Clark Kent Is No Peter Parker

So, Clark Kent is patrolling Metropolis (solo!) in the WGBS newscopter, and of course, a crisis comes up:



Well, of course, he deals with the crisis, and of course, he returns with the news story, right?


What?!?

Of course you "could have" caught yourself on film!! Peter Parker did it all the time!!! (True, it never made sense that he was able to, but--comic books, man!!) The "super-brain" from Krypton couldn't figure out a way to set a camera to automatically take pictures while he's in action?

Of course, one could question WGBS' judgement, as well, for sending up a reporter solo in a copter, and expecting a civilian to fly it AND take news photos at the same time...

Oh, Clark...

Funny you should mention Jonah, Morgan...because just as Kent is no Parker, you, sir, are no J. Jonah Jameson.

From Superman #297 (1976)

Manic Monday--A Plague For Their Dowries

"I say, we will have no more marriages..."
-Hamlet Act III Scene i

Of course, Hamlet said that while feigning (?) madness. DC? Apparently, it's now corporate policy.

We already knew that the New New (New) DC Universe is going to "One More Day" Clark Kent and Lois Lane's marriage--never married, nope, not even really dating. Apparently, it's too tough to write a married Superman--Lois gives him "too much support," they need Superman to "struggle" more and be more "isolated" and "broody."

Jim Lee said Friday that the marriage had made writers "complacent." You'd think the answer to that would be to tell your writers to write better, rather than toss the relationship, but the inmates are in charge at DC.

Lee went on to say "[Superman] had this love of his life that he couldn't necessarily obtain, and that's something that was kind of missing from that mythology." Which kind of proves that Lee never actually read a Silver Age Superman story, because that's not how I remember things: Superman could have "obtained" Lois anytime--he was the one playing hard to get.

But yesterday we found out that was just the beginning. New Flash cowriter and penciller Francis Manapul told a panel "[Barry Allen] and Iris were never married. He's dating someone, but playing the field a bit. He's fast enough for all the ladies."

Wow.

First, you have to wonder why DC was so insistent on bringing Barry back, if they were going to change his background, get rid of his friends and family, and change his personality--"playing the field"?!? Barry Allen?!?!

Second, I've opined in this space before about the wondrous storytelling possibilities Iris Allen presents. She's a time traveling, body-shifting Lois Lane, with Superman's origin, and everyone she touches becomes a God of Speed. To claim that she somehow makes writers complacent or limits storytelling possibilities is just foolish. But no, all that is outweighed by the fact that the pre-adolescents in the DC He-Man Woman Haters Clubhouse think marriage is icky.

But aside from all the relationships now fiated away with a hand wave, and aside from all the currently existing characters who've never been born because of DC's "our heroes must be younger and not married to be more relatable" policy, here's the problem:

If DC's not going to have any married characters, doesn't that ruin the (melo)drama of having their heroes date? If this policy means that Lois and Clark can never marry, what's the point of watching them date, if you've already declared that their relationship can go no farther? Having Barry Allen "play the field"--aside from projected wish fulfillment by the creators, how can that provide better storytelling possibilities, if you've already declared a large set of those possibilities out of bounds? Isn't removing the possibility (and even the desirability) of marriage just as likely to lead to complacency by writers, just as limiting to character growth?

Sadly, DC has seemingly and unironically taken Hamlet's rant to heart:

If thou dost marry, I'll give thee this plague for thy dowry: be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, thou shalt not escape calumny. Get thee to a nunnery, go.

Buddy Baker, you'd best be watching over your shoulder...

I Hate Slot Machines, But...

...damn these would be tempting:


Fortunately, these guys aren't actually in Vegas...they're apparently in online casinos only.

Still, it's nice to know that Batman and Wonder Woman endorse gambling. Look Kids--casinos!! And the big guy is in on the act, too:

Marvel also has a presence in online slot play, although how long that will last with Disney no in charge is an open question. Still, come on now--a Fantastic Four slot machine? Thor?? Damn,I would be broke quick...

And look, the Chris Sims special--a Street Fighter slot machine!!

Oddest tangent: this article on 6 DC Heroes Who Shouldn't Have Their Own Slot Machine. Which is an odd enough idea for an article, but the 6 chosen are those whom I can pretty much guarantee would never ever ever have been considered. Maybe the article is written in that odd British tongue-in-cheek, so I'm missing the snark, but the author seems to serious discuss why Matter-Eater Lad would be a poor choice for slots.

But I really have to disagree on one point--a one-armed-bandit based on Arm Fall Off Boy has some amazing possibilities...

