I feel like I should wear a hat

It's a quote -- most likely a mangled misquote, actually, given how shitty my recollection is -- from BODY HEAT. So don't worry about it.

Day three of the Respiratory Shit From Hell for SuperFiancee, and instead of being home where I should be giving her as much support as I can, I'm here at the Scream Center doing a 12 hour shift to make up for the hours I lost Monday and Tuesday, which, if my health and my temper hold out, I'll be repeating tomorrow and Friday.

Adding to my woes, I get here, after not being here for four days, only one of which was really at all restful (Saturday, way back in the long ago era Before SuperFiancee Was Sick, when we spent most of the day dropping over $500 from my FSA on two new pairs of glasses for me, fucking BIfocals, Jesus CHRIST), I find a stack of email in my work system, and each one I open gets worse and worse. First, they're doing all this mandatory United Way shit here for the next two weeks, and if I manage to dodge it all without putting any of my inadequate pay into a goddam donations bucket, I'll be a lucky lucky man. Second, they're moving everyone's cubicles again this Saturday, which is always a pain in the ass, with the packing your shit up and then never knowing where you're going to end up and with my luck, I'll be right in front of a supervisor where my computer screen will be constantly under surveillance. Fuck.

But that was just the prelude, they were just warming me up. I open up another email and there it is --

Mandatory Saturday overtime. Two days, one in late September, one in early October.

A little ray of sunshine -- they didn't schedule it during our vacation.

So, you know. The hits just keep on comin'.

I've figured this shit out, though. It's Chris Simms' fault.

See, if that cocksucker Simms had led my boys the Bucs to the victory that was rightfully theirs over the christly Bawmore Ravens on Sunday, none of this would have happened. I know it's true. SuperFiancee wouldn't have gotten sick. I'd have shown up for work as usual on Monday and all would have been well. We wouldn't be moving our cubicles and we especially wouldn't have any for the love of sweet baby jesus MANDATORY OVERTIME scheduled for motherfucking SATURDAY.

Still, SuperFiancee got her doc to phone over a scrip for some serious meds yesterday, and she says she's feeling much much better today. I can only hope. And y'all should, too, because I know all of you who read this blog are big SuperFiancee fans, too. So send all the positive energy you can her way. I need her, you need her, the kids need her. Let's get her back on her feet.

Ups and downs

We got ambushed by some kind of vicious bug sometime on Sunday, with the result that SuperFiancee became increasingly sicker as the afternoon and evening wore on. Spiking a small fever, her head and lungs started to fill with phlegm, causing her to feel weak and nauseated, as well as have difficulty breathing, frequently compounded by very scary coughing fits. She and I both wound up spending a sleepless Sunday night as she hacked and wheezed and worried and ran errands for her, and therefore, we both called in sick yesterday.

I waited on her and foot most of yesterday, after getting a couple of hours of sleep in the baby's bed (which, once, long ago, in another, worser incarnation, was the futon I used to sleep on down in Florida) so she could have ours to herself. She seems to have thrown off most of it, although she's still got the cough, and may well call in sick again today, if she can talk herself into it. Given that she seems to be doing better, I'll go in to work, although I'll worry and fret and bombard her with calls for progress reports on every break.

The SuperKids, thankfully, seem to have avoided the crap, although Super Drama Teen, our oldest, has an intermittent cough now, too. Still, she's got respiratory issues of her own and isn't necessarily coming down with whatever SuperFiancee had... or so we sincerely hope.

We have no idea exactly what it was that hit so hard, or where it came from, or how SuperFiancee wound up with it and I managed a pretty clean miss. But whatever it is, it seems to be passing, for which I heartily thank Whatever There May Be.

In 'up' news, the ever generous S.M. Stirling dropped me an email the other day offering to send me a comp copy of his latest book, as recent money woes have kept me from buying ANYthing at full price in a bookstore lately, especially at hardcover rates. Once I get it and read it, I'll have to see if I'm still on the board over at joebobbriggs.com, and if I am, I'll send them a nice review. Or at least an honest one; but I think I'm safe in assuming it will be excellent.

Now, Mr. Stirling, if we could just get that next installment in the Draka series where the Alliance comes back from Alpha Centauri a generation or so after THE STONE DOGS and liberates Earth, finally expunging the Draka from the human genotype once and for all, I could die a happy man. ;) (Yeah, I read DRAKON. I simply don't accept it as a valid installment in the series. Sorry.)

Okay, I gotta start chasing the day. Any good energy anyone out there has to spare, send it to SuperFiancee.

UPDATE: SF isn't doing as well as I'd optimistically hoped earlier this morning, so she's definitely staying home, and I'm here with her. She's planning to see if her doctor will phone a 'scrip in for some antibiotics, and if he does, I'll be on hand to walk over and pick them up for her. Also, by staying home today, I save her the otherwise necessary long drive out to J-Town to pick me up tonight.

In an odd note of sychronicity, we stumbled onto Love Potion No. 9, an 80s era romantic/sex comedy, on one of our pay stations this morning. What's odd is that the movie stars Tate Donovan, and down under my last entry, you'll see a comment from someone named Tate, who, to the best of my knowledge, has never commented on the blog before.

Strange how things connect randomly like that.

9/11

First I'll direct you over to SuperFiancee's excellent 9/11 tribute post today. If you haven't read it yet, please hit the link. Unlike the fuming diatribe you're about to read here, hers is an entirely compassionate piece, void of anger or finger pointing, a simple remembrance of a day of mourning for a nation, and one person in particular who died on this day five years ago.

Me, I can't rise above it as well as she does.

When I read, on her site or anywhere else, about a particular person who was lost that day, I am filled with sickening rage. I was at work on September 11, 2001, in the Tampa City Clerk's office. A quick check of the PC's calendar function tells me it was a Tuesday, a detail I otherwise would never have remembered. This means it was a pretty slow day in the City Clerk's office; Council meetings were on Thursdays (for all I know, they still are) and there was always a lot of activity then, but Tuesdays were often quiet.

I remember the woman at the desk next to mine, who always seemed to spend most of her day on personal phone calls (which I didn't mind, I felt it amply justified me spending most of my day working on whatever personal writing project I was typing at that day instead of the City Council minutes I was supposed to be transcribing at any given moment). She put down the phone and went to our Deputy City Clerk (the actual City Clerk at that time, Janett Martin, was either already dead of cancer, or busy at home fighting a losing battle against it, I can't remember which, but I do remember Janett was a strong, smart, capable woman and I'm sure the City of Tampa is much the worse without her) and said "My mom just mentioned something about a plane hitting the World Trade Center... okay if I turn the TV on?" She got the okay, and flipped on the set, and that was how it was that, however many minutes later, we all saw the second jet, in a blur of unthinkable velocity, impact the other tower of the WTC.

And, again, however many minutes later it was, that was how we all saw the WTC go slumping, in what seemed like horribly accelerating slow motion, to the ground.

I think we all walked around in shock, feeling strange and fragile and distant, for the rest of the day. I remember someone poking their head into the office and advising us we could leave around 1 o'clock. I remember going home and turning on my TV and watching for the rest of the day. I remember, in succeeding days, cutting a paper American flag out of my local paper and hanging it from my balcony. I remember drawing a cartoon tribute to the valiant passengers on Flight 93, and I remember sending angry emails and posting angry posts about how badly I wanted to see the perpetrators punished, and specifically, how badly I wanted those goddam dancing Arab kids and that goddam dancing Arab woman in the stupid fucking glasses that all the news channels showed a clip of singing and celebrating in the streets, to be bombed back into their component atoms.

And I also remember thinking, and even talking about with a few other people via email, how it would be so obvious that the 9/11 attack was a ploy on the part of Bush, Cheney, the Republican party, the conservative movement, and the international corporations pulling the strings on all of that -- given just how much Bush's otherwise poisoned Presidency was going to benefit from this, given how easy 9/11 was going to make it to move our country towards the kind of totalitarian, permanently militarized police state that all fascists dream of running -- well, you couldn't help but think "maybe they set this up". Or even if they didn't, "maybe they let it happen". Because, you know, when you ask the oldest question in the world in such things -- "who benefits?" -- the answer is, again, obvious.

I thought that, but then dismissed it, because it was, well, unthinkable to me, just as it's unthinkable to all of you few people who read this blog. I believed Bush and Cheney were unprincipled, opportunistic men who put their own interests, and the interests of the companies they worked for and their stock portfolios, ahead of the interests of the people they supposedly represented. I believed they stole the 2000 Presidential election, and I believed they did it through fraud and chicanery and outright thuggery and I believed... I knew... that they were dishonorable and low men of poor character and not at all worthy of the high offices they had bamboozled their ways into. I believed that... yet I could not believe that they were actively mass-murderous, that they could be knowingly complicit in the cold blooded murder of 3,000 of the people whose safety and wellbeing they were charged with.

Or, to put it more exactly, I did not want to believe it and I refused to believe it, exactly the way all of you do. If Cheney and Bush and Rumsfield and Ashcroft et al had conspired in the execution of 9/11, or known about it and refused to take any steps to stop it, they were far worse than simply corrupt politicians. They were monsters; ghoulish mass murderers conniving at atrocity for their own personal gain. I could not believe that; I did not want to live in a world where that was true. It would be like waking up one day and discovering that the President, Vice President, Supreme Court, and Congress of the United States were entirely populated with Satan worshipping vampires.

Nowadays... well, I am not so naive. Nowadays, I believe that Cheney and Bush and Rumsfield and Ashcroft and I cannot even begin to list how many other members of the government, and the shadowy power structure behind our government, did indeed know that 9/11 was being planned, and not only did nothing about it, but actively enabled it. I believe they did it exactly for political gain. I believe that people working within our government brought the two towers down, and killed 3,000 of our fellow citizens as they went about their daily workday lives, simply so they could start a war they had been planning since the 1980s and get rid of the Constitution and funnel trillions of dollars in tax dollars into their own pockets. I believe it because I have read things like this, and this and this and this and this, and even this.

