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

Review of Unusual Words That I Learned From My Father, Part Two, By Johnathan

Today's Word: Squam.

The tale: So my Dad has two sons, a bad memory, and a fondness for nicknames. While the first two traits when combined lead to myself being referred to as 'Nick' half the time, a liberal addition of the third to our lives somehow solved everything. Fully a third of the time my brother and I are referred to not by our names but by a revolving selection of nicknames such as Worm, Toad, Tadpole, Weasel, Spook, Unscrupulous Creature, etc.* These names were not exclusive to either one of us, although I believe that Nick was/is referred to as Tadpole more frequently, while I am most often Weasel (Indeed, a perhaps-apocryphal family story holds that for a time in my extreme youth I thought that Weasel was my proper name). As well, I, by dint of my greater age, am sometimes given the prefix 'Super', as in Super Toad.

One word always stood out, however. Amongst this veritable zoo of nicknames stood one that basically made no sense: Squam. Though I have been referred to by this title (or it's Super variant) for much of my natural life, I have no idea what it means. I can't bring myself to ask at this late date, though, so I can only hope that my Dad read a lot of HP Lovecraft in his youth, and has simply abbreviated squamous.

Anyway... it has a nice ring to it.

-JOHN APPROVED

*Upon reading this list I feel compelled to note that this was not a Boy Called It kind of situation - these were somehow very affectionate nicknames.

Review of Hipster Erotica: GETTING SCENE by paul

http://www.hipsterotica.com/

Pay attenshions noobs.

Not only do I know about hipstererotica.com I go there, regularly, and I check to see if the guy has made any new posts. I totally didnt see you there. I practically know the guy already. American Pervert, you are so right rofl. Anyways. THis guy is killing me and ->














See you there.

APPROVED

Review of Sudden Unexplained Illness by Paul

I woke up this morning. I was sick. I went back to bed. That got boring fast. I began to trust my ILL -ness, and I tried to do - things - as if there was nothing wrong with me. I ate supper. I went outside. I got some scene at the Grocery Store. Walking back from the grocery store my temperature began to rise and i broke a cool sweat. I saw a number of attractive ladies on that walk. I repressed all of my urges to vomit with the most non-chalant smiles, waves and gestures. Paul the calm consumer guy walking down the street feeling like he was about to vomit but not showing it.

"Sorry, I cant talk now sweet heart. I have got to go get something off my chest." Oh for sure. I came back had a sip of Orange juice then I vomited, cooly, like it was nothing. I had myself A shower. I took some time to prepare a meal replacement. I watched some TV with the guys.

NOT APPROVED

Review of Unusual Words That I Learned From My Father, Part One, by Johnathan

Today's word: Jillyprog.

Some history - This is a logging word, but I'm not too sure whether it's widely used, or confined to Nova Scotia, or peculiar to my family, though my Grandfather did work in a logging camp, so I suspect that someone, somewhere, at some point, has used it before.
In any case, my family burns wood, and all of that wood has to be cut, and so I spent many of my winter weekends throughout high school in the forest, lifting heavy things whilst my father wielded a chainsaw. Now, the normal means by which one cuts down a tree of any size is to cut a notch out of the trunk on the side of the tree that you want to hit the ground, then saw completely through and let gravity do the rest. Occasionally, though, this tried and true method fails, and one is left with a huge piece of wood balancing unsupported on a tree stump, which is not the most ideal situation. To solve this problem, my learned elders would cut a long stick and we would place one end high on the offending trunk, then push mightily on the other, thus bringing low another mighty forest giant. That stick, my friends, is known as a jillyprog.

JOHN APPROVED.

Review of Some Outsider Art, by Johnathan

So my job mostly involves talking on the phone to Southerners (subreview: people who say "Huh?" every time that they can't hear you on the phone and you have to be polite even though you want to hunt them with knives - NOT APPROVED) which leaves me somewhat parched, as you can no doubt imagine. So I drink a lot of water, and as a result go to the bathroom a lot. And in the bathroom that I go to, I've noticed a thing: someone has drawn a little face on the wall in greasy fingerprints. This is fine. However, this greasy little face has been drawn directly above the urinal, which forces me to conclude that it has been drawn using ball sweat.


-NOT APPROVED

Review of What If? By Johnathan

What If?, for those of you who may not be giant nerds, is an on-again, off-again series from Marvel comics, filled with tales of alternate realities and hosted by the cosmic-powered, blue-toga'd Watcher. The Watcher's entire race are bald, emotionally detatched voyeurs in blue togas who observe other civilisations for no discernable reason* and are not adverse to telling easily-illustrated tales of the wonders of the cosmos.

The series filled two major needs: firstly, it had about a hojillion artists, and each of them got to draw the Watcher as he or she had always envisioned him, from concerned alien baby:
To grotesque, horrifying alien baby:
But more than merely a vehicle for the apparantly burning need of all comic book artists to draw their own radical new type of alien baby in a blue toga, What If? allowed comic book writers free reign: as all of the stories were set in alternate dimensions, all bets were off. Mostly, this involved taking some major or minor event in Marvel continuity, putting a new spin on it, and killing off as many characters as logically possible, from a dead Iron Man in a story about the Hulk going nuts, to a pretty cool little yarn where giant snake gods eat literally everyone on earth.
But as cool as it always was to see how Captain Britain was going to get killed off this issue, the really great thing about What If? was when it suddenly veered off at right angles and gave you something like this:
Ghost Rider getting ready to sacrifice Pope John Paul II. I don't even remember why anymore. I'm just glad I saved the picture.

