Review of the Retirement of the Elastic Avenger by Paul

Well, not really.

worlds biggest elastic launch


PAUL APPROVED

Review of some unknown PS3 game by Paul

The good thing about cars is that they have thousands of little pieces that they burst into when they explode. I discovered this one evening in an isle of the future shop. While there I did not find the future, but the store does not promise the future.

Hanging above the droves of consumers was a free version of a car racing game I will call "When cars explode"; and they do. Cars explode a lot. While inside the game, where I allow myself to drift, I note that it is mostly my car that does the exploding and when it does, the world slows down to embrace the moment and so do I. A cloud of bolts, car doors, tires and other recognizable bits burst out as if held by the thinnest skin. Their cheap frames shimmy and tear dance and bounce like fish* of water(except they are bolts out of cars! not even close). All of this fades away as the remains of my car twist in the air helplessly. Some additional laws of physics had been added where previously missing.

My car is never safe. Other cars and an ever flickering clock force me back into motion. What they don't seem to realize is that the world is circular. I relive the explosion again and again. Nature decorates the world around the race track and crushes all that collides with it.

Nature is safe for the most part. All of the damage is transferred to the car. Obviously this is a punishment. The laws of nature won't tolerate car damage. Not in that world.

I always knew that cars had tonns of little bits holding them together and I found it very exciting to see them all at once.

PAUL APPROVED


*I refuse to use the word fishes. :P

Review of Facebook by Paul

Facebook the friend comfirmation book!

I used to cringe everytime someone pulled out a family album. Let it be known that I am not a sentimental person. I like change. I like meeting new people. I like dropping a profession or a degree program like its nothing. Take a risk. Everywhere I go I always meet good people. It doesn't matter. I always find something to write about something that makes me feel alive.

Facebook. Imagine yourself walking around the city with a stack of blank paper and a photo album. The paper is filled with blank lines but there is a complete one that you have pinned on your chest so people can take a glance at it and know what to write. They fill out the paper work and hand it back. On the way home they stop at staples and grab a blank stack of paper and a photo album.

Facebook:
"Here is some paper work for you to fill out"

Imagine that everyone you have ever met is suspended around you. People you have never met but want to know you. They can all send you messages and hope that you will respond. Before you know it you find yourself trying to please everyone.

Whats worse is that people have already placed some importance in Facebook. I'm sure the people who have been trying to contact me are going to be confused when they see that I have deactivated my account.

Facebook. Facebook is a warning of things to come. Its funny because I am a programmer so I don't expect to see all kinds of people who aren't programmers while i'm actually trying to do some work. Its just a database people - come on. No magic here. You know what its the winter time we all do things we regret in the winter time. We sleep with people we shouldn't sleep with. I know. Its cold. We all saw the fancy web 2.o curves(don't even get me fucken started). It was terrifying! Some of the people I used to know are now insane! We all do things we regret in the winter time. Its the confinement.

It got into my head so fast and how could it not. The problem with the program is that it displays all of your friends to your friends of your friends. I like games. I could win facebook if I wanted to. I could write pr0grams to help me to automate the process. Then I could give the programs to others. If I had my back against the wall i would do it. But, in the end, I would be connected to a bunch of people that have nothing to do with me. I might spend hours in my day keeping tabs on them. Meanwhile the world would be passing me by. The world is passing me by. Still.

It wont be long before we all have RFIDs and when we sign up for a social network everyone will be able to see where I'm standing. When that day comes I'll just keep walking in random directions.

For all the irony fans out there: Facebook makes me feel dead.

I don't like facebook.

NOT APPROVED

Review of the Green Hornet, By Johnathan

I've been listening to a lot of Old Time Radio (as it is now known) at work lately - mostly old radio plays: the Shadow, the Clock, Dimension X, etc. All are pretty delightful, especially when they have arrived on my computer with the ads intact - that's how I learned that Blue Coal was America's finest anthracite, after all. Most recently, I've been on a big Green Hornet kick and am loving it.

Here's the skinny on the Green Hornet for you poor saps who don't make a habit of listening to 1950s radio programs. Real name: Britt Reid, dashing young newspaper publisher. Britt's got a gas gun, a fancy car called the Black Beauty and a Filipino valet (pronounced vallit) named Kato. He brings crooks to justice as the Hornet and then has folks write about them in his paper, The Sentinel.

