Reign of the Supermen #402: Supertree

Source: International Paper Company ad (1967)
Type: ObjectClick on the image to get a closer look. Sleestak from Lady, That's My Skull (give him some blog love) sent me this ad from a late 60s edition of Life Magazine. It's worth the read. The 1960s pulp and paper lobby was actually proud of producing more chemical by-products! As someone who grew up in a pulp'n'paper town, I can now sleep more soundly knowing that the yellow stuff being pumped into the river right next to my school was DC Comics and Superman-approved!

And now, just to make this post longer, the Top 5 Things I Don't Miss About Living in a Pulp'n'Paper Town...
#5... Never being able to ask who farted, because clearly, the mill did.
#4... Cars with acid rain-chipped paint jobs.
#3... The very real chance the river water would flood the valley, yellow foam and all.
#2... Goons with 8th grade educations lording it over the entire town because they were the economy.
And the #1 Thing I Don't Miss About Living in a Pulp'n'Paper Town... Damn Supertrees changing in the town's only phone booth! [Imagine Paul Shaffer Band playing here]

Oh, and that's right kids, less than 2 days left to send in your answers to the Reign 400 contest posted last Monday!

Epic Fail: Superman Grounded

"You will believe a man can fly."

"It's a bird, it's a plane..."

Yeah. Not so much.

I know the Internet has done a good job of slamming the coffin shut on J. Michael Straczynski's new Superman storyline, in which the Man of Steel walks across America in order to connect with regular people, but I can't help myself. I want to add my nail to the job. Now, I think my good blog buddy Snell did an excellent job identifying what's wrong with the Superman #701, but as I read it, I found even more to object to. I won't cover the same exact ground, so here's what Snell had to say:
Superman sends a child to his death
Superman: Uncooperative smartass
Pruning the supporting cast out of the book
Superman damages city property and other crimes
A tin ear to racial politics
And on Hero Press: What's wrong with the media's representation?

You'd think that'd be all, but no... Here are a further 10 things that don't make any damn sense:

1. In Superman #700, Superman returns to Metropolis after an extended stay on New Krypton. It's obvious that he missed Lois, and while he can't promise never to leave again because of "the life", it doesn't seem right that he would take off again so soon to do some soul-searching. Never mind that he's escaping responsibilities like his JOB and his WIFE, which isn't like Superman, but it feels completely wrong in the timeline. No wonder he looks so sad.

2. The big shocker that he's been "disconnected" from the common man comes from a woman upset that he wasn't around to save a man from his brain tumor. Is this something Superman does A LOT? Surgery? In the Silver Age/All-Star universe, maybe. In the so-called real world, I don't think I'd let a superhero open my head up and shoot heat beams into it. JMS' arc isn't just a trip across America, it's a GUILT trip. Fun, eh?

3. Let's get down to some of the practicals of this "walk across America", keeping in mind that the whole point is to reconnect with the common man. Why does he walk at night?
Will he be walking down deserted highways too? I bet he will. How many common men and women are you bound to reconnect with on long stretches of road? Wouldn't it be better to spend a good part of your day in some new city, town or rural area, then return home to the wife at night? Like a tour with no overnights. Surely, there's a better way to schedule a trip like this when you've superspeed.

4. And about that reconnecting... Superman hasn't been so alien and aloof since the Eradicator took him over in the Last Son of Krypton storyline 20 years ago. He speaks in riddles. He makes sermons and walks away. He just hovers there and watches you. And he seems completely unable to relate to the common man. He's gone and become CREEPY.
5. So there's the bit where he tells the kid to give the drug dealers a message for him... Aside from Snell's points on this matter, there's another question I've been asking myself: Why doesn't he arrest them? He sets their crack house on fire and promises to return once a week to see if they're still operating. If they are, he burns them (and the evidence) down again. "They'll just start over somewhere else," he's told. That's ok, as long as it's not here, is his response. So instead of taking these guys in, you're allowing them to run free and terrorize some OTHER neighborhood? So now we have two victimized neighborhoods where we used to have only one. If they move to someone else's turf, we can expect a gang war, and nobody ever gets in the crossfire of that.

