Jimmy Olsen’s Blues

Astonishing X-Men #25 might be the twenty-fifth issue of this series (twenty-sixth if you could the Giant-Size issue), but for all practical purposes, it might as well be the first. This issue serves as a fresh introduction to largely the same cast we’ve been reading about previously — though the issue contains almost no action whatsoever, it manages to move along quickly and provide plenty of necessary character and plot information in an entertaining — frequently hilarious — way.

One advance reviewer claimed that the characters’ voices don’t sound the way they did during Whedon’s issues. And that’s true enough, I suppose, though of course it’s to be expected with the change in writers – Whedon and Ellis have very different writerly voices. They don’t sound like Whedon’s writing them. They sound like Ellis is writing them. The important thing, though, is that their underlying personalities and motivations are fundamentally the same. Anyone who’s been reading the previous issues of this series won’t feel like they’ve been dropped into an entirely new batch of characters.

What has changed is the title’s overall feel and direction. Unsurprisingly, given Ellis’ involvement and his noted disdain for superheroes, the book feels a little less superhero-y and a little more science hero-y and more than a little more detective-y. But he’s also not forsaking the superhero motifs, either, and in fact plays them up and riffs on them several times, especially where costumes and code names are concerned.

Simone Bianchi’s artwork, while beautifully rendered, is too murky and difficult to read. Bianchi seems as to come at page layout strictly from a design point of view and not so much from a storytelling one. I’d rather he stuck to covers and design work (though if I were an artist on one of the other X-books now forced to draw these overly intricate costume designs, I’d be cursing Bianchi’s name at the drawing board). While the Whedon-to-Warren transition wasn’t especially jarring, going from John Cassady’s clean lines to Bianchi’s heavily textured work truly makes this issue feel like the launch of an entirely new series rather than a continuation of the previous one.

So far, I’m most enjoying Ellis’ take on Hisako, the young X-Man who, in shades of early-80’s Kitty Pryde-Sprite-Ariel-Shadowcat, doesn’t like her code name (“Armor”) [1]. Hisako’s very much an updated version of Kitty, though she’s a little savvier and more confident of her place in the X-world at this point than Kitty was early on – I’d imagine having already survived her first offworld adventure as an X-Man would give her a substantial confidence boost. She has no problem standing up to her older teammates, and interestingly enough, seems to have a relationship with Emma Frost which is exactly 180 degrees from the one Emma and Kitty had.

(Also: it’s nice to have Storm back in an X-book, where she belongs.)

If you enjoyed Whedon’s run on this book, you’ll still find plenty here to enjoy, even if the flavor is a bit different. If you’ve enjoyed pretty much any of Ellis’ mainstream superhero work, you’ll find plenty of Ellisian bits here to make you happy.

GRADE: A-

[1] Ellis seems to be setting up something to do with names and naming in this issue and I’m curious to see where’s going with it; it’s not the kind of thing he tends to do by accident.

For all of the usual Pixar brand of amazing technical virtuosity on display in WALL-E (and believe me, there’s plenty of it), it’s the wonderful characterization which makes the movie such a joy to watch. That director Andrew Stanton and his wizards at Pixar were able to draw such well-developed characters with such little dialogue is testament to the skill of their animation and story departments. I have trouble imagining a more human movie about robots.

If you’ve seen director Stanton’s previous masterpiece, Finding Nemo — and really, if you haven’t by now, you really should — that depth of character won’t surprise you in the least. WALL-E himself shows himself to be one of the more appealing leads of any of the Pixar films; on retrospect, this big-hearted, curious, noble, romantic little waste-collection robot is probably the most likable lead Pixar’s ever created. All of the film’s robot characters have distinct, well-crafted personalities, and almost none of them have much dialogue to speak of (pun intended). I think WALL-E and Eve spoke ten different words between them, yet there was never any problem communicating with each other or with the audience.

During the early parts of the movie, the audience is expected to piece together for themselves what happened to Earth, but once the setting changes, the Kid Gloves of Subtlety come off in favor of the Brass Knuckles of In Your Face. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; the less-subtle bits also provided a good deal of the movie’s comic relief. WALL-E might be a love story between two robots, but it also falls cleanly in the Science Fiction Film With a Message mold. The same segments of the population which allowed themselves to get lathered up about the environmental message in Happy Feet will be thoroughly pissed off by WALL-E, which amplifies the green message and throws in several helpings of condemnation of our consumerist society to boot. The two other main themes I took from the movie — Open Your Eyes to the World Around You and Follow Your Own Directive — likely won’t go over any better with the crowd who’d be upset with the Take Care of the Planet one. But I think all of these points are valid ones to teach our kids (and adults). More than valid, really. Essential.

