Heart of admantium

Well, back to reality, of a sort, after all that heady heady comic book tripping:

My love let me spoil her a little yesterday morning. I always have to fight tooth and nail to get her to let me indulge her a bit, as she's just not used to it from anyone in her life previous to meeting me.



Yesterday I got up early with the two older kids (they have to roll out of bed at 5 am to catch a 6 am bus) and let SuperGirlfriend sleep an extra hour. I also did the morning chores around the house as she wasn't feeling all that great; unloading and reloading the dishwasher, packing a lunch for SuperAdorable Kid (and my own, which SuperGirlfriend usually spoils me by packing for me), taking the trash out, making the bed (the last of which are my designated morning chores, anyway).

No big deal. But SuperGirlfriend was raised in a household where everyone expected her to do all her own housework, plus as much of theirs as they could fob off on her, and she spent twenty years with a guy who resolutely refused to ever get up early with the kids no matter how much she might need it, and who made doing anything at all she asked him to do into a huge tit for tat bargaining session -- an "okay, if I do the dishes and make the bed for you today, what am I going to get out of it and how soon" negotiation.

I can't imagine trying to maintain a loving relationship that way; I've always felt that when you're running a favor tab with someone, keeping track of who owes who what and how soon the debts are due, well, by definition, that someone isn't your friend (much less, your domestic/romantic life partner). To my mind, one of the simplest definitions of real friendship is, well, you don't bother keeping score, you just trust the other person not to take advantage of you... and when you stop trusting them, well, you stop being friends with them.

Anyway, I did all that stuff, which wasn't a big deal, because SuperGirlfriend needed a little extra sleep, and SuperDependable Teen fried an egg for breakfast yesterday and the smell in the kitchen combined with SuperGirlfriend feeling a little nauseous would have made it very difficult for her to be out there making lunches. A no brainer; she's the love of my life and it makes me happy to make her happy. I'm sure you can all dig it.

But SHE thinks it's a big deal, because, you know, I'm the first person she's ever known who's been decent to her, I guess. So last night, when she came and picked me up, she had a little gift for me: the Jocasta Unique from the most recent Marvel HeroClix expansion, one of the last few Uniques from that set I want.

At 78 points, Jocasta is no game breaker. Still, with the newest WizKids designer apparently determined to deflate all the games recent wildly jacked up attack and defense statistics once again, her opening Attack Value of 10 with a damage of 3 makes her a solid hitter. From there she drops down to 9 for two clicks of Psychic Blast at a 2 damage, which isn't shabby. That and her opening two clicks of Impervious make her a nice little package for the points.

Not that her playability matters much to me; I just wanted her because she represents an interesting character from late 70s Avengers continuity, and she gives me someone to put over next to my various Ultrons.

This really leaves only the new Spider-Man fig as a Unique I really want from ARMOR WARS, although I wouldn't mind getting the new Magneto and Mystique, either.

SuperGirlfriend also delighted me with a box I've been impatiently waiting for since shortly after my birthday, containing my mailaway ARMOR WARS freebie, the Anthony Stark Unique. Upon opening it I was delighted all over again; although the WizKids site clearly depicts that the fig has no TA on its base, mine sports the Avengers TA, meaning I give up absolutely nothing by simply swapping the gold armored sculpt from ARMOR WARS' Iron Man Unique with this grey armored sculpt. This is lovely, as the Anthony Stark Unique has a significantly better dial than the Iron Man version, which is kind of ridiculous, since the golden armor represents at least a generation of improvements in the basic Stark battlesuit technology.

I'd planned to swap them out anyway, but had been sad at the thought that my gold armored Iron Man, who actually was in the Avengers, wouldn't have the Avengers TA. However, now he does! (It makes little sense for WizKids to have put the Avengers TA on the grey armored Iron Man, since IM only wore that armor in his origin story, before the Avengers ever formed. But in this case, their mistake is my enormous gain.)

Looking at the two different figs and dials, you almost have to think that WizKids intentionally designed it this way. The dial they gave us with the gold armor, available from booster packs, has generally lower stats and a much more limited power array than the dial on the supposedly more primitive grey armored mailaway. About the only way to make things work consistently with actual comic book continuity is to do exactly what I have done, and switch figures. Perhaps the new game designer is more subtle than I thought.

In addition to all this, SuperGirlfriend also printed off several sheets of Green Lantern Power Battery and Mr. Terrific's T-sphere pogs (see one of my entries down below) so the SuperKids and I will have those if we want to use them in any future games. The T-Spheres I expect to be very useful when playing Mr. Terrific from now on, but the Power Batteries are also cool, being set up as they are to be able to be hidden on Hindering Terrain, and to provide the Support power when necessary, if only to Green Lanterns. (They have a movement value of 0, so they have to be picked up and carried around, or you have to go to them.)

Have I mentioned recently that I am the luckiest man in the universe?

::sigh:: Okay, off to work...

Self gratification

You know you’ve made it when someone, anyone, anywhere, wants to interview you. And I know I haven’t made it because no one anywhere wants to interview me. And while that would stop a lesser mortal dead in his tracks, to me it is no obstacle, because like Jimmy Rabbit in The Commitments, I am perfectly capable of interviewing… myself.

And I won’t be lobbing myself any softballs, either.

So it is that MISERABLE ANNALS OF THE EARTH magazine interviews… ME.

MAOTE: Highlander, you’re a powerful force for good in both the real world and on the Internet, and you’ve been crusading for justice for a long time, under a great many identities. Just how many nom de cybere’s have you had, over the years since you got your first computer with an AOL account?

ME: Well, first, of course, came Doc Nebula. DocNebula was, in fact, the very first AOL screenname I ever had. I wound up with it after every possible combination of GiantMan turned out to be taken, which still strikes me as bizarre, but what the hell.

MAOTE: And who is Doc Nebula?

ME: Dr. Nebula is the arch villain of a high school superteam I created back in college named Fighting Five. He’s actually the high school janitor. One of the members of Fighting Five was this total comics geek who used to fantasize about what would happen if he and four of the really cool kids at his high school were all on the same superhero team. Because the janitor looked very sinister to him, he also incorporated him into the fantasies as their arch nemesis, Dr. Nebula. Well, one mind staggering plot device later, his fantasies were transformed into actuality, the Cool Kids and he all had super powers (although they still didn’t want to hang out with him, of course) and the poor janitor had his personality completely overlaid by that of the megalomaniacal Dr. Nebula.

MAOTE: And did the hero feel guilty about it?

ME: Yeah, when he wasn’t getting beaten up by the Cool Kids he’d inadvertently given superpowers to.

MAOTE: What would have been a nifty twist there would be a couple of the Cool Kids ending up going villainous, and some of the other nerds in the school, who also got superpowers from the plot device, joining the team instead.

ME: Yeah. That was going to be the big second year reversal story arc – three of the original members of the team more or less go evil – well, arrogant and self involved, anyway – and the original geek and his girlfriend, who used to be one of the Cool Kids, end up with three other geeks in the team fighting the original members.

MAOTE: Would Dr. Nebula ever have become his normal self again?
ME: No, he’d be a tragic figure like the Hulk. Well, worse, because he’s totally evil, but it’s not his fault.

MAOTE: Okay. So, after Doc Nebula…

ME: I don’t know. I suppose my next webnomen was John Jones, Manhunter from Marathon, IL. I’d gotten a reputation under the Doc Nebula name that made it difficult to get people to read my work objectively… potential audiences were coming to me already biased by crap they’d read about stuff I’d written, that they hadn’t bothered to read themselves.

MAOTE: Like the whole Kurt Busiek/ASTRO CITY thing.

ME: Yeah, we call him ‘Slappy’ around here now, to avoid Google searches.

MAOTE: Ah. Wise foreign policy. So with John Jones, you wanted to start over…

ME: More or less. But after a while I got tired of being all conciliatory and just started to let my true colors show more and more in my writing, and it wasn’t long before certain people…

MAOTE: Slappy, for one…

ME: …yeah… tumbled to it. So I copped to it. But then I started blogging. My first blog was called Doc Nebula’s Eastern Oregon Dum Dum Depression Blog, but unfortunately, I was blogging about a really exasperating job I had at the time in the City Clerk’s office in Tampa, and my boss heard about the blog, so I had to go into hiding. Eventually, that led to me creating A Brown Eyed Handsome Man, a blog title that was actually inadvertently suggested by Elaine Riggs.

MAOTE: You don’t hang out at Elaine’s blog much any more.

ME: No, she writes about things that don’t much interest me, like, I don’t know, tofu matza balls and what have you. She’s a funny, sharp woman, but our reality tunnels don’t seem to intersect much these days.

MAOTE: So, let’s see: you were Doc Nebula, and then John Jones, and then A Brown Eyed Handsome Man…

ME: People generally just called me Handsome.

MAOTE: But you’re not vain.

ME: I considered it an ironic nickname. Like calling the tall guy Shorty.

MAOTE: But now you’re Highlander, and what the hell, dude, the blog name is pulled from BUCKAROO BANZAI, so what’s up with that?

ME: I live in a neighborhood called the Highlands. I was originally going to call myself Monkey Boy when I started this blog, but Supergirlfriend absolutely hated that name, and wanted me to be Highlander. I find when I do what Supergirlfriend wants my life is a very happy one, so…

MAOTE: ::makes whipcracking noises::

ME: And the horse you rode in on, buddy.

MAOTE: Okay. Marvel comes to its senses, calls you up, and begs you to write any one title you want. What is it, why, and what are you going to do with it?

ME: AVENGERS. It badly needs me. And damage control.

MAOTE: Give us an example.