But even when you believe this monstrosity, you still can't get your head fully around it. I and millions of other people like me -- billions, maybe -- sat there and watched the planes hit the towers and the towers and the people in them burn and fall, resulting in thousands of deaths, THOUSANDS. And you can accept that the people in power in our government cooked an election, and you can accept that they are corrupt, and you can accept that they will do anything to move their terrifyingly totalitarian agenda forward -- but, at worst and last, you cannot really accept that they would do anything because, Jesus Christ, they could not really have possibly known about 9/11 months in advance and done nothing, could they? They could not really have actively squelched investigations and buried warnings, could they? They could not actively have even planted explosive devices to bring down the towers if the plane impacts themselves weren't sufficient, could they?

No, no, no. They're bastards, and scum sucking pricks, and lying assholes, but... my God... deep down inside they are good decent patriotic American citizens, right?

You see the insane disconnect right in the middle of that sentence, but, like me, you cannot help but succumb to it. Otherwise, you are living in the world where the people who run our government actually own us, and they are drinking our blood. And who wants that? Who can stand it?

I used to have a fall back position, though. I used to argue against these traitorous, treasonous, blasphemous thoughts with one simple, irrefutable line of reasoning -- they could never get away with anything that big. You can't cover up something that big. It would leak and the media would have a field day with it and it would be the trial of the century.

Almost charming, isn't it, to think I still had that much faith in our media, only five years ago?

I believe the government of the United States of America actively conspired to kill 3,000 or more of its citizens 5 years ago this day. I believe that this government has reaped enormous benefits from this monstrous act, and they continue to milk this atrocity for every drop of advantage they can get to this day. I take some solace in the undeniable fact that this government is an illegal government, an outlaw government, an unelected government that sits in the high places of American power by no right but the fiat of unbridled corruption... but even that solace is limited, because if we Americans had risen up as one six years ago, the way the people of Ukraine did in 2004, none of this would have happened, and the world would not today be so dark a place.

So part of my rage is for me. And for you. And for all of us. But most of it is for the Cheneys and the Bushes and the Rumsfields and the Ashcrofts of this world, who are happy to let a few thousand people die, if it means they get to remake America into a social and political landscape more to their liking.

Happy September 11. It sure is for the people in power.

John Worfin -- DESTROYED!

Which is also about the only word that applies to what the Baltimore Ravens did to my boys the Bucs this afternoon.

It was torture to watch.

That is all.

Weekly reader

Nostalgia was behind the majority of my comics buys this week. High standards and good taste will drive my not bothering to buy any of them again, however.

I've already talked, one entry below, about how simultaneously disappointed and appalled I was by the latest issue of MARVEL TEAM UP, a book I was buying mainly because of the childhood emotional associations its title conjures up in me. Out of the four other comics I bought this week, THE ATOM and MYSTERY IN SPACE were purchased on the basis of a similar impulse.

The new Atom series has been disappointing from the start. Over on Mike Norton's blog, someone (probably the ever astute Orto himself, but it may have been Dwight Williams, I can't remember right now) made the observation that it seemed obvious that Gail Simone wasn't doing much on this book except providing dialogue over John Byrne's fully self plotted pencils. Byrne doing writing of any sort is never pretty, which is an observation I've made at length in other venues. I've hung in there to date out of loyalty to Ray Palmer (a strange motivation, since this version of the Atom isn't Ray, and has little to do with him), a desire to support the first solo title the Atom (any version) has had in over 20 years, and a hope that eventually the Gail Simone who wrote VILLAINS UNITED would reappear actually writing this book. But issue three is just as goddam boring as the first two, and shows just as many of Byrne's tedious plotting hallmarks, and so, I'm outta there. I'm sure if Simone ever does start actually writing the series, it will quickly generate buzz and I can jump back on then.

On a completely different note, I have no idea who created this page about insanely fucked up J.M. deMatteis creations Turner D. Century and Morgan McNeil Hardy, but he or she deserves some traffic. This shit is hysterically funny. And, alas, whoever wrote the page did not make up any of the references to Turner D. Century or Morgan McNeil Hardy. J.M. deMatteis really did create those turkeys back in the 80s, and Marvel really did let them get into print. My God. My God.

Going back to bad comics I bought this week because I was nostalgically fond of their titles, we come to MYSTERY IN SPACE #1, featuring Captain Comet.

I know very little about Captain Comet, although, like a great many people who know very little about Captain Comet, I think he's kind of cool and am somewhat interested in the character. I understand he's a mutant with super strength, telepathy and telekinetic powers who mostly hangs out in outer space, and he had some recent involvement in the cosmic sub-plotline of INFINITE CRISIS -- a branching of that particular story which went nowhere and accomplished nothing, but what the hell.

MYSTERY IN SPACE, of course, is the name of the old 50s rotating anthology title that eventually became home to Adam Strange, for a while. So I thought it was kind of cool when DC revived the title, and gave it to Captain Comet, another Earthman adventuring in outer space who just happened to be named Adam. In fact, I thought it was so cool that I bought the first issue of the series, despite it being written by Jim Starlin, who is a pompous blowhard of a writer/artist who has never had an idea Jack Kirby didn't have first and draw better thirty years before Starlin tore the panel out of its original edition and taped it to a lightbox.

Starlin only writes one thing at all well, and that one thing is death/rebirth stories. Fortunately for us, Starlin knows this, and therefore, it's all he ever bothers to write; I've lost track of how many times Thanos has died and been reborn under Starlin, for example, and I suspect he's getting ready to do it again, in some Marvel cosmic crossover series I have no more interest in than I do in CIVIL WAR, the other big Marvel crossover series that I'm currently assiduously avoiding.

So, Captain Comet gets a death/rebirth story, and it's so painfully badly written that four pages in, the reader loses track of exactly which layer of flashback is being narrated at any given time, and at what particular moment in the fucked up non linear internal timeline the story might be at any randomly chosen juncture.

Some of the panels on a given page are being narrated in first person by Captain Comet, who is dead, or who recently was dead, or something; other panels on the page are filled with expository word balloons being narrated by some talking bulldog who belongs to Captain Comet, assuming, of course, that Captain Comet is actually alive, and not dead. The bulldog, and some yellow skinned ninja chick in an eyepatch whose name we never learn because Starlin is exactly that bad a writer, think Captain Comet is dead, but apparently, Captain Comet is not, because although his body was vaporized, he had some kind of spiritual encounter with another really idiotic and contrived and, until this story, long forgotten Jim Starlin character called The Weird, and now both he and The Weird are alive again, huzzah, huzzah.

Anyway, Captain Comet comes back to life and then Starlin launches into a long flashback about The Weird, a character that, as I previously noted, I'd long since conceived an utterly necessary traumatic amnesia concerning, and that I'm going to probably need serious therapy now that Starlin has made all those painful memories come crashing back again.

Other than every other bad space opera Starlin has written from the first Warlock series to that crappy Dreadstar thing, what this issue mostly reminds me of is Howard Chaykin's truly horrifying TWILIGHT miniseries from sometime in the late 80s. A post CRISIS re-imagining of DC's entire line of space based adventuring characters, TWILIGHT focused on Chaykin's twin obsessions -- lots and lots of fictional characters having weird sex together, and yet another smart ass talking cat. MYSTERY IN SPACE mentions quite a few of the same DC space based characters as were featured in TWILIGHT, although there isn't as much body fluid exchange, and we get a smart ass talking dog instead of a smart ass talking cat, so I guess we're ahead in the deal.

I did enjoy one panel in the book, where we found out that Captain Comet had returned to Earth in the 1980s and hated everything about the decade -- politics, music, and "something called the Secret Society of Super Villains, whatever that was".

Other than that, though, the comic was a busted axle 22 pages for me.

If you don't want to take my word for how bad this comic sucks, though, please understand that Ragnell really likes it. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is the final nail in the coffin for it. But as always, your mileage may vary.

Oh, I shall digress once more at this point and mention that it's Ragnell's blogoversary, and to celebrate, she redid her extensive sidebar, adding a link to this blog right here. This is apparently a much coveted honor among Modern Age fangeek bloggers, and I sincerely appreciate it, and am especially fond of the affectionate nickname she bestowed upon me there -- "Miserable Jackass". I shall do my best to live up this title to in the future, as I obviously have in the past. Thanks, Ragnell. Doubtless, in the annals of miserable jackasses everywhere, you too shall be duly enshrined.

Okay, back to the crap -- I bought two other comics this week, one of which was terminally mediocre, and the other of which was the latest issue of 52, which I refuse to judge by the same standards I use for normal comics, because, well, it's a weekly comic whose characters include every single fictional person in the entire DC Universe, and I'm just not going to subject it to the same level of criticism as I apply to, say, the new 1602 series by Peter David.

Which I found to be kind of tedious and stupid and boring, so I won't buy any more of it. But I have to admit, it may not be entirely David's fault. The art is just friggin' horrible, and let's face it, Neil Gaiman, like Alan Moore, is a virtually impossible act to follow for any other writer. One need only imagine the inadequacies and comparative shortcomings that would necessarily have to be embodied within a Peter David WATCHMEN sequel to understand just how brutally disappointing nearly anyone's attempt to follow on the path Gaiman blazed in his original historical heroic fantasy would necessarily be.

So, deeply though I want to buy a 1602 miniseries centering around the Fantastick Four, I'm going to pass on the rest of this one. But it could always be worse; Brian Michael Bendis or Warren Ellis could have gotten the writing assignment instead. Although in that case, I wouldn't have wasted any money on it.