JOHN APPROVED

*Note to any comic book nerds that may read this post: Earth X was a shitty reimagining of the Marvel cosmology, and I choose to ignore it, so there.

Review of big butts, By Johnathan

I cannot lie:

JOHN APPROVED

Review of Comic Book Hilarity, by Johnathan

click it! click it good.

Ok, so as usual I'm starting my review with an image taken from a comic book, and as usual that image has been selected because it made me giggle when I saw it for the first time. Unusually, this panel has not been spirited away from a mid-Sixties comic novel, but rather from an issue of Shade the Changing Man, c. 1993. Now, it's not that contemporary (oh shit, '93 isn't that contemporary anymore, is it? Curse you, Father Time!) comics to not bring the laffs with them when they come to visit, it's just that we've all become so much more aware of our senses of humour since der Sixties. The above panel, featuring Ernest Hemingway clobbering a mutated alien police officer while James Joyce eggs him on, could certainly have occurred in a 1965 issue of Superman, but if it had, it wouldn't have been because someone had realized ahead of time that it'd be hilarious (well, probably not, anyway). It would have just happened. Superman would be dicking around in the past - telling people about the future, getting involved in important events, daring the laws of causality to be true, the usual - and he'd run into Hemingway and Joyce, and there'd be a scrap, because there always was. And that's why it would have been funnier to have found this exact panel in that 1965 Superman: because nobody involved meant for shit like this:

so very funny. They just wanted a picture of Clark Kent wrestling some guy, 'cause it was part of the plot. The result: comic gold. Cheap comic gold. Comic fool's gold. Yeah.

JOHN APPROVED

Wait, what did I just approve of?

Review of Some Guy D357roying the Legend of Zelda, by paul

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5245277851446670151

This guy beat TLOZ in 32 minutes.



APPROVED

Review of owning, by paul

Counterstrike servers create about 10 deaths a minute
(based on myown observations, deaths seen and unseen
but generated by a server so, someone saw the death
or could see the death, it happened, it was a game event.
A servers containing 12 - 16 people, over a varity of levels
maintain an avarage of 9-10 deaths a minute.
Its possible that this could be much higher, but do to the
nature of a win scenario in COunter Strike, being almost a
zero sum game, ie at least one team must lose most
if not all of its members in a loss, it
is rare to see fewer than 9-10 a minute. )

15360 minutes in 16 hours of play a day.

5606400 minutes of css a year which means

56064000 deaths on one server a year. In a year we see:

1207170048000 so thats 1.2 trillion(13 digit number)


1.2 trillion virtual deaths caused by counterstrike alone,
if evryone in the world played Counterstrike
(7 billion) that would mean that
each person gets to kill 172 people... ... ...great

The national debt of the united states is 8.4 trillion dollars

The US natinal debt increases by
1680000000(10 digit) a day

all counterstrike servers known by gamespy generate
3307315200(10 digit) virtual deaths a day,
roughly twice as many virtual deaths to virtual dollars
in fact , if one added all othe online gaming deaths,
the numbers would be quite different they would
be prolly 100 times higher or more.

When I own, I like to keep things in perspective.
When i take on the online charcter f10, I like to
get the message out about just how many virtual deaths
can occur. I don't approve of death, but virtual death
is also wrong.

N07 4PPR0V3D

Review of Superman as husband, by Johnathan.

Granted, this is a dream sequence - Supes' cousin Supergirl is hell-bent on finding der Man of Steel a wife (and incidentally causing untold damage to the space-time continuum and my suspension of disbelief in the process) and so visions of marital servitude are naturally enough dancing in her head.

All that aside, though: Superman is a terrible better half, just terrible. Here are some reasons:

a) Superman is a master roboticist/ virtual demigod, yet poor Mrs. Kent still apparently spends her days puttering around their horribly-decorated split-level bungalow, while her so-called better half has exciting adventures in exotic lands. She apparently has so little to do that she has become the greatest cook in all of creation, when really she should be spending her days in a Martian pleasure-palace, waited on hand and foot by automatons and subjugated supervillians.

b) This alien guy. I've read plenty of Sixties Superman comics, and I gotta say: 75-90% of the time, anyone that the Big Blue befriends turns out to have a heart full of betrayal and a secret stash of kryptonite. If he keeps bringing home every 'friend' that he makes once he's outside the ionosphere, sooner or later ol' wifey's going to get fragged. And her with nary a robot in sight to protect her...
Even assuming that Superman never accidentally brings home his new pal the Predator or something, this is a troubling little scene. Why? Three words: explosive allergic reaction. I get the impression that the Two Space Amigos have just dropped in unannounced, and Super-housefrau has pulled the latest in the endless series of meals that she cooks just to ease the bitter loneliness of her existence off of the stove and served it up. Further, I'm betting that even the Universe's Greatest Cook doesn't constantly have a series of different meals on the go, each tailored to a different alien biochemistry, and that one day an unexpected extraterrestrial dinner guest is going to end up as a thin film spattered liberally throughout the dining room. Come to think of it... maybe it's already happened, and that's why the walls are such a terrible shade of yellow.

NOT APPROVED

As a final aside: at the end of the story, Superman described his ideal bride, and it turned out to be someone just like Supergirl, but not his cousin. Uk.

NOT APPROVED