The first thing that I love about the Green Hornet is the fact that - despite the fancy car and the gas gun - his most useful superpower (equivalent) is that he's a wanted criminal, and not in a Spider-Man kind of way. The police legitimately think that he's killed a guy, as well as that he's involved in basically every major crime that pops up in the city. Britt's most effective tactics are either to show up somewhere as the Hornet to attract police attention to where it is needed or to rile up crooks into doing something stupid by pretending to muscle in on their rackets. I swear, he gets most of his crime-fighting done just by showing up places.

The second thing that I love is the cast. Specifically, I love the fact that most of them are Irish. There's always a couple of scenes that take place at the police station, where all of the cops are Irish. Lower-class women are almost always Irish. Axeworthy (possibly Axeford), one of Britt's top reporters, is a former cop and thus is Irish. And Gunnigan, one of the two other major newspaper characters, is also for some reason Irish. The total effect is pretty great, if occasionally confusing. Britt occasionally seems like a token American in an Irish radio program.

On top of all that, the villains are nice and evil, even though most of them are white-collar con menwho are trying to score fat civic contracts and such. Oh, and the theme music is 'Flight of the Bumble-Bee.' Whee!

JOHN APPROVED

Review of Either a Benevolent Conspiracy or Fever-Induced Hallucination, By Johnathan

So this is a theory that I came up with on the bus a couple of days ago, while staring at someone's hat. I did have a pretty wicked fever at the time, so bear that in mind.

The hat that I was staring at was a pretty bad fake leopard print. I eventually had to look out the window, which I did just in time to see someone drive by carrying a faux-leopard handbag. My over-heated brain began ticking over: 'There sure is a lot of leopard print in the world,' I thought, 'I wonder if anyone wears real leopard any more, since it looks so tacky.' That's when it hit me: that's why there's so much awful spotted merchandise in the world. It's a vast conspiracy by the manufacturers and consumers of such goods to save the noble leopard from the fur industry! Every pair of stretch pants or set of seat covers adorned with that distinctive pattern acts as another nail in the leopard-fur industry's coffin. What right-minded society maven would want to wear leopard after seeing it stretched across the generous buttocks of the woman who manages her cuticles down at the local Nail Abyss?

Watch out for some sort of faux wolf pelt to become the newest NASCAR enthusiast's accessory, thus vindicating my theories.

JOHN APPROVED

.

ping


PAUL APPROVED

Review of Recession, By Johnathan

So my hair's starting to both creep backward and to thin out a bit. In an effort not to be some loser with long, thinning hair I've shaved it down to 1/4 inch. I'm told that it doesn't look bad, which is fine, but the really good thing about this new hairstyle is the fact that if you rub my head it feels like you're petting a cat.

JOHN APPROVED

Review of Some Web Site, By Johnathan

So two of my friends just became roommates, and upon examining their collective possessions they discovered that they had over twenty different types of tea. Two facts occur: 1) these guys like to drink tea and 2) there will be a lot of peeing in this house. My friends, being who they are, hit upon a third fact: If 20 teas are good and will generate a lot of urine, they said, then over one hundred teas would be awesome - and the collective fluid waste would reach staggering levels. Plumbers might be needed. Being who they are, my friends set out to gather a diverse selection of teas.

Further, it was determined that this tea collection would be even more wondrous if they could somehow share their impressions of the various teas (bagged and loose [like John Peter]) that they ingested. Standards were quickly set: they would report upon the tea's flavour, they would judge its overall quality by stating what they would trade for one kilo of said tea and they would answer the all-important ever-present question: sure it's a good (or a bad) tea, but would you dip your balls in it? The debate still rages on the issue of female reviewers and how they will address this important question.

So it's a blog, there's talk of tea, there's talk of testicles, it's

JOHN APPROVED

Review of Heroic Codes, by Johnathan

Here's a fun and widely-known fact: Superman and Batman don't kill, because Batman saw his parents horribly murdered in front of his eyes and Superman's a good guy about stuff like that. That's why the Joker and Lex Luthor are still running around: Superman and Batman just do not kill.