Hey, speaking of that, let's throw in another review for free of something I took out of the library and read last week -- Warren Ellis' OCEAN.

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has read much of my work that I really found this story arc to be utterly batshit awful. What surprises ME is that otherwise intelligent people like John Rogers simply can't stop raving about the brilliance of Ellis, and I have yet to see so much as a subatomic particle of said brilliance in anything written by Ellis that I've managed to slog my way through.

This is no exception. It's a hundred years in the future, and a black guy who looks just like Samuel L. Jackson and who works as a weapons inspector for the United Nations is on his way out to some moon of Jupiter (or something) that, as it turns out, is one gigantic ocean underneath its perpetual icy shell. See, a United Nations orbital observatory out there has made a big discovery -- thousands of advanced alien sarcophogi a billion years old floating in the depths of this unearthly ocean, each of which contain an alien life form in suspended animation. Turns out these aliens are ancestors of modern day humanity; their DNA is around 98% congruous with ours, and apparently they seeded Earth with the building blocks of human life way back before it even had much of an atmosphere. Or some fucking thing; I don't know. Too much idiocy in one place makes my brain hurt.

Churning onward -- It turns out the alien humanity ancestors (or "our parents", as the characters in the novel keep insisting on referring to them) are incredibly evil; all they like to do is wage war amongst themselves and they have incredibly advanced technology that is capable of blowing up entire planets. Apparently they blew up the planet that is now the Asteroid Belt, and they also vaporized Mars' one time Earthlike atmosphere, causing the oxygen in it to be seared into Mars' outer crust, staining it red.

But, see, there's an evil corporation (Ellis cleverly names this 'the DOORS Corporation', and they specialize in a universally used software that makes computer screens turn blue and die three times a day, get it, GET IT, nudge nudge wink wink SAY no more) and this evil corporation has its own satellite way out there, too, and they know about the sleeping aliens and they want them for themselves. Exactly what they figure on doing with thousands of all powerful entirely evil aliens who like to do things like vaporize inhabited planets I could not tell you, and neither could anyone else, because there is no sensible rationale why any for-profit corporation would want to have anything to do with wiggy-ass unstoppable nut jobs like that. But the chief executive on the spot is conveniently bugshit, so we don't need any steenking rational motivations for him; he's going to wake the aliens up and no sonofbeech-sheet United Nations lawn jockey is gonna get in his way.

So, you know, there's one fight in this evil guy's office and another fight on the United Nations satellite and the Samuel L. Jackson guy cleverly manipulates the artificial gravity to win which makes all the geeks in the audience cum in their shorts and then all the good guys get into a diving ship and head for this convenient wormhole portal stargate thing that the aliens set up a billion years ago that empties out very close to Earth, and they have to get there really quick, because it turns out that the Samuel Jackson guy has somehow hacked into the ancient alien computers and overriden one of their super powerful planet killing phaser banks and pointed it at the center of the ocean-moon, and when it goes off it will blow up the entire planet and kill all the aliens and everyone else, too, if they don't get through that wormhole fast enough.

But, they do, so that's all right.

Besides the Samuel Jackson guy, who really hates guns but who is really really good with them when he has to use them (oh, the angst; oh, the internal conflict) there is a really hot looking Indian or Asian or some frickin thing chick who is the commander of the United Nations orbital observatory, who never does very much besides thrust her excellent bosoms against the taut fabric of her tight coverall, and there's this other really hot redheaded chick who is a pilot who likes to fly spaceships really fast and crash them into things and who is constantly talking about how horny she is. Now, if you or I or Bill Mantlo or even Ernest Fucking Hemingway His Damn Self were to create exactly this character, a million liberated readers of either or both genders would rise up righteously and denounce us for writing a female character who is nothing more than a man with tits, but since Warren Ellis did it, and Warren Ellis is this brilliant 21st Century writing deity, I guess this is a fabulously insightful and amazingly innovative portrayal of human femininity. Or something.

Anyway, beyond the fact that pretty much everything in this comic book story is either boring or stupid or both from start to finish, what mostly occurred to me when I read it is that for a singularly original visionary, Ellis certainly seems to steal a great many of his ideas from other sources, and worse, he steals really insanely moronic ones, to boot. I mean, if I didn't believe that Jeff Goldblum could upload a functional computer virus from a 3.5 floppy disk to an alien computer in an alien fighter ship in INDEPENDENCE DAY -- and I really, really fucking didn't -- I'm certainly not going to believe that Samuel L. Jackson can somehow hack into the programming instructions of a billion year old alien computer belonging to a billion year old alien race whose technology is so advanced that they can stay alive in suspended animation for a billion years, much less, turn entire Earthlike planets into asteroid belts, in OCEAN. And I really, really fucking don't.

But maybe it's just me. I understand a great many people out there think Warren Ellis is the greatest thing since, I don't know, boobs, or something, and a lot of them are very intelligent. I, however, just don't frickin' get it.

I did enjoy 52 this week, though, a great deal more than I liked it last week, when goddam Lobo showed up, and Adam Strange didn't even outmaneuver him into a black hole or anything.

This is how a gay man dies

What the hell is Robert Kirkman thinking?

I didn’t like Kirkman straight off. My brother Paul handed me a big stack of Kirkman’s work on CAPTAIN AMERICA, advising me that it was brilliant and I had to check it out, as Kirkman clearly loved Cap and was basing all his stories on Cap’s history and past continuity and was doing a lot of interesting characterization.

Paul figured he had another sure home run here, since he’d already convinced me to read Joss Whedon’s run on ASTONISHING X-MEN against my better judgement (I hadn’t picked up a New X-Men title in I could not tell you how long, and had honestly never planned to again until and unless Marvel let me write the title) and I’d surprised myself by liking that arc quite a lot.

But Kirkman is no Joss Whedon (which is not entirely a bad thing; Joss has his flaws as a writer, yes he do) and Kirkman’s run on CAPTAIN AMERICA mostly drew on details from the grueling endless hell that was the Gruenwald era of the title, and while others may have found the stuff charming, I simply found it depressing and unfathomable. SHIELD has LMDs that are so lifelike Captain America can have sex with one and not know its not human? Moreover, the LMD itself doesn’t know it’s actually an LMD? I don’t know. Marvel has some seriously advanced tech, but when you take stuff to this level of sophistication, it becomes pretty much impossible for me to suspend my disbelief any further. Unless you’re dealing with Superman’s super-intelligence and advanced Kryptonian circuitry, I simply don’t accept that humanoid machines of this level of sophistication are possible in a world that even vaguely resembles the one we all live in.

Despite that, though, I let Paul talk me into reading some of Kirkman’s run on MARVEL TEAM UP. There were various reasons for this. Probably the biggest and most significant, though, was that MARVEL TEAM UP is a series title that is redolent with childhood nostalgia for me (even though that vast bulk of the original run was monumental, I mean, truly staggering, brain-boggling crap) and when someone publishes an ongoing comic book series with that title, well, I really want to buy it. So, I figured, what the hell, maybe it’s tolerable. (At the very least, MTU has always been a comic that keeps its continuity more or less to itself, so the book probably wouldn’t be reiterating a lot of stuff from a time period that I hated, the way Kirkman had in the Cap title.)

Kirkman’s run on MTU has been interesting, entertaining, and occasionally, even pretty good. It’s never been what I’d call fabulous, but, as I say, the very phrase MARVEL TEAM UP is like a siren call to me, and as long as the book wasn’t overly objectionable, well, I kept buying it. As a very very long time Marvel fan, who has been completely and consistently appalled at so called ‘developments’ on pretty much all my favorite Marvel titles over the past (fill in your own number of years – for FANTASTIC FOUR it’s, like, thirty, for CAPTAIN AMERICA it’s around 25, for AVENGERS, it’s only, maybe, four since Geoff Johns stopped writing the title), I find that no matter how badly I want to, I simply cannot read, much less buy, the vast majority of the toxic bilge being pumped out under the Marvel banner right now. FANTASTIC FOUR, SPIDER-MAN, CAPTAIN AMERICA, AVENGERS… God, AVENGERS, it makes me want to cry like a little girl just thinking about the heap of shit that AVENGERS has been turned into lately… they’re all horrible and terrible and dreadful and worthless and insulting and humiliating and I hate them and can’t even stand looking at their covers when I go into a comics shop nowadays.

But I really hate the idea of just finally giving up on the entire Marvel Universe, so, when I discovered that MARVEL TEAM UP was, at least, consistently readable and occasionally good, and it generally didn’t rub my nose in the redolent omnipolitan skylines of ursine feces that the remainder of the mainstream Marvel Universe has lately been reduced to, well, I was in.

But, just as I have recently (last couple of months) finally had to give up on the other Marvel title I was buying for exactly these reasons (THUNDERBOLTS), well, so too has the most recent issue of MARVEL TEAM UP finally pushed me to a point where it… along with the entire Marvel Universe (sob) has finally been chucked out the friggin’ window.

Here, if you want to know, is why. (Actually, the reason why is here whether you want to know or not.)(Oh, yeah... if you haven't read MTU 24 yet, and you think you might... spoilers below, True Believers. You have been warned.)

Because, as I said at the top, I cannot for the frickin’ life of me figure out what the hell Robert Kirkman is thinking.

Couple issues back in MTU, Kirkman introduces a new character called Freedom Ring. (The character’s origin is convoluted, tracing back into other ongoing storylines in MTU, but I’m just going to exercise discipline and only talk about the elements of the character that really matter to this discussion and try not to digress into, you know, exactly WHERE his super powers came from, which is a whole ‘nother thing.)

Freedom Ring was interesting. He basically has a ring made out of fragments of the Cosmic Cube, which allows him to rearrange reality however he likes it – but only within 30 feet of the ring.

