The Cinema File #307: "Justice League: War" Review

In an American animation landscape dominated by CGI, DC's straight to DVD features of the past few years have been a welcome respite of traditionally animated fair that has often met or exceeded the standards of theatrical film. 2012's The Dark Knight Returns made it to my top five favorite movies of the entire year, and still represents both the best Batman film ever made and arguably the best comic book movie in general. Their last film The Flashpoint Paradox didn't quite measure up, but still served as a refreshingly dark elseworld's tale with plenty for both hardcore fans and newbies to love. Unfortunately, just as the Flashpoint comic book gave way to the lackluster New 52, apparently the film has lead to a similar upheaval in this anthology film series, and also just like the comics, they seem to have forgotten what was good about these stories in the first place.

For the uninitiated, the New 52 was a relatively recent re branding of the DC comics universe designed to attract new readers by completely(ish) overhauling several decades worth of canon and restarting the stories of all of their most famous characters. This has happened before, most notably in an event comic called The Crisis On Infinite Earths, and represents a stark contrast from Marvel comics, which has managed to preserve