Michael Hutchison: April 2008 Archives

I've been thinking about the origin of the Penguin. No particular reason, but when a friend advised me to come up with some new material to pitch to DC (what with so many of my traditional faves being kaput or inaccessible) I started thinking of characters I'd like to update. The origin of Oswald Cobblepot is one I'd love to retell and expand upon, since I think I could do a very credible story of a put-upon kid forced to carry an umbrella by his mother.

In case you don't know, Oswald's dad died of pneumonia from being caught in the rain unprotected, so his mom ordered him to always have an umbrella handy. This naturally makes him a laughing stock with the other kids, and thus his resentments begin to build etc. etc.

I had the story pretty well roughed out. And then I realized...

These days, he could just put a collapsible umbrella in his pocket and no one would laugh. His origin has been utterly ruined by technology. Oh, granted, Oswald is like 40-50 years old and so they didn't have them quite yet in his childhood, but he'll be getting there as the timeline continues to slide.

And now it's a music video!

MicroCon is this Sunday at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds in St. Paul.

For the first time in several years, I'll be an attendee instead of a guest. It's been a while since I published my last book, and competition for space at MicroCon is fierce. I've been honored that they have invited me back year after year, and have felt like I was skating on their largess. I think I'll actually have more fun this weekend because the pressure's off... especially the pressure on my butt in those chairs for six hours! It'll be great to stop in, stay as long as I want, see all my friends, scout out some talent, and then vamoose.

By this October, I'll have a new book printed and more in the works, and hopefully they'll invite me back as a guest for FallCon.

I know I say this every time, but the guys who run this con are simply some of the nicest people in comics. It's a thrill to go, it's a treat to be a guest, and I hope you all make an effort to get out here for at least one MicroCon or FallCon.

(Did I just say "new book printed"? Yes, I did. I guess I haven't really mentioned it here yet. And I still won't. However, plans are to have this book ready by Wizard World Chicago. So...more soon!)

This is getting silly.

I told you how I found out you can get MST3K's Giant Gila Monster for a special low price on a single disk from Rhino. Then I updated you that it was no longer available... and as a result, I was selling my Volume 10 in order to buy 10.2.

Now they tell me that I can add it to my order and it will be sent to me whenever a new shipment is in. (Now they tell me...after I placed my order for the whole volume!)

Learn from my mistakes, people. Get Gila while you can!

Oddly enough, I was taking a break from re-watching "Hellboy" out in the kitchen and Dirty Harry tipped me to the following:

Guillermo del Toro, director of the Hellboy movies as well as Pan's Labyrinth, just signed on to direct "The Hobbit" and a sequel. Previous talk of splitting up The Hobbit into two parts have either been thrown out or were rumor; the sequel will cover the timespan between Hobbit and LOTR.

Hellboy, by the way, is a terrific film. I don't read the comic book, but the movie made me think that I should... and considering what a DC-drone I am, that's a great compliment. Story-wise, the movie could be better, but it's a superb cast (of Ron Perlman, all I can say is "perfect"), the special effects aren't too annoyingly CGI-ish, and the movie has style and artistry to spare. More importantly, the characters have time to work out their relationships (Hellboy fighting with his "Dad", chafing at the arrival of the new guy, struggling with his self-hatred and the barriers in his relationship with Liz, etc...), and all too often big blockbusters won't waste time on those kinds of elements. (I should know, I just suffered through re-watching Spider-Man 3, which bungles its character arcs badly.) Surprisingly, there is a pantload of character development for such an action-packed movie. As I recall, the Hellboy film was a success but not the colossal blockbuster fans would have liked. Here's hoping the sequel does well.

A follow-up to my post about "Giant Gila Monster": Unfortunately, the limited printing of disks has been sold and it's now out of print.

I've decided to sell my Out Of Print MST3K Volume 10 and collect the 80 Bajillion bucks it's going for, and use that money to buy the 10.2 for $40. The Godzilla movie is funny...but it's no Giant Gila Monster, which is an out-and-out smörgåsbord of hilarity.

I'll let you all know when I sell it and where, in case you're interested.

Libertas' Dirty Harry brings it to our attention that the frog legs entrepreneur who pursues Kermit the Frog cross-country was actually a decorated World War II hero. Charles Durning lied about his age in order to storm the beaches of Normandy at 17, survived several deadly confrontations to get patched up and back out onto the battlefield again, was captured and imprisoned...and lived on to become a cherished character actor.

Something to remember the next time you see him prancing around in The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas.

