My One Political Prediction

It, um...seems to have been an interesting few weeks, politically speaking. I believe that since I last blogged, Donald Trump has picked a fight with the parents of an American soldier who died stopping a suicide bomber on the grounds that they support Islamic terrorism, stabbed his two most prominent national political allies in the back, insinuated he would use nuclear weapons as a first resort, asked the Russians to illegally interfere in a national election on his behalf, discussed documents that he claimed were "top secret" (which may not actually exist), and oh yeah he kicked a baby out of one of his rallies.

And then said that he doesn't understand why he's behind in the polls.

With all that, the Republicans seem (unsurprisingly) to be hitting the panic button. There's just one problem--that button's not hooked up to anything. There is no provision for denominating a candidate who has been selected as the Republican standard-bearer once the convention happens. This means that no matter what Trump does--publicly setting fire to Reince Priebus' car, pissing in Paul Ryan's protein shake, playing the "I'm not touching youuuuu!" game with John McCain--all they can do is ask him to drop out. (And Trump knows it, which is why he's doing all this. Trump is only nice to people when he needs to be in order to get something out of them. Voters should remember that in November.)

Which brings me to my one political prediction. Because rumor has it that the Republicans are, in fact, privately trying to get Trump to drop out (a rumor that the Republicans are denying with the same approximate degree of believability that NFL team owners use when insisting that they have full confidence in their 1-11 head coach and don't plan on making any personnel moves until after the season). And those journalists who have looked into this have said that if Trump were to drop out, the Republicans would need it to happen before September 1st in order to be able to put the new candidate's name on the ballots in all 50 states (once they selected him or...oh who are we kidding, him...to become the nominee, which would also need to happen before September 1st).

So here's my one political prediction. I'm not saying that Donald Trump is going to drop out and fail to finish what he laughably calls a political campaign. (Although it's not an impossibility. If you quit, claiming that the game is rigged and people aren't giving you a fair chance to win, you can always claim you would have won.) But I will say that if Trump does drop out, it will not happen until at least September 2nd.

Because if there's one thing that the Ryan/McCain episode has made clear, it is that Donald Trump never does anything gracefully when he can achieve the same outcome while avenging imaginary slights against him. If Donald feels like the Republicans have insulted him (which, although entirely justified on their part, they have) he will exit the race in a way that makes it as clear as possible that the blame for his failure rests on them, and in a way that does as much damage to them as a party as he conceivably can. In this case, that means shifting his campaign message to suggest that he's being sabotaged by his own party, then dropping out after it's too late to find a replacement and watching their electoral strategy crash and burn.

I realize that "Donald Trump does something spiteful and petty to his allies in order to salvage his ego" is not exactly going out on a limb as far as predictions go, but I feel that it will at least help you during this uncertain period to know that we are stuck with Donald for another month at least. Beyond that, it will depend on which kind of humiliation he hates more--the humiliation of losing to Hillary, or the humiliation of not even trying.

The All-Kidding-Aside State of the GOP Race

And now there are only five. A dying race, ruled by a dying emperor, imprisoned within themselves in a dying land.

No, wait. That's 'The Dark Crystal'. In the GOP race, they're not dying quickly enough for anyone's tastes. (And not metaphorically enough for some, but that's a whole other story.) We are down to five candidates, with the departure of Thank-God-He-Failed-Or-They'd-Dredge-Up-Neil-in-2024 Jeb Bush: Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump.

More importantly, though, there are only three viable candidates; Kasich and Carson have struggled to break out of single digits, with Kasich's only finish within sniffing distance coming in New Hampshire, immediately after Rubio's worst debate performance. Neither one of them stands even a microscopic chance of getting the nomination. That puts it at a three-way race--Cruz, Trump, and Rubio.

I can pretty much guarantee you that the GOP establishment would just as soon it be Rubio. They're terrified of the possibility of Trump actually getting the nomination--he's a gaffe-prone disaster whose every utterance is an airborne toxic event, and having him tied to the Republican brand would be exactly what they don't want in an election year that's probably going to have pretty high Democratic turn-out anyway. Cruz has his own problems; he has historically not worked well with his fellow Republicans, and there's some bad blood there. So they want Rubio.

And Rubio is doable. Not easily, but he is. Cruz and Trump are basically drawing off the same pool of voters, and I don't realistically think that Kasich supporters will go to Trump or Cruz. Carson supporters may go to Trump or Cruz, but I don't think he'll leave the race for anything short of an autographed selfie with Jesus. Kasich, on the other hand, could be lured into conceding with the promise of political considerations either personal or for the state of Ohio. (What they used to call "bribes".) And Kasich plus Jeb equals probably about fifteen percent of the GOP vote, enough to shift the conversation if they all break for the same person.

So if Kasich is lured into conceding, and he endorses Rubio, Cruz and Carson and Trump split each other's votes and Rubio winds up being the nominee. Which means the Democrats will win, because he's a callow dimwit who's less interested in the actual business of governance than he is in imagining himself to be a bigshot politician, but it's not like Cruz or Trump are going to shear moderates away either. Basically, I think what Republican insiders are hoping for at this point is to nominate someone who isn't such an obvious hot mess that he screws up their chance to keep the House and Senate. If they win the Presidency as well, that's great, but they really just don't want to backslide.

If Cruz drops out, on the other hand, all bets are off. I don't see Rubio picking all of those people up, even if a lot of them probably wouldn't go to Trump either. (I assume that if you're a crazy religious libertarian nutbag and you haven't already supported Trump, it has to be due to personal antipathy.) That could deliver the nomination to Trump, who will probably explain three days for the election that this was all a Stanley Milgram-style psychological experiment to see if the American people would vote for the worst human being imaginable and that he really wishes President Clinton/Sanders the best of luck.

Hey--it could happen. Certainly wouldn't be any crazier than anything else this electoral cycle.

Why It's Going to Be Hard For the Republicans to Avoid Jeb Bush

Even though we're almost two full years away from the next Presidential election, we've already got Republicans jockeying for position in their party's not-even-close-to-happening primary season. The reasons for this are many--24-hour news networks start talking about the next election for the same reason that the NFL Network starts talking about the draft five minutes after the Superbowl ends, the sheer amount of money required these days means that you have to have your donors lined up months before actually campaigning, but a big part of it this time out is that Barack Obama isn't running again for fiddly legal reasons, and so these guys think they have a chance of winning. (Say what you will, but Obama was not a candidate that the Republican party wanted to tackle.)

So that means that there's a very crowded field, because a lot of these guys have been waiting a long time for their shot. Which means that each candidate needs to distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack, and that means they need to start campaigning early. So we've got Mike Huckabee and Scott Walker and Tim Pawlenty and Sarah Palin and Bobby Jindal and Chris Christie and Rand Paul and Rick Perry (did I miss any?) all trying to make headlines for themselves by visiting the primary states early and often and getting to know everybody there, and declarating their opinions all over the news like a cat marking his territory (except that you can probably distill something useful out of cat piss). And it's becoming clear to everyone concerned and most observers that Jeb Bush is slowly turning into the frontrunner.

This means, of course, that the knives are coming out for him. Because if there's one thing it's tough to be in a race this long, it's the wire-to-wire frontrunner. The earlier you emerge from the pack, the longer the other players have to drag you down. So we're already getting a lot of speeches from all concerned about how Jeb Bush is insufficiently right-wing, how he doesn't understand what motivates the modern Republican base, how he may in some way shape or form have expressed empathy for another human being in his past...you know, deal-breakers. Basically, the rest of the field is going hard at Jeb Bush, and they probably won't stop.

But in this case, I'm not sure if it's going to matter, any more than it did for Mitt Romney. Because right now, the Lovecraftian Horror Show That Is the 2016 Republican Nomination Contest (TM) has a field that consists of a bunch of head-trauma patients and Jeb Bush. And, like with Mitt Romney, we're dealing with elementary game theory here--Jeb Bush has pretty much the entire non-head-trauma vote locked up, and while that's a depressingly small percentage of the Republican vote, the head-trauma vote is split between lots of candidates. And if Jeb Bush has twenty percent of the vote, but the eight other guys only have ten percent each, he wins.

