Riding the lightning

JUSTICE SOCIETY OF AMERICA #5 -- It's taken a while for Johns to hit his stride for me again since this book rebooted, and I still don't think he's all the way back to full strength. But at least with this issue I'm no longer bewildered and appalled to find myself living in a reality where I'm enjoying TEEN TITANS more than JSA every month.

I'm enjoying a great many aspects of the current storyline as it runs between JUSTICE LEAGUE and JUSTICE SOCIETY. One is that it's reminiscent (deliberately so, I'm sure) of the pre-CRISIS tradition where the JLA and JSA would team up, usually along with one other DC superteam, to handle some... well... 'crisis', actually. I'm also enjoying all the Gaiman and Moore references in this latest issue. And I very much like the fact that apparently, superheroes who were involved in the original CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS can now remember it, as well as their pre-CRISIS existences, and I'm very much enjoying the fact that the Legion has been restored to its roots, as a Superboy spin off.

If I'm annoyed by anything, it's that according to recent revelations by WizKids, the new LEGION OF SUPERHEROES HeroClix set will contain, among other figures, something called Young Superman. This seems to be a pretty straightforward indicator that apparently Superman will never have had adventures under the name Superboy, and that aggravates the crap out of me, but I'm trying to emphasize all the good stuff we got in this issue, instead of the few exasperating ungrace notes.


And best of all the good stuff? Superman once again has statues of the pre-CRISIS Legion in his Fortress of Solitude -- and they're mostly wearing Dave Cockrum costumes.

Beyond the Cockrum costumes, well, for a Silver Age DC fan, that two page spread on pages 18 and 19 are like coming home again, to a warm and comforting place you thought had long since been razed to the ground and replaced with a Burger King, or a drug rehab center, or something. I mean, a Legion with a Mon-El in it again? The original Invisible Kid? No Kid Quantum, and everybody has their real names once more instead of that stupid ass Triad and Live Wire and Umbra and Chameleon horseshit? I'm in fucking heaven.

Not everyone in this LSH is in a Cockrum costum. The Cockrum era was, of course, a skank fest (although not so much as it became later under Mike Grell; while most of the Legion costumes in the Alex Ross graphic to the left are Cockrum designs, the Cosmic Boy outfit that looks like it escaped from the Rocky Horror Picture Show wardrobe trailer is by Grell) and since that long lost time period, sensibilities have... er... matured somewhat. I asume this is why Imra Ardeen isn't in that adorable pink halter-leotard thingie Cockrum put her in. (Realistically, Saturn Girl has always been a bit of a prude and it was never particularly characteristic that she'd wear something like that anyway, unless she was drunk or being mind controlled or something. If she did wear it in public sometime, well, being telepathic, she would know exactly what all the male Legionnaires, and maybe Dream Girl, too, would be thinking whenever they see her in it, so she'd be unlikely to repeat the experiment.) Princess Projectra is, lamentably, wearing her Sensor Girl outfit rather than wearing her own Cockrum skank-suit. Of all the hot chicks from that era of Legion, only Shadow Lass is allowed to retain her skimpy Cockrum swimsuit.

Still, these are quibbles. This is far, far closer to a recognizable Legion of Superheroes than I ever expected to see presented in a contemporary DC comic again, and I'm deeply appreciative of Geoff Johns for giving it to me. I have no idea how this presentation of the Legion matches what is currently established in the ongoing SUPERGIRL AND THE LEGION OF SUPERHEROES title (it's not written by anyone I admire, so I'm not buying it) but I don't need to know that, either. For a brief, probably feeling moment, I find myself basking in the warmth of Silver Age DC Superman and Legion of Superheroes continuity again, and for as long as I'm allowed to, I shall revel in it.

The Grind

GRINDHOUSE recipe --

First course, PLANET TERROR -- take equal parts DAWN OF THE DEAD (original recipe) and THE ROAD WARRIOR, mix well. Fold in several hot skanks in as little clothing as is humanly feasible and a few classic story elements from nearly any random series of Steve McQueen movies, along with 400 foot/pounds of gorilla adrenochrome and 300 gallons of PCP. Thoroughly lobotomize. Bake for just under two hours.

Second course, DEATHPROOF -- take whatever bits of THE ROAD WARRIOR you have left over from preparing the first course, mix at very high speed with extracts of DUEL, DEATH WISH, BULLITT, and THE BLUES BROTHERS. Add in a cast full of truly obnoxious, dislikeable men and women, one of whom is a complete psychotic. Encase in high velocity heavy metal and send hurtling at the audience at insane velocity.

Serves any number of admission paying moviegoers who are capable of having a great time watching Quentin Tarantino jack off onto celluloid.

* * *

More seriously, if you can hand your brain to the ticket taker as you're going into the theater, you can have a fabulous time watching this movie, or these movies, or whatever the fuck you want to call them. I realize I'm sounding more derisive than I should, given that I did indeed enjoy the films and may buy them when they come out on DVD (or may not, the jury is still out on that). I can enjoy a schlocky sf/horror or killer on the road exploitation movie, I'm just not that much into bad movies for the sake of bad movies -- my area of obsession is, as my few blog readers already know, superhero comics. GRINDHOUSE is very much a cinematic version of what Alan Moore has attempted, with varying degrees of success, to do with his different tributes to past eras of superhero comics like 1963 and much of the 'flashback' material in strips like SUPREME, and I can certainly respect a similar impulse in Tarantino and Rodriguez. But it's not my thang. My response to these is probably identical to how Tarantino would react if he happened across a copy of NO ONE ESCAPES... THE FURY! or TALES FROM BEYOND featuring N-MAN and the HYPERNAUT... momentary bemused amusement, a detached appreciation for the long lost era these artifacts are attempting to recreate, a fleeting, shallow flash of nostalgic warmth... and ultimately, tedium and irritation at what is, after all, just another piece of really crappy, stupid, pointless entertainment with no redeeming value whatesoever. The fact that the creation of such was exactly the point is, in the end, a minor and meaningless footnote.

(As a final parentheses, for what it's worth, I think Moore and Veitch's 1963 were far, far more than 'really crappy, stupid, and pointless entertainment', but, again, that's because I like Silver Age superhero comics. Tarantino would almost certainly feel exactly the way I feel, he'd just think the comics were pointless while the cinematic nostalgia-projects had some transcendent meaning far greater than the sum of the parts we see on the screen.)

For better or for worse

Ah ha ha HA! I'm totally fuckin MARRIED, bitchez!!!!

Okay, let us be more mature about this --

Several months ago, I gave SuperFiancee (for such she was, at the time) a written guarantee of beautiful weather on our chosen wedding day. God's been working our nerves hard the last couple of weeks with a lot of completely stupid and unnecessary rain and cold meteorological horseshit, but he seems to have gone on a bender last weekend that he's still hungover from, as he let up on all that nonsense over the past six or seven days and yesterday was just gorgeous.

With a beautiful day coming our way by default (God is malignant, there can be no doubt of that if you look around at how his universe is run, but occasionally even he has to sink into a drunken stupor for a while and everyone gets a temporary break), we reaped the benefits of SuperFiancee's painstaking wedding prep. My dumbstruck relatives poured in from out of town to gape in awe at the woman who can tolerate my nearby presence in her life for longer than a few minutes at a time, SuperFiancee's family ambled by amiably, mostly for the (excellent) food she'd prepared for the reception, and other than the things I myself nearly screwed up by either (a) being a fumble fingered, stammering lout or (b) entrusting delicate tasks like pushing the PLAY button on a nearby stereo to a man-child who was, apparently, not equal to that elaborately Byzantine and overly complex task, and we plighted our mutual troths.

This is not to say all went off like clockwork, unless, of course, one refers to the Luciferean clockword of hell's nethermost rings. Our rehearsal dinner on Friday afternoon was hindered by our discovery, upon arrival at the restaurant where we had reserved the party room, of a large crew of cleaners and redecorators who were, apparently, in the process of disassembling said party room and reassembling it into I don't know what -- a giant spaceship disguised as a party room, perhaps, which they would then use to lure rebellious Houses of the Zodiac into their nefarious clutches prior to launching them into the ravening depths of space.

The sight of that pushed SuperFiancee onto a slot where she had both HyperSonic Speed and Battle Fury, and within seconds there were bodies flying everywhere. The owner of said restaurant was summoned frantically from his chambers by his badly beleaguered minions, and things were set as close to rights as they could be, and the party went on. But it was an unwelcome glitch and seemed an ominous way to kick off the official wedding festivities.

A few other things came clear on Friday that would have to be dealt with, mostly having to do with my best man Nate and my groomsman and younger brother Pat having both completely ignored my instructions that they each bring with them a belt that could take a new belt buckle. It was decided we'd make an emergency mall run the next day to take care of it.

Saturday, things seemed to be going smoothly; in fact, with God still sleeping his last binge off, we continued to get lucky -- upon arriving at the reserved picnic shelter in the park to do clean up and preparation for the wedding later that afternoon, we discovered a few park personnel hard at work cleaning the place for us, something we hadn't expected at all. They advised that the nearby bathrooms were currently down, as sewage was bubbling up through the toilets, but that a plumber had been summoned, and in fact, by the time we got done making a couple of trips up there with wedding materiel, the plumber had arrived and gotten to work. The toilets were restored to function well before the ceremony began, and the park employees cleaned the bathrooms for us, too. God may not play dice with the universe, but it's been my experience that most of us mortals have no choice in the matter. Apparently, our opening throws were all 7s.

A few hours went by. My buddy Bane arrived on schedule with a truckload of tables borrowed by my future in-laws. Bre'r Pat had had his most excellent wife Nettie get him a belt that could take a buckle at some haberdashery somewhere, but there was nothing stocked in Nate's size, so Bane, Nate and I hied off to the mall. We got the belt, headed back home, and by sheer happenstance, I asked Nate if he had his clothes (white long sleeved dress shirt, black pants) ready for the ceremony. He advised he hadn't brought any black pants and while he'd brought a dress shirt, it wasn't white. So off he and Bane went to Wal-mart to remedy that lack, while I fanned cool breezes onto SuperFiancee's fevered brow and begged her not to have an aneurysm.

Finally, it was time to head up to the site for the final time that day. Everybody had a change of clothes for the reception loaded into the car, except for me, because my change of clothes was in a bag on my bed, and I'd been forbidden access to my bedroom, where SuperFiancee was changing, for the past 45 minutes. Once she came out all was high velocity madness, in all the hoopla and hubbub, I entirely forgot my change of clothes and off we went without it.