I have been anxiously awaiting the chance to buy the single DVD disk of "Giant Gila Monster" from the Mystery Science Theater 3000 series. See, what happened was that after their 10th box set was released, there was a rights issue regarding the Godzilla movie contained therein. Rhino pulled the title, removed Godzilla from the collection, threw Giant Gila Monster in its place (thus making the giant lizard on the cover relevant again) and re-released it as MST3K Volume 10.2. But for those of us who don't want to purchase the 10th volume all over again, we were told that you could also purchase Gila Monster separately. After months of waiting, I googled it only to find that it is only available direct from Rhino, and for a limited time, and I may have missed it. Wah. (I was looking forward to hearing one of my favorite riffs again: "Looks like Larry Miller's traveling hot tub.")

My hunting tonight also revealed some great news: after 7 years, the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Movie has finally been put back in print.

Oh, and TV's Frank has a new job on a web-based mini TV series called "The Writer's Room". It's about the writers for a late night show hosted by Kevin Pollak. One of the running gags is that Kevin calls the writers on a speakerphone and bores them with his impressions. Here's one of the five episodes:

I was reading a "Street Kings" review and I felt it was time to say something to forestall the inevitable "Keanu is a 'whoa' guy who can't act" avalanche.

I’ve always liked Keanu Reeves as an actor, he strikes me as a hard worker, and from what I understand in person he’s one of the nicer people in Hollywood. That he has a bit of an oddball persona (i.e. the superficial surfer dude which causes anyone mentioning him to use the word “whoa”) which perhaps makes him an odd choice for some of the roles he gets is not his fault.

I mean, people love Chuck Norris but Keanu Reeves has far more range than Norris ever will. The thing is, Norris does one thing VERY WELL and gets movies that emphasize that one thing. If Norris was trying to do Shakespeare, he’d be laughable. Reeves has done Shakespeare; he’s passable but he’ll never be Patrick Stewart. But are we supposed to condemn Reeves for trying to stretch as an actor instead of just taking surfer dude roles all his life? Reeves is a fellow who could have been consigned to character acting the same role forever, but he managed to land the lead in some blockbusters. Good for him!

He’ll never have the acting skills of Al Pacino (back when Al Pacino was Al Pacino), but he’s still got more depth and range than Mike Myers.

Oh, I should add…I like Myers, but he’s teetering close to Robin Williams territory. You know, where we once thought Williams was this never-ending fount of spontaneity and now we realize he just falls back on his black voice, his gay queen and his southern preacher in every interview.

There's going to be a second X-Files movie.

X-Files was an absolutely ruined show in its later years, so I don't know how it's going to work, but the poster sure is cool! I enjoyed the first movie, though it too also fell apart in its final act.

Batman and the Outsiders #6 - You may recall that last month BATO shot to the top of my "Most Anticipated" list, due to Ralph and Sue Dibny exchanging their Thin Man homage for a Topper homage. Unfortunately, they don't appear this month, but I'm sure they'll show up before the end of the story. This issue has a terrific opening that's cute and page-turn thrilling. It's great to see Sapphire Stagg again; unfortunately, there's no recap of where their relationship is. With all of Rex's deaths, that Shift character, Java (her husband) being dead and then rejavanated.... I don't know if she's Rex's wife or not. Hopefully we'll get more character development on that front. Meanwhile, the issue is good, so long as you buy into the whole Dixon "real world" feel. Sometimes it's a tough sell, trying to believe that a bunch of superheroes... most with strong ties to the JLA... can't get to the moon. I mean, the JLA had a base there for years. Batman must still own a teleporter somewhere. It's hard enough believing Batman is so self-reliant that he can't call for some power-ringed help when it happens in Batman's own books, but when you pull this in a title like Outsiders one begins to wonder if Batman just likes making his job harder by setting up artificial barriers.

Artificial barriers also crop up in Dixon's Robin #173, where Tim mentions that he can't always go running to Batman for help. Again, it looks like a character growth lesson, and really it's just a way to explain how characters can have adventures on their own without the joined universe intruding. Some good writing here as well. The return of Spoiler is played in reverse of how one would expect in a comic book story. Usually, the dead character returns, the mourning friend is guarded but hopeful, then finally accepting, and then it turns out it's a clone/robot/Durlan/pretender and our lead character is crushed. Here, Tim is obstinately unaccepting and doesn't buy it for a second, and it may actually be true. I have a hard time believing Tim is so pig-headed he won't even listen to what she's saying (we can all see what's about to happen when he ignores her warning), but stress of seeing a dead girlfriend can do that to a person. Plus, Chuck believes in finding the flaws in your heroes.

