Friday Morning Freak-Out--You Had One Job, Drax!

Time to blow your mind, folks.

It's time for the first battle between Drax The Destroyer--created/resurrected specifically to defeat Thanos--and the Mad Titan himself!

SPOILER ALERT: It doesn't go well for Drax.

You had one job, Drax.

From Captain Marvel #28 (1973)

Accept This Substitute!!

Not too long ago, I opined that if DC was going to continue to piddle around in bringing back the Legion Of Super-Heroes, Marvel should give a lot more prominence to the Imperial Guard, just to tweak their publishing rivals.

Well, someone was listening.

(No, of course I don't think Jeff Lemire, or anyone at Marvel, reads this cow-town puppet show of a blog. Allow me my fleeting moment of reflected glory, however unearned.)

In this week's Thanos #3, guess who gets to fight the Mad Titan? And guess who gets to be described an awful lot like the Legion?

Hells yes.

And like the LSH...

MANY. MANY. MEMBERS.

And, yeah, just like the Legion beat Darkseid, the Imperial Guard takes out Thanos:

Granted, Thanos is ill, but still...

So go ahead, DC. Continue to drop hints and clues that go nowhere in plot lines that develop at a glacial pace. Hell, we're approaching a year into Rebirth, and DC still hasn't gotten around to actually explaining or clarifying anything yet--so at this pace any Legion revival is at least a year off, if it's not just a big tease to begin with.

In the meantime, Long Live The Imperial Guard!!

Manic Monday--Again With The Acronyms?!?

Danielle Cage, the Captain America from the future, tells of how Thanos conquered Earth in her timeline, but was eventually beaten:

Wait...what was that?

Ahh, just what we need this Monday morning--a contest?

C'mon, folks, help us out here. Come up with what "A.V.E.N.G.E.R.S." stands for!! You know you won't be able to focus on anything else today until you do!!

The story doesn't tell us what it stands for--so your guess is as good as the actual truth!!

Best entry wins eternal esteem...

From U.S.Averngers #2 (2017)

Thanos--Cosmic Schlemiel!!

You know, at one point, Thanos had possession of a Cosmic Cube, used it to make himself a god...and still lost.

Now, he has the flipping Infinity Gems and accompanying Gauntlet, and he's showing off to Drax and the Silver Surfer how powerful he is now...

Yup, all powerful, all right. No way anyone that awesomecould ever lose.

And he lost again. 

Jim Starlin (and others) have continued to bring back Thanos again and again and again, seeking out more powerful weapons...more powerful than the gems which give you absolute control over time, space, soul, mind, power and reality? Sure, why not!! And he keeps losing.

Someday they'll realize that the continually raising the stakes from infinity to infinity plus infinity to infinity to the infinity power is just the same story over and over again, and it's always going to come out the same.

Because Thanos is a putz, and even with infinite power, he always loses.

Maybe he just needs to set his sights lower. Rule Pluto for awhile, see how that goes...

From Silver Surfer #44 (1990)

Friday Morning Freak-out--Time To Make The Donuts!!

OK, OK, let's call this meeting to order...

...umm, why are we here, anyway?

And where the hell are the donuts?

Whose turn was it to bring the freakin' donuts?!?

Oh, crap, it's Thanos. Everyone just hold really still and pretend to be just a representation during Thanos' usual "look at all the powerful people I know" tour...

Phew. He's gone. Now, where the hell are the donuts?!?!

Oh, crap, it's the Molecule Man!

He's a total cosmic buzzkill!! Everyone split quick!!!

Living Tribunal--next time YOU bring the donuts!! Geez, for cosmic entities, we're so disorganized!

Friday Morning Freakout--COSMIC, Bro!!

Who needs coffee to wake up?!?

DUDE!!!!!

From Captain Marvel #31 (1974), art by Jim Starlin, inks by Dan Green and Al Milgrom.

Friday Night Fights--I'm Just A Bill Style!!

Dudes, there are time when certain creators take their pet characters and start to write fanfic. Oh, BLANK is so cool and powerful that they could beat anybody and yada yada. Eventually, the character becomes Stardust The Super Wizard, but infinitely more boring.

