Jimmy Olsen’s Blues

When I first entered the comics game in the early 70’s, I had one pusher available to me: the local 7-11. Fortunately for my parents, 7-11’s only stocked the standard cover price DC’s each month. Unfortunately for my post-adolescent checkbook, those comics were loaded with in-house ads for 100 PAGE SUPER SPECTACULAR editions of my favorite titles. It wasn’t until I was old enough to hit a con or two or drive to few and far between LCS’ that I was finally able to hold some of these beauties in my hands, usually at around ten times cover price.

There was some (ill-informed) disappointment that the majority of the 100 pages were used for reprinted Golden Age and early Silver Age stuff, but I’m way over that now (especially since I realize now that a lot of it actually kicks major ass).

The covers still sell these books today, masterpieces mostly by the great Nick Cardy. Take a look:

10. Shazam #12: Mmmmmary Mmmmmarvel. I think I just realized why I loathe Countdown.








9. World’s Finest #226: Superman (to Batman): “Metamorpho, the Doorknob of the DCU. Everybody gets a turn.”









8. JLA #116: For my money, Justice League America had the most consistently good 100-page Giant covers, so it was hard to narrow it down to the few in this list. These days, kids see that cover and assume Santa just can’t hold his hooch. Back then? Mind-blowing and frightful. (I don’t have the issue handy–can someone explain why Dr. Mid-Nite’s on the cover? The story’s not titled Crisis at the North Pole.)







7. Shazam #16 Back in the day, I always wondered why the Seven Deadly Sins looked so goofy, but now it makes perfect sense. Would you really expect Greed or Sloth to look like something out of Hellraiser?






6. JLA #116: Why aren’t covers like this still the norm? I can still look at it without laughing, honest. (Well, except for Matter Master’s utterly unimpressive wizard garb.)



5. Detective Comics #440: Don’t know how much influence DC’s large line of spooky comics (House of Mystery, House of Secrets, Ghosts, etc.) had on many of these Giants, but take a close look and you’ll see creepiness everywhere.




4. World’s Finest #225: See what I mean? “Bow Before Satan’s Children”? Brrr… not seeing that on Super Friends Saturday morning.






3. Brave and the Bold #116:Here’s a Spectre who would simply not abide by the Goddamn Batman.








2. Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes #202: Much like modern comics, this actual scene doesn’t take place in the book. But unlike the comics of today, there’s at least Devil Fish in this story.

…and numero uno:






1. Detective Comics #439: This cover didn’t grab me as immediately as some others in this list did the first time I saw it, but this image sticks with me to this day, so much so that it was easily the first comic I considered for the 10. It also contains a Batman story easily in the top 5 all-time. (I know this list is about covers, but you gotta be able to break ties somehow.)

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Eternal thanks to Mike’s Amazing World Of DC Comics DC covers indexes. I implore anyone who hasn’t checked his galleries out to do so immediately. Also bring a square meal or two before viewing, because you’ll lose several hours before you’ve refreshed your memory of DC titles like Hercules Unbound.

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?

The comics community continues to reel with the horrible, unexpected passing of Mike Wieringo. Many blogs and message boards have started their slow march towards business as usual, but Jimmy Olsen’s Blues isn’t quite ready to do that yet. It’s Tuesday, time for a Ten, but this week we’re not ranking anything or goofing around. Just a look back at some memorable covers done by the late “Ringo”. Enjoy.














Most of these graphics courtesy of the most bad-ass of comic art repositories, Comic Art Community.

Spider-Man director Sam Raimi easily plopped six classic Spider-Man villains in just three films (yeah, I’m counting Curt Connors). Sadly, he seems to be slightly unwilling to commit to doing further installments…

Before you realize just how many private islands or moons of Saturn you could buy, Mr. Raimi, I beg you to go back to work, considering the flat-out awesomeness of the Spider-Man nemeses you haven’t used yet…

10. The Scorpion: C’mon, they’re going to send you a check for the CGI in an envelope made entirely of taped-together thousand-dollar bills. You could do worse than investing in some vicious whipping scenes.




9. Morlun: He’s Dracula with an even more exotic fetish. How 21st century. Get points on a gothtastic soundtrack, Sam, and you could probably put a Starbucks in the bathroom of your European castle.



8. The Molten Man: The tech they used to bring Hollow Man to life is probably available as freeware by now. Use all that sappy backstory you couldn’t get to with the Sandman in SM3 (or Dr. Octopus in SM2, and so on and so on) and voila!



7. The Vulture: Crazed, bald old men are always the best when featured in multi-centi-million dollar movies. Is Abe Vigoda still alive? Hell, even if he’s not, you can still sign him up. I’d pay $10 to watch cut-n-paste footage of ol’ Tessio sighing his way through explosion after explosion.





6. The Hypno Hustler: But you’d have to get Jamie Kennedy or somebody like him to do it. No black man would touch this part. And you’d have to update HH’s usual disco scene o’ the crime to some rave somewhere. A rave that Tobey Maguire would somehow end up going to. Hmmm, maybe this isn’t such a great idea.



5. The Jackal: Kidding aside, take Professor Warren out of that ridiculous costume and make him some barely visible tormentor like in Saw. True, it might be your last Spider-Man film, but if you’re trying to jump off the franchise anyway…




5. Grizzly: What better way to prop up the suspension of disbelief necessary for Hero Dressed As Spider than to have Villain Dressed As Crazed Bear?







4. Man-Wolf (John Jameson): Already introduced, and his ties to Spider-Man’s most fervent enemy (and the fact that the movies’ John Jameson probably did the nasty with Mary Jane) make for some critic-pleasing drama. Plus: WEREWOLVES FROM OUTER SPACE. I can’t trumpet this loudly enough.