At the shelter, the wedding went off without a hitch, unless, of course, you count as a hitch little things like my brother getting lost on the way back to the park and nearly missing the entire thing, and the Justice of the Peace we'd chosen to officiate not showing up, with a last minute substitute neither bride nor groom had previously vetted rolling out in his place. And then there was the way the kid I'd chosen to act as deejay failed to perform the one task I'd entrusted to him (pushing the START button when SuperFiancee and the SuperKids started up the hill in their rented horse drawn carriage), and the way, once he actually did and Edwin McCain's "I Could Not Ask For More" was playing as the bridal processing exited the carriage and started up towards where I and my groomsmen awaited for them, our photographer insisted on holding up SuperFiancee at the carriage so she could take endless rolls of pictures of her in the goddam thing.

But, finally, we were all together and the ceremony started and we got through this unapproved officiant endlessly droning about tomorrow being an opportunity and yesterday being a box of donuts but today was both a promise of donuts and an opportunity for a box and I don't know what the hell all else, although I should, because he apparently figured he'd found a good phrase and decided to work it like a Mexican day laborer, repeating it unctiously at least four more times during the ceremony, and you'd understand how impressive that was if you realized how short our ceremony actually was. Then we got to the part where SuperDrama Teen was supposed to sing "Don't Want To Miss A Thing", which is kind of SuperFiancee's and my song, as it were, and, uh oh, Super Drama Teen had left her sheet music in the car. So we sent the idiot kid I'd entrusted to be a deejay off to the car to find it, and he spent ten minutes hunting all over a very small car with no luck, so we sent over my soon to be new niece, and she couldn't find it either, so finally we released Super Dependable Teen from her spot at the non-altar, and she came trotting back with it, and Super Drama Teen sang beautifully, and then I bumbled and stumbled my way through the Medallion Ceremony wherein the Super Kids all got medallions from me as a symbol of my devotion to them as well, and then we finished the ceremony and got the grills going and started cooking the food.

And everything was fine from that point on, except that, well, a lot of people who had said they were coming wound up not coming, so we'll be eating left over hamburgers, hot dogs, and kielbasa for the next month or so, and for a few minutes it looked like we weren't going to have to have enough grillmasters to cook all the food in the first place, because somehow or other I managed to have a wedding reception with about a dozen guys at it and they were the only dozen guys in America would not only had never handled a grill but who were utterly terrified at the prospect. Still, I managed to finally get my Uncle Fred and the above mentioned future niece to supplement Tony Collett and my stepdad, Carl at the spatulas.

I wasn't as much help as I could have been after the wedding ceremony, because I was mostly wandering around in a euphoric daze, staring in stupefied disbelief at the ring on my finger and reflecting that now, this wonderful, sexy, beautiful woman was my wife, and these wonderful, amazing, beautiful girls were my daughters.

In the end, we reversed the same process we'd undergone in the morning setting everything up, and with the help of our photographer and another one of now-SuperWife's friends, as well as the invaluable Bane, we got everything back to the house. Then everybody else went off to see Thunder, the local fireworks show, and SuperFiancee and I retired to our room for a two hour honeymoon.

I was under orders from my grandmother to show up the following day at 7:30 a.m. for breakfast with my family before they all left to drive back down South, but after a day that had been completely exhausting on every level, emotional and physical, I decided my grandmother wasn't the boss of me and I slept in instead. I have no doubt my family down south who live closer to her will never hear the end of that, but fortunately, I'm out of earshot of her voice.

Today, with the kids over at their bio-dad's until 6 this evening, SuperWife, Nate and I decided to catch a showing of GRINDHOUSE before they all got back. Checking online for movietimes, I discovered that the only showing we could watch before the kids got home started twenty minutes in the future, so we shifted into gear and hurtled out to the movies. A minor catastrophe with Super Drama Teen came in over the cell phone on the way there, so we had to head back right after the movie to let her into the apartment so she could retrieve a coupon she'd left there and get her hair chopped off, something she'd been planning for weeks and that SuperWife had resolutely refused to allow until after our wedding.

Once SDT got in and got her coupon and headed out again, so did we, this time to check out a tiny little geek shop on the other side of the river in Indiana. I was hoping to pick up a Hellboy set, but they didn't have any, so I got a few ORIGINS and PLANAR CHAOS boosters instead. Then we went over to a nearby park, which was mostly underwater due to all the rain lately, and from there, to a local restaurant we like for a late lunch, where Nate and I enjoyed a prime rib sandwich apiece while SuperWife tore through a Frisco salad. Then, off home again to play a little Magic until the SuperKids got back.

And that's been the weekend so far. Except I think I'm forgetting something... what could it be...

Oh, yeah, Heroclix. Friday night I set aside my own personal sense of propriety long enough to pretty much utterly guilt trip my best man and hapless visitor Tony Collet into what will probably be the very last HeroClix game I will ever play. I'd been hoping maybe one or two other people hanging around would want to play, but, no, it was just me, Nate and Tony. I offered them a choice of possible frameworks for team building -- Go Big or Go Home, with 1500 points for building teams with a maximum of 7 figures, or Street Smarts, with 600 points one could use to build teams of 'street level' superheroes or supervillains. They chose the smaller option.

My best man proceeded to put together an extremely annoying set of Batman Allies -- the Darknight Detective himself (the tidy, economically compact ICONS version) along with Nightwing, Azrael, the Question, Spoiler, Batgirl, Catgirl, and Catwoman.

Tony had brought a selection of his own figures along and perhaps constrained by limited choices, he cunningly assembled a team whose roster included an AIM Medic, Moondragon, a Skrull Warrior, and Spiral, among others that, I suppose, could more fairly be thought of as 'street level' ops, like Taskmaster, Titania, Avalanche, Pyro, and Bullseye.

Tony was obviously only playing at all under duress and pretty clearly would have rather been nearly anywhere else doing nearly anything else, and this reluctance to hang in the cellar playing stupid miniature games with the petulant, babbling idiot who was getting married the next day was only exacerbated by my ruthless application of House Rules that, in the words of Tony himself, only ever seemed to work in anybody else's favor, as when he tried to have his wild card pieces Taskmaster and Spiral copy the Skrull TA so I'd have a somewhat harder time hitting them, and I was forced to point out that in my latest revisionist frenzy, I'd made the Skrull TA one that could not be copied by wild cards, since, you know, if you're not an alien shapeshifter, you shouldn't be able to use alien shapeshifty powers.

Tony took these rulings with the same level of pleasant, good natured geniality that is always typical of him, but we've been friends long enough that I'm pretty sure he was rather frustrated, something I regretted at the time and regret even more deeply now. There was no agenda against him, or anyone else; it's just that nobody ever plays very often under my House Rules (not even me) so mistakes get made (even by me), and when those mistakes are pointed out, it usually ends up in some kind of disadvantage for someone. Unfortunately, in this most recent game, it seemed like Tony was always the one coming up on the short end, and, again, Tony displayed his usual patience and good sportsmanship, something I appreciated Friday night even more than I normally do, given the weekend's momentous nature.

Anyway, I strongly suspect Tony's reluctance to play as well as his level of frustration with how things were going in the game for him led to his making some rash moves, like dividing his forces to take on both Nate and me simultaneously. Me, if I'd been in his position, I'd have either holed up in a corner and hoped Nate and I went after each other, or I'd have forced the issue by putting Moondragon out far enough to Mind Control one of my characters into attacking one of Nate's characters, or vice versa, only emerging once the shooting stopped, to pick off the weakened survivors.

My team consisted of Daredevil, Spider-Man, Captain America, the Falcon, Paladin, and Nova. The Vet Spider-Man I was using had an Avengers TA, as did Captain America and, after I house ruled it on there, the Snap Wilson Falcon LE I was using. I Thunderbolted that TA to the Ultimates TA, and between that and the fact that both Spider-Man and Daredevil each had Super Senses, I was well set against all of Nate's built in Stealth. (I was disappointed that point considerations did not allow me to put one of my new Mercenary Feat Cards on Paladin, where it would have seemed very appropriate, but you can't have everything. As it was, I did get to try out Pummel for the first time, and found it worked very well, along with Knockdown and Dissent.)

My initial strategy was to sneak Cap and Falc down the outside of the warehouse (we were playing on the warehouse map) to a point where Cap could punch a hole in the wall and the two of them could go in and kill Tony's medic. Tony sent Spiral, Taskmaster, and Pyro in my direction to screw me up, and dispatched most of the rest of his team to deal with the Bat-infestation entering the warehouse from the other direction. An early strike on Nova saw him pushed onto a HyperSonic Speed click, which let him pick up a dumpster and pummel Spiral into oblivion. (Thinking about it now, Nova should not have been able to use the dumpster for that, as my House Rules forbid pieces from using any other superpowers in combination with HyperSonic Speed, so Nova should not have been able to use his Super Strength. Still, even his normal damage would have done for Spiral, if he'd hit her enough, which he would have with what I rolled.) Cap and the Falcon did manage to get all the way down the warehouse, but by the time they'd gotten there, Nate had sent Spoiler and Katana in to kill Tony's medic, something Katana managed with a berserk charge ending in a rolled 12, letting her skewer the poor AIM Medic like a turkey on a spit.

Anyway, I can't remember the play by play in detail, but I do recall that between Nate and I, we made pretty short work of Tony's forces. Then DD and Spidey, with their Super Senses, and Captain America, with his Ultimates TA, went to work on the surviving members of Nate's Bat-force. In the end, I emerged triumphant, which is just as well, as I sincerely doubt I'll ever have an opportunity to play HeroClix again.

And that's the weekend so far. I imagine I'll do a GRINDHOUSE review reasonably soon, but right now, I'm tired of typing.

Very happy to be married to the most wonderful woman in the world, though. And official, legal stepfather to the most wonderful children, as well.

Marital bliss

So, SuperFiancee and I exchanged wedding gifts today. I got her a crappy little charm bracelet-watch, which wasn't what she asked me for, but, you know, sometimes I'm just a jerk. (Okay, actually, she'd long ago mentioned she'd love to have a charm bracelet, and she'd also mentioned she badly wanted a new watch, so I took a shot in the dark and, well, turns out, she wants one or the other, but not a combination of the two, so, I'm an idiot, but, you know, I'll make it up to her later.)

What did she get for me?

Well, kindly remember how I'm the Luckiest Man Alive, when I advise you that she got me... a KINGDOM COME GREEN LANTERN HEROCLIX FIGURE. It's not much of a present, only the rarest, most valuable HeroClix figure there is, and the most coveted Heroclix fig I had yet to get into my avaricious little grasp, prior to tonight.

He now rests securely with the rest of my Kingdom Come figures, ready to thrash the ass off anyone foolish enough to so much as sneer in their general direction.