6. 701 also includes the worst "talking down from a ledge" scene ever. Snell has already talked about how wrong-headed this all is (keeping emergency services there, destroying city property, talking about people he thinks should be dead in a fair world, and allowing lots of bad stuff to go down while he hovers there - what if somebody has a brain tumor or something?!), but it also shows JMS' poor understanding of clinical depression. Superman tells her that if she can't possibly imagine another happy day in her life, to go right ahead and jump. She's suicidal. She's clearly distraught. She didn't go up there on a whim. Can she REALLY see another happy (not endurable, HAPPY) day in her future? It's my understanding that someone who is truly depressed is unable to see that happy day, and that's the point. You could counter that in all that time, she didn't jump, so it was all a big cry for attention. Maybe, but then Superman's a bit slow on the uptake if he stays with her all night and does nothing. Bring her down already. Take her with you as you help people. Give her a lesson in hope through deeds. But of course, that might be interesting.

7. Either way, the suggestion JMS makes that Superman would have let her fall if she had taken the leap is a measure of how little he understands the character's appeal.
Way to reconnect with those common cops!

8. How's he planning to pay for this trip? The one charming scene in the book is the one where he does odd jobs to pay for lunch because he doesn't have much money. So he just took off without thinking. Way to reconnect with the common man. Tip: Unlike most superheroes, we have money issues. It's like Clark suddenly forgot he was raised as a human being by human parents and has lived a human life with a job, and girl trouble and everything.

9. There's no actual reconnecting with people (if I even accept the thesis that he's disconnected from humanity, which I actually don't). He walks by a house, tells you what's wrong with your engine or your health, and moves on. "Gotta go! Lots more people to reconnect with! Sorry I can't stay and reconnect with you!" It's the equivalent of a hand-shaking tour, but won't remember a single face or name. It's a publicity stunt, a photo op, something Superman shouldn't have time for. If he REALLY wanted to connect with humanity, why not do so as Clark Kent? Why not go down to Bibbo's or work on his mother's farm for the summer? If he were doing it for himself, that could work, but he's obviously doing it for his IMAGE, and that's wrong.

10. It's also a publicity stunt in our world because it looks like a thinly veiled reason to bring Superman to YOUR town. It doesn't seem like the DC Universe's mythical cities are on the tour at all. There's nothing wrong with that per se, but it does take Superman out of the DCU. Then again, it's ok if this isn't the DCU, because this isn't Superman.

Ironic Brightest Day Versus Ironic Heroic Age

As both of the "Big Two" comic book companies apparently enter a brighter, more positive era, we look at just how well each of their "show runners" are handling it...

From Brightest Day #2
Firestorm's face getting shredded!
A mom pulling her face off after killing her entire family!

Hawkman vowing murder!
From Avengers #1 (Heroic Age banner)
Some future teen Avengers committing murder most noir!

Wolverine on the team!
I can't believe Steve Rogers actually put him on the team for his "ruthlessness". Real "Heroic".

And I can't really find any other moments, but that's because Bendis just has them talk for most of the issue. So it's business as usual. The "Heroic" hits keep on coming.

Brightest Day... Oh, You're Being IRONIC!

I know they're putting the Brightest Day banner on anything and everything that features one of the characters returned from the dead, and the Titans-Villains for Hire special features Osiris, but it's more than that, isn't it? Brightest Day tags the books that are leading to the eventual return of the Bronze Age current DC writers love so well. (Guys, I started reading comics in the Bronze Age. Have you LOOKED at those issues with your adult eyes lately?) I suppose there's a cost in blood for returning to those "brighter days".Now regardless of the "white washing of the DC Universe" killing Ryan Choi has become a part of, I quite liked the All-New Atom. More than I ever liked the Silver Age Atom. His adventures were wild and wacky, and his version of Ivy City was one I wanted to come back to again and again. And now he's dead, and for what? Just to set Ray Palmer back up as the Atom. No other reason.

The evidence:
-My interpretation of the Brightest Day "event" stated above.
-Here's an entire "special" that has no other function except the murder of Ryan Choi at the hands of people who have no personal connection to him (the fact the contract was paid for by lame-ass villain Dwarfstar is doubly insulting).
-Each time Ray Palmer is mentioned, they make sure to put him on a pedestal compared to Ryan.

You know what this means...
The jury...
Comics Alliance
CSBG Archive
Trusty Plink Stick
Angry Asian Man
Read/Rant
Second Printing
Reappropriate
CBR Review
Rich Lovatt
Last of the Famous International Fanboys
Bookhound

The verdict..?