Flawed heroes and page-turn panels also crop up in Tom Peyer's The Flash #239. I was balking at the flimsy premise that a villain named Spin who can manipulate public sentiment could turn people against the Flash just because he kvetched that crime-fighting didn't pay and he was hurting for cash... in Keystone of all places, people should be sympathetic upon hearing that........... and then in a brilliant bit of writing, Peyer has Wally noting that "Those aren't real human reactions". Right there, that one line saves the whole story arc.

Suicide Squad #8 - Back in February I complained on a message board that a sudden bit of Bush Derangement Syndrome had intruded into what was one of my favorite books of the year. A company called Haake-Bruton, led by a guy looking like and with a similar name to Cheney, suddenly shows up, and we're treated to the sight of a bunch of overweight old white men swilling wine in goblets and smoking cigars, talking about all the money they're going to make as they watch some virus-infected brown-skinned people expiring inside glass tubes. I think the only thing I can say about it is that it's so over-the-top that it's not worth the outrage. However, now that I've read the ending, I have to say that the descent into caricature and some fantasy political catharsis for the writer and his fellow travelers (they get some wish-fulfillment as Deadshot puts a bullet through pseudo-Cheney's brainpan) really tainted what was a dream project. The Suicide Squad is one of my all-time-favorite comic books, and it's Ostrander who drove it. Ever since he lost control of Suicide Squad, Amanda Waller has been completely out of character in a half dozen other books. Half the writers who use her seem to think she's a villain or a traitor to the USA. The character bits in this book have been a joy to read...reminiscent of the old "Personnel Files" stories... but John Ostrander's more overt politicizing of the book have not helped the story. Hey, I've read The Authority, V for Vendetta and other books that are far more political and/or challenging to my personal ideals, but it's done as part of a coherent plot. Here, the pseudo-Halliburton is just a big straw man. The virus they're planning to sell is never mentioned again, because it was never more than a big puppy-killing scene to get you hating the villains so that you can enjoy their thrashing in the end. I know Ostrander is a better writer than this. Here's hoping he gets a new ongoing Suicide Squad and with this bit of bitching out of his system he can focus on a stronger story.

(You know, back when I wrote a Suicide Squad fan-fic at the height of the whole impeachment debacle, I made Al Gore the good guy even though I disliked him even back then, because it was a good story. Bring back the Ostrander who could write convincingly realistic presidents Reagan and Bush 41 even if he wasn't on their political side.)

Finally... Countdown #2. Hey, Darkseid is dripping with arrogance and superiority as he threatens somebody. Haven't seen that before. And I'll bet $100 that he'll be back to do it again someday soon, no matter what happened in this issue. I'm so bored. I did have to wonder...if Jimmy Olsen grows to the size of a skyscraper, and The Atom is inside him when he enlarges, does the Atom enlarge?

I loved the first trailer, but this new one is really playing off of the success of "Pan's Labyrinth". Many more disturbingly weird and nightmarish creatures in this trailer.

Some Russian site leaked the Star Wars "Clone Wars" trailer a month early, before it is officially shown before Speed Racer. IESB has it.

Meh. I don't think I'll even go to the theater for this one. The Prequels just sucked the joy out of Star Wars. I probably could have ended that sentence after the fourth word.

Is Iron Man's movie going to be based on the original character, the old fiercely anti-Communist patriot, or is he going to be another John Henry Irons moaning "I made all my money selling munitions and I suddenly realized that someone could get hurt"? That seems to be one of many questions dogging the blockbuster-in-waiting.

A lot of us just don't know what to think from the trailers, and now the early reviews and leaks are making us even more leary. Are we being shown all the macho stuff in order to hide an "America is the real enemy" message, or could it be that Hollywood will hew more towards the pro-military themes that made Transformers a hit? Is it even possible for Hollywood to make a movie about an arms manufacturer without his shutting down the company and donating all his money to fight world hunger by the end of it?

Stan Lee based Stark's personality on real life anti-Communist Howard Hughes, essentially wondering what if Hughes spent his money on flying armor instead of a wooden plane.

For more fears about the upcoming film, check this out:

Wildly Popular 'Iron Man' Trailer To Be Adapted Into Full-Length Film

No, this isn't a chance to flog some Amazon products and get you all to throw some cash my way.

I wish.

No, this is just me being a nice guy and directing you to some of the geekly bargains I've come across.