Of course, in doing so, they leach away almost all of the potential drama in a character, and have to have him keep getting involved in more and more esoteric and "cosmic" adventures, and pretty but yawn...

Yeah, I'm talking about Thanos. He started out as a tough guy, sure, but he needed the Cosmic Cube to be a real threat, or he had to sneak around "leeching" from Adam Warlock's Soul Gem to make a weapon. And then you give him the Infinity Gauntlet, and you'd think that you couldn't go any farther, but nope--Jim Starlin just kept building and building until Thanos had the power to literally end creation, but was just too filled with ennui to be bothered to actually do anything. (Funny, that ennui bit describes the reader, too)

So for this week's Friday Night Fights, we'll see a guy who used to run from a toe-to-toe fight with Iron Man as the guy who mops up cosmic heroes without a sweat.

Thanos is on some stupid quest for some stupid cosmic doodad that will destroy reality but replace it with something completely indistinguishable except to Thanos, who will brood about it. The Annihilators wish to stop him. Good luck with that.

Beta-Ray Bill is our featured "watch Thanos beat down someone powerful so you'll be in awe of him" victim du jour:

Yawn.

Thanos also takes out Ronan and Gladiator without breaking a sweat.

Spacebooger really hopes that, as compensation for the author-required beat-down, Beta-Ray Bill gets to appear in Thor III.

Another pretty but empty head trip is from Thanos: The Infinity Revelation (2014), written and drawn by Jim Starlin, inked by Andy Smith

Now is the time for you to go and vote for my fight! Why? Well, if you anger him, Thanos might go on another quest for power that results in absolutely nothing actually happening! So go vote!!

Bare Banner & Hirsute Hulk?

Not to get obsessed about trivial matters...but I'm about to get obessed on trivial matters (again).

Here at Slay Monstrobot, we've been focused like a laser for years on the burning issue of whether or not artists portray the Hulk with chest hair.

Just last month, we had new a new data point to discuss, as Jim Starlin made it fairly clear that he preferred a hirsute Hulk.

But today, we go to new depths heights of investigation, as we tackle the issue: if the Hulk has a hairy chest, does Bruce Banner, too?

Clearly, Jim Starlin (and/or inker Andy Smith and/or colorist Frank D'Armata) believe the answer is...

...no. Hirsute Hulk, but Bare banner.

Thank you for your attention in this crucial matter.

From Thanos Vs. Hulk #3 (2015). By the way, Thanos does not appear in a single panel in this story...he isn't even mentioned!! I guess "Hulk Vs. Blastaar" wouldn't have sold nearly as well...

Lazy Puzzle Saturday--The Infinity Gems!

OK, I need a quick, low-tech, easy tie-in to the Guardians Of The Galaxy movie.

Oh, I know--a puzzle!!

Read the rules carefully!!

Ready---go!!!

Of course, if you had the space gem, you could just get them all at once...

And if this were all it took to keep the Infinity Gems from Thanos, well, we would have been spared an awful lot of cosmic portentousness...

From Spider-Man Interactive Comic Book #2 (1996)

These All Make More Sense Than Aliens Vs. Predators

To hell with Amalgamations, alternate worlds or other stuff...these are just straight up Marvel/DC crossovers I want to see:

**Nightwing Vs. The Circus Of Crime

**Killraven meets J'onn J'onzz

**Kid Eternity Vs. Thanos (and throw in Nekron, if you must)

**The Mandrill Vs. Wonder Woman

**Batman Vs. Arcade. I can't tell you badly I want to see this one...

Hmmm, this list is mostly DC heroes vs. Marvel villains. I'm not sure what to make of that...

**Black Bolt Vs. Sonar

**Ka-Zar vs. Grodd

If you don't want to see all of these, you are dead to me...

Manic Monday--Blackest Night Roundup

Did I miss anything while I was in 1985?

Oh, yeah...