Now, if some of the other guys dropped out, then it would spell trouble for Jeb. But each of the other guys know that if they stick with it and let everyone else drop out instead, they'll get all of the head-trauma vote and beat Jeb. Which means that none of them will drop out, which means that Jeb will keep trucking along with his twenty percent, and eventually take the nomination right out from under the noses of all those "true" conservatives who would make much more entertaining horror shows in the general election.

I don't think any of this matters, because I think that America wants to see another Bush in office like Germany wants to see a Chip Hitler candidacy, and Bush is the most electable out of the Lovecraftian Horror Show That Is the 2016 Republican Nomination Contest (TM). By far. But I do think that the coming primaries are going to be some of the most vicious and nasty infighting you'll see in a long time...and coming from the Republicans, that means something.

How I Think GamerGate Is Going to Play Out

How GamerGate Is Going to Play Out #GamerGate. Summing up quickly for those of you who don't know (or those of you who know and don't want to hear about it much more), #GamerGate is a group of 4Channers harassing prominent women in the gaming industry with rape and murder threats, while ineptly disguising it as a "movement" promoting greater ethics in game journalism. It's been a big thing in the gaming industry press over the last few months, on account of how it exposed an ugly seam of misogyny running through gaming culture that gamers have been trying very hard to pretend doesn't exist and in fact still are--every post on the subject on every blog, news site or twitter feed is met with a swarm of gamers insisting that the death and rape threats don't represent them, and they'll rape and kill you for saying so.

It is still ongoing--several women continue to receive death threats for speaking out against sexism and misogyny in gaming, a problem that again I will remind you gamers are saying does not exist while threatening to rape the people who point it out. And it shows no signs of stopping, at least not yet. Here's where I see it going over the next few months. (Please keep in mind that these are merely predictions, not necessarily hopes; there are a few things in here I'd love to see happen, and others I'd love to be wrong about. You can probably guess which are which.)

1) #GamerGate is going to be replaced with a new cover story. The hashtag "#GamerGate", coined by not at all crazy person Adam Baldwin, was the attempt to legitimize the harassment of women in the gaming industry by pretending it wasn't about "hating women for having and using ladyparts without permission", it was about "journalistic ethics". This basically meant that they weren't angry with women for sleeping with men, they were angry with women for sleeping with men who were journalists. Nobody has been fooled except for the #GamerGaters, who continue to argue that they're a totally legitimate grassroots movement and not sexist at all despite the fact that there are chatlogs of people saying, "If we could just convince people that we're a legitimate grassroots movement, it'll deprive these women of their support base and we can drive them to suicide!" (Believe me, I wish I was using hyperbole instead of merely paraphrasing.) #GamerGate, as a "brand", is irrevocably tainted with misogyny and hate.

So they're going to need a new cover story. I suspect that within the next few months or so, we'll see an entirely new grassroots movement spring up, this one with a different set of faces in front of it and a different name. They'll try to keep this one more legitimate, maybe put some token condemnations of the harassment and a few token protests out there of actual bad industry practices (such as big developers paying for YouTube videos while putting clauses in the contracts stating that they can't disparage the game or show any bugs in the game), and generally clean up their act a little bit...but ultimately, it'll just be plausible deniability for gamers who want to pretend that misogyny isn't a problem for them. Expect to see a lot of posts like, "Oh, no, that's not us! We're Gamers for a Responsible Industry! You can't blame the actions of a few #GamerGaters on us!" While, of course, using a fake account to post more rape threats.

2) The threats will get worse before they get better. I don't think this will escalate to actual violence. I think these are inherently cowardly people--not just in the pejorative sense, but in the sense that they're fundamentally nerdy assholes, and a big part of the "nerd" social identity is the belief that while you lack the ability to hold your own in a physical confrontation, you're smart enough to get your revenge in various untraceable and more permanently damaging ways. The stereotype is of the jock who beats up the nerd, and comes home to find his homework assignment deleted from his hard drive and replaced by embarrassing pictures of him kissing his dog. I think the people who are involved in this harrassment campaign have bought into the idea that they're better off finding other ways to hurt people besides violence.

But the problem for them is, they're losing even in their chosen arena. They are losing the rhetorical war, becoming increasingly isolated from their own sub-culture and treated as horrible people and not the righteous defenders of geekdom that they imagine themselves to be. The women they're threatening aren't going away like they'd hoped. The glorious revenge that they imagined from all those 80s teen movies is not happening. And like all trolls, their only choice is to escalate. So I do think that we'll see more threats, and maybe some threats that skirt closer to the line of actual violence. Ticking packages, envelopes with mysterious powders...the sort of thing that makes people believe they're in imminent danger, rather than impending danger. Which leads to...

3) Some people are going to wind up in jail over this. In the past, threats delivered over the Internet have generally been viewed by society as less "real" than threats delivered over the phone or through the mail or in person. The Internet has been seen by law enforcement agencies as some sort of a weird playground for weird people, ultimately harmless and disconnected from reality. However, this has been changing lately. Recent high-profile cyberstalking and cyber-harassment campaigns have slowly been bringing lawmakers around to the idea that this is just another form of communication, and threatening to kill someone over Twitter isn't that much different from leaving a threat over someone's voicemail.

Which leaves one main difference between the Internet and reality: It's actually much harder to avoid leaving a trail that leads back to you when harassing someone on the Internet. The reality of it is, America has become a police state to a not-inconsiderable extent, and the privacy protections we are supposed to enjoy in our communication have become more of a privilege than a right. Telecommunications companies are all too happy to give over their records to law enforcement officials, and communications that were once transient and impermanent now leave records everywhere. And while that's generally a bad thing in principle, it is going to mean that justice is going to be served in this particular instance. The people who are leaving these threats are, I think, going to find out to their shock and dismay that what you say on the Internet can land you in jail in real life.

Now, some of them no doubt think of themselves as 7334 hackers with mad skillz who can evade the governmental cyberdragnet...and probably for about one in ten who think that, it's actually true and not a boast that they'll profoundly regret. But the thing is, the FBI (who now has all the chatlogs gathered by Zoe Quinn regarding her harassment, as well as several of the threats sent to Anita Sarkeesian) uses their own form of "hacking". They don't use social engineering to gain passwords; they use it to gain confessions. Hacker A might have covered their cybertrail pretty well, but they have a friend in Hacker B who isn't so careful. And Hacker B will flip on Hacker A to avoid jail time. I think that actually, quite a number of people will be seeing men with badges in their not-too-distant future. Which is why...

4) Eventually, this will die down. I don't think it will ever go away--there are still people trying to roll back Social Security, and that's older than most of its current recipients. It's hard to really imagine that the same people who are filled with the kind of hate that made them do what they're doing now will just calm down and walk away. But I think they will realize that they have to limit the expressions of their hatred or face consequences. I think that this will keep them from using threats to try to force women into line or out of their hobby. And I think that without those threats, what power they have will eventually fade away and be spent. And frankly, good riddance.

My Bottom Five Candidates for the Big Bad of the Big Bang

I realize that British fans may now make fun of me, since this post is two days late and they, unlike me, have already seen "The Big Bang". But Moffat has done such a good job in avoiding spoilers for who the mysterious villain is for Series Five, I don't feel like I'm going to overlook a ludicrously obvious candidate. Speculation abounds, but nobody really seemed to know prior to broadcast. (Which is, of course, over in the UK. No spoilers in the comments sections, please!)

So this isn't my guesses as to who it is--it's my desperate hopes for who it isn't.

1. Davros. Please, please, please, please, please don't let it be Davros! It doesn't make any sense, it'd come totally out of left field, and Davros has just been used as the season-ending villain (and that came totally out of left field, too.) Anyone would be better than Davros, anyone at all.

2. The Dream Lord. Or the Valeyard, or Zagreus, or any iteration of the "evil Doctor" theme. I just don't think there's much that's interesting about the idea of a villain who's just "the Doctor, only bad", and I'm hoping we won't see that as the menace behind everything that's happened this year.