Tower.com has Dr. Katz, the Complete Series for $80, which is the cheapest I've found. I'm going to buy this next month with my discretionary movie spending, but I hate that I've already bought seasons 1 and 2 individually before they decided to package it this way. Dr. Katz was one of my favorite shows and I'm looking forward to seeing it again.

I was fortunate to buy all of the Batman and Superman animated series installments at Sam's Club for $20 apiece about a year or two ago, but they never seem to carry Justice League. I've been holding back for years on buying Justice League and Justice League Unlimited because they never seem to come down in price. The only luck I've had so far is finding JLU Season 2 for about $20.

This week, I found seasons 1-3 of Teen Titans for $9 apiece! Then I actually discovered that Sam's is finally selling JLU box sets! Yay!

Oh, wait. They've packaged JLU 1 and 2 together for $40. And now, since I have Season 2, I can't buy it. Argh! But for all of you, this is a good deal.

It does make me wonder something: How can Teen Titans have 13 20-minute episodes and sell for about $15, but Justice League (also with 13 20-minute episodes) retails for almost 40? This is why I can't justify paying retail for it.

Anyway, also at Sam's, I found the Complete Tex Avery Droopy and two Tom and Jerry volumes, all for $13 apiece. (Warning: Tom and Jerry Volume 2 has Whoopi Goldberg, undoubtedly repeating her "I hereby take the curse off your racist cartoons" introduction which she did for the Warner Brothers volumes.)

They also have the Superfriends box sets for cheap, and I went back and forth on whether to get those as well. Frankly, I don't have young children, so I can't imagine watching them on my own. Nostalgia, sure, but they're pretty painful to look at these days.

A light week but a good week with good things to talk about:

Countdown #3: Three issues left. Good.
The only comment I have this week is that Superman shows up to fight Darkseid and says it's "well past time for me to put you down." Come on. What is Superman going to do? We're talking about somebody who is such a namby-pamby about killing that when it came to quite rightfully executing the murderers of billions of people he became so wracked with guilt that he developed a multiple personality, exiled himself from Earth and finally swore that he would never again take a life and he'd always find some other way out... despite never once proposing what else he could have done in that aforementioned situation. I'm sure Superman IS angry at how Mr. Miracle and others have been abused and murdered, but what exactly is he proposing to do to Darkseid?

Justice Society of America #14: Finally comes out two weeks late, judging by the way it is promoting Countdown #5 in the back. Good. Now, if only they could jettison all the Kingdom Come garbage.

Green Lantern Corps #23: This is an excellent jumping-on point for new readers, and it is some of the best writing I've seen from Tomasi yet. (I was disappointed at the terrible quality of the Guy and Ice reunion, you may remember, so this is definitely an improvement.) If I have any criticisms here, it's the same one I've had in general for the last several years: they've gone to the Alan Moore well far too much. Mongul using the Black Mercy (these days, you'd think it was his only weapon, like it's his equivalent of Joker laughing gas), Mogo appearing everywhere (spoiling the whole effect of his first appearance), the Blackest Night "prophecy" (I always figured Qull was lying in order to spook Abin Sur)... enough, you know? All those stories are 20+ years old. I love nostalgia, but why don't you make up something new? Still...this is a good issue, with a beautiful (and painstakingly detailed) cover by Pat Gleason. Recommended.

Booster Gold #8: Once again, the best book of the week. This issue has a surprise appearance that I will not spoil, but it is one of the best uses of the page-turner grabber that I've seen in a while. Highly recommended.

Rachel Dawes' endorsement of Harvey Dent is... uh... is... I don't know what to call this, because I can't see what they're trying to do.

There is one memorable line in the whole thing: "Harvey Dent believes in two things." Cute. But as our first exposure to Maggie Gyllenhall as Rachel Dawes, this is miserable.

Hat tip to Spoutblog and Libertas, both of whom said it better than I could.

A guy gets a heart transplant from a man who shot himself. The recipient then marries the donor's widow... and then also commits suicide by shooting himself.

Pity the next recipient of that heart!

Bizarre.

Back during the first Gulf War, my local newspaper ran an article with an illustrated diagram of Saddam Hussein's impenetrable bunker. During the discussion over whether to actually invade Iraq or just push them out of Kuwait, this was one of the arguments: Saddam could sit secure inside his underground palace, beneath 10 feet of concrete topped with machine gun nests and land mines. That was the argument, anyway.

Check out the counter-argument.

