Identity Crisis was "inspired" by a bad story

One that may have been ommitted from continuity years ago too, in fact.

When reading one of the replies to this thread on Comics Should Be Good, that's certainly what I'm beginning to think now anyway.

And it makes sense. That many of the worst stories of today are based on some of the worst ones of yore.

Spooky.

Update: by the way, I once discovered on Progressive Ruin that this abominable miniseries was turning up on eBay with its own special section, strongly suggesting that a lot of people became rightfully embarrassed by it, and were trying to sell it off. It's the same situation with Avengers: Disassembled. I think a better idea would be to just burn the copies of the miniseries altogether.

Update 2: Much as I hate to have to do this, and boy, does it pain me -- on the ultra-sugarcoated Hero Realm, five critics review Countdown, and all five of them more or less bent over backwards, and all five of them more or less demostrate as to why I now find Hero Realm such an unappealing place to pop into:

From reviewer No. 1:

"I don’t like how DC’s writers and editors seem determined to undermine one of the only periods in DC’s history where characters were allowed to smile and laugh, it seems like they are (to use a very bad metaphor) raping an era that is better left alone in more ways than one...

...But I must set my feelings about the underlying aspects and the editorial decisions asideand focus instead on the storytelling. Johns, Rucka and Winick do a fine job carrying the mysteries of a book for 80 pages, and the multiple twists found throughout are unexpected and well done..."

From reviewer No 2:

"There is one thing that I can say in regards to Countdown-thanks. Thanks for making me so intently care about a character. Thanks for pissing me off. Thanks for making me want to see what happens next. Thanks for making it worth my time and my money.

In (very short), Countdown is the most riveting thing I’ve read since…well, since Identity Crisis. Like the events or not, they draw you into the frame of the story and keep you there. Blue Beetle is the main narrator of the tale, and considering I’ve read all of…9 comics with the guy in it, the writers all do wonders to make me push him to the top of my ‘all time faves’ chart."

From reviewer No. 3:

"I’m not a big DC fan. I couldn’t care less about the upcoming sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths. I didn’t care about the hype or the seemingly dead body Batman was holding on the cover. I wanted to read a good story and be entertained for that half-hour or so that I devoured this 80-page morsel.

And I was. I couldn’t tell you if I even knew that Blue Beetle existed before reading Countdown, but I sure as heck wish I had. The writers instantly hook you into the plight of this misfit hero. The reader follows him through each twist and turn, never knowing how it will turn out until flipping to the very last page. That kind of spectacular pace and emotion makes for a highly dramatic story..."

From reviewer No. 4:

"There are long lists of things to dislike: (1) The big guns are portrayed as selfish jerks. (2) The Blue Beetle’s feelings of low self-esteem don’t ring particularly true. (3) The dialogue and narration can be hokey and pretentious...

...There are also things to love: (1) Evidently DC is no longer willing to ignore their “second-tier” characters, imbuing them with life and personality that they haven’t had in years...

...But ultimately, what makes the issue a good one is not only the fact that it’s well done, but also the fact that it will have real consequences throughout the DC Universe..."

From reviewer No. 5:

"DC has managed to pull off a ratings stunt that is contraversial to say the least. It does suceed in making me want to see at least three of the four mini series introduced here, that's the good news. The bad news is they do that by using a character who is vastly underused and perhaps abused by previous writers and demonstrating that he deserves a monthly series and a wide fanbase, in spite of all that was written about him in the past. Once that is done, they squander the character. This I find pathetic...

...Like it or hate it, I guarantee you will have a strong opinion to this comic. Overall, I liked this comic, but it has me trying to find a better way to write it."

So as we see here, in the case of some, they may not like it, yet they just go along and praise it anyway. While some others seem to be quite okay with the going-ons simply because they either don't know much about the DCU and its connections, or because they simply don't care about its history. Rather, they just care about it because its hyped.

Now does being mega-hyped make it good? Of course not. And I might also point out that, given how Dan DiDio was the editor of this book, it wouldn't surprise me if the writing trio was doing it all according to how he for one wanted things done.

So whether or not Greg Rucka, Geoff Johns and Judd Winick are talented (and by today's standards, I don't think they're one bit so), when a book like this comes as an editorially driven product, one cannot expect the best of results. And lest we forget what happened when DC tried to wreck Hal Jordan forced Ron Marz to have to do as he was being told then!

Which, one can only wonder, also describes the case surrounding all these reviews here. The site's owner did after all try to dumb down the site's editorials earlier, making them go according to his PC views on how things should be done.

(Speaking of which, this now reminds me of when Pauline Kael, one of my favorite movie critics, had the guts to pan Lina Wertmuller's Seven Beauties in 1976, and 3 other film critcs praised her for having the courage to do what they were afraid to do at the time. Could this be a similar case? Who knows?)