**Forgive me for being contrarian, but Blackest Night was crippled by a huge flaw: no decent villain.

I mean seriously, can you remember one line of Nekron's? One substantial thing Nekron did, besides stand around and posture?!? Can you even remember what he looked like, without having to go back to the comic to check?

He was completely ineffectual as a presence, a complete black hole in the center of the story. And yes, you can try to defend that with "he was an avatar of death, so of course he wasn't big on personality--he was more a concept than person." Well, I say piffle, and point to Thanos. He tried to wipe out all life in the universe, more than once--and he was never a cipher. He was interesting.

Which is not to suggest that Nekron should have been a Thanos clone. But Geoff Johns didn't even try to make Nekron a character--he was an attempt to impress the readership with with Johns' knowledge of continuity, and because Johns needed a villain who'd fit his...odd...cosmology. But he could have been literally anyone else in the DC Universe, because he wasn't given a scintilla of a scrap of any personality or characterization of his own. Which means, when you compare Blackest Night to Crisis I or any other "event," it has to be ranked farther down, because the quality of your adversary defines you to a large extent--and the adversary in this series had NO qualities whatsoever.

I mean, it's gotta say something when the Anti-Monitor is a more compelling character than your main villain, right? And it has to say something when Johns put FAR more effort into his Black Hand text pieces than in doing anything--anything at all, for heaven's sake--with Nekron.

**Let's whine about dangling plot threads, shall we?

Like, what happened to Sinestro? After Nekron separates him from the White Entity, we don't see him again. Shouldn't we have gotten something? He had been imprisoned by the Guardians, and scheduled to be executed...and the Yellow Corps wanted to free him, and the Red Corps wanted to rough him up themselves...so what happened? He just disappeared from the story. Did someone capture him? Did he escape, twirling his mustache? We don't have room to deal with this?!? Sinestro was a major player, and...poof, gone without even a syllable of explanation???

And what about when "Scar," the Guardian working for Nekron, captured the other Guardians (or killed them...this was very nebulous)?? Are they alive now? Free? Gone back to Oa? Chastened by the mistakes they made that helped all this happened? Arrogant and blaming others? Anything? Hello?

And at the end, Earth was being visited by all these hostile and antagonistic color corps. Did of the the Sinestro Corps just go home, even though Green Lanterns are supposed to detain them, and are authorized to kill them?? Did the Red Corps, supposedly filled with unquenchable rage, just kind of wander off without attacking anyone? Does that seem likely??

Seriously, I know everyone (including Geoff Johns, apparently) was distracted by all the big "surprise" resurrections at the end. But they sort of forgot to actually finish the story they were telling. Even if the Guardians (assuming they're alive--no one bothered to tell us) declared a general amnesty and told everyone to go home (and how likely does that seem, given their depicted attitude to the other corps??), does it seem at all likely that the Reds and Yellows would just meekly go home?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! What the hell actually happened?

**I can't believe that nobody was harping on this:

Aquaman has his hand back!!

Not that it matters to me that much, but you think more people would have mentioned it...

**Pot calling kettle black department: From the Brightest Day panel at Wondercon:

Was Blackest Night meant to be a commentary on the nature of death in comics? "Characters get killed all the time in comics," Johns said. "We wanted to do away with that tool for a while—when a character dies, they're dead. Try to give death a meaning in the DC Universe again."

This from the guy who did more than anyone else--much, much more than anyone else--to take away the meaning of death in the DC Universe in the first place. It's kind of like Bendis and Quesada complaining about how Marvel had mysteriously become less heroic under their tenure, and then expecting us to applaud the Heroic Age.

[James]Robinson: "Can I just say that there are characters that I wish came back that didn't, but Ted Kord died a true hero's death," saying that bringing him back might diminish that.

Yeah, because Barry Allen didn't die "a true hero's death." I guess he just tripped and fell down the stairs or something...or maybe he was just killed to prove that Maxwell Lord was a villain now. Now that's heroism. Anyway, bringing Barry back in no way diminished his sacrifice, right? Right? Hello?

**Why do so many of these rings involve vomiting?

Seriously, Geoff, that's kinda sick (and odd)...