of it, I'll exempt it from a "this character was so dead" point of view.

No, the problem was Swamp Thing, specifically the story, "The Anatomy Lesson", wherein we discover that everything that we knew about Swamp Thing was wrong. It was a good story. It breathed life into a failing character. It was throwing up a "Hail Mary" pass and watching the receiver pull it down in the end zone to win the game.

You know how many times those "Hail Mary" passes fail to work in football? Almost all the time. Guess how often they work in comic books. About the same percentage of the time.

But because this trick worked once for Alan Moore -- twice if you count Marvelman -- every so often some writer and editor decide that they should try it again, because what's there to lose? Or just because it'll be cool.

As a result, we get idiocies like Carlin's Metal Men or Morrison's savaging of the Chief in Doom Patrol. Or the mess that Moore and Bruning made of Adam Strange.

See, mostly this trick doesn't even work for Alan Moore.

So why would even a talented comic writer think it's going to work for him?

I filled out my order sheet at the comic book store yesterday and decided that there are several more titles that are going over the side. I'm really, really tired of Brian Bendis, so New Avengers is gone. Daredevil would follow it, but the first of Ed Brubaker's issues is coming out on this order, so we'll give him a chance. Peter Milligan's X-Men is gone, for the same reasons that I've dumped Grant Morrison's books. Hulk is toast, Peter David having left the book again and my enthusiasm for the "Planet Hulk" event being completely lacking. And the non-PAD Spidey books come off the subscription list, now that "The Other" event is over.

Marvel is committing the worst sin that they can in comics -- they're simply being boring. Despite the recent House of M event and the resulting fallout, I've tired of padded storylines where nothing happens and I wait for the reset button to be pushed.

Interestingly, I'm anxiously waiting to see how DC is pushing the reset button in Infinite Crisis. But I've had the feeling that DC is going somewhere, even if I don't always agree with where they're going.

On the DC/Vertigo front, Swamp Thing gets one more month (since they're finishing a story arc), then it goes over the side too.

So I was filling out the subscription list for my local comic shop and I came upon the Grant Morrison written Bulleteer and Frankenstein, part of the massive Seven Soldiers crossover that I've bought many issues of. And I thought of this post that I made a few days ago where I explained why I don't like Morrison's work.

So why would I want to buy any more of it? I turned down All-Star Superman as well.

Now I just need another 50,000 people to agree with me and we might get DC's attention.

I like Mark Waid's work. I don't particularly care for Grant Morrison's work. I've finally come to understand why.

Both Waid and Morrison have frequently dealt with reconstructing older comic book concepts. Waid most recently has worked with the Fantastic Four and the Legion of Super Heroes; Morrison with the Seven Soldiers of Victory and the New X-Men. And here's what I see:

Waid seems to love the old stories and treats them with respect. If he wants to show us a new take on a concept, it's a take that's entirely consistent with what's come before. In his first issue of the FF, Waid gives us a motivation for Reed that makes the character deeper and increases our appreciation for him, but which doesn't contradict anything that we know. His Legion may not be exactly like the previous incarnations of the group, but it feels right in all the important ways.

Morrison seems -- to me, at least -- to be the exact opposite of Waid. Old comic book stories were stupid, characters who appeared to be good may not have been good at all, and the whole adventure was slightly smarmy and dirty. If the X-Men running from Lee to Thomas to Claremont constructed the love story of Scott Summers and Jean Grey, well, that just has to go. In Seven Soldiers, the Newsboy Legion mutates into the Newsboy Army and is mocked and the joy sucked out of it. Go back to his second notable comics work (the first being Animal Man) with the Doom Patrol and look at how the history of the Chief is eviscerated.

Now, compare that to what Waid does with Reed Richards. And then tell me that I'm wrong.

Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman. Infinite Crisis.
( Possible spoilers inside... )

And so we saw Fantastic Four this afternoon.
( Spoilers inside... )

Just noticed that DC Comics has one of my favorite stories available on line and thought I'd pass it along. It's from Astro City #1/2 by Kurt Busiek.

I picked up the final issue of Green Lantern: Rebirth today, which completes the job of unwinding the fetid pile that was Emerald Twilight:
( Not just comics stuff inside... )

The third issue of Green Lantern: Rebirth was out today and went to the top of my to-read stack immediately.
( Spoilers inside )

Via Mark Evanier, here's an interesting article discussing Marvel Comics' lawsuit vs. the City of Heroes folks.

I discovered that my tuxedo had mysteriously shrunk since the last time I wore it. I now have a new one.

On the way home from work, I grabbed the pile of comics from my store and read Identity Crisis #6 (of 7) at the stoplights. I now know who did it.
( Big honking spoilers inside )

A couple of years ago, Gretchen and I wrote a bit for SpaceTime Theater's ConClave show (where the con's theme was Heroes and Villains) about a married couple where the husband is a super-hero and the wife is a super-villain. Not surprisingly, they find themselves at a marriage counselor. Gretchen played the wife, Jerry played the husband, and Kelley played the counselor. The bit went over really well, so we thought we'd revisit the characters again.

Gretchen and I had the idea of having our couple invite their friends over for an anniversary party. (How could we possibly have come up with such an idea?) Since Sam and I are the biggest comics fans, we went upstairs to work on that bit, leaving Gretchen and the rest of the group to work on another bit.

Sam and I had a great time writing the bit -- which we hope that some of you will see this year at ConClave! We had to invent a lot of super-heroes and villains for the sketch, since we weren't using any existing characters.

Well, except for one. A tossed-off-for-laughs character who had appeared in a few Marvel comics in the 1980s and who hadn't been seen since. But he was exactly what we needed for the bit and we figured that only members of the subspecies Comics geekus maximus would actually catch the reference.

Until he showed up on the cover of an upcoming issue of "She-Hulk" in last month's Previews.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Captain Ultra!

I've been uncharacteristically quiet since getting back from Sixteen Tones, in part because I really want to take the time to do a con report and I haven't had the time to do so yet. But I did want to mention this.

Today I picked up Volume 1 of the Adam Strange Archives from DC Comics. I've been waiting for this for years. I remember lobbying Bob Wayne for it at some long ago Worldcon and his uncertainty about how such a volume would sell. And today, my dealer -- who isn't typical, I suppose -- told me that it had one of the highest pre-order volumes that he's seen for a DC archive.

I haven't read most of these stories and I don't think that many of them were reprinted when Strange Adventures was running Adam Strange. And I don't want to even think about what the originals would cost.

The editor, of course, was the late, great Julie Schwartz. At least he knew that the book was coming out...