Plus: Some more things that I found that are misleading - and even absolving Dr. Light of the crime he's depicted as doing in Identity Crisis - in the Associated Press' coverage of DC's bigoted little miniseries from last year:

"A few of the world’s most notable superheroes may have indirectly had a hand in Mrs. Dibny’s demise, or unjustly punished the wrong suspect — and find themselves agonizing over the responsibility."

Now I suppose it's fair to assume that this was meant to be a clue that Dr. Light was being possessed. But whatever turns out to be, what with Countdown soon around the corner, it's still not clear who or what they mean by the wrong suspect, is it? Not really. However, it does seem to imply exactly what I find most offensive about the mini: that the victims are to blame for what happened to them all.

Disgusting.

Now for what DiDio, largely responsible for this mess, has to say:

“But the newer readers, or the people looking for much stronger and multilayered storytelling, are embracing it,” he added. “This book has generated no apathy, that’s for sure.”

It has now. And from what I can tell, sales aside, the talk of newer readers seems to be exaggerated, especially seeing when there's no clear numbers anywhere to be found. In fact, when you think about how the books turns out in the end, well, it wouldn't surprise me if any of the "newer readers" whom DiDio speaks of concluded that this is hardly at all what comes as "strong" and "multilayered" storytelling.

"In some ways, this is also a response to the popularity of rival Marvel Comics, which has such characters as Spider-Man and the Hulk, whose appeal comes from battles with personal woes as well as supervillains."

And whose woes have become woefully overdone by now too. In all due honesty, the whole push for realism, which in the end seems to add up to little more than one thing, that being violence, has been getting old by now.

Now, for something else, by Meltzer himself in the article, that pretty much gives away how unserious he truly was about conveying this seriously:

Meltzer said he pitched the story with the death of the Elongated Man’s wife becoming secondary as the books progress.

“I said forget the death of the character, we’re going to test every character in the DC universe. We’re going to test what they believe, what they stand for, we’re going to test whether Superman is as good as we think he is. We’re going to test whether Batman is, too. Yes, it will be in the context of this murder, but we’ll get so much more out of it.”

Well well well. And as we've seen by now of course, in the end, the rape was dealt with about as seriously as the biased world media dealt with the tragedies of Daniel Pearl and Nick Berg, if at all.

One more reason why this botched mini is such a failure.

Also, from the Comic Book Galaxy, here's another dreadful essay I decided needed to be analyzed:

So many superhero comics readers cry out for more realism in their comics, more characterization, but you give them something genuinely real and shocking and they can't handle it.

To be quite honest, the whole argument on realism has already worn thin a long time ago. But where the writer totally misses the point is that, when readers usually ask for realism, they mean as in human relations and personality. Not violence, which is what seems to be the misperception amonst a lot of writers today, one more reason why Batman has suffered so badly in terms of persona since the mid-90s.

I can understand fans being upset -- you're supposed to be -- but it can't be because Meltzer has changed the characters for his purposes. I mean, the only reason anyone even cares about Sue or Ralph Dibny is due to the changes made by Keith Giffen and J.M. DeMatteis on their Justice League run, playing up the comedy of Ralph as an embarrassing, if endearing, goofball, and Sue as his long-suffering, but loving, wife.

Very interesting paragraph piece we have here too, veeerrry interesting indeed. And more precisely, what we have here is a case of a so-called fan trying to deligitimize the right of fans to protest what they feel is wrong about a specific take on their favorite characters, not to mention justifying Meltzer's own tamperings with the characters. And since when exactly did we truly want to be upset, or at least, more than need be?

And pardon my asking, but...what exact changes did Giffen and DeMatties make to Ralph and Sue Dibny on their League run? They made no real changes to the characters at all, really, quite the opposite - they gave them a more prominent role in the League when JLInternational and JLEurope were being published back in the late 80s, early 90s.

A perfect example of a website where at least one contributor does not stand up for what really devoted comics readers believe in.

DC didn't say earlier that you'd need to read Superman and WW to understand OMAC Project

The following is a statement made by Greg Rucka on the Newsarama website:

“I want to say, before anything else that we tried very hard to build OMAC so that you weren’t obligated to buy anything else, and we failed,” Rucka said. “We really did. I’ll cop to it – I won’t lie about it. And we did it by playing dirty pool too – if you were buying The OMAC Project, you really need the Superman and Wonder Woman books to know what’s happening in issue #4 of the miniseries. If you don’t read them, it’s possible to understand them, but you don’t get the emotional resonance. That was a little bit of dirty pool, but we didn’t plan it out that way – we weren’t looking to spring this on people, but that’s the way it happened, and again, we’re sorry. So instead of a six issue miniseries, you get a ten issue miniseries, and I won’t fault any reader for not picking it up. I’d still suggest them though, because they’re a good story and worth reading, but I’d suggest, if nothing else, you pick up Wonder Woman #219 at the very least – call it issue OMAC #3.5 if you must, because it sets up the events of OMAC #4.”