3. The Master. And speaking of "the Doctor, only bad", John Simm's Master is too self-consciously manic, too overwritten, and was just used in the last big "season finale" special. I'm ready to give the Master a nice long rest and a bit of a rethink before we see him again.

4. Rassilon. I really liked Timothy Dalton's performance, and it would fit the plan that we've seen so far, but as with the Master, didn't he just show up?

5. Amy/River. "Evil companion" isn't doing much more for me than "evil Doctor", plus I like those characters and want them back next season. (Oh, and "evil Rory" would also be on that list, as amusing as the idea would be.)

There we go--soon enough, we'll see whether Moffat disappointed me!

Handicapping Palin

And not in the Jeff Gilooly sense, either.

It does seem to be one of the big political questions out there. Will Sarah Palin run for President in 2012? Political pundits are divided; some see her as a serious, transformative candidate (her boosters imagine her as a populist revolutionary, her detractors as a willfully ignorant demagogue) while others believe her to be a slick-talking huckster who's left politics for the far more lucrative profession of entertainer/pundit. The key moment that will tell who's right is 2012. If she makes a serious bid for the Presidency, then she clearly hasn't given up her political ambitions. If she sits it out, she's another Glenn Beck. (Which would be two more Glenn Becks than we actually need.)

My feelings? I think that on the one hand, it's pretty clear that she likes being rich. (Hey, who doesn't?) She quit halfway through her only term of elected office in order to cash in on her celebrity status, something that she had to know might come back to haunt her later on. (More on this...) And notably, running a political campaign is not something that makes money, it costs money. Especially when she doesn't have the kind of fund-raising apparatus and insider connections needed to raise the big donations, the way Dubya did. If she runs, she's going to be hemorrhaging cash, something that she's been very averse to doing, and she won't get any potential payoff until 2016 at the earliest. Unless, of course, she becomes the first President to quit after two years to do speaking tours...

On the other hand, a Presidential bid, even a failed one, boosts her credibility as a political pundit and gives her another fifteen minutes of fame. Her fanbase is demanding it, and they're a fickle group; failure to run could seriously tarnish her status as a populist revolutionary in their eyes, while failure to win can only increase it. ("Sarah's too much of a maverick to break through the Washington establishment! At least, that's what she's saying at her latest rally! Let's all buy tickets!") And it's easy to throw your hat into the ring, at least at first; you can always drop out when it starts getting expensive.

But most importantly, Sarah Palin has a lot of weaknesses as a politician that she has so far managed to conceal because they haven't been exposed to much scrutiny--Alaska has a small population, and she was hand-picked to run for Vice-President. A Presidential bid is going to expose those weaknesses. She will not be able to avoid unscripted interviews with tough media figures the way she has for much of her political career--George W. Bush pulled it off, but he had a lot of family connections to experienced political operators who could arrange that kind of strategy. Sarah Palin does not trust and is not trusted by those same campaign experts.

And that's also worth mentioning all by itself--Sarah Palin does not have a staff, and she doesn't want one. She is fast becoming notorious for being slapdash, organizationally speaking...something that works fine when you're just co-ordinating your speaking appearances and media engagements, but not so much when you're running for President. She doesn't have the kind of apparatus in place that you need for a serious political campaign, and more importantly, her experiences with that kind of apparatus in 2008 have left her very wary of putting them into place. She's going to try to go it alone, if she goes.

And that might not work very well, because the campaigning process (especially on a national stage) is brutal. She's not going to be able to conduct her Presidential bid through Facebook, speaking rallies, and appearances on Fox News. She's going to have to get in there and face off against other candidates who will be happy to use her weaknesses against her--remember that "quit halfway through her term as governor" thing? You can bet Mitt Romney will remind you, if you forget. And if Palin has shown a single defining character trait through her time in the political spotlight, it's that she's thin-skinned and holds grudges easily. (Or is that two traits?)

Put it all together and my guess is that you get something like this: Palin will make a Presidential bid in 2012, but it won't last long. She'll last through a few primaries, then drop out, citing a desire to protect her family from the vicious, unmotivated attacks that her opponents have unfairly leveled at them. Experts will cite the fact that she was running out of money and didn't do well in those first few primaries, but Palin will have already retreated back to the world of entertainment, where she can create her own reality. And make good money doing it, too.

Breathless Anticipation

For those of you who are interested, rumor has it (spoilers for the upcoming season of Doctor Who, but ones that have already been reported extensively elsewhere) that the Silurians are going to be returning. (Yes, I know. It's not even "rumor" anymore, the BBC has confirmed it. Hush.) Having just watched "Warriors of the Deep", I'm absolutely thrilled to see these classic Doctor Who monsters return, and I'm certainly wondering if the new series will keep all the best elements of these classic monsters. To wit:

• Will we see a return of the Sea Devils, and will they continue their proud warrior tradition of discussing all military matters using only ventriloquism?
• Will the Myrka be back, and will it still be willing to use its stubby little arms for kung fu?
• Will the Silurians keep their adorable sweater vests, or will they return to the nudist ways of the Third Doctor era?
• Will the Silurians still blink their third eye rapidly in time with their conversation?
• Do the Silurians still have that perky smile, even when things are at their worst? (The Myrka also seems to have a bit of a jaunty grin, too. I hope they'll retain that.)
  

And most importantly of all...

• Will the Myrka have liposuction, or do Real Myrkas Have Curves?
  

Bleak, Pessimistic, and Hopefully Wrong

I'm a bit worried about the future of Marvel's movie division. I don't think it even needs saying, at this point, that Marvel's track record at making movies of their characters is much better than DC's; even counting high-profile misfires like Elektra and Daredevil, they've had more and better films than DC--the latter has really only had two major franchises that they've managed to translate into movies, and those have both had long fallow periods (between Batman and Robin and Batman Begins, and between Superman IV: The Quest for Peace and Superman Returns.)

Why? If you study the disastrous history of DC's film franchises, the answer becomes pretty obvious; as a subsidiary of Warner Brothers Entertainment, DC has not been in a position to exercise control over their intellectual properties. Despite a long and relatively successful track record of managing their characters well ("Identity Crisis" notwithstanding) they're forced to bow to the whims of studio executives who don't necessarily understand the appeal of the characters. Everyone has their own set of demands to impose on the next Superman movie, and there's nobody with a strong, singular vision behind the wheel to keep those demands from tearing the film apart in a mess of confusion and conflicts between fanboyish enthusiasm ("Dude, we've got to put in the Eradicator! It'll be an easter egg for the fans!") and outsider indifference ("Why do we really need to have Superman in costume, or flying? Seems kinda corny to me.")

But Marvel...they're the client, not the employee. They're the customer, and the customer is always right. By demanding script approval when they sell the property, they can ensure that the brand isn't diluted by incompetent or indifferent adaptations. They can make the movies a strong translation of their original stories, instead of a vague, generic, corporatized blockbuster (like, say, the GI Joe or Transformers movies.) That power is something that they should not surrender lightly, because it's a big part of what makes the movies work.

But, um...they did, didn't they? They're now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Disney. Marvel Studios is possibly redundant, and even if it survives, it'll be as part of a larger company. Admittedly, a company that's downright famous for being ferociously protective of its intellectual properties, but nonetheless a company that views Marvel as just one of its many projects. Marvel will no longer have the same leverage it once had when dealing with directors, producers and screenwriters, and I'm worried that this might translate into weaker films. I hope I'm wrong, of course. As I say, Disney is quite protective of its characters, and might at least be willing to listen to people who think like they do. But if Thor has a wacky, jive-talking robot as his sidekick, you know who's to blame.

Showcase Update '09

Another year begins, ripe with the promise of twenty-four brand new thick volumes of black-and-white goodness on cheap paper. That's right, it's time for another update of my wish list for DC's "Showcase Presents" line!