Oops. Except vampires, apparently. And intelligent machine entities. And monsters, space-dwelling sentient clouds and the occasional alien. Superman and Batman don't kill humans. Which is bullshit. It's the same sort of logic that shows up in fantasy novels all the time, where the hero spends most of the narrative carving up hopelessly outclassed members of supposedly 'evil' races like goblins only to get all moral and hesitant when his (or her, but usually his) opponent is another human, no matter how demonstrably evil. To me it smacks of crypto-racism - I'm sure that if I were still in university I'd be gearing up for an essay that mentions the Other a lot (with maybe a hint of the ol' Male Gaze, just for variety). I mean, *why* do we not kill other people, when you get right down to it? Because they're self-aware entities, just like we are, and if that's enough to save the Joker from your Bat-Wrath then you shouldn't be so damn casual about ripping off those vampire heads, Bruce. And Clark.

NOT APPROVED

Review of Comic Book Weirdness Toward Women, By Johnathan

As some of you might have heard, the traditional comic book is not the most enlightened place when it comes to the 50% plus of our species that has breasts... but not the ones that have man-breasts - those are dudes. Female superheros are thin on the ground, they have lousy costumes, they get murdered and raped and so on and so on (see Living Between Wednesdays for some excellent writing on the subject as it applies to today's comics, by an actual girl who reads comics and is funny). Me, I'm still stuck in the past, so you get to hear about how women got the short end of the stick in the comics of the Sixties and Seventies.

There's a lot to cover here, so let's break it down:

1. Female Characters' Costumes.

Heading into the Seventies, the costumes that the ladies of the comics world were wearing got pretty ridiculous (the guys also had stupid outfits, but that's a tale for another time). A good example comes to us from the Legion of Superheroes, as is so often the case. Let's look at Saturn Girl, who was a tough customer from the get-go, a founding member of the Legion, two times Legion leader and had a decent costume:



As I said: nice. Kind of like the Canadian flag, if Canada was in outer space. Which I assume is the case, a thousand years hence. And look at her unmask that fraudulent Legion applicant! Smart as a whip, I tells ya.

Then, all of a sudden, this happens:



Eep and jeepers. She's got no nose, she's wearing a bathing suit and posing like a porn star. It happened to basically every female member of the Legion (except Phantom Girl - she just got some bellbottoms, bless her). Look, here's Night Girl before:



She's seven feet tall and kicks ass. Even though her powers only work in the darkness she was pretty consistently awesome. After:



Pointlessly skimpy costume, loss of distinctive hair, considerably shorter, etc. The story that this is taken from mostly consists of her getting beaten up by the bad guys over and over until her boyfriend comes to bail her out. Blarg.

2. Career Heroines Not Wanted



This is possibly the worst bit of cheering-up that I've ever seen. "Don't worry your pretty little head. You've lost your duplicate self and you no longer have super powers, but now you can be a devoted wife! Awesome, right?" Getting married was always the cue for super-heroines to retire, though this specific case might have just been a way for the writers to get Duo Damsel out of the way so they could relax and stop trying to find ways to make her power seem useful.

3. This One Panel, Like, Creeps Me Out.



This one's not really a trend, but here seems as good a place as any to bring it up. The panel is from a story where Colossal Boy is dealing with his feelings for Shrinking Violet, who he can't woo because she's in love with Duplicate Boy, who could totally kick his ass. Colossal Boy's doing okay with the urge-controlling, too - right up until this panel, where he gets incredibly creepy. She's your "flower girl", huh? I'm guessing that she put in a request not to be sent on any more missions with him for a while pretty soon after this little uncomfortable moment. Additional creepy element: this is during the period where Colossal Boy's costume didn't really include pants.

4. General Background Misogyny.

Here are a few of my favourite bits of casual contempt:



Mordru kicked Mon-el and Superboy all to hell for a couple of issues, while these three tricked him with about five minutes work. That's not ironic, Mon-el. That's you being a fucking idiot.



I just like this one because Superboy thinks that someone having an ape-man as a counterpart in an alternate reality is *way* more likely than them being a woman.



Female androids are also pretty unlikely. Also: can you really not hit a lady, Superboy, or are you just copping a feel?



Last up, here's Timber Wolf acting like a tool. His teammate just crashed her spaceship and he takes the opportunity to make a joke about women drivers. Ass.

Unsurprisingly, this is all NOT APPROVED. However, there is one upside to all of this: every once in a while it gets turned around. Every time the girls get a leg up the guys are just totally emasculated. Look:



They're very sad, poor things. They've been outclassed by the ladies and have to pout and it's hilarious and

JOHN APPROVED

Review of My Own Actions This Past Sunday, By Johnathan

I'll let the series of small reviews tell the tale:

Having sushi with Brad and Alex: JOHN APPROVED.

