The Meaning of Lobdell

In honor of Douglas Adams, I now present a list of terms for phenomena in comics that everyone has noticed, but nobody has thought much about because there was never a word for it before. I name them after X-Title creators pretty much totally at random, because naming them after cities seemed just silly.

Claremont (n): The death of a villain at the hands of another villain (usually a new villain) solely to demonstrate how powerful and ruthless the new villain is. The Upstarts, for instance, began their string of appearances in the X-titles with the claremont of the entire Hellfire Club, while Stryfe demonstrated his power with the claremont of Apocalypse. Virtually without exception, claremonts are performed by weak, incompetent, or otherwise unexceptional villains; their spectacular performance against villains never seems to allow them any advantage against heroes. The obvious conclusion to draw is that they're in the wrong line of work--while they might be unexceptional as bad guys, they'd make excellent super-heroes.

Lobdell (v.): To inadvertently reveal one's greatest secret by telling it to the one person sure to blab it to everyone; namely, the reading audience. The greatest example of a character lobdelling comes from Guido Carosella, who revealed to Doctor Leonard Samson and the audience that his powers caused him chronic pain and heart trouble. Within months, a wide variety of characters stumbled onto the information independently and without talking to Doc Samson. Clearly, the audience blabbed. (The same phenomenon also occurs with the secret mindwipe of Batman in 'Identity Crisis'...a secret kept perfectly up until the time the readers found out about it.)

Madureira (n.): A character brought back from the dead despite the seeming total indifference of the reading audience to their deceased status. For example, Bucky. By definition, a madureira must first be a portacio, unless the character has been dead for an extremely long period of time. It will probably take at least another three decades for Barry Allen to become a madureira.

Morrison (v.): To appear in so many titles at the same time that even the most naive reader wonders when the character finds time to sleep. Currently used almost solely in regards to Wolverine, but during the 1990s, the Punisher, Ghost Rider, and Lobo morrisoned regularly.

Portacio (n.): An obscure character brought back for a guest appearance who is obviously going to be killed off over the course of his or her guest appearance in order to "shock" the readers. Why any writer would think their readers are going to be shocked by the death of a portacio, when their imminent death is so obvious, remains a mystery.

Silvestri (n., pl.): The assorted minor characters that have accumulated over the years in the X-titles, which readers are expected to remember even though they might not have appeared for months, years, or even decades. Polaris is a noted silvestra, as is Havok, and by this point the entire original cast of 'New Mutants' qualify as silvestri.

Whedon (n.): A character who is popular enough to be given their own book, but not popular enough to sustain it; the character winds up getting a regular series several times, each time not lasting more than a few years before cancellation. (Notable whedons or wheda--either is correct--include Hawkeye, the Martian Manhunter, Doctor Strange, and the Thing. Note that in all cases the whedon remains a high-profile and active character even between iterations of his/her series.)

ConBestiary #2

Phantasmal Stench: As we are all aware, convention attendees have worked long and hard to change their behavior in the face of stereotypes of them as unwashed, smelly and disgusting. If you poll con attendees, they'll all tell you that of course they shower and change their clothes every day of the convention. So why, then, in the face of all these truthful and hygenic conventioneers, do we still catch a distinctive and unpleasant scent of human body odor?

The answer, of course, is that the stench has endured for so long that it is now self-perpetuating and sentient. The sheer amount of body odor pumped into the air at cons over the years has created an intelligent stink--one whose personality is naturally formed from hundreds of con attendees, and which therefore loves to hang out at cons. It particularly loves the dealer rooms; even though it has no money, it likes to "window shop". It also enjoys hanging out at gaming sessions and all-night anime rooms.

If you find yourself walking through a pocket of the phantasmal stench, simply breathe through your mouth and mutter that you think you saw a bootleg copy of the 'Dungeons and Dragons' cartoon on the other side of the dealer room. (The phantasmal stench loves that show.)

ConBestiary #1

Escalator Gremlins: These tiny creatures are a sub-species of the common gremlin (subhominus dahlen) which believes itself to be benevolent. Unlike its malicious cousin, it tries to help humans by sabotaging dangerous machinery. Unfortunately, its small cranial capacity (the average escalator gremlin is only three inches long from head to toe) has led it to the erroneous conclusion that escalators are dangerous. They do look dangerous, after all--they're all ominous and black, and they move in a vaguely disturbing way (as any small child who's worried about being sucked into one can attest.) As a result, the escalator gremlins make it their mission to disable escalators in high-traffic areas.

Contrary to popular belief, escalator gremlins have no grievance against elevators--in fact, they find the little chime that sounds when the doors open to be quite soothing. They do everything within their power to ensure that said chime occurs at every single floor, whether the elevator is going up or down.