Anyway , it’s nice to see that Pixar has next year’s Best Animated Feature Oscar wrapped up early. One critic mentioned that he thought WALL-E could be up for Best Picture, but now that the Academy Awards have a separate animation category, I’m not sure any animated flick will ever get a Best Picture nomination again. I’ll be curious to see if it gets a Best Original Screenplay nomination for Andrew Stanton, especially given the paucity of dialogue; my suspicion is not, though my hope is yes. I guess we’ll find out in February.

Grade: A.

(Related side note: the short feature before the movie is one of the best they’ve done yet. Hysterical, and also dialogue-free, as most of their shorts are. Do not arrive to the movie late.)

Hanging on the wall of my office is an Identity Crisis poster my wife got me for Father’s Day a few years ago. It features the art from the cover of issue #1 — and it’s signed by artist Michael Turner. The poster also came with a photo of him signing it (or one much like it, I suppose). My children look at it all the time and like to rattle off the names of the characters on it.

Rest well, Michael Turner. From what little was made public about your health, I know it was a hard battle for the last few years. Thirty-seven is far, far, far too young.

So I’m starting to formulate what I’m sure is an entirely off-base, probably nonsensical theory about Grant Morrison’s Final Crisis. [1] This idea of mine comes both from some history of Morrison’s and from, of all places, statements by trade dress designer Chip Kidd and artist Gene Ha, who doesn’t even have anything to do with this book.

Let me ’splain.

I’ll start with Ha’s comments, which were made last September in passing as part of an explanation for the huge delays behind his and Morrison’s run on The Authority:

“First off, I don’t think The Authority #3 by Grant Morrison and Gene Ha is ever coming out. Grant is busy redesigning the DC Universe and I’ve moved onto new projects.”

I think that’s the first place I’d seen reference to that idea of Morrison “redesigning the DC Universe,” or at least put quite in terms quite that specific. We knew even then that Final Crisis was going to be another epic multiverse-shaking story, but little was known about what sort of result the series was going to have. (Honestly, we still don’t know that much about it; DC’s been doing a damn good job of not letting that particular secret slip.)

So we know (or can at least theorize with some degree of certainty) that when Morrison’s done, the DCU will have been changed in some way, likely with his particular brand of highly imaginative neo-retro fusion. (Really, if you were going to redesign or modernize/futurize a comics universe from the ground up, wouldn’t Grant Morrison be on or close to the top of your list of creators you’d want involved?)

The second bits of info which got my neurons rubbing together to form this wild-ass theory came from Chip Kidd when discussing the distinctive, if thus-far uninspiring, FC trade dress:

NRAMA: So what went into the process for Final Crisis’ look?

CK: Well, to start with Final Crisis – the big thing that no one would be able to know yet, and I won’t get too specific here, but for the people that think it’s a generic look – wait. By the third issue, you’ll start to get it. Basically, the trade dress dissolves. So, it’s starting out as something now, and by the second issue, it will be slightly different, the third issue, even more different, and between the third and fourth issue, I hope people will get it, and understand what we were doing all along. It might not make people like it any better, but they’ll at least understand what I have in mind. It’s an evolving trade dress. … There are people who are in the talkbacks saying that DC is just riffing off Civil War, but again – wait and see. By the fourth issue, you’ll realize that’s not what we’re doing. We’re doing something else.

So the trade dress is going to start to dissolve and turn into something else which will be apparent — or at least the direction will — by the third or fourth issue. This implies to me either the current dress and logo will “fall away” to reveal something new underneath, or will degrade and reform into something new over the last half of the series’ seven issues.

I don’t think what’s revealed or regrown will be simply a reworked presentation of what came before. I think it will be something entirely new.

I think the title of this series is going to change halfway through, or perhaps begin to change only to be complete at the end of the series.

Title and trade dress are important to Morrison. When he took over X-Men in 2001, he changed the name of the book to New X-Men precisely because he’d designed a logo for it which could be rotated 180 degrees and read the same. He had Marvel redesign the trade dress for all of the X-Men books to make them more visually distinct from the rest of Marvel’s line. I think to him these elements of comic books have more meaning than beyond the simple graphic appeal of them — while I’m not willing to say for sure it ties into Morrison’s interest in magic, it’s possible that it does, but at the very least ties into his penchant for meta-story. The trade dress of many of his books say something about the books themselves.

So I’m looking at the words “Final Crisis.” And I know that Morrison is building a new DCU. And I know the trade dress is going to change. And I know that there’s a tremendous battle halfway through the series which, I speculate, is going to result in the deaths of most or all of the DC heroes. And I know that Morrison’s using Jack Kirby’s Fourth World creations extensively in this series.