Going out for a beer or two afterward: JOHN APPROVED.

Having six or seven beer: NOT APPROVED.

Being drunk until noon the next day: NOT APPROVED.

Having a day off because of this, even if it was mostly spent hung over: JOHN APPROVED.

Breaking the bar's door on the way out: NOT APPROVED.

Making sure that they had my correct phone number so that I could pay for said door: Morally JOHN APPROVED/ Financially NOT APPROVED

Learning on Tuesday that I had called up a friend at midnight Sunday to demand that he build me a 'Laugh-o-Meter' that is capable of determining who could laugh the loudest: NOT APPROVED.

Learning that I was apparently persuasive enough that he is building it: JOHN APPROVED.

Overall: NOT APPROVED

Review of the Super-Human Detritus of the 30th Century, Part 3, By Johnathan

Part three in our series of tributes to the common and/or crappy superteen of the future is devoted to the poor shmoes who had their Mom (or their Mom's robot, at least) sew up a costume and drive them down to Legion HQ but weren't quite distinctive enough to merit their own tale of rejection. Now most of the fine folks pictured here appeared in the same issue as Lester Spiffany and Stormboy (Adventure Comics 301, if you must know) and were a little overshadowed by those two notable gentlemen. In the interest of fairness, here's a who's who of the world of superhuman crowd scenes, presented in the order in which they appeared, with on-the-spot reviews.



First up is a lad that many only know as The Lavender Target, who's feeling a bit nervous - just look at that body language. His cape might be saying "Yes!" but his arms are saying "no." in a very small voice. In honor of his vulnerability:

REVIEW DEFERRED

To the Lavender Target's right, in the green/brown shirt and red/brown pants, is Ask-Me How -I-Recently-Lost-Over-65-Pounds Lad, who was trying to join the Legion in order to promote his diet/exercise book, I'll Tell You How I Lost Over 65 Pounds, Lads. Rejected by the Legion of Superheroes, the Legion of Substitute Heroes, the Wanderers and the Khunds, he regained the weight and found unexpected happiness as a Bouncing Boy impersonator.

JOHN APPROVED

The head to the left belongs to a heroine known as Awesome Girl. Not shown is her costume, which consists solely of a ratty floor-length trench coat. This is because Awesome Girl is the product of a bet between the members of the Legion of Super-Pets, and consists of Beppo the Super Monkey, Krypto the Super Dog and Proty II standing on each other's shoulders. To be fair, they almost made it into the Legion, until a fit of overzealousness caused Proty to claim that Awesome Girl had 'the ability to give birth to monkeys on command.'

NOT APPROVED


Here we have The Bouffant, heroine of Anzac III. A mutant, she was born with a super-tough shell of hair, sufficiently hard to crack plate steel and so dense that nothing could penetrate it, rendering her immune to even the most powerful telepathic abilities. She too almost made it into the Legion, but was forced to leave after breaking Colossal Boy's nose for calling her "a real firecracker," and offering to help her adjust the complimentary flight belt.

JOHN APPROVED

Pictured behind her is You'd Look Great in Powder Blue Kid, who was forcibly removed from the area soon thereafter for using his powers a bit too freely on the other applicants.

NOT APPROVED


Note the poor shmuck in the background of this frame - clearly reveling in his brand-new powder blue jumpsuit.

The other guy's name was Biting Brad, who had a formidably fanged maw, as his chest emblem suggests. Brad is virtually unknown, but was the first applicant to demonstrate the rule that states that anyone whose superheroic name is just their real name with a little bit extra (Porcupine Pete, Radiation Roy, Eye-ful Ethel) will never ever get into the Legion. Biting Brad later became the first person to die of scurvy in almost eight hundred years.

NOT APPROVED


Another shot of The Bouffant, who is a bit of a firecracker, at that.


Note the two guys in the background of this picture - You'd Look Great In Powder Blue Kid has struck again. The Kid later attempted to become a super villain, but his plots only ever really succeeded in boosting the economies of regions that produced blue dyes.


The Lavender Target, who's feeling a bit more comfortable now. Though he was able to eat bullets and shoot them out of his eyes, the Target was rejected by the Legion after he nearly throttled himself when his flared cape got caught on a door knob.