Vacating

Just a note to say I'll be on vacation for the ensuing week, and will probably not have an entry next week (and really, this is it for this week too, and it ain't much either. Then again, let's face it, none of this is exactly Shakespeare.)

So I leave you with this thought: Why, in this gender-equal world in which we live, do we not hear as much about teamstresses and seamsters as we do about teamsters and seamstresses? Misters and mistresses get equal time--although you don't really hear about a woman having an affair and keeping her "mister" in an apartment across the street--but the proud, hardworking teamstresses get nothing.

To say nothing of how even the most politically correct child doesn't check their pet's gender to determine whether to call it a hamster or hamstress...

The Bestest Paradox Ever

November, 2002. The Oval Office. GEORGE W BUSH, the President, sits at his desk.

Enter OLDER GEORGE W BUSH.

YOUNG GEORGE: Am I seeing double? You look more like me than my dad, or even my brother Jeb! And that's saying a lot!

OLD GEORGE: I am you--I'm from the future, the distant year of 2008. A man gave me a time machine, said I could use it to fix my mistakes and make the world a better place. So I came back to here to warn you not to invade Iraq. It'll be a huge mistake.

YOUNG GEORGE: Well, I dunno about that...all my experts have been telling me this should be a slam dunk.

OLD GEORGE: They're wrong! I know, I was there!

YOUNG GEORGE: Seems to me I've heard that kind of negative talk before--you can't focus on the filter, George. You gotta listen to the important stuff, like the things that Karl and Dick tell me. And they're saying that the invasion's gonna go great.

OLD GEORGE: But I'm telling you it'll go bad! Look, I even brought a newspaper! See, we fail miserably!

YOUNG GEORGE: Now, you know I never read the papers. I get all the news I need from my advisors. They do good work.

OLD GEORGE: But it's me! I'm you, and I'm telling you it fails! I was there! I saw it! You have to listen to me, I'm you!

YOUNG GEORGE: I think I'd rather listen to what my heart is telling me over what my future self is telling me.

OLD GEORGE: God, I was an idiot six years ago.

YOUNG GEORGE: Dunno what you're so smug about--which one of us screwed up the war in Iraq?

OLD GEORGE: Oh, that's it. Bring it on!

OLD GEORGE kills YOUNG GEORGE, then promptly vanishes from existence in a poof of temporal logic. Oval Office is vacant except for a dead YOUNG GEORGE.

MAN WITH TIME MACHINE: "Fix mistakes"...check. "Make world a better place"...check.

OK, Needs a Few Words

The post below is part of a fad that's been sweeping comics websites--Marvel's doing a big crossover called 'Civil War', in which their superheroes are divided over a controversial law that makes them register their activities with the government. Iron Man believes that it's important to regain the public trust, while Captain America calls it a violation of civil liberties. And Marvel decided to release little "banner" images you could put on your own website, one with a picture of Captain America that says, "I'm with Cap", one with Iron Man that says "I'm with Iron Man".

Then some guys modified the image to be a shot of Ms. Marvel...from behind...from about waist height...and changed the slogan to "I'm Following Ms. Marvel". It kinda ballooned from there.

The image below is part of my tiny contribution to the fad. I'd post the other two, but several people who read this still haven't seen Season Two, and I don't want to spoil a big plot twist.

So now you understand not just the context, but my allegiance. Because really, whichever side Doctor Who takes is the side that's going to win anyway.

Needs No Words

The Punk Comics Manifesto

Time, I think, to synthesize several thoughts I've been having about comics as a medium and an industry into a single statement. My hope is to get this read and seen as a movement--the Punk Comics Movement, if you will--however, I'm uncomfortably limited in my experience of starting movements, so I'll probably settle for posting this everywhere they won't take it down and hoping people pass it on. Which I freely give permission to do, by the way--I give anyone who wants permission to copy and repost this in any forum, anywhere, so long as the contents are unaltered. I'd like you to give me credit, but I'm sure it'll get dropped off somewhere along the line--that's OK, the ideas are more important, and if anonymity is the price of fame, then so be it.

The Punk Comics Movement can be summed up in two simple statements, one for the artistic side of comics, one for the business side. (Once you read these two statements, it may or may not be apparent to you why I'm calling it "punk comics".) The artistic Punk Comics Manifesto is, "Write this comic like it was the only one anyone was ever going to read." The business Punk Comics Manifesto is, "Everyone should be reading comics." Those two statements might seem mutually exclusive, but read on.

1. "Write this comic like it was the only one anyone was ever going to read." You can break this statement down into two parts--first, assume that the comic you're writing is the first one that someone has ever read, and second, don't expect them to be picking up the next one you write. A good comic should always be self-contained.