Greg, with all due respect, I like your work, I really do, but...no. I'm not saying that Mr. Rucka is at fault here, but I will have to say that DC, if anyone, was being very dishonest with the readers by not telling in advance that, in spite of what may have been said earlier, that the OMAC Project didn't require reading other books in order to understand what's going on in the miniseries itself, it DID. Update: as of today, I'm no longer impressed with Rucka, even if he's not the worst writer per se today.

The failure of this whole buildup to yet another needless crossover is already starting to be felt. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, DC hasn't been publishing those silly "this issue sells out/goes back to press" news releases as much as they did before recently. Whether or not they're selling well, it's apparent that things are beginning to take their toll.

Update: an older item where I may have discovered for starters that Blue Beetle will be a victim of Countdown. And to make matters worse, Newsarama's interview with Greg Rucka does not reveal very promising details about it either:

"Likewise, the throughline of The OMAC Project draws directly upon the aftermath of Identity Crisis. The damage you get from Identity Crisis - the trauma that was inflicted upon the characters, both in terms of present continuity and revised past continuity - it's something that has to be addressed," Rucka said. "The OMAC Project is a story that, in part, is about Batman's reaction to the Dr. Light incident being absolutely corrupted for an evil purpose."

Sounds like a direct spinoff of IC, and frankly, I would rather save money than be gypped of any of my valuble greenbacks for the sake of some arbitrary miniserials that could in the end cost as much as another 4 dollars each.

This is decidedly the time that fans will have to face a real test to see if they can avoid being taken in by one of the big two's further attempts at foisting something upon their loyal buyers that they really have no use for. And me for one, well, I most certainly won't be fooled by a one dollar price tag, no matter what goes on. As Batman's Ten Cent Adventures showed, it's just not worth it.

Update 2: this item on Comics Should be Good talks about the political themes Countdown could have.

Update 3: DC's VP-editorial Dan DiDio is as sugarcoated as he was before when speaking with the ultra-establishment Newsarama about this awful x-over:

Dan Didio told attendees DC and the writers have spent so much time on Countdown, he called the book “seamless”, despite have three writers (Rucka, Judd Winick and Johns) and challenged any reader to figure out who wrote what.

Which I am not interested in doing. I am simply not interested in Countdown despite the price of just one dollar, which could indicate that they know they're in trouble now, following Identity Crisis.

An important note: not mentioned in here from what I can tell is that DiDio wants to use this as a way of "darkening" the DCU, just for the sake of it. Though some creators tried to assure the readers otherwise, and could have a point, it makes no difference; I have no interest in Countdown.

And also, on the knee-jerk Comics Nexus, we've got something truly ridiculous that implies that Batman's story arc in which Jason Todd appears to be returning is "fanboy material":

"Neat new cover. Unlike a lot of people (including some in our very own Roundtable) I have no problem with this one that "gives away" the shock ending. Why? Well, because if you are a "fanboy" you already know the shock ending."

By fanboys, the meaning is apparently those who find the material to be great stuff no matter what, regardless of whether it's good or bad.

Is this really what the industry should be built on though? And again, did we really need this kind of a story?

Fantastic Four computer console games

Joseph Szadkowski of the Washington Times looks at some more games being sold for when the FF movie's been released in theaters, including for the Xbox. Looks interesting.

Did Avi Arad stoop to propaganda?

I remember when once, the Jerusalem Report interviewed a Jewish born TV animation producer, who even took the time to start making needless political statements. Now, the same magazine goes along and publishes an interview with Avi Arad, a former soldier in the Six Day War and now marketing manager for Marvel's movie projects, who goes along and makes a needless analogy, or, if anything, one that the magazine itself would like to hear. What does he say?

"Magneto signifies the extreme right [wing] of any minority," Arad told The Report. "I would look, ideologically, more to Jabotinsky and Begin than to Ben-Gurion. Magneto to me is not a villain. But he becomes more like Kahane the more frustrated he is with the way the world is approaching the ones who are different. Kahane," he adds, referring to the late Meir Kahane, founder of the Jewish Defense League and leader of an Israeli political party that advocated the expulsion of Arabs, "is where you start out with the right intentions and you end up going off the deep end. With Magneto, that was a very specific reason to push his heritage," as it formed a basis for giving the character his own starring vehicle.

Does he really? Since when did "right" and "left" bear relevance to such a subject? And where did he come to this conclusion that Magneto would represent Jabotinsky, who actually had favorable views towards the Arabs in many cases, no matter what people like him are trying to imply, or even Begin?

I do wonder what Arad would say if he knew that Jabotinsky was one of the templates for Professor Charles Xavier, the X-Men's own leader, along with Martin Luther King and Michael Collins? I guess he'd probably say nothing.

I can only hope that Arad was only misquoted, which doesn't seem too unlikely of such a magazine, because otherwise, he's simply not on my list of favorites.

Then again, recalling how he gave Stan Lee the shaft 3 years ago, when he tried to make it sound as if Spider-Man was more a committee creation than the work of but a few good men, Stan the Man Lee being the main one, I suppose it isn't too farfetched that he'd do something like this, regardless of whether or not he alienates the audience.