NOT APPROVED


The young man on the left of the second panel is Chet Kord, thirtieth century descendant of the Blue Beetle. Unfortunately, Chet doesn't just use devices instead of innate powers, he uses the same devices that his ancestor did, one thousand years earlier. Not only is he rejected , he is laughed out of the building, and Superboy vows not to believe his umpteen-times great grandfather if he attempts to tell him about any grand conspiracies back in the twenty-first century.

NOT APPROVED

The other lad is The Spelunker, who goes to the bathroom a few minutes after this and is not seen again until years later when the Legion of Substitue Heroes take over the Legion clubhouse. During renovations, Color Kid finds a green-clad skeleton in a particularly twisty bit of ducting and has to go lie down for a while.

NOT APPROVED


More on these two in a minute. Let me just take a second to explain that a) Bouncing Boy has just explained to these youngsters exactly how the hell he got into the Legion and b) yes, that is The Bouffant. It was just a bit chilly and she put on a jacket.

So: The lad in the red and grey is Reg Winthrop, Two-Fisted Seismologist. Reg hoped to get in based on his Metropolis University boxing championship and his ability to guess the severity of an earthquake to within one point on the Richtor Scale, but was swiftly rejected - especially after he tried to prove his might by decking Shrinking Violet.

NOT APPROVED

On the right is Gastrointestinal Discomfort Boy, who followed through on the vow that he makes in this panel. When his power of inflicting painful abdominal cramps on others was deemed unsatisfactory and he was rejected from the Legion, he refused to give up hope and showed up at every subsequent tryout they had. Once he started hanging around outside Matter-Eater Lad's door for hours at a time, the Legionnaires were forced to take out a restraining order. GD Boy can still be found lurking at the edges of the three hundred metre limit imposed by the courts, staring hungrily at Legion HQ.

NOT APPROVED

Well, that's that - those are the people that failed the most.

Review of the Super-Human Detritus of the 30th Century, Part 2, By Johnathan

Next up: Storm Boy!
Before we got down to the nitty-gritty of the events surrounding Storm Boy's application to the Legion, let's take a look at appearance. His hair: square and marine-esque, it probably said someting to the DC audience of the time, but I'm not sure what. This was the early sixties, and I'm not certain at what point the owner of such a haircut would have metamorphosized from an upstanding young man to a complete and utter square. In any case I like his hair, because of its rarity in the comic medium - you're not likely to find it on anyone other than Sergeant Rock... and maybe Captain Atom. I like his glasses even more, and for the same reason: superheros don't wear glasses (Clark Kent et al do not count). And I wear glasses, so. Plus, this thing's set a thousand years in the future! I honestly would have thought that by the year 2962 (or whenever) children would be scanned in the womb and at the first sign of myopia the cloning process would begin. New eyes would be grown in a matter of minutes and installed in utero, and the entire family would henceforth speak of 'Billy's little problem' in hushed tones when he wasn't around. Assuming that my powers of prediction are infallible - and permitting myself a lapse into vulgarity - this guy's eyes must be fucked up!

Moving on, Storm Boy's clothing is a standard 30th Century jumpsuit. For a while I'd thought that he was wearing a glowing jewel around his neck, but I recently realized that that thing is his superhero emblem - he's chosen to represent the awesome powers of the thunderstorm with a little glowy cloud thing. Questionable, but we all just have to remember that the guy's eyes are fucked up.

Enough with the fashion critique. It's time for the nitty-gritty!

Storm Boy lives up to his name and his glowy cloud and calls up a thunderstom. He Impresses Bouncing Boy - looks like the guy's a shoe-in! But wait...

Oops! He was doing it with a little device in his pocket! And that's the number one rule when seeking membership in the Legion of Superheros: you gotta have your own powers. Storm Boy's little remote control is a big no-no, and one that he likely knew about, which is why I ask the question: why'd he do such a bad job of using it? Sticking his hand in his pocket like that. So disappointing, but even if he wasn't a moron and hid it in his boot or something what did he expect to happen? Did he think that he'd do well as a member and that everyone would just laugh it off when they found him out? Listen, Storm Boy, if a Legionnaire loses his or her powers at two o'clock they're out the door with a selection of erased memories by four thirty. They don't even get a party. And that's Sun Boy - you they'd probably hunt for sport.

So anyway:


They get Triplicate Girl to kick him out and think no more of it. And that, if you were wondering, is why they keep Triplicate Girl around.