There was a time when this was virtually taken for granted in the comic industry. Reader turnover was considered to be complete every two years, and so it was assumed that anytime you wrote a comic book, you were writing it for an audience that didn't know about anything that happened more than two years ago. In addition, with spotty newsstand distribution, it was considered to be so difficult to follow a comic for more than a few months that issues had to be self-contained to avoid reader frustration. These two notions have been almost totally abandoned over the years; in much the same way Punk Rock went back to the roots of the genre and simplified the message, Punk Comics aims to do the same thing.

A. Assume the comic you're writing is the first one that someone has ever read. You should assume that, really--more than assume, you should hope it. You should always hope, as a writer, that every comic you write is attracting a new reader, at least one, and you should write with that new reader in mind. Which means that you have to, absolutely have to, write an issue that a first-time reader can pick up and immediately understand. If you're writing an issue of the Flash, make sure somewhere in that issue is an explanation of who the Flash is and what he's all about--it doesn't have to be long, or elaborate, but it needs to be there. If you're bringing back Electro, explain who he is and why he's dangerous--even just a brief, "Uh-oh, it's Electro again! Last time we fought, he nearly killed me with his electric blasts!" is better than no explanation at all. Characters with backstories so complicated they need elaborate, lengthy explanations (or worse, stories with no point beyond explaining backstories from existing characters) shouldn't be involved. Simplify, simplify, simplify, and assume that your reader knows nothing.

B. Don't expect them to be picking up the next comic you write. A comic takes an enormous amount of time and effort to produce, meaning that there's a substantial wait on the part of the reader for each individual comics story. Producing a story with no pay-off, a story that ends on a cliff-hanger, is essentially telling the reader, "This story is so special that it is worth an entire month of your time to wait for the ending." Producing a ten-part story is telling the reader, "This story is so special that it is worth ten months of your time and thirty dollars of your money to wait for the ending." That's a lot to ask of the reader, and you should do it only rarely.

Instead, the medium should fit the message. If you have a comics story that will be 200 pages long and paced like a novel, write it as a 200-page graphic novel. Don't break it down into ten 20-page chunks just to fit a century-old idea of how comics are sold. If you're publishing a monthly 32-page comic, put a pay-off in at the end of every thirty-two page issue, even if you're also establishing longer plot threads that will pay off more for the returning reader. If you're worried that you're providing a "jumping-off" point for people to stop reading, then you don't have enough faith in your writing talent. Tease them into buying more, yes; entice them, lure them, interest them. But don't expect their continued patronage, and certainly don't demand it by writing a story that never seems to end.

(And yes, people will point to Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman, both of whom wrote serialized graphic novels--but both Moore on Swamp Thing and Gaiman on Sandman had quite a few stand-alone issues, too. And, of course, with two exceptions, you're not Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman, so you probably can't get away with what they can.)

2. "Everyone should be reading comics." The comic book industry has sunk into a ghetto. Their marketing muscles have atrophied from long disuse, and they no longer even seem to have an awareness that there's a world outside of the comic store; they consider it a far-reaching, radical step to put their product in bookstores, in the little section for "graphic novels" that's being slowly edged aside by waves of better-marketed Japanese imports. This has to change.

The comic medium has the potential to be the most pervasive in the world. Comics combine the accessibility of television or film with the intellect and ability to express complex concepts of books. They should be able to display the same breadth of subject matter as books, as films, as any other medium out there. And yet, if you look at them now, they are predominantly action-adventure material of a single sub-genre (the superhero) exclusively sold in a single type of store. Whereas books are sold in grocery stores and drugstores, videos are sold in K-Marts and convenience stores, and magazine racks are in practically every store large enough to hold them.

Comics companies need to experiment with format, with price, with subject matter. Start a line of romance digest comics, paperback-sized, and sell them in bookstores next to the Harlequin Romances. Co-produce a line of educational comics with the makers of Cliff's Notes. Create magazine-sized "Treasury" comics that you can sell next to Disney Adventures and Nickelodeon Magazine. Market a line of teen fantasy comics to sell to the girls who buy Tiger Beat, and a boy's action comics line to sell in video game stores. Stop thinking that comics have to be 32 pages long, all the same length and width, and sold in comics stores to the fanboys. Readers are not going to walk through your door and demand your product. You must find them.

3. Conclusion: Comics need to be more accessible. To the writers, this means writing a comic that anyone can pick up and enjoy, not simply an infinitesimal fragment of a never-ending soap opera. To the publishers, this means putting the comic out where anyone can find it, where it is the perfect impulse purchase instead of the province of a dwindling number of devoted enthusiasts.