DC's slowed down considerably from their first year, where it seemed like every month had two brand-new series coming out. But that's only to be expected; having released collections of most of their "big guns", they're starting to get deeper into those series' original runs. Two volumes of the Flash, three of Green Lantern, four or five now of Superman...it starts to cut into the number of new series they can release. (Marvel's in the same boat.)

And looking at last year's list, it kind of shows. Of the fifteen titles I picked for my wishlist, only two (Blackhawks and Doom Patrol) were released or are slated to be released. That's not to say those were the only new series DC put out--did anyone ever expect to see a "Showcase Presents Ambush Bug"? But in terms of their score of catering to my personal wishes, they didn't do so good.

So what are my personal wishes for the coming year?

15. Kamandi. Really, this and the "New Gods" material should have been released in preparation for "Final Crisis" (and probably some "OMAC" stuff as well.) Sure, DC can point to their big, thick Kirby Omnibii and say, "Look, we're putting out our Kirby backlist to help make "Final Crisis" comprehensible," but those things aren't cheap. I'm not made of money, here, DC!

14. Tomahawk. DC's been pretty good about getting their war comics into the line, but their westerns have been far less represented; why not start here, with the frontier adventures back from when everything in the United States counted as "frontier"?

13. The Demon. Another Kirby creation (how he's not featured prominently in "Final Crisis" is downright inexplicable to me), the Demon has tons of material available for collection. Sure, his own original series only ran sixteen issues, but he's had numerous revivals, guest appearances galore--heck, they could toss in his appearances in 'Batman Adventures' if they wanted!

12. New Gods. Again, this is something that should be out already--"Final Crisis" is so dense in Fourth World mythos that it desperately needs supporting material to make it comprehensible. And yet, the only "Fourth World" collections are sixty bucks apiece and need a forklift to get them out of the comics shop. It's a travesty, I tells ya.

11. Superboy. Sometimes, it can be hard picking new series to go up here, especially for someone like me who didn't spend his childhood steeped in DC lore. (I was a total Marvel Zombie as a kid.) Luckily for me, I have a feeling this one is here to stay forever, what with the endless litigation over the rights to the character between DC and the Siegel estate. (Which I have literally no opinion over--it's strictly a business matter between the Siegels, Warner Brothers, and the court system, and with any luck it will be resolved fairly between the two parties.)

10. Sugar and Spike. I was gratified to find out that I'm not the only person who really wants to see DC's classic humor series published; none other than the legendary Chris Sims, of the Invincible Super-Blog, referred to the situation of this book not being in print as "DC hating money".

9. Plastic Man. Or maybe it could just be, "DC hates fun." Plastic Man is pretty much their only signature character who doesn't have a "Showcase Presents" volume--the entire Super Friends pantheon has one, including an actual "Super Friends" collection coming soon, but Plas is left out in the cold. (Hope he doesn't become brittle.)

8. Warlord. They're launching a new "Warlord" series soon, if memory serves me right, so that might mean we actually see this one--DC's been pretty good about marketing synergy like that (although there's always room for improvement.)

7. The Question. I've heard rumors that "The Creeper" is coming soon (all right, I did a search for "showcase presents" on Amazon and it listed it as coming soon.) Point is, if they're doing "The Creeper", can "The Question" be far behind?

6. Blue Beetle. Or for that matter, can "Blue Beetle" be far behind? (Note for non-die-hard comics fans...who I have to imagine are reading this solely out of sheer bloody-mindedness..."The Creeper", "The Question", and "Blue Beetle" were three of Steve Ditko's classic series during the time he worked for Charlton comics. Charlton was later bought out by DC, so they're DC characters now.)

5. Swamp Thing. This had so many A-list creators working on it that half the series has already been collected in color; why not give us a nice, cheap black-and-white version we can lend out, too? (I suspect the answer is, "Because that's a Vertigo series." About which I will say no more right now.)

4. Firestorm. I don't think DC realizes just how popular this volume would be--the original Ronnie Raymond Firestorm is just old enough now to catch a strong wave of nostalgia (and the fact that he was in a couple of seasons of "Super Friends" can't hurt.) The old series could segue into the new series pretty effortlessly, if they needed additional material, and increasing the character's visibility before trying another "Firestorm" relaunch couldn't hurt.

3. Hawk and Dove. It's another classic Ditko series, but more than that, the later run written by Karl and Barbara Kesel is my personal favorite series DC ever published, and it's the series that got me into DC. More than any other item on this list, this is a personal indulgence on my part, but I don't care.

2. Suicide Squad. So after canceling the "Showcase Presents Suicide Squad" volume, and telling everyone that it would be resolicited next year...DC did not, in fact, resolicit it. It's the lies that really hurt, DC. You can make it up to me by putting this collection of 80s awesomeness out this year, though.

1. MAD Magazine. People have pointed out to me that you can get a CD-ROM collection of every MAD Magazine issue, but if I've managed to get one thing across with these yearly lists, I hope it's that I still prefer old-school, hard-copy, ink-on-paper editions of these classic stories. You can't toss a CD-ROM in your bookbag and read it when you're in line at the bank, you can't grab it off the shelf on your way to the bathroom when you're just looking for something to while away a minute or two, and you certainly feel a lot worse if you drop it in the tub by accident. I'd like all of MAD, from the beginning, in a convenient and affordable format. Because I love it.

Essential Update '08

That's right, it's that time of year again, time for me to pick my favorite series that Marvel needs to collect in big five-hundred page chunks for our viewing pleasure. (Because I sincerely hope I've managed to infect at least one or two people with my love of great big cheap "readers' editions" of Marvel's classic series.)

So how did Marvel do, off of last year's picks? Um...not so much of the good, really. In the sense that they didn't print very many new series at all. We got plenty of continuations of older stuff, like more Hulk, Iron Man, Fantastic Four, but the only new series to be printed were the 'Rampaging Hulk' and 'Captain Marvel' collections, and while I won't knock those, they weren't on my list. So let's go over the list again, with extra special begging and pleading this time...

15. The Champions. I suspect that this one won't ever get a release, since it's out in the "Classic" format, and since the rights situation is so confusing, and since 'The Order' got canceled (does that prove that there's no viability to the 'Champions' franchise, since it got canned, or that there is, because they couldn't call it 'Champions' for rights purposes?) Still, with a Hercules series and a Ghost Rider series running right now, there's a slim chance we could see a collection of a book that contains both characters.

14. Shang-Chi, Master of Kung Fu. Another one where the ship might have sailed; Shang-Chi did pop back up again in 'Heroes for Hire', but that book didn't even last a year, so the character's returned to comic book limbo for a time. Still, with Brian Michael Bendis' crush on the 70s being what it is, I wouldn't be surprised if he joined the Avengers along with Spider-Woman, Luke Cage, and Howard the Duck.

13. Micronauts. Again, I don't even know who has the rights to the Micronauts right now, so this could be a plea to Devil's Due or Dynamite for all I know. But hey, Dark Horse is reprinting 'Savage Sword of Conan', so clearly the "giant reprint book" idea is catching on industry-wide...

12. Adam Warlock. He's back, he's in the new Guardians of the Galaxy (which seems to be fairly popular), why not reprint his older stuff? This is the kind of synergy that a company with a large backlist should be taking advantage of, reprinting their older material to build interest in their new stuff, and simultaneously getting fans of the new stuff to buy reprints of the backlist (which are low cost to produce, since you've already paid the writers and artists.)

11. New Warriors. They really should have done this one last year, in order to maybe build up some sort of buzz for the new 'New Warriors' title (actually, it's the fourth 'New Warriors' series--the New New New New Warriors?) Now they're canceling that series, so that dims the chances of seeing any old 'New Warriors' for the upcoming year. Oh, well. Any title that's had three relaunches is bound to have a fourth.

10. Spider-Man 2099. Really, all the 2099 series should probably be collected, but Spidey 2099 was the best of the lot; Peter David really enjoyed his time writing this one, and it shows. Sure, it's a little bit obscure, but can it really be any more obscure than the Living Mummy, Brother Voodoo, or Gabriel the Devil Hunter? (I don't even know who that last one is, and I've got every single volume of the Official Handbook to the Marvel Universe.)