Some closing thoughts:

1) I sure hope that this wasn't one of those needlessly complicated comic books schemes where, say, Storm Boy's sister has been kidnapped by gangsters and he's not allowed to go to the police but he figures that if he joins the Legion he can trick them into rescuing her. Because they didn't really give him a chance to explain.

2) Did Cosmic Boy give back that storm-making device?

"Hey guys! I got a new power! I'm magnetic and I can make storms!"

Storm Boy is:

NOT APPROVED

Review of a Great Video Game, By Johnathan

Second non comic book-related review in a row! It'll be a quick one, though.

So I started playing a game called Bookworm Adventures yesterday (check it out here). Essentially it's Boggle - you get a selection of letters and have to spell things from them - but with a plot. There's this worm, see, and he's on a quest and fights monsters with greater or lesser ferocity depending on the length of the words that you manage to spell. Attention nerds! It is time to do very well at a video game based solely on the strength of your vocabulary! And Stephen Notley of Bob the Angry Flower fame worked on it in some capacity! Which is I admit only impressive if you're me, but still:

JOHN APPROVED

Addendum: A Mini-Quiche due to popular demand (you know who you are).

Tiny Review of Sussex Golden Ginger Ale, By Johnathan.

It's simply the best ginger ale there is.

JOHN APPROVED

Review of the Picard Song, By Johnathan

So I believe that most everyone but me had already heard the Picard Song before I did today. Nevertheless, I must speak: this is an utterly awesome song.

Thoroughly

JOHN APPROVED

Review of the Super-Human Detritus of the 30th Century, Part 1, By Johnathan

For the last few months I have been reading the exploits of the Legion of Super Heroes, who are as you may know the cream of the crop when it comes to super-powered future-teens. One of the recurring themes of Legion stories were the tryouts, wherein various losers would try to demonstrate their worthiness to join the Legion. Most would screw up horribly and get kicked out, but once in a while someone would qualify, and even more infrequently such an inductee would be something other than a super villain.

Anyway, these tryouts were full of great characters who acted like morons, so I'm writing about them (of course).

First up, appropriately, is the very first applicant at the very first Legion general tryout: Lester Spiffany!

Lester shows up in his very own chauffeured rocket, set to dazzle and amaze:
Now, my two favourite things about this panel: 1) the 'swankiest jewelry establishment' line, which makes me think that the chauffeur used to me a cab driver or something. "Youse want I should take ya to a swanky hotel, mac?" and 2) the use of 'er' which cropped up all over the place in DC during this era, and is the second-most unnatural comic book speech habit of all time (the first being the way that anyone under the age of five in the DC universe used to talk like Tarzan of the Apes. I still have a hard time reading anything featuring Superbaby or Wonder Tot without visibly cringing because of this).

Lester's role in the proceedings quickly emerges: he is there to assure the reader that in the future there will still be douchebags.


Of course the Legionnaires reject his offer of money for membership, as they are honest, upright and incorruptible, as well as funded by the richest man in the galaxy. Showing some genuine class, Lester leaves for his appointment on Mars.

"Gosh, this sure is a swanky planet, boss. And plenty red, too."

JOHN APPROVED

A Few Quick Reviews of Some Recurring Patterns That I've Noticed In the Comics of Yesteryear, By Johnathan

Rather than do four small reviews, I have decided to serve them all up in a single entry, like a delicious platter of tiny foodstuffs. I think that I might call them 'Reviewlets,' or maybe 'Opinion Mini Quiches.' No matter, on with the ridiculousness!

First up:

The Tendency of Male Versions of Female Superheros to Wear the Exact Same Costume as Their Originals (Opinion Mini Quiche):

Take a look at this:
Saturn Girl and Princess Projectra are being manhandled by their male counterparts. I do admit that 'Prince Projectur' doesn't look too bad (though I question his choice of pants), but let's take a closer look at Saturn... Boy? Lad? Male.

He's wearing a bathing suit, folks. The white modesty panels that he's installed on the sides do nothing to disguise the fact that he took this directly out of Saturn Girl's closet. And gender-flipped doppelgangers do this every time - it's like there's a union and they'll either cover dental or the cost of costume tailoring.

