Odds and ends today, as I’ve been busy training new victims”¦er, I mean, recruits, yeah, that’s the ticket”¦for my department, DESPITE not having been promoted to any kind of leadership title. I believe there’s a technical word for that: bastards.
First, the answers to the crossword puzzle. I’m just going to post the questions with the answers because making the grid with the feeble tools at my disposal is a pain. Answers in CAPS and BOLD!
DOWN
a) My favorite comic. If you don’t know by now, you’ll never understand my columns.THUNDERBOLTS
b) My least favorite Wildstorm comic, historically. But if Gail Simone’s writing it”¦GEN13
c) Marvel’s “Batman” finally got his own book. It’s weird as hell, but I like it.MOONKNIGHT
d) What’s the over and under on how many consecutive issues Portacio will complete?WETWORKS
e) Hal Jordan’s back. And he bores me to death. At least this OTHER book is fun!GREENLANTERNCORPS
f) Amanda Waller makes every book she’s in more interesting. Whodathunkit?CHECKMATE
g) If you know this one, then that’s half the battle.GIJOE
h) Heavy boots of lead, fills his victims full of dread”¦and now it’s happening in comics too!IRONMAN
i) Warren Ellis is tremendous. So is Stewart Immonen. So why don’t I like this title?NEXTWAVE
j) I’ll let the Beastie Boys tell it: _________ Intergalactic!PLANETARY
k) I wonder what issue 100 of this will be like? I’m sure Brian K. Vaughn won’t disappoint!EXMACHINA
l) He’s the future character of Mystery In Space.CAPTAINCOMET Note: my bad if this was confusing, I meant to type FEATURE, not FUTURE. Shows ya how well Daron edits this stuff!
m) I had to cut this title short, it’s probably the longest in comics. Go with ______&_______, two words and put the ampersand in the middle!SUPERGIRL&LEGION
n) The feature character of the new Dabel Brothers imprint, based on Laurell K. Hamilton’s novels.ANITABLAKE
o) This title is definitely NOT the Cap, Thor, Iron Man, Giant Man, Hulk, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch book of your fathers, ‘cause it‘s BETTER.YOUNGAVENGERS
p) Did I mention Gail Simone rules? This is her masterwork, and the best Batbook around.BIRDSOFPREY
q) It’s not Fables, but it’s not as bad as Willingham’s Robin, either.SHADOWPACT
r) Waid + Top Cow = really interesting stuff, when it comes out.HUNTERKILLER
s) The most rebooted Wildstorm book ever. If they don’t get it right this time, forget it.WILDCATS
t) The only character to appear ON more covers than IN the actual issues.RONIN
u) I’m old enough to remember Gomer Pyle saying this all the time.SHAZAM
v) The best X-Book on the market. I asked this little girl in front of their building, and that’s what she told me.XFACTOR
w) I “never forget” to get the longest title that ends in “men”.ELEPHANTMEN
x) I hope this character gets an ongoing title when the mini is done. Nothing beats hysterical psychotic superheroes.CREEPER
y) The color of almost all the “cats” in the Marvel universe.BLACK
z) If you beat her, she’ll sleep with you. What on earth are comics teaching kids today?RENSONJA
A) And oldie but a goodie, and a nice short title to boot.JSA
E) The only book more beloved for it’s letter column than the actual content. If that doesn’t give it away, try this: “monkey sex”.POWERS
N) Almost missed this one. I don’t care much for his new costume. What animal only has 7 legs?SPIDERMAN
ACROSS
1) The best collection of B and C grade characters since Thunderbolts.HEROESFORHIRE
2) If it’s Mike Perkins, its got to be good. God save the Queen!UNIONJACK
3) I fight them, but they always win.AUTHORITY
4) The short version of the title created and starring Rosario Dawson.O.C.T.
5) The Best X-Book in the multiverse. Except for Nocturne. L-A-M-E!EXILES
6) Johnny Cash wrote a song about him. And a guy named Tex is famous for drawing him.GHOSTRIDER
7) It’s DC’s Thunderbolts! Villains doing the right thing! Shame it’s a mini”¦SECRETSIX
8) It’s the short name of the group Zatanna was in, but spelled the way Zatanna would say it.ALJGet it? It’s backwards! Ain’t magic a hoot?
9) The best lawyer comic ever. Because really, how often did Murdoch attend court?SHEHULK
0) Brian K. Vaughn’s fun take on Michael Chabon’s under appreciated character.ESCAPISTS
B) Only in Marvel can homeless kids be entertaining.RUNAWAYS
C) Great Metallica song, silly excuse for a comic about giant robots that kill mutants.O.N.E.