Admirably, once he figured out more or less what the ring did, he decided to become a superhero. First time out of the box, he wound up more or less teaming up with Spider-Man against a rampaging Abomination. This didn’t go well for him; he let ‘bommie get too close, and took a hard shot to the chest that, while it wouldn’t even have bruised the Hulk, pretty much killed Freedom Ring. Or, at least, it put him into a coma for weeks and he would have been paralyzed for life, if he hadn’t used his ring to regenerate his legs once he got out of the hospital.

Undaunted, he decides to continue being a superhero, this time around, with some coaching from a neighbor, who is also a wannabe superhero calling himself Crusader. This particular neighbor happens to be a Skrull who was sent here to spy on Earth, and who decided, as so many Soviet sleeper agents have done over the years, that he likes it better here than at home. So he’s trying to make a place for himself within the Earthly superhero community by surreptitiously using his Skrull shapeshifting powers to battle for all that is good and right and decent.

Under this guy’s tutelage, Freedom Ring begins to use the ring in far less obvious ways. (Crusader points out to FR that , basically, when you call yourself something that calls attention to the item you get all your powers from, and when you display your powers in a form that makes it obvious where they come from, well, you are begging the bad guys to snatch your power source away from you, which never goes well. ) So, while FR doesn’t change his name, he does start using the ring to enhance his body, giving himself invulnerability, and super strength, and like that, so it won’t be quite so obvious that, hey, he’s got a ring that makes him omnipotent, within a very limited range.

So we’re all set to see Freedom Ring vs. The Bad Guys Round Two, fully expecting that this time around, our hero will be older, wiser, more experienced, and therefore, make a better showing for himself.

Oh, one more thing – Freedom Ring is gay.

No, no, I don't mean "Freedom Ring is a sissy" or "Freedom Ring is a terrible character" or "I hate Freedom Ring". I'm not using 'gay' as an insult, as in "Freedom Ring may be the gayest goddam idea I have ever seen in my life." No, I'm just telling you -- Freedom Ring is gay. Homosexual. He goes on movie dates with guys, in hopes of gettin' some.

Yeah, I don’t know what Kirkman was trying to say with the ‘gay’ thing, either. But I’m also not sure he thought it through. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, well, he may have just wanted to give the audience a gay hero, or, to put it another way, a hero who just happens to be gay, and whose sexual orientation really doesn’t matter, one way or the other… which would be a subtle, if powerful, argument for acceptance of alternate lifestyles. Here’s this guy with a pretty typical superhero origin, trying to do typical superhero things, and he’s likable and admirable and sympathetic and we want him to do well and beat the villains and be respected by the superhero community and oh-yeah-cough-cough-by-the-way-not-that-this-is-any-big-deal-or-anything- but-he’s-gay.

Problem is, you create a gay superhero in a continuum that pretty much lacks anything remotely like gay superheroes, and, well, you sort of make the poor guy into an iconic emblem of all gay people everywhere. You may not like that – I really don’t, I think it’s entirely unfair and I tend to bridle whenever a particular character (or a particular human being, for that matter) starts to be treated like A Symbol For This Entire Subset Of Humanity – but, well, that’s just how it works. When Luke Cage or the Black Panther get their asses kicked in four color comics, it’s not just them getting bitch slapped around, it is The Entire African-Descended Community In Comics. When any poor female character in comics is depicted baking a cake or trying desperately to get her MAY-un to marry her or being sexually harassed by Green Arrow or getting killed in some big ticket maxiseries or doing anything else that depicts her as weak or scheming or dependent or vulnerable or powerless or a victim, the forces of liberation rise up righteous and declare that THAT character, Sue Storm or Janet Pym or Betty Banner or Sue Dibney, THAT one right there, is a symbol of every twisted repressive sexually disturbed misogynistic fantasy that male creators in comic books all universally hold dear, and Something Must Be Done.

And, when you’ve got, like, one gay male character in comics trying to be a superhero, and first time he hits the street, he gets punched into a coma by a powerful but, let’s face it, third rate dipshit supervillain that Hellcat could probably take if she had a briar patch to lure him into, well, you have to wonder… is this deliberate? Is Kirkman trying to say that gay people shouldn’t be superheroes? That there is something about a gay man that makes him intrinsically unsuitable to defeat monstrous, ultrapowered evil?

But, wait – he didn’t die, eventually, he got better and he was just crippled for life, which is worse, but then he used his ring to heal himself, and he’s getting right back on the horse… okay. So, you know, gay guys aren’t intrinsically deficient as potential superheroes, he’s got some guts and some determination; he made a mistake but he’s going to learn from it and be a more effective hero. Good for him.

But then this latest issue comes out, and yeah, it’s the long awaited Round Two for Freedom Ring and his new partner, the Skrull calling himself Crusader.

And who are they putting him up against? This alternate universe crazy ass homicidal Tony Stark who calls himself Iron Maniac, who has singlehandedly been kicking around the entire line up of New Avengers for the last three issues of MTU.

It’s – okay, I want to digress in so many different directions right at this point.

Let’s see – minor notation: keeping me even marginally involved in the Marvel Universe requires a few things currently, and one of them is, you mention the horrific crap Brian Michael Bendis is inflicting on the Avengers as little as possible. This is difficult, I know, since so much of what is going on in the Marvel Universe, what with CIVIL WAR and all, seems to originate and flow out of Bendis’ NEW AVENGERS right now, like sewage from a ruptured septic tank. But you gotta make the effort or you’re gonna lose me, and for the past couple of issues, Kirkman hasn’t been making the effort. I know, I know, Spider-Man is now in the Avengers and he’s wearing this horrible new costume Tony Stark gave him and he’s the more or less star of MARVEL TEAM UP and what are you gonna do, but, well, still. Every time you make me confront and accept the New Avengers in a title I’m buying, you add another few drops of rocket propellant to the jet pack that eventually will blast me screaming out of the Marvel Universe. I'm just sayin.

Somewhat more significant digression – let me just stress again that I really really hate it when a character is suddenly perceived as a Symbol For An Entire Subset Of Humanity, or, really, any kind of symbol at all, rather than simply an individual character or (if well written enough, which is always my preference) an actual person. So I’m really, really resisting the whole “Oh my God you can’t do that to Freedom Ring because whatever you say about Freedom Ring is something you are saying about EVERY GAY MAN IN THE UNIVERSE”. I’m really digging my heels in against it, I want Freedom Ring to be just a character who happens to be gay and that’s okay and we’re moving on.

Just as I truly truly loathe it when I read some fine fellow somewhere telling people that the IDENTITY CRISIS miniseries was a dreadful and horrible insult to women everywhere because it showed one woman as a victim and another woman as a scheming murderous bitch, well, again, I’m really trying hard not to say “Jesus Christ, look what you did to Freedom Ring, fuck, Kirkman, do you really hate homos THAT DAMN MUCH?”

Really trying hard.

But… I don’t know… sometimes… it’s… you gotta…

All right. So Freedom Ring is gay, and he nearly died after his first, spectacularly inept outing as a superhero, and we all love a good tale of redemption, so we’re waiting for him to come in and totally kick ass and save the day. I mean, geez, here’s Iron Maniac booting the entire current line up of Avengers around (which isn’t saying much, when you got, like, Luke Cage and Spider-Woman and for the love of sweet kitten cuddling christ WOLVERINE in the team, but, still) and Freedom Ring coming in like gangbusters and you just know he’s going to redeem himself totally and Cap will invite him to join the Avengers and that’s kind of ridiculous but still, it will be suh-WEET! Because we like the guy, we want to see him do good.

And then, Kirkman has him do this.



Now, this is just stupid. There is no other word. Well, perhaps ‘retarded’ would be a better word, but, hey, let’s stick with stupid. It’s not foolish, it’s not unwise, it’s not silly, it’s plain ol’ goddam stupid. You’re fighting this guy, you’ve seen the Avengers fighting this guy, you’ve had your new partner lecture you endlessly on not telling the bad guys where you get your powers from or how your powers work, you’ve had your ass handed to you once already by another supervillain/monster and this particular supervillain you’re fighting now has already beaten you like a big brass gong a few minutes previous to this. So, you know, landing right in front of the guy, and bragging about exactly what it is you are doing to him, and how you're doing it – no other word. STOOOOO-PID.

Lest we forget, Freedom Ring has a… well, a power ring… that lets him completely control reality to suit himself within a radius of 30’ feet. And as I said, he’s already had the crap kicked out of him by this guy once, earlier in this issue, and right before he lands and starts doing his idiotic dominance display on Iron Maniac, he watched Iron Maniac basically put his fist through his partner Crusader’s thorax. Does this teach him caution? Does it make him wary? Does it cause him to pause, and reflect, and then do something intelligent and/or wise, like use his ring to make himself invisible and undetectable, and then get within 30 feet of Iron Maniac and use his ring to make Iron Maniac unconscious, or, you know, DEAD?

Nooooooo.

He does… well… again, see above. Not only does he do something mind bogglingly STUPID, but it’s a mind bogglingly stupid thing he has been specifically advised NEVER TO DO.

Honestly, he’s just too goddam dumb to live, and, well.. funny thing about that...

This is all aggravating enough, but I could put it down to a writer jerking his audience’s chain, and if that’s what he’s doing, well, I can’t fault him for it. You buy emotional gravity for your story by killing characters that the audience likes. I know it; I’ve done it in six out of seven of my unpublished novels, in fact, in EARTHQUEST, I got to the end and realized I didn’t have anyone likeable that I could bear to kill off and since I knew I needed to, I went back and retroactively inserted someone, generating the poor slob pretty much out of the very empty air on the spot. It was gratuitous, but, you know, you gotta do what you gotta do.