The Woefully Understaffed Daily Planet

A day in the life of a major metropolitan news organization:

Really, Perry White? You don't have a bureau in Gotham City, or stringers? Every time Batman faces some "weird" crooks, you send your top reporter all the way to Gotham City?? Surely the crime would be over with, one way or another, before poor Clark Kent could make it there.

Of course, this begs the question of exactly where Gotham City and Metropolis are in relation to each other. DC has always been annoyingly vague about this, especially post-Crisis. Some sources, such as an Ask The Answer Man column in 1977, said they were both in New York, adjacent to NYC. (That same column also put Midway City in Michigan--yay!! we have our own heroes!!--Central City in Ohio--really?--and Star City in Connecticut--not so sure about that).

Most sources, though, put Gotham in New Jersey and Metropolis in Delaware. An issue of Amazing World Of DC Comics placed them there, as did Mayfair's RPG supplement, Atlas Of The DC Universe. It's an open question how canonical those were, though. And of course, that was pre-Crisis, and pre-Zero Hour, and pre-Infinite Crisis, and pre-Dakota, and...

Some folks on the net have made their own stabs at this project. But again, not canonical. So how about it, DC? Since you're doing a new History of The DC Universe, how about settling some of these geography questions once and for all?

Plus, I can't believe that someone hasn't done a Google Map with all of DC's fictional cities...Get on the ball, nerds!!

Perry White wastes a lot of gas money in World's Finest #105 (1959)

Manic Monday--Superman Vs. Kimbo Slice?!?

Time: late 1978. Spider-Man has just been cleared of all of the pending charges against him, so the marketeers and agents are coming out of the woodwork to sign deals with him. First up, there's a proposed TV deal:

ZING!! This is especially ironic, as the Spider-Man books of the era all have this on the cover:

Next up, a proposed comic book deal:


Oh, Spidey, how could you dis Jenette Kahn like that?

Of course, he's right...Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali didn't hit shelves until after Ali lost the title to Spinks...and Ali pretty quickly took it back, so Spidey was right to mock the concept of fighting Spinks.

Sadly, boxing is in such a state of disrepair and disrepute these days, I don't even know who is heavyweight champ right now (answer: 4 different people hold the title. I told you boxing was screwed up).

So if the project were to happen today, Superman would what--fight a wrestler? Someone from MMA?

Me, I'm old school. I'd only accept Superman vs. Clubber Lang.



Marv Wolfman, Keith Pollard and Mike Esposito stick it to the man (and woman) 30 years ago in Amazing Spider-Man #186 ( November 1978).

Snarky Questions About This Week's Books

Instead of reviews, which ain't my schtick, I've got some smart-ass questions which need answers.

A) What, the Batmobile drives from the right side? Is Bruce Wayne importing his vehicles from England??



B) I know DC heroes are frustratingly casual with their secret identities, but is this at all wise?


Seriously...taking the Titans out to a Kansas farm to meet Supergirl...isn't that just a bit risky, especially given that the Terminator's daughter and a kid who has sold his soul to the devil are members?? (Yes, I know the Supers flew a ways from the Kent spread before hooking up with the Titans, but c'mon now...)

Aside: When Identity Crisis started, I had hoped that the story was going to involve somehow having knowledge of everyone's secret ID's wiped out. I mean, how many hundreds of people know that Bruce is Batman and Clark Superman? It's not remotely credible that somewhere, somehow that information isn't going to leak out. Some sort of spell to wipe out knowledge of everyone's identities would fix that, and lead to some interesting stories about whom you'd trust with that info. But nope, instead they did a story where the Atom's ex-wife becomes a serial killer. Much better choice. Really.

C) Why is it that Search for Ray Palmer: Crime Society is infinitely better than anything they've given us in Countdown?

Perhaps because it involves absolutely zero about the search for Palmer, and virtually zero about our "Challengers of the Unknown." And it actually focused on the world where they were visiting, instead of just a bunch of cameos from natives, and no sniping between Kyle and Jason Todd. Seriously--whose idea was it to team these three together? Could there be a more annoying team (at least, more annoyingly written) in all of comics?

D) Why is it that in one page Paul Dini does more to explain and advance the "Athena's Shelters" storyline in one issue of Detective than they do in 20+ issues of Countdown, even though Paul Dini is allegedly in charge of that project? I mean seriously, is it that everyone else writing Countdown is so inferior?


Or is it that the weekly format is DESTROYING the series, because there ain't 52 weeks worth of story, so we've got to pace things very slowly to kill time until Final Crisis?

E) How come Bizarro Doomsday looks and acts exactly like regular Doomsday?