ME: Like this:
PAGE ONE
VISUAL: This is a splash page, with several Avengers – Hawkeye, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision, Captain America, Iron Man, Giant Man, the Wasp, all dressed more or less as if they’ve all just gotten up on Saturday morning, in the kitchen at Avengers Mansion. Hawkeye is at the table with a plate of food, a stack of comics on the table beside him. He’s reading a copy of AVENGERS; from the cover, we can see it’s the issue where he supposedly died. Everyone else is sitting or standing around, eating or getting themselves food or washing dishes or what have you.

HAWKEYE: Uh…
HAWKEYE: Say, guys. Did you know I was dead?

TITLE: Starting Over

PAGE TWO
PANEL ONE:
VISUAL: Iron Man, Scarlet Witch talk to Hawkeye.

IRON MAN: You just got to that issue? Oh, it gets better.
HAWKEYE: Better than me dead?
WITCH: Sure. Turns out I killed you. And eventually about a million mutants. Because I’m an unstable psychotic mass murderer.

PANEL TWO

VISUAL: Add in more Avengers, see word balloons.
VISION: But you’re a very beautiful unstable psychotic mass murderer, Wanda.
WANDA: Aw, Vision, that’s soooo sweet. Pass the jelly.
CAP: I don’t know. I like the part where Tony begs Wolverine to join the team.
HAWKEYE: Wolverine… joins the team…?
CAP: Yes. ::snicker:: But only after Tony begs him.
HAWKEYE: You never begged ME to join the team!
IRON MAN: Well… be fair, Clint… we were enemies…

PANEL THREE:
VISUAL: More yammer.

GIANT MAN: I don’t know, Tony. Wolverine could be a valuable addition to the team. I could, like, throw him at… I don’t know… the Mandarin. Or giant robots.
WASP: Oh, ew. Those sideburns. And he never showers. I’d rather have D-Man. Honestly.
CAP: Maybe Tony can beg D-Man to join the team for you, Jan…
GIANT MAN: ::musing:: Yeah… I could throw D-Man, too…

And then, the mansion gets attacked by, like, super gorillas.

MAOTE: Super gorillas?

ME: The Marvel Universe has a criminal shortage of super-gorillas.

MAOTE: I suppose they could be being led by the Man Ape…

ME: Exactly.

* * * * *

There's no chance we won't continue this later. I could write this stuff all day and all night. Don't even dare to hope this is the end of it. But that's all for now.

The Abyss Gazes Back

My fans respond! And I love them for it.

First, though, let me say this: I am, by definition, a Modern Age fan. By this I mean, there are comics that were published after the Silver Age ended that I like and think highly of. There are writers who have worked in comics in the Modern Age whose Modern Age work I enjoy, admire, and respect. Therefore, again, by definition, I am a Modern Age fan.

When I write derisively of the Modern Age, I do not speak of every single panel, caption, and/or word balloon that has ever been published in a Marvel comic book since GIANT SIZE X-MEN #1, or a DC comic book since CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. Hell, I can’t even honestly say I loathe every swoosh line, impact star, or heavily inked spot black in all the Image Comics ever printed, since Alan Moore actually wrote quite a few good comics under that imprint, near impossible though that is to believe from almost any remove.


Similarly, when I write in glowing, majestic terms of the Silver Age, I am not necessarily heaping unconditional praise and brilliant accolades on every single pencil stroke, ink line, and beautiful Artie Simek lettered sound effect ever to appear on a spinner rack in the 60s and 70s. Well, okay, yes, all the Artie Simek lettering was fabulous, that’s irrefutable. But still, nobody who has ever read an issue of MARVEL TEAM UP and who is remotely sane could possibly claim that every single comic published in the Silver Age was a tremendous achievement in the graphic storytelling form. For that matter, virtually every title DC published during the infamous DC Explosion experiment, from BLACK LIGHTNING through STALKER to KOBRA to SECRET SOCIETY OF SUPERVILLAINS was, frankly, appalling. And the less said about BROTHER POWER THE GEEK the better, of course, of course.


So I am, to a certain extent and within the legal definition, a Modern Age fan… but it must be admitted, my primary allegiance is to the Silver Age, I am a Silver Age zealot, a Silver Age fanatic, a resident and denizen and citizen of the Silver Age. What stories I like from the Modern Age often contain Silver Age sensibilities; the stories I loathe the most from the Modern Age are, in nearly every particular, the anathema of the Silver Age. And when I say that, I mean many things, but here are a few of them:

In the Silver Age, writing mattered. Some of the most intelligent, sophisticated, and brilliantly written stories ever done in comics were done in the Silver Age, because way back then, nobody assumed that simply because the average comics reader was in his or her teens, that meant they were chuckleheaded overstimulated emotionally retarded morons who would buy anything that had a foil cover, and avoid anything that required a fifth grade reading comprehension level. Back then, no one had yet declared that All Teen Age Comic Book Fans Are Dipshits, and tailored their material to suit that preconception. Difficult though that is to believe, yes, Virginia, once upon a time there was an age prior to Image Comics, and in that age, smart, sophisticated, complex superhero comics filled with exciting and interesting concepts were written and published, and teenagers actually bought, read, understood, and enjoyed them.

In the Silver Age, heroes were actually heroic. I know. I just lost every Modern Age reader I might have had; every single one of them just leapt for the gunwales, screaming and clawing to get off this boat before it steams steadily off the edge of the their belovedly amoral world. “Heroic heroes?” they sneer in contemptuous derision as they frantically clamber over the transom, “dude, that’s stupid! Heroic heroes don’t have claws, or samurai swords, or automatic weapons, or flechette grenades, or particle beams embedded in their lower colons! They don’t break people’s backs or rip people’s hearts out, fry people to a crisp or slice people open! Heroic heroes? That’s CRAZY TALK!!! If heroes were heroic, what would I have to beat off to? Where would I get my carnage? NOOOOOOO!!!”

It’s an old riff, I know. One well pummeled into oblivion by now. I bring it up, understanding it is pointless, knowing full well it will be ignored. But it lets me segue into another point that is, perhaps, not quite so cliché regarding the difference between heroes of the Silver Age, and their Modern Age counterparts:

Back in the Silver Age, heroes actually had jobs.

This is something I only recently came to realize, but it’s nonetheless very true. My Silver Age icons all worked for a living. Even the really really rich ones, like Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne, still had careers they put a lot of effort into when they weren’t inside the super suits. Silver Age heroes pulled their weight and did their share, even when they weren’t out saving the entire universe from Fin Fang Foom.

This is a pronounced contrast to the Modern Age, where all the most popular heroes are slackers. They sit around with no visible means of support, playing video games and eating Cheetohs in between world saving adventures, and often, when evil rears its ugly head, they have to be cajoled, conned, or even threatened into getting off their asses and doing something about it by Older, Wiser (and therefore More Boring) Heads.

This is in large part symptomatic of why I generally loathe the Modern Age. All comics fans, regardless of Age, favor heroes that represent what we aspire to be. In the Silver Age, this meant heroes who were admirable and likable, men and women of ideals and accomplishments, folks who did things, big things, great things, who had a positive impact and made a social contribution.

In the Modern Age, however, the most popular ‘heroes’ are, well, parasites and layabouts, whiney wanks with no manners and few morals, lewd, rude, crude dudes with ‘tude -- defiant, petulant, truculent, and emotionally (and often physically) adolescent. They goof off, they sleep in, they (mis)behave, in fact, like exactly what they are: perpetual brats without the slightest shred of scruples or sense of responsibility. They are Titans of Tantrum and Sultans of Sulk. They posture, they sneer, they snigger, they leer.

They are… and I cannot tell you how much this appalls me… exactly what their target demographic wishes most fervently to be.

Of course, when I say that such characters represent the entirety of the Modern Age, I exaggerate. Actually, the eternally adolescent slacker non-hero supplies only a portion of the Modern Age non-heroic gestalt. The remainder is made up of the ultraviolent super-psycho – that fine fellow (or, I suppose, femme) who rampages about in a fine frothing frenzy (or in a cold, clinical, calculating… something that starts with a hard ‘c’ sound, I don’t know, get a thesaurus, do I have to do all the work around here?), distributing deadly force by the dumptruckful to every mob boss, drug dealer, loan shark, child molester, and t-shirt or turban wearing terrorist that walks, crawls, limps, scuttles, or hijacks an airliner within a thousand mile radius of him/her.


Oddly, most of your nutjob homicidal lunatic uber-vigilante types don’t have jobs, either. They just rove the Earth in armored black vehicles festooned with great big fetishistic symbols of a violent nature, living on moonbeams and apparently manufacturing bullets, bombs, and shuriken out of the very ether itself.

Nonetheless, I will admit, only a vanishingly small fraction of Modern Age fandom actually wants to be one of these guys. However, it’s not really morality or a sense of social responsibility that keeps the rest of them from aspiring to be a psychotic serial killer with a costume and a machine gun… it’s just that that stuff looks way too much like work to really appeal to them. They’d much rather just sit around in the clubhouse with Bart and Conner, playing HALO and leering at whoever happens to be calling herself Wonder Girl that week.

All of this has enormously to do with my general distaste, contempt, scorn, hatred, and loathing of and for the vast majority of stories that have been published within the perimeters of that era I refer to, generally through clenched teeth and often while spitting, as the Modern Age.

But I have never, not once, not anywhere, not on any occasion or at any particular nexus of time and space, claimed comprehensively that every story, every writer, every artist, and every editor ever employed in superhero comics during the Modern Age entirely and absolutely sucked. Nor, for that matter, have I ever stated the adverse, which is to say, that every creator creating and each creation created within the glorious parameters of the astonishingly epochal Silver Age was, in fact, transcendentally godlike in its awesome artistic power. There are many Silver Age writers and artists who are just barely adequate, and a small but discernible number that actually stink out loud and on ice.


