Mean-spirited.

I have a particularly awesome group of friends whose tastes run the gamut of the pop-culture spectrum. From anime to comics to film to literature, I've been blessed these last few years to know some especially sharp people who I can hang out with, laugh with, and share some good times. One of our rituals is to get together every other week and hang out. There's usually some good food, some pleasant conversation, and then we usually pop in a DVD and kick back to watch some quality entertainment, with perhaps the odd smart remark from the peanut gallery thrown in for seasoning. This week's choice however did not so much raise conversation as it sparked a mass exodus from the entertainment centre and into the living room. In the end, as with the Contest of Immortals there could be only one who would not so much view the film in question as endure it, clinging to sanity with grit teeth and cracking nails as wave after wave of sheer and utter crap washed over the poor, sodden fool.

In other words I saw The Spirit last night. Or rather, I didn't see the Spirit last night. Confused? Stay with me and I'll try to explain.

Before I go any further I want to preface this review with a little caveat; I am legitimately not trying to be a dick here. This is not me as a lone fanboy bitching and moaning about a film. No fools were we either; we knew this film was going to be less than stellar at best. We were at least hoping to be entertained in the way some bad movies can provide. Our hopes were to be dashed quite decisively.

When the film started there were 9 people in the room, then eight. . . seven. . .six. . .until only I remained. So out of about eight to ten people, only one managed to make it from opening credits to closing. Now I know tastes are subjective, but that's at least 4 more than the reccomended peer group of dentists you get in your average gum commercial. Clearly, something was horribly, horribly wrong with the film. Understand that I am not being snide for its own sake, merely that I wish to understand the truth inside the lie and dissect the reasoning behind such an epic dud of a movie.

Let's start with what I actually enjoyed about the film (it'll be brief, trust me):

1) The visual aesthetic: While it owed a bit too much to Sin City, I liked how Central City appeared in the film as a mixture of 1940s/50s architecture and stylings. Mind you, that gets to be a bit jarring as the film goes on(more on that later) but I can't say that the film didn't at least look impressive. Say what you will of Frank Miller and much can be said, but the man does have a good eye for detail and knows how to position what he wants in a shot to make it look as comicbook as possible. I can see what he was shooting for here and I can appreciate it.

2) Gabriel Macht as The Spirit/Denny Colt: He looked the part and it was clear to me that he was giving it his all in the film, doing his best to embody the character as Miller had written him. The problem of course is not so much with Macht's performance as with the material he's given and the Wolverine-style growl he has to grind it out with. The voiceover narration was jarring, the one-liners painfully bad, but he was seriously making an effort, which you have to admit is something. It's clear from other performances that they were just plain bad (Johansen) or had completely lost their effin' minds or couldn't give a damn (Jackson). I mean, he tried to make 'I'm gonna kill you all kinds'a dead' sound cool. He really, truly did. He'll have a breakaway action role, I don't doubt it for a second. Its just that this wasn't it.

That's all that's good in this film. Which brings us, of course, to the wrong in this movie. And where else can we begin but at the very top:

1) Frank Miller: Frank, Frank, Frank. I love ya, ya knucklehead, I truly do, but for the love of all things good and holy just stick to your own comics. You want to do 300 and Sin City? Kool and the Gang man. Have a blast, tear it up, do your thing. But let's you and I be honest with each other as we stand here at the Reichenbach Falls: you can't really write anything else can you? Maybe once upon a time you could vary the tone of your work, make a good superhero story or a tale outside of your normal 'guns/girls/psycho freaks/ultraviolence' schtick. But somewhere between Sin City and Dark Knight Strikes Again a switch was thrown in your head and that capacity just went dark. You write noir stories, you've got a serious man-crush on writers like Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, and Mickey Spillane. Particularly Spillane. I've read his writing, and I've read yours, and dear Lord it makes Geoff Johns' man-crush on Hal Jordan look positively subdued(sorry Geoff but c'mon, we all see it). I get it. You like stories about guys. Tough guys. Men of strength who walk alone and wrest the world from the weak and the wretched. You like stories about women. Tough women. No, scratch that. Tough dames Frank. Dames who don't take crap from anyone and use any means at their disposal to get what they want, stepping over everyone in their path and using them and driving them mad with a throaty, earthy sexuality that no man can possess. . .except of course the Tough Guy, who grabs her by the back of the head and kisses her hard, taking her because that's how they should be taken after all. And let's not forget the giggling deviants, the freaks, the scum that need to be taken out of the gene pool, preferrably in a hail of bullets or in manner so graphic and permanent that the next batch to come down the pike should be wettin' themselves if they even think about tossing a crumpled up candybar wrapper on the curb, let alone messing with the Tough Guy's dame, his turf, or his money. It's an old story, a good story, one that I don't mind enjoying from time to time. Just admit unto me that it's the only story you're capable of telling and we can get on with our lives. Honesty Frank. The best damn policy there is.

2) Sin-Spirit: With that information in mind, you can see where I might have a problem with the film. The Spirit of Will Eisner's comics is a heroic everyman, a guy who surivives death by pure chance, and now legally dead he can work outside the system as the police department's secret weapon. That was gotten right. The problem is that while Eisner used the Spirit to tell tales that ran the gamut (from straight up action to film noir to comedy and all points in between) Miller can't do that. He's got the one mode, and as such The Spirit has to bend to meet Miller's style. What results is pretty much what you'd expect from the style I outlined in the above. Everyone is tough. Everyone speaks in a growl or declarative barks, with the odd sultry croon thrown in from the ladies. The action is servicable, but by the time the Octopus (we're getting to it, trust me) whips out twin auto-BFGs and starts firing crazily into the sky at a fleet of police assault helicopters, it's just sensory overload at that point. I mean, when you've seen the hero have a toilet smashed down over his hips and the villain get a kitchen sink to the face, any and all attempts to maintain suspension of disebelief are the fevered dream of a madman. While the Spirit's story structure did lend itself to some dark and noir-themed stories that's not all it could have been, and anything that was done in this film just comes off as a rehash of Sin City, which is far from fair to Eisner's legacy as a creator.

3) Period. Or rather, the lack thereof: The Spirit's heyday was in the 1940s-50s. The film has a very '50s look to it, but the first shot we get is of Denny Colt on a cell phone. We later have a flashback to Denny and the femme fatale Sand Seref in younger days with a '52 Packard driving by on the street and Denny reading EC Comics crime stories. Then when Denny's uncle is murdered a television news team with a very modern shoulder camera get in their faces. The hell? It's either period or it's contemporary, you can't mix and match without confusing the audience and making the work of suspending that monumental disbelief that much more of a herculean task.

4) Louis Lombardi: He plays the various cloned goons created by the Octopus names Porthos, Nervos, Pathos, Adios, and Amigos (And we see those two near the end? Oh verrrrrry clever). Every time I heard his voice or saw that vacant, smiling face of his I wanted to throw something at the screen. That I did not and thus spared my good friend's high definition television is a testament to sheer willpower. What the hell was this about? I freely admit I'm not the most devout reader of Eisner's spirit stories, but I thought the Octopus (he's coming) was a crime boss, not a mad scientist. And Gods, that dialogue, that voice, that grin, it makes my teeth grind just thinking about it.

'We was watchin''

Christ I wish I hadn't. . .

5) The women: Frank Miller cannot write women. He can't. He physically can not do it. I'm sorry. Each woman in this film is either pining after him hopelessly (Paulson, Katic), attracted to him in incredibly kinked-up ways (Vega), or is out to kill him whilst being as goddamned weird as possible (Johansen). They're either golddiggers, weak, crazy, or in it for kicks. They're not actual characters so much as lovely visages and hot bodies the Spirit can work his mojo on.