And while I can’t say for sure exactly what’s going to happen…

…I want to note that it wouldn’t take a lot of work visually for the word “Crisis” to evolve into the word “Genesis.” (New Genesis, remember, is Kirby’s “good twin” of Darkseid’s evil planet Apokalips.)

When this series becomes Something Genesis by issue #7, launching the shiny new Morrison-ized DCU, I want you to remember where you heard it first.

[1] That’s not to dismiss the work of artist JG Jones, by the way; it’s just that this particular notion of mine lies along the story and meta axes, so it’s much more in Morrison’s court than Jones’.

I’d like today to gush just a little, if you don’t mind, about just how happy comics/TV scribe Brian K. Vaughan makes me. Or, rather, how happy Mr. Vaughan’s writings make me; while I have no doubt that his personal happy-making skills are considerable, I’ve never met the guy, so we’ll just stick with the stuff he’s written for now.

I’ve never read any of BKV’s output that I haven’t at least liked, and most of it I’ve absolutely loved. As I told Timmy B. a few days ago, I’m pretty sure Vaughan could write a long-form comics series focusing on the trials and tribulations of a multi-generational clan of overly-flatulent mole rats and I’d dig the hell out of it. The man can almost do no wrong by me, and I say the “almost” only because there’s always a possibility he could write something that just didn’t hit me right. So far, though, that possibility remains theoretical.

I truly love the fact that if you boil most of Vaughan’s works down to the one-sentence high-concept pitch, they don’t necessarily sound like anything exceptional, and can even border on the trite — I love it because it’s proof that execution trumps concept (at least in his case), and that’s inspiring to me as a writer who doesn’t feel like his ideas are anything exceptional. C’mon… Y: The Last Man isn’t exactly the first “last man on Earth” story ever written, but what BKV has done with the story has been moving and compelling and exciting and generally most excellent. I’ll happily leave the “mad ideas” to the likes of Grant Morrison and Warren Ellis, but I’ll take Vaughan’s work over theirs most any day. [1]

Some selected highlights from the Vaughan Oeuvre:

• Runaways. Six kids in L.A. discover that their parents are super-villains and, well, run away. Vaughan makes the personalities of each of these kids distinct and appealing in their own way (especially appealing: eleven-year-old mutant Molly). Sure, BKV frequently succumbs to Joss Whedon-esque Real Kids Don’t Talk This Way syndrome (Vaughan actually turned the writing of this book over to Whedon after thirty issues), but hey, what the dialogue lacks in realism it more than makes up for in entertainment value.

• Y: The Last Man. As noted above, not the most original concept ever, but just a terrific batch of characters and situations. Y shows off one of the things Vaughan does best: thinking through the ramifications of his setup and of the actions of his characters. Almost every issue of Y features a moment of “Well, duh, of course that’s what would happen if suddenly all the men were gone.”

• Pride of Baghdad. A graphic novel based on the true story of four lions who escaped from the ruins of the Baghdad Zoo after the U.S.’s initial attacks on the city in 2003. Disturbing, sad, haunting… and I mean that as a compliment.

• Ex Machina. Not quite Runaways-good or Y-good, but still damn enjoyable. One-time superhero Mitchell Hundred uses the goodwill he generated after saving New York City to get himself elected mayor. Ex Machina boasts far more political intrigue than it does big superhero action (though it has a fair share of that, too). Vaughan tries hard to strike some balance and not let Hundred’s liberal tendencies turn this into a left-wing diatribe; Hundred’s idealistic liberalism gets regularly smashed by the realities of a less-than-ideal world. Also: the first issue of Ex Machina features one of the single most breathtaking final pages of any comic I’ve ever read.

• Doctor Strange: The Oath. I just read this one last week — thanks, Timmy B! I’ve never cared all that much for Doctor Strange; I didn’t hate him, but neither the character nor the mystical corner of the Marvel Universe he inhabits eever interested me much. Vaughan, however, wrote a Doc Strange I’d be happy to read more about: arrogant without being assholish, fiercely loyal to his friends, charismatic, possessed of a biting sense of humor and immensely powerful.

Vaughan’s been scaling back on his comics work over the last year or so as he’s now a story editor for Lost, which makes me want to watch that show again (as does the presence of Buffy vet Drew Goddard on the writing staff). But as good as Vaughan would be at the TV game if he gets pulled farther in that direction — his episodic storytelling skills seem profoundly influenced by television — I hope he keeps several toes in the comics pool, as I’d truly miss reading his words.

(Cross-posted in a slightly altered form at Allen’s site.)