One minute: nuclear bomb shelter.
Next minute: a good start on a gravel quarry!

For those of you who fuss about politicians choosing their background so that they're always in front of a backdrop with the words "Change" or "Opportunity For Growth" or "We Must Have Change" or "Got Any Change?":

THIS IS WHY.

Oh, and Chavez is calling the photo an act of terrorism.

Small batch this week.

Metal Men #7 - I can hold my tongue (technically, I'm not using it, but don't be picky) no longer. This book is appallingly bad. The Metal Men have such a dear place in my heart, and all I want is a rollicking good time with these characters. Not that they can't be serious, but every attempt to do them as serious angsty characters has been a disaster. It's like the movie "Scooby Doo", where it's all about poking fun at the stereotypes of the main characters and changing Daphne into a butt-kicking tough girl, and the monster isn't some shady character using a mask to frighten people away from a property deal but instead it's a deranged Scrappy Doo who gains superpowers...and the only thing they won't do is give you the gang solving a mystery, splitting into groups, Velma losing her glasses and thinking the monster is Shaggy, etc. I love the Metal Men, but DC seems determined to slather them in irony and point out how silly they are instead of just giving the team a monster to fight, letting them bicker and rattling off notes about their tensile strength and melting points while they devise ways to defeat their opponent. The one time they DO do that in this mini-series, someone has to stand back and point out that it's the same old thing and how trite it is.

I'll tell you another thing that bugs me: "Based on ideas by Grant Morrison"? Excuse me, but where's the credit to the guy who actually created the characters and wrote their first story in a weekend, Robert Kanigher?

I can't even tell you what the plot IS! The writing in this book is so bad that I have yet to make sense of it. The story jumps from the early days of the Metal Men's creation to the present and back, with little rhyme or reason for the jumps. I love the sciencey stuff, but the metallurgical data rattled off in this series is impenetrable to anyone who isn't either Professor James Kakalios or John Selegue.

Duncan Rouleau's art style is interesting, but I just hate the redesign of the team and his storytelling is abysmal. Half the time I cannot tell which Metal Man I'm looking at. Will Magnus and his brother look indistinguishable in many scenes (and it's essential that you are able to distinguish them). This issue #7 has a last page where the Manhunter robot takes his blue face off and underneath is a human's face... and I get the sense that it's supposed to be meaningful but I've no clue who that is.

This book, even more than Countdown (and that's saying something), has made the case once and for all that if DC Comics is just going to write for the trade without any care for keeping us informed as to what's going on, then the inside cover needs to have a cast of characters and a plot summary. A month can be a long time to keep track of the plotlines from the last issue, and given the incomprehensible storyline of this book we need that refresher even moreso.

I know this is sour grapes. I've wanted to write the Metal Men, during their long hiatus I tried to pitch the Metal Men (with no luck whatsover in reaching the right editor), my first fanfic for Fanzing was a Metal Men story, I've longed to see the Metal Men as a cartoon series...they're lifelong favorites of mine. Back before Infinite Crisis simply pressed the reset switch on the whole Viridium thing, I had actually sketched out a mystery mini-series that would not only have resolved that mess but done so with a cool storyline that made perfect sense, tied into Metal Men history and developed a couple of the characters in new directions, and I really hate it that I never got to tell that story. But I promise you, I'm not against this mini because I'm being grabby. If Mark Waid was doing this story straight, I'd be giving it a rave review and saying, "Glad somebody deserving is writing it." If I'm angry about anything, it's the likelihood that this mini-series will result in the burial of this fine team of characters for another decade.

Why reinvent the wheel?

Countdown to Final Crisis #4 - Apparently, everyone in the DC Universe knows they're in a comic book. That is the only explanation I can come up with for this issue after the events of last issue. After watching everyone on the planet Earth get transformed into monsters by a virus, ripping each other apart and then getting nuked, the heroes suddenly realize they're on an alternate Earth from their Earth and they leave. They're responsible for everyone in that universe dying, and it doesn't matter because at least it wasn't "the real Earth". How they know which Earth is the original, and thus somehow of more value, is bizarre. It's like turning off "Schindler's List" and saying, "Well, thank goodness that was only a movie!"

Sweet Mary Marvel gets turned back to her power-mad self with very little coaxing from Darkseid. I know she's a Republican, but still, that seems a bit improbable. (To everyone who thinks I get too right-wing on this blog: You're welcome.)

