4thletter!

I don’t “get” the Joker. I know he’s Batman’s greatest villain, but I don’t exactly understand why. I find Riddler infinitely more interesting, and think that he’d be a great foil for a man who honed his mind and body into the peak of human condition or whatever.

Anyway, the Joker is the epitome of my problem with Batman’s villains. He’s ca-razy, coocoogococonuts, and insane. He does what he does because he hates Batman, or loves him, depending on your interpretation. That’s basically my least favorite motivation for a villain. At least Lex Luthor believes in the inherent superiority of mankind (Luthorkind). Joker just wants to be crazy.

Luckily, this is comics and there are a number of different Jokers I can pick from. The Joker Alan Davis wrote in The Nail was singularly spiteful, and the end point of where I see the “regular” Joker going.

I really, really like Dandy Joker, as played by Cesar Romero in Batman or my good friend Emily Stackhouse of Writer’s Old Fashioned. You can actually see everything I love about Dandy Joker in her pose. It’s relaxed, fun, and most of all, funny. This Joker does things because it is hilarious. Acid in the face? Joker fish? It is all good, it is all in fun, and if a few dozen people die during it… that’s even funnier. Man falls down and sprains his ankle? Sad. Man falls down a manhole? Funny. Man falls down a manhole into a sewer full of grinning crocodiles painted like clowns and dressed like the Daughters of the American Revolution?

That’s amore.

This brings me around to Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo’s Joker. I’m not really here to review it, other than to say that I enjoyed it like I’ve enjoyed Azz’s other work, but the Joker they portrayed was really interesting to me.

Instead of being the invincible super crazy clown prince of crime, Azz’s Joker is a broken man. He refers to his years in Arkham as the time he was “gone,” and seems hesitant to say that he is crazy. Other people believe he’s crazy, but the only ones that knows the truth are the narrator of the book and Joker’s silent Gal Friday, Harley Quinn.

There’s a scene in the book that solidified my feelings about the Joker in general. The narrator is walking past the Joker’s room, and he sees Joker collapsed on the ground, hugging Harley Quinn, and just going to pieces. This is a Joker I like. He isn’t superhuman. He knows exactly what he’s doing. But, he’s trapped in a prison of his own design.

My idea about this is that the Joker got stuck in his own gimmick. At first, he’d do something crazy to get someone off his back. It was so outlandish and insane that he had to keep it up, or else people would know he was soft. And when you’ve made a living out of being the hardest man around… you can’t afford that.

So, he’s trapped. He can never escape, because escaping means it’s game over. At the same time, Batman is the only one who can save him. The Joker does all this stuff to get Batman’s attention to be put back into jail and away from a place where he has to keep up the facade.

I kind of like a pathetic Joker. It isn’t something I’d like to see always, but it’s a very human and believeable take.

As far as silent moll Harley Quinn goes… wow! I didn’t think I’d dig the take, but it worked out really, really well. In a way, she was one of the most threatening people in the book, and I think it’s because she never spoke. She’s that Stand By Your Man girl. She’s there for support, and sometimes support means machinegunning a dozen people and skinning a man alive. It’s a little scary, and the silence means we get no insight into her character. We just know she likes luxury and stands by the Joker, no matter what. I’m such a stan for Harley, though.

Like I said, nothing I want to see constantly, but a fun little peek into an alternate take. Frank Miller’s not-funny Joker in ASBAR was another one I liked, because it made super murderous Joker into something inhuman, interesting, and actually kind of scary, if more than a little overwrought.

I’d love it if Genocidal Kills a Thousand People a Day Joker retired forever. It’s by far my least favorite Joker, and the least original take on the character I can think of. I like a Joker that goes deeper than just “Waheyhey CRAZY! BY THE WAY I JUST KILLED A MILLION PEOPLE BATMAN WHATCHA GONNA DO HUH?”

At that point, Batman should just take one for the team and give Joker accidentally beat Joker until nothing’s left but a puddle of blood. That Joker isn’t doing anything but hurting Batman as a character. Someone break his neck or toss him down a deep hole or just shoot him in the face, seriously.

And let the Riddler take his place.

(what kind of world is it where i’m the guy wanting less murders in comics?)

Listen y’all, here go the moral of the story.