Reduced to Ranting

I want to be a citizen again, not just a tax payer!I want to be a person and not a consumer!
I want to do my part for society, not for the economy!
I want a government that doesn't think of itself as a business!
I want good and productive people to be rewarded with financing, not tax credits!
Why has my relationship to the State been reduced to paying taxes?
By changing the words, they've reduced us to passive bank accounts. Pay your share, don't do your share.
I want the real words back.
All head shots accompanying this rant from Hergé's Les Cigares du Pharaon.

Enough Already!

If Heroes references the Red Hulk one more time, I'm gonna scream.

Is it Jeff Loeb's massive hubris or a farewell gift to a sacked producer? Either way, I ain't buying it.

Le Brave et le Bolde

One of my pet peeves is bad French in American comics. Only one of many, I assure you, but important to me nonetheless. French characters spouting remedial French at best, and Babel Fish at worst. So here's a quick correction, if you will indulge me, or the otherwise entertaining Brave and the Bold #9. Master Waid and Mistress Buscema (I should think proofreading is part of "assistant-editing), attend:

So the trouble has to do with the two Andrés in the Blackhawk/Boy Commandos team-up, of course. Let's call them Big André and Little André. It all starts when Little André comes out of a pyramid shouting:"Une maman a Brooklyn!" Ok, let's look at this, shall we? "Maman" is the equivalent of "Mom", so it's really a pun. A mummy has Brooklyn, in the "are you my mummy?" sense. Of course, it's not a pun in French, it's just nonsense. Mummy (the Egyptian undead extensive care patient type) in French is "momie". I'm giving Waid a pass here, hoping he knows he's making a joke.

What about Big André's French?
Ah yes, Big André has mangled syntax syndrome. He should be asking "Qu'est-ce qui s'est produit?", but he sidesteps the normal interrogative for a literal translation of "What has happened?" It's more like he's saying "The thing that's happened?" which gives it a demanding tone, but is ridiculously awkward. This is a fail. Now, what about Big André's translation?
It's a good thing he can read speech bubbles, because it sounds to me like Little André is saying "A mom in Brooklyn" or say we ignore the pun, "A mummy in Brooklyn". There's a homophone at work here, you see - "a" means "has", but "à" means "at" or "in", and they sound exactly the same. Given Brooklyn's a place name, Big André should probably be hearing the wrong thing. But he sees there's no accent on the "a", AND gets the pun, AND knows there's a Boy Commando called Brooklyn, so everything's fine.

Little André's story about the stone door, etc. is surprisingly clear, and Big André translates it well. (Well, there's a confusing pronoun use, but this is how a person would talk.) And then little André makes an unforgivable gender mistake. In French, you'll remember, all nouns have a gender. This is a particular difficulty to second-language learners because there's no real rhyme or reason to which are masculine and which feminine. "Pierre" (Stone) is feminine, by the way, so Waid correctly says "Cette pierre" using a feminine demonstrative adjective ("Ce pierre" would have been a mistake). However, he goes on to use the masculine pronoun "celui" to refer to that stone in the next bit, instead of "celle". Ah well.

Total score: 4/10. Mark will have to take the course again.

Counter Argument of the Gods

B&B #9 does have a lot of cool stuff on offer, so you shouldn't listen to Siskoid and his amazingly anal pet peeves (see, I can make French puns too!). Some of the best bits include:
-Robby Reed!!! (I'm a big Dial H fan.)
-Platinum reminding Mercury he's not the only liquid metal at room termperature.
-The Warlock of Ys! (I love it when pouring over my Who's Whos every night pays off.)
-The Atom narrating his story, just like in his own title.
-Between B&B and Booster Gold, the few series I'm reading at the moment are really giving me a tour of the entire history of the DC Universe. What's not to love?

Hergé's Head Trauma Fetish

Geekrant subject: So You Think You Can Dance
Thesis: Bullshit appologies to American patriots

(As accompanied by images from Objectif Lune)I make no secret about it, I like So You Think You Can Dance. It's the only talent show I watch, and I've been known to be emotionally affected by dancing. Also, I've got the major hots for Cat Deeley. Now that I've properly lost all my street cred, on to the ranting.
Last night, the show opened with two of the "joodges" appologizing for things that had gone on the night before. First, about a fashion jacket that had some symbol upside down on it which apparently insulted the U.S. Marines to a great degree.
Mmm, ok... Sure, I'll buy that. I guess. Of course, don't these guys have other things to do than nitpick a dance choreographer's choice of clothes? Like maybe, fight a war/insurrection/rebuilding initiative?