So if Kirkman was just doing that, creating a character for no reason except to make us like him and then kill him off, as a kind of ‘look, see, just because you’re a hero, that doesn’t mean anything, because even a hero can die’ sort of thing, well… yeah. I can grudgingly respect that. ‘Grudgingly’ because, well, it just ain’t true; heroes that have their own titles and that make money for the company will NEVER die, and even the ones that do die, if enough fans like them, will eventually come back to life… but, still. I could see and respect what he was trying to do.

But, let us remember, Freedom Ring is gay. And he’s very nearly the only male gay character in the entirety of superhero comics (I understand there is a gay teenage couple in YOUNG AVENGERS, and my wishing them merrily in hell has nothing to do with them being gay, but everything to do with them being Young Avengers, because Marvel doesn’t need its own New Teen Titans title and frankly, the idea of a character named Hulkling makes me yearn for death, and not my own, either). So whether we like it or not, and I don’t, whatever happens to Freedom Ring is going to be perceived, rightly or wrongly, as something happening to EVERY GAY MALE IN EXISTENCE.

So, bad enough that Freedom Ring is a spectacularly incompetent gay male superhero, and an abysmally stupid one, at that, who nearly got killed in his first fight and who really DID get killed in his second one.

But… this is how the poor dumbass sonofabitch actually died.



I mean, holy shit.

I have been reading comics for very very close to 40 years now (and boy, are my arms tired). In that time, I have read hundreds of thousands if not millions of comic book stories, have seen millions if not billions of individual comic book panels, and have witnessed dozens if not hundreds of character deaths in superhero comic books.

I have never before seen anything remotely like this.

I have never seen a follow up panel bearing even the vaguest resemblance to this.



I mean... DUDE!!! EWWWW! HIS CORPSE IS RIDDLED WITH FRICKIN HOLES!!!

(You can tell this isn't a MAX book, though, as despite the fact that Freedom Ring looks like an oddly humanoid colander, there's not a drop of blood to be seen.)

Now, with any other character I’d just say “oh GROSS, you stupid idiot, why didn’t you just make him unconscious, or better, DEAD, while hiding around a corner? I mean, GEEZ!” And then, a few seconds later, repeat “oh GROSS”.

But… you know… Freedom Ring is GAY.

Was gay, I mean.

I mean, okay, yes, this is insanely sickening and gruesome. But, come on, now… are we supposed to just accept that this completely singular and utterly excruciating and grotesquely grisly death… in which this, one of the very few male gay superheroes in all of comics is, you know, multiply penetrated/impaled by huge phallic objects simultaneously… that this is just, what… coincidence?

It’s… I don’t know. I want to say, sure, the fact that the guy is gay had nothing to do with the horrifyingly gruesome, agonizing doom that Kirkman scripted for him, or that the artist drew for him. And maybe it didn’t, it’s all subjective, maybe I’m perceiving something that was never intended.

Still, here’s the deal – this GAY guy gets a ring that makes him all powerful, for a radius of 30’ around him. He decides to put on a costume and fight crime. He gets his ass kicked and nearly dies, and then, he does something incredibly stupid and gets killed – by multiple penetrations with enormous phallic objects, after being symbolically emasculated two panels prior to his death.

I mean… JE-sus H. Kee-RIST.

I don’t know what to think. Yeah, Freedom Ring got a heroes’ send off at his funeral. Yeah, Cap picked him up and cradled him in his arms and acknowledged that he was a hero and he had saved everyone. Yeah. I get all that.

But he was stupid, and he died, and he died in a manner that is atrocious and hideous and horrific and as far as I can tell, pretty much unique in the history of superhero comics, and that is, on a symbolic level, repulsively, grotesquely sexual.

So, I’m left to wonder – is whoever came up with this, writer or artist, the biggest gay basher working in comics today? Consciously or subconsciously?

Whatever the case may be, well, between this repulsively ugly, grisly, gratuitous, possibly toxically homophobic death of a character I liked, and way way WAY too much exposure to goddam Bendis’ goddam New Avengers, well, I’m no longer buying MARVEL TEAM UP.

Much as I hate to say that.

Someday, maybe, a writer I like will start writing something at Marvel again and I will return to the shores I have loved so long, so deeply, and been so disappointed by for so many years now.

Someday.

Maybe.

But for right now, all I’m buying is whatever Geoff Johns and Gail Simone and Greg Rucka are writing over at DC.

Until they impale some gay guy on a dozen phalluses at once, I mean. Then I'm outta there.

Mr. Collett Kicks My Ass

Hey, I just recently noticed my good buddy Tony the C. slapping me around a little bit on his blog.

I can't blame him. I am pretty frickin' insufferable. But I did want to say, I'm happy he enjoyed THE CHAMPIONS in their recent TPB, and now he can understand exactly why I ran the team during that HeroClix game he totally PWNed my sorry butt in. Despite their manifold failings, well, I just love those guys.

I do have to disagree, though, when he says that differences of opinions simply add up to tallies on a chalkboard, and there is no reason why one of us should really want to convince the other as to the validity or lack thereof of a particular point of view.

See, here's the deal -- if a great many people buy really really bad writers doing really really vile things to characters that I love, then editors will encourage really really bad writers to continue doing really really vile things to characters that I love. I dislike this intensely. So, I argue. Sometimes, vociferously.

I think this point is indisputable. They gave Bendis AVENGERS, and he started out by killing Hawkeye. At this point some sane, benevolent, caring individual should have whacked him sharply in the testicles with a rugby bat, and if they had, we'd all be much better off for it, but being civilized and hoping for the best, we all forbore, and now, Wolverine is an Avenger and Spider-Man has mechanical tentacles and no secret identity and Luke Cage looks like Wesley Snipes in an inflatable muscle shirt and the entire frickin' Marvel Universe is, like, beating itself about the head and shoulders with a metal folding chair as it resolutely transforms itself into something much like Alan Moore's WATCHMEN setting, without the zippy dialogue or the pirate comics or the excellent Dave Gibbons artwork. And it makes me sad.

Now, if I could only convince a few thousand other fans that Bendis is an enormous pulsating blowhole who would serve this fabulous funny book industry better as a men's room attendant in Muncie, Indiana than as the writer of anything, anywhere within the vast and varied realm of superhero comics, well, the world would be a better place... not just for me, but for all the other Avengers fans, too. Because, whether they know it or not, the alternate timeline where Wolverine never joined the Avengers is a far, far better place than this.

So, while often you have to agree to disagree, that's not to say there is no value in the attempt to illuminate, nor no purpose in eventual success at same.

As to Batman not belonging in the Justice League, I say thee nay, True Believer. Batman may well not belong in the mainstream DC Universe, but if we accept that he should be there, his grim n gritty urban landscape sprawled all pock marked and graffitified next to the scintillating skyline of Metropolis and the old fashioned architectural charms of Keystone, well, certainly, the Darknight Detective can hang out in the cave or the satellite if he feels the urge. The JLA has never been a team of balance, and if we can accept Tony Stark dropping to his knees and reaching for some Canadian mutant's zipper as he whimpers and sobs about how badly the Avengers need what Wolverine has, well, I have considerably less trouble comprehending that DC's Greatest SuperHeroes might find Batman's intellect, logic, and deductive abilities somewhat handy, as well.

But that's just me. Your mileage may vary, and this isn't an argument I feel needs to be won, since, clearly, DC's editors already agree with me, anyway, and seem to have for the last fifty years or so, at least.

And your little dog, too

In a post entitled "Help Me Out Here", girl-geek and fempowerment blogger extraordinaire Ragnell advises --
I should have joined in the conversation in this post, but I'm trying to keep to my "Don't Comment While Angry" rule. It's difficult, because whenever I read the discussion, I get to a single comment and freeze in my tracks.

It's a very condescending comment, one that goes out of its way to oversimplify the opposing argument (and completely disregards my oft-stated opinion on Steve Trevor). I try to pass by it, but I can feel my fingernails turn to claws and snakes rustle in my hair. That comment colors every comment after it. It brings out the monster in me. I read through the rage and neutral statements seem like unprovoked attacks. I'm licking my fangs as I formulate my responses, until I realize that if I join in I'll find myself attacking every commenter and making no headway in the process.

To prevent this, I wait a few hours, look again, and freeze again.

The only way to solve this, is to take that comment out of the conversation and study it directly. And I need some help with this.

Once again, finding male companionship is equated with marginalization of female characters.

Sad.

What do you think, readers?

It's important to note here that while I am one of Ragnell's regular readers, she isn't addressing the question to me. She doesn't want to hear anything from me; or so I intuit, given that the last time I posted a pretty innocuous response to one of her comment threads, she doused me in kerosene and set me on fire in those same threads.

And that's kind of what I'm talking about here. Not the specific conflict between Ragnell and I, which essentially could be boiled down to, we're both assholes and we've decided to be assholes who dislike each other, and that happens roughly one billion times a second throughout reality, so who cares? No, I'm talking about a more general phenomena that I see every day on the Internet, specifically, on blogs – the "somebody tell me if I'm wrong" plea for help – directed specifically into a continuum that the poster knows is populated almost entirely with sycophantic asskissers who will reassure them that they are correct, regardless of the situation… a continuum that the poster has, in fact, deliberately created, by resolutely running out anyone who has shown the temerity to disagree with them in any way over the course of the continuum's existence.

Or, as I sometimes refer to it, "Seeking validation in Echo Canyon".

Ragnell is hardly the only person who does this, she's just the most glaring example I have in front of me right now.

Nobody who comments regularly on Ragnell's blog is going to provide her with the help she is pleading for. None of them are going to give her anything remotely like a valid reality check. Why? Because anyone who tries to tell Ragnell anything she doesn't want to hear gets hit with so much public vitriolic hostility that they tend to just give up and go away. And if you don't believe that, and don't want to accept my example as binding, just take a look at the comment threads underneath that entry, and see where West, the guy Ragnell is pissed off at, ends up.