And last, but far from least, we come to:

6) The Octopus: Some of my friends have opined that they're sick of Sam Jackson in motion pictures. He's become a contemporary of Kevin Bacon in terms of the sheer bulk of motion pictures he's been in or at least affiliated with in the last ten to fifteen years. For the longest time I maintained that while,yes, he may be a little overexposed there was never any such thing as either A) too much of anything good or B) too much Sam Jackson.

I stand corrected.

This performance is so bad, so awful, so utterly wretched that it has to be intentional. It simply has to be. There's no way he intended it to be anything else. He doesn't so much chew the scenery as devour it en masse, not so much speak the dialogue as sneer it. The Octopus of Jackson's portrayal is a complete fruit loop, a mad scientist that would make even Thaddeus Boddog Sivana go 'Seriously, relax already.' He's no spider in the center of a web, no cunning mastermind whose very neame evokes terror in the hearts of the law-abiding. No, here he's a thug, an over-the-top, ham-handed rendition of every hand-wringing, monologing, kitty petting stereotype of a Bond villain you could concieve, and the performance has about as much stability and consistency as Jackson's wardrobe. He'll be a badass Sam Jackson-esque thug one moment, then suddenly launch into a two to three minute monologue about eggs. Seriously. Eggs. Did I miss something from the comics?

BONUS COMPLAINT:

The Macguffin of the piece, the Blood of Herakles, makes no effin' sense either. One sip will make the Octopus immortal, although his earlier experiments in life eternal have made himself and the Spirit virtually unkillable. Uh, pardon my miniscule and non-Millerian intellect, but when you're immune to everything from bullets to knives to poison to being hit over the head with a goddamned toilet, isn't that by definition immortality? Let me consult the dictionary:

Immortal - adjective - 1. Not mortal; not liable or subject to death; undying.

Seems to me that both the Octopus and the Spirit are pretty damn non-liable. So what's the point? What the hell was it all for? Bill, help me out:

'It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.'

Brother, you ain't kiddin'.

Stac

The Warlord #1 Review.

DC Comics

Writer: Mike Grell

Penciller: Joe Prado

Cover: Mike Grell.

The Warlord is a character that has been a part of my life for a number of years, though I confess I have yet to read his original 1970s-80s series in its entirety. Most of my familiarity comes from reading old copies of his comics at my cousin's house waaaaay back in the early '80s, but that helmet, the sword and sandals trappings, the conceit of a gun in a fantasy setting. . .it stuck with me for a long, long time. Now that I actually have a chance to sit down and think about it, The Warlord was probably my earliest introduction to Sword and Sorcery fiction, to say nothing of the Underground World/Other Planet stories of writers like Edgar Rice Burroughs. Needless to say, it had an impact, and when word reached me that Mike Grell would be penning another series set in the hidden world of Skartaris, it was a certainty that it'd be on my pull list for last week. So great was my anticipation for this volume that I didn't engage in one of my oldest and most sly of comicbook store tricks; that of leafing through the issue in a quick speed-read to see if it was worthy of an actual purpose or a simple return to the shelf from whence it came. No, going in blind and on faith that this book would rock harder than an Iced Earth/Dragonforce double-bill, I set the book confidently down on the counter and whipped out my debit card.

This, I thought, is going to rule.

Before I get into the meat and potatoes of my review, a bit of backstory might be in order. The premise of the series is that in 1969 U.S. Air Force pilot Travis Morgan passes through a hole in the Earth's crust at the North Pole and enters into an otherdimensional realm called Skartaris, a bronze-early middle ages world inhabited by wizards, warriors, dinosaurs and other fantastic creatures. Armed with only his pluck, a sword, and his .44 AutoMag pistol, Morgan battles foes such as the evil sorceror Deimos and a variety of tyrannical kings in a series of swashbuckling adventures. Along the way he meets stalwart allies such as the former gladiator Machiste and the seductive cat-woman Shakira (no, not the singer), and eventually finds his queen in the form of the warrior woman Tara. The series ran from 1976 to 1989, with 133 issues and six annuals. Take into account that this was a book that had a marginal at best connection with the DC Universe proper and featured no capes or tights and you can begin to see what a diamond in the rough this series was. You can understand my feeling of utter glee as I sat back in my easy chair, soda in easy reach as I opened the covers of the new volume, the legend 'ENTER THE SAVAGE WORLD OF THE WARLORD' emblazoned on the front. Invitation gladly accepted, I sat back and devoured the book in a single sitting. The verdict?