I mean, I was thrilled with the concept--Bizarro Doomsday...rad!! But shouldn't he be nice, or meek, or articulate, or in some way the opposite of regular Doomsday?!? Seriously, if they didn't tell you he was "Bizarro" Doomsday, you'd think he was just regular ol' Doomsday. This is why we have GOT to stop letting amateurs tell Bizarro stories.

F) Speaking of Richard Donner, when, exactly, was it decided that the Richard Donner Superman movies were part of the official Superman continuity?


I mean, does anybody like the Phantom Zone as the floating mirror thingy? Do we *really* have to declare that "the son of Jor-El will kneel before Zod?" What's next? Otis?

G) Why the hell isn't Blogger working properly today? Grrr.....damn you, Google!!

Pictures from, in order, JLA/Hitman #2, Supergirl #22, Countdown Presents: The Search for Ray Palmer: Crime Society #1, Detective Comics #837, Action Comics #856, and Countdown #30. Phew...

Yanking Out the Rug from beneath Us

When All Star Superman one the Eisner Award for Best Continuing Series, were they being ironic? Were there quotation marks around "Continuing?"

Granted, it's doing better than the Goddamn All Star Batman, which saw a 1-year hiatus between issues. But in nearly 2 years, A-S-S has seen a grand total of 8 issues, making it considerably less than bi-monthly. So this is "continuing??"

I kid because I love. But also, I want to compare this to the opposite of the "occasionally published" comic, the "our creators are so slow we punt" phenomenon, we has been going on a lot at DC.

Last week, much to my surprise, Superman Confidential did NOT feature the continuation of the "Origin of Kryptonite" story by Cooke and Sale. Instead, we got a tremendously abysmal mermaid story, with only the following editors' note as explanation:


No apology or explanation, just "here it is--tough." ON PAGE 4.

Now, part of it is my own damn fault, for not reading the solicits or paying attention to the cover when I picked up my pulls. And it's not like the Cooke/Sale story was the greatest thing ever, either. But still, this kind of thing is pretty damn annoying. No wonder more and more readers just wait for the trades...

And as we know, it's hardly an isolated incident:

• The One Year Later relaunch Wonder Woman was unable to complete even it's first storyline...eventually they just started the next storyline with a new team and said, "we'll show the end to you guys later." They did, finally, in the Wonder Woman Annual a couple of weeks ago. SPOILER ALERT: apparently, Diana didn't die in the "Who is Wonder Woman" story.
  
• The highly publicized Geoff Johns/Richard Donner/Adam Kubert collaboration in Action Comics was never able to finish, with the editors bailing after 4 issues with several months of fill-ins and Countdown tie-ins before starting the NEXT Johns/Donner storyline, and promising us that sometime in the future we would see the finish of the "Last Son" story. Really.

Now, I shouldn't be too harsh, because obviously DC's editors are in something of a dilemma here. Having inconceivably long gaps between issues of a continuing comic must be bad for sales, right? Not to mention for the fans, who (if they're like me) have a hell of a time remembering what happened last issue when last issue was 4 months ago. And for some of your supposedly flagship titles, like Action or Wonder Woman, you definitely want to keep publishing as continuously as possible, even if it means foisting fill-in crap on the fans.

But obviously there are different rules for different creators. If you're a "Name," say Frank Miller or Jim Lee or Grant Morrison, well, take as long as you need (Eisner Awards must help in that decision, too). If not, well, we're yanking you, and we'll just publish somewhere, sometime, when you finish.

Now I would argue that this latter approach is a real disservice to the fans. Especially those who don't bury their nose in the industry news.

• No one should be surprised, as I was, by getting product they wouldn't have wanted. Again, mea culpa, but there should have been a more prominent warning; if not on the cover, than certainly before page 4.



• Certainly something more than a mere "it will appear elsewhere" seems required. After plunking down $15 bucks to follow the "Kryptonite" story, I'm damn well owed an apology, aren't I?



• More definite plans than "printed at a later date" should be given. Obviously, given the slow work of the creators, you may not have a definite date, but tell me it's going to be in an annual, or a future issue of the regular mag, or a giant one-shot like the 1970's Cancelled Comics Cavalcade--maybe Late Book Bonanza!!

Of course, that's all fan service for after the gears have been gummed up. Perhaps a bigger question is, which is better? Interminable waits between issues, or cancelling the story and just starting the next? I know I prefer the former, even though I'm not thrilled about it. How about you?

And the other question is, how can DC avoid this (other than stop employing slow-ass folks--I kid because I love)? Perhaps schedule more bi-monthlies? Or not start publishing the story until most (all??) is already in the can? I yield to anyone who has more inside knowledge of the workings of the industry than I...