No, no, none of you may marry SuperFiancee. She is allllllll mine. You may, if you wish, kiss the hem of her garment. But no tongue! That's disgusting.

On a more serious note, and to SuperFiancee -- thank you, baby. Every minute of every day you make me realize anew that I am indeed the luckiest human being who has ever drawn breath, but some minutes, you manage to make me realize it even more intensely than otherwise. I adore you.

Death and more!

*** So, Kurt Vonnegut died. It's a bummer. He did an appearance at Syracuse University once back in the '60s for University Union Speaker's Board, and while I was on Cinema Board instead, still, I volunteered to work the gig, which was at Hendrick's Chapel, and which involved basically standing at the front doors and taking people's tickets, which were actually free, but, still, for some reason, you had to have a free ticket in order to get in (I'm guessing it was to control how many people actually got let into the chapel; I think they were anticipating a big, possibly overflow, crowd).

I remember Mr. Vonnegut being charming, whimsical, and funny, much more so than Robert Klein, whom I'd also seen in a similar venue some time previous to Mr. Vonnegut's appearance.

I was mostly interested in seeing Mr. Vonnegut because the movie version of SLAUGHTERHOUSE-5 was a big Cinema Board favorite and I'd probably seen it like 9 times at that point -- not a particularly significant claim in the context of easy rentals and home video players, but something of an accomplishment back in those days, when every time I'd seen SLAUGHTERHOUSE-5, it was actually projected on an actual big screen in an actual auditorium in front of a paying audience.

Despite having seen and enjoyed S5 many times, I had not at that time ever read anything by Mr. Vonnegut, and to this date I'm not sure I ever have. Maybe I read CAT'S CRADLE, honestly, I could not tell you. Well, I know I read that one short story of his with Harrison Bergeron -- BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS? The one that everyone has read. But I think that may be all the Vonnegut I've actually read.

Still, he's somebody I once saw when he was alive, and now he's dead, and for some reason, the fact that I actually laid eyes on him in person at one point in the dim and distant past makes that death seem more real to me than, say, the death of Richard Jeni or Marshall Rogers. Go figure.

* * * I'm in the middle of a couple more Heroclix trades -- wait, wait, I can hear the glaze forming on your retinas from here. I'm moving along.

* * * Wedding stuff, wedding stuff -- well, SuperFiancee has that all well in hand, and other than getting all the food together and somehow moving everything over to the site and set up and organized and me not making a massive hashed up nuclear catastrophe out of my various bits of the ceremony, I think we're pretty well set.

My bachelor party has pretty much fallen below the local event horizon; absolutely nobody has responded to any of my best man's invitations as to clix games or maybe Killquest with anything but sullen, stuporous silence. So my plan is, go back to the house after the rehearsal dinner, see who's hanging around, announce I'd like to play a game of clix if anyone is interested, and then either play clix with anyone who may be interested, or, if nobody speaks up, well, I guess I'll tie a pork chop around my neck and see if any of the neighborhood dogs want to play with me. Or something.

It doesn't seem as if Mike Norton is going to be able to attend the ceremony, which makes SF and I both very sad. However, we always knew it was a long shot, anyway. We actually sent invitations to several people we knew were highly unlikely would show up -- The Always Esteemed Scott Shepherd, my old buddy Opus, several close relatives. I wish they could have all put in an appearance, but, well, they'll all be in our thoughts, as will a few others we couldn't even send invitations to, like SF's much missed friend Chick and my best buddy, the Late Great Jeff Webb. Ah, well. It's a time of joy, not regrets.

* * * Stuff like this I should post on the poli-blog, but fukkit, it's not like more than fourteen people really read my work no matter where I put it, so, to save me some time and trouble, I'll just post it here -- it seems odd to me that a few weeks ago, the standard right wing trope on the fired U.S. Attorneys was "these guys serve at the pleasure of the Commander-in-Chief, The President is the decider, he can fire anyone he likes whenever he likes for any reason he likes, so what if his reasons were political, these are political jobs, nothing to see here, move along".

Now that nobody in the media or, really, the American public outside the bitter Bush dead-enders bought any of that shit, well, suddenly we're hearing from the Administration (through the larynx of Dick Cheney) that:

Well, as vice president, I don't know anything about the particular problem you're talking about. I mean, it took place inside the Justice Department. The one who needs to answer to that and lay out on the record the specifics of what transpired is the attorney general, and he'll do so.
-- which translates as, The Buck Stops -- Over There, Bitchez. Don't look at us.

So, please bear in mind as you start to hear more and more about how the White House had nothing to do, really, in any specific or substantive way, with firing any of the U.S. Attorneys, oh, no, that was all the bad, bad Attorney General, oooooh, we hates him, we hates him forever... a couple of weeks ago, the story was, the President is in charge, these people serve at his pleasure, he can fire any of them he wants to any time he wants to for any or no reason, now shut the fuck up, please.

I don't for a moment believe Bush actually made any of these decisions; I don't believe Bush makes any decisions in the White House beyond what he has for lunch (and maybe not that). But these decisions were made through the Oval Office, by whoever it is who actually pulls Bush's strings... Karl Rove, or Dick Cheney, or both. And it's important to keep that in mind. For whatever reason, this White House has always been willing to throw anyone under the bus in order to protect three people... Bush, Cheney, and Rove. Any and everyone else is expendible. And when Bush, or Cheney, tell the world that anyone has their full confidence, it's practically like tying a tag to their toe. Stick a fork in Alberto Gonzalez... he's done... but I hope that Congress doesn't let it end there. We badly, badly need to see both Cheney and Bush impeached (hopefully simultaneously). Pelosi can't possibly do a worse job as an interim President than these malignant creeps have been doing (although Hillary Clinton might have an aneurysm at the prospect of another woman getting the props as first female U.S. President in history).

The Age of Ortocence

Damn me for a black hearted scoundrel! So busy have I been fighting space- borne hordes of Ultra- Gorgonites in our Solar System's outermost gravity shell, I nearly forgot that today is the Emperor Mike Norton's birthday!

These hideous hideous Gorgonites just won't let me get away right now, but I'm sending telepathic birthday greetings back Earthside by transolar theta-ray mail. The transmissions can manifest in various strange ways, so if you think you're actually reading this on your computer screen, that's just the most familiar context the wave-pattern receptors in your hypothalamus picked to present the data to you in, and it probably means you're spending WAY too much time on the Internet lately. Log off and go outside for a while -- but first, send Mike Norton a Happy Birthday email.

Or, you know, initiate your own theta-ray burst, if you've got a few billion tachyons to spare and a negatized magnobeam projector to spin them up to translight velocity with.

Happy Birthday, Orto!!!!

Several matters

* * * Okay, I've been trying to keep my mouth shut on the whole Imus "nappy headed hoes" thing. I'm conflicted on it; while I'm a fervent believer in absolute freedom of expression unless said expression demonstrates a clear danger to some bystander's health and/or safety, still, Imus is a jackass, and when you're a jackass on TV and in the media, people are going to respond, which they have a right to do. So I've tried to see it as a wash, and avoid saying anything, because on principle, anything I say is going to sound like I'm defending Imus, and, well, Imus is a blowhole and I don't want to defend him.

And this should probably be over on the poli-blog, anyway, and maybe I'll excerpt it for that when I'm done here.

Anyway, I tried to stay out of it. But then I go over here, and I'm reading about the Reverend Al Sharpton, who is a galaxy class asshole, leading the protests against Imus and his idiotic behavior, and, well... it's hard to stay out. But I was doing it. I was doing it.

And then I read this --

Bruce Gordon, former head of the NAACP and a director of CBS Corp., told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he hoped CBS would "make the smart decision" by firing Imus.

"He's crossed the line, he's violated our community," Gordon said in a telephone interview. "He needs to face the consequence of that violation."

For us old timey superhero comics geeks, there's a little guffaw in there, as 'Bruce Gordon' is the name of the beleaguered scientist who occasionally freaks out and turns into Eclipso, a crazy ass megalomaniac with superpowers who keeps trying to plunge the entire Earth into darkness, or some shit. But that's very much by the by. I have no idea (beyond what the article tells me) who the real Bruce Gordon is, but I will say this -- he's not a part of the solution. He's a part of the problem.

I have said this before, and I will doubtless say it again and again and again as these things keep coming up -- being offended is not the same thing as being hurt, or, in this case, as Mr. Gordon, former head of the NAACP and a director of CBS Corp., put it to the Associated Press, being violated.

We make this mistake constantly in our culture. We believe that if someone does something that offends us, they have deliberately assaulted us, they have harmed us, they have done us an injury from which we, in legal parlance, 'need to be made whole'. This is egregious horseshit. Speech is not a punch in the mouth, no matter how deeply you may be offended by something someone else said. As an adult, if you are offended by something, you have a simple, sovereign remedy -- stop paying attention to it.

Imus is a fucking asshat, and there's no getting around that. But he does not have the power to control what station you set your radio or your television to. If you don't like his particular brand of dipshittiness, then you have many, many other broadcasts you can audit in his stead... or, you know, you could turn the fucking boxes all off and go talk to your kids, or something.

Havign said that, for something like the millionth time, let me add this -- stuff like this is not cut and dried. Imus has a right to freedom of speech, as do the people who are offended by how he exercises it. However, what it seems to me that people are offended most by with someone like Imus is not that he's a jackass, but that he's a jackass who speaks to a large and very receptive, very enthusiastic audience who loves his shit and who support him with their wallets, or at least, by lending him their brains for a few hours every day so advertisers will continue to support him with said wallets.

Now, Imus does not have a right to the job he currently holds. He has that job because he makes money for his employer; if he stops making money for his employer, his employer has a right to fire him. And the people whom Imus has offended have a right to speak out and to organize in protest against Imus in this regard; they have a right to bring whatever pressure it is they may be able to on Imus' employer through threatened boycotts of advertisers, etc. As it turns out, this same article I referred to above also makes the following clear:

Even as advertisers defected and politicians piled on, it was an internal mutiny within NBC News about Don Imus' racial slur that was key to pulling the plug on his MSNBC simulcast.
About 30 angry NBC News employees, many of them black, met with news division president Steve Capus less than 24 hours before Capus decided that a two-week suspension of Imus' morning telecast wasn't enough.

They said they'd had it with Imus' brand of coarse ethnic humor, capped with last week's reference to the Rutgers female basketball players as "nappy-headed hos."

"Within this organization, this had touched a nerve," Capus said Wednesday. "The comment that came through to us, time and time again, was `when is enough going to be enough?' This was the only action we could take."