If anything, this is yet another entertainment related case in which politics are needlessly shoved in when they didn't have to be. What does the Jerusalem Report have to gain or accomplish by airing this drivel? It certainly doesn't help Arad, that's for sure.

LA Times fawns over "The First Genuine Middle Eastern Super Heroes."

I'd heard something about this, which could very easily be, or contain, propaganda. The ultra-establishment Los Angeles Times (via the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette) reports on a publishing company called "AK" from Cairo, that publishes comics with titles like "Jalila, Savior of the City of All Faiths" and "The Lone Warrior, Rakan."

The very ambiguous article says in it:

"The heroes are purposely crafted to be vague as to their religious faith, and they live a futuristic vision of the Mideast where national boundaries have been blurred and harmony is threatened by monsters, not intractable religious rivalries."

Now of course, is this telling much? So as a result, I don't know if those monsters they speak of are meant to be analogies for anyone whose views they disagree with/despise.

"The comics have made a footprint in the Mideast – they are now handed out to kids on every flight of Egypt Air and they have replaced Spider-Man on bubble-gum wrappers in the region. But now AK Comics has its eye on the U.S. market, and so a trip to Comic-Con in San Diego was a must.

“It would be a moral victory to be here,” said Marwan El-Nashar, the company’s managing director. Still, a passing conventioneer who was also a U.S. Marine did a double-take at the booth’s sign. “I thought we were the only heroes in the Middle East,” he told the AK team."

I'd have to agree with the US Marine on this one, because I doubt that the characters in the books are as heroic as the publishers, and even the LA Times, would like us to think.

Aside from that, notice the part about "moral victories" that the company's director speaks of. It's not exactly that. Far from it. For people like that, being able to maintain a presence in a lot of these kind of events is something that comes as a victory to them simply for the fact that they want to muscle in on anything where they can gain "representation" whether they're deserving of it or not. Or, they hope to sell as much propaganda as they possibly can.

Now, here's something that certainly casts a shadow of doubt over the sincerity of the convention as a whole:

The convention has become many things to many fans and veered wide enough to include a performance by Tenacious D, the ribald comedy-rock duo that features actor Jack Black. Among the songs about sex and dragon-slaying was the crowd-pleasing political statement of “The Government Sucks.”

So in other words, politics taints the show, is that it? No wait, that's not what's wrong here. What is wrong here is that they say "crowd-pleasing" for the song that was played.

If this is what the convention was all about, and which the newspaper ever so conviniently glosses over, then I can't say that I'm so eager to pay them a visit.

"A more serious note was the panel assembled by Warner Bros. films to debut a trailer for the film “V for Vendetta.” The panel answered questions about the adaptation of a comic that depicts a flamboyant terrorist in England who uses explosives and the subway system to wage war on the government. The book was written in the 1980s and has more to do with Orwell than Osama bin Laden, but the similarities to the recent London bombings gave pause to some."

Somehow, I can only wonder if the movie's been written as a contemporary political statement. With movies like Spielberg's take on War of the Worlds littering up theaters today, is it any wonder that we have to approach them with caution?

AK Comics, the Cairo venture, thinks kids in the Mideast need more caped heroes and fewer terrorist tales. The company founder and comics’ creator, Ayman Kandeel, is a 36-year-old economics professor at Cairo University who grew up in Egypt in the late 1970s searching out the hard-to-get Batman comics from the United States. The simple messages of those stories stuck with Kandeel.

“Yes, I do think the entertainment created for young people says a lot about a culture,” Kandeel said. “These are stories of optimism and positive messages about what we can all be.”

I wouldn't be fooled too easily by what this Kandeel is saying. There are many Arab propagandists who can talk out of both sides of their mouth, and given how superficial this article is, it's always possible that here too, could be the case.

And if they really do give out comics like these to kids on Egyptian air flights, could it be that it's because they're some kind of war/hate propaganda, which this article doesn't make clear?

For the record, such books that AK is publishing aren't the first genuine middle eastern superheroes. Michael Netzer once wrote a comic in Hebrew called "Uri-On" in 1987 when he moved to Israel to take up residence here at the time (as far as I know, he still does), and then, there's also Marvel's own Sabra, Ruth Bat-Seraph. To say "genuine" is just a self-justificatory statement.

Update: on a semi-related note, here's an old article from the Jewish World Review that talks about a propaganda item published by the left-wing reporter/illustrator Joe Sacco that was fawned over in some of the wider medium. As told here, the actual book by Sacco is truly disgusting.

Don't be fooled by this little "double-trick"

This is funny. The ultra-establishment Captain Comics, Andrew Smith, writes a column for July 17 in which he tries to explain why movie critics didn't like the Fantastic Four movie, for the following reasons:

All of these critics compared Fantastic Four unfavorably to other superhero movies. And, to a man, disliked FF because it wasn’t as dark and brooding and psychologically troubled as those other movies.