But then, the series producer had to appologize because of an anti-war/pro-peace routine from the previous night.
He actually appologized to patriots for a dance routine where the participants wore a peace sign and a word such as "love", "humility" or "compassion".
He made those points, as well as the usual "anti-war doesn't mean anti-troop" argument, but he still ended with "we're sorry".
If he wanted to appologize for something, how about the fact that we had to sit through that same cheesy solo routine 10 times? Offended, I was not, but bored? Yeah, a little.
But now I'm trying to figure out just who the hell wrote in with those complaints? Who are these pro-war militants who would cut grants for the arts in a nanosecond if given the chance, who nonetheless follow a fucking dance contest on tv?

I have vague visions of some survivalist nutcase in Waco with Cedric's "save me!" number on his speed dial...
But they probably don't exist, do they, these complainers. Fact of the matter is, the show airs on Fox. Starting to see the light?
It's no secret that Fox is hardcore right-wing, especially if you enjoy its Fox News distortions.
I get the feeling THEY're the ones who came down with an edict to appologize to their viewers (all those screaming teenage girls with shotguns in their closets).
Either way, appologizing here is INSANE! "Gee, sorry I can't get behind violence! I hope my peacenik attitudes don't offend you, but I'M A FUCKING DANCER!!!"

(Not to say a dancer can't fight the good fight. I wouldn't want to offend any dancers out there. From everyone at Siskoid's Blog, I deeply, deeply appologize.)
See how stupid that sounded? This is a show that brings weekly doses of hip-hop routines based on anal sex, and people are coming down hard on its peace message? Kill me now.
Then, the two people I'd figured to go went, and all was right with the world.
But you know... it still bugs me that someone, somewhere is so dense as to miss the point entirely and that tv is still catering to them.

All I got left to say is: Protect yourself, kids.
(Dedicated to all the troops everywhere in the world. No matter which side you're on, you shouldn't be dying out there.)

Your Hergé Head Trauma Moment

You know, I rant a heck of a lot in life, but I'm not really one of those bloggers. Which is surprising. But if I combine my ability to rant and my desire to provide you fine folks with Tintin getting it in the head, maybe I can come up with a post!

(Images selected from Le Sceptre d'Ottokar by Hergé.)

Geekrant subject: Computer trouble
Thesis: That shit is my fucking kryptoniteThere is nothing - NOTHING - that kills me more than computer trouble. I use computers all the time. At work. At home. At other people's homes when they're not in the room. But I don't know jackshit about them. Oh, I can get around a lot of software, and I'm good at troubleshooting most of the time. But hardware? No way. And when the damn machine doesn't want to do what I want it to...
No it's not my kryptonite (thesis discarded), it's my reason for hulking out. Forget the Superman metaphor and cast me as the Hulk. For Bruce Banner, it's getting slapped around by frycooks in a dirty kitchen (tv version) or Tony Stark (comics version). For Green Lantern, it's destroying Coast City (oh no, you di'n't!). For Batman, it's digging up his parents' graves. And for me, it's computer problems.
Case in point, the day before I was supposed to go on vacation, my job's technical services changed my account to accommodate their new email address policies.
For whatever reason, they didn't plan on any kind of crossover time when both the old accounts and new accounts were active together so that one account could, so to speak, give the other account the keys to everything. So guess what happened?
If you said I couldn't start my vacation on time because it took a whole day to get everything (and I work in communications, so that's a lot of everything) back in order, I'll send you something nice*.
That's exactly what happened.
Add a screw-up with my employee number...
...the fact half of everyone is on vacation and unavailable to help...
...and the deep impression that I ignored some email sometime, which means it was ALL MY FAULT**...
...and you've got a recipe for Hulk-level frustration.
But listen, you might as well ask Bruce Banner to calm down when he's getting the bejeezus kicked out of him. You can't. Just 10 minutes ago, PhotoShop crashed.
Just find that vibrating string of rage inside yourself and make it be still. One day at a time. One day at a time.

BONUS: Your Hergé Ass Trauma Moment
Protect yourselves, kids.

*I will most definitely not send you anything for your deductive skills. I was telegraphing the answer the whole time.
**It totally was, and if anyone who works at tech services reads this - like my webspace provider - much thanks for helping me get it all working again.