Bonny Blue Beetle is dead and gone. He’s joined the ranks of Firestorm (35 issues), Spider-Girl (130ish issues), Checkmate (31 issues), Manhunter (30-odd issues), Catwoman (82 issues), The Order (10 issues), Blade (12 issues), and dozens of other critically acclaimed victims of the direct market. All of these, excepting I think Catwoman, fell prey to the doom of all comics: low sales. Sales spike every once and a while, but comics generally sell less each month.

Now, the question isn’t whether or not these comics are dead. That’s obvious– they are, and they aren’t coming back. And if they do come back, they’ll just pull a Manhunter and bite it again six issues later.

No, the question is who killed Blue Beetle, and when?

Most people would say DC Comics killed it. They didn’t market it right, they didn’t give it enough of a chance, maybe they should have eaten their losses, maybe so-and-so (Blue Beetle) can join one of the worst written books in the line (Teen Titans), and so on. If only DC Comics had done their job, things would be okay!

I think the answer is a bit more obvious than that. Who killed Blue Beetle? Comic fans did.

Looking at the top 300 books for September 08 tells me one thing. There are exactly two books in the top 20 that fall into the critically acclaimed column– All-Star Batman and All-Star Superman. Those don’t count, though, since they have big names attached and are tentpole titles. I had to drop down to #41 to find another one of those books (Incredible Hercules), #61 for the next (Nova), #69 for another (Captain Britain), and it stays dire after that. Blue Beetle came in at #161, with around twelve thousand sales.

The “Blame DC” model tends to work in the “If you build it, they will come” model. However, DC built Blue Beetle. They made it easy to get into and it tied into a few of their big events (Infinite Crisis, Sinestro Corps, and Countdown). It was fun and funny. They did their job. Why didn’t it work out and go on for 800 issues? (My question is ‘why should it?’ but that’s another post entirely.)

It didn’t work because of comics fans.

Comics publishers push a certain subset of their books as being very Important and Essential and Vital to Understanding the Future of the ______ Universe. “This is the story you need to read,” they tell you. “This is the story I need to read!” you respond.

And that’s how Ultimates 3, a book that I have yet to see one person say was worth the 2.99 online or in real life, sells ten times as many comics as Blue Beetle, a book that everyone supposedly loves.

Every time a new event is announced, comic fans grumble. “Ugh, I have to read all these books to know about the Marvel Universe?” I was in the room at New York Comic-con ‘07 when World War Hulk was announced… two days after Civil War #7 shipped. The room didn’t cheer. There were no excited “WHOO!”s going on. There were some polite claps. Everyone was tired of events. “Event fatigue.”

World War Hulk came and went and was a big success. Big surprise there. Event fatigue must be a myth, because people grumble every time one is announced and then it goes on to become a sales juggernaut.

Comics companies have learned that if you say that something will change everything forever, or feature a character death, or kickstart a new and important story, comics fans will eat it up.

Blue Beetle, despite its original positioning, was not Important. It was about a kid from El Paso who was wrestling with a hero’s life. Catwoman was about a morally gray woman who wanted to look out for herself and her child while pulling off some cool heists. Spider-Girl was the last vestige of ’90s Marvel.

They are separate from the main continuity. New Krypton has no ties to Jaime Reyes down in Texas. Selina Kyle doesn’t even know Black Lanterns exist. Spider-Girl can’t factor into Secret Invasion. So, these books are unimportant. You can get the whole story by reading the Important books, why should you bother with these stories that don’t have nothing to do with nothing?

Do you see what I’m getting at here?

Companies realized that comic fans will eat up that continuity porn garbage rather than read an irrelevant story, no matter how good. People would rather see a halfway decent Batman story than a great one featuring anyone else.

New Krypton has so far resurrected a couple of Golden Age heroes (one of them over Grant Morrison’s wonderful Manhattan Guardian), killed Pa Kent, shipped two specials, re-introduced Nightwing and Flamebird (don’t ask who they are, you mean you don’t know already?) and gotten down to tying all of the Superman books together into one tightly packed ball of continuity.

Geoff Johns’s JSA has been talking about Kingdom Come for what feels like eight years already, but that’s impossible because the series hasn’t even been around for two years yet. Final Crisis is setting up some big new status quo that we don’t even know the details of yet, and Secret Invasion is getting us ready for Dark Reign, where Norman Osborn runs SHIELD and Iron Man is on the run.