Well, I find that silly. Fantastic Four isn’t like those other movies, because … well, those are different movies. Movies that tell different stories. Fantastic Four didn’t tell a dark and brooding story, because the Fantastic Four aren’t dark and brooding characters. The FF didn’t see their parents gunned down when they were kids (Batman). They aren’t hated and feared by a world they seek to protect (X-Men). They aren’t juggling guilt and responsibility (Spider-Man).

In general, they’re having a whiz-bang of a good time. They’re not even really superheroes -- they’re explorers, and they’re celebrities. And their lives are pretty swell. With the exception of the tragic Thing – which does give the story a little heft – the Cosmic Quartet are pretty much a well-adjusted, happy bunch. I mean, for heaven’s sake, it would be a blast to be the Human Torch!

So, to compare “Fantastic Four” to “Batman Begins” is apples and oranges. It’s like watching a bunch of Shakespeare comedies and then going to “Hamlet” … and complaining that it’s not funny enough. Hey, they’re all “plays by William Shakespeare” – shouldn’t they all be exactly alike in tone and theme?

Well, of course not. Nor should “movies with superheroes in them” all be exactly alike.

Now, if you want to compare Fantastic Four to The Incredibles, I’m game. Those are both superhero movies with similar themes. (Pretty much identical themes, to tell the truth.) But both are fun movies, and the DVDs would make good bookends.

“Fun” being the word not found in these reviews – or, apparently, looked for. What the dour critics are missing is the Fantastic Four’s appeal: They’re throwbacks to a simpler, sunnier time. They do the right thing, because it’s the right thing to do. And they’re familiar. Despite the super-powers, they’re just like us – only us looking a lot more buff, with a lot more money and fame, and going places and doing things we can only dream of. Which means kids of all ages just adore the FF, without the slightest bit of post-modern irony.

And Fantastic Four, the movie, gave us mostly that. The film (some critics lamented) focused more on interpersonal relationships than spectacle. The only “dark psychological trauma” I saw on the screen was that Reed sometimes ignores his girlfriend, Sue can be a nag, Johnny’s irresponsible and Ben has a bad temper. With the Fantastic Four, like our own families, there’s no tragedy – just a lot of irritation.

Would that I could credit this...but no. Not after the double-stance he took when it came to what DC Comics cooked up last year, in the pages of their very own comics, that being none other than Identity Crisis, whose apparent purpose was to grim and grittify the DC Universe, and to tear down the heroic ideal of the superheroes. Tsk tsk tsk. Putting down the movie critics for lambasting a movie like FF for not being dark, while at the same time backing the steps taken by a publishing company that does almost exactly what the movie critics may have been hoping for with the FF movie! What's the world coming to?

Now I'm not saying that some parts of the DCU can't be "dark." But then, not every character/title in the DC line of superheroes is exactly alike, and it wouldn't - and doesn't - work to flat-out make them that way either. So why say that not every superhero movie should be exactly alike, while at the same time supporting/tolerating an attempt in comicdom's publishing base itself to make 'em all alike? Batman may work best in the dark, but Superman works best in the light. There is a difference, isn't there?

Granted, he's right, that the movie critics do tend to be dishonest in many cases like these. But then if a movie critic can be dishonest with the audience, so can a comic book critic, as I learned when I looked at what websites like The Comic Fanatic, The Fourth Rail, Hero Realm, and even Comic Readers could do. And that is exactly what even Mr. Smith is doing here by arguing one side of the spectrum while supporting another.

Double-stancing aside, another problem is that, most convieniently, he glosses over the harder, more challenging questions as to why anyone, critics or audience, would find fault in this movie. To which I present the following argument from the Las Vegas Weekly:

After an exciting opening sequence detailing the group's origins, the movie grinds to a halt as the central quartet sit around and make jokes while waiting for Reed to whip up a machine that will cure them all of their powers. In a strange twist for a superhero movie, there is no world-ending threat, and Victor doesn't even get around to being particularly villainous until the movie is almost over. Story seems to think that Fantastic Four will work best as either a mismatched buddy comedy pairing the angsty Ben with the lighthearted Johnny, or a romantic comedy pairing onetime lovers Reed and Sue.

He's wrong on both counts, and while Evans gets in a few good one-liners as the sex-crazed, extreme-sports-loving Johnny, the film goes straight downhill after its opening. Even when the team finally sees some action, the effects are so fake-looking that it's hard to suspend disbelief long enough to get excited. Chiklis, buried in a ridiculous latex suit, growls excessively, perhaps to draw attention away from how stupid he looks.

Whoa. Now that's telling something, I'll say. Not to opine upon the movie, even from an analytical perspective, but, if it's really as anti-climactic as the reviewer from Vegas says, then waddaya know, they've come pretty close to what Marvel, under Bill Jemas anyway, was trying out: taking out the themes from an action-adventure book that make it work best, to say nothing of de-facto rejecting their powers, at least at the beginning of the movie! Why wasn't this mentioned in the Smith column? The Thing I could understand in a case like this, but the rest of the movie-FF I cannot.