And even Presidential candidates had to pile on:

Democrat Barack Obama on Wednesday became the first presidential candidate to call for Imus to be fired. "He didn't just cross the line, he fed into some of the worst stereotypes that my two young daughters are having to deal with today in America," said Obama, the only black candidate in the race.

Now, I have to tell you, I'd have a great deal more respect for Obama if he'd come out and said something truly controversial regarding every American's right to freedom of speech, even when said speech is truly, mortifyingly offensive and goddam fucking stupid, to boot. As Ted Rall and many others (including me) have noted in the past, it's easy to support other people's freedom to say things we approve of. Nonetheless, it must be noted -- Imus isn't facing arrest, nor has the Federal government threatened to suspend his employers' broadcast license over this, nor has anyone been violent towards him over it (although I don't doubt he's gotten some threats in that vein). What Imus is facing is intense, widespread social opprobrium over some truly, virulently hateful remarks he made. Does he have a right to make those remarks? Sure. But actions have consequences, and he does not have a right to a job as a popular shock jock.

So, as I say -- it's complicated and I'm conflicted. I'm not defending Imus; he's generally a dickhead and what he said in this case was truly, monumentally dickheaded. But however offense his words were, they do not rise to the level of a 'violation' of anyone. And I believe our culture and our civilization would be much further forward if every putative adult simply ignored contemptible, weak-minded shit like this. In fact, if every putative adult did ignore this kind of nonsense, then there wouldn't be a problem at all -- because dimbulbs like Don Imus wouldn't have an audience to begin with.

* * * Moving on from this to more personal stuff, I've changed jobs. I'm four days in to my new employment and so far it's a gas. Great people to work with, slightly more money than my last job, and, well, I'm not working at a call center any more. I'm downtown and can ride to and from work with SuperFiancee, which is lovely, and while my job is customer service, I'm providing clerical support to a large corporation, and my interactions with 'customers' are much more one on one. My 'customers' are all professionals, too, not walk ins from the street, so while the job is demanding, and I have a great deal yet to learn, it's still orders of magnitude more pleasant than my previous post.

If I seem to be being somewhat vague, well, reality is haunted by malevolent dumbasses, and some of them yearn to see me unemployed. So if you want the lowdown, shoot me an email.

And past all this, SuperFiancee has been down for the last two days with some killer stomach bug, and all good thoughts and energy you can spare I'd like you to direct her way. I worry about her.

We're also worried about weather for the wedding, on the 21st. Try to hold a good thought in your head for that, as well.

Okay, I'd best be about my business. Good Thursday to everybody.

Tomorrow soon turns into yesterday...

...and things they are a'changin' around Castle Anthrax. But those announcements are premature; we'll be rollin' them out some time next week, Grok willin' and the creek don't rise. (Lest friends worry and nosy assholes prematurely rejoice, however, be advised -- the wedding is still on, everybody is well and happy, and rock n' roll is still the music of the gods. Fear not! All is well!)

Until it's announcement time, though, you'll have to content yourself with more Doc Nebula's HeroClix House Rules madness, as follows --

So I wanted to create an alternate Team Ability for all the Wild Card TAs. I mean, if you wanted to build a team of ALL Wild Cards, you certainly could, but, you know, you just wouldn't get any benefit from the TAs. That seemed to me to suck. Not as bad as the 2000 Presidential elections or anything, but, still, this one is an injustice I can redress. I'd already created alternate TAs for the Legion of Superheroes and the Minions of Doom TA, so I figured I'd go in and do one for Calculators and Spider-Man Allies, as well.

And then, as I am wont to do, I went a little nuts coming up with a few additional Team Abilities --

CALCULATORS –

If your entire team is comprised of Calculators, you may use the following Alternate TA instead of the above TA:

Choose one member of your Calculator force. Give that member an action token. For the remainder of that turn, this character may use either Perplex, Outwit, or Leadership as if that power is showing on its dial. All Calculators on a force are always considered to be within range of each other for use of powers that affect each other, even powers that normally only affect adjacent teammates. All Calculators on a force always have line of sight to each other.


SPIDER-MAN ALLY –

If your entire team is composed of Spider-Man figures and/or figures with the Spider-Man TA, you may use the following Alternate Spider-Man Ally TA instead of the above TA:

When any Spider-Man figure or member of this TA is adjacent to any other friendly Spider-Man Ally or Spider-Man figure, the higher cost figure may act as a transporter towards the lower cost figure. When any Spider-Man figure or Spider-Man Ally is adjacent to any opposing Spider-Man figure or Spider-Man Ally, that Spider-Man figure or Spider-Man Ally may make a close combat attack on the opposing Spider-Man figure or Spider-Man Ally as a free action.

MARVEL FAMILY – Prerequisites: Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, Black Adam
Members of this TA may roll 1 d6 when hit by Incapacitate or Mind Control attacks. On a 4-6, the attack does not hit.

BIRDS OF PREY – Prerequisites: Black Canary, Huntress, Oracle, Big Barda, Jade, Lady Shiva, Manhunter, Hawkgirl – Birds of Prey may use In Contact With Oracle for no cost.

ASGARDIANS – Prerequisites: Thor, Loki, Enchantress, Executioner, Lorelei, Ulik Members of this TA reduce all damage dealt to them by 1. They do not take pushing damage, and no damage done to them is considered to be unavoidable or irreducible.

NEW GODS – Prerequisites: Darkseid, Orion, Kalibak, Mr. Miracle, Big Barda, Desaad, Parademons Members of this TA reduce all damage dealt to them by 1. They do not take pushing damage, and no damage done to them is considered to be unavoidable or irreducible.

SQUADRON SUPREME – Prequisites – Exp or Vet Hyperion, Vet Speed Demon, Exp or Vet Dr. Spectrum, Skymax, Power Princess, Experienced Nighthawk - Members of the Squadron Supreme may add 1 to their Defense Value for every adjacent member of the Squadron Supreme. Members of the Squadron Supreme may add 1 to their Attack Value for every adjacent member of any other Team Ability.

That's all you get for now. Wednesday is here! Wrestle it to the ground, bang its head on the asphalt until it goes limp, and then stomp on its face!

I looked up 'self pity' in the dictionary...

...and this is the picture I saw:







And then, underneath, I read this:
DANCING IN THE DARK

I finally finished A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, but my dog ate the manuscript and there was no copy, so I'm starting over.

What, you don't believe me?

Okay, okay. We don't have a dog at present, and A DANCE WITH DRAGONS is not done.

I'm still writing. Certain storylines are going well. Others, not so much, but that's what rewriting is for, yes?

I have to admit, these updates aren't working the way I hoped they would. I started them in the hopes that they would help stem the flood of emails asking about the next book. They haven't. I get just as many emails, only now they're asking about the next update. Yes, I know I said I'd have an update in "early January," and January came and went and there was no update. I can read a calendar too. The reason there was no update...

Well, the book's not done. And we've had home renovations. And the book's not done. And there's been work on other projects, on comics and The World of Ice & Fire and the games and the new Wild Cards book, Inside Straight. And there was football, and cons to attend, and a signing tour, and the holidays, and did I mention those home renovations?

The truth is, these updates do make me feel like a twelve-year old trying to explain to teacher why he isn't turning in his essay, and knowing she isn't going to buy the "dog ate my homework" ruse any more than you guys do.

The only update that I want to write is the one that says, "A DANCE WITH DRAGONS is done." That's the one you want, and that's the one that I want to write... but when the book isn't done, having to come online and say so every few months becomes a stressful and unpleasant task. I really do appreciate the fact that so many people are so eager to read the next installment in A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE and I wish I could get it to you right now, but you guys read a lot faster than I can write.

When A DANCE WITH DRAGONS is finished, I will post that news here. The moment I finish the book, I will log on and make the announcement. If this message is still here, that means the book is not done yet. Until such time as I can trumpet that news, however, this page will remain the same.

The next update will be the one that announces that the DANCE is done.

—George R.R. Martin, February 15, 2007

Thus, so. An Open Letter to George R.R. Martin, the "American Tolkien":

Dear Mr. Martin,

Before I get to how appalled, infuriated, and, frankly, nauseated, I am by this, your most recent public wallowing in unmerited, unbridled, unbecoming, unappetizing, and utterly absurd self pity, let me say this:

When you're writing an update as regards your progress towards completion of a book to several hundred thousand fans who have been eagerly, avidly waiting for that book for a period of years even longer than the period of years that has elapsed since you earnestly and solemnly promised them the book would be done by, and you open that near desperately anticipated update with the phrase "I finally finished A DANCE WITH DRAGONS", and then you go on to admit that you're actually lying, that makes you... hmmmm... what's the phrase?

Oh yeah. A fucking ASSHOLE.

It ain't funny. It ain't cool. It is, in fact, complete shitbag behavior. For doing this, let me say now -- you SUCK. If Roger Zelazney had ever been that big a fucking douchebag over one of his AMBER novels, well, then he would have proved himself a meritricious punk by doing so, and Mr. Martin, while you are a fine, fine writer, you are no Roger Zelazney, and, frankly, I cannot at this point think very highly of you as a human being, either.

That was some rank shit. Said once, and with utmost sincerity -- You finally finished A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, but then the dog ate the manuscript?

Kiss my ass, bitch.

Now, moving on the to bulk of your latest widdle foot stomping:

I am so, so sorry, Mr. Martin, that these updates haven't been working out the way you wanted them to. And I am deeply, deeply regretful that it is so cumbersome to you, so tedious, such a fucking chore, to have to deal with the expectations of hundreds of thousands of people who have provided you with so much of their money in the past and who eagerly, avidly look forward to the opportunity to do so in the future. And most of all, I am enormously apologetic and positively goddam fucking RUEful that you are such a lazyass undisciplined inept whineyboy needledicked nutless fucktard that you not only can't manage to complete a single goddam book within several years of your original deadline for said volume, but, you can't even manage to do a christly 438 word update on your progress towards the completion of said volume within the same 31 day period you had originally scheduled it for.

Honestly, Mr. Martin, I weep real tears for you when I read of your torment. There's home renovations, which we paid for with the money that we spent on your books, on the million dollar home that we bought for you with the money that we paid for your books. And there's football, that you watch on the big screen high density televisions that we bought for you with the money that we paid for your books. And there are comics, and roleplaying games, and a signing tour, and cons to attend, all of which you get to enjoy because of... wait... what was that thing again? Oh yes... the money that we paid for your books.