Green Lantern is busy turning space cats into murderous vomit fetishists and naming villains things like Atrocitus and Kryb and Spacehitlersiegheil so as to set up Blackest Night, where a bunch of dead characters will come back and have their own space laser rings so they can shoot the people with other space laser rings of other colors until Hal Jordan gets one of each ring and becomes the White Lantern, the greatest of them all, and we will all learn a very valuable lesson about controlling our emotions, but not being afraid to feel, at the end of the day.

And all of these stories will sell 100k copies a month while other series die on the vine.

Basically, us comics fans got the comics industry we deserve. Why? Because we care about important books.

This is the industry we’ve built.

I realize that the Bat-books are Esther’s purview, but I have a very, very important question here. What is going on in this panel?

Near as I can tell, Nightwing is torturing info out of a crook by pouring honey over his head and therefore tempting rats into eating him? Is that it? I just don’t understand.

This is the most remarkable thing in the book, by the way– the other highlights are Nightwing’s computer password (”big top”) and Two Face’s plan to terrorize New York by throwing giant bags of (scarred) pennies off the Empire State Building.

It’s all played perfectly straight. Terrible.

I figure I have a reputation to keep up with, so let me get on with it.

Scipio from Absorbacon, on the day after Barack Obama was elected president, had a few things to say. I pulled an excerpt out for y’all:

Sorry to rain on anyone’s parade, and I’m sure this is going to anger a lot of readers, and I’m going to be misunderstood. But here goes….

Barack Obama’s not the country’s first black president; Barak Obama’s not black.

First, let me affirm, and strongly: I supported Obama during the primaries; I voted for him in the general election. I was, am, and, hopefully will every reason to continue to be, a strong supporter.

His election is not just a victory for an individual or a party, but for American democracy and spirit, which it has revivified. And I couldn’t be happier about it.

However….

I am not delighted by the constant characterization of Obama as the first Black president. YES, he certainly “looks black”. Yes, because of that he’s certainly had the experience of growing as a perceived black person in the last 40+ years. And, yes, that is very significant. It’s of great signficance and a great sign of hope for the future that the American people would elect such a man as its leader.

But, for one thing, he’s biracial. That, to me, is more symbolically significant, since he personifies (or could) a post-racial way of viewing the world, one that is the only real hope for social unity in our nation. That’s something that gets swept aside when he’s characterized simply as “our first black president”.

I don’t think that Scipio will be misunderstood at all. His point is clear as day. “Barack Obama is biracial, therefore he is not black.” In his own words, “Barack Obama’s not black.”

The problem is that Scipio is wrong. His opinion is wrong, his point of view is wrong, he’s uninformed whatever whatever. You know what I’m saying. There is actual factual reality and then there is Scipio, over here saying things.

My first thought after reading this post on Wednesday was a Paul Mooney skit. “White folks made up the word ‘nigger’ and don’t want me to say it.” His point is that nigger is not new, and was not created by black people. Was it adopted? Yeah, it was.

“Being black” is similar. Black people didn’t decide who got to be black and who didn’t. One drop rules aren’t from Africa. That’s something we inherited. However, we took the handoff once the ball got rolling. Got free, reclaimed it, and made it ours.

So, basically, you don’t get to decide who’s black or not. Black people got that treatment for a few centuries and now it’s over. It’s our turn. We know who’s black and who isn’t.

Being black isn’t a matter of having two black parents. It isn’t that simple. It’s not about being from the ghetto, or talking slang, or liking rap. It’s not about education. It’s not about status. There are a wide spectrum of experiences that make up the black experience.

Most of all, though, Barack is black because he says so. In his own words: “If I’m outside your building trying to hail a cab, they’re not saying ‘Oh, there’s a mixed race guy.’” He’s said over and over again that he’s black.

Who are you to say that he isn’t, in the name of making him fit your agenda? Being biracial is more symbolically significant than being black when attaining the highest public office? Really?

How about if it’s good for Barack, it’s good enough for me? And you? And anyone else who cares to question his own personal racial identity?

I’m sorry he doesn’t fit into the little box you’ve prepared for him.

So, in the spirit of not misunderstanding–

Scipio says “Barack Obama is not black.”

Barack Obama says he’s black.

No misunderstanding there at all.

Add “Chasing the Dragon” into that super-long title, too.

I was talking to Graeme (Savage Critic(s)/io9) McMillan over email a few weeks back and he mentioned how he wasn’t sure that being a fan and being nostalgiac were two different things. It ties into the first shock of experiencing certain things. To paraphrase and extrapolate on his point a bit, you end up chasing the dragon.