And it doesn't get any better with the following, revealed by the Boston Globe:

What these mutations inspire is a bad superhero comedy that takes its time going nowhere. Much of it is centered around poor, pathetic Ben, who's depressed that his horrified wife has left him. In one sequence, he sits atop a bridge where a bird perches on him and relieves itself. Then he scares a suicidal man into oncoming traffic in an attempt to save him. That mishap provokes massive crashes and imperils bystanders whom Ben and friends rescue.

This is supposed to be a bravura sequence. Ben, for instance, stops an oncoming truck simply by letting it smash into him, the metal warping around his body. But the image is too familiar to be rousing. (Didn't the Hulk do the same thing? Didn't somebody in a "Matrix" movie?) And the filmmakers fail to top it with a shot as remotely as exciting. Instead, the scene relies on jokes as flat as the acting by Gruffudd and Alba. When invisible Sue reappears in the scene wearing only her underwear, Reed observes, "Wow, you've been working out!"

As unhappy as I am with what the critic from the Globe says about the FF as comics characters, that they were "never all that interestingly human to begin with", which is untrue, I'll at least have to give him some credit for giving some clues as to why one could end up disliking the movie, and not just the critics. Which is more than I can say for Mr. Smith, who doesn't say anything, that's for sure. And while I do dig Jessica Alba, if she really doesn't have anything else to do other than to serve as attractive wallpaper, then where's making her into by far the strongest of the team, huh?

Finally, from Week in Rewind:

Not even the evil fifth person, Victor Von Doom (Julian McMahon), has the necessary bite to be a great villain. For much of the movie, he’s just seen festering along the edges, wringing his hands and smirking malevolently, until his electrical powers are called upon to generate some trouble in the flame-out finale.

A supervillain who doesn't do anything, if at all? Now this is a novelty, heck, it has to be! 'Course though, if the underwhelming presentation of the Doomster in this movie didn't sink it, I'd figure that the ambiguous presentation of his [metaphysical] superpowers would've. I can tell though why the filmmakers strayed as far as they did from Victor Von Doom's origin in the comics: they just didn't want to use one that would feature a cruel dictator who needs to be opposed and brought down, since for them, it'd be an analogy to the war on Iraq, and today's film industy nuts who are opposed to the war simply can't have that. What a shame. But what's really a shame is that Mr. Smith doesn't dwell on any of that. And that's exactly why his column ends up being as underwhelming and unchallenging as it truly is.

I think the best thing I can say in response to this is: pack it in, Mr. Smith. It's getting old already. And the blogosphere already outmodes his columns 100 to 0. With blogs to help us out, who needs newspaper double-talk like what he specializes in anyway?

Since when did a chimpanzee alone make the book worth reading?

On a topic at Comics Ate My Brain that I once responded to, another person responds with a very superficial argument in which he says about Day of Vengeance the following:

"I love the characters who are fun (c'mon it's a talking magical chimp!) and despite of feeling they have no chance in hell to pull things off, they give all that they have."

This is a joke, right?

No really, this is a joke, isn't it?

Sure, a protagonist like a talking chimpanzee and Detective Chimp, in and of itself, can be very inventive. And Julie Schwartz must have a world class record at making monkeys fun. But simians alone and solely - do not make the book worth reading. And judging by how the numbers are falling off for DOV, ditto the talk of it, it would certainly appear that I'm not alone in feeling that way.

The Titans Tower webmaster had the best thoughts on things like this last December:

"The most galling thing is this is being praised. DC Comics and Wizard can’t say enough superlative things about it. It is being lauded as 'adult, mature' comic books. Well, as adult as a CineMax movie maybe. With about the same level or writing. Only instead of stringing together 'gratuitous sex' so no one cares, there are 'fanboy moments' strung together. "Wasn't it cool when Deathstroke beat the JLA?" "That was awesome when Green Arrow told off Batman!" well, yeah... But cool moments do not a story make."

Absolutely correct. Since when exactly did Slade Wilson alone make the book a must-read/buy? For crying out loud, even I don't buy the Flash just to see Captain Cold do his freezer thingie on the Scarlet Speedster every month.

What the person I'm quoting is doing is implying that good writing does not matter; rather, it's the fact that there's "cool" characters in the book that does. Sorry, but cool characters - and chimps - alone do not a story make, and they most certainly don't make it entertaining by themselves. No, it's good writing that does.

Sure, I'd like to read a book sometime with Detective Chimp, and see just how enjoyable a monkey mage can be, but only when a really good story that isn't built upon a travesty like Identity Crisis and isn't editorially mandated either comes along. If it hadn't been for the way that this crap was all put together as part of the umpteenth needless crossover, it could have some potential to it, but being the x-over material that it is, and given how grimy the miniseries it continues its premise from was, no sale.