9. Power Pack. The lack of this one continues to surprise the heck out of me. It's got name recognition, it's got plenty of guest-stars, it's a relatively self-contained and popular title with a long run...really, I honestly don't know what they're waiting for here. It's easily the most obvious choice on this list, even if there are others I'd want more.

8. West Coast Avengers. I can only assume Marvel's trade paperback department is currently committing ritual seppuku for knowing that there is a comic book series out there in which Hawkeye leads a team of Wonder Man, Iron Man, Tigra and Mockingbird, and not releasing it in collected format for the American reading public to enjoy. Shame, really. They were nice people.

7. Alpha Flight. Sure, we all know that Marvel has never been able to successfully recreate the popularity of the early 1980s Alpha Flight, despite attempted relaunch after attempted relaunch. But really, isn't that actually an even better argument in favor of reprinting the classic John Byrne-era series?

6. ROM. I've heard some rumors recently that we might see a ROM revival, spearheaded by Hasbro. Could this mean that the adventures of the Greatest Spaceknight will no longer languish in Marvel's forgotten vaults, but will instead be told in glory? We can but hope.

(Seriously, these were some great comics. It really did feel like an epic war, complete with a grand conclusion that spread through all of Marvel's books that month as the Dire Wraiths made their last great attack on the human race. It's a shame that rights issues have held reprints of this series up.)

5. Quasar. Another character who's currently in the Guardians of the Galaxy...umm, sort of. It's actually a lesbian alien daughter of Captain Marvel with the same name and powers as the Quasar whose book I want to see reprinted. That's not, um, convoluted or anything, is it?

4. New Mutants. Okay, remember what I said about 'Power Pack' being the most obvious title for an Essential edition? Kidding. It's actually 'New Mutants', which was as popular as any of the mutant books, tied into the other X-series frequently, and formed a cornerstone of mutant continuity for almost a decade. Let me put it this way--the Essentials of X-Men and X-Factor are already up to about issue #75 of where 'New Mutants' would be, complete with numerous dangling plotlines that get resolved within that book's pages. This one is a frustrating missing chapter for any X-fan.

3. Excalibur. This one is a lot less necessary than 'New Mutants', because it was pitched at the time as a "casual" book for X-fans who were sick of having to follow three series' worth of continuity. But that's exactly what would make it so nice for the purposes of reprinting; there's a nice, clean through-line of story that involves very little tying-in and crossing-over. (There's also a long, ugly stretch of fill-ins and weak writing between Claremont's departure and Alan Davis' run as writer, but hey, that's why they're cheap, folks.)

2. Guardians of the Galaxy. Look, there is a 'Guardians of the Galaxy' series going right now! It is very popular! It features numerous references to the classic series that I want to see reprinted! This is about as easy a decision as you can make, Marvel! Heck, you can start with the 70s origins of the team to keep Bendis happy! Please!

1. What If...? This is clearly pretty popular, as there are 190 issues available for collection already and they still do one-shots, specials, and limited series based around the concept to this day. I know I'd love to see them collected in big 500-page chunks, and I hope that I'm not alone. Because if I am, you'll see this one again next year in the top spot.

Showcase Update '08

As with Marvel, I did a list last year around this time of
the top fifteen DC titles I'd like to see released in the 'Showcase Presents' format. And as with Marvel, it's time to update that list in light of another year of releases.

So before we present the new Fine Fifteen, how did DC do in 2007? The short answer, they killed. They absolutely demolished my list, presenting me with nine of the fifteen that I most wanted to see, including my top four, plus giving collections to several of the honorable mentions. They gave us 'Batman and the Outsiders', the 'World's Finest', 'Sergeant Rock', 'Supergirl', 'The Atom', 'The Flash', 'The Metal Men', 'Adam Strange', and 'House of Secrets' has already been solicited. Really, the only way the year could have gone better is if they hadn't pulled the rug out from under us on the 'Suicide Squad' collection.

I don't really expect 2008 to have as many new series as 2007, because they're going to be putting out more volume twos and threes of existing series (which I have no complaints with; I'm very much looking forward to more 'Legion of Super-Heroes', for example.) But this is the goal to shoot for, in my eyes:


15. Kamandi. To be honest, this one is really only on here because so many of my top fifteen got knocked out from last year that there's room for "stuff I've kind of heard of that sounds vaguely interesting". I know very little about it, other than that it's about The Last Boy On Earth and animal-people. But hey, it's got to be worth a read...

14. The Demon. He's a staple character of DC's magical line-up, and it'd probably be nice to have a big thick book of his adventures just to get people up to speed on who he is and why he's always rhyming. (Plus, if the volumes go far enough, they'll hit Garth Ennis' run on the series, and that has to be good.)

13. New Gods. To be honest, I've never been that big of a fan of Kirby's DC work; I think he did his best work for Marvel, in collaboration with Stan Lee. But the Fourth World mythos are so integral to DC that they really do deserve a "reader's edition" for us poor chumps, to go along with the expensive omnibii they're released.

12. The Blackhawks. You'd have to be careful to avoid their goofy "super-hero" phase, but let's face it; DC did them some good war comics back in the day, and this would probably go very well on my shelf with 'The Haunted Tank', 'The Unknown Soldier', 'The War That Time Forgot', and 'Sergeant Rock'. (True story: I re-read 'World War Z', and when I got to the Battle of Yonkers, the big collapse against a tide of zombie forces, I found myself thinking, "This never would have happened if Sergeant Rock was there.")

11. Sugar and Spike. So far, they've done a ton of super-hero and war comics, with a smidgen of horror. But there were comedy comics around back then, too!

10. Plastic Man. Really, he's about the only major DC character left who doesn't have a 'Showcase Presents' volume. ("Major" being here defined as "If you went up to a random man or woman on the street, and asked them to name as many comic book characters as they could, Plastic Man would probably get named more than half the time.")

9. Warlord. I salivate just thinking of black-and-white Mike Grell sword-and-sorcery artwork.

8. The Question. I'm pretty sure they did release a collection of this sometime this year, but it wasn't a cheap, hefty chunk of over 500 black-and-white pages, so as far as I'm concerned, it didn't count.

7. Swamp Thing. Obviously, they've already collected Alan Moore's groundbreaking run, and part of Rick Veitch's work on the series, but that's really just the tip of the iceberg. You probably wouldn't even get to Moore's first issue in Volume One, and it'd be very nice to see exactly what led into 'The Anatomy Lesson' without having to track down back issues.

6. Doom Patrol. Probably not recognizable to the man on the street, but to DC fans, this is another really obvious hole in the line-up that needs filling.

5. Firestorm. Having read a few scattered issues, I'm really surprised at how well Gerry Conway's "Marvel-style" writing works for DC, how strong a storytelling engine this was, and I'd just like to see a lot more of it.

4. Blue Beetle. Not sure exactly which comics they'd use for this, whether they'd be able to use Steve Ditko's work, or whether they'd skip straight to his 80s series, but either one presents some fun options. There's a lot of strong nostalgia appeal for Ted Kord right now, and they'd be foolish not to take advantage of it.

3. Hawk and Dove. I cannot be the only person who adored this series. "First rule: Don't mess with Hawk." "Batgirl...doesn't exist anymore." And probably my favorite bit, "I can think of fifteen ways to stop you from firing that gun right now. Six are painful."

2. Suicide Squad. This got a bit of a bump this year because I came so close to actually holding it in my hands...it is emblematic of all of the "delayed" titles, like 'Secret Society of Super-Villains' and 'Captain Carrot and the Zoo Crew'. DC said they'd be out in the second half of 2008; let's hope they don't just expect us fans to have short memories, eh?

1. MAD Magazine. Bit of a long-shot, as I'm not actually 100% sure they have the rights (Warner Brothers owns MAD, Warner Brothers owns DC, not sure if the syllogism completes, though); however, MAD Magazine is more than just a piece of DC history, it's a piece of American history. Reading MAD as a kid was a rite of passage, an education in the sometimes cynical, sometimes strange world of adults. It taught you politics, it taught you culture, and it taught you (perhaps most importantly) not to believe everything you were told. MAD Magazine has become a perfect time capsule of our nation's history for the past half-century, and it deserves to be collected in its entirety. And it deserves to be collected...for $15.99 (Cheap!)