And, for that matter, there are a very very few Silver Age writers, artists, and editors who were so horrifyingly, dreadfully, appallingly bad at their jobs that if being bad at your job was an actual crime, they’d be doing triple life without parole…and trust me, if that were so, superhero comics would be much the better for it, too.

So, yeah, there are good Modern Age stories, and yeah, sure, there are bad Silver Age ones. But the proportions are, well… honestly, they’re just disproportional.

And, obviously, this is all just my opinion. And it is possible that I may have exaggerated my claims, a tiny little bit, to make my overall point. (Which would, you know, be an absolute first on the Internet. Try not to faint. Wait, let me stand back and give you air.)

Regardless, however, nonetheless, notwithstanding, and, probably, a few other phrases meaning, basically, ‘but’ -- in my entirely arrogant and absolutely unabashedly snotty opinion, for whatever it may be worth to whoever may be reading this, most of what has happened in the course of the Modern Age has been a degradation and a diminution of the superhero comics genre. You can argue with that if you like, you can dispute it if you choose, you can disregard it if you must, but I will continue to think and feel that this is the essential underlying truth of the Modern Age in every fiber of my being, regardless of your feeble and utterly self indulgent need to live on the shores of Denial River.

You can loudly claim that Batman’s transformation from World’s Greatest Detective to World’s Greatest Facebreaker represents a quantum leap forward in quality comics storytelling. You can shrilly insist, if such you wish, that Aquaman turning from noble altruistic battler of pirates and all sea faring criminals to a sneering, posturing prick who inundates populated areas with tidal waves in fits of pique is a tremendous leap for the superheroic art form. You can insist that Superman sniveling about everyone wanting a piece of him, Hawkman becoming a patricidal junkie, the Legion of Superheroes being rebooted every 6.7 picoseconds, the Ultimate Captain America impaling elderly men on the nose-spires of fighter jets, the Ultimate Wasp flashing her tits at the Ultimate Hulk, and the all wise, all enlightened Guardians of the Universe selecting a Green Lantern on the basis of how much hair gel he wears, all represent incredible and brilliant innovations in the comic book continuum.

You can scream it, shout it, tell the world about it… but I simply don’t believe it, and frankly, I don’t think you really believe it, and I don’t respect you for insisting on it in the face of all evidence to the contrary. To me, this steady darkening, this grim n’ grittification, this rising level of self indulgence in the most negative and pernicious of antisocial, unappetizing and egregiously immoral impulses on the part of superhero comics is destructive and abrasive to the human spirit. It is, to put it as bluntly and simply as possible, a wrong thing, and it strikes me as being an atrocity and an obscenity that very nearly rises to the level of blasphemy.

Superhero comics, for all their essential inherent childishness, were once a celebration of the heights to which the human spirit could aspire.

Now, they are, for the vast most part, a wallow in the worst extremes of degradation, decadence, and debauchery. They teach nothing, they inspire no one, they aspire to nothing. There is no art to this art form any longer. Thirty years ago, the entire industry decided to thrust its hand into its underarm and make fart noises, and that is, for the most part, all that it has done ever since.

There is greatness in the Modern Age, to be sure… it’s just that when you find it, it’s like coming across a thin current of gold streaming through an ocean of shit. Even the finest Modern Age writers wallow too much in darkness and degradation; for every “Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow” that a brilliant writer like Moore gives us, we have to suffer through two hundred issues of PUNISHER or WOLVERINE or, for the love of God, YOUNG JUSTICE. For every uplifting story of human achievement that Alan Brennert or Geoff Johns offers up, there are a thousand stories where some badly Xeroxed Wolverine or Hulk or Spider-Man or Punisher rip-off breaks the spine or tears the entrails out of some hapless rapist or schoolyard bully. For every Modern Age comic book that makes me want to smile, or laugh, or nod in appreciation, there are dozens or hundreds that simply make me want to gag, or puke, or shake my head in appalled disgust.

And all of this, every last bit of it, is the fault of the Modern Age fans who love that shit, who can’t get enough of that shit, who, as someone in my comment threads very recently put it, votes with their wallets for that shit.

Which is why I have absolutely no respect whatsoever for the Modern Age fans who love that shit, and why I continually bait such fans on this blog page, and elsewhere.

And now, having concluded my preface, let’s bring on The Modern Age Fans their damn selves:

Someone named Rjwhite, posting at http://www.livejournal.com/community/seebelow/139314.html, cogently states the following:

“I know I've posted a few of these, but they still confuse me to a certain extent. This guy has his wrapup of Infinite Crisis and as opposed to that other silver-age obsessed guy who hates it, this one loves the heck out of it-“

Then he pulls a couple of paragraphs of mine from a much longer post, which, you know, I love, because there’s nothing anyone likes more than being taken out of context, especially for purposes of being denigrated behind one’s back. Here’s what he posted of mine:

In fact, Johns is a lot like Moore, he just doesn't seem to feel the need to paint Silver Age icons with three coats of shit in order to generate drama....

I should note that I don't expect anyone to answer all these questions, or even any of them, since my constant, well deserved abuse of Modern Age fans has no doubt driven any and all of them who used to drive by this blog shrieking away into the nether void. But that's okay. The nether void is where they all belong... and anyway, from what I can see, they may as well get comfortable there, because the Silver Age is making a big comeback at DC.

And I couldn't be happier about it.

And then, with admirable articulation for a Modern Age fan, he wonders, wistfully:

“Okay. I like some of the silver age stuff. I like some of the modern age stuff. Why is it an angry, either/or proposition for these guys? Why does it all have to be giant typewriters and magic rings, or else the comics should be burned? There was crap then, there's crap now. There were great things written/drawn then, there are great things written/drawn now. What is the deal with this mindset? It kind of reminds me of an uncle who told me once when I was a kid, that he refused to watch any film more tha five years old. It just seems so limiting.”

Fair questions, deftly delivered. Why, indeed, does it have to be giant typewriters and magic rings, or else the comics should be burned? Beats me. Speaking only for myself, I don’t know a single Silver Age fan, much less me, who thinks it all has to be giant typewriters and magic rings (and, in a slight digression, I’m thinking Giant Typewriters and Magic Rings sound more Golden Age-esque than Silver Agey, but, what the hell, you can’t expect a Modern Age fan to keep all that crap straight, after all, it all happened before BEVERLY HILLS 90210 was on, so who cares anyway?)

So I would say it doesn’t have to be all Giant Typewriters and Magic Rings Or Else The Comics Should Be Burned. What it has to be (Or Else The Comics Should Be Burned) is Well Written, With Heroic Heroes.

Got that? Or should I find smaller words?

Now, further down RJ’s comment threads, CalamityJon does some of my work for me, pointing out rather neatly that –

“Naturally, it works in reverse as well. I've participated in discussions (which have taken place on the internet, and therefore are 'arguments') where someone might say, for instance, "I'd prefer to read a Batman comic where he doesn't feel it's necessary to shoot the Joker in the crotch and then jam the tip of his sharpened steel-toed Batboot into his ballsac and grind it until the Joker dies of heart failure," and someone will respond "It's not the silver age any more, grow up!!!"

This is, I believe, an excellent point (and wittily written, too; bravo, CalamityJon, you are that rarest of all beings, A Modern Age Fan Who Can Actually Write). In fact, it seems to me that when Silver Age fans butt heads with Modern Age fans, it is generally the Modern Age fans who reach for their pistols first. They start shrieking and screaming badly spelled, exclamation mark laden death threats firstest and loudest, generally after no greater provocation than a mildly typed comment like “Well, sure, but I like my Green Lanterns with a little more intelligence and a little less styling mousse, thanks”.

Still, every once in a while you get what passes for an intelligent, reasonable Modern Age fan swimming amongst that previously mentioned ocean of shit that is the Modern Age itself. For example, here’s Kalinara, from my previous post’s comment threads, who takes some time away from plotting pornographic fan fic involving a threesome of sentient planets to opine:

My response was actually to Scipio not you, as it was his blog and I thought it would be rude to focus solely on your points.

Rude, and, well, futile, since my points are irrefutable, or, at the very least, beyond the abilities of any Modern Age fan to successfully refute, anyway. But, wait, she’s not done:

And sorry, I just didn't see the point of arguing Silver Age (or Golden Age) versus Modern Age with you. It's a matter of taste, that's all.

Yes, well, that’s very true, and her taste is for mindless carnage, contemptible non-heroes, and, it seems, amateur slash-fic involving the carnal interactions of intelligent celestial bodies. My taste, on the other hand, is for smart, complex, character driven plots, excellent dialogue, and heroes who behave heroically. (Okay, sure, I'll read any amateur slash-fic featuring Wonder Woman and Wonder Girl you may happen to have lying around, but planetary humping is just not my cup of tea, sorry.) By the very Jesus, let us not be judgmental. There eez, as they say in the old margarine commercials, no deeferance.

But… Holy Yammering Y’ung’uns, Batman! Is she STILL going on? It seems she is:

Personally I think Silver Age is vastly overrated. Golden Age characters appeal to me a lot more if you're going the nostalgia route.

And if she can tell the difference between the two, she’s at least one up on RJ. Give the woman her props.

And times and audiences change.

We love Modern Age fans here on the Satellite of Love, we do, we do. One of the reasons we love them so, is that they state the obvious with such style and panache. They do, they do.

Having said that in the snarkiest fashion available to me at the moment, let me add this: it’s all very well to say, with enormous if unconscious smugness, while still in one’s teen or early 20s, sitting in one’s happy comfortable little bed or dorm room safe within the sheltering wings of daddy’s paycheck, with all the heroes one has treasured since childhood still being happily and cheerfully published pretty much exactly as they have always been, that ‘times and audiences change’.