It was. . .good.

That's about all I can say. It was okay. Now, don't get me wrong, I see a lot of potential here and I can understand that Grell is doing his best to be accomodating to new readers and longtime fans alike. . .but it was adequate when I was expecting awesome.

The issue opens in the present day with a group of mountaineers in Tibet discovering the preserved remains of a dinosaur frozen in the ice. They bring it to a professor of paleontology who immediately contacts an old friend and daredevil adventurer, who brings his photographer pal along. They go to Tibet, get into a dust-up with the Chinese armed forces, and then pass through a portal (that looks suspiciously like a triangular Stargate) and presumably into Skartaris. We don't see the resolution of their arc, as it immediately cuts to Travis Morgan(who hasn't really aged a day since '69, time working differently in Skartaris) and we get a scene with him and Shakira in bed as he remembers his origin(Shakira's in cat form so there's no hanky panky). Travis' reflections are suddenly interuptted by a giant bird thing that's been driven from it's normal habitat in the north. They slay it handily, then find themselves dealing with yet another wave of refugees from the lands of the Shadow Kingdom(Skartaris is a realm where the 'sun' has a fixed position in the heavens, thus its always day. The aptly named Shadow Kingdom is where the sun doesn't shine. Literally). Travis looks over a wounded boy and gets a shock; a wound in the son's chest and a hole in his breastplate that looks amazingly like their source was a bullet. Dun dun dun!

Okay, so I get it. We need to introduce new readers to the book, so we focus on the assembly of this band of characters that we'll deal with later. My problem arises with the matter of pacing. The Interpid Band get a whopping 16 pages to set up their scenario, whilst Travis and Skartaris get a mere 8. This out of an issue that contains ads and a 7-page Power Girl preview for her upcoming series. So out of a 32-page comic, only 8 pages are actually devoted to the title character. 8 out of 32. 8 out of 24 for the actual story. That's a mere 33% of my expected quotient of sword and sorcery awesomness! What the hell Grell?! I signed up for The Lost World of the Warlord, not The Cast of LOST in the Land of the Lost Featuring the Warlord. I wanted the book to live up to the awesome mission statement of your cover and it only just barely managed it.

The writing gets us where we need to go at a steady clip, and it's clear Grell's enthusiasm for the character and his world hasn't diminished over the years. Joe Prado's art has a nice hint of Grell's original style while still being it's own animal, so I'm eager to see where they're going to go with this. I just wish the first issue had been a bit stronger. But perhaps its just a case of my anticipaton trumping my objectivity.

I'm in for the first four issues at least, but with misgivings. Thusly I must grant this book a rating of three and a half out of five, with a point-five boost for the nostalgia trip. C'mon Mike Grell, I know you can knock this one out of the park. I want this book to succeed.

Rating: 3.5/5

Until next time,

Stac

Books I Love: Sword of the Atom.

Or 'Let's Get Small!'

In the echelons of the superheroic elite, there are champions aplenty who make the grade and attain the upper tier of recognizability and popularity. Amongst these esteemed ranks you have heroes like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, hell even the Wonder Twins have some modicum of fame amongst pop culture junkies, if not comicbook fans proper. And all of the above have a bevy of interesting powers and abilities that make them characters rife with storytelling potential(okay, maybe not the Wonder Twins. A girl who can become any animal and a guy who can become anything as long as it's made of water? Riiiiight).