NOT APPROVED

Next:

Over-Zealous Recapping (Opinion Mini Quiche):

Check this out:
In just two panels - two poorly, poorly-written panels - they've established the names of the whole Kent family, the names of their erstwhile visitors, how everyone relates to one another, and that Clark Kent (son of Jonathan and Martha [wife to Jonathan {Kent, Father to Clark} and mother to Clark {who is Superboy}, as well as girlhood friend to Lisa {mother to Kathy}] and secretly Superboy [Superboy is Clark {Superboy} Kent]) is actually Superboy. I'm surprised that they didn't squeeze in the origin of Beppo the Super-Monkey, honestly.

Now I understand that the average reader of Superboy comics circa 1970 probably needed this sort of thing - they weren't the media-savvy mental giants that we are today - but really: couldn't they have stretched it out a bit more?

NOT APPROVED

Hup!

Misogyny (Opinion Mini Quiche):

Simply put, Superboy kept the sisters down. Look at this:


So basically, Lana Lang got this alien belt, see, and she could wear it because she had such a slim waist, see, and it made her pretty much the equal of ol' Supes. Only drawback was that the belt functioned using advanced powers of magnetism, and so could only protect Lana from metallic projectiles such as bullets and not, say, rocks. Which is, I admit, a crappy weakness for someone to have. However: I do not see why this logically led to the destruction of the belt. Should someone whose only weakness (quick recap: Superboy's [Clark {Superboy} Kent] weakness is Kryptonite [Irradiated shards of the destroyed planet Krypton, home planet of Beppo the Super-Monkey]) seems to be about as common as sandstone, and who further seems to mention his susceptibility to it in every conversation that he ever has be allowed to take away someone's powers because they themselves have a weakness? Answer: no. Chauvinist pig.

NOT APPROVED

Last one!

Text Boxes With Hands (Opinion Mini Quiche):

I don't know if this was the work of one artist over at DC, or if it was a fad for a while, but text boxes with arms and hands that pointed at each other and so forth were all the rage for a while.

Witness:

Now these guys were totally awesome.

JOHN APPROVED

A Much Better Review of Advertising, By Johnathan

Oh, heavens. I was wrong. When I wrote the advertising review (see below) this is the only ad that I needed. Take a second and read it:

There. See what I mean? It's a much better ad for my purposes - the i Patrol gets called in by the Mayor of their presumably very small town to lead the Hero Parade (which appears to be celebrating the Mayor and his brothers, if those sashes are hereditary), which is ludicrous. The kids get top hats and canes and ride into history in the best parade ever. This is all great stuff, but I just can't concentrate on it, and all because of one man:

Parade Hater Horace.

I love Parade Hater Horace. I love him so much. I love that he tried really hard to have the Hero Parade cancelled, and that he had the conviction to wear that sweater while doing it. I definitely love any villain that shouts 'Foiled again!" when foiled two or more times.

I wish that Parade Hater Horace was part of DC continuity - he could have tangled with the Flash or been a part of Superman's ridiculous Silver Age mythos. He could have gone nuts and joined up with the Luthor/ Brainiac Axis of Evil during Crisis on Infinite Earths and been killed by Oans or shadow monsters or something. Then he'd have been eased back into continuity by the cool writers - the ones who knew that it was a good idea to bring back Superdog but skip Ace the Bat Hound - and killed off and replaced by his nephew (who would have P4R4D3 down one arm and H8T3R down the other and a 'cool' haircut and 'rad' sunglasses) by the uncool writers - the ones who keep doing that kind of shit to every character ever. Then he could have been reimagined sans continuity by John Byrne and re-reimagined by Grant Morrison or someone. We'd have learned how he was abused by a parade when he was a kid or how a parade stole his woman or how the government programmed him to combat parades because of an ancient prophecy that predicted that a parade would someday put out the sun. In the big fight outside of the Gulag in Kingdom Come there'd be some dude in a yellow shirt beating the tar out of one of the Wonder Twins, as lovingly rendered by Alex Ross. And after he found out about the mind wipes he'd have come back deadlier than ever.

hmmm.

Oh, Horace. What might have been.

Entirely,

JOHN APPROVED

Review of Construction Guys Who Hammer What Sounds Like Copper Washtubs Early in the Morning While I'm Still Asleep and Then Don't See the Need to Ham

mer For the Entire Rest of the Day, By Johnathan.


Raurgh!