I’m sure by now you’ve seen the sure-to-be-temporary Alex Ross redesign of Captain America debuting in January. It’s not a bad design, I think, if a bit overdone with Ross’ fondness for metallic materials; I actually like the callback to Cap’s original shield in the design of the chestpiece. And if, as speculated, it’s Bucky/the Winter Solider underneath the mask, then all of the black and the gun and the knife make sense for the character. So I’m cool with it, especially since we all know it’s just a placeholder until Steve Rogers somehow, some way comes back from the dead (later in 2008, I’m guessing).

But looking at the new costume brought me back to the Nubile Nineties, when pretty much every one of the major superhero icons got spruced up in horrendous new duds at some point (and pretty much every one of them reverted back to their classic look soon after). The list which follows isn’t anywhere near complete, but it does touch on some of the high points — or low points, if you’d rather — of mid-90’s superhero couture. (As always, make sure to stop by Project: Rooftop for some far, far better attempts at updating the iconic looks!)

Armor-Plated Captain America — The last time Cap got a serious costume update, it wasn’t by someone with the design sense of Alex Ross. In fact, I’m not sure it was someone with the design sense of my five-year-old. Here’s the deal: Steve Rogers’ body begins to break down because, I don’t know, he’s old or something. (Who paid attention to the details of any Marvel comic in the mid-90’s, really?) Anyway, Steve-O’s forced into wearing a star-spangled exoskeleton (read: armor) to keep his body from falling apart on him. (Ah, the 90’s! Just look at all that needless over-rendering! Good times.) Obviously at some point he got himself fixed up so that he could go back to his regular duds, but I couldn’t tell you how. And even if I could tell you, I honestly don’t think I’d care to.

Armor-Plated Batman — Surely you know the basics of the near-interminable Knightfall story which overran the Batman titles in the early part of the 90s by now: ‘roid-rager Bane snaps Batman’s back; a crippled Bruce Wayne handles the mantle of the Bat to serious nutjob Azrael, who adopts a ludicrously over-the-top armored costume for his time as Batman. While the look of the costume certainly matched the mental state and background of the character wearing it, the design itself was terrible and nearly impossible to draw in any way that didn’t look ridiculous, as you can see right over there on the laughable cover of Detective Comics #567 (drawn by Kelley “all humans have 300 ribs, right?” Jones).

Armor-Plated Daredevil — Why did Daredevil ditch his normal red togs for black-and-red armor? Because the 90s, that’s why. (OK, it’s because his secret identity became public knowledge and he, I dunno, thought that changing his costume would give the media something new to talk about during their next news cycle so they’d leave him the hell alone. How many times can this guy have his ID outed and deny it before the public stops believing him? Lindsay Lohan’s “rehab was so good for me, I’m never ever going to party anymore!” claims have more credibility at this point.)

Armor-Plated Booster Gold — Are you starting to sense a theme here? Booster, much like Captain America, needed his armor to say alive after getting an arm hacked off and other internal injuries. Luckily, Booster’s best friend was a super-genius and could cobble up some life-support armor for him that just happened to match the color scheme of his costume! (Yes, this was the start of the “darkening” of the Giffen-DeMatties Justice League that Dan DiDio has had such fun with over the last few years.)

(A quick note: While researching these god-awful monstrosities, I discovered that Dave Campbell had much these same thoughts two years ago; please go read his blog for more armored shenanigans, including a couple of heave-worthy costumes I didn’t even mention here.)

Bug-Girl Wasp — As part of the Avengers aptly-named mega-crossover “The Crossing,” most of the team got spiffy new designs courtesy of then-series artist Mike Deodato. Some of the uniforms were fairly decent (like the Scarlet Witch’s), some were just a little different (like Hawkeye’s or Thor’s) and some were… well, they turned the Wasp into a big orange-and-pink bug. [1] The design of Bug-Jan wasn’t particularly appealing, and the treatment of the character seemed even less so. Luckily, something positive came out of the Heroes Reborn/Heroes Return hooey which followed shortly after: this move was wiped off the books.