On another note: no offense to the person who wrote the above in response to the topic posted last June, but IMO, he's writing almost like a vagrant, and, it should be noted that he ignored what I linked to from Columbus Alive when I wrote my own thoughts on the subject at the time. Not a very good way to conduct an argument, if you ask me.

Update: let me post that up front here too, now that I think of it: something that could very easily weigh even more heavily against DC's credibility. On April 27, Columbus Alive published a review of Day of Vengeance #1, and isn't that something: the book contains dialect that sounds almost like a woman being sexually harrassed:

While we only hear her half of the conversation, with the diamond’s half apparently occurring in her head, it sounds nauseatingly like a woman being sexually harassed. Writer Bill Willingham’s dialogue: “Oh, no, I could never do that! What kind of woman do you think I am?… Because I was raised better than that—that’s why!… If I did agree—we’d only have to do it once?… And you’d never tell anybody?”

Ick. She gives in, at which point her top blows open, the diamond plants itself in her breast, and voila! She’s now a super-powered villainess.

That's quite likely to weigh against not just DC, but also against Willingham's (and even Dan DiDio's) own credibility as well, and to cost them even more potential readers with good sense.

And in case I didn't mention...the woman in the story being reviewed by the weekly newspaper I've linked to here is none other than Jean Loring, still suffering misuse at the hands of DC's knee-jerk advocates. And the role she's being forced into here is that of Eclipso, a crooked character few have ever really found interesting.

The publishers have a lot of apologizing and explaining to do for coming up with this gratuitous beginning for Day of Vengeance.

James Doohan, RIP

Another great Trekker, James Doohan, who played Scotty on Star Trek, is dead at 85.

I remember Doohan as one of the most interesting of the co-stars on the old Trek series, where he played the engineering officer in charge of the teleportation technology on board the Enterprise. He first began as a radio performer, then in the mid-60s, he auditioned for a role on Star Trek, and won that of Montgomery Scott, chief engineer on board the Enterprise.

Most interesting, that I didn't really know until now is that:

When the series ended in 1969, Doohan found himself typecast as Montgomery Scott, the canny engineer with a burr in his voice. In 1973, he complained to his dentist, who advised him: "Jimmy, you're going to be Scotty long after you're dead. If I were you, I'd go with the flow."

"I took his advice," said Doohan, "and since then everything's been just lovely."

There are quite a few actors on TV who've undergone the problem of typecasting, and it's a shame that Doohan had to be one of them. But I'm glad that he was able to accept it.

I'll certainly miss him, and I thank him very much for his contributions to one of TVdom's most classic space adventures.

Jim Aparo, RIP

CBR reports that Jim Aparo, the co-creator of the Outsiders with Mike W. Barr, has passed away at age 72.

He will be very missed.

All about Comic-Con

FOX News has a report on Comic-Con, which deals mostly in comics movies, among other things.

"As Hung put it, Comic-Con has become the most effective test-screening for studio comic-book movies. If they don't get a favorable response from the core audience, "they will change the direction they are going with the movie," Hung said.

"Variety did a huge article about how 'Catwoman' and 'Electra' got booed there," he added.

Apparently it was too late to save either of those movies."

That's certainly interesting to know. How come WB for one didn't try and do that?

The Brave and the Bold is back

According to the establishment-based Newsarama, Mark Waid is going to write a new version of the old anthology series, that first began with random characters, then became a Batman-based anthology in 1967, due to the brief popularity of the Adam West TV show. I can tell: this is in order to follow up on Marvel's revival of their own Marvel Team-Up, which drew on the popularity of The Brave and the Bold, with Spider-Man being the main-based star when it ran in its time.

I hope this'll be good when it comes out, and I also know that Waid'll be getting an editorial job similar to what Geoff Johns is getting, but the question is - just how credible will it be, if anything from hereon becomes mandated by Dan DiDio, and even has political biases forced in?

Plus, let's not forget that, post-Identity Crisis, they certainly have been getting very questionable in how they portray continuity now.

Review the book before making it a pick of the month, please

The ultra-establishment Captain Comics writes up another sugarladen column of his, this one being on the new All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder, written by Frank Miller.

"I would say the line is aimed squarely at casual readers," Lee told the online site Newsarama, while wearing his VP hat. "Browsers who have never read a Batman comic but are familiar with the character from other media should be able to pick up ('All Star Batman') and 'get' it right from the start."

In all fairness, I should point out that Marvel Comics did something similar five years ago, which has met with enough success to be copied. Their "Ultimate" line serves up many of the same characters that have been around since the early '60s, but as if they were starting out today. In "Ultimate Spider-Man," for example, Peter Parker is a teenage high school student - whereas in "Amazing Spider-Man," and all other non-Ultimate Marvel books, he's a twentysomething high school teacher. The two Spider-Men inhabit different "universes," and what happens in one doesn't affect the other.