My response was in the negative– nostalgia is obviously something that old people have for old boring comics. It’s new comics being written like old comics because that’s the way it used to be. It’s Hal Jordan being Green Lantern again, Superman’s dad dying, and all that continuity cop crap. It’s strip-mining the past to tell stories today. I’m the kind of fan that likes the new hotness, not that old and busted crap that somebody’s grandpa wrote.

The long and short of it is that I’m a liar and Graeme McMillan is right.

I had this realization a few days ago. Despite working with video games all day, I’ll throw on a game I like and fool around for an hour or so to relax and chill out. One of the games I’ve been screwing around with for the past week or two is Spider-Man: Web of Shadows on Xbox 360.

Now, I’m a huge Spider-Man fan. He’s my favorite hero, even beating out the Flash, and I’ll generally try anything he’s in. Spider-Man 2 was an excellent Xbox title and easily the best movie tie-in, but the franchise has suffered since then. Ultimate Spider-Man had a great style, but the chase scenes were a lot like being forced to pull splinters– necessary and amazingly annoying. Spider-Man 3 was better than the movie, but still featured gameplay that was kind of like waking up to find Jabba the Hutt’s butt in your face.

So, for some reason, I was a little interested in Web of Shadows. It had Spidey, Venom, an interesting story, and more than a few cameos. Luke Cage, Black Widow, Wolverine, and Moon Knight all show up. I figured that I’d at least give the game a go, since they’re marketing it directly at me and all.

Turns out that I can only stand to play the game for 15-30 minutes at a time. It’s buggy, the characters are annoying, the missions are repetitive, and the tutorials are terrible. The lock-on system varies between being too sensitive (”Hey awesome I locked on a dude two blocks behind me, screwing up the camera and my current fight”) and terrible (”oh what’s this i can’t lock onto a guy directly in front of me?”). The auto-upgrade system doesn’t tell you what it upgrades or when, and the manual upgrades have clunky menus, making it a pain to get new skills. The new skills you just bought? Generic thugs will block them all day like they were some kind of kung fu master, making your brand new Maximum Spider attack or Ultimate Web Throw completely useless.

Playing it for more than around half an hour brings all of these screaming to the forefront of my brain, but I kept going back to the game this week. The animation on Spider-Man is great, and the web slinging is sublime. It’s the best it’s ever been, and I sometimes spend ten out of those fifteen-to-thirty minutes just swinging around the fake New York.

I was airing these grievances to a few of my FBB4l brethren and Pedro, always trying to one-up a Brothers, told me “Why are you playing a garbage game?” Every time Pedro reads a bad comic and complains about it, I ask him the same thing. It was a fair point, and one that made me rethink my position on the game.

Basically, WoS adds in one good gameplay mechanic (web swinging) and then layers on cameo after cameo in an attempt to keep me interested. These cameos lead to boring tutorials (”hey go beat up 15 of these guys”) which lead to boring missions (”all right go beat 20 of these same guys”) which lead to worse boss fights (”do this three minute sequence six times in a row while you fight wolverine”) which lead to the next cameo. It’s garbage. The game is weak and not even remotely worth the sixty bucks. I’d rather they just put the city and web slinging on Xbox Live Arcade and charge ten bucks for that.

On the other hand, post-One More Day Spider-Man is exactly what I want out of Spider-Man comics. It isn’t perfect, but it’s easily the best Spider-Man has been since Kraven’s Last Hunt, which was back when Peter and MJ first got married. Mephisto getting rid of the marriage is a sticking point, I guess, but it’s been blown out of proportion. I think that if the stories are going to be this good, then losing a marriage that had stagnated? Net gain.

Moving all of that to the side– the stories are much better than they have been before now. I wasn’t a Dan Slott fan before his run on Amazing Spider-Man. His first go at She-Hulk was okay, until he got bogged down in continuity cop and fanboyisms. But Spider-Man? For some reason, Dan Slott’s Spider-Man is a lot of fun.

That’s a theme that’s run throughout Brand New Day and onward. “Spider-Man is fun.” He’s young, he makes mistakes, and he’s down to earth. He’s clearly experienced enough to hold his own, he’s smart enough to improvise solutions to weird problems, and he enjoys his life, despite the Parker Luck. He’s comfortable in his own skin.