Electro Superman — Honestly, I don’t think I’d hate this costume or this power set… if it weren’t supposed to be Superman. I mean, c’mon, DC. Changing Superman so completely (and yes, they tried to pull the “No, this is permanent, we swear!” routine) was done just to get the media to look their way for a few moments. Was it worth it, DC? Was it worth absolutely bastardizing your number-one asset, just to get some play on CNN? sigh This is why nobody likes you, y’know. Everyone’s all cool to you to your face, but behind your back, they’re all “That sumbitch DC don’t got no respect, it’s all ‘Hey, look at us break Batman’s back!’ or ‘Hey, look, Superman done stuck his finger in a light socket, ooooh!’”

ahem Sorry. Moving on…

Noseless Wolverine — Does this count as a redesign, when it was really more of an obviously temporary state for the character? Well, I’m going to say yes, because if I don’t, then I can’t include this atrocity here. So something happened to Logan which regressed him to an even more animalistic state than normal (yes, again, I’m a bit fuzzy on the details), and apparently “more animalistic” when applied to Wolverines means “big fangs, poor posture and no nose.” Yet for all of the oddness to his appearance, the loss of his ability to speak in more than grunt, the dragging his knuckles along the ground… Logan still felt the need to tie a flap of cloth with eyeholes in it around his head to wear as a “mask.” Erm… wha huh?

Bike Shorts Wonder Woman — Don’t get me wrong here: I actually love me some bike shorts. But that doesn’t really say “Wonder Woman” to me, y’know? Neither does all the black. Also, another clue that we’re in the 90s: the jacket. Not an absolute travesty as compared to some of the other designs on this list, but if it weren’t for the “WW” motif, this design wouldn’t even be recognizable as Wonder Woman. (This design also qualifies as part of the “Temporarily Replacing An Icon With An Unworthy Stand-In” trend, which hit most every major hero at some point during the decade, but that’s for some later post. This one’s long enough already.)

Torn Hoodie Spider-Man — Oh, look, another installment of “Temporarily Replacing An Icon With An Unworthy Stand-In,” though I guess Spider-Man’s clone would theoretically be just as worthy as he, right? Anyway, once Ben Reilly, the aforementioned clone of Spidey, decided to take on his own Spideriffic identity, he threw together a red bodysuit and a ratty blue spider-emblazoned sweatshirt which would do Bill Belichick proud. And thus was born: the embarrassingly-named Scarlet Spider! This one counts as a redesign to me as since Ben even took over the lead role in the main Spider-Man books for a little while. This costume? Uuuugly, especially in comparison to the other new Spidey costume we got for awhile in the 90’s (the one now worn by Spider-Girl, Spider-Man’s alternate-timeline future daughter. Clones taking over for the characters from which they were cloned? Potential-future offspring from alternate realties? Who says comics are hard to penetrate for new readers!)

Skinhead Hulk — Not technically a costume redesign, true, but the hairless Hulk just never looked right to me. He looked more ridiculous than scary, even under the pencils of John Romita, Jr. During the early part of writer Bruce Jones’ run on The Incredible Hulk, Bruce Banner buzzed his dome in an attempt to hide from… well, everybody, since it seems that Banner-as-Hulk had done Something Bad. While we spent a lot of time with Baldie Bruce, we didn’t actually see a full shot of the Hulk for several issues as Jones built the Hulk up using the “what you don’t see is scarier” technique. And then, once we got a good look at Romita’s Hulk… I snickered when I should’ve been shuddering.

Two links you’ve probably seen before if you’re at all part of the comics blogosphere, but these seemed like bits and pieces you should know about anyway:

• Occasional Superheroine gets tells us exactly what it is the current DC editorial crew is doing wrong with their “Everything Ties Into Countdown” mentality. It’s funny — a year ago, I thought DC was doing a great job with most of their line post-Infinite Crisis; now, it feels like most of their line’s a big ol’ mess. I’d imagine that most of those perceptions are due to the uber-series providing the throughline through the universe: 52 was generally accepted as being done well, so DC as a whole had a bit more of a positive gleam to it, but since Countdown seems to be about as well loved as O.J. Simpson, DC’s books in toto seem mired in poo. I’ll be really curious to see what effect Final Crisis has on the perceptions of DC’s books as much as on the DCU itself.

Also, OS gave me something else I might have chew on more later: during the Paul Levitz era, DC did a good job of staying off of Time Warner corporate’s radar. Dan Didio doesn’t seem to think that’s a priority, and his willingness to piss people off might lead him to pissing off the wrong people: his corporate overlords. Maybe nothing will ever happen on that front, but it’s certainly not out of the realm of possibility.

• Project Rooftop has kicked off a Redesign Bart Allen meme to memorialize the late Mike Wieringo. I think that’s a fantastic idea, and I encourage any of you with artistic leanings who feel up to the challenge to go throw your speediest hat into Dean and Chris’s ring.