Punk Comics. This is a pen. This is a pencil. Now start your own.

Top 5 Worst Resurrections

...in comics, that is. I am not discussing Jesus again, especially not in the context of comics resurrections. (Although that one was kinda lame. His dad just zaps him back to life a few days later? Puh-lease. It wasn't even foreshadowed.)

No, I'm talking about the comic-book trend of bringing back dead characters with very contrived explanations, primarily because fans want to continue reading about said character's adventures and won't take "Ack, gurgle, thud!" for an answer. Here they are...

5. Jean Grey. Technically not a very bad one, but it set the precedent for BS "Look, I'm back!" resurrections. Jean Grey's mutant powers had kicked into overdrive, making her telekinesis so powerful that she could snuff out stars--which she did, destroying an entire solar system when he went crazy from having so much power. She nobly decided to kill herself, rather than risk endangering the entire universe should she go crazy again. Resurrection: It turned out that an actual super-powerful cosmic entity precisely duplicated her, and the cosmic entity/duplicate killed itself because That's What Jean Would Have Done. The real Jean was found years later, just fine and dandy.

4. Elektra. She was stabbed in the chest with her own sai by Bullseye (although unlike the movie version, it was in a rivalry over who would become the Kingpin's personal hitman.) Resurrection: Ninja magic.

3. Green Lantern. Hal Jordan went insane after the destruction of his hometown, Coast City, at the hands of the alien Mongul, and tried to gather enough cosmic power to rewrite history and save those victims no matter what the cost to anyone else. To this end, he destroyed the Green Lantern Corps, destroyed and remade the universe, yet still failed at saving the people he cared about the most. Finally, having regained his sanity, he sacrificed his power and life restoring Earth's sun in a heroic and noble moment, and became DC's ghostly spirit of redemption, The Spectre. Resurrection: All the evil stuff he did was because of alien fear parasites, and when he found that out, he got better.

2. Green Goblin. In one of the most iconic and memorable stories of Spider-Man's 44-year history, Norman Osborn's mind reverted to his sinister Green Goblin persona one last time, prompting him to kidnap Peter Parker's girlfriend, Gwen Stacy, and throw her off a bridge. Spider-Man failed to save her, and he tracked down the Green Goblin and beat him savagely--and yet, he couldn't kill him. The Goblin did that himself, when he tried to impale Spidey from behind on his Goblin Glider and Spidey dodged it. The Goblin's own Glider stabbed him through the heart. Resurrection: It just hurt real bad. He's better now.

1. Guardian. Alpha Flight's charismatic leader died in a battle with Omega Flight, a team assembled to take the Canadian super-heroes down. Months later, he returned, explaining that he'd actually activated a prototype teleporter in his battlesuit that teleported him to one of the moons of Jupiter, where he was rescued and healed by a race of benevolent aliens. But this turned out to be a lie covering the return of Omega Flight's leader disguised as Guardian--writer John Byrne cleverly parodied implausible resurrection stories to sucker fans into believing Guardian was back, knowing that the more convoluted and unbelievable the resurrection, the more the fans bought it. The unveiling of Guardian as a villain was therefore a genuine surprise. Resurrection: The whole BS story about the moons of Jupiter and the benevolent aliens turned out to be true. Says it all, don't it?

The Announcement

It's not really a big announcement, since 90% of the people who read this blog are friends and family, and I've already told all of them, but this is the point where anyone who just stumbled onto this blog while looking for Doctor Seuss fanfic and discussions of zombies finds out...

I'm now officially contracted to write 'The Crossover Companion', for TwoMorrows Press, due sometime in 2007. It'll be a comprehensive look at the crossover phenomenon in comics, starting from the earliest idea that each company's stories all took place in the same fictional universe, and moving forward to examine the "event" crossovers that became a permanent fixture of the industry (for good and bad) in the 80s, 90s, and on through the present day. It will also serve as a guide to these crossovers for anyone who wants to know what titles spun off out of 'Zero Hour', who wrote 'Secret Wars II', what happened in 'Unity', and who died in 'Extreme Prejudice' (assuming anyone on this Earth actually cares who died in 'Extreme Prejudice'.)

It'll be about 200 pages, and I'll give details on things like price, cover artist, and similar once they're forthcoming. I hope everyone enjoys it. I also hope they buy it, since I get a cut of every copy.

In Defense of the Status Quo

Let's face it--everyone hates the status quo. People equate the phrase with stagnation, boredom, lifelessness, and a flat unchanging nothing. Everyone insists that stories should "kick against the status quo" (especially in comics, where there's practically a jihad going on between people who hate it and people who love it.) And nobody seems to understand what the damn thing is. So here's a quick explanation of what a status quo is, and why you should love it.