And the book isn't done. And the book isn't done. And the book isn't done. And we keep sending you emails about the book not being done. And it's horrible. Horrible. Horrible. Because these updates make you feel like a 12 year old trying to explain to teacher why he isn't turning in his essay, and that really IS horrible... a horribly false and self indulgent metaphor for the actual situation, which is, you have an audience of hundreds of thousands of avid readers, who support your extremely comfortable and luxurious lifestyle with their very hard earned money, and you have created something fabulous and wonderful and larger than life, and YOU ARE FUCKING IT UP. Because you're too goddam undisciplined and lazy and nutless to realize that, hey, when you're writing an epic fantasy series that threatens to grow large enough to jostle the very planet we all inhabit out of its orbit and send it careening into the photosphere of the sun, maybe you shouldn't fucking add another dozen new characters every time you manage to kick a new installment out, dumbass.

But, you know, I still had hope, Mr. Martin. Prior to reading your latest snivel-fest, I continued to cling to a tiny glimmer, the merest shimmering spark, of faith that you might be able to pull it off. That somehow, great fat Sam and his weird ancient cracked horn and that poor kid with the birthmarked face and the Woman In Red and Jon Snow and Danaerys Stormborn and Tyrion and Jamie and Lancel and Patchface and Nymeria and the stolen child of the King Beyond The Wall and all that other amazing incredible brilliant stuff you've woven into this immense enormous astounding tapestry of sheer raw unrelenting story might actually be going somewhere and might actually have had a chance of coming together into some conclusion that would be utterly satisfying and coherent and sensible and wonderful.

But now, having seen that you're a sniveling whiney pissy little bitch who honestly doesn't know just how absurd it is that you can actually have the life you have and still feel sorry for yourself... well... I've given up on you, sir.

That you can actually post to a website where you know your fans will read it the words "I finally finished A DANCE WITH DRAGONS" -- as a joke -- and then go on to jump up and down and shake your tiny fists and stomp your widdle feet and hold your breath 'til you turn blue because, you know, it's just so terrible that people actually expect you to keep the assurances you've made, over and over again...

Frankly, sir, you can take every published page of A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE, fold them until they are all sharp corners, and then vigorously ram them up your ass using the original cover art and any Valerian Steel prototypes as may be within arms reach as a tamping rod.

I know my feelings mean absolutely nothing to you, and you'll get along fine without the thirty or sixty or ninety bucks I would otherwise have spent on any books you managed to complete before you finally expired of sulkiness. Nonetheless, your addlepated, near-obscene public display of pique and petulance has so utterly alienated me that I will never spend a cent on anything you ever write again.

Should you manage to complete any further installments of A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE before you collapse beneath the weight of your own grotesquely over-swollen ego, I will take the fucker out of the library. And when it starts to suck, and its suckiness begins to accelerate at a rate and a velocity unprecedented even by the geometrically progressive suckiness of the DUNE series, as it inevitably will because you simply don't have it in you to do anything except make this series suck and suck and suck and suck until it becomes universally known not as A Song Of Ice And Fire but rather as The Ballad of Stink And Suck, well, then I will log back onto the internet and sign on to this blog and laugh and laugh and laugh while pointing at you and your lame ass book and chortling "I told you so, I knew it would happen, I absolutely understood years and years ago that anybody who was that big a fucking suckass crybaby pussybitch could never under any circumstances make something with this grand and this brilliant and with this much potential work".

And you can't, and you won't, and I know this because if you could and you would, you would have done it already, and you certainly would never ever have written anything like what you wrote and posted on February 15, 2007, to the people whose money you have happily taken for the last several decades, yet to whom you seem to feel nothing whatsoever besides infantile resentment.

A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE is a huge, HUGE project, and you are a tiny, tiny human being.

That's it. I'm done with you. Go watch some fucking football, or sign another contract, or do one of the many, many other things that are more important than working on the book you promised us many, many years ago.

Sincerely,

Highlander


Update: I originally wrote this thing when I was pretty angry, and as I long ago learned that anger rarely works when you're trying to communicate with someone, I came back in today to reread it to see if maybe I'd gone a little bit overboard and perhaps I should rewrite it from a calmer, more taciturn, more restrained perspective.

But I also reread the original 'update' from George R.R. Martin that had so infuriated me in the first place, and having done so, and then re-read what I wrote above, well, no. There is nothing I want to rewrite, nothing I want to retract, nothing I want to smooth or polish or replace with something perhaps more diplomatic and less confrontational. George R.R. Martin is an accomplished and wildly successful author, he has won awards, he can walk into any bookstore anywhere in America and, probably, Europe, and, perhaps, much of Asia, as well, and get his ass kissed by dozens if not hundreds of random strangers. He has lived a life and enjoyed a career and been gifted with a talent that millions could and doubtless do envy. And, leaving aside the profoundly disturbing cruelty of his opening sentence, still... I have never in my life seen a putative adult make such a public spectacle of himself throwing such a monumental, Brobdignagian fit of self pity.

Thus, so... my words stand unaltered.

From beyond time and space

...or, at least, from friggin' Ireland, which is very nearly the same thing -- a package arrived today.

Within -- Booty! Plunder! Spoils! Swag! LOOT! Well, trade goods, at the very least... an offering from the East, winging in via International Express to win the heart of my very own Queen Hippolyta.

And a noble effort it is, too! Within said chest of treasures was to be found the agreed upon ransom, a vast wealth of Limited Edition, Prize Only, bronze ring HeroClix --

The Power Cosmic Dr. Doom (the Supernova ClixBrick mailaway LE)
Kraven the Spider (Sinister)
Dr. Hank Pym (Supernova)
Celestial Madonna (Supernova)
Nathaniel Richards (Supernova)
Vance Astrovik (Supernova)
Wonder Woman (Origin New Guy Night giveaway)
Genis Vell (Supernova)
Joe Ledger (Supernova)
Norrin Radd (Supernova)
Jennifer Walters, Esq. (Supernova)
One-Who-Knows (Supernova)
Henry Camp (Supernova)
Super-Nova (Supernova)

Naturally, the package didn't come in until too late on Saturday to mail out Queen Hippolyta in exchange, so that will have to go out on Monday.

In addition to that, my streak of getting no Uniques whatsoever from ORIGIN broke yesterday, when SuperFiancee bought me three boosters, and out of those boosters I pulled two Uniques, Negative Woman and Johnny Quick. In addition to those, I also pulled a Veteran Blackhawk to go with the rookie (Olaf, I think) from a few boosters back, and finished out my Triplicate Girl REV with a Rookie, and my Animal Man REV with an Experienced. I also picked up a Veteran Damage and a Veteran Mr. Miracle. These join other recent Vet acquisitions Supergirl and Mano.

Today was a busy day, but a good one. Early morning saw a 10 a.m. transfer of the SuperKids to their bio-dad for an overnight visit, after which we came back home, took a late morning shower, then went to a local deli we both like a lot to pick up some food for a brief picnic in the park. On returning home, we found the delivery slip for the package on the door, and got lucky when a very helpful mailman came by a few minutes later to deliver the regular mail. He offered to call the Express Mail delivery guy for us, who came back an hour or so later with my box. This caused us to miss a 1:15 showing of THE ASTRONAUT FARMER, something I want to see regardless of how many crappy reviews it gets. But there's always tomorrow. After getting the package, we did some spring cleaning (sweeping out the living room, sweeping off the front porch, hosing down the plastic porch furniture), worked on the card box for our wedding, which is coming out looking pretty good, actually, grilled some burgers, and ate out on our now much cleaner looking porch since the furniture had dried out in the sun.

Backtracking to Friday briefly, the big accomplishment of the day was getting our marriage license. (Ha! Now she CAN'T get away!) After that, since the littlest SuperKid was spending the early evening with her grandparents, we took the older two off to see THE HOST, which was actually pretty excellent. I won't peremptorily command anyone to go see it, as many other bloggers and reviewers seem to be doing, but I will say it's a well made monster movie, and I'm of the opinion it will become even better when some American studio inevitably remakes it and cuts out a lot of the unnecessary plot clutter and pointless sidetracking that seems to be de rigeur for Asian audiences.

And, really, that's about it at Castle Anthrax. Hope everyone out there is doing well, even if y'all are obviously too busy to comment on me or SuperFiancee's blog. ;)

Civility

Here's most of a long post I've put on a couple of other boards, featuring some general feelings I have about what Marvel has done to their universe with the recent CIVIL WAR event. It won't get much (if any) more attention here than the other places I've posted it, but this blog is sort of my 'paper of record', and I think I make some excellent points in this post.

* * * *

As to CIVIL WAR and its fallout -- a key thing in keeping a superhero universe successful is to make it seem realistic and internally consistent, without actually making it realistic and internally consistent. The reality of a superhero universe, with all that advanced technology and all those paranormal individuals, would be very different from the world we all inhabit. But we don't want to see our heroes in a very different world from ours; we want to see our world, WITH SUPERHEROES. The fact is, if our world had superheroes, it would no longer be our world, it would be something we can't even imagine (although it would probably be something similar to what we see in Alan Moore's America's Best Comics titles).

Yet with CIVIL WAR, Marvel has taken their universe and actually made it 'realistic' by asking, and answering, the question -- should superheroes, and superhumans, for that matter, be subject to intense government supervision at all times? The actual answer is, of course, yes -- the idea of someone with Cyclops' powers walking around on a city street, with nothing between the people around him and a horrible massacre but a pair of Raybans, is ludicrous and horrifying. Even the Human Torch's powers badly, badly need some kind of oversight -- realistically, that boy should have inadvertently started thousands of fires over the course of his career.

The simple fact is, though, that this isn't any FUN. We just don't want this level of detail in our superhero fantasies, and we certainly don't want to fantasize about being a superhero who has to fill out insurance forms and get bonded and go before government oversight committees and maybe report once a month to some kind of state or Federal supervisor of superhuman activities. I mean, that's just b.s. The whole basis of the superhero fantasy is a POWER fantasy; we want to become someone else (hence the mask and the cool costume and the code name) and run around doing whatever we want, and feel like it's all justified because we're using our powers in the service of the common good.

I used to feel that both DC and Marvel had made grave and potentially fatal mistakes by turning their comic book universes into places that weren't any FUN any more, that none of their readers would ever want to live in or even visit, or, more specifically, that none of us would ever want to fantasy project ourselves into. But I seem to have misperceived the zeitgeist. While this has alienated ME from both universes, the overall audience today seems to like reading about universes they would not want to actually live in, like, I don't know, the WATCHMEN universe, or the SUPREME POWER universe, or, nowadays, the post CRISIS DCU, or the post CIVIL WAR Marvel U.