Death in comic books means nothing. We all know that. Beyond the fact that “death” rarely sticks (even the “characters what never ever came back!” are starting to come back now), c’mon… let’s not forget that these are fictional characters, most of whom aren’t known by anyone who doesn’t read comics (meaning: most everyone). But while the deaths of these particular characters might indeed be meaningless in an existential sense, they still had an effect on me and, I’d wager, many others. Presenting Ten Comic Book Deaths Which Touched Me In Some Small But Signficant Way:

Phoenix (Uncanny X-Men #137, 1980). (The first time only, please.) I was pretty new to the X-verse when Jean sacrificed herself to save the universe: I had only started reading UXM with issue 135, the tail end of the Dark Phoenix Saga, and the tragic, confused, supremely-powerful Jean Grey was already one of my favorite characters. UXM #136’s cliffhanger, with most of the X-Men disappearing into space, gripped me in such a way I was sure I would die before #137 came out. Little did I realize, however, that Uncanny X-Men #137 was a double-sized issue, meaning that the local 7-11 where I bought my comics wouldn’t carry it; I didn’t catch on to that fact until #138 came out. And when I opened that issue and saw all those somber X-faces standing over Jean’s tombstone… well, nine-year-old me took that hit pretty hard, I’ve gotta tell you.

Captain America (Captain America v3 #25, 2007). By no means do I believe Cap’s death is going to last long-term, but I have to give Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting credit for pulling off such a high-profile event with such skill. The stories being told in Cap’s series after his death have been just as riveting, if not moreso, than those being told when he was alive.

Guardian (Alpha Flight v1 #12, 1983). Ah, the glorious spoiler-free advance-solicitation-free pre-Internet days. The cover of Alpha Flight #12 told us straight up that one of the Alphans would be biting it in that issue, and knowing that death was coming for one of the team had me almost in terror while reading this issue. As I got closer and closer to the end and it seemed more and more obvious that John Byrne had pegged Jim Hudson to die, I couldn’t believe it: “No way can he kill Guardian!” thought I. “He’s the team leader! The star of the book!” But kill him Byrne did, and in a way that I’m sure must have impressed on the mind of young Joss Whedon, too: Jim knows he’s only got seconds left to keep his cybernetic suit from self-destructing — and then his wife, Heather, comes in and distracts his attention, causing the suit to explode and consume Jim in front of her. Meaning that Heather had to watch her husband die and know that she effectively killed him. Powerful stuff, both for Heather Hudson… and for me.

Blue Devil/Amazing Man/Crimson Fox (Starman #38, 1998). OK, sure, Blue Devil didn’t stay dead for long, and yeah, I might be the only person on the planet who actually misses Amazing Man… but still, the brtual efficiency with which Jack Knight’s nemesis The Mist dispatched this newly-formed Justice League Europe — just to prove she could — was almost sickening to behold. [1]

Robin (Jason Todd) (Batman #428, 1988). I didn’t particularly care that the Joker murdered Jason Todd — I’d never really much cared for the second Robin, apparently much like the many, many people who called DC’s special 900-number voting for him to die. But I was pretty shocked that DC actually went through with his death, not only because the character of Robin is so iconic (the mainstream press surely wouldn’t have recognized that the Robin who died wasn’t the one from the old Batman TV show, the only touchstone they seem to have for the Batman characters) but because they were murdering a kid. In a way it would’ve been less shocking had the Joker offed Batman… though they would’ve found a way to bring Bats back within months, instead of the nearly twenty years it took to bring back Jason Todd.

Alex DeWitt (Green Lantern v3 #54, 1994). When Ron Marz took over the book and introduced Kyle Rayner as the new Green Lantern, he also introduced Alex, Kyle’s good-hearted, funny, beautiful, very likable girlfriend… and then three issues later had her killed by uber-baddie Major Force and had her corpse shoved into a refrigerator. Alex’s death was shocking, yes, giving Kyle the “Uncle Ben” motivation to become a great hero — but there was a bigger positive to come from her death: the birth several years later of the Women In Refrigerators site, which both pointed out how poorly female characters in comics are treated… and gave the comics industry the vastly talented Gail Simone.

The Flash II (Crisis on Infinite Earths #8, 1985). Barry Allen was my first-ever favorite superhero (and only partially because of that wonderful last name), and his death in the first Crisis really upset me. I read this issue standing in a drugstore in Brookhaven, Mississippi — I had no idea his death was coming, and I spent the bike ride back to my dad’s apartment all kinds of bummed out at the loss of the Flash. (Note to DC: please please don’t ever bring Barry back.)