Naturally, he obscures the fact that the Ultimate line (which he doesn't even mention that Marvel claimed to be for younger readers before abandoning that claim quickly afterwards) isn't exactly thought of as being the most well written line of comics ever produced, and ends up no better than its parent line. Early in Ultimate X-Men, the supervillain Magneto violently attacks the White House and the president, and Xavier disposes of him in just as lurid a fashion. And when Millar revisits one of the weakest, if not the worst, moments in Avengers history in the Ultimates, that being the time when Hank Pym lashed out at Janet Van Dyne, he implied that Jan was to blame by having her belittle/provoke Hank, leading to his abusing her within just the first few issues.

Of course, he doesn't mention those stories, now does he?

But if there's anything that really bugs me here,

So the "All Star" approach isn't terribly original. But who cares? Just the idea of a new Frank Miller Bat-story is enough to get this jaded fanboy excited. And it's sufficient to name "All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder" No. 1 my Pick of the Month.

Not so fast.

What exactly does Mr. Smith think he's doing by going along and saying that it's his pick of the month if he didn't even actually read and review it first? It's pretty obvious that he's writing what he thinks of the product's being published without actually reviewing it to boot. What good is that? I may want to check it out, but I still want an opinion on the inner content before I do.

Anti-war positions expressed in a children's comic book

Here's something to think about: are even comics drawn from Saturday morning cartoons safe from anti-war propaganda? The answer: probably not, as this review of Justice League Unlimited #4, written by the ultra-establishment Don MacPherson of the Fourth Rail, shows:

"What makes this story work is the plausible premise. A young man rejects the notion that his people must rely on an outsider for peace, for justice. The plot unfolds in a corny way, but the message is a solid one. The idea Beechen explores here is one of the reasons there is resistance in Iraq to U.S. efforts to bring democracy to the country. The people feel the Americans have usurped control of their destiny, and that's why they're treated as enemies as opposed to being perceived as the heroes the Bush administration wants them to be."

Now this begs the question: what's so wrong with being a hero? Or, what's so wrong about being law-abiding? And who says that it's just and only the Bush administration that wants the Iraqis to be heroes? And how do we know that they don't want to be? And, what planet does MacPherson come from, for heaven's sake?

This is one of the most bewildering opinions I've ever seen, making it sound as if being good is wrong. It's practically mind-numbing. But worst of all, is that this should be taking place in a child-geared comic book.

It's just like they say: comics are no longer safe for kids.

Mr. Zad looks at FF-related material

In the Washington Times, Joseph Szadkowski writes two articles this week on the new Fantastic Four movie. In the first one, he looks at some toy figures and other games based on the Foursome. In the second one, he looks at multimedia based on the Foursome. However, I do wish that he wouldn't waste his time on Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds, which hasn't exactly turned out to be the most successful adaptation of H.G Wells' classic novel, and which, with its political undertones, certainly isn't going to do much better than some of Hollywood's other floundering films.

Superficial review of Batman Allies: Secret Files and Origins 2005

Let's see what we've got here. A review of the Masked Manhunter's current Secret Files entry from the fairly biased Comics Nexus. But what's wrong with this review here? It's that it doesn't give the whole story of what really goes on in the part with the late Stephanie "Spoiler" Brown being discussed.

Now I'm really not that impressed with the Fourth Rail's reviewers, but I'll certainly be willing to thank Don MacPherson for pointing out in his review what the problems are with the special.

"The problem is that the script doesn't tell the reader how the Spoiler died or why Robin blames Batman. Derenick's art seems a lot more polished than usual. His work here reminded me a little of the styles of such artists as Darick (Toxin) Robertson and Amanda (The Pro) Conner.

Oh, and the late Spoiler doesn't get the profile page treatment, despite being the central plot element in this story."

Not to mention that DC (and Marvel) seems to have developed quite a habit of sweeping things under the rug, or taking such an incredibly biased [editorial] position as to not even offering an actual profile for the character, simply because she's dead, whether it's permanent or not, and even trivializing the characters, dead or alive, to boot.

This kind of bias being displayed by the big two's editorial staff is but one of the problems that's destroying comics today. If it's not dealt with, how will they be enjoyable, and how will the readers even be able to care about the characters, dead or alive?

That's why these editorial biases are going to have to be stopped, sooner or later. And one really good way to do so is simply by not buying DC's "product".

Taking a look now simply at comics news

When I first began blogging in March 2005, I thought to blog about both comics and world affairs on the very same blog. But that began getting, IMO, a bit crowded, plus, as I realized, I was spending far too much time in working on everything, so much that I thought to myself, "surely it'd get in the way of both parts?"

So I decided that, if to resume blogging, that I'd split the blog in two, and blog about comics on one, while dealing with world affairs on the other. Not all at once, of course. I should give myself room to breath between whenever I update the blogs. Just a few days at a time are all I really need when dealing with this.

So here now is my new blog in which I try to focus on both the good and the bad in comics, whatever biases I find in the media on comic books and whatever good stuff is being done about it, et cetera. So here we go, to see what can be done to help our favorite comics and their characters through these hard times, and what can be done make them better again!