But for me, a great deal of the pleasure of reading about my favorite characters is gone, because I no longer have any desire to fantasize about being a superhero in those worlds and hanging out with those guys. It's two fold -- first, the worlds themselves are dismal, depressing places nowadays. Second, a lot of my favorite characters have turned into pricks. (The one that Marvel resolutely couldn't turn into a prick, Captain America, they decided to put a couple of bullets through instead.) I'm still reading DC because DC has good writers; I no longer read Marvel, because Marvel doesn't. (Not only that, but all the really popular writers at Marvel are British Invasion Alan Moore wannabes who can't freakin write, and nobody seems to care, either.)

But, as I say, I seem to be in a minority; there is definitely an audience out there for dystopian superhero universes. And if such universes are well written, I can even enjoy them, too. But first, such a universe would have to feature characters I am not emotionally invested in (like the current DCU) and second, it would have to be well written (again, see current DCU). If the universe features characters I love from childhood and they are being treated disrespectfully (see: Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Captain America) or simply turned into jerkwads (see: Iron Man), well, that's going to aggravate me, and when your 'best' writers are Mark Millar and Brian Michael Bendis and Warren Ellis, well... see ya. Wouldn't want to be ya.

Oh my god.

On December 2, I sent off the following email to WizKids --



Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to express my intense disappointment with one particular aspect of your newest HeroClix expansion, SUPERNOVA.

I am one of your older customers. I am in my 40s (actually, I just turned 45 on Nov. 21) and I have been an avid superhero comics fan most of my life. I have played HeroClix since my brother bought me an Infinity Challenge starter set for Christmas back in 2003.

Like many clix fans, I've been filled with intense anticipation for Supernova due to the character selection, and the character I myself was looking forward to getting a new version of most was Thor. I've long felt that the Clobberin' Time dial seriously short changed the God of Thunder, and the sculpt was... well, it was lacking a certain sense of grandeur. So, having seen photos of what the new Thor was going to look like on your site, and having seen the dial layout, well, I've really been eager to get my hands on a new Thor.

A few weeks ago, I picked up my first small batch of Supernova boosters, tore into them, and was delighted to see I had gotten a Thor. I pulled him out of his wrappers avidly -- and felt crushing disappointment as I realized that the Thor figure had been packaged with a Vision dial.

Now, mind you, I'm also really looking forward to the new Vision; his new sculpt looks excellent and his dial is great, too. So, getting a Thor figure with no dial, and a Vision dial with no figure, really exasperated me.

Money is tight, of course, as it is for everyone -- I have three kids to provide for -- so that initial batch of boosters has been all I could afford to buy until today. Today, though, I treated myself to four more Supernova boosters. When I opened the first of those, I was again very pleased to see a Thor figure. I figured that the packaging error I'd encountered prior to this had to be a one in a million fluke and this time, THIS time, I'd have a Thor dial to go with the fig... but upon pulling the pieces out of the packing, I was amazed and appalled to find that, against all the odds, I once again had a Thor figure and a Vision dial.

So, I now have TWO Thor figures, with no Thor dials. And TWO Vision dials, with no Vision figures.

This is EXTREMELY AGGRAVATING.

As a birthday present, my kids have ordered me a brick of Supernova (which has been delayed again and again in the mail, but that's no fault of yours, so don't worry about that). However, when and if it finally arrives, I cannot tell you how annoyed I will be if I open it and find any MORE Thor figures with Vision dials.

I would very much like to rectify this packaging error. What do you suggest?

A very frustrated customer,

D.

Let me say right here how strange it is for me to suddenly confront the fact that I must have been buying Supernova boosters back before Christmas, 2006. It's just one of those odd juxtapositions of space/time events that seems deeply weird, when one is suddenly confronted with it.

Anyway. So I got standard boilerplate in response to this email, instructing me to mail the defective figures in for replacement, and I did that. And that was probably back in late December, early January.

Since then, SuperFiancee has asked me a couple of times "Hey, whatever happened with those replacement clix from WizKids?" And I would shrug and say "Never showed up... not yet, anyway." You're supposed to wait 4 to 6 weeks, but when that mark irretrievably passed in mid February, well, we've got three kids and an old car constantly on the verge of a total breakdown and crappy jobs and a wedding to plan, so it's not like I didn't have other stuff on my mind. So, while I didn't really forget about it, I kinda... forgot about it.

So then, yesterday, SF sends me an email saying that the kids were home from school and there was a package from WizKids for me. Now, by this time, I've gotten a brick of Supernova and several more boosters of Supernova and I've traded my zombie Captain America for a great many Supernova figs, so I not only have rookies of Thor and Vision, I also have Veterans of each and an Experienced Vision, as well. So, well, I shrug to myself again. I mean, it's nice that, yeah, after 10 or 12 weeks, they finally managed to ship me replacement rookie Thor and Vision figs, but, hey, it's not like they're crucial adds to my collection or anything at this point.

So when SF picks me up at work that night (I work in the kingdom of Far, Far Away, and my schedule keeps me at work until after buses stop running in the evening) she's brought the box, because she knows I had a crappy day and she thought it would cheer me up. Which is merely a fraction of the thoughtfulness and consideration that SuperFiancee displays constantly, and a miniscule fragment of the reason I am the luckiest man in the universe. But, I digress.

So I open the box idly while we're driving home, figuring at least I will verify that I got the rookie Thor and the rookie Vision as asked, and...

...underneath the packing material, I find this li'l fella...



For those not in the know (including all of you who really don't care), this is The Mighty Thor, a convention only exclusive figure, which means, you only get if you attend a convention, go to the WizKids booth, and buy $100 worth of product.

Or, apparently, if you send in a couple of Thor figs with Vision dials and ask for the correct figs and dials to be sent back.

While I have no real idea what lies behind this substitution, I'm certainly not kicking. I have badly wanted a Mighty Thor ever since WK announced the figure's existence, and I assumed I would never ever get one, because I don't go to cons and if I did, I wouldn't be spending $100 at anyone's booth, much less WK's.

I have to assume that, if WK is substituting The Mighty Thor for, you know, rookie Thor dials, then they must have badly underestimated how many Rookie Thor pieces they would need to keep around as replacement stock.

Why do I want the figure so bad? Well, did you look at his dial? I mean, I'd want him anyway because he's Thor and Thor is cool; in fact, Thor is so cool that even his crappy Ultimates version with the uru hammer the size of a Volkswagon is just a tiny little BIT cool, which is saying something, because not even Hank Pym (who is very VERY cool) is cool enough to make his Ultimates version anything but a chump.

But, seriously, did you take a look at his dial?

One KO slot. ELEVEN clicks of life. An Attack Value that starts at 12 (TWELVE!!! For a Seth designed dial, that's, like, "Here, here's the keys to my house, take everything you want, and my girlfriend is a real easy lay after the first two beers, too, so bring a sixer, I work from 8 to 8 every day and she's always home by 4 in the afternoon, dude"... I mean, Seth simply does not dish out 12 attacks, he must have been high on goofballs or something when he designed this dial) and never drops below the miserable crappy 9 that Seth nearly always inflicts on EVERY character, no matter how astonishingly godlike that character should actually be. A 10 movement with Running Shot, so he can move and make a missile attack in the same turn, a 16 Defense, which isn't so hot in and of itself, but with Impervious on it, well, that rocks out loud, and a 4 damage with Ranged Combat Expert. Now, I could quibble on that last -- I mean, if the new Icons Superman, and the new ORIGIN Supergirl, can deal out 5 damage straight up, without mods, then I'd think The Mighty Thor should get a 5 damage too, and then, sure, add +2 to that for a ranged attack with mighty Mjolnir, absolutely, that works for me.

But, I ain't gonna quibble. If Mighty Mjolnir only does 6 clicks of damage when Thor bounces it off someone's coconut at range, well, 'tis enough, 'twil serve.

Speaking of range -- while a 10 isn't a 12, or, perhaps, the truly mindbogglingly and fittingly godlike 14 I'd like to see on the Norse God of Thunder, still, it's nothing to sneer at. Coupled with the Running Shot and the formidable Attack Value (he hits 18 Defenses on a 6! A SIX, bitchez!!!) it makes The Mighty Thor into one lean mean wrecking machine.

And that Power Cosmic TA -- oh BABY. The Mighty Thor's stats cannot be countered by sneaky little Outwitting dickheads, and he does not take pushing damage, so he can take two actions in a row all damn day long without hurting himself. This -- THIS -- is THE MIGHTY THOR. Bow before him. Worship him. Or, y'know, just head for the hills.

Yeah, he's the only Thor that can't fly, but, well, Thor employs his hammer to fly, and if you're wondering what's keeping mighty Mjolnir busy, well, take a look at all that Ranged Combat Expert on Thor's damage slot. Mjolnir is a little too occupied breaking shit to act as a taxi for this fig, and that's all right with me.

Now, sure, at 286 points, he's one pricey frickin' piece of plastic to add to your team, more expensive even than the much vaunted LEGACY Ares. And, sure, I'd have liked an extra range target or two to really make the most of all that Energy Explosion halfway down his dial. But fuck it, every click he has Energy Explosion on he also has Flurry, letting him make two close combat attacks per turn for 3 damage each, with Attack Values of 11, 12, and 11. I mean, who's going to be throwing lightning around when you can pummel some adjacent dumbass for six clicks of damage in a turn, or two adjacent dumb asses for three each?

Add in the Thundering Blow Feat Card that comes only with this exclusive figure and you've got a powerful force for good or ill indeed, albeit one that weighs in at a hefty 306 points.

My only problem at this point is figuring out where to display him. I already have two different Thor figures (Clobberin' Time, Supernova) in my Avengers line up, so I'm thinking of starting a separate Thor and His Enemies section on another set of shelves...

Anyway. Fabulous surprise in the mail last night. Plus, an online magazine had a lot of advance information on the upcoming AVENGERS set... but I'll need a lot more time to adequately report on that, and Mike Norton will probably beat me to it, anyway.

Shot through the heart (and JMS is to blame)

Now slightly updated! (3/20/2007)




























From Wikipedia:

The story begins on December 8, 1940. Dr. Abraham Erskine is killed by a German spy, along with MP Benjamin Parker, before the Super-Soldier Serum was to be used for Project: Rebirth.

Due to the assassination, Project: Rebirth is cancelled. The US government activates Project: Iron Man and asks Steve Rogers to participate in it. Steve accepts, and is permanently bonded to the Iron Man armor. Iron Man debuts during the Battle of Guadalcanal, going on to help win the Second World War.