D) I couldn’t fit this super soldie’s full name anywhere, so I used what his friends all call him.CAP
F) There’s 3 of these titles with different adjectives. Take your pick.XMEN
G) I’ll never be able to read “The Three Little Pigs” in the same way again.FABLES
H) An interesting and in my opinion successful experiment in comic marketing. Something to enjoy, every week.FIFTYTWO
I) Her name sounds like she won a beauty contest. And Cho and De La Torre draw her like she did.MSMARVEL
J) I got one word for ya: “Bub.”WOLVERINE
K) One of Jack Kirby’s best creations, getting some great John Romita Jr. love these days.ETERNALS
L) Civil Wa’s best tie in, starring, of all things, the Press.FRONTLINE
M) It’s not quite SHIELD, heck, it’s not quite like anything. But it fills in some quirky gaps in the Marvel Mythos. And it’s got a talking gorilla, which everyone seems to like for some reason.AGENTSOFATLAS
There ya go, hope you had fun! Maybe next time I’ll do a word search. I personally enjoy those more, but man they’re a bitch to type out.
Next up, the Marvel Civil War book: Choosing Sides. At $3.99, this is an extremely mixed bag. It feels too much like the DC “Preview” comics they’ve been doing, like the Brave New World comic that gave folks a taste of upcoming titles like Martian Manhunter and Creeper. I don’t mind the concept, but I shouldn’t have to cough up an extra buck to read something I’m eventually going to read again with the entire story. I don’t know that Choosing Sides is quite a preview or just an attempt to bridge the Civil War event to upcoming new titles, but it’s certainly brought to my mind the term “diminishing returns”. It seems like each short story in the book got progressively worse. I don’t want to rattle on too much about it as this isn’t supposed to be a real review of it, but I’ll gloss over the highlights briefly before getting to the point. Leinil Yu’s art for the “Venom joins the Thunderbolts” chapter is a little hectic but my gripe here is Marc Guggenheim’s decision to use Radioactive Man for some clever “bad cop” quips. That’s just odd to my ear. Fabian Nicieza does a good job characterizing Rad Man as a stoic Chinese scientist type, not a giddy Peter Parker or Clint Barton personality. Just about ANY other Thunderbolt would have played that part better. Waitaminute”¦did I just compliment Fabian Nicieza? Damn I’m getting soft. The Kirkman/Hester/Parks Antman chapter does nothing for me. In fact, the whole Antman book just feels like Marvel’s typical rush job to attempt to compete directly with DC’s offerings. Simone and Byrne are doing a New Atom?!? ZOUNDS! People must want to read comics about extremely small superheroes! Quick, get Kirkman on the phone! Bah, pass. But then it picks up again with the Brubaker/Fraction/Aja “Iron Fist as Daredevil” piece. I was particularly pleased with Aja’s art style, which fits nicely in the Maleev and Lark niche. This one got me excited about the upcoming Iron Fist book. Next, unfortunately, is Mike Oeming and Scott Kolins working up a completely uninteresting US Agent story. Personally, I’m not sure ANYONE could make US Agent interesting. Maybe Brubaker”¦maybe. Ideally, Marvel would just kill the guy and bring back a decent yet deceased character to keep the balance (say, Jack of Hearts! Hells yeah!). But man, what a team to assemble for such an daunting task as making US Agent compelling. Oeming gets to wave his “I’m a friend of Bendis” pass, apparently. The guy’s art is barely adequate and his writing’s not even THAT good. And Kolins is just downright frustrating. I rather liked his run on the Flash, but everything he’s done in Marvel looks horrific. Maybe it’s the color palate? Or maybe he’d benefit from having someone else ink his pencils? I just can’t figure hot why I enjoyed his Flash and run screaming from his Marvel work. No disrespect to the guys who worked on the Howard the Duck piece, but why in the big blue Hell do we EVER need Howard the Duck in ANYTHING? By the hoary hosts of Haggoth, sell him to Disney or Warner Brothers for a tidy sum and never speak of him again.