Any series (not just comics series, but TV, movie, video game, manga, what have you--any setting that is designed to tell multiple stories based around a character or group of characters) must have a status quo. That status quo is the baseline setting and context for the series, and it functions as a generator of stories. That status quo can be anything from "a group of people in the workplace that don't get along very well" to "a man with a magic box that lets him go anywhere in space and time" to "a mystery writer who actually solves mysteries" to "a group of mutant superheroes that help a world that fears and hates them." (Obviously, these are just thumbnail descriptions: A real "status quo" for a series involves descriptions of each character, what makes them tick, the world they operate in, their relationships to each other, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.)

That phrase, "a generator of stories," is an important one. It means that there are stories you can tell about these people that come out of the setting and context you establish, stories that are interesting in and of themselves. Obviously, not all status quos are created equal. There are a lot more interesting stories you can tell about "a man with a magic box that lets him go anywhere in space and time" than you can about "a group of people in the workplace that don't get along very well", which is why 'Doctor Who' is still going after 43 years and even a great workplace sitcom like 'NewsRadio' only lasted five. Not all settings and contexts have the same number of interesting stories to tell about them; some have very few.

Now, this is where the comics community has bandied about terms like "real change vs. the illusion of change". There are two factions in comics that each have very strong views about making major changes to a comic book; the "real change" people insist that change is an important, naturalistic element of story-telling, and that by forcing the characters to conform to an unchanging model, they've made them stagnant and lifeless; the "illusion of change" people insist that when you make major changes to a character, you're losing as much as you gain, and all too often you can lose the thing that makes the character special.

But here's where our above definition of "status quo" comes in, because it not only explains away the seeming contradiction between the two, but also explains the existence of the third type of story that neither side seems to acknowledge: The story that is exciting without having either change or the illusion thereof. That type of story is the kind that the status quo generates directly out of its context and setting, and if it's a good status quo, you should be able to tell a lot of those. The X-Men can go out and save the world a lot without needing to make changes in their setting and context, and it'll probably be exciting.

But "illusion of change vs. real change" translates, here, into "deviation from, and return to the status quo vs. transition from one status quo to another new status quo." An "illusion of change" story is one where something happens to upset the status quo, the setting and context of the characters' lives, and their efforts to return things to said status quo. For example, the X-Men went through a very long "illusion of change" story from Uncanny X-Men #200-280, where Professor X left Earth, the team faked their deaths and moved to Australia, the mansion was destroyed, and several characters lost their memories of being X-Men, all before Professor X finally returned and helped set things to rights. (Which brings up an interesting point: That storyline wasn't well received, because it went on for a very long time and people were frustrated that there seemed to be no end to the changes. You can only deviate from the status quo so long and so far because "meaning" comes from setting and context--without a world to ground the story you're telling, it becomes pointless. Status quos are necessary because they provide that context. But I digress.)

"Real change" stories, on the other hand, change the status quo to an entirely new one. They demolish the old story-generating engine, and create a new one. For example, Batgirl got shot in the back, suffering permanent spinal damage that confined her to a wheelchair, and became the tech-savvy Oracle, leader and mastermind of the female super-hero team, 'The Birds of Prey'. That's a significant and permanent change--you're telling a completely different type of story with Barbara Gordon than you told thirty years ago. You have a different status quo.

So, here's where it all comes together. "Real change" fans think that they're advocating "no status quo", but you can't do that, because a status quo is simply a context and setting to your character's continuing adventures, which is absolutely necessary to give the story its emotional grounding. They're simply advocating that status quos should feel free to change. "Illusion of change" fans recognize the point brought up back near the beginning: Not all status quos are created equal. Not all story-generating engines have the same number of stories in them, nor the same quality. (Notice how 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' tended to founder a bit after they left high school? New status quo, not as many good stories in it.) Changing to a new status quo is only a good idea if the new status quo has as many or more good stories in it. Otherwise, you're just closing off interesting possibilities. Which means that changing the status quo shouldn't be done lightly or often, especially in comics--a lot of these status quos have managed to keep going for decades because there are so many interesting stories to tell with them; changing the engine could wreck it, and it takes time and effort to fix something like that. (Witness the 'Clone Saga'.)

There ya go. Why status quo is important, why it should be viewed as valuable, and why you shouldn't tinker with it too much when you're writing an open-ended series (like, say, having Scott Summers get mind-controlled by Jean Grey's ghost into falling in love with the White Queen, right before you leave the series.) And all in just a few hundred easy paragraphs.

"And I'd Survive, Too!"