3. Spider-Slayers and Dr. Spencer Smythe: And sticking to the mission statement of inviting as many movie-goers to the party as possible, let H.R. Giger design one of the Slayers: MY FANGED VAGINA NOSTRIL WILL BE YOUR DOOM, SPIDER-MAN!



2. The Black Cat: If Shia LeBoeuf is indeed taking over all of American cinema for the next 5 years or so, then put him in the suit and let him be led around by his web-shooters by some Maxim-annointed goddess. He’s probably method-acting it already. Something Wild, but in costumes.


1. Tony Stark: If (god forbid) Iron Man bombs, then appropriate Tony Stark as a wolf-in-sheep’s-clothing blackguard straight out of Karate Kid 3. To further his own political agenda, Stark throws poor naive Peter right under the bus, only to be out-geniused by the Spider trying to dig into the underground. Oh, the tension!

Received via e-mail from deceased JLA Detroit (Justice League of America Detroit?) veteran Paco Ramone, d/b/a Vibe…

“Dear” Allen:

My man Apache Chief emailed me a link to your inadequately researched and horribly executed post, in which you stated I was so awful in my role with the Justice League that I was in a class of my own, and as such unworthy of inclusion. Aren’t you so smart, Allen, if that’s your real name.

While I’d love to meet you mano y mano and call you names like gringo or pendejo, I can’t make room for the “hot-blooded Latino invectives” stereotype right now, loaded down as I am with “gang-leader”, “spectacular breakdancer” and “brightly colored red, green, and yellow fighting gear” stereotypes already.

(Which reminds me, DC: you’re on my list too. While you were bringing back Jason Todd, you could’ve at least had Superboy “punch” the whole “spectacular breakdancer” bit from my continuity. Pendejos.)

And again, if you’d bother to do the same kind of legwork that Tim did, you’d have found out just how beloved I was during my tenure with the League. Zatanna, Black Canary, Hawkwoman, Vixen, Supergirl… they all loved having Vibe around the ol’ Headquarters during monitor duty, if you know what I’m saying. (J’onn J’onzz too, but don’t ask further.)

Seriously, Tim can track down Bart Allen beyond the grave, but you can’t do the same for me? Or shoot an email to a living Vixen? I would say it sounds like racism, but again, I can’t fit that sweeping generalization into my psyche with all the others.

Pop and Lock this, buddy.

VIBE

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.

After some exhaustive research (read: marathon bathroom session where my only companion was George Perez’ 30th Anniversary Avengers poster), I arrived at a starting point for thinning Earth’s Mightiest Heroes & Others Dressed In A Similar Manner.

10. The Swordsman: That lavender getup is just your first clue that this isn’t Marvel’s Errol Flynn. He also betrayed the team (and his boy Hawkeye), and got led around by Li’l Swordsman so badly he wound up in the grave. And the gal he so blindly followed didn’t realize she loved him back until he was seconds away from death. And after she struck out with every single other Avenger on the roster. What kind of lame tramp could dare play such games with an F-list swashbuckler?

9. Mantis:

This kind.

I think Thor’s onto something.

(By the way, all of these panels are from the same comic. Ho, indeed.)

8.Spider-Man: That’s right, I said Spider-Man. Just look at his supporting cast here, symbols of his mundane little problems. How do his regular-guy hangups get any meaningful panels when he’s on a team with recovering alcoholics, mutants, gods, demi-gods, and a bipolar Superman?

7. Tigra: She’s furry and bikini-clad^[1]. That’s about it. And I bet Jarvis prays for her death every time he has to clean the curtains.

6. Rage: He stole (and subsequently lost) a quinjet just to impress the New Warriors. Because, y’know, being an Avenger wouldn’t be quite enough.

5. The Hulk: Stan Lee had him off the team by the end of the second issue. Iron Man eventually shot him into space. All because of a silly myth about what “green guys are packing” in their shredded purple jeans.

4. Silverclaw: If Challenge of the Super Friends was still on, having her as the shape-shifting, animal-emulating, Spanish-accented member would make it awesome.^[2] But this is Marvel Comics, not DC/Hanna-Barbera TV.

3. Dr. Druid: Even Warren Ellis couldn’t polish this hocus-pocus turd. So he did the next best thing: he had the Son of Satan light him on fire and stuff him in a garbage can. And the charlatan (who despite being a reknowned psychiatrist and a mentalist, wound up mind controlled or whacked out most of the time) had it coming. Just look:

There’s a tie at the top bottom! It’s a dead heat! One is truly dead, and the other has Death in her name. While there’s a reasonable distance between these two and the preceding eight, it was impossible for the staff here at JOB to select just one to stand alone.

1. Gilgamesh & Deathcry (tie): Why wasn’t Gilgamesh solving all the Marvel Universe’s problems in about 15 seconds? He certainly seemed to have whatever power the job required. Why did Marvel so completely and utterly destroy a character that they took such great pains to establish as immortal? And most importantly, why wasn’t he Avenged? Maybe if he’d re-thought that outfit (a little more black leather, a little less mall-kiosk gold)…

Speaking of mall-jewelry, we are all equally scarred by just how long Marvel kept around Deathcry, Warrior-Brat of the Shi’ar. Nothing says “1990’s comics” quite like a 30-something male writer trying to sound like a 16-year old girl to better relate to 13-year old boys. Well, that and naming the character “Deathcry”.

So, Marvel, feel free to use this list as a guideline for keeping these misfits away from Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. If you can’t resist the temptation, just bring back the Secret Defenders. Or staple your thumbs to your eyelids until the feeling passes.

[1]I will admit that is a pretty sweet Adam Hughes portrait, though.

[2]You got me–Challenge of the Super Friends would be awesome today no matter what.