Ragnell's commenters are, many of them, intelligent and articulate, and during the brief time I was allowed to post comments there, I myself enjoyed taking part in the conversations. Ragnell herself is bright and perceptive, most of the time. But, like most people, she prefers to hear opinions that largely agree with her own, and the intelligent discourse she is looking for is largely something that will allow her to continue to see herself as the smartest person in the room.

This is hardly uncommon, but it is really sad… and, well, when you see a statement like the one I started this entry with, it can be borderline scary.

Ragnell advises us that because of this one comment, she "can feel [her] fingernails turn to claws and snakes rustle in [her] hair". That this comment "brings out the monster in [her]". That she "read[s] through the rage" and wants to "attack… every commenter".

What has provoked this Olympian, Amazonian bout of fury? What has driven Ragnell to the very limits of her self control, to a point where, were she a cousin to Bruce Banner and she had just received a transfusion of his blood, would see her transforming into a raging half ton of scantily clad, fanboy favorite distaff emerald fury?

Well, it's because "it's a very condescending comment, one that goes out of its way to oversimplify the opposing argument" and "completely disregards my oft-stated opinion on Steve Trevor".

Did you get that? Someone posted a comment that in her subjective opinion was 'very condescending', that 'oversimplified the opposing argument' and that (and this, I suspect, is what really irks her) 'completely disregards' (emphasis hers) one of Ragnell's most frequently stated opinions regarding an obscure comic book character.

Letting yourself get this crazy about this stuff is, well, crazy. I don't know if Ragnell is overworked, or not getting enough sleep, or just found out she has cancer, or someone she loves just got carried off by a twister, or she just badly, badly needs to spend twenty minutes' private time in a vibrating La-Z-Boy recliner. Whatever the case may be, however, going into a near murderous fit of psychotic rage because, you know, somebody posted something in her comment thread – something that was in no way personally insulting or abusive – something about, you know, frickin' comic books… well, this is not the response of a reasonable person of wisdom, maturity, or good will towards their fellow beings.

Ragnell. Sweetie-Baby. Take a deep breath. Release your death clutch on the mouse. Back slowly away from the keyboard. Go outside. Get some air. Get some chicken in you. Have a mint chocolate chip ice cream cone. Buy yourself a book. Get a back rub.

Nobody in your comment threads is going to tell you how absolutely batshit freaked out nutzo you sound right now. Why? Because it isn't something you want to hear, and when your commenters say things you don't want to hear, you flog them through the streets of Jerusalem and up the slopes of Golgotha and crucify them without nails on a cross of humble yew with a shingle upon which has been lettered THIS GUY PISSED ME OFF, HOW ABOUT YOU, CHARLIE? above their heads, and you damned well do it right out there where everyone else can watch, too. And if you think the commenters who stick around on your blog aren't smart enough to learn a lesson from how you treat anyone who pisses you off, you are sadly underestimating them.

I am offering this response to your post, not because I care, particularly, as in point of fact, my personal opinion of you is every bit as low as your personal opinion of me – but because you do have some writing talent, and you are intelligent, and you're even capable of genuine wit on occasion, when you aren't trying to see whether you can get both shoulders up past your lower colon along with your head this time. (I'm also offering it because you haven't been terribly nice to me in the past, and given an opportunity to slap you around in public, well, I should probably rise above it, but, hell, sometimes I just ain't that enlightened. Like Dick Jones, I say good business is where you find it.)

Intelligence is rare, writing talent is rarer, and actual wit is a pearl beyond price, especially out here on the Internet amongst the geeks and the trolls and the "Hehe totaly PWNed yr ass dude" subliterates.

So, out of respect for all these rare qualities you possess, I say – take a breath. Take a break. Take a powder. Take a vacation. Take a chill pill.

It's just frickin' comic books. Get a damn life.*



*Please note, I have to be pretty gravely concerned before I would use a phrase I normally abhor as much as I despise 'get a life' to a fellow geek, however much I may dislike her.

Far too much self gratification

MAOTE: More of this?

ME: Well, I have a lot of different little things to post about, and I could do one of those ‘grab bag’ posts, but whenever I do, I get zero comments. I mean, ZERO.

MAOTE: But the self gratification stuff…

ME: Well, people say they like it, and usually I get at least a few comments.

MAOTE: And it’s all about attention.

ME: Pretty much always, yeah. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t keep our journals on the goddam World Wide Web, would we?

MAOTE: Excellent point. Plus, you know, whenever you do this you really piss off all the heeby-jeebie Modern Age fans who lurk around on this blog waiting for you to show your ass.

ME: Pissing off heeby-jeebie Modern Age fans is never a bad idea.

MAOTE: Okay, so, first up…?

ME: No, no, you’re supposed to ask me leading questions and shit.

MAOTE: Ah. Well… so, what do you think of your girl Katherine Harris now that she’s won the Republican primary ?

ME: I think I won’t be surprised if a tragic accident occurs to her fairly soon, so the Repubs can put a candidate into the race who might have a shot against Nelson. Harris is poison in a statewide race in Florida, and everybody knows it.

MAOTE: Will you weep for her?

ME: No, I’ll just consider it evidence that karma actually exists.

MAOTE: Okay then. So, you mentioned how it was all about attention. So what do think about this story on all the NFL’s wide receivers who act like assholes, in order to get attention?

ME: I think it’s very ironic. Team publicists trawl through all those articles looking for any mention of their own players, because any publicity is good publicity. The Bucs have two of the best wide receivers in the League in Joey Galloway and Michael Clayton, but since Galloway and Clayton are well behaved, professional, and team players, there’s no mention of them, or the Bucs, at all.

MAOTE: So the lesson is…

ME: You want ink, encourage your players to behave like jackasses. Honestly, it really is ironic. And if you read the article, it tells you nothing you don’t already know – I mean, what football fan in the world doesn’t know T.O. acts like a dipshit to get attention? It’s an entirely pointless piece of non reportage that some guy obviously sat down and typed up simply to make a deadline. Yet because it’s out there, the perception will intensify… you want the spotlight, be an asshole. If you behave like an adult, nobody writes about you.

MAOTE: That doesn’t seem to work in the world of blogging. I mean, you’re a gigantic asshole, and yet…

ME: Well, I’m not doing it on Monday Night Football.

MAOTE: So, do you think there’s some way to get these guys to stop? I mean, maybe if the media stopped rewarding them with attention for this nonsense…

ME: Oh, that will never happen. The media serves its own best interest by playing this crap up; it’s what the audience wants to see. The audience tunes in to be entertained, and T.O. may be a fuckhead, but his tantrums are entertaining. So rampant jackassery will continue to be rewarded with high levels of national attention in the media, and that’s just how that’s going to be in our entertainment driven culture.

MAOTE: Uh huh. So… we just put up with it?

ME: Well, the League could make these guys cut the crap out a lot by getting serious with the punishments they hand out for this shit. You moon the fans in the end zone, you get suspended for three games and hit with a $500,000 fine. That sort of thing. Attention is great, but in these guys’ case, the attention translates into more job opportunities, because teams will pay more to have them, because if you’ve got T.O., more people want to watch your team on TV so they can see what T.O. is going to do this week. And in pro football, as in all the pro sports, it’s all about television revenues these days.

MAOTE: So the League has to do it.

ME: Yeah, but the League makes money off the TV ratings, too, so in the end, they like anything that gets people watching. So they’ll slap people on the wrist a little bit, but, essentially, poor sportsmanship makes them money.

MAOTE: So we just put up with it.

ME: Well, if the fans felt strongly enough about it they could organize a boycott or something… refuse to watch games with these idiots in them, refuse to buy these guys’ merchandise. But we’re all lazy and hey, we like being entertained, too.

MAOTE: And honestly, what harm are these idiots doing? I mean, really.

ME: Uh… I don’t know. I guess they’re teaching anyone who watches pro football, or pro sports in general, that if you act like an asshole, you’ll be rewarded for it. And we wonder why our culture is becoming less civil. I mean, if a kid who wants to play football sees Michael Clayton behaving himself, and he’s rookie of the year and has great stats but he makes like a tenth of what Terrence Owens makes, and yeah, T.O. has better stats than Clayton and has been in the League longer, but still, this kid knows most of the difference in salary is because Owens acts like a douchebag in public while Clayton is a professional and a team player… what’s that kid learn? Be cool? Or be a tool?

MAOTE: I don’t know. When do you stop letting someone be a role model, and start letting them just be human beings?

ME: Let’s turn that around. When do we start asking for adults in all walks of life… regardless of whether they are, in fact, role models for millions of kids… to behave like adults, and not jackasses? To show a little bit of decorum in their public and professional behavior? To act as if there might be something a little bit more important than just their immediate self gratification, and eventual self aggrandizement?

MAOTE: Wow. Man, you’re pretty harsh. Expecting grown ups to act like grown ups. I mean, seriously. That’s hard core.

ME: I know. It’s really very unfair of me. Honestly, I should lighten up.

MAOTE: Ah. So… let’s see… you discovered the origin of the term Cat Piss Man …?

ME: Oh, yeah. You know, it was such a striking phrase, when one of those morons in one of the We Hate Doc Nebula chat threads referred to me that way… I ran into it somewhere else and decided to track it down.

MAOTE: And it means…?

ME: Well, it means one of those freakish comics fans who doesn’t bathe or brush their teeth… the kind of socially inept, hygienically challenged ubergeek who we all dread running into at a con or a comics shop. You know, one of those PTA poster children for why parents shouldn’t let their kids read comics, or play D&D, or read SF, or watch Star Trek… whatever.

MAOTE: And you’re one of those guys…?

ME: Well, if by ‘one of those guys’ you mean someone who bathes regularly, brushes his teeth, does his laundry… yeah, I guess so.