However, when you’re a few decades older and you’ve sat there and watched in hapless horror as all your beloved childhood companions are ruthlessly killed off, replaced by idiots, or rebooted in the most dreadful and appalling manners imaginable to the mind of men or monkeys, well, you’ll find yourself a great deal less complacent when mouthing bullshit, stupid ass, smirking platitudes like ‘And times and audiences change’.

Ah, but, give the lass credit: where most Modern Age fans have the attention span of a sand flea, our very own representative of the Kali-Yuga is yet to run out of steam. Harken:

As for say, Kyle Rayner, he *saved* the Green Lantern franchise. For whatever reason, DC did not believe Green Lantern was selling enough. This meant a change in front-person or cancellation. Whether you like the guy or not, he's the one who kept the line going so that in 2005, Johns could resurrect Hal in Rebirth.

A salient point. My response is three fold:

(a) Anything it takes Kyle Rayner to save isn’t worth saving.

(b) It didn’t take Kyle Rayner to save GREEN LANTERN, it took good writing, and maybe a fan favorite artist, rather than, you know, goddam Gerard Jones and Pat Broderick. I grant you, giving the power ring to an inept if beautiful dolt whose very incompetence would vastly appeal to a target demographic comprised almost entirely of inept incompetent dolts who all yearned for beauty was much, much easier than going out and getting a good writer and an interesting artist, but, well, the results have spoken for themselves… and, by the way, although it took more than a decade, we can now see that I am entirely correct: given a good writer and a good artist, Hal Jordan is perfectly capable of selling an acceptable number of comics.

(c) Anything it takes Kyle Rayner to save REALLY isn’t worth saving.


Some of us think there's more to "modern age" heroes than you seem to think.

Some of you think Vibe is a wonderful character, the word ‘constitutes’ has no ‘n’ in it, and my real name is Daniel Madigan. (Go back to RJ’s comment threads and scroll down for that particular example of idiocy.) Actually, I’m not sure I’d agree that ‘some of you think’ at all. Mostly, what Modern Age fans seem to do is emote melodramatically. And, you know, write slash fic about planets going down on each other. (Volcanic eruptions as the money shot? I'm just sayin.)

That's fine.

Wait. She’s admitting that she thinks a statement she has made disagreeing with me and supporting Modern Age fans is fine? Gosh. That’s very generous of her.

I've always liked Kyle, since Marz wrote him.

And this has nothing to do with Kyle’s fine, fine ass.

Johns never wrote him *in* Green Lantern after all.

There’s a point here somewhere, but honestly, I’m too tired to strain after it. And anyway, it’s not true; Geoff Johns HAS written Kyle in GREEN LANTERN, he’s done it recently, in the rebooted strip of that name.

I like Conner and Connor and even Bart.

I’m baffled. How did Angel’s son get into this discussion? Not that I mind, but man, he is DEFINITELY a Modern Age character… psycho, slacker, and perpetual adolescent, all rolled into one.

Oh, wait. She’s talking about Green Arrow Jr. Okay. Never mind; he’s an appalling snot.

Tim Drake is my favorite Robin, and Cassandra Cain and the modern age Huntress are great females in my opinion.

I like Tim Drake. I like him more now that Johns has written him, but I actually enjoyed his first couple of miniseries under Chuck Dixon (I think). I could do a whole article about how I’m greatly in FAVOR of seeing heroes age normally and grow into new roles, and have been for decades, and it’s the Modern Age fan who throws monster fits whenever anyone tries to inflict any maturity on their favorite brat-icons. But I won’t, I’ll just say, I like Tim, know little of Cassandra Cain, and nothing about the Modern Age Huntress…. But whoever she is, she can’t be as cool as the Silver Age Huntress, who was, after all, the daughter of Batman and Catwoman. I mean, how do you GET cooler than that?

But the way you worded your argument gave the impression that you would probably not be interested in our opinions. I apologize if that's not the case.

No apology necessary. I’m not interested in most Modern Age fan opinions, because most Modern Age fan opinions aren’t particularly well reasoned, and are generally abominably expressed. In Kalinara’s case, however, I’ll state that she’s only one for two. She certainly shows no capacity for lucid, rational analysis. But, on the other hand, she can construct a proper sentence and apparently knows how to use spell check, and that makes her very nearly a god(dess) among Modern Age fans.

But please don't act persecuted because we didn't see the point of arguing with you on Absorbascon. If you attack what we like blindly, why *should* we respond.

Well, I don’t feel persecuted, just smugly superior. And I have never attacked anything blindly; I support my opinions at length and with multiple examples (and no little modicum of stylish wit, as well). Which hardly matters, because few Modern Age fans have the attention span to read anything I write all the way through, and none I’ve encountered have the capacity to actually be persuaded by a rational point of view.

We'll respond with our wallets and buy the comics we like. Silver Age-rooted characters, Modern Age, or Golden Age-characters.

Yes. The Modern Age fan: They like crap, they want crap, they buy crap, and in direct response to this, the world fills up with crap crap crap. And, apparently, they are proud of it… or at least, this one is. Yay.

As for apathy, I think clearly that we've all got blogs to talk about what we like says otherwise.

I never said the Modern Age fan was apathetic about their favorite comics; just the opposite, in fact. What they are apathetic about is the notion of actually thinking about whether or not it’s healthy for them to avidly support such degenerate and despicable concepts and characters.

And, again… that’s why I have so much difficulty liking Modern Age fans, and why I really can’t respect any of them.

Still, some of their blogs are a great deal of fun to read.

And, all kidding aside, I do have to respect Kalinara for one more thing, other than her literacy: She's no coward. She talks to me to my face, instead of excerpting my stuff without notice and then pissing all over it behind my back.

Special True Believer Exclusive Bonus, in this issue only:

See me brilliantly analyze and define the perimeters of and essential underlying dichotomy betweenthe Silver Age and the Modern Age!

Stare in awestruck wonder and convulse in near constant gales of laughter as I bitch slap the living jesus out of a buncha dipshit Modern Age fan-turds!

When you gaze into the Abyss...

Ah, I just can't stop pissing off Modern Age fans.

Over at The Absorbascon, in the comment threads to this post, I seem to have inadvertently kicked off a minor little debate that strikes me as being a pretty good microcosm for the entire dichotomy between the Silver Age and the Modern Age.

See, Ragnell started the whole thing by chiding me -- "Highlander -- That's silly. Not all of any one age is crap the same as not all of any one age is good. I love Johns as a writer because he recognizes that and plays the mix and match game. Keeping Kyle and Hal, for instance."

I responded:

Ragnell -- sometimes I exaggerate to prove a point. No one here would understand that, of course. ;)

However, as to whether or not an entire age can 'suck', it depends on how you define ages. I've written several articles on exactly how I feel the essential difference between the Silver and the Modern Ages should be defined. To me, it comes down to one fundamental principle -- the Silver Age ended and the Modern Age began when the suits and the bean counters took over, and writers and artists were no longer allowed to primarily treat the characters and their worlds as 'real'.

The Modern Age is all about treating us as target markets and the characters, and the world they live in, as commodities and commercial properties. Got a Green Lantern who isn't pulling in the audience share your advertisers want? No problem... do a big crossover event to get rid of him, and stick in a new Green Lantern with jazzy new visual accoutrements, plenty of 'tude, and hair like that guy in the BUFFY spin off. The kids will like that, right?

Comics have, to one extent or another, always been a business and they have always been about sales, but prior to the Modern Age, the commercial aspects still had some room in them for love. The Silver Age creators weren't just working for a paycheck; they pretty clearly loved the characters, and the joy of reading the early Silver Age Marvel Universe is that the characters, and their world, seem real.

It's more complex than that, of course... there's also the simple fact that yes, audience taste has largely changed over the last thirty years (since GIANT SIZE X-MEN #1) and the young audience that comics try to cater to now wants different things than the young audience did when I was among them, and I pretty much despise all the things that lazy, simple minded non-writers preprogram into superhero comics nowadays to get the attention of that same young audience. Superhero comics have become much much more mean spirited, with adult heroes being largely seen as killjoys, and young 'heroes', on whom the focus always seems to be, seemingly always depicted as cool, irreverant, wiseass slackers.

I do admire the fact that Johns will try hard to keep elements of both ages around, but when he does that, he invariably has to (by my standards) vastly improve the characterization depiction of the Modern Age characters in question. Kyle, Conner, Bart, all the Infinitors he's scripted... under Johns' hands, these characters have all matured enormously and become far more interesting and admirable than they ever were.

Hell, if Johns wrote Damage for a while, I'd probably like him, too.

What I find notable -- and this may not be typical, I can't tell yet -- is that on many of the blogs and in many of the threads, I encounter a very real resentment from younger fans, or early 20s fans who grew up with these characters behaving in a certain extremely irresponsible manner, against what Johns has done to them.

To me, he's made the characters more interesting by showing them, to at least a slight extent, as undergoing growth. But to the people who grew up with Conner and Bart, et al, as brats with 'tude, this is a betrayal. They wanted those characters to remain snarling, smirking adolescents forever... and in a medium where Franklin Richards has been 8 years old for forty years or so, they see no reason they shouldn't have that. ("Good writing" never seems to carry much currency with such folks as a reason.)

Are there good Modern Age comics? Sure. Moore, Gaiman, Busiek, Kirkman, Nicieza, Stern, and now, of course, Johns and Rucka and Simone... all these people have done good superhero comics in the Modern Age (although it should be noted that all of them except for perhaps Gaiman and Johns have also done very BAD superhero comics in the Modern Age, too; that's the price of being prolific, and even Gaiman had his creative misfires on SANDMAN). But, still, the fact remains... overall, the Modern Age has largely been loathsome, because it has largely simply been one circulation stunt after another, with good, solid character driven fiction being given consistent short shrift at both Marvel and DC for decades now.