Oh, and Kyle Rayner transports everybody on a big green disk. Admittedly, I'm not a Rayner fan, but wasn't the entirety of his shtick centered on how he is this creative artist who always creates something cool rather than just spheres and flat beams and catcher's mitts? If I missed some story that explains this, then I apologize.

PS238 #30 - Still the best money I spend on comic books today, and this is probably the funniest issue in a long time. There are exchanges worthy of Monty Python in this one, and it was nice to bring an arc to a close for once. Sometimes the plots meander, and I appreciate when a book has the courtesy to every now and again say "The end to this adventure. Next month we start something new!"

If you're not reading PS238, you'd better have a reason. There are four trade collections and they are worth every penny. I buy them even though I own the books, and I'm not the kind of guy who does that!

You made the decision to skip "Countdown". Maybe it was because you weren't as sure of the writing teams. Perhaps you didn't think that Jimmy Olsen, Pied Piper, Jason Todd, Donna Troy, Karate Kid, Catwoman's ex-hooker ex-sidekick, Harley Quinn out of costume and a Triplicate Girl without superpowers were compelling enough to make for good reading. Or you just wanted to save $150+. You haven't been reading Countdown at all up to now.

Gawd, do I envy you.

I don't even know how to best summarize this rambling, shambling soap opera. It may be best to tell you some of the threads that have taken all year to play out. For all of the following storylines, imagine them taking place in little chunks, about four pages an issue apiece.

And I'm doing this all from memory. If I get anything wrong, I'm not even going to bother to correct it, because it's evidence of just how hard it is to follow this meandering title.

Plotline #1: Jimmy Olsen begins developing goofy superpowers, all of which are based on his pre-crisis stories and transformations, and begins a quest to try to figure out what's causing them. It ultimately leads him to Cadmus and then Apokolips, where it turns out his body is a vessel for the Anti-Life Equation. Oh, and he meets a new female version of Forager who is more insectoid and also walks around naked in front of him. This plot has the largest continuity gaffe, because Jimmy Olsen and/or Perry White refer openly to "Jason Todd". How is it that they know the secret ID of the former Robin? Isn't that a huge security breach?

Plotline #2: Mary Marvel, having lost her Shazam powers, begs for new powers from Black Adam. She then becomes a totally corrupt evil harridan, and if she hasn't killed people by the letter of the law she's certainly assisted in their deaths. Eclipso (Jean Suekiller Loring) leads her around by the nose for a while, and then Mary rejects her and falls in with the duo from Plotline #3. Her story sort of petered out.

Plotline #3: Holly, the tweenie hooker introduced as Selina Kyle's sidekick in "Batman: Year One" is now grown up. I've not a clue what happened to her since that as I've never read Catwoman. She joins a cult of Amazons-in-training who are led by Athena herself (but it's really Granny Goodness in disguise who is recruiting new Female Furies from Earth). Also in this cult is Harleen Quinzel, a/k/a Harley Quinn; I guess you need to be a regular Batman reader in order to know why she isn't a criminal any longer and why she doesn't wear a costume.

Plotline #4: Somebody is killing off the New Gods by ripping their hearts out. Lightray, Sleez, Knockout... every New Genesis and Apokolips resident gets killed off. Big Barda, one of the coolest female characters ever....who was based on the mom from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" back in the days where she posed for Playboy, just in case you hadn't caught that bit of trivia...dies without a fight. This spins off into "Death of the New Gods", though I think "New Goderdammerung" would have been a much better title. It all culminates in the destruction of Jack Kirby's Fourth World in order to bring about a "Fifth World" which, for some reason, Darkseid is looking forward to.

Plotline #5: The Flash's Rogues Gallery gathers together doing drugs and hanging around with hookers so we get the point that they're a bunch of reprobate criminals and not a cute colorful gang who teeter on the edge of going straight. They begin plotting some new villainy, while Pied Piper and The Trickster (the former a friend of Wally West, and the latter a dude who had been on the side of good for years) are reluctant to participate. Then they all kill The Flash. I can't give you the details because I wasn't able to read the story. The marketing wizards at DC had this essential plot element occur in the 13th issue of a book few people were reading without any kind of note at the end of Countdown screaming "YOU ABSOLUTELY CANNOT MISS 'FLASH: THE FASTEST MAN ALIVE' #13. YOU MUST READ IT BEFORE NEXT WEEK!" They thought it was enough to show a house ad with the Rogues standing over Flash's dead body. Because, you know, comic book advertising never ever shows us anything that doesn't actually take place in the book. So most of us picked up the next issue of Countdown to find Piper and Trickster on the run for their lives, hysterical that they've killed the Flash, and then we called our comic shop to find out they were out of that issue. Oh, and in case you were wondering, this was Bart Allen, former Impulse and Kid Flash, who died. Piper and Trickster go on the run, tied together with some sophisticated bomb handcuffs, and suddenly we're in a remake of The Defiant Ones with a gay man and a homophobe shackled. Then Trickster gets shot in the head. Piper ends up on Apokolips and plays a tune that causes the planet to blow up.