NOT APPROVED

Review of advertising, By Johnathan

So, as you might have been able to tell by even a casual glance at the rest of my entries in this blog of love and magic, I like the old comics - I find them delicious. One of the things that I love the most about these funnybooks of yore is the advertising - partially because the way that things are advertised has changed so much and partially because no matter how gandiose the claims made or exciting the typeface used, I know in advance how successful the product was, and can snicker to myself on a level totally different from that on which I usually snicker at advertising.


But enough generalities - how about some specific examples, eh Johnathan? (this is what I'm imagining you saying - good job on spelling my name right, by the way.) Very well: here are some advertisements that I have oh-so-tenderly liberated from their original contexts.
(I recommend clicking on the images to get the full impact of their majesty)

First up:
So, putting aside the fact that the cartoon spokescat looks like he's hooked on a mild euphoric (Which is not actually uncommon - I believe that if such characters were real, the stigma of possible drug abuse would hover over their misshapen heads like a life of petty crime haunts the future of every child sitcom star), and putting aside the notion that anyone could have fun playing with those crappy-looking models - let alone acquire a million laughs from each, or from both in tandem - the real eye-catchers for me in this ad were the three young chaps that were oh-so impressed by el Gato's drug-addled ramblings. Let's take a closer look, shall we?
The first of these youngsters, although noseless, might be the only honest one of the bunch - he took AMT's money but he just couldn't bring himself to praise such stupid models, so just went with an expression of polite disbelief. I'll bet that he grew up to be a mildly corrupt cop. The second child, who I'm guessing - due to the same congenital lack of nose - is the first tyke's brother, chooses to focus on the model-building process - with his talents of obfuscation and misdirection, he's probably gone into politics. The third kid... well, putting aside the fact that he's flat-out lying and he knows it: look at that face! You could insert basically any evil thing that you want into that speech balloon and it will look totally natural. "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die." "In exactly thirty minutes the Statue of Liberty will be no more.""Kill all of the kittens." Kid gives me the creeps. Probably lurking in somebody's closet right now.
I include this ad only so that I can point out that a)"It's magically delicious!" is a much better catch phrase than "Tis a charmin' cereal... simply charmin.'" and b) Either this is Lucky the Leprechaun's dad, or ol' Lucky's had a facelift some time in the last thirty-odd years.
It's a bitchin' bike, and not a bad idea, but the four-panel format always left a lot of questions unanswered in the various adventures of the i patrol that've cropped up in my reading over the years. For instance: everyone leaps into action / onto their bicycles in order to find this kid, but the bikes don't really come into the resolution of the adventure, like they would if the kid were trapped in, say, a half-pipe or been kidnapped by someone in a motorized wheelchair. Also: character development. This kid in the sombrero intrigues me - I didn't think that sombreros were big as accessories in the late Sixties, and if I'm right I want to know why this kid's got one on. Is he half Mexican? Was the iversion Corporation so in the know that they were trying to woo the Hispanic segments of the purchasing public decades before anyone else? Sadly, I doubt that we'll ever know.
Hoo boy - this one's a doozy. Setting aside the fact that those kids look kind of like store mannequins brought to hideous life, and setting aside the fact that the text starts rhyming halfway through, we come to the really important question: What the hell?

What the hell was this thing? It looks like somebody read - no, skimmed - a book on mysticism and fortune-telling, and then crammed as much of it as possible into a single creepy package. You got the name, Ka-bala, which is surely not meant to invoke the spirit of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism, as popularized by Madonna), surely. You got Taro(t) cards, you got some faux ouija board stuff with the old Eye of Zohar (which looks a bit like a Magic Eightball, come to think of it) - you've even got several references to the marble being made of crystal, which is probably no mistake. Cripes - I'm surprised that there wasn't a little fold-out table where you could read the entrails of a plastic bird.

Little backgound on the last entry: the Phantom Stranger is this mysterious guy who gets into all of the magical business in the DC Universe. He might be all powerful, and he might be a semi-fallen angel, and he might be a lot of things. Every time that somebody tries to really nail down what the Stranger's really all about, somebody else muddies the water again. He's mysterious. Only three things about him are known for sure: he has a cool name, he has a cool hat, and in this one Hellblazer comic he shows up at John Constantine's birthday party and gets vomited on, which was cool. Anyway, apparently at one point he had a comic book all to himself, and here's the ad: Children! Are you prepared to follow strangers? Phantom strangers? Awesome.

Everything's JOHN APPROVED