He’s got a strong supporting cast again, including Harry Osborn, the best character who isn’t named J Jonah Jameson. Peter’s got a best friend again, which gives him something to bounce off of, and he’s got girl trouble. We’ve got more than just Aunt May and MJ, though both of them are present in one way or another.

The art is amazing. I don’t think I have to say more. If you don’t like John Romita Jr, Marcos Martin, Chris Bachalo, Barry Kitson, or the other cats who have put pen to paper (or stylus to Wacom), something is wrong with your brain.

Finally, the pace is excellent. Shipping three times a month gives the book an entirely different feel. Story lines pop up and end within a month. Subplots percolate in the background, old school style, and there are a lot of them. Despite all of this, the book is very manageable. You won’t miss out on a reference because you missed an issue six months ago. It keeps you in the information you need.

The first few months were dedicated to creating new villains, rather than reusing old ones over and over again. This resulted in both having an interesting new series of characters for Spidey to interact with, but also making the return of the old villains in New Ways to Die a blockbuster occasion.

After the latest issue, where we get this scene:

Amazing Spider-Man is pretty much everything I want out of a Spider-Man comic. It’s a great mix of funny, fun, and action. Spider-Man looks amazing. We get expressive eye lenses and half spidey masks, a couple of personal favorites, Ben Urich, an Aunt May who isn’t just an old lady, and by the way, did I mention the amazing art?

You want to know the difference between why I pushed and played Web of Shadows long after I was tired of it (two hours, for the record) and why I love reading Amazing Spider-Man these days?

Nothing. I’m a fan of Spider-Man, and it makes me happy to see that this character who introduced me to comics is once again receiving the quality I think he deserves. It’s nostalgia. It’s being a fan. I am a fan of Spider-Man because I was once a fan of Spider-Man.

That has waxed and waned over the years. I quit JMS’s run after JRjr left, which turned out to be a great idea, since the next two years were pretty much crap. The Clone Saga helped chase me away from comics when it was getting going. For a while, I liked X-Men more than Spidey, but quickly came back around when the art got better. Save for Paul Jenkins and early JMS, the majority of Spider-Man books printed between say, 1994 and 2008 are not worth your time. There are a few exceptions– Todd Dezago and Mike Wieringo had a fun run, for example. However, you aren’t missing much if you don’t buy that Spider-Man trade collecting, say, Maximum Carnage or anything Howard Mackie ever had a hand in.

Now, though, it’s back in full force. I look forward to picking up Amazing Spider-Man three weeks out of the month. I know I’l get a treat that pleases me and the me from however long ago I started reading comics.

What’s kinda funny is that Tucker Stone wrote about this same thing on Wednesday, though I found it on Sunday morning.

The moral of the story is that Graeme McMillan and Joe Quesada are both right.

I was raised in a black, church-going, military family. My grandfather did 30 years in the Air Force, my mom did a few, my dad was in Gulf War I, I’ve had various relative enlist, and it seems like everybody I knew from high school is either married or joined some branch of the military. I guess all of this is just to say that I’m not coming at Amazing Spider-Man #574 from the position of a total neophyte or someone who doesn’t know nothing about nothing. I tend to pay attention to those things, if only because all three things are so close to my heart.

The crux of ASM #574 is that Flash Thompson was sent to Iraq, with the surprise revelation that he lost his legs rescuing a fellow soldier. The issue tells the story of Flash’s motivations during the story, even while massaging continuity (Vietnam quietly replaced with an unnamed jungle) and bringing the character up to date.

Overall, I really enjoyed the issue. Other than one hollow note (the origin of the name Flash comes from a high school date), this is probably Guggenheim’s strongest piece of writing to date. Careful attention is paid to the reality and treatment of the military in the book, including a desk-driving general and slang. These aren’t your cardboard cut-out soldiers. We don’t get the guy with the kid at home, or the crazy war-thirsty jerkoff. The little attention given to them paints them as just regular people.

It’s Flash’s story, though, and the issue is mostly told in the first person, as Flash tells his story to the general who is reviewing him for a Medal of Honor. It’s in an issue of Spider-Man because Flash is Spidey’s number one fan, and the text shows how Spider-Man has influenced Flash’s life over the years. When Flash needed a hero, his abusive father was found lacking. Instead, he looked to Spider-Man, resulting in iconic shots of Spider-Man versus the Sinister Six, or lifting a heavy thing, or fighting the Kingpin head-on, and so on, when Flash needed that extra motivation.