And then there's the Atom.

For those in the audience who just drew a blank when I dropped the above name don't worry, I'll bring you up to speed as best I can. I should warn you that this piece is going to get very geeky very fast, but I promise to do my best to keep things as free and breezy as possible and keep the dreaded c-word (continuity!) to the barest of bare minimums.

Back during the 1950s in the wake of the crackdown on comicbooks spearheaded by America's conservatives, DC Comics turned to its stable of superheroes to draw in the youth readership market with good, clean, wholesome fun. By that period though most of the DC heroes had faded into obscurity save for the holy trinity of Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman. Rather than rehash the same old characters, editor Julie Schwartz decided a full revamp of the lesser known and second tier heroes was in order. Thus the Flash, Green Lantern, and the Atom were divested completely of their 1940s characters and origins and rebuilt from the ground up.

The Atom was scientist Ray Palmer, a professor at Ivy University in the quaint Midwestern metropolis of Ivy Town. A falling meteor provides a mysterious energy source, emitted from a white dwarf star, that when harnessed grants Ray the ability to alter his size and mass. Armed with this newfound power, he creates a size-changing belt and dons a colorful red and blue costume to fight crime and keep the peace in Ivy Town as the heroic crusader men know as the Atom!

Okay, I'm trying here but it's very hard to make the character's initial concept sound cool. The Atom gets small. That's his power. We have people who can run at incredible speeds, wield rings that make their will a reality, have trained themselves to be the greatest martial artists and deductive minds on the planet. . .and the guy who gets tiny. Wow.

While a staple of the Justice League's roster, it can be understood when stacking him up alongside other heroes that the Atom isn't exactly a character to set the eyes of readers ablaze with passion in hearing more and more of his adventures, and by about the early '80s DC was working to find some way—any way—to make the character seem cool. In 1983, Jan Strnad and Gil Kane accomplished the impossible with their four-issue mini-series Sword of the Atom, a series which gleefully tore the Atom's status quo apart and rebuilt something wonderfully and maniacally insane in its place.

By this point in his career the Atom is in a bit of a holding pattern. He's married attorney Jean Loring (his Lois Lane figure in the classic stories) but their lives are pulling them in different directions and their marriage is suffering for it. Ray is dedicated to his scientific research and his crimefighting heroics as the Atom, while Jean has thrown herself in her work as an attorney and wants a normal life with someone who cares for her and can commit to her full time. As the series dawns, Ray catches Jean with a coworker of hers, Paul Hoben, and the couple decide a trail separation might be in order. Ray decides to head to South America and the Amazon in order to track a piece of white dwarf star that he believes fell in the jungle some years ago. Unfortunately, the quality of his native guides leaves much to be desired and in his efforts to get an aerial sweep of the jungle his pilots turn out to be very protective of their coca fields. They jump Ray, but the hero is prepared and soon engages the two in battle as the Atom. Of course, loaded guns and a bounding tiny man lead to the plane spiraling out of control in a storm, only to be hit by a bolt of lightning. The Atom falls as the plane crashes and lands smack dab in the middle of the Amazon jungle. His size-changing belt damaged by the lightning, the diminutive hero finds himself trapped at only six inches(152mm) tall!

There's a joke I could make about six inches, size, and shrinkage, but I'm just gonna stick to the high ground. I swear to you I'll keep all size jokes to a minimum. Hah! Y'get it? Minimum. . .heh. . .okay, moving on.

Now the challenges of a man of merely six inches in height trying to survive and escape the Amazon jungle—one of the most potentially lethal environments on the planet—would be exciting enough(it even opens with an awesome battle between the Atom and a snake that's dangerously larger than he is). But it is here that the series completely loses its mind, as the Atom finds himself suddenly beset upon by a band of tribal, yellow-skinned alien warriors riding frogs and is captured, led off with a band of prisoners to an alien city hidden in the depths of the jungle.