And now, as promised, the point: somebody got their chocolate in my peanut butter. The last 8 pages tell an odd little Avengers story. I somehow skipped the box on page 4 where they give special thanks to the cast of the Guiding Light soap opera, and that was halfway into the story. By that time I was thinking, “Who’s this electric chick? Are we getting a new Dazzler? A female heroic Electro? Do I care either way? NOPE.” So it wasn’t until the end where I was personally beginning to figure it out”¦Springfield”¦Spaulding family”¦hey, my MOTHER watches a soap about Spauldings in Springfield”¦oh no”¦OOOOHHHH NNNNOOOO”¦they wouldn’t”¦”Learn the origin of Harley’s powers by watching Guiding Light on Weds, Nov. 1st CBS.” Excuse me a moment, I gotta go quote Darth Vader upon his creation”¦”NNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
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It almost makes sense. Comics and soaps do seem like a match. And I have been harping in some recent columns about the need for the industry to expand their audience. But this seems like a pretty big leap. |
Wha”¦who”¦nah”¦whoa”¦huh? Is this a Marvel/CBS Soap Opera crossover?!? I feel unclean. I mean, I watch a soap opera. So does Marvel editor Aubrey Sitterson. It’s called the WWE. There’s lots of backstabbing and people standing around talking and then people get their asses kicked. But soaps skip the ass-kicking. They do all sorts of sappy stuff that women seem to get hooked on like broadcasted crack. My Mom watched Guiding Light for years when my younger siblings were still in grade school. Is that the target audience? Are soccer moms watching last week’s TiVoed Desperate Housewives or the Guiding Light really clamoring for some Wolverine and Captain America in their daytime dramas? Does the world really want Susan Lucci, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.? Somehow I think that would stretch their suspension of disbelief past their breaking points. I don’t remember which soap I was stuck watching, but there was a week when I lived at home that I was sick with a bad bout of flu, and was lying on the sofa, watching TV and slipping in and out of drug induced slumber. I fell asleep when some moron on the Price Is Right was playing the Dice Game and rolled a one. Bob Barker asked, “Is the third number in the price of the car a one?” BUZZZZ! “No, Jimmy, it’s not a one”¦” Jimmy interrupted Bob with, “Honeybunny, is it gonna be higher or lower than a one?” Jimmy obviously had a permanent pass to ride the short bus. Snooze”¦zzzz”¦huh? What the”¦aw man, the remote is way over there”¦ Whatever soap came on, the scene was a boat house. These guys are arguing about a woman and one of them shoots the other one. He decides to get rid of the body by rolling it towards the camera”¦SPLASH!! WHAT?!? Where the Hell is the other wall and the floor? Wasn’t this an enclosed room? It wasn’t designed anything like a pier or a covered “boat port””¦by Odin why do women watch this crap? I need more drugs. A day or two later, I’m still sick as a dog and again I bow out during the inane bidding wars of the Price Is Right. That dirty old man groping the eye candy–disgusting! I could do that for a lot less than what Bob gets paid. I wake up and once again, the soap is on and the remote has magically sprouted legs and sauntered across the room. This wet guy crawls on screen, flops over, and pulls out a necklace charm mo bigger than an American half-dollar piece. It’s dented–where the bullet from two days ago hit him and knocked him out. OH JUST KILL ME! Brandon Lee died from less than that. I mean, who blocks a bullet with a necklace?
Well, Aunt May could probably do it. Bullseye could do it in his sleep. Spiderman, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye”¦damn. It almost makes sense. Comics and soaps do seem like a match. And I have been harping in some recent columns about the need for the industry to expand their audience. But this seems like a pretty big leap. And I don’t think it’s necessarily works well going both ways. Giving a daytime television character superpowers just seems weird. I don’t think Guiding Light viewers are going to want to see that, and I don’t think the typical target audience of Marvel comics, mostly males, mostly younger than 40, are going to be setting their recorders or sneaking home at lunch to catch the electric adventures of Harley the Electric Woman. A smarter move might be to draw females into the comic stores by starting a Guiding Light comic. No Marvel Universe tie-ins, no Doctor Doom, no Iron Man, just a panel by panel Guiding Light story. And then go the other way and debut a Mary Jane Watson character on the soap. Or a Janet Van Dyne. And don’t give anyone powers. Just let the entertainment fields blend gently and naturally, like that first dance you went to. Everyone stood across the room from each other, not sure what to do. And after some punch and the DJ breaking out Young MC’s “Bust A Move” the party is in full effect. You can’t force it. Just let it come. Once the ladies find a store, they’ll find Mary Jane, or Red Sonja, or Strangers In Paradise. And then they might even branch into Heroes For Hire or Spider-Man. And then we got ‘em. And since you know there’s no unattractive people on soap operas, you can bet there will be some guys who’ll pretend to grudgingly allow their girlfriends or wives to erase that NY Jets season opener on TiVo to make room for Guiding Light with some ridiculously hot actress playing Mary Jane. Marvel certainly needs a TV presence. DC’s been enjoying the ratings of Smallville for what, 5 years? NBC’s Heroes is a success. But Marvel gets to turn a Guiding Light character into a mutant? That, folks, is missing the boat. But I guess it could be worse. They could be adding Howard the Duck to the cast.
Welcome to my nightmare.