Unbidden, the memory of reading about the medical condition known as "hyponatremia" popped into my head last night--it's a dangerous medical condition caused by over-hydrating (usually done by marathon runners who are over-eager to prevent dehydration) where the sodium levels in the blood drop too far. It can lead to all sorts of unpleasant symptoms, and can even be fatal.

It got me thinking about marathons in general, and I had to wonder, "How did all this get started?" I mean, yes, we've all heard the legend about the Battle of Marathon, and the Greek soldier who ran all the way from Marathon to Athens, proclaimed the Athenian victory, then keeled over dead.

What I wanna know is, who looked down at the guy's corpse and said, "I bet I could beat his time"?

The S-Word

I read 'X-23: Innocence Lost' and 'NYX: Wannabe' recently, the two books that brought X-23 into the Marvel Universe (X-23 is a clone of Wolverine that, for various reasons, wound up being female). I'm not generally a person who goes into these things seeing any sort of political or subtextual agenda, and I generally enjoy my comfortable obliviousness to said agendas, but...wow, these books are pathetically sexist.

There. I've said it, and I'd say it again if I had to.

Basically, there's a certain element of laziness to X-23's origin story. She's "Wolverine as a teenage girl". Her origin is pretty much exactly the same, beat for beat, except where they felt they should change things to make them more "female". And that's where the sexism comes in. Because, you see, while Weapon X escaped from the project because they were torturing her, X-23 had a female scientist who acted as surrogate mother to the clone and felt all maternal to her (see, she lost her scientific detachment and went all gooey for the girl once she was born, because that's just what women do.) And it was Mom who helped X-23 decide that she needed to escape (because X-23 wouldn't have done it on her own, or something.) Mom dies in the escape, and X-23 is left on her own...

...and when we next see her, she's a hooker.

Do I even need to add anything to that last statement? Do I even need to explain what is so staggeringly, pathetically, loathesomely sexist about the idea that any woman who winds up on her own in a large city for more than a week winds up under the thumb of a domineering pimp, even one who can leave people's body parts in different zip codes and doesn't need money to survive? Do I need to point out that there's absolutely no explanation given for her career move--she just shows up in the book, and hey look, she's a hooker, and the writer (who is also, disappointingly enough, the editor-in-chief of Marvel) just expects us to accept that, no questions asked, because that is after all what women do?

Sometimes I wonder about this medium.

DC Zombies

After reading 'Ultimate Fantastic Four Volume Five' (now a strong contender for Awesomest Thing Ever), I'm fully up to speed on the Marvel Zombieverse--an alternate reality just like the regular Marvel Universe, except that "three days ago", one of the super-heroes got infected with a virus that gave him an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Human, and super-human.

And now, every super-hero in the Marvel Universe is a rotting, insane, super-zombie.

So naturally, that led me to think: How would the DC version of this go? So here's the basic plot of the three issue "DC Zombies" mini-series.

Issue One: Outbreak. Access (the DC/Marvel jointly-owned character who can freely travel between continuities) teleports into Gotham City, looking for help from its heroes. But he's already infected, and by the time he finds Robin, he starts gnawing on him instead of asking him for assistance. Robin fends off his assailant, but a trail of victims tells him that Gotham's already in trouble. The infection spreads through the city, snagging both Nightwing and the Mad Hatter (who are locked in combat at the time.) Nightwing delivers the Mad Hatter to Arkham before succumbing to the infection himself.

At dawn, Batman returns to the Batcave, having narrowly escaped infection several times, and broadcasts word to the JLA that he needs help quarantining the city. Superman arrives, bringing with him Wonder Woman, the Martian Manhunter, and Green Lantern, but it's already too late--isolated reports of infection have come through from Metropolis and Fawcett City, and it appears to be spreading west. Then worse news arrives, as dozens of super-zombie-criminals break out of Arkham, led by a zombie Amygdala and a zombie Killer Croc. The JLA attempt to contain them, but the issue ends with Kiler Croc chomping down on Superman's shoulder.

Issue Two: The Hunt. The battle with the JLA concludes in disaster, as Superman flees the battle, and Wonder Woman and Martian Manhunter are both infected. Green Lantern is forced to retreat, and zombie Wonder Woman and zombie Martian Manhunter begin circling the globe spreading the infection. Batman goes into zombie-infested Gotham to find Nightwing and Robin, getting updates from Oracle as he does so. (Oracle is on a Blackhawk plane, circling the globe herself, and is hence safe from the plague, but she's already starting to worry about refueling.) Oracle delivers updates from Coast City, where Hal Jordan tries to hold off zombie Sinestro, from Fawcett City, where Captain Marvel is nowhere to be found (we see Billy Batson starting to shout "Sha--" before a zombie sinks its teeth into his cheek), and all over the world.