Plotline #6: The Legion of Super-heroes comes back in time to help Wally West return to the DCU just as Bart is being killed, and they leave behind Karate Kid and Una (Triplicate Girl without the powers) in the present. The two wander around trying to cure a fatal illness that Karate Kid has, and they fail utterly. The virus Karate Kid has, Morticoccus, ultimately breaks free of his body and destroys one of the parallel Earths, turning it into Kamandi's universe.

Plotline #7: Monarch is Captain Atom. He's evil now due to something that happened in a Wildstorm book I didn't read and then he was trapped in the Monarch armor in that Bludhaven book that I did read and yet completely forgot about. Now he's conquering the alternate Earths using an army he builds using the bad guys from alternate realities.

Plotline #8: A team of Monitors, one for each of the 52 alternate universes, is fussing about cross-contamination amongst the alternate Earths. They quibble about what to do. We're supposed to tell them apart due to differences in beards and slight costume changes. One of them leads a team of heroes ("The Challengers of" something or other) to search for Ray Palmer, while another of them hatches a scheme to do away with the other Monitors and absorb their power. No, wait, I think that's the one who is with the Challengers, because he turns out to be evil. Then another one is playing chess with Darkseid. There was another one who had an assistant who was some kind of evil hunter-woman from a race that the Monitors always employed. Maybe those are the same guy. I can't remember. Then, in the biggest ripoff ever sold by DC, there's an issue entirely devoted to exposition by the Monitors about everything that happened so far, with no new action taking place whatsoever, and they had the gall to charge full price for that issue.

Plotline #9: A Monitor, who is nick-named "Bob", escorts the "Challengers of the Beyond" (I admit it, I looked it up) into subatomic space and then across dimensions looking for Ray Palmer. These "Challengers" are Donna Troy and Jason Todd, joined later by Kyle Rayner. How this starts, we don't know, because once again it's a story occurring outside of the series and we aren't directed to go buy the missing tale. One minute, Jason Todd is Nightwing, and the next he's just wearing a domino mask with his leather coat. Their pairing doesn't make much sense, except that readers know both of them are characters with incomprehensible histories. These stories are like the tale of Lemmiwinks, inasmuch as these so-called adventurers don't do a darn thing but get led around from fight to fight. It could be Dumb Bunny, Resurrection Man and Major Bummer on this team for all the difference it would make. They go somewhere new, meet their new opponents, fight and then move on. This story gets tedious. They finally find Ray Palmer on an Earth where the Justice League is retired and living happily, and then that Earth gets destroyed. Ray's body contains an antigen which gives him immunity to the Morticoccus virus. Jason Todd discovers the Batman of another Earth who took more extreme measures (similar to Jason's own philosophy), and Jason adopts the guise of Red Robin.

Plotline #10: Superman-Prime, in perhaps the best issue of the entire book, goes on a rampage and destroys an entire alternate Earth just because it isn't his ideal Earth like he used to read about in old DC Comics. He tortures Mr. Mxyzptlk, gets attacked by an alternate Zatanna, and then faces off against the Monitors. I've actually forgotten his present status.

Plotline #11: Brother Eye (who I just found out is a character that existed before "Infinite Crisis" -- Hey, I never read the original OMAC!) breaks free from the facility where it's contained. Brother Eye goes to Apokolips and merges with the planet, though it is defeated by Pied Piper.

Plotline #12: Buddy Blank, the pre-crisis OMAC, gathers up his grandson and takes refuge in Command D shelter as his planet is ravaged by the Morticoccus virus, which causes humans and animals to show traits of the other, and a nuclear war. Then we find out, natch, that it isn't the "real" earth, and his grandson is now the "last boy alive", Kamandi.

Plotline #13: All the disparate plotlines interwined and led to all these characters ending up on Apokolips, and from there they went to Earth to try to fix Karate Kid's virus. Turns out they were on an alternate Earth, and when last we saw them they had fled Kamandi's Earth to try to find their own.

This brings you up to speed. Or you can turn to Wikipedia.