Essential Update '07

Last year at about this time, I made a list of
the top fifteen Marvel series I wanted to see made into Essentials. It's now a year later, and I thought I'd take a moment to ask, "How did Marvel do?"

Unsurprisingly, they did a lot more volumes of existing series. I can't say I mind, honestly; it was good to get another X-Men volume, a couple more Spider-Man trades, more FF, more Silver Surfer, more Punisher, more Werewolf By Night, and more X-Factor. But of the fifteen titles on my list, only two were actually collected: Ms. Marvel, and Dazzler. (Which isn't to say there were no other new series being collected--'Essential Marvel Saga'? I didn't list it because I didn't dream Marvel would collect something so wonderful, yet so esoteric...now I've learned that my fanboy dreams can truly become reality.) So what does this year hold in the Marvel release schedule of my dreams?

15. The Champions. To be honest, I'm not sure what the rights issues are with this series, and I suspect nobody else does either, including Marvel (they did, after all, get within two months of publishing a new 'Champions' series before deciding to call it 'The Order'.) But I know there's a 'Champions Classic' set of trades in print, so Marvel must have the rights to reprint its old stuff. So howbout an Essential, Marvel?

14. Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu. Another one where the rights might be in limbo...they can obviously make use of Shang-Chi himself, since he's an original Marvel character, but the series also used Fu Manchu, and I'm sure the rights have lapsed on him by this point. Still, I will fall back on my "Godzilla" argument: If Marvel can hash out the rights to an Essential Godzilla, how much harder can any other character be?

13. Micronauts. I really don't know what the rights status for this series is. But somebody's got to be able to reprint these. Even if it isn't Marvel, I'd settle for another company putting out an affordable black-and-white reprint volume...

12. Adam Warlock. With all the "cosmic" characters enjoying a big renaissance due to the success of 'Annihilation' and 'Annihilation: Conquest', putting out affordably-priced reprints of the old adventures of these characters sounds like a smart move to me. And it's not like Adam Warlock doesn't have a fan following. (OK, certainly the sales figures on 'Adam Warlock and the Infinity Watch' suggests he doesn't have much of one. But that was a whole different era.)

11. New Warriors. Another series that seems more relevant than ever in the new year...there's a new 'New Warriors' series out, Nova's got his own series again, Night Thrasher and Penance (the former Speedball) both have mini-series, Justice is a prominent character in 'Avengers: The Initiative'...really, Marvel, this one just makes sense.

10. Spider-Man 2099. The only reason this didn't make the list last year is because I figure a series should be at least fifteen years old before being considered "Essential"...and that time has passed by 2008, meaning that Peter David's wonderful reimagining of the Spider-Man concept can see print. It's the best of the 2099 line, it's got a surprisingly faithful cult following, and it's the only series to feature the line, "I have tough nipples." What's not to like?

9. Power Pack. They're already doing new, family-friendly out-of-continuity 'Power Pack' mini-series. Why not reprint the classic adventures as well?

8. West Coast Avengers. Hawkeye. Team Leader. I should not have to speak of this one again next year.

7. Alpha Flight. Another one of those series that's had a bit of a renaissance lately, and one that I really think would work well in big, 24-issue chunks. It was ahead of its time in "writing for the trade", with lots of ongoing subplots and character developments that unfolded over many issues, and now is the time to reprint it.

6. ROM. I am aware, thank you very much, of the rights issues regarding ROM. Pah, I say to them. Pah! If you can do 'Essential Godzilla', why are you letting the only records of our great struggle with the Dire Wraiths languish in Marvel's vaults?

...don't make me get Congress involved here.

5. Quasar. See everything I said about 'Adam Warlock', only with bells on. This really was Mark Gruenwald's magnum opus, and I don't think it ever got the attention it deserved. I think it would sell very well in trades, and I really enjoyed the series.

4. New Mutants. As I understand it, the reason this hasn't been collected is that Bill Sienkiewicz's art doesn't translate well to black and white. But I still hold out hopes that somehow they could "remaster" it to make it work, because this really is the definition of an "Essential" title. Following the X-Men during the 80s meant following the New Mutants, and the X-Men and X-Factor titles feel incomplete without the missing third of the story.

3. Excalibur. Less "essential" than the New Mutants, but oh-so-gorgeous...and don't even try to tell me that Alan Davis' art doesn't look good in black-and-white, because I ain't buying it.

2. Guardians of the Galaxy. Still one of my favorite series ever from my childhood (well, teenage-hood), still needs to be reprinted, still needs to be relaunched (I wanted to see 'Civil War' end with the Guardians showing up and siding with Cap), but I must bump it down a spot, because...

1. What If? I must, at this point, confess the deepest of fanboy shames. I totally forgot about 'What If?' when making last year's list. Two series, hundreds of issues, one-shots to this day, the inspiration for 'Exiles' and the only place where you could see seriously dark stuff go down in the Marvel Universe, this cries out to be reprinted. Yes, I'm aware there's a "Classic" line for this series, much as there is for many of the series on this list. But I loves me the big thick black-and-white volumes, and that means I wait in anticipation for the day this one gets released.

Post-Civil War Predictions

So, the dust has settled, the smoke has cleared, and the Civil War is over. Captain America is in prison, Iron Man is in charge of SHIELD (and by extension, every super-human in the United States), and Registration is the law of the land! Huzzah...wait a second, doesn't that kind of seem like a depressing ending? And doesn't it kind of mean that the entire seven issues were a complete waste of time? Oh, well. It sold, right?

So now the obvious question is, "What happens next?" Here it is, my absolute infallible predictions on the future of the Marvel Universe post-Civil War.

Within five issues, Captain America will either break out or be broken out of the Negative Zone prison. Probably, he'll be the "new Ronin" they're talking about in the pages of 'New Avengers', since the "take up a temporary identity" gimmick is one they've done before for Cap, and it makes a certain amount of sense; he doesn't want to restart the big war, and Cap's a big, tangible symbol of the Resistance. But he's obviously not going to stay in prison for long, because he's got his own series.

Within two years, it will be revealed that Iron Man is either mind controlled, an impostor, or just plain went insane. It will be further revealed that he orchestrated the explosion at Stamford, CT (by maneuvering either the heroes, the villains, or both into that spot) to create the furor that pushed the SHRA into law, all to consolidate super-heroes under his personal control. There'll be another big crossover, Iron Man will be defeated, and the SHRA will be repealed now that everyone sees how dangerous it is to give so much power to one man.

Within five years, there will be a tremendously unconvincing storyline in which Peter Parker pulls a scam to make everyone think that the revelation of Spider-Man's identity was, in turn, a scam; everyone will believe this new scam hook, line, and sinker, allowing Peter to return to his old job at the Daily Bugle.

Within seven years, if Tony Stark was revealed to have just plain gone insane, it will at this time be revealed that he was either mind controlled or an impostor all along, and the real/normal Tony Stark will come back as Iron Man.

Within ten years, Aunt May will be back from the dead, if she was in fact fatally wounded and not just wounded at the end of the latest issue of Spider-Man.

In other words, my prediction for 'Civil War'? In ten years, it'll be as if none of it ever happened. Because there's either two options here. Either one, this is Act One of a grander story that will end with a return to the status quo, or two, Marvel's editorial staff has just made a colossal mistake that they will spend the next decade burying.

You decide!

Unwrapping DC Showcase Presents

(See the clever thing I did in the title, there, using the other meaning of the word "Presents"? That's what we writers call, um...clever, I think. There's probably a technical term for it, too.)

Originally, I didn't think I was going to do a DC equivalent of http://fraggmented.blogspot.com/2006/11/potential-essential-confidential.html in this blog, mainly because I didn't think I knew DC history well enough to make any good suggestions. But on thinking about it, DC's reprint program is so new, it's like shooting fish in a barrel. Even a relative DC novice like me (I started reading DC comics in 1991) can come up with a bunch of good choices for reprinting, because they haven't even gotten around to Wonder Woman yet.