Would companies that honestly cared about their characters have ever given us either the Ultimates or the All Stars? Please.

If I seem harsh, well, that's how I will seem to you. I am a relic of another, better age. Looking around me at the ruins of that age, well, I am often bitter. I have heard that the best comics ever will always be those comics you read when you were 9 years old. I was 9 years old in 1970 and 1971; the comics of that era WERE the best superhero comics ever done. It's a tough act to follow.

Johns is picking up the mantle admirably, though.

A lot of pretty heavy points made there, I think.

Here's the response I've gotten so far:

Kalinara says: "*shrug* I liked Damage a lot more than Atom Smasher. That's all I know. :-) I'd like to see him return sometime."

And some twit calling himself Diamondrock opines: "Your opinion does not costitute objective fact."

That seems to sum it up. On the Silver Age side, we have cogent, well reasoned, in depth analysis, at considerable length, and it's all, as far as I can see, spelled correctly, too.

Rebuttal from the Modern Age can be boiled down to an inarticulate gesture of apathy, a statement of unwillingness to think deeply on the subject, and an additional statement as to my opinion being subjective that is so obvious as to be either Zen in its transcendent wisdom or just straight up clueless... and judging from the fact that its author apparently cannot spell, you can guess which side I'm coming down on.

That's the Modern Age for you -- Three parts self indulgence, five parts mental laziness, and two parts restating the obvious, all of it in the shortest sentences possible because the target demographic has no attention span... and can't spell, either.

His object tokens all sublime

Scipio, who blogs over at The Absorbascon, is one helluva fine and funny writer. He hates Hal Jordan and loves Kyle Rayner entirely too much for me to fully respect him as a comics fan, but in addition to being a creative guy, a witty fellow, and a very articulate proseator, he's also a damned fine graphic artist and an excellent game designer. As one can see, when one bears witness to the brilliantly designed, all original Object Tokens he's posted to his blog, specifically the Green Lantern Power Battery, on your left, and the perhaps even cooler (because they're a REV, how cool is that?) Mr. Terrific's T-spheres (pictured below).

There are some special rules governing both sets of Objects to be found in Scipio's original posts, here and here.

Scipio is always well worth reading anyway, even if he does go on and on and on about Kyle Rayner's butt and Hal Jordan hitting his head against blunt objects entirely more than can be accounted for within any rational definition of sanity or reason.

Misfire

There were, it should be admitted up front, bad omens everywhere.

I'd read somewhere that the Redskins were 6-0 when losing the opening coin toss. Staring at the screen, after ABC crammed in as many commercials as possible in their last pre-game break, forcing the at home audience to miss the coin toss itself, I realized with some approbation that Washington was lining up to kick off.

Uh oh, I thought to myself, even as Super Adorable Kid, recently graduated from toddler status by her 6th birthday, and high as a kite on too much sugar from said celebration's cake, ice cream, and pinata contents, buzzed around the room like a three foot high Battling Top, shrieking at the top of her lungs that she wanted to paint, she wanted to play with her Play-Do, she wanted to use her new tap dance shoes, she wanted to watch her new That's So Raven! DVD, and she wanted it all NOW, NOW, NOW-NOW-NOW, regardless of whether her mom was trying to blog, her older sisters were trying to do their own Saturday post-party stuff, and I was, oh, yeah, trying to watch the opening round of the play offs, in which my team was taking part for the first time in a seemingly endless, often torturous three regular seasons.

So, after watching the Bucs offense choke badly on their first drive, I got up and moved to the back room, sending Super Dependable Teen into a sulking snit, because the TV in the back room is the only one with the ultra-high tech cable box attached to it, meaning it's the only one that gets the channels numbered between 80 and 102, meaning it's the only one she can watch Bam on.

I evicted her relentlessly and regardless (it's my goddam bedroom) and watched as Joe Gibbs' readily apparent deal with the devil went into effect, and a tipped Bucs pass at the line of scrimmage neatly flew into the hands of a Washington defender named LaVarr Arrington, who had never done a single goddam thing of distinction in the game of professional football prior to that moment. A play later, the ridiculously overrated Clinton Portis, who didn't manage to do a single goddam other thing for the remainder of the game against Tampa's top rated, #1 defense, lumbered happily into the end zone.

A few minutes further on, the still supernaturally stymied Bucs were tripped up by diabolism again, as the previously utterly reliable Cadillac Williams inexplicably fumbled a ball while being tackled. One bumbling Washington defender hopped on the ball and shambled clumsily with it a few yards, was tackled from behind and had the ball stripped away, only to see another unbelievably fortunate Washington defender somehow scoop it up and ramble into the end zone with it.

I heard Satan laughing in delight.

It was a hellish, utterly inexplicable, by all natural laws impossible one-two punch straight out of some obscure Roger Corman movie about voodoo curses. The Bucs couldn't come back from it. The Redskins' offense, bewildered, seemingly hungover, and undeniably playing well out of their depth, never managed to accomplish a single stinkin' thing for the remainder of the game besides a chip shot field goal. Mark Brunell looked baffled and irritated whenever he was on the field; Clinton Portis finally discovered what it was like to run against a defensive line that actually knew how to play the game, and the only honest assessment of the entire contest would have been that the Bucs completely shut the Redskins down... except for those two, early, freakish, Satanically inspired touchdowns.

On the other side of the scrimmage line, whenever Lucifer allowed it, the Bucs moved the ball beautifully down field. Chris Simms racked up impressive stats, only to have drives that should have easily ended in touchdowns thwarted four or five times by the flukiest, unluckiest plays imaginable, as the Redskins' infernal compact with darkness continued to torment the Bucs.

In the end, even Satan couldn't seal the game for the clueless, blithering Redskins, but no matter; the refs were in on the fix, too, and found some idiotic, unimaginable, completely insufferable excuse to take away an obvious game-tying touchdown from the Bucs... a touchdown that was so obvious, in fact, that the game announcers called it, the ABC technical people put the points up on the TV screen scoreboard, and the Raymond James Stadium crew shot off the Bucs' trademark cannons in celebration.

But nooooooo... some puny, pathetic Washington defender, badly beaten by Bucs wide receiver Edell Shepherd on the play, went sobbing like a little baby-girl to the refs that Shepherd hadn't, maybe, had full control of the ball upon being brought down in the end zone. Even Forrest Gump watching the play would have known Shepherd had the ball; it was cradled in his arms when his knees hit the field, and only came loose as he slammed full length, an eternity after the touchdown was actually official. No matter, no use; given the slightest shred of justification, the insanely biased and clearly deranged line judge was happy to rule the pass incomplete, despite all visual evidence otherwise.

That ridiculous ruling was huge, and cost Tampa Bay the game, as the instant replay regulation requires irrefutable visual evidence to overrule the call on the field. Had the ruling been proper, for a touchdown, no amount of instant replay analysis could have thrown it over. Since it went the other way, though, an undeniably in the bag refereeing corps was happy to throw the touchdown out.

It's small consolation to me that had Tampa won (as they richly deserved to) they'd have had a horribly tough job beating the Bears in Chicago in January next week. It's even smaller consolation to me to contemplate the demolition and dismemberment that Gibb's inept and incompetent Washington Capitals... er, I mean, Redskins... will receive next week against the Seahawks.

Making the day complete, of course those useless, worthless Jaguars couldn't knock the loathed Patriots out of the play offs for me, either. One small shining jewel of pleasure for me in these playoffs is that it is statistically impossible for both Indianapolis and New England to get to the Super Bowl this year; one of them has to be eliminated. Now if only it could be both of them, I'd be very pleased. I have nothing against either the Bengals or the Seahawks; if both of them could end up advancing to the Super Bowl, I might not watch the game, but I wouldn't care overmuch who won.

Enough football. The season is effectively over for me. If Gruden has enough sense to pour piss out of a boot, he'll leave Simms in charge of the offense next year, and as long as Cadillac and Galloway stay healthy, and Clayton can get healthy again, the Bucs will be unstoppable. I'll just have to wait for that. (It would be nice if somewhere under the salary cap, Bruce Allen found a few million bucs for Mike Alstott, who has shown once again that he is a uniquely valuable and irreplaceable offensive resource for the team.)

Meantime, life is hardly bad here, and in fact, is wonderfuly good, for all the customary reasons I still never quite manage to become accustomed to. Staring around me sometimes at the astonishingly joyful tableau that my life has somehow, inexplicably transformed itself into these last eight months, I am left speechless and even breathless at just how inexplicably and undeservedly fortunate I am. Forget about Joe Gibbs; to all apparent observation, I myself must have signed some kind of compact with Satan to suddenly have everything turn out so right for me in such short order. Yeah, my football team got robbed, but on the other hand, I've got a super home to live in, filled with SuperKids and SuperGirlfriend, and even if I'm a clumsy, babbling, blundering dolt much of the time (as was evidenced yesterday, by an incident I won't go into detail regarding, save to say that it involved me attempting to carry a breakfast tray into the living room for SuperGirlfriend and failing miserably, with results that ended up throwing the family into a blue funk for much of the day, until SuperGirlfriend worked her inevitable magic and, once again and as always, cleaned up my karmic mess for me), well, life is pretty darned sweet for me.

And it's not just me that thinks so. Yesterday, at SuperAdorable Kid's slightly belated birthday party, her poor dad had to spend the entire afternoon watching me in my home that I share with his ex-wife, watching SuperAdorable Kid swarm affectionately all over me (no matter how often I tried to redirect her attention to her natural father, out of a sense of pity for the miserable schmuck), even on one occasion haplessly overhearing as SuperAdorable Kid identified the back bedroom, where SuperGirlfriend and I sleep, as belonging to her "mom and dad" as she gave her friend Ashley a tour of the apartment.