That brings you up to date, sorta.

Testosterone aplenty as Chuck Dixon's new "Bruno Books" imprint is launched with a 170-page cardstock cover flipbook. 1/2 of the book will be a struggle for survival against a drug cartel's army of thugs who chase down the survivors of a jet crash in "Jungle Rules". The other 1/2 is "Philly Narco", a crime drama.

Both are collections of mini-series Chuck did for Epic. They will be available through ComixPress and Amazon. If they find an audience, more reprint goodness is promised as well as some all-new goodness.

For my part, I've wished Chuck had his own comic line for ages. Chuck Dixon's one of those guys who can really deliver if allowed to cut loose, so even the possibility that this could lead to his self-publishing his own new books is something to hope for.

Of course, distribution is everything with self-publishing. Fingers crossed!

Apologies about the lack of posting in the last few weeks. All of my typing time has been devoted to a project I haven't really been able to write about publicly. This weekend, I finally got the OK to let everyone know.

It looks like I'll finally have something published by DC. Oh, sorry, let me bold that: It looks like I'll finally have something published by DC. The connections I've made over the last few years have finally paid off. It took a while, what with the shifting inter-company politics and shake-ups. (I finally make a real connection with Peter Tomasi and he announces he's becoming a writer!) However, there was an opening for a fill-in story and my name was mentioned by one of my friends who has an in, and I got the call.

I'm being coy here because these are the kinds of things that cause problems when every fanboy knows how to submit stuff. I've been told to keep this hush-hush. Part of me resents that, just because I've BEEN that fanboy and it's so frustrating that there isn't a set route for getting reviewed and working one's way in. I mean, I understand that the "who-you-know" factor will always be part of the process, but in comic books "who-you-know" seems to be the entire process. I just turned 38 this weekend, and I'm finally getting my shot after more than a decade of pestering editors at conventions, sending off proposals and self-publishing!

Anyway, I got the call to submit a fill-in story, what's sometimes called an "inventory" story. The Final Crisis storyline and the fallout from it is impacting all of the major books, and while this is ordinarily a good thing it's disrupting the flow of the made-for-the-trade six-issue story arcs. Thus, the opening for a number of inventory stories in many of DC's titles. So many of the writers currently working for the big two have had a decade of "writing for the trade" training, to the point that writing a done-in-one 22-page story isn't really their thing. Fortunately, those are the kinds of comics that I love.

I had to submit a one-page springboard for each story, and submit them for several books, because it was unknown which one would have the opening.

Getting back to said editor with a story summary was a killer. I pulled out my list of second-tier characters that I've always wanted to write. (If you think you're going to be handed Batman as a newbie, you're crazy.) See if you notice my problem:

• Elongated Man


• Captain Carrot


• Firestorm


• Booster Gold


• Blue Beetle


• Guy Gardner


• The Metal Men


• The Shining Knight


• Fire and Ice

So, my favorite character's dead. The Metal Men just had that revamp book that, God Bless It, just didn't mesh with how I envisioned the team, so using them in even a guest capacity for a regular book posed problems. Shining Knight's now a girl from pre-history with a talking horse. Captain Carrot's now a bunny owned by Zatanna. Firestorm was a no-go. Booster, Beetle, Gardner, Fire and Ice... oddly enough, for all the talk about Keith Giffen's JLI team being hated at DC, they're the only characters on my list who were still a going concern.

In the end, I dashed off a Green Lantern Corps springboard, a Booster Gold fill-in, a Birds of Prey pitch with Fire and Ice guesting, and for good measure a Batman/Martian Manhunter one-off mystery.

So guess who's getting to write Batman?

No, no, it's only for a month, and who knows when it'll get published. I will keep you informed when they tell me the exact issue number and date.

It's just that...of all the characters, it's Batman, the one that's supposedly booked for the next century with stories. I was not expecting that. I'm curious as to where this will lead.

As for Monitor Duty... we'll have to see. If I should land a gig, then this blog would probably be going away, but for the time being I'm told I can still do the site without a conflict of interest because it's standard work-for-hire.

Remember this date! April 1, 2008. That's going in my diary.

I know the comic is called Luann, but whenever the subject is Brad the strip is much better. After 9/11, Brad went from a shiftless older brother eating out of the fridge to an aspiring fireman, and in his quest he's moved out of the house and fallen in love with another firefighter.

Whenever the strip goes back to Luann mooning about boys and clothes, it feels like a different, more shallow comic. I like Brad. When it comes to women, I identify with his cluelessness.