So without further ado...

Honorable Mentions: DC's got a lot, actually, because (again) their list of what's actually out is so small. They could do more war comics (Blackhawk, The Losers, Enemy Ace), more of their classic heroes (Superboy, Wonder Woman, Swamp Thing, Firestorm, Plastic Man, Martian Manhunter), or some of Jack Kirby's contributions (The Demon, New Gods, Kamandi.) There's still horror out there (like The Witching Hour)...heck, I think they even have the rights to Mad Magazine. But for the top fifteen...

15, Sugar and Spike. Yes, there are people looking at me funny, saying, "Why would you want to reprint a kid's humor comic instead of 'Firestorm'? But S&S is well-regarded, it'd probably sell well as a black-and-white reprint, and it's the sort of thing that might not get reprinted anywhere else, because it doesn't have the hardcore nerd appeal.

14. The Outsiders. Or, as it was known for much of its early run, 'Batman and the Outsiders'. It's a concept that's had legs for a while now, it's still being published today (albeit with no Batman, and a completely different team line-up), and there's a lot of 70s nostalgia in there to be tapped.

13. World's Finest. One of those concepts that was always a no-brainer; "Hey, you got your Superman in my Batman!" "No, you got your Batman in my Superman!" Since they've got a Superman line and a Batman line, this one seems to be the natural extension.

12. Sgt. Rock. Easily DC's most famous and recognizable "war comic" character, and yet 'The Unknown Soldier' beat him to the punch. This is the sort of thing you don't want to get worse; better reprint him before things get out of control and 'Girls in Love' has a volume while the Sarge is still stewing in limbo.

11. House of Secrets. If you've got 'House of Mystery', you've got to have 'House of Secrets'. What's Cain without Abel?

10. Warlord. Mike Grell's 70s sword-and-sorcery epic has tons of devoted fans out there, all of whom would no doubt snatch up collections of the comic. Not to mention, I have a strong suspicion that Grell's art would look great in black and white.

9. Supergirl. I have to suspect that plans for this one are already afoot, given that they published the volume of Superman that introduced her, but didn't give us any of her back-up stories. In any event, Supergirl's probably more popular than ever, so this one's a no-brainer.

8. The Question. If they're going to make this one relevant, they'd better hurry--it doesn't look like he's got long left. (That's a '52' reference for those of you not stopping at comics stores; the character has terminal cancer.) The reprints could probably cover the entire Ditko era before the first volume finished, then go on to the Denny O'Neil stuff that's probably got a bigger following.

7. Suicide Squad. Technically, there's not enough material of the "classic" Silver Age Suicide Squad to fill a volume, but that's alright, because what everyone's really jonesing for is the 80s John Ostrander Suicide Squad, the one with all sorts of B-list DC villains and death around every corner. It made Captain Cold seem bad-ass, so it has to be impressive.

6. Hawk and Dove. Again, there's not enough actual Silver Age Hawk and Dove material to fill a volume, but spice it up with some of their key Titans appearances, and then the uber-classic early 90s series by Karl and Barbara Kesel, and you've got a slice of good comics. (I don't know how to make an umlaut in this format, by the way, so just draw two little dots on your screen with Magic Marker over the "u" in "uber".)

5. Doom Patrol. In the Marvel list, things got closer to the present as they got higher up, because I wanted the comics I remembered as a kid; here, they get older, because I want to see the roots of DC's Silver Age. The Doom Patrol is best remembered now for Grant Morrison's weird 80s run, but I think that the 60s version has a lot of potential for reprints.

4. The Metal Men. Another one that's actually pretty topical at the moment, since their creator, Will Magnus, is popping up now and again in '52' (he doesn't have terminal cancer. He's manic-depressive. Gosh, isn't DC fun for kids nowadays?) Fun book, cool robots, it's a snap.

3. Adam Strange. Another '52' alum (both eyes gouged out--no, I'm not kidding), Adam Strange is practically synonymous with the Silver Age. He's a space hero with a jetpack, a laser gun, and he's even got a fin on his head! How he hasn't been reprinted yet is beyond me.

2. The Atom. Another Silver Age icon whose absence is surprising, this would be another topical pick, since there's a new 'Atom' series out there (he's not in '52', though, and is probably breathing a heartfelt sigh of relief.) It'd be good synergy to reprint this one, since the current 'Atom' series deals with Ray Palmer's successor, and kind of assumes you know something about the Silver Age Atom (like, for example, the fact that his real name is Ray Palmer.)

1. The Flash. The absence of a 'Showcase Presents The Flash' is absolutely bizarre to me. Comics historians actually date the beginning of the Silver Age from the first appearance of the Flash, in 'DC Showcase'. He's the definitive Silver Age hero. To have a 'Showcase Presents' line without the Flash is like Marvel's Essentials line not having gotten around to putting out a Spider-Man book yet.

So, there's the list for DC to match Marvel...again, licenced titles were excluded, which is a real shame. Because who wouldn't, if they had the option, want to pick up 'DC Showcase Presents: Jerry Lewis'?

Potential Essential Confidential

(Been waiting two weeks to use that title...)

For those of you who don't know, the "Essentials" series from Marvel are trade paperbacks that reprint their classic comics; they print them in black-and-white, on cheap paper, in order to reduce costs, which means that you get about twenty-five issues of story for the price that an eight-issue collection would cost in color on glossy paper. They're great ways to get big, hefty chunks of reading material for a relatively low cost (in fact, some of the Wolverine and X-Men collections might actually be less than cover price, on a per issue basis.)

Marvel's been putting the Essentials out for a while now, and they've got a very nice library of titles built up (the DC counterpart, "Showcase Presents", is much newer and has only a relative few), but there's still room for more. So, without further ado, I present...the Top Fifteen Comic Book Series That Should Get "Essentials" Trade Paperbacks*!

Honorable Mentions: Captain Marvel (a character that will probably get an Essential someday, but one who's more famous dead than alive); Solo Avengers/Avengers Spotlight (a title I enjoyed as a kid, but I still have enough of the issues that I'm in no hurry to see it collected); Cloak and Dagger (interesting, but did they ever live up to their potential?); Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD (I'm sure this is much higher on somebody's list); Web of Spider-Man (will probably get one no matter what I say); Shogun Warriors (it sounds like fun in the "Godzilla" mode, but I'm not sure what the licensing status is. See the footnote at the bottom of the list.)

15. Dazzler. Sure, it was a silly series. Sure, she started out as "The Disco Dazzler." Sure, Marvel worked overtime to make her seem like a major player by bringing in guest stars from Doctor Doom to Galactus. But let's face it...all that just makes you want to read it more, doesn't it?

14. Champions. Another series that is sort of "famous for being famous", this was the LA super-hero team that featured Hercules, Ghost Rider, Angel, and a few other super-heroes...basically, whoever was in LA and not doing much at the time. They always had a rep as "bargain-basement heroes", but I'd be interested in seeing exactly what got them that rep.

13. Shang-Chi, Master of Kung-Fu. This probably deserves to be much higher on the list, to be honest, because he's a bad-ass martial artist who fights his father, Fu Manchu, using kung-fu. And that sentence alone makes him crazy-cool. But I'm an 80s kid, so I don't have the kind of personal nostalgia for the title that would push him higher. (In fact, I remember reading an ad for his comic when I was four, and not realizing that "Kung-Fu" wasn't a person. I just figured "Kung-Fu" was a guy, and "Shang-Chi" was another guy who could beat him up.)

12. Ms. Marvel. She's really more well-known to me from her time in Kurt Busiek's Avengers and her role as Binary in Claremont's X-Men, but I would like to read her classic stories to see what all the fuss was about.

11. Micronauts. This might fall victim to licensing issues, but I suspect not, and this is a series that I know has a huge cult following. They could also use it as an opportunity to collect the "X-Men Vs. the Micronauts" limited series, which would just plain rock. But again, I never got much of a chance to read it myself.