It isn’t clear in the text whether Spidey was on his mind during the action itself, or simply making parallels in the retelling, but both work thematically. Guggenheim is walking a fine line here, and could easily tip over into equating the exploits of Spider-Man, a fictional character, with the very real soldiers over in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Instead, I found that it was just a story about where heroism comes from.

Everyone has someone or something that they look up to. It’s that person in the back of your mind who inspires you, or whose memory you want to live up to, whether it’s What Would Jesus Do or I Wanna Be Like Mike. It’s a very human thing to look outside yourself for strength, and I think that this book does a good job of doing that. Flash’s father was abusive, so he was right out as far as heroes go. Spider-Man, however, was young, capable, and an easy target for a young guy who needed help. Flash latched on and became a huge fanboy. When he needed to push, he could look to Spidey.

I can see how this could ruffle some feathers, but I thought it was done perfectly respectfully. Nowhere is anyone but Flash’s motivations attributed to Spider-Man, and it’s always in an inspirational manner. It isn’t about how awesome Spider-Man is, but rather about how important heroes are to people, albeit illustrated on a very small scale.

This issue prompted me to put some real thought as to whether or not it was appropriate for comics, and superhero comics in particular, to address real world issues. One man’s “respectfully handled” is another man’s “complete travesty.” Why can we do World War II comics by the boatload, but more modern issues are taboo? Is it the time and distance that separates us and makes it seem less real? Is the War on Terror, or Insert Cause/Injustice/Action of Your Choice Here, somehow more real and troubling than the Big One?

I don’t think so, and I think this issue is a good reason why. If you can do your best to treat an issue respectfully, do the research (we can call it “due diligence” so we can pretend to be adults), and generally just put your best foot forward, I don’t think that any subject is taboo.

I believe that fiction is important. As much as I hate to quote a Superman comic to support a point, I have to say that one of my favorite Superman moments is in Action Comics #775, where Superman defeats the hot cynical superteam of the moment and says, “Dreams save us. Dreams lift us up and transform us.”

The fictional nature of something does not decrease its importance any more than relating something fictional to something real insults the real thing. Sometimes you have to push toward that fictional ideal to get the job done. Sometimes it’s your father, sometimes it’s Spider-Man. There is little difference between the two, and both serve different purposes for different people. Sometimes, dreams are just what you need.

I’ve personally known people who were big on the Punisher, Sgt Rock, or (X character) who spent some time in Iraq. We didn’t spend a lot, or really any, time talking about how the adventures of Clint Barton helped them in the field, but people generally have pet heroes, or tattoos of heroes, for specific reasons. One guy in Iraq using Spider-Man as inspiration? I can buy that.

I was thinking about a few things this weekend, and I realized that I have a superhero Type.

I’m partial to speedsters. I like all the Flashes, though Wally is the best, and I’m cool with Quicksilver. I even like Doc Rocket over in Youngblood and Velocity in Cyberforce.

There’s just something about someone whose power is to run fast that appeals to me. I like running, though I don’t do it often enough, but I don’t think it’s a “I wish I could do that!” sort of thing. I think it’s more that speedsters tend to have cool visual appearances. Of course, pretty much all of them have lightning bolts or red in their design somewheres, but the running always looks graet. Some get afterimages, some get blurs, and the best appear in single panel more than once and carry on conversations that way. The best of the best have smoking shoes.

I was going to say that my other Type was archery-based characters, but that isn’t true at all. I actively dislike Green Arrow, Red Arrow is the dumbest, and Speedy is annoying and terrible. Connor Hawke is interesting, though kind of a cipher. No, the Type I like are marksmen.

Hawkeye, Shaft (from Youngblood), Deadshot, Bullseye, and I’m sure there are others. They’re awesome. Anything in their hands is a deadly weapon, and trick shots are the order of the day. I like seeing the creativity you have to use when writing these guys. It isn’t enough to go “Oh, boxing glove arrow!” nowadays. Everyone’s seen that. What’s next?

I wasn’t a Hawkeye fan until recently. Fabian Nicieza wrote a pretty good (and short-lived) series a few years back, and Bendis started using him in his Avengers titles. Somewhere along the line, though, I must’ve become a fan, because this scene from SI #7 got a rise out of me:

What’s your superhero type? Acrobatic wisecrackers? Brooding vigilantes?

