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To balance my feelings of disgruntlement, I'm going to share something that makes me ever so happy:

DC is bringing back Mike Grell's kick-ass series The Warlord in April. Back in the day, this centre of the Earth sword and sorcery epic was one of the company's top sellers. I remember reading my cousin's back issues and finding Travis Morgan to be the most badass character in comics who wasn't a superhero. Apparently there are plans to give the previous run a slick trade paperback treatment, though to be honest I'd take a black and white Showcase-style phonebook of the classic series without a smidge of protest.


I mean seriously, look at this:
And this:




If babes, brawn, and awesome winged helmets aren't your bag you could always try something else. Crochet maybe. For me though, this is epic.


Epic metal.

Stac

Ps. Comic Book Resources has a great interview with Grell (from which I. . .uh. .. appropriated these awesome covers) to be found here. Check it out, it's quite good.

Wherein one tries not to fly off the handle.

Okay, I'm doing my very, very best to be good here. I've long maintained that while we each have a right to an opinion, it should be an informed one. So I am most assuredly not going to take what I've read about and seen in regards to the seventh and last issue of Final Crisis and turn it into an angry, angry rant.

I've decided I'm going to need to take a look at this in depth and objectively, so this weekend I'll be purchasing a copy from my friendly neighborhood comicbook store. I will give Grant Morrison the benefit of the doubt and take a look at the denoument of this year's biggest epic without any expectations, and see if the whole thing holds water. After all, Superman Beyond did charm me, so I shouldn't take what I've seen on scans_daily as the sum total of the entire book.

But oh, has issue #6 and what I've seen thus far irk me. But I'm being good. Oh so good.

For now.

Stac

Nerd Rage.

For some time now, I've been told I have 'rage issues' when it comes to the various passions roiling about in my psyche. It was as I was making a reply to a blog I frequent that I came across what might be the flashpoint of my frequent nerd rage episodes. For your amusement, I submit for the approval of the forum Superman #22, the only comicbook I've ever done violence to.

For those who haven't read this book, it was the apex of the 'Pocket Universe Saga' that ran in the Superman titles a few years back. The Crisis on Infinite Earths had fixed DC continuity forever(ahem), and the DCU settled back into a universe where Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman debuted in and around 1986. Seems simple enough, right?

Well, as it turns out, not exactly. Y'see, one of the titles to continue its storylines in the wake of the crisis was a book near and dear to fanboy hearts: The Legion of Super-Heroes. Amongst their members there was a young Clark Kent aka Superboy, one of the Legion's earliest recruits and their moral bedrock and inspiration. But in the wake of the Crisis it was decreed that Superman's powers developed over a period of years and that he never was Superboy. Also, he was the sole survivor of Krypton, so adios Supergirl, Krypto the super-dog, Beppo the super-monkey, and the remaining roster of the Legion of Super-Pets.

A moment of silence for the Legion of Super-Pets. Thank you.

So you see the paradox. How can Superman have just burst onto the scene if meanwhile, 1000 years in the future, Superboy is having adventures and battling cosmic evil alongside friends and colleagues and an entire federation of worlds that's known of him for centuries as a legend and for years as an actual, factual hero? Fire up the Deus Ex Machina of course!

It turns out 'Superboy' was part of an elaborate scheme conjured up by a long time Legion villain, the Time Trapper. The Trapper used the eldritch cosmic energies created by the crisis to create a pocket universe wherein there was a planet Earth and a Krypton. This Earth was something of an idealized vision of the past (read any of the Superboy stories from the '50s and you'll have a rough idea of what we're dealing with). Every time the Legion got in the time bubble to visit their hero Superboy, they were being diverted to this alternate past. The Superboy of their legends, was just that, a legend that had sprung up around the real Superman. The Trapper then held the destruction of the pocket universe over Superboy's head to make him betray the Legion. Through some timely intervention by the 'real' Superman, Superboy came to his senses and freed his friends, fighting alongside them and having one last moment of heroism that saved not only his universe but 31st century Earth, but at the cost of his life.

Confused yet? Strap in, it gets weirder.

The pocket universe was a recreation of the Earth of the Silver Age, and as such it had much of the same tropes. In that universe there was a Krypto, a Krypton. . .and a Phantom Zone. Within the Zone were housed some of the worst criminals imaginable('KNEEL BEFORE ZOD!'), and after duping a well-intentioned version of Lex Luthor into freeing them they ran amuck on the pocket Earth, ultimately killing all life on the planet despite Lex's creation of a 'protomatter' Supergirl and recruiting Superman to help them. In the end, only Superman and the de-powered Kryptonian criminals (thanks to some handy gold kryptonite. Superman post-Crisis only had green to concern him with, whereas the pocket universe had the multicolored spectrum, the gold variant being able to strip a kryptonian of their powers permanently. I told you it got weirder). They rant and rave, swearing they'll find a way to get their powers back and then find their way to Superman's universe, where they'll happily slaughter every living thing there as well.

After some soul-searching, Superman decides to act as that world's judge, jury, and executioner, exposing the criminals to green kryptonite and having them die in slow, painful agony.

The end.

Now, a little about me. I love Superman. He is my favorite superhero character, the archetype of the entire genre, the originator and the innovator. He's a character whose adventures I've thrilled to, whose moral example served as a template for my personal development and a character I've always thought was boss since I first leaned to read via the Fisher Price read-along book SUPERMAN: FROM KRYPTON TO METROPOLIS. The Richard Donner films, the Bruce Timm animated series, you name it, I love it. And then John Byrne had Superman kill.

