Even Anarchists Care About Personal Hygiene

Captain America's occasional partner, Dennis Dunphy the Demolition Man, sacrificed himself in a plane crash in the Arctic, and presumed dead.

But this is Marvel, of course, so he was actually frozen in suspended animation in the ice. He's rescued by a tribe of Eskimos, but he's in pretty rough shape, has no memory, and can't talk.

And of course, in this condition he stumble upon Flag-Smasher and an ULTIMATUM base:

Oh, c'mon, dude, D-Man's been through a rough patch. let's not be too critical...

OK, OK, finicky anarchists are really fussy about body odor. But when Falcon rescues him:

Now, for some reason, Marvel writers found this very amusing, and decided to make poor personal grooming the defining characteristic of D-Man's life. When the Avengers return from the "Reborn" universe...

Yes, Namor, the X-Men have never been choosy...they took you in, jerk.

But it's just arrogant putzes Namor and Moondragon who are so snooty:

Oh, come on, guys...he been living with and protecting an underground homeless group. Can't one of you cut him a little slack? And Vision and Machine Man...can you even smell anything in the first place? Sheesh...

And then there's Hercules:


Oh, please, Son Of Zeus. You come from a time well before deodorant and daily bathing and such. You're telling me things didn't get pretty stinky on the Argo, with 80-odd manly men stuffed into one ship on a long voyage?

(And can you lay it on any thicker, Kurt Busiek? How many stink jokes did we need in one issue, anyway?)

Anyway, Marvel writers finally got over their fascination with D-Man's hygiene. So now he's just a mentally unstable lummox who arbitrarily joined the Revengers and has been brainwashed into being the murderer Scourge.

Maybe the stink jokes weren't so bad after all...

From Captain America #400 (1992) and Avengers #1 (1998)

Friday Night Fights--Greek God's Revenge Style!!

We'll give you the moral of today's Friday Night Fight up front: don't get a Greek God pissed at you.

You see, back in the halcyon days of the Stern/Buscema/Palmer Avengers, Erik Josten (Powerman/Smuggler/Goliath/Atlas) and his fellow Masters of Evil slipped Hercules a rufie and beat him into a coma.

So when Herc got wind of the fact that Josten had been posing as a hero in the Thunderbolts, well, it was time for as little payback:

As Herc fells the rest of Thunderbolts who leap to Atlas' defense...











BAM!!!! Hercules don't do no redemption!!!!

Spacebooger has pecs as good as Hercules, he just doesn't like to show off...

Kurt Busiek, Mark Bagley and Scott Hanna show that it ain't so easy trying to be a good guy in Thunderbolts #22 (1999)

Now is the time for you to go and vote, and specifically vote for me. Why me? Well, as you've just seen, Hercules doesn't accept apologies...so you gonna tell him you're sorry you didn't vote for me? Thought not...

What If...Civil War Had Been Written By Folks Who Understood The Characters?

In Iron Man/Captain America '98, Kurt Busiek and Roger Stern (plot) and Mark Waid (script) set up the following situation:

After thwarting a plot by Mentallo to take over every mind on Earth by using his telepathy and the "World Wide Web" (hey, it was 1998), Tony Stark takes advantage of the failed plot to...

So, he erases knowledge of his secret ID from every mind on Earth.

Captain America, however, is not pleased:



Well, they bicker back and forth throughout the entire annual about freedom and civil rights and such, while battling A.I.M. and M.O.D.O.K., until Cap is forced to make a similar decision vis-a-vis giving a group their freedom of choice or letting them die (long story):


So, tough decisions are made, bad guys are thwarted. And the result of Iron Man and Cap's contentious political debate over rights and freedom is a 7-issue miniseries with long battles, heroes murdering other heroes, and heroes acting out of character, right?

Uh...no:





5 panels?? They put their differences aside, decided they were "on the same side," shook hands--in just 5 panels?!? No protracted event?? No "this changes everything" series? No 11-issue companion series to show how this affected everyone else in the Marvel Universe?? No decompression, no attempt to milk us for as much money as possible?

Geez, Busiek, Stern and Waid...no wonder you're not "Marvel Architects."

Bold Fashion Choices--Wonder Man Can't Win!!

Long-time readers know I love to give props to a certain self-awareness in my comic book stories.

So now that Wonder Man is back on the scene (as Bendis has finally remembered that plot thread he's been dangling for over 2 years now) and giving up his list of the Top 5 Wost Things The Avengers Have Ever Done (because Bendis will go to any lengths to show us static images of comic characters standing around lecturing), let's revisit Wonder Man Annual #1 (1992).

In one of the back-up features, Kurt Busiek gives us Wonder Man dreaming an awards ceremony in which he names his "Ten Worst Villains." (I know, I was as surprised as you--Wonder Man has 10 villains? But 6 of them are peeps he fought as an Avenger...).