4thletter! is: David, Gavin, and Esther. 4l was David, Gavin, and Hoatzin, and David, Gavin, and Thomas before that.

Gavin is a Marvel. He likes weird tie-in comics, Venom, and wrestling. Esther is a DC, and likes the various Batgirls, Batman, and sometimes books that do not have Batman in them, but that’s just because he’s in hiding before he picks the perfect time to make his appearance. David likes a mix of both, though he was raised a Marvel. He also talks about black people all the time.

We are 4l and we are awesome.

You can get us on RSS (with a separate feed for our comments) or via livejournal syndication. We have an archives page, which has no context whatsoever beyond dates, post titles, and comments. If that’s too much for you, Gavin stated doing a table of contents that he updates every few months with notable posts.

We take guest pieces, too. Drop an email to 4thletter@gmail to get it started.

The links table is horribly out of date. I will one day update it.

I have this thing where I have to see why I do things. Why did I have that reaction, what does that mean about me, and so on. I got completely pissed off at blogging about race last week and decided to quit doing it. Of course, this week, a couple interesting books from a race perspective were released, but whatever.

I started thinking about why I had such an adverse reaction, what brought it on, and why I got so sick of it all of a sudden. I’m crazy busy at work and not sleeping at home, so I’m sure that that doesn’t help. I was thinking about it while I was walking to get lunch and actually had Lupe Fiasco’s “Gold Watch” off Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool [amazon link] snap it into focus for me. It’s the title of this post, and there really isn’t that much context to go with it. It’s just a hot line.

I think the straw that broke the camel’s back (”Why did one straw break the camel’s back? Here’s the secret: the million other straws underneath it”) was this post by Angry Black Woman. It’s about a top 25 list of black superheroes that I saw and ignored back in June. It’s a crap list that, to be honest, is only worth talking about as something terrible.

Exactly ten of the characters deserve to be on the list, thogh in different positions, and doggone Meteor Man is on the list ahead of Black Panther. It’s a joke. It’s a sub-Maxim Top XX list, which is there pretty much for hits. The list sucks. The choices suck. The justifications for the choices suck.

Read the rest of this entry �

Thanks to my PCS cohort Jon Haehnle for the link.

I’m pretty much done talking about race in comics forever for the foreseeable future, and I’m kind of mad at comics. I made the mistake of catching up on a lot of books I don’t usually read (Secret Six, JSA, Action Comics, Superman) and I realized that I’d tricked myself into thinking that quality as a whole was on the rise. Untrue. DC publishes an astonishing amount of mediocre books. Marvel has a slightly better track record, even though Uncanny X-Men is ugly and Astonishing X-Men is annoying.

I don’t like reading mediocre books, and I’m starting to think that Saul Williams was right when he said, “Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that which as been given for you to understand. The current standard is the equivalent of an adolescent restricted to the diet of an infant.”

I don’t like the idea of reading the literary equivalent of applesauce and crushed pears just to find something to blog about. I’d rather be quiet and keep listening to this Anthony Hamilton album (Comin’ Where I’m From) and Nas’s latest album over and over again. I’d rather spend another couple hours on Nike iD designing some sneakers. I’d rather read Charlie Huston’s new novel, or download a free PDF of Caught Stealing, the first novel in the Hank Thompson series. Maybe I could buy these for my birthday instead.

If I had to choose between blogging about Nightwing/Dini’s ‘Tec/Batgirl’s latest issue/that new issue of Mighty Avengers where Captain Marvel cries for a million pages/Superman screaming about how his dog is a good dog worship him WORSHIP HIM HU-MANS or making a flow chart/liveblog about yet another 100 Bullets read through, I’d choose the flow chart. It’d be interesting and about something good, rather than something not worth reading.

I’ll take anything but mediocre comics. In a way, they’re worse than bad comics. Mediocre books at least have some kind of potential or pedigree or talent that hints at a better result than what we got. They’re the very definition of wasted potential. No one expected anything great from Ultimates 3. Geoff Johns on Action Comics, though? I thought I was going to get more than the millionth Superman vs Brainiac fight, with the added bonus of the third death of Jon Kent in the past fifteen years.

Anyway, I need new things to talk about. All that other stuff is old and busted. If I have to keep talking about crap, I’m going to burn out.