I felt bad for him. But, as he mentioned when he was leaving, he was off to Lexington... a phrase that we know (and he knows we know) means he was going to meet one of his many Internet paramours for a little post-birthday party bliss. So I'd gather his night ended with a bang rather than a whimper, and I say good for him. Who needs boring domesticity when you're a newly single man with a modem? To paraphrase Derek Smalls, people should envy him.

Us, we just cleaned up after the party, ordered in Chinese food, watched a frustrating football game, kissed the kids goodnight, and went to bed. Watched a little bit of The Last Boy Scout in the back bedroom, then off to sleep, with my brand new, second hand copy of Peter O'Donnell's fourth Modesty Blaise novel, A Taste For Death, sitting on the bedside stand waiting for me to resume reading it next morning.

Once again, I close by invoking the animated Gambit -- life just don' ged much bedda dan dis.

Full court press

A failed Supreme Court nomination could well spell doom for the Bush Administration, and a serious setback to the conservative Christian agenda. Are Republican leaders willing to step up? Will they go all the way to get Alito on the Supreme Court? Pictures don't lie --



















Christian conservatives desperately want Alito confirmed -- so much so, in fact, that they're willing to BLOW GOD!



















"Say!" says a prominent conservative African American, "that's a great idea! If it gets Alito on the court, I'll BLOW GOD too!"




Yet another wealthy and conservative African American shows his support for Alito. "I'm not orally inclined," this fine fellow opines, "but God, I will manually stimulate your prostate to orgasm several times if you will only put Alito on the highest court in the land!"





"Dammit," Senator Ted Kennedy says, "I'm not gonna orally copulate God to keep Alito off the Supreme Court, that's ridiculous... the best I can do is a handjob, Lord."












The nominee himself, meanwhile, is understandably exasperated with all this foolishness. "I'm the main man here! For Christ's sake, who's gonna blow ME?"














"Uh... well, I... thanks, ma'am, but... er... anyone else...?"



"Uh... wait... um... can I maybe get one of those black guys...?"
















"No need for miscegnation, Sam," the Senate Majority Leader generously volunteers. "My finely sculpted Caucasion suck hole was made to order for your pulsating pink love log... just break that bad boy out and ram it home, Goliath!"




In the end, the truly devout Christian can only stand aghast and appalled at what the Republican Party has become.

Alito off the top, please

I don't blog much about politics -- most of the folks at the other end of the links I put up a few entries ago do it much better than I do -- but occasionally something catches my eye. So:

Over here we have a few choice bits:

Senate leadership aides said Thursday that Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., that Democrats will invoke their right to hold the Alito committee vote over for one week.

"Bah! You cannot stop our plans for galactic domination with such puny tactics!" sneers Senate Sith Lord Frist, twirling his mustache villainously.

Okay, but for real: back in December, Frist himself stated ""I will use all the tools I have to simply get an up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate for the president's judicial nominees."

As long as, you know, they aren't Harriet Miers. Wait. Did I say that out loud? Never mind... here's what we're hearing today:

"Procedural gimmicks and partisan tricks will not stop the confirmation of Judge Alito to the Supreme Court, no matter how much extremist elements of the Democratic Party wish it so," a Frist spokesman said.

Well, no. And all by themselves, in isolation, standing alone, and other cool phrases essentially meaning 'all by themselves', the American Minutemen wouldn't have had a chance of booting the most powerful Empire on the planet at that time off of their continent. But the Minutemen had a lot of other factors weighing in their favor -- Britain had a fleetload of problems in other places, and was stretched way too thin to deal with those miserable bloody Colonials the way they so richly deserved.

Of course, that's a foolish analogy; nothing like that is happening with the Republican Party right now:

To pull off a successful filibuster, Democrats need things to go their way both inside and outside the hearings, said Julian Zelizer, a Supreme Court expert at Boston University.

Events outside the hearing also will have an influence, Zelizer said, especially the guilty pleas of Jack Abramoff, the once-powerful lobbyist who has agreed to testify in a political corruption investigation. It could "increase the willingness of the Democrats to be even tougher in the Alito hearings, sensing that the Republican leadership is in trouble," he said.

I'm thinking, a week's delay here, a week's delay there... pretty soon, you're talking about serious Republican indictments and a fundamental shift in Congressional power.

I'm just sayin'.

Zoot alours!

SuperGirlfriend has a blog! Go there now, and rejoice in her words of wondrous wit and wisdom!

And leave comments.

That will make her happy.

I love it when she's happy. :)

I don't know what 'zoot alours' means, though.

Crisis control

Well, I have my $1 Countdown to Infinite Crisis, along with Infinite Crisis #s 1,2, and 3, sitting in a stack next to my keyboard. Here are some random questions and comments:

Overall, I love this comic. Other bloggers have noted the steadily increasing body count in the book (and its periphera) as if this is something that surprises them, but those of us who suffered through the first CRISIS understand that this kind of event is, among other things, a large broom with which DC periodically sweeps all their accumulated continuity detritus away. Last time, the people in charge of deciding what went out with the trash, and what stayed, and what got transmuted into something presumably better, were Marv Wolfman and Len Wein. This time around, apparently, it's Geoff Johns and Greg Rucka, and maybe a few others I'm less thrilled with. Still, I respect Johns' apparent devotion to Silver Age continuity, and so far he and I seem to be in alignment as to what should go on which list.

Still, you can't please everyone; the fan community has already seen a great deal of weeping and wailing and guh-nashing of teeth over the death of Ted "Blue Beetle" Kord, a character who was very nearly the text book definition of extraneous. I don't mind that he's dead at all, although I will note that it is one of Geoff Johns' particular talents, apparently, to take a complete loser of a character, make them likable and even admirable for the first time ever... and then kill them.

Having said all that --

Phil Jiminez's art has been, for the most part, excellent, and in spots it has even transcended excellence and become goddam scarily impressive. However, he simply does not know how to draw the Golden Age Superman. Panel 2, on the next to last page of Infinite Crisis #2, is a horror. I'm not sure who that is, but the closest I can come is Fred Gwynne doing a "What If Elvis Had Never Died?" impersonation. It's certainly not any Kryptonian I've ever seen. Rags Morales wouldn't have done this to us.

Now, I'm moved to ask -- who is this other Luthor? No, I don't mean the Luthor running the Society, who seems to have recently been revealed to be Alexander Luthor from Earth 3 (which revelation I don't believe for a second, but we'll get to that). I mean, who's the guy in the battle armor who apparently can't think when he's in the same room as the guy running the Society? The post CRISIS, Modern Age, Byrne-designed Lex Luthor I knew was a pudgy, leering businessman turned politician, and while he was certainly no dolt, he wasn't a supergenius rogue mad scientist capable of building nuclear powered battlesuits. However, when Superboy-Prime strips the battle armor off this Lex towards the end of IC #3, we briefly see a very slim, buff looking Lex Luthor in skintight purple togs with crisscrossing green chest straps... the spitting image of pre-CRISIS, Silver Age Lex.

I suppose that pudgy snarling Byrne-Luthor could have turned into this guy over the past twenty years and I just wouldn't have known about it, since I've barely glanced in the direction of the SUPERMAN titles long enough to spit for most of that time. But honestly, if this is the Modern Age Luthor, I wish someone would tell me, because, well, my theory is that Alexander Luthor is actually the pre-Crisis, Earth 1 Lex Luthor. Knowing the universe was about to undergo radical quantum revision (c'mon, Lex would just know that; he'd have sensor devices seeded throughout the universe that would tell him), he doubtless killed Alexander Luthor and craftily took his place... and ever since then, he's divided his time between slowly, secretly getting the Society organized down on the new Earth-Alpha, and gradually bringing the Earth-2 Superman, as well as Superboy Prime, under his mental dominance up in their 'crystalline heaven'.

I think it would greatly appeal to the pre-Crisis, Silver Age Lex Luthor to use what would seem to him to be inferior (but still powerful) otherdimensional doppelgangers of his lifelong arch nemesis (Lex was mortal enemy to both the Silver Age Superboy and Superman, after all) to take control of this brand new Earth. And re-organizing the Silver Age Secret Society of Supervillains on this brand new, post CRISIS world would also appeal to the pre-CRISIS Lex.

I don't understand why pre-CRISIS Lex's brainwaves apparently jam the thought processes of post-CRISIS Lex, but I won't argue with it, either. It seems... just.

Other questions -- we've seen many of DC's occult heroes in Days of Vengeance and the related sub plots through IC... but where's Swamp Thing and John Constantine and the rest of the Vertigo crew? Has Vertigo been so resolutely spun off into its own sub-continuity that IC has no effect on those books? If so, that's a little sad.

Beyond that, just a list of comments regarding my favorite moments from IC so far:

Issue #1: The Freedom Fighters open the wrong door. I swear, that double page spread of the Society, with Bizarro saying "Good bye", just chilled me to the bone. Once again, Geoff Johns exhibits his peculiar brilliance, making me like a bunch of useless goobers for the very first time... and then killing them ruthlessly. Except, apparently, for Damage, the one I most want to see dead, whom we find out in #2 is still alive.

At least Dr. Polaris got blown to bits, too. Never liked that guy.

Other things I liked: the foreshadowing represented by the Bat-signal projecting onto the Spectre's chest. Bruce Wayne as the new Spectre, while Tim Drake becomes Batman for a while? It could work. I'd rather see Dick step up to the Big Eared Cowl, but TITANS continuity says it will be Tim, and I like Tim well enough.