Superman, meanwhile, contacts Batman to tell him that his powers aren't enough to hold the infection at bay, and he's losing control to the hunger. When he fled, it was to attain orbit--the more sunlight he gets, the more powerful he becomes and the better he can fight the infection, so he had to get out of the atmosphere to avoid atmospheric scatter. But it's still not enough. He informs Batman that he's flying at top speed towards the sun--he'll either get strong enough to burn out the infection completely, or he'll vaporize in the sun's heat. Either way, the world will be safe from him.

Meanwhile, Oracle continues to receive reports of heroes fighting zombies. Swamp Thing is attacked by zombie versions of Doctor Fate and Zatanna, and is forced to abandon his physical body, only to discover that he's brought the infection into the Green itself. Buddy Baker, meanwhile, finds that he's done the same with the Red. Nature begins to eat itself as the infection spreads.

We cut back to Batman, in the Batcave. The JLA teleporter has been disabled. Nightwing and Robin are pinned to the ground with Batarangs through their hands and ankles, each one muzzled to prevent accidents. And Batman begins working on a cure.

Book Three: The Cure. Oracle acts as pronouncer of the end of the world, from two miles above it. Her reports come in from every city, and she dutifully relays them to Batman. The Green Lantern Corps has abandoned Earth and recalled its ring-bearers. (Back on Oa, we see a zombie Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, and John Stewart slugging it out with the rest of the Green Lanterns, in the first battle of the Green Lantern Corps and the Green Lantern Corpse.) The few people immune to the zombie plague are being killed. (Hawk, Dove, and Black Adam, each with magical bodies, are being ripped apart--literally--by the JSA.) Nobody knows what's happened to Captain Marvel. (We see a young boy, his jaw half-ripped-off, shouting "a-am!" ineffectually through shredded lips.) Poison Ivy's own plants have attacked her, infecting her, and the Floronic Man has spontaneously zombified. Things have gone from bad to worse to worst...

Then they go to the level past worst, as zombie Power Girl and zombie Supergirl each take a wing of Oracle's plane and make a wish. But back in the Batcave, Batman's made a breakthrough. He's got a drug that appears to be able to stem the hunger, like methadone for a heroin addict. It doesn't cure the infection, but the patient becomes rational. He makes the dangerous test of it, releasing zombie Nightwing from his muzzle...but Dick's sane now. He doesn't attack.

Power Girl does, though. She and Supergirl come smashing into the Batcave, its location supplied to them by zombie Oracle. Batman fires darts filled with the "cure" at them, but their bullet-proof skin repels it, and he's forced to flee. Dick and Tim are left behind in the Batcave, the formula for the "cure" unfortunately lost in the Batcomputer that was buried under tons of rubble in the fight, and knowing they'll succumb to the hunger without it.

Batman, meanwhile, flees for his life through zombie Gotham. He manages to elude Power Girl and Supergirl by ducking through lead-lined subway tunnels, and thinks he's escaped...but one of his own Batarangs slicing into his Achilles tendons tells him otherwise. He limps away, expecting to see Nightwing when he turns...but instead it's zombie Oracle, wheeling herself towards him with an evil grin. She pulls him down, and begins to feed...

Two weeks later, and Superman finally returns. He's cured--it took a plunge into the very heart of the sun, a risk he'd never have taken if not for the need to cure the infection, but he's free of it now, and more powerful than ever. He's ready to save the world! But he sees, as he arrives, that it's too late. He's met by the zombie super-hero population, everyone from zombie Ambush Bug to zombie Zatanna. The very trees, the animals, every single form of life on Earth has succumbed to the infection, and the hunger it brings. And then he understands what he must do to save the world. Superman's never unleashed his full power before, but he does now--and he destroys Earth and everyone on it. Alone, in space, the last son of two worlds looks for somewhere new to call home.

And on Apokolips, a boom tube opens. Darkseid himself looks toward the noise, and sees his estranged son, Orion, cross the threshold. But why does he look so...pale?

Nummy Thing Of The Day

Marvel's putting out a line of little pocket-sized "Marvel Adventures" books. They're seven bucks, they collect four issues of stand-alone, all-ages stories in a format about like the manga books that are slowly but surely taking over entire shelves at your local Barnes and Noble, and they're so much fun it hurts. I can't stress this enough--they are cheap, portable, light-hearted, all-ages comics. If they sold these things at super-market checkout lines, everybody in the world would be a Marvel fan.

They're very much worth tracking down.

Die-Cut 'Stigmata' Cover!