I will say that again: tribal alien warriors riding frogs. I love comicbooks so very, very much.

Taken to the city of Morlaidh, Atom quickly becomes enmeshed in the affairs of a band of freedom fighters to rid the city of the tyrannical king Caellich and his scheming vizier Deraegis. Along the way, the Atom learns that the people of Morlaidh were part of a penal colony established on Earth centuries ago whose technology and culture has degraded to a medievalist society over time. All this is learned on the run as Atom battles giant(for him) rats, marauding imperial warriors riding hawks, and other assorted perils of the jungle and the Morlaidhian hordes. Along the way he gets to know the charismatic rebel leader Taren, the lovely and defiant Princess Laethwin, and the shifty but reliable archer Voss. Meanwhile, Jean Loring doesn't get lost in the shuffle as she does her best to track down the missing Ray Palmer. Does she succeed? Will the Atom overthrow the tyrannical ruling elite of Morlaidh and restore justice? Will he and the Princess get close in the wake of Taren's untimely death? Will the Atom regain his size-changing powers(not making the joke, not making it. . .)? Can riding a bullfrog whilst wielding a sword look cool? All these questions and more can be answered within the thrilling pages of Sword of the Atom!

This book is purest, simplest joy, at once completely deconstructing a Silver Age hero while at the same time telling an amazing and thrilling 'Planet Story' in the best tradition of Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian stories or the Skaith stories of Leigh Brackett. Taking a normally staid and science-fiction themed hero like the Atom and dropping him into the middle of a sword and sorcery story is a concept that shouldn't work and yet does so brilliantly. The tale must've been popular, as there were a number of follow-ups included in this collection. The Atom actually became the first hero in the DCU to have an in-universe tell-all biography written about him, one that not only revealed his identity to the world but was in effect a swan song for the characters as he had been. After that there were a number of adventures starring the Atom and Laethwen, including one in which Jean Loring and Paul Hoben find themselves involved in the tiny world of flashing blades and giant snakes. Simply put, the entire concept and execution of the series was a blast, and it's clear Strnad and Kane were having fun tipping over the applecart of the Atom's previous status quo and just going nuts with an adventure that Robert E. Howard would've approved of. Strnad's writing is crisp, and while it occasionally gets a bit on the florid side it's still thrilling and entertaining. Gil Kane is one of the legendary DC artists, and his work here is that of a master in his prime. His style may take some getting used to for those who prefer the uber-rendering of an Alex Ross, but to me his work has a primal vitality and a passion to it that just screams 'this is a comicbook'. It may not be 'realistic', but its energy is palpable on the page.

Of course, comicbooks being what they are it wasn't long before this storyline was swept completely aside to make way for the Atom's return to Ivy Town and hardcore superheroing, which later led to his return to obscurity and then eventual replacement by the newest Atom, scientist Ryan Choi in Gail Simone's excellent The All-New Atom series. That made it all of twenty-five issues before it met the inevitable death knell of cancellation.

But for one brief, shining moment the Atom had a chance to stand tall (no pun intended) in a world where his detriments were unexpected strengths and his concept was not only tweaked and twisted, but completely reworked. And it was glorious. Sword of the Atom is no perfect masterpiece, but it is a helluva lot of fun being done at a time when DC wasn't afraid to experiment with their characters and take some risks. It's a storytelling alchemical brew that you should definitely check out if you haven't already. Everything you need is between the covers, and like a good movie it'll keep you entertained pretty much from beginning to end. It's the kind of comic that never won an Eisner, but they don't all need to be. Sometimes you just want something to kick back with on a Saturday afternoon on a hot summer day on the patio, maybe with a cola slurpee within easy reach of your deck chair. In this, Sword of the Atom remains one of my absolute favorite books you've probably never heard of. Highly recommended.

Stac

Open-handed appraisal.