Maxwell Lord (Wonder Woman v2 #219, 2005). This one’s actually less for the murdered than the murderer — Wonder Woman demonstrated exactly how dedicated to The Greater Good she really is by giving the retconned-into-pure-evil Lord a nice view of his own posterior, a move which truly was significant from both a character standpoint and a plot standpoint. Part of DC head honcho Dan Didio’s campaign to eliminate most of the Giffen/DeMatteis Justice League, as was the event which precipitated it:

Blue Beetle II (Countdown to Infinite Crisis, 2004). It’s not often that a well-liked, if second-string, superhero gets his brains blown out by a former teammate who’s been retconned into being pure evil. I’d say that losing Ted Kord was a waste of a perfectly good character… if it weren’t for the fact that his replacement’s an interesting, entertaining character in his own right, probably the best new character to come out of Infinite Crisis.

Cypher (New Mutants #60, 1987). Doug Ramsey held an “everyman” place within the New Mutants since his powers (the ability to instantly understand all languages, human and computer) were entirely intellectual. Unfortunately for Doug, “entirely intellectual” superpowers don’t do a whole lot to stop bullets. But Doug’s sacrifice (he died to save teammate/girlfriend Wolfsbane) isn’t the reason for his inclusion on this list: the incredibly creepy “Warlock takes possession of Doug’s corpse and tries to reanimate it” storyline which followed is. I mean, c’mon… what the hell, Claremont?!

[1] During research for this post, I read that James Robinson hadn’t intended to off three heroes in one issue, but editor Dan Raspler encouraged him to get rid of some unused characters. If the characters aren’t being used, couldn’t you just leave them in limbo for when someone inevitably thinks of something interesting to do with them later on? Hell, shouldn’t Amazing Man be in the Justice Society at this point?

It’s starting to look like some Colossal Boy-sized happenings are in store for the Legion of Super-Heroes in the year to come, just in time for their fiftieth birthday. There’s the whole multiple-Legions thing running through the contemporary DCU, and the current team looks like it’s going to be getting more buzz thrown its way: rumor mill suggests Jim Shooter’s going to be returning as writer of the Legion of Super-Heroes sometime very soon, presumably at the same time newly-DC-exclusive Francis Manapul takes over as penciller.

(Am I the only glad that Supergirl is nowhere to be seen in that picture? I’m assuming this means the title’s going back to just Legion of Super-Heroes rather than Seriously Overexposed And I Mean Than In More Ways Than One Supergirl and…).

The image by Manapul excites me, if for no other reason than I like a great many of the costume tweaks and redesigns we can see in the image. Manapul has said he’s looking back more to Dave Cockrum’s design sense for inspiration, and I can certainly endorse that idea, what with Cockrum being one of the best costume designers the industry’s ever known. I’ve always liked Barry Kitson’s artwork, but most of his designs for the LSH for this most recent reboot left me a bit cold. Manapul’s tweaks are refreshing: I especially love the Saturn Girl design, bringing back the look of her classic bikini with a twist; Phantom Girl, even if we can’t see if she’s got the bell bottoms of her original Cockrum costume; Brainiac 5, whose look and pose in that pic perfectly represent the attitude of the current version of the character.)

As for Shooter… well, honestly, I’m not sure how I feel there. I respect that he had such an important and influential run on the book thirty years ago, but I want to take a wait-and-see attitude toward how his work will come across these days. The presentation of comics has changed so much, the modes of storytelling — I’m just unsure if his writing will feel contemporary or dated. I wasn’t particularly a fan of his Valiant/Acclaim work, but I’m not ready to say I think he can’t do it. Whether he can or not, we’ll see, but anything which raises the Legion’s profile at least has my interest. Here’s hoping.

My big question with bringing Shooter on the book — and all of this is supposing that the rumors are correct, and based on the investigation detailed at The Legion Omnicom I’m assuming they probably are — is why? Yes, he wrote the book long, long ago, but he hasn’t done anything notable in comics in ten years or more. His name recognition value will only matter to older readers (like, erm, me) — younger readers might recognize the name, but nothing more. Again, I’m not saying that Shooter can’t turn in some good stories nowadays — there’s no recent evidence one way or the other — but I’m honestly wondering if he was brought in because of his name or because he had solid ideas for stories and a direction in which to take the team. I hope that it’s at least the latter as much as the former; you only get a fifitieth birthday once, and it’d be nice not to have the Legion’s wasted.

Since Tim unknowingly started this Tuesday Ten thing off last week with his rundown of the ten lamest Avengers ever (a pretty impressive list, I must say), I thought it was only fair to follow it up by picking through the detritus of DC’s premier super-team, the Justice League. Some of the Leaguers below were part of some of the various Justice League offshoots, (Justice League Task Force, Extreme snicker Justice), but all can fairly be considered members of the Justice League… even if they weren’t members for very long.