Not even sure what part of my comics-saturated brain came up with this one, but it's terrifyingly easy to imagine the New Testament as done by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. The covers practically draw themselves in your head:

Issue #15: Mary Magdalene kneeling by the body of Lazarus, saying, "NO! The Pharisee has killed Lazarus!" But standing right behind her, his fists clenched, is Jesus, shouting, "Not if I have anything to say about it!"

Issue #27: Jesus, struggling against two Roman Legionnaires, with a thought balloon over his head, saying, "It can't be! One of my disciples...has betrayed me! But WHO???" At the bottom, text reads: "You must not miss...the Kiss of Death!"

Issue #32: Jesus on the cross, his teeth clenched as a Roman Legionnaire prepares to thrust a spear at his ribs. Text reads: "64 pages! No ads! THE DEATH OF JESUS!"

Issue #35: The tomb in the hillside, with the rock that forms its entrance shattering from a blast of cosmic energy. Text reads simply: "Guess Who's Back?!?"

And of course, it'd all end with Jesus giving super-powers to his disciples before going off to have cosmic adventures in space, which leads to the spin-off series: The Disciples! "Disciples Determine!"

Amen, True Believers!




...i'm so going to hell for this...

Super-Heroes Were Insane In the Fifties

Reading a black-and-white digest volume of classic Silver Age Justice League stories, and...wow, it's some seriously crazy shit, here. I mean, Grant Morrison on his craziest day could not come up with anything this batshit insane. The Weapons Master has traveled back in time ten thousand years to test his super-arsenal out on the JLA (see, he's surrounded by cops, and he knows that one of his super-weapons can stop the police, but he doesn't know which one, so he's traveled back in time ten thousand years to figure out which one is the best, so he can then travel back into the present and use it on the cops. Just typing that sentence destroyed brain cells.)

So as I say, the Weapons Master wants to test his weapons on the JLA. His plan--trap the JLA in a force-field (which he won't use on those pesky cops), and then as they escape one by one, drop a cryptic clue as to his future whereabouts so they'll chase him there and he can test his weapons. The first clue, given to the Flash, is "When the ghost walks at Hesperus on the second day of the moonless month, I am waiting to do battle!"The Flash knows that "when the ghost walks" is theatrical slang for payday, and finds out from an encyclopedia that "Hesperus" was Homer's name for Venus. So from that, he instantly deduces that the Weapons Master will be attacking a planned rocket launch to the planet Venus from Florida that takes place February 1st!

And he's actually right.

Super-heroes were insane in the Fifties.

*wave*

Haven't posted much lately because I haven't had much to say--I've been filling my brain up with so much comics lore lately (Hint #1 about the book in a series! Collect them all!) that it renders it hard to think about anything else. I am, right now, one of the most boring conversationalists in the world.

Unless you happen to be into comics too.

Theodore Geisel's 'Serenity'

When River fights with Reavers, it's a River-Reaver battle.

When she cuts them with a cleaver and she hits them in the liver, it's a River-Reaver-liver-cleaver battle.

And when River fights with Reavers with her Reaver-liver-cleaver and she hits them in the liver and she slaughters them like cattle, it's a River-Reaver-liver-cleaver-cattle-battle.

Then she says, "Our fight is done sir, you're dead so I think I've won, sir."

(Next time on Theodore Geisel Theatre, we present "Theodore Geisel's 'X-Files'. "If sir, you sir, want to chew sir, on the black goo Krycek knew sir, do sir!")

No Wonder He Uses Mind Control

So exactly how does Charles Xavier sell Xavier's School For Gifted Youths to the average parent?

"Yes, it's a lovely campus, with small class sizes..."

"Accredited? Well, no, not so much accredited per se, but our staff is world-renowned. For example, well-known mutant terrorist and criminal Magneto once--"

"Students? Well, I started with five, but now we have well over a hundred children learning--"

"Graduation rate? Well, the initial five all graduated, and, um...one or two since then, I think, I'd have to go back and check. Oh, it's easy to speak with the graduates--most of them still live at the school, or at least hang out there. The surviving ones, that is."

"Oh, no, don't worry, our death rate is actually quite low! We've had a suicide recently, and a handful of gunshot victims, and of course the riot...but really, it's relatively safe. Most of them come back to life at some point anyway. Eventually."

"Tuition? Yes, I can see how you'd find it a bit high, but there are a number of expenses to consider. We have a supersonic jet to maintain, and of course the on-premises supercomputer, and the 'Danger Room'..."

"No, no, that's just a name. It won't actually put the students in any danger. The whirling blades, flamethrowers, energy blasters, and solid-light holographic simulated mutant killers are programmed to stop before they really hurt people. Although there was the one time that the computer developed sentience and tried to kill everyone..."