Decades later, Peter Parker sneaks out of a field trip to a desert base and goes joyriding with friends in a stolen jeep. After the jeep breaks down, Peter goes off to find fuel, wandering into a test site just as a gamma bomb is detonated and recovers from the explosion in hospital. After returning home, Peter is confronted by the two friends, who accuse him of getting them into trouble. Peter becomes angry and turns into the Hulk, destroying property around him. The Hulk is confronted by the police. Aunt May recognises the Hulk as Peter and suffers a heart attack, which causes him to flee.

Peter later visits Aunt May in the hospital and says goodbye before running away, only to be confronted by Iron Man and several army troops. Peter turns into the Hulk and confronts Iron Man. After a long fight outside the hospital, the Hulk eventually kills Iron Man and flees in terror.

Meanwhile, Reed Richards, along with his co-pilots Ben Grimm, Sue Storm and Johnny Storm, launches into space in a rocket designed to collect cosmic rays. However, the rocket explodes before it can reach orbit due to sabotage, crashing back to Earth and killing Ben, Johnny and Sue. Afterwards, Reed is invited to join the spy organisation called S.H.I.E.L.D.

Years later, Bruce Banner is bitten by a radioactive spider collected from the gamma bomb test site and mutates into a half-man, half-spider creature. After going on the run for two years, Banner is captured and, after having his mutation brought under control, becomes a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent.

That's the deal, and it's fine as far as it goes. And, I grant you, it isn't very realistic to expect it to go all that far, in a mere 5 issue miniseries. And yet, I get to the climactic fifth issue, and here are all these previously completely unmentioned superheroes and supervillains swarming out of the woodwork to fight Galactus, and Strazinsky gives us this clever little caption about how "Some lives were not touched at all" by, you know, the original stray bullet that created this entire alternate universe -- and sure, that's reasonable. It is.

Upon reading this, though, a huge part of me instantly screams -- "BULLSHIT!!!!"

If you're going to 'turn the Marvel Universe on its side', you have to do THE WHOLE MARVEL UNIVERSE. If one stray bullet is going to turn Steve Rogers into Iron Man, Peter Parker into the Hulk, Bruce Banner into Spider-Man and keep the Fantastic Four from ever existing... well... that's a lot of weight to pile onto one small piece of high velocity heavy metal, granted. But I say, KEEP PILING. I want to see this supposedly minor change eventually effect everything and everyone in the entire damn universe, or, at least, on the entire damn Marvel Earth.

Otherwise, it's very much like you're saying "Well, yeah, sure, Captain America and Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four, they're important. If you fuck with their origins, make a bunch of them not exist and seriously screw with the others, that's going to have an impact, yes. But... you know... not on everything. Especially not on, um, THE NEW X-MEN. Because they're too good to be in any way changed by something as trivial and stupid as Captain America and the Fantastic Four never existing and Peter Parker and Bruce Banner trading super-identities."

And, once again, my forebrain is up on its hindlegs chanting "bullSHIT bullSHIT bullSHIT". Because there is just no way I'm going to swallow that nonsense.

And, you know, my so-called mind, in its endlessly mysterious ways, kicks out alternate timelines the way horses shit on an uphill slope. So, here's MY rather more fully fleshed out timeline for Marvel's BULLET POINTS universe --


Inventor of super soldier serum killed days before Steve Rogers would have become Captain America, stray bullet cuts down MP Ben Parker as well -- Steve Rogers becomes first Iron Man -- after WWII, Peter Parker becomes the Hulk -- Reed Richards is sole survivor of rocket flight, becomes director of SHIELD -- Stephen Strange is never injured, works as surgeon for U.S. government

Strange is eventually assigned to Operation: FURY, a top secret project hidden in Canada where an immortal soldier from WWII has volunteered to have his bones fused with admantium

Professor Charles Xavier is led by his first, experimental Cerebro machine to New York City's bowery, where he discovers a homeless mutant who has winged feet, pointed ears, the ability to fly, bulletproof skin, and superhuman strength that is somehow tied to a dependency on immersion in water -- this mutant agrees to accept training and therapy from Xavier, in hopes of recovering his memory -- these two become a team, and their adventures soon lead them to the American Southwest, where they unearth the inert body of the world's first android, the ironically named Human Torch -- the Torch's revival causes the homeless mutant to remember that he is Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner -- the Torch, Namor, and Charles Xavier form a group called 'the New Invaders', whose specific purpose is to foil threats to world peace originating outside America's borders

A teenaged Sam Wilson pushes an old woman out of the path of a speeding truck and is blinded when a piece of radioactive waste from the truck strikes him across the eyes -- when his parents are later killed by crime related violence, Wilson will take on the guise of Daredevil and declare war on Harlem's underworld --

A young Scott Summers, having fallen under the criminal influence of the mutant Jack o'Diamonds, finds his mutant powers manifesting as he and his evil mentor are being attacked by a rival underworld gang, led by a man named "The Fixer". Summers and Jack O'Diamonds easily destroy their attackers using Summers' new, largely uncontrolled optic blasts. Now responsible for several mostly inadvertent murders, Summers becomes a hardened criminal --

With The Fixer's gang destroyed, "Battlin" Jack Murdock takes the heavyweight title of the world -- his son Matt Murdock goes on to excel in his studies and join the Air Force, where he eventually enters astronaut training with NASA – his superior sense of spatial relationships coupled with his own brash nature quickly earn him the nickname of "Hotshot" --

At Cape Canaveral , Lt. Carol Danvers has encountered and foiled several alien infiltration plots – when top secret long range sensors discover what seems to be an alien base on the moon, she volunteers for an exploratory expedition commanded by Colonel John Jameson, using a redesigned Richards rocket engine -- others in this expeditionary crew are Air Force pilot turned astronaut Matt Murdock and young math genius and Air Force Lt. Hank McCoy, who is secretly a mutant -- passing through cosmic radiation belts during the journey, all four are mutated (or further mutated), with Matt "Hotshot" Murdock gaining power over fire and the ability to transform into a walking humanoid fireball, McCoy transforming into a monstrous black furred superstrong Beast with incredible agility and regenerative powers, Lt. Danvers gaining the ability to manipulate an invisible particle field allowing various effects (including high velocity flight while encased in an indestructible, friction proof forcefield) and Col Jameson himself gaining the power to stretch his body to a near infinite degree – the expedition reaches the moon and discovers the "Blue Area" along with a Kree outpost there, which they manage to destroy – returning to Earth, they are hailed by the press as "the Fantastic Four" and led by John "Mr. Fantastic" Jameson, become the U.S. military's front line force against unEarthly threats

In the Soviet Union, Project: воин олова("Tin Soldier") has been ongoing since the mid 1940s, attempting to create a working duplicate of America's Iron Man armor – Dr. Erik Magnus is in charge. Magnus is using the project as cover for his private, covert activities searching out fellow mutants he can dominate/enslave and use to conquer the world. When Tin Soldier hits an snag, Magnus arranges to have visiting biophysicist Henry Pym and his East German wife Maria kidnapped so Pym can be forced to work on the project – Pym combines his own cybernetic and size control breakthroughs with Russian 'Tin Soldier' tech to create a prototype 'Soldier Ant' battlesuit that will only function in miniature size – he is killed attempting to break himself and his wife out – his wife, Maria Pym, dons the 'Soldier Ant' battlesuit and wreaks havoc on the Tin Soldier compound before escaping – back in the U.S., she vows to carry on her husband's work and to use his technology to fight crime and aid the oppressed as Soldier Ant –

Soldier Ant soon encounters Misty Knight while Misty is still going through the police academy – Misty asks Soldier Ant if she can become her partner; Soldier Ant uses Pym size change technology to create the superhero identity 'Giantess' for Misty – the two become a crime-fighting team

When Vernon van Dyne is murdered by an alien outlaw, his teenage daughter Janet becomes obsessed with avenging her father's murder. She devotes herself to a rigorous physical and mental training process and utilizing her newly inherited wealth as well as her father's self invented alien detection technology, she equips herself to hunt down her father's murderer and kill him. Having done so, she equips herself further with alien technology confiscated from her father's murderer, and vows to devote her life to avenging the innocent as The Punisher (a name she chooses from something her father's killer calls her as he is dying, referring to an alien legend)

When newly graduated medical students Don Blake and Jane Foster accidentally stumble on an alien invasion fleet hidden in Northern Europe, they flee into a cavern, where a cave-in kills Blake and breaks Foster's leg – she finds an old stick and upon accidentally striking it against a stone she is attempting to shift, she is transformed into a female version of Thor – she escapes the cavern, foils the aliens, and returns to the U.S. where she continues to occasionally battle evil as Thor –

Odin assigns Loki to test this new female 'Thor' -- Loki uses his powers to make a circus strongman named 'Crusher' Creel into The Absorbing Man – Creel runs amok at the circus – Jane Foster is watching, and turns into Thor to battle Creel – also in the audience are Maria Pym and Misty Knight, who become Soldier Ant and Giantess to aid Thor – working as performers in the circus are Clint Barton, along with Wanda and Pietro Magnus – all six working together are barely capable of defeating The Absorbing Man, and upon doing so, decide to form a permanent team called The Avengers

After Mordo proves incapable of protecting Earth's dimension from Dormammu, the Ancient One seeks a more effective disciple to eventually become Earth's sorcerer supreme – sensing enormous latent power to manipulate reality in a young American named Rick Jones, the Ancient One recruits Jones – eventually, Jones becomes a Master of the Mystic Arts and, on the death of the Ancient One years later at the hands of Shuma-Gorath, succeeds to the post of Sorcerer Supreme

When Magneto and his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants – Cyclops, Jack o'Diamonds, Mastermind, the Blob, and the Toad – attack Cape Canaveral, it is the Fantastic Four who drive them off

When Victor Von Doom nearly succeeds at hurling SHIELD headquarters into the sun, SHIELD Director Reed Richards works with Tony Stark to design a giant, flying 'helicarrier' to use as a mobile HQ for SHIELD from that point on – upon having his plan foiled by Richards and Stark, Doom kills Baron Strucker and replaces him with a lifelike robot duplicate, which Doom then uses to control HYDRA by proxy -- thus begins a decades long conflict between Doom/HYDRA and Richards/SHIELD


That should cover most of the early Silver Age, at least, and with that level of change to the MU (no Cap, a military FF, Tony Stark and Dr. Strange are civilians, Hank Pym and Don Blake dead, Reed Richards is running SHIELD, Nick Fury is basically Wolverine, Magneto is working for the Soviet Union when he isn't moonlighting as a world beater, Rick Jones as Sorcerer Supreme, Charles Xavier, Namor, and the original Human Torch adventuring together, etc, etc) it seems to me that virtually every other character and concept we know of in the Marvel Universe would have to also be distorted in some way by the effect of that original stray bullet.