I’m upping the degree of difficulty just a bit with this list by not allowing myself to include Vibe, who would honestly have to be the worst Leaguer ever. By several orders of magnitude. I’m also not considerding those characters who were played purely for laughs during the Giffen/DeMatteis years (G’nort, Justice League Antarctica) — the entire point of those characters was their awfulness. So think of this list as “The Ten Worst Justice Leaguers Not Named Vibe And Not Purposely Ridiculous.”

(All images below graciously ganked from Ze Ball Breaker Micro-Heroes Site. Go poke around… it’s easy to lose hours looking at all the bizarre stuff there.)

Bloodwynd. Much like “Ten Worst Avengers” desginee Deathcry, Bloodwynd’s suckitude starts with the grotesque mid-90’s name, but surely doesn’t end there. Turns out at first Bloodwynd was a mind-controlled Martian Manhunter in disguise, and then we found out that there was a real Bloodwynd who the Manhunter had been mimicking. That Bloodwynd was some sort of necromancer who wouldn’t deign actually to do anything for the League on the grounds that he didn’t want to disturb the natural order of things. Good thing the “natural order of things” for Bloodwynd was to quickly fade into obscurity. (I’ll admit that I kinda dug his costume, though.)

Blue Jay. Is there any chance whatsoever that the name “Blue Jay” ever inspired fear into the hearts of any criminals anywhere? At least the Marvel hero of whom he was an analogue, Yellowjacket, had a name which could terrify bad guys allergic to bee stings. (C’mon… Blue Jay?)

Doctor Fate (Linda Strauss). This version of Doctor Fate makes the list thanks largely to the brevity of her run with the League which, if I’m remembering correctly, consisted almost entirely of the cover of Justice League America #31. I think Giffen and DeMatteis planned to keep her around longer, but events in her own book — like her death — scuttled those plans.

Geo-Force. I’m sorry, Brad Meltzer: he’s not cool. Horrendous name, worse costume, not even a hundredth as interesting as his late half-sister, the original Terra. Also, I’m pretty sure that he’s added absolutely nothing to Meltzer’s run on the book, though we still have an issue left, so maybe he’ll, y’know, do something seriously amazing then.

L-Ron/Despero. I liked L-Ron, the little robot who served as Maxwell Lord’s majordomo during the Giffen/DeMatteis era — he brought a welcome sense of snarky humor to the book (as opposed to the ridiculous humor most of the other characters brought). I like Despero as a villain for the JLA — his brutal attack on that same League (featuring the supposed death of Mr. Miracle) was a highlight of the Giffen/DeMatteis run. Putting L-Ron’s consciousness in Despero’s body and making him a full League member? With a big gun? Seriously, who thought that was a good idea?

Mystek. Perhaps the character herself wasn’t lame, or wouldn’t have been if she’d been given the opportunity to develop, but she was knocked off almost as soon as she joined up with the Justice League Task Force. Writer Christopher Priest had intended her to be a creator-owned character starring in her own mini-series and had put her in JLTF to build some buzz for her. But DC nixed that mini-series, so Priest nixed Mystek.

Plastic Man. Yeah, you read me right. Plas always felt like an incongruous presence in the League and I never quite understood his continued membership past Morrison’s “Godly Legion of Leaguers” roster — it became “The Big Seven, Oh And Also By The Way Plastic Man.” If I had to have a stretchy hero in the JLA, I’d much have preferred Elongated Man, who could bring the funny and had more depth to his character. Guess that’s not happening anytime soon, though, is it?

Triumph. DC’s version of Marvel’s Sentry, but before Marvel got around to creating the Sentry. Triumph, apparently, was one of the original founders of the Justice League, but was removed from the timestream and erased from the memories of everyone everywhere. When he “came back” into the modern DCU, he was, frankly, an asshole. Theoretically, his assholishness was justified, since no one even remembered he’d ever existed — I’m sure that would have hacked me off pretty good, too — but it sure made for an unlikable character. In a vaguely ironic final twist on the “no one remembers Triumph” bit, a turned-into-glass-by-the-Spectre Triumph was still in the JLA Watchtower when Grant Morrison destroyed it, presumably destroying Triumph as well… not that anyone, including Morrison, seemed to remember. Or care.

Zan and Jayna, The Wonder Twins. The friggin’ Wonder Twins?! In a book called Extreme Justice? Wow, this idea positively reeked of eau du nineties, didn’t it? (Dr. Olsen’s Fun Science Fact: That feeling in your brain you’re getting while trying to reconcile “Wonder Twins” and “Extreme Justice“? That’s what we like to call cognitive dissonance.)

Hmmmm… a full half of the entrants on this list come from Extreme Justice, and I can promise you that wasn’t intentional. I guess it just shows that Chris Sims (as usual) was right: Extreme Justice might very well have been the worst series DC ever published.