I liked the talk-talk-talk between Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman in the ruins of the JLA Watchtower. I've always hated the Watchtower. Very few writers could get away with page after page of dialogue between DC's three most powerful icons, just standing around doing nothing but yak... and Johns threw in a meaningless battle with Mongul to keep stuff moving... but I don't think he needed it. He could have carried it with just the word balloons. He's that good.

Is anyone else but me wondering if the hole in the universe, among all the other craziness that's going on, has something to do with Krona, and the events in JLA/Avengers? That would be sweeeeeeeet.

Issue #2 -- Booster Gold is back. Why? Oh, well. He looks good.

I enjoyed seeing the Joker torture the entire Royal Flush Gang to death. And it's nice to see that Luthor is sane enough to avoid recruiting the Joker to the Society.

Geoff Johns is the only writer who has ever made me believe that Lois and Superman should actually be married anywhere but in an Imaginary Story.

Conner Kent has always been a big whiney sissyboy, but this is carrying things too far. Lex has to be mind controlling him from a distance.

I don't remember all that pre CRISIS back story for Kara (Power Girl) in the actual Silver Age. Is Lex planting false memories through his Golden Age Lois Lane android? (C'mon, if that's really the Silver Age Lex Luthor, there's no way he really saved the original Lois Lane. She's an artifact he created to help mind control Superman and Superboy. Or she's Harbinger in disguise.)

OMACs fighting Amazons bored the crap out of me, but then, the new OMACs bore the crap out of me anyway, and the Modern Age Amazons have always been pretty tedious, too. Nice to see them gone. I did enjoy Paula's Purple Death Ray, though. That was a brilliantly geeky touch.

Oh, and the opening to issue #2, where Animal Man is frantically searching for the space suit Adam Strange gave him, only to find out his wife threw it out because it was leaking rocket fuel... priceless stuff. Worthy of Moore. In fact, Johns is a lot like Moore, he just doesn't seem to feel the need to paint Silver Age icons with three coats of shit in order to generate drama.

I have no idea who this 'Mick' guy is in Firestorm's head. But he's got a good eye for the female form.

Superman's concept of bringing back Earth 2 to supplant the current, Modern Age DC Earth-Alpha is beautifully portrayed. To us old fanboys, it simultaneously makes you want to cheer... and shudder. It's a brilliant idea... and an utterly megalomaniacal one.

Issue #3 - Batman's near nervous breakdown. A perfect marriage of words and pictures. "This wasn't supposed to happen. ...I can't breathe. Can't... do this anymore. God... I wish... I wish I could just start over." Without the pictures, those words just don't hit hard enough, but with them, it's a devastating page. And then, Superman shows up... but is that really him? Am I the only one who noticed that this is the only sequence with Superman-2 which isn't accompanied by Superman's own narrative? The whole thing is so fabulously, sneakily manipulative... if the Silver Age Lex Luthor can cast an illusion that he's Alexander Luthor, certainly he can look like the Golden Age Superman, too.

The only thing that rings wrong there is Superman's shame faced looking away as he admits that the Earth-2 Robin wasn't any better than the current, Modern Age Dick Grayson. Lex would certainly have fed Batman the answer he wanted to hear... but... then again... what answer would that have been?

Anyone else get the sideways reference to an old Tommy Tomorrow strip? When Animal Man channels a beast that 'shoots lightning out of its face', that's straight out of a really bad Tommy Tomorrow story where Tommy constructed a kite to get a lightning-eagle from deep space to inadvertently recharge his cosmic radio, or some such horseshit. Terrible, terrible story... but it's that kind of devotion to Silver Age trivia, combined with an ability to do wonderful characterization and excellent plotting, that makes me love Geoff Johns' work.

Luthor building his machine out of the bones of the Anti Monitor is ever reminiscent of Kronos' building his citadel out of the bones of Galactus, in JLA/Avengers. Tribute... or hint that 'Alexander Luthor' is actually a new Kronos, reborn from his infant universe?

I should note that I don't expect anyone to answer all these questions, or even any of them, since my constant, well deserved abuse of Modern Age fans has no doubt driven any and all of them who used to drive by this blog shrieking away into the nether void. But that's okay. The nether void is where they all belong... and anyway, from what I can see, they may as well get comfortable there, because the Silver Age is making a big comeback at DC.

And I couldn't be happier about it.

Fish or cut bait

These are the people you should be reading, instead of whatever trivial, meaningless-in-the-greater-context, entirely personal drivel I happen to be throwing at the walls of the monkey cage at any given moment:

Digby
The Poor Man
James Wolcott
Firedoglake
Tbogg
Alicublog
Kung Fu Monkey
Sadly, No!

These people got serious game when it comes to the writing thing. You should also read Daily KOS and Atrios and Billmon, whenever he gets around to putting up something new, which lately isn't often, so I sincerely hope the reason is he's met a 19 year old hottie and is spending a lot of time in a hammock with him or her, because nothing else would be a good enough reason for an analyst as brilliant as Billmon to keep his brilliant analysis from me for the extended periods he's taken to doing it.

Also, if SuperGirlfriend would get her fine, fine ass a blog, I'd always be recommending it, because she's about the wisest person I know, and has some writing game herself. But she just won't do it...


Anyway. I can't write as well as these people, and when I've tried to do the poli-blogging thing I was little more than an empty, posturing sham because, honestly, I just don't have the connections to do anything more than cruise around the blogosphere and reiterate stuff in my own second rate prose style that better bloggers with better sources have already stated more eloquently elsewhere.

So, instead, I'll cruelly mock a faction of my fellow comic book fans I don't like very much:

The Modern Age Fan -

Modern Age fans and I have been butting heads since the first Crisis On Infinite Earths. Anyone who actually thought that story had anything worthwhile in it at all (besides the art, I mean) was, de facto, a Modern Age fan, and, as Modern Age fans have continued to be nearly to a (wo)man since, completely idiotic. Crisis On Infinite Earths was, honestly, objectively, and irrefutably, bilious horseshit from panel one to the closing cover ad, and (again, other than the art, always other than the art, George Perez knocked himself out on the artwork for Crisis On Infinite Earths and he's an enormously talented penciller) anyone who liked any story element in it, much less the story as a whole, is frankly brain damaged.

Crisis came out before the Internet did, so headbutting back then was done on letters pages, in Amateur Press Alliances, and in person at comics shops (often at high decibels that may have, just occasionally, leaked over into a very slight level of shrillness). And it wasn't new even then; I'd been butting heads with nascent Modern Age fans for years before that in reference to horrifying wannabe Modern Age tripe like Marvel's New X-Men and DC's New Teen Titans. (To be clearer: The New X-Men are Modern Age, but Marvel's Modern Age began about ten years before DC's did. DC's started with Crisis in 1985, Marvel's began with Giant Size X-Men #1 in around 1975. So the New X-Men, and their fans, were always Modern Age, while the New Teen Titans predated DC's Modern Age by several years, even though the entire concept stank of the Modern Age from its inception.)

Once the Internet came along, of course, even in its first, crude form, headbutting rose to new heights, and I quickly picked up a great deal of experience with baiting the Modern Age fan out here in the ether. And when you're in the right mood, it can be a lot of fun, although, sadly, when one sobers up and looks back at such things objectively, it can also seem a great deal like putting a bucket of water atop an ajar door and luring a mentally retarded person into the room by shouting "Free donuts!" over and over again. It's funny, but, you know, it also seems kind of mean.

Unlike mentally retarded people, though, Modern Age fans pretty much deserve all the meanness you can shove their way, because, well, they're Modern Age fans, and therefore, wretched, miserable excuses for people, who actively conspire, connive, and collaborate at the ongoing degradation of a once great art form. They revel in the ruins of what was once magnificent, sneer at the greatest practitioners of an artform they claim to adore, and wave their monkey asses at all that used to be wonderous about comic books, while rolling around exultantly in the feces and vomit that comics have become over the past thirty years or so.

They are worthless, shabby, pitiful people. And we must mock them at every opportunity, or, by God, at least I must, or, by the Jesus, at the very least, I shall.

Here, then, are some Quick and Easy Tips for Baiting the Modern Age fan into an insensible rage:

1. Praise a Silver Age character somewhere on the Internet. It doesn't have to be on a comics related board or blog, either. You could head out to some Yahoo gardening group and hang a comment in their threads saying "You know, I really preferred Batman when he was the World's Greatest Detective, instead of being the World's Greatest Facebreaker". The poor housewives who populate the gardening group won't have more than the vaguest clue what you're talking about, but within picoseconds, avid slobbering Modern Age Batman fans will have found your comment on Google and swooped in like maddened velociraptors. "O so u like SISSY FAGGOT Batfag" they will sneer. "U r soooooo STEWpid the Batman now would so totaly pwn your pussy Batman", they will deride. Of course, the Modern Age Batman got his back broken by Bane and had to be replaced for year by a half-mad Frenchman with tin foil gloves, and he couldn't deduce who farted while trapped in an elevator with the corpse of Charles de Gaulle and the Kingpin eating bean dip, but never mind all that; according to every Modern Age fan in the universe, he would totally pwn the Silver Age Batman if they ever had a fight, and of course, that's the end of that, even though 'pwn' isn't actually a word.

You see, the Modern Age fan cannot abide any praise of any aspect of the Silver Age. This is because they fear and resent the Silver Age; they know, on some primordial level that they do not care to dwell on overly, that the Silver Age is a far far better age than any they have ever known, and they hate it, and therefore, they will not countenance or tolerate anyone anywhere saying anything positive about it. It bothers them, and threatens them, and infuriates them, and they will not have it. This is one reason they embrace continuity hating writers like Grant Morrison; they know Morrison can be trusted to either categorically ignore the Silver Age, or, better yet, if he actually uses Silver Age elements in a story, he will quite artfully degrade and demean them, which Modern Age fans just adore to read. In fact, there is nothing the average Modern Age fan likes more than seeing one of their Modern Age fan favorite writer/artist teams dig up an obscure, beloved Silver Age character, for the specific purpose of being sodomized, pissed on, and then flushed down a toilet into the sewer that is the Modern Age.