For the first time, I pulled away from the character of Superman, someone I'd known all my life, and looked upon him as a stranger. It was like trying to have a robot on classic Star Trek explain love. Smoke was damn near pouring out of my ears as I grappled with it.

Superman's a good guy. Good guys don't kill.
But Superman just killed those guys.
But Superman's a good guy.
But he killed them.
But he's Superman.
ILLOGICAL! ILLOGICAL! MUST DESTROY POUGHKEEPSIE! EX-TAH-MIN-ATE!!

I'd finished the book while waiting for my Dad at his office. I calmly and reasonably walked to the office paper shredder and deposited the offending article. And I did what anyone does in the face of such a paradox; I ignored it for the sake of my continued sanity. Thankfully the powers that be at DC followed suit and it's since been lost in the reboot/retcon shuffle.

I've developed a bit of a sense of humor about it in the years since, but at the time I was livid pissed. Yes, an argument can be made that sometimes there are some truly evil scumbags that need to be dealt with in the most severe manner possible, but if I want that kind of catharsis I'll read The Authority. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west, the sky is blue, and Superman doesn't kill. End of story.

Stac

WE'RE BACK!

New content shortly. Sorry for the wait folks!

Stac

The Canadian Defender will return. . .

. . .soonish. I'm moving at the moment so please bear with me. Content to come, promise.

No more.

Two Women Assaulted at Ontario School

I'm not a polticial guy. By and large my idea of the Big Issues tend to revolve around whether who would win in a fight between Superman and Captain Marvel. But the above has shaken me out of my complacency and I'd be remiss if I didn't at least talk about how this news made me feel. Much of this will doubtless sound monumentally naive and simple, but I want to get this out of my system so in the future I can just point to it for my opinion on the subject.

I'm a Canadian, and a proud one at that. I love my country and truly think we've got the best of all possible worlds in this great land. I've always had this image of Canada as having its problems to be sure, but still being a land of decent people where we embraced the diverse and built upon that selfsame diversity for a better tomorrow. Nations, spiritual beliefs, gender, sexuality. . .none of that mattered in the Canada of my idealized vision. Needless to say reading of the above assault, hearing of a similar attack in British Columbia has done a lot to--if not shatter--than at least to smudge that rose-colored view a great deal.

I'm not gay. I say that not as a defense mechanism, merely as a statement of truth. I can't imagine what it must be like to live in a world where I have to face intolerance for being who I am and wanting to be with the people I care deeply for. With the passing of Proposition 8 in the United States, the simple act of recognizing a same-sex couple legally as a loving pair joined in matrimony has been rejected. And most of all, I can't concieve of a world where something as simple as picking your kid up from school could become the basis of a savage, unreasoning attack for no other reason than one of these women may have spoken to the child of this creature that poses as a human being.

Why? Seriously, why is this such a big deal? What is it that's so wrong about people being with people that they love? It makes no sense. They're not trying to force their beliefs on anyone, they're not trying to make you gay. No. All they were doing was living their lives, and for that unforgivable sin of daring to dream of a world where they might actually have a chance at life, libery, and the pursuit of happiness some cowardly, insecure fucktard took it upon himself to act as what he doubtless percieved to be the righteous fist of the majority. How dare anyone think that they could spend an afternoon picking up their kids with the woman they love, maybe heading to Dairy Queen to treat them for good grades on a quiz? Where do they get off just living their lives like they're--y'know--normal human beings? Don't they know they're different? Don't they know that's the way it is? Well I'll sure show them right?

And the worst thing, the absolute worst thing that just makes my molars grind is that this thing, sitting there waiting to be arrested acted blase about the whole thing, impatient to be getting home. Never mind that he'd left these women broken and bleeding. Never mind that he'd traumatized their kids, his kids, and the kids of this school. He had to get home in time to watch the latest tractor pull or run the risk of missing So You Think You Can Dance. To top it all, the police released this walking pustulence. He gets to go home after the mild inconvenience of being detained for a few hours while these women are in the hospital.

It boggles the mind, but more than that it shames me and shakes me out of my complacency all at once. The Gay and Lesbian community are a part of everyday living now. They deserve no less than the same fair shake that we all recieve in turn. They also deserve the same defense that anyone who is attacked and made the victim should be granted, and the offender should be charged and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. We need to send a message that this kind of behavior is the antiquated relic of a previous century and will no longer be tolerated. Who we choose to love should have no bearing on who we are in society. It's just that simple. No more.


Stac

My vote for Captain America.

The more I hear about the Captain America movie the more relieved I am. Joe Johnston directed one of the all-time best comic-to-film adaptations with 1991's The Rocketeer, and I thought his stuff on Hidalgo was just rock-'em, sock-'em adventure fun. I breathe a sigh of relief at the news the film is in his capable hands.

Speaking of the flick, y'know it never occurred to me until just now but Nathan Fillion would make an excellent Steve Rogers. They might have to digitally weaken him a bit for the pre-Erskine treatment, but he could really pull off the whole super-soldier look with six months physical training.

And come on, the irony of a Canadian playing the Sentinel of Liberty? Delicious.

Stac