I'd ask people to tell me what they think, but, well, this is one of those entries that nobody but me ever reads, so... y'know...

(not so) Great Scott!

One of my very first 'favorite characters' was the Golden Age Green Lantern. Yeah, that's him over to the left. Funky, huh? I saw him for the first time ever in a 100 Page Super Spectacular that was mostly reprint material -- I couldn't tell you which one in particular, but I know it featured a story where the Golden Age GL had to take on the evil Sportsmaster, besting him at any number of sports-related athletic events without resorting to his magic power ring. Naturally, GL thrashed the baddie utterly, proving that even without his item of power, he was still a force to be reckoned with. Either that, or Sportsmaster was a doofus. Maybe both, come to think of it.

For some reason, the story made a deep impression on me -- probably because when I was a kid, the gaudier and more garishly polychromatic a superhero's costume was, the more I liked him or her. As you can see, the Golden Age Green Lantern may well be the all time champeen and universal record holder for Most Aesthetically Dreadful Superhero Outfit Ever, beating out even the Murphy Anderson designed costume for the adult Robin of Earth-2 (only ever seen in a single two page spread done for an early JLA/JSA team up back in the 60s) and the yellow/red monstrosity sported very briefly by Daredevil, for sheer vulgar tackiness.

I loved it. And, when I managed to read a few more reprinted adventures of the Golden Age Green Lantern, I loved the character, too. I mean, yeah, sure, the then-modern version of Green Lantern was cool enough with his test pilot job and his green and black skintights and his membership in an intergalactic, mostly alien police force. But this Golden Age guy was the bomb! He had that awesome purple cape and his costume looked like it was made out of real fabric and materials and his ring was magic instead of an artifact of alien super science and it seemed much cooler to me that where the current GL's power ring wouldn't work on yellow, the Golden Age Green Lantern's ring was powerless against wood.

I mean, this just seemed more workable, somehow. ANYthing could be yellow, after all; yellow wasn't a substance, it was a subjective condition of an object's appearance -- even as a ten year old, I used to wonder, are there alien Green Lanterns who don't see what we regard as visible light? Maybe bat-like Green Lanterns with a built in radar sense? And if so, wouldn't they be completely invincible, because nothing would ever be 'yellow' to them, and in fact, they wouldn't even know what 'yellow' was? But wood was an actual substance. If something was wood, well, it wasn't going to be anything else if you turned out the lights, or filtered the rays of the sun through a green power prism, or, y'know, closed your eyes.

Anyway, I really liked Alan Scott, the Golden Age Green Lantern. I thought he was super cool, along with that bizarre Hawkman guy, and the stuff we love when we're 10 years old is the stuff we will always love in some way. So, thirty years or so later, when I started collecting HeroClix figures, well, one of the first ones I went looking for was a Golden Age Green Lantern.

Alas, back when I started collecting HeroClix (Christmas of 2003, I believe) we didn't even have a Hal Jordan Green Lantern figure yet; the only Green Lantern that had come out in clix form at that time was John Stewart (most likely because he was pretty much the only black character in that entire first HeroClix expansion; DC's superhero line up being almost overwhelmingly Caucasian in appearance). We weren't to get a Hal Jordan GL until the UNLEASHED set came along, although, in the preceding LEGACY set, WizKids did, kind of, give us an Alan Scott figure -- this guy here:

Straight out of the odious but oh so popular KINGDOM COME graphic novel came this rather foolishly balding Alan Scott (foolishly balding because, you know, while Alan Scott in the Modern Day has to be something like 87 years old, he's also entirely composed of some mystic green energy in humanoid form, and his appearance is entirely a matter of his will, and I find it doubtful that any human male would ever 'will' himself to have the kind of receding hairline that Alex Ross depicted Alan having in KINGDOM COME). The green energy, medieval looking sword and armor made for a lovely looking HeroClix sculpt, and as for the longest time this was the only Alan Scott figure in existence, I wanted it badly. This yearning led to a great deal of frustration for me, since the Kingdom Come Green Lantern was then and still remains one of the most avidly sought after chase figures in HeroClix; a quick jog over to Ebay reveals that right now, he's going for around $50 a pop.

KC Green Lantern is, to my mind, not much of a Green Lantern, as defined by the dial you can see a graph of above. A few clicks of Running Shot on an acceptable but not outstanding movement made him a mobile piece, sure. A missile attack range of 10 helped his usefulness, and 2 targets is always good to see -- but for attack powers, all he has is Telekinesis, making his generally excellent attack values kind of a waste if you want to use that power, and absolutely making the extra range target all but useless. The defense is frankly fabulous, especially on that opening click, and Willpower makes him slightly more useful, as he can take actions two turns in a row without pushing himself off that sensational 20. And a 4 damage with RCE ain't nothin' to sneeze at, either -- that's 6 clicks of bone bruising admonition he could deliver, up to 15 squares away from whatever grid he might start the turn in.

Yet, still, for a character with a magic weapon that can create literally anything he can imagine out of mystic green energy, this was a startlingly limited interpretation -- he was, basically, an orbital laser cannon, or, if you will, a flying plasma bolt generator. And the lack of damage reducers made him a chancy investment of 225 points; yeah, it was going to be tough to hit him with that high defense, but everybody rolls boxcars sometimes, and if some lucky player managed to clip KC GL for 4 or 5 clicks of damage, he suddenly transformed into a 225 point turd. The last two clicks of Defend with the late dial spike in Defense Value could make for an interestingly useful if massively overpriced taxi as the game wound down... but, honestly, he just didn't impress me that much. A Green Lantern, after all, should be able to do so much more.

So it was that, when we first started seeing promotional material for the latest HeroClix expansion, ORIGIN, I was very pleased and excited to see that one of the characters prominently featured on the booster box art was the Golden Age Green Lantern. And, as more and more information was doled out in tiny, miserly dollops by WizKids' sadistically cruel and almost certainly bedwetting HeroClix Brand Manager, Mark Tuttle, one of the tidbits I received with great joy was that not only was there going to be a Golden Age Green Lantern figure, but that Alan Scott would be represented by a full REV -- Rookie, Experienced, Veteran versions -- in the set as well. Best of all, the Veteran Golden Age Green Lantern was going to be 214 points -- a mere 11 points less than what the KC Green Lantern had cost.

I had high hopes that this REV of Alan Scott, and especially the 214 point vet, would finally do the character justice.

I am, at this point, about a full brick (12 boosters) into the set, and, very oddly, I haven't pulled a single Unique yet -- other than Queen Hippolyta, which, I suppose, pretty much used up all my luck in that quarter for some time to come. I was pleased, a few boosters back, to pull out one of these little fellas --


That first one I pulled was just a rookie. Now, the rookie version of Alan Scott, Green Lantern is pretty cool -- for 85 points, you get all this Green Lanterny goodness --




This was the kind of dial I wanted to see on my Golden Age Green Lantern, baby. Solid opening stats and powers that I found very playable for the points -- a 10 movement with Running Shot making him highly mobile, a 10 Attack Value with Incapacitate making him very effective right from the start, a 17 Defense Value with Energy Shield/Deflection making him nearly as tough to hit from a distance as his Kingdom Come version, a solid 3 damage making him a likely candidate for a Stunning Blow feat card -- yeah, this was a rookie Alan Scott I could have some respect for. The JSA team ability meant I'd be able to share that high 17 defense with other JSAers, which was a nice little bonus. Yeah, the 8 range wasn't such a much, but still, he's a rookie. I had very high hopes that the decent stats boded VERY well for what I'd see on his Vet version.

So, just the other night SuperFiancee bought me a couple of boosters of ORIGIN. And I was VERY pleased to open one and see, tucked down towards the bottom, another Golden Age Green Lantern figure -- which, upon closer examination, proved to have a red ringed (Veteran) base. Yes! The 214 point Golden Age Green Lantern -- was MINE!!!

So I got him home and took a look at his base, clicking through all his slots. I'm sure I'd looked at his stats when WK first posted the full ORIGIN gallery a week or so back, but when you click through 123 figures at once, it's hard to really concentrate on one dial in specific. This time, looking at him in isolation, and knowing what the rookie had on his dial, well, I got a much better overall impression of his utility.

Here's what I saw:




The first thing that jumped out at me were his stats. In 75 years of fighting every sort of menace imaginable, Alan still hasn't gotten any faster, or any better at hitting something with his magic power beam. His range is greater -- at a 12, in fact, he's got one of the best ranges in the game -- but he still only has 1 range target, which makes his Incapacitate and Energy Explosion attack powers largely wastes of points. His Defense Value is one better, and his opening click of Barrier is always welcome under my particular House Rules, where the power is actually quite useful. Under WK's normal tournament rules, though, this opening click with no defense mods or damage reducers is basically an invitation to the opposition to bring the hammer down -- and do it for at least three clicks of damage, so as to knock Alan through his two clicks of Invulnerability and onto some Energy Shield/Deflection.

Now, an 18 Defense with a JSA team ability is something worth celebrating, as it's the first time the JSA has gotten a member with a really high defense to share amongst adjacent team members. Still, 214 points is a high price to pay for it. In fact, for a somewhat mobile long range Incapacitator who deals out pretty decent damage when he hits with an acceptable but not spectacular Attack Value -- well, 214 points is just a lot to pay, period.

The Vet GL becomes much more effective if you add Stunning Blow to him, so he can both add an extra action token AND deal 5 clicks of damage to any target he successfully hits from range. That jacks him up to 224 points for a flying pillbox, though... one who still can't hit for the kind of damage his KC doppelganger can deal out, and who will lose that high defense if he takes action two turns in a row. An Armor Piercing will make his weak-ass single target Energy Explosion a bit more effective, but that's simply adding more points to an already out of control, completely unbalanced build investment that will never pay any dividends.

A click of Leadership, one of Phasing, a few of Pulse Wave and Force Blast -- yeah, they make the figure more versatile, but none of this versatility really seems to justify the monumental price tag. I'd trade in all four powers for an extra range target and an opening slot with an 11 attack value. Change out the last slot of Willpower for the first slot of Barrier so Alan can blow shit up two turns in a row without losing his best stats or power combinations and you might just have a figure worth the hefty price tag.

As it is, though, when I play Green Lantern in a JSA team, I will most likely play the 85 point rookie. He's very nearly as useful as the monstrously overpriced Vet, and leaves a lot more room for extra Feats and additional teammates.

It also makes me sad that in an expansion that is truly notable for beautiful sculpts, WK decided to go with an obviously Golden Age, rather awkward and two dimensional looking Martin Nodell inspired figure for Alan Scott. But, hey, at least we have one now. That's something.