10. Adam Warlock. I never got the chance to read the classic Adam Warlock stories from the 70s, either, but I remember reading recaps of them in "Marvel Age" and the Marvel Universe Handbook, and thinking that they sounded like the coolest, trippiest thing ever. Adam Warlock fights Thanos, the man in love with Death, and the evil empire established by the Magus, his own future self? Whoa. A lot of the mythos established here would come back to the forefront years later, and it'd be nice to make it all available.

9. New Warriors. Ah, now that we're into the top ten, you can start to see where my love really lies, can't you? The New Warriors practically defined late 80s/early 90s comics, and it'd be great to see it all put down in big thick chunks of black-and-white goodness. It had some great artwork, Fabian Nicieza doing fun soap-opera writing as a labor of love, and it brought back Nova, Speedball, and Firestar. Where's the bad?

8. Power Pack. To be honest, I wish this could be much higher. From a strictly commercial stand-point, it probably should be; this was a series that had great kid appeal. Four pre-teens with super-powers, guest stars galore, the X-Men, the FF, sleep-overs with Franklin Richards, and power swaps every twenty-five issues. Power Pack just plain rocked.

7. West Coast Avengers. Hawkeye led the team. Nuff said.

6. Alpha Flight. Another one of those titles like New Warriors that had a big, crazy soap-opera epic feel to it that would work much better in large chunks than single-issue stories, this would be excellent for collection. And John Byrne's art looks beautiful in black and white.

5. ROM. Every comics fan above the age of thirty is nodding right now. Not as they read this, as I type this--just my thought of "The Essential ROM" is causing their brains to vibrate with sympathetic resonance as they remember how freaking cool ROM was. A lone alien warrior, fighting a war against the evil shapeshifting body-stealing Dire Wraiths (a war that spilled out into the whole Marvel Universe towards the end--almost a crossover without the hype)...oh, it was the best. Actually the fifth best, but still very cool.

4. Quasar. I remember that I absolutely was not collecting Quasar as a teenager. Really, I wasn't. Oh, sure, I'd pick up an issue or two...or four...or seven...but really, I wasn't collecting it. I didn't have the time to add another title to my list. I just was buying it. A lot. And with a new Quasar series on the horizon, it'd be nice to not collect it again, in trade paperback format this time.

3. New Mutants. Actually, how is it that this hasn't already been collected as an Essentials series? They've got two X-Men Essentials (one for the Lee/Kirby era, one for the Claremont fans who weren't willing to wait three volumes to get to the good stuff), X-Factor, Wolverine...where's the New Mutants in all this? MIA, that's where, and it has to stop!

2. Excalibur. Everything from #2 applies here, but with added exclamation points at the end of every sentence, because Excalibur was just that much better.

1. Guardians of the Galaxy. At this point, mad props must go out to Jim Valentino, who took these characters that I'd just heard about and that I thought sounded cool, and made them into the best thing ever. In the 30th century, the alien Badoon have enslaved humanity, and a band of rebels from across the solar system must band together to stop them! And then, once they stop them, they become wandering adventurers, traveling through time and space to learn about what became of Earth's legendary super-heroes! And then...well, then they got cancelled, and have been in comics limbo ever since, which was a shame. But there's plenty of great material for several Essentials in there, and it might just lead to a revival. (Plus, we'd get to see more of Nikki, team hottie. Damn. Girl was so hot, her head was on fire!)

So there you go, Marvel. Get cracking. Oh, and keep putting out more of the ones you're doing already, too. And get Karl Kesel to write Fantastic Four. Seriously, he'd be great at it!

*This excludes comics that Marvel is precluded from collecting due to the lapse in licensing agreements with the companies who owned the properties in question; so, for example, the Essential Transformers, Star Wars, and GI Joe are all off the list because Marvel can't do them. The Essential Conan already got scuttled--if you see a copy, snap it up because it's out of print.

Bold Predictions

Michael Vick will not only never win a Superbowl, he will retire from the NFL never having gotten to the Superbowl. If you can find a bookie who takes bets of this nature, go and put a modest sum of money on it and I feel confident you will see a return on your investment.

The reason is simple: He's just not a very accurate passer. Sure, he dazzles with his legs, but every good defense knows that the way to beat the Falcons is to stack up against the run, keep a disciplined pass rush, and dare Vick to beat you throwing. He can't do it, and he's never going to be able to do it because he's surrounded by a crowd of people telling him that he doesn't need to learn that--he should just "let Michael be Michael".

Against a disciplined defense, "Michael being Michael" is indistinguishable from "Michael running around in the backfield like an idiot, then getting tackled for an eight-yard loss."

Next time, on Bold Predictions: Matt Millen will go down as one of the worst GMs in NFL history!

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.

Watch This Space

I'm writing a book. More info later...

Hot Stoves and Brick Walls

At some point during our Thing With Iraq (it can't be a war, since we declared victory; people get very shirty if you call it an occupation; and I'm not sure if we really want to try to explain why we're "liberating" them with torture centers, guns, tanks, and in a few rare cases, body armor)...well, at some point, the administration pretty much waved the white flag in the "moral authority" department. Basically, the argument has gone, "Alright, yes, there were no weapons of mass destruction. Yes, the intelligence was, at best, shoddy, and at worst so overtly shoddy that it's blatantly obvious that we were willfully misreading it to construct a causus belli, and everyone knew it even at the time. Yes, the entire war has been nothing but a blatant power grab. BUT..."

The new conservative rationale for the war. "Now that we're there, we have to win, because the alternatives are too horrible to contemplate."

Discussing a pull-out of the troops is considered to be "defeatist" talk, the same sort of thing that people did in World War II because they secretly supported Hitler or something. We're told that this "hurts troop morale", because after a long hard day of getting shot at, watching your friend get scissored in half by a chunk of shrapnel the size of a cat, and missing your wife and kids desperately, nothing will really lower your morale like hearing that people back home want to get you the hell out of Iraq.

The fact of the matter is, any realistic discussion of the war in Iraq must consider the question, "What are the conditions for victory, and are those conditions still attainable?" If the answer to the latter half of the question is "No," then it is not defeatist to say that we should cut our losses and go, any more than it would be defeatist to suggest that we shouldn't try to break a brick wall with our skulls. We can't do it, and we'll probably do ourselves serious harm in the process.

The current administration is refusing to consider this question. They have sub-ordinated the best interests of the American military, the realities of public policy, and quite possibly the well-being of the nation for the forseeable future, to the egotistical belief that they will be vindicated by history if they can simply pour a sufficient amount of resources into the war. By attempting to salvage their reputation, they are in fact making it worse. It's like touching a hot stove, and instead of pulling your hand back, holding it there to prove how tough it is.

So, let's take a moment and actually consider the question. "What are the conditions of victory in Iraq?" The answer would seem to be, "The creation of a stable, humane, US-friendly government in the country." If this is, in fact, the answer, we should pull out now, because that was never an achievable goal and never will be. Any government that is stable is stable because it is responsive to the needs of its citizens; any government that is humane is humane because it values its citizens; any government that is US-friendly (in the terms we are attempting to impose upon Iraq) values our goodwill higher than it does its own citizens. Meaning that any government that is US-friendly will either have to resort to violence to keep power, or else ask us to do it for them. "Stable, friendly, humane" is the "cheap, close, nice" of nation-building: Pick two.

So what's a realistic "condition of victory" in Iraq, one we can actually achieve that won't make us feel that this is a total failure (or worse--a chaotic, unstable Iraq would be a total failure, a stable-but-actively-hostile-to-the-US Iraq would be worse). This is something that is changing day to day, which is another thing that the Bush administration is failing to understand, or possibly deliberately refusing to understand. "Events are in the saddle, and ride mankind." It was spoken of Vietnam, but it's equally true here. The statement, "We have to stay until we win," presumes that there will always be an existing condition of victory, that we have an unlimited supply of time, money, manpower, material, and goodwill (both of the US and Iraqi public) to accomplish our aims. We do not. The clock is ticking.

It may already have run out.