And on the list:


Nice bit of self-criticism there.

Of course, it should be noted that the costume Simon Williams was wearing at the time was not much better:

Oh, the 1990s. And then there was the more leisurely version he wore on the cover of this Annual:

I'm not sure why they've never been able to come up with a decent costume for Wonder Man (hint, costume designers--lose the attachment to the "W"!). I'm sure it has something to do with the fact that no one seems able to get a good handle on the character and what he should be about...

Still, this issue did come up with one alternative that I'm sure a number of his fans can get behind:

That one was for the ladies!!

Manic Monday--Exploring The Cosmos

As far as I'm concerned, every single Doctor Strange story should include this scene:

Stephen Strange (sort of) trips the light fantastik in Defenders: From The Marvel Vault #1 by Kurt Busiek, from a plot by Fabian Nicieza (sort of) and Mark Bagley...oh, it's complicated, go read it and text piece that explains it.

Kontinuity Kop--Action Comics Annual #11

All right, all right, what exactly is going on here? Just another egregious case of both a continuity conundrum, and another egregious example of DC letting some writers do whatever they want, no matter what it does to the work of others.

Let's take a quick look at Action Comics Annual #11. Now, it's bad enough--embarrassing enough--that this resolution to the "Last Son" story is appearing MORE THAN ONE YEAR after the previous chapter. Hell, it makes All-Star Superman look like it's published in a timely manner. After much fanfare and hoopla over Richard Donner co-writing this arc, it's gotta suck to have to bail on the story and continue it at some (much, much, much) later date.

But the funny thing is, the rest of the Superman stable was publishing during this delay, and guess what? It doesn't match up at all with how Johns and Donner conclude the arc.

At the end of this story, Lor-Zod (aka Chris Kent), the Kryptonian tyke born in the Phantom Zone and sort of adopted by Lois and Clark, sacrifices himself by going back into the Phantom Zone to seal the breach that is keeping it open. This is clearly a big deal, because Superman gets all broody about it.




Afterwards, Mon-El cannot find any trace of Chris...he's somewhere deep in the Zone, apparently. And in the little character capsules bit in the back of the issue, Johns clearly tells us that Chris is still in the Zone, his whereabouts "remain a mystery."


WAIT A MINUTE!!!During Kurt Busiek's run, haven't we seen many, MANY stories with Chris Kent, set AFTER the defeat of the Phantom Zone invasion? You know, Kal-El gave him a red sun watch, they enrolled him in school, he helped defeat the Daxamites in Busiek's last issue...remember?

Now, there's no way you can suggest that everything we saw in Superman somehow took place between the events portrayed in Action...what, they took a break from saving Metropolis to buy Chris clothes and put him in school?? Even if you were to, somehow, claim that Busiek's Superman stories all took place DURING Last Son, there's no gap, no place where they could have!! And if you want to argue that Chris somehow subsequently escaped the Zone, well, where's that story?? Where's a single line of dialogue, "We're so glad you escaped the Zone?" We never saw it. Busiek apparently wrote his stories from the assumption that Chris would be permanently around, not lost in the Phantom Zone.

It's almost as if nobody at Superman knew how the story in Action was going to end. Which is pretty funny, because both mags had the same editor, Matt Idelson. So which is it, Matt--did you let Busiek write all those stories with Chris Kent when you knew they couldn't happen? Or did you somehow not know that Johns was going to leave Chris lost in the Phantom Zone? Would it be too much to suggest that either way, you resign immediately due to gross incompetence?

No, the sad fact is, right now Geoff Johns is the horse pulling the DC Universe cart, and whatever he says, goes. He IS DC continuity right now, no matter what anybody else writes. What he wants to happen for the Legion is what's going to happen, period, and now it looks like Jim Shooter is being booted off in favor of Johns. Johns has his pet theories about the "emotional spectrum" in Green Lantern, and now much of DC ret-conned to reflect that. He wanted the pre-Crisis Superman back, so he waves his wand and huzzah--with no notice or explanation young Clark Kent hung with the Legion, all colors of Kryptonite are back in play, etc. And if he wants to banish certain characters to the Phantom Zone, well, why the hell should he bother to inform Kurt Busiek, anyway?

Remember...DC doesn't have continuity, it has wikinuity. And Geoff Johns is the one with the eraser.

BONUS KONTINUITY KOP PREDICTION:
Hmmm...Young Chris Kent is trapped in the Phantom Zone for the foreseeable future. Geoff Johns is writing the Legion of 3 Worlds, and probably taking over the regular Legion title. Hmmm, do I smell a way to introduce a NEW Superboy to the Legion, one who is not Clark Kent and thus maybe not subject to the strictures of current legal proceedings?? You read it here first...