Superman is, by far, my favorite comicbook superhero for a wide variety of reasons. It could be because of his presence in my life for about as long as I can remember. I learned to read from a Fisher-Price Read-Along Book entitled SUPERMAN: FROM KRYPTON TO METROPOLIS. I watched the first Superman film on VHS in Sydney, Cape Breton and instantly accepted it as gospel truth. Superman was real, I'd seen it with my own two eyes.

There's a long essay in me about the character of Superman as an embodiment of hope and an postmodern representation of godhood, or even as an idealized vision of how America wishes to be percieved in the wake of the second world war. That'd be an awesome essay to write, and I promise you we'll get to that in the fullness of time. For now though. . .I'd like to talk to you about something that actually bugs me about the Man of Steel. Indulge me, won't you?

Superman's costume is one of the most distinctive pieces of imagery in popular culture. Even people who've never picked up an issue of Action Comics in their lives know the distinctive s-emblem, the cape, boots, the shorts over the tights and the yellow belt. It's emblematic, it's powerful, it's a little silly looking (tradition usually dictates underwear be worn inside the pants, but the suit was modelled off a circus strongman so the trunks were put in). Simply put, it's a classic piece of imagery. . .that has a distinct design flaw that threatens to bring the whole dual-identity thing of Superman/Clark Kent crashing down.

Never mind the fact that Superman wears no mask and is frequently seen operating in broad daylight, yet no one in Clark Kent's life has made the distinction. I will accept that either something in the water makes people in Metropolis a little slow, or even a pseudoscientific macguffin whipped up on demand (he vibrates his facial features so a clear picture can't be taken, super-hypnosis, he adjusts his posture and wears glasses that cut his distinctive glacier blue eyes, etc). The glasses thing has been picked to death and that's not where I take issue. No no.

Examine the costume for a moment. Do you see the glaringly obvious fault here? Yep, you guessed it: Superman doesn't wear gloves. Everything he touches: the planes he swoops in to save, the steel girders he bends to bind up Metallo, the numerous keys to the city and award plaques, he's leaving fingerprints all over Metropolis and the rest of the damned planet.

You could argue that perhaps kryptonians don't have fingerprints, but if that's the case how did the Kents register him when he went to school? How is it that Lex Luthor hasn't put this together? All those years cramped inside the heads of giant robots or working all hours on purple-green suits of power armor and kryptonite death-rays must have addled his wits.

All in all though, it's a flaw that makes the gem. That's one of the things I love about comics; that they can be epic tales of good and evil that can be as deep and rich as any work of prose but aren't afraid to be silly at the same time.

Stac

Oh the places I have been and the things I have seen.

Hey gang,

Just a quick note to let you know I'm back home and will soon have TCD churning out the usual nonsensical ramblings about pop culture and comics that you've come to expect. The Emerald City Comic Con was indeed a blast of epic proportions, and I have notes, audio, and video to provide some nice commentary on what was neat at the con.

It's April now, and my Watchmen review got a bit sidetracked as I wrote the 'More on Moore' pieces, but I assure you a detailed review is coming. . .and should be out about the time the film is released on DVD. I'll try not to leave it that late, but grade on a curve is all I'm saying.

The next 'MoM' installment is in the works, but it may be a while as its a series I'm still working my way through. Expect in when you see it, but in the meantime I have a plan for a filler piece or two you might find fun.

Later,

Stac

The Most Awesome Thing Encountered Today.

Rapper MC Esoteric has created a tribute to the Silver Age of Comics with his Serve or Suffer album. I need a copy stat. A full article on the artist and his process can be found here. 'Cause the only thing cooler than being a comicbook fan is being a comicbook gangster. Werd.

Stac

Truth.

'If no other knowledge deserves to be called useful but that which helps to enlarge our possessions or to raise our station in society, then mythology has no claim to the apellation. But if that which tends to make us happier and better can be called useful, then we claim that epithet for our subject. For mythology is the handmaid of literature; and literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.'

-Thomas Bulfinch on fandom.