MAOTE: So why do you think this particular idiot called you that?

ME: I guess it’s become a common usage insult in comics fandom. I guess, if you’re really really stupid, and you read something that somebody wrote on the Internet about your favorite superhero that you really disagreed with, well, you’d call the writer a Cat Piss Man, because, you know, he must be a Cat Piss Man, if he said something bad about Frank Miller’s first run on DAREDEVIL, which you regard as sacred literature, or something.

MAOTE: Maybe they don’t have any idea what a Cat Piss Man actually is.

ME: Well, I’ve discovered that those who heap personal insults long distance on people they’ve never met based solely on something that person wrote about frickin’ comic books, for chrissake, generally know very little about anything at all.

MAOTE: So you’re not a Cat Piss Man…?

ME: Well, no. But let me say this… after reading the article in which the phrase originates, and seeing such wonderful observations as “I'm not advocating setting up a dress code for comic shops, although I have to say that a dress code for comic shop managers and customers might not be a bad idea. (C'mon, guys: you don't need suits from Barneys, but have you ever wondered what people think when they see you behind the counter in sandals, ratty jeans, and a Lady Death T-shirt?)” or “I'm willing to concede that Cat Piss Man buys something every once in a while, and that we can't afford to alienate customers in this depressed market. However, even if his Mommy's allowance gave him the opportunity to buy $200 or more in comics and other goodies a week, Cat Piss Man drives off easily twice that many paying customers, who would come back to a comic shop again and again if they weren't subjected to nasal rape every time they walked inside. This also holds true for the "Tragic: This Gathering" players shrieking at the tops of their lungs in the back (that is, except in the comic shops where the owners realized that they lost less money in sales to card game players by closing the gaming areas than they lost from items that "liberated" themselves when the gamers left for the day), or the guy who pesters customers into buying loose action figures out front because the store owner didn't want a box of dog-chewed Spawn figures. And let's not forget the fanatics who threaten violence upon anyone who dares scoff at the idea of an Action Girl/Witchblade crossover event.” well… if I bought my comics from the guy who wrote that, I’d find someone else to buy them from. He’s an asshole.

MAOTE: Wow. He hates customers who don’t dress up for him, he hates Magic players…

ME: And thinks we’re all thieves! Loud, shrieking thieves!

MAOTE: …and he can’t stand fans who are, you know, actually devoted to the characters they like. Who are this guy’s customers? Is he actually in the business of selling geek stuff to geeks?

ME: Yeah, I wondered that myself.

MAOTE: Maybe he hires more pleasant people to work the counter for him.

ME: It’s possible. But I guarantee you, if he ever works his own register and he lets his honest opinion of most of his customers show even once, he’s going to be boarding up his shop a few weeks later. What a turd. If I bought comics from him and then read that article, I’d find some place else to get my fix.

MAOTE: Well, he’d probably be glad to see the back of you.

ME: So many would be. Ah, if only I had the time to leave behind all the places that would love to see me go…

MAOTE: That’s you, spreading joy wherever you leave.

ME: We all have to have a gift.

MAOTE: But, honestly, don’t you think that perhaps comics shop owners might have some legitimate issues with some of their clientele? Geeks are, by and large, socially challenged. Gaming geeks do tend to be pretty loud, and the younger ones who are feeding a cardboard crack habit most likely do tend to shoplift… in fact, I’ve heard that shoplifting is a chronic problem in most comics shops. And many, many geeks get very confrontational when someone tells them ‘no’, or even ‘well, I disagree with that opinion’… as you yourself know.

ME: I hear all that. But, first, I think the nearly psychotic level of murderous hostility towards a large sector of the fans this guy services is pretty evident throughout that article, and if this is how this guy feels about the people whose money he takes, he needs to get a job doing something else. Yes, many many geeks are obnoxious and hard to take. However, if you set yourself up in business taking their money, you need to deal, or you need to rethink your line of work.

MAOTE: Even with Cat Piss Man?

ME: No, Cat Piss Man represents an extreme that nobody running any business should be expected to put up with… or would put up with, for that matter. But for God’s sake, this guy says he wants to set up a dress code, not just for comics shops employees, but for comics shop customers. How insane is that?

MAOTE: Many restaurants have dress codes for their customers…?

ME: How many geeks eat at those restaurants? How many geeks are going to put on a coat and tie, or even make the slightest effort to think even vaguely about their appearances, before they wander up to the geek shop to get some comics or some cards or some action figures? Besides, most comics shops SELL comics related clothing… t-shirts, specifically… that would be in violation of ANY kind of sane dress code. He’s going to tell his customers they can buy stuff from him that he won’t let them wear into the store? Is he retarded?

MAOTE: Well… he does seem to have issues.

ME: Even a dress code for comics shops employees is stupid. Comics shops employees get paid jack shit. They take the job because, usually, it’s marginally better than any other six buck an hour job they can find, and that’s because it’s usually a relaxed, laidback atmosphere. That’s one of the perks… maybe the only one. You start telling your employees at the comics shop that they can’t wear their scruffy blue jeans and their LADY DEATH t-shirt to work, and you better double their pay, too. Otherwise, they’re off to some other minimum wage job, where they don’t have to put up with a dickhead like you.

MAOTE: Hey, not like ME, dude. If I owned a comics shop I’d let my employees wear anything they wanted, as long as they bathed regularly and didn’t call the Magic players thieves.

ME: Well, I’d buy comics at your shop.

MAOTE: Thanks. Now tell us something amusing about your job.

ME: Uh… okay. Here’s an email we got yesterday from one of our team leads, forwarded on from our supervisor:

Please let the CSR's know that I have decided to get back on the phones as a CSR , because I feel that I need to be stress free at the moment. I have enjoyed being a Team Lead, but feel right now being on the phones is the best thing for me .

MAOTE: Wait. She’s a team lead, and she wants less stress, so she’s getting back on the phones…?

ME: Yeah. Let me tell you, in a call center, you do everything you can to get OFF the phones if you want less stress. And in our call center, as in every call center I’ve ever worked at, the team leads do very little, compared to the people who work above them, or the people who work below them. And this particular team lead…? If she has any particular area of expertise, it’s avoiding work. She does the least work of any team lead at any call center I have ever experienced.

MAOTE: So you’re thinking this is bullshit.

ME: Big time bullshit. I’m thinking that the fact that this team lead does very little work as a team lead, and doesn’t know jack shit about anything, and frequently gives bad information, and is generally loathed by nearly all the CSRs here, including me, has much more to do with her getting back on the phones, than her wanting to ‘avoid stress’.

MAOTE: Well, yeah, I guess that’s amusing. So… anything else new?

ME: Still deliriously happy with SuperFiancee and the SuperKids, which is terribly boring to anyone who isn't us.

MAOTE: But, elsewhere…?

ME: Well, there's always something. I'm hearing a lot about Harlan Ellison feeling up Connie Willis during an awards presentation at a big con lately…

MAOTE: Are you outraged?

ME: Well, everyone else seems to be. On behalf of all women everywhere, I guess. You know. This is just another in an endless barrage of humiliations and degradations that men have heaped on women and it is especially indicative of the poisonous atmosphere female fans and professionals have to put up with within the SF or comic book or other geek type reality tunnels… yaddity yaddity, etc, etc.

MAOTE: You don't sound outraged.

ME: I hate people taking someone else's situation and claiming it as their own. Stamping their flag on it. Making it an issue for their focus group. Has anyone asked Connie Willis if she really wants this thing to be a public cause for every feminist on the planet? Beyond that, I dislike the fact that, if this is going to be an issue – and it is – then it's now been claimed by one group of humans, when in fact, it's a problem for all of us… something we should all deal with.

MAOTE: You mean we all have to deal with how men treat women…

ME: I mean we all have to deal with the thoughtlessness and stupidity that human beings seem to continually show towards other human beings. The issue here is, one human being put his hands on another human being in a way that she did not want, invite, or consent to, in public, and he thought that was okay. You don't do that. It's inappropriate. It would be inappropriate regardless of the genders of the people involved. If one guy did it to another guy, or a woman did it to a woman, or a woman did it to a man, it's no better. You don't put your hands on another human being, especially in a specifically sexual manner, without their consent. Any where. For any reason.

MAOTE: Ah. But suddenly, this is all about…

ME: The terrible way men treat women, especially in the male dominated worlds of SF and comics. I mean, please. This is about the rotten way people treat other people, or, if you look at the other perspective, the spectacularly shitty way Harlan Ellison just behaved in public towards Connie Willis. Either it's entirely their problem to resolve… or it is all of ours. But it isn't simply about This Evil Majority Against That Oppressed Heroic Minority. The idea that all men would behave the way Dickhead Ellison did is simply moronic. I refuse to allow Harlan fucking Ellison to be used as some kind of symbol of my entire gender, just as I refuse to allow myself to be forcibly identified with the behavior of other members of my gender – or, for that matter, any other set or subset I belong to without my consent – that I abhor. But now that this has happened, every other female professional in SF or comics, and every other fangirl, is trotting out their own atrocity stories, about how they got felt up in an elevator at a con, or how demeaning it is for them to have to draw superchicks with gigantic hooters all the time, or the terrible leering expressions they have to put up with on guys’ faces all the time. And this isn’t about how men treat women, in SF or comic books or anywhere else. It’s about how Harlan Ellison treated Connie Willis at a WorldCon during an awards ceremony, or it’s about how fucked up human beings treat other human beings. It’s one or the other. But making it about how men treat women is simply hateful, biased, provincial, backwards ass thinking. I’m a man, and I do not treat women the way Harlan Ellison treated Connie Willis.