I theorize that this mostly comes down to changing values. One thing comics fans of all eras have in common is that we adulate our favorite heroes; they represent what we would like most to be. In the Silver Age, most of the heroes are adults, and they are moral, ethical, stalwart, and, well, heroic. They go out and do things, important things, and in their secret identities, they all have jobs. In other words, they work hard, they do the right thing, and they have accomplishments.

This is horror and anethema to the Modern Age fan, who is overstimulated and spoiled, has a microscopic attention span, who regards the very concept of a work ethic with appalled incredulity, and who would like nothing better than to sit in his bedroom in his mother's house for the rest of his life, playing video games, smoking dope, eating fast food, having his buddies over occasionally for really badly designed RPG sessions, and jerking off while he looks at Internet porn, or just Pamela Anderson on her new FOX show if his parents have put filters on his computer and he's too lazy to hack around them.

Some Modern Age fans are more adult than this; their parents are paying their way to college so they can delude themselves they are grown ups while they resolutely slack there, or their parents have insisted they start paying some sort of nominal rent, so they've gone out and gotten the first lousy job they can get that will meet their $25 a week nut, and pay for their comics and Magic: the Gathering fix, too, and they'll bitch and complain while they run the fryer at Burger King, and then they'll go home and happily sink back into their slacker lifestyle until they have to shamble off to their next shift.

These people don't want grown up superheroes who hold down jobs; they want perpetual adolescents with 'tude, dude, who sit around the Young Justice clubhouse playing HALO, throwing things at each other, leering at The Inevitable Female Member's ass in her Inevitable Tight Thong-like Costume Bottom, eating Little Debbie cakes, and sneering at whichever of their adult mentors happens to have drawn the really shitty job of coming around that week to try and motivate the little fuckers into actually doing something with their super powers and super lives.

These are the Modern Age fans who hate Geoff Johns the most, and why? Because he took the Modern Age Superboy, and the Modern Age Impulse, who used to behave precisely as I have described above (I mean, to a tee) and he had them actually grow up a little and begin to exhibit some vague vestiges of maturity.

It is a grotesquerie and a sedition to them, and they are outraged about it, and they just cry and cry and cry all over the Internet about it, too.

I have to get ready for work, so...

NEXT ISSUE: The Modern Age Fan and his/her deeply unhealthy attachment to Kyle Rayner, most worthless of all Green Lanterns

Rockabye sweet baby James

As a nearly perfect weekend with SuperGirlfriend and the SuperKids draws to a close, I look back over some of the highlights:

Saturday afternoon, we un-decorated. It should have been a depressing time -- it always has been in the past, when I've taken down whatever holiday trimmings I might have put up, stripped down the tree, and dragged it out to the dumpster/curb by myself. But I think the key words there are 'by myself'. With the whole family pitching in, and Elvis Costello rocking out from our DVD player, it went more quickly than I'd expected, and was a lot more fun.

Saturday evening, Bane came over for a few hours, and brought me copies of INFINITE CRISIS #2 and INFINITE CRISIS #3, which I've read a few times since then. Fascinating stuff -- if the first CRISIS had been this well written, I'd have long since picked up the trade paperback.

In preparation for Bane's visit, I moved a couple of tables around downstairs and set up what I'm calling Gaming Area A, a table top with a great deal more space on it than anything we have available upstairs. However, Bane hasn't really wanted to play clix during his visits. Nonetheless, me and the older two girls played a game down there tonight -- a game which I won, largely because Atlantis Rising popped out of the random Battlefield Condition deck, and I had the only team with a lot of flyers who could get to the small strip of outdoor area (a flood in an indoor environment is eventually lethal to every non-swimming fig that can't get outside).

Overall, Gaming Area A is a bit dank, and definitely a sweater-friendly environment. Also, the basement to the large house where we rent the largest apartment is anything but cozy -- it's cement walled, but unimproved, lit only around the edges, and full of clutter from however many previous tenants have lived in one of the four apartments in this house and then abandoned some of their chattels when they moved on. The kind of place it's very easy to start to feel uneasy in. But, still -- a handier place to play than the kitchen or living room, and additional room for feat cards, snack plates, and drink cups is a big plus.

Over at HC Realms, one of the Modern Age punks mentioned that apparently, DC has appointed a Gang of Four to be their current continuity cops, now and following INFIITE CRISIS. Geoff Johns is apparently the Chairman, and I say yay to that. Greg Rucka is also supposed to be one of the new mandarins, and I've heard good things about Rucka's work on WONDER WOMAN, and I enjoyed his OMAC PROJECT miniseries, so he gets a tentative thumbs up from me too.

However, the other two are Mark Waid, who invented the concept of Hypertime ("where everything is real") and Grant Morrison, who pitched such a monumental public hissy fit back in the late 90s, when he took over writing JLA and encountered a faction of fans who actually expected him to read the past issues of the comic he was writing and do stories that were consistent with what had already been established.

Waid has conned a large contingent of pros and fans into believing he is some kind of Silver Age maven, but he's not fooling me. He may have a fondness for pre-Crisis material, but anyone who creates a character like Impulse is no friend of Silver Age style characterization, and the idiocies he heaped on the Reverse Flash are... well, idiotic. No matter what some people may insist, he's not a good writer, and his Silver Age sensibilities are no such thing.

And Grant Morrison... I'll just shudder and move on. Okay, no, I won't -- I'll simply point out pretty much any and everything he's ever written, mention the terms 'continuity' and 'Silver Age', gag, spit, and then I'll move on.

Ah, but I digress. Back to my nearly perfect weekend...

Sunday night I played HeroClix with SuperDependable Teen, running my Fantastic Femmes squad -- Crystal, the Sue Storm LE (Fantastic Forces), the Experienced She Hulk, Medusa, and the Vet Lockjaw. It's a cheap team, even with an Extended Range on Crystal and an Unstoppable on She-Hulk. The lack of expense (it all came in at 400 points, appropriately enough) probably greatly contributed to my victory, as she put together a small squad of JSAers (Golden Age Flash, Experienced Mr. Terrific, Veteran Power Girl, Experienced Black Canary) who simply hadn't much of a chance at hitting a 19 Defense, which, with the new FF TA, all my team except Lockjaw had.

Throw in my House Rules for Pulse Wave, which is very nearly an auto-hit for 1 point of damage or an extra action token... and I just realized I lost that game, because I consistently forgot to halve Crystal's range when using Pulse Wave. Urg. So, never mind.

Still, I can see why many venues have outlawed the new FF TA. Especially with WizKids moving towards making the dial numbers smaller. A 19 Defense is going to be nearly unhittable. The FF should be tough, mind you... they don't often lose in the comics... but, still, I can see where playing against that sort of thing would be quite frustrating.

On the other hand, our random Battlefield Condition deck now contains two cards, Disbanded and Isolation, that screw the FF TA completely.

On a third hypothetical hand, what also helped me win that battle (that I now realize I didn't win) was Deep Shadows popping out at random, meaning Sue Storm (and any other character with Stealth) is effectively invisible anywhere on the board. Under my House Rules, a character with Stealth on hindering terrain cannot be attacked at all, so if that card pops up, it gives an ungodly advantage to sneaky sorts. And I suppose it should, but combined with the new FF TA, it's pretty wicked.

Sunday night, we also played Scene It!, a game that SuperGirlfriend has where you put a DVD in your DVD player and you answer various trivia questions about movies, some of which are on cards, others of which come when you watch clips from films off the DVD, or have to solve various puzzles portrayed on the TV screen. We used the new cards and disc that SuperGirlfriend gave the older two SuperKids for Christmas, and I eventually won, but it took a loooooong time.

Later on Sunday, we finished watching the fifth season of Angel. SuperGirlfriend cried when Wesley died, not so much at the death itself, but at Ilyria reshaping herself into Fred and giving her touching little 'soon you'll be with me' speech as Wes died in her arms.

Monday we all had off, so, as I'd learned during the Scene It! game that none of my girls had ever seen Last of the Mohicans, I made them all watch it with me, which was fun... I enjoy sharing things I love with them, and they all seemed to dig the film, which was gratifying. (When I say 'them all', I exclude SuperAdorable Toddler, who is too little to watch things like Magua cutting Colonel Munroe's heart out, and Duncan being burned to death. We set her up with a Madeline movie in the living room.) Then we goofed off most of the afternoon and went out to an early dinner at Rafferty's, using a gift card that a co-worker gave SuperGirlfriend for Christmas. Rafferty's has, in the past, cooked me the best bacon cheeseburger in the universe. Today, they provided an equally tasty prime rib sandwich.

Then back here for the aforementioned clix game, where my Kingdom Come team emerged inevitably triumphant, mostly, as I said, due to the Great Deluge. (Prior to the Great Day of the Rope... er... Flood, it should be admitted that Super Dependable Teen's Hellboy had headbutted KC Superman for quite a few clicks of damage.)

And SuperGirlfriend is sleepy, so it's time to kiss this holiday season good bye.

Merry happy, everyone.

In a random P.S. - after reading this, SuperGirlfriend mentioned that it wasn't Ilyria's speech to Wesley that made her cry, it was when she asked Wesley if he wanted her to 'lie to him now' as he lay dying, and he responded with 'oh, yes, that would be lovely'.

She also pointed out that the Scene It! expansion pack came from a relative, not from her; she just suggested it.

So, as always, she's set me right when I've gone wrong, and as always, I'm deeply appreciative, while wondering exactly what I did, in this or any other incarnation, to deserve such an amazing and wonderful woman in my life.