MAOTE: Okay. I think I get it. Something you said, though… "put his hands on". That sounds like a firm line you're drawing, a point of definition. Are you saying that inappropriate social behavior begins with touching someone without their consent? That, for example, harassing speech, should be forgiven? If, for example, Ellison had made a crude remark about Willis' anatomy 'all in good fun', but hadn't touched her, that would be okay?

ME: I'm saying that there is no subjectivity about putting your hands on someone when they don't want you to, in a specifically sexual manner. That is, straight up and objectively, violence, and unless you're in a situation where violence is clearly justified, you don't do it. And I'm also saying that sexual touching – fondling – is the sort of thing that responsible adults need to always assume is unwanted and unwelcome, unless they have specific information otherwise.

MAOTE: You've never put your hands on someone, touched someone, without their explicit permission?

ME: Not sexually. I'm not talking about a touch on the shoulder or putting your arm around someone or a hug, something like that. I'm not saying that's okay, I'm simply saying, there are circumstances where it's okay; there's some subjectivity. But sexually touching someone without permission… no. You don't do that. And it doesn't matter what gender is touching which. If it's sexual, and it's nonconsensual, it's violent, and it shouldn't happen.

MAOTE: Okay, but back to the other thing. So this is where you draw the line on unacceptable social behavior? Sexual touching that one party hasn't consented to?

ME: No, I'm including that in my definition of 'violence'. We can agree that there are very few occasions on which violence is appropriate social behavior, right?

MAOTE: Uh… well…

ME: Connie Willis wasn't coming at Ellison with a chain saw or anything, right? He can't argue that he was trying the infamous Boob Grab defensive maneuver as seen in that cool episode of Star Trek where Kirk has to fight in the arena against the alien gladiators, right?

MAOTE: You mean where he has his hands chained behind his back and does that really cool backwards shoulder roll to get them in front of him and…

ME: Yeah, yeah, that one.

MAOTE: I love that episode.

ME: All us geeks do.

MAOTE: But, anyway. So, you're saying, non sexual touching is okay, and talking is okay, but when you touch someone in a sexual way without their consent, or you pop someone in the schnozz, then you're out of bounds.

ME: I'm saying there's no subjectivity to it at that point. Speech, facial expressions, non sexual touching… there are situations where it could be justified. Someone can make an argument. It could just be a misunderstanding, and adults have to take some responsibility not simply for their own potentially offensive behavior, but for how quick they are to take offense at someone else’s behavior. But you grab someone by the tit or the genitalia without them specifically signing on for the treatment, you're out of line, just as much as if you knee someone in the solar plexus for no good reason. These are objective standards, and inarguable. You cause someone physical harm, you touch them deliberately in a sexual area, you’re just wrong.

MAOTE: Yeah, okay. But admit it. Men do tend to do more sexual harassment of women, than vice versa. And what Ellison did, well, no, not every guy would do that, but a lot of guys do, and it probably is a problem in the specific reality tunnel of SF and comic books, given that those reality tunnels are dominated by male geeks, whom we’ve already established, are largely socially clueless. And your insistence that this isn’t a feminist issue, or a man/woman issue, is at least somewhat motivated by the fact that you understand your gender does tend to be guilty of these offenses when it can get away with it, so there is some justification to the mass outrage at Ellison publicly groping Willis by female fandom.

ME: Wait. What was the middle thing…?

MAOTE: Fuck you, bitch! Admit it! It pisses you off that chicks are up in arms at every guy in the world, especially every guy in fandom, over what Harlan Ellison did, but still, they’ve got some righteousness on their side, because male geeks are for the most part pretty fuckin’ horny. SAY it.

ME: Yeah, okay, it pisses me off that many of my fellow geeks who happen to be male behave boorishly towards other of my fellow geeks who happen to be female, enough so that they feel righteously indignant on behalf of Connie Willis, as well as personally injured, when a dickhead like Harlan Ellison gropes her in public. But it also pisses me off that because I’m a guy, I’m apparently not allowed to be indignant on Connie’s behalf as well, in fact, I’m assumed to be part of the problem, and I’m not. And it pisses me off even more that, again, this whole thing has become a huge deal, and nobody is asking Connie Willis if she wants to be anyone’s martyr to propriety.

MAOTE: So you are outraged.

ME: Well, I’m more outraged about the last two Presidential elections, but, yeah, if they need volunteers to whack Harlan Ellison’s pee pee, I’d like to put my name on the list, certainly.

Outside the box

So, I have this Suicide Squad vs. Batman & The Outsiders battle set up downstairs, for some time later this Labor Day weekend, when I'm not playing Magic or grilling brats or something. And the more I thought about the freakin' Outsiders TA, the less sense it made to me. I mean, sure, it's hard to come up with a new, original Team Ability in HeroClix, which already has a dozen or so. But -- well, here's the Team Ability that WizKids came up with for the Outsiders:


Once at the beginning of your turn as a free action, a member of this team chooses a target friendly or opposing character within 10 squares; the member must have clear line of fire to the target. Until the beginning of your next turn, the target may not be the target of powers or team abilities that modify its combat values. This team ability may not be copied by wild card team abilities.

What this seems to mean is that, well, anyone that WK puts the Outsiders' Team Ability on has the ability to simply glance at an opposing figure and, for a pretty lengthy period of time, 'freeze' the numbers on that opponent figure's dial.

I could not, for the life of me, understand two things about this --

(a) what good this was, in terms of game mechanics

(b) how in the name of God a character would get this power (pointless or not) simply by being a member of a moronic Mike W. Barr superteam from the 1980s

Both factors are important. If the power doesn't do a damned thing within game terms that's worthwhile, well, it's broken, and my House Rules exist to fix broken things within HeroClix. On the other hand, even if the power if effective, if it doesn't make any kind of sense for the characters who have it to have it, then, well, that's still broken, and again, an application of my House Rules is required.

But, having set up the Suicide Squad/Outsiders battle, it occurred to me that the Outsiders TA could very well be useful to prevent the Suicide Squad from using THEIR Team Ability, to wit:

SUICIDE SQUAD : When an adjacent friendly figure is KOed, Suicide Squad members may Regenerate as a free action.

Since Regeneration would undoubtedly modify a character's combat values, it made sense to me that the Outsider TA could prevent this. Okay, this would be somewheat useful. Still, I could not for the life of my understand how one would justify, say, Black Lighting, Geo-Force, or, for the love of sweet baby Jesus, Rita Farr, being able to pull this off. Sure, if it works you can keep Wolverine or Sabre-Tooth from Regenerating in the middle of combat, and that's the spiff -- but how in the world do a buncha losers like the Outsiders get away with that?

So I posted the question to the WizKids board, in a thread called "Suicide is painless", as follows:

Okay. Can the Outsiders TA be used to cancel out the Suicide Squad TA? In other words, can Arsenal decree that Deadshot's combat values may not be modified, then blow up Killer Frost, who is adjacent to him, and Deadshot then cannot do his free Regenerate? A free Regenerate would modify Deadshot's stats, right?

Here are some of the responses I got (I won't bother reprinting the ones from the guys who just printed all the lyrics to the original movie M*A*S*H theme song, since they didn't really address the point, although they certainly reflect on the level of commentary you can expect on these boards):

Not quite....ok, actually not at all!! Healing (clicking the figures dial counter-clockwise) does change the stats, but it doesn't "modify" the figures stats in game terms. Modifiers add to or subtract from the number on the dial without actually changing what is there, but healing (and damaging) a figure simple change what "click" appears in the stat slot on the figure's base, so, while the stats are different, they haven't been modified (again, at least not in game terms).

Ah. So, it doesn't work, because, you know, we say it doesn't work. Well, fair enough, it didn't make any sense to me that the TA should do that, anyway. But if that doesn't work, then what DOES it do?

Well actually it's one of the most useful TA's around as it totally negates the ALT F4, Defenders, Sinister Syndicate and any other TA's that function similarly to them.

Huh. Hadn't thought of THAT. See, all these Team Abilities... the Alternate Fantastic Four TA, the Defenders TA, the Sinister Syndicate TA, etc, allow a figure to replace a particular combat value on its dial with the combat value from a teammates' dial. So the Outsiders TA would effectively make this impossible. Hmmm. Okay, still can't see how in the world a bad Mike W. Barr team should have this power, but it seems to be more useful than I'd thought.

But...

Outsiders does *not* negate any of those TAs, since none of those modify stats, they replace them.

Oh. Well, piss. But, then, what DOES it do?

It also negates ES/D, combat reflexes, ranged combat expert, close combat expert, Ultimate X, 2000AD, hydra, SHIELD, Morlocks, PD, enhancement, etc. I don't see how it would negate F4 ATA or Defend though. Those are replacement values, not modified values which in game terms are two different animals.

Ah. So, it won't cancel out REPLACEMENT values, which, in some bizarre way, are not modified values at all. But it will keep people from directly adding or subtracting to their Combat Values through various other Team Abilities or Powers that do that.

Okay.

Still, it makes no sense to me that these characters should have this ability due to their team alliance, whether the ability is useful or not. So I decided to change it, as follows:

OUTSIDERS: A member of this TA may not have its dial altered in any way by opponents when adjacent to another member of this TA. A member of this TA may modify the combat values of any adjacent member of this TA by 1 as a free action, once per turn. This team ability may not be copied by wild card team abilities.

See, this strikes me as being appropriate to a group that prides itself on being 'Outsiders'. Opponents cannot use their own abilities to alter an Outsider's combat values, and the Outsiders, when working together as a team, can modify each other's combat values, slightly.

So I mentioned that, and, of course, drew the inevitable response:

After reading your manifesto, why even ask questions or post here? That makes no sense to me. You play a completely different game then Heroclix so any answer you get here will be incompatible with the rule set you created and make you seem argumentative to those they play by wizkids written rules.

This strikes me as typical of most gamers. They may not actually understand the official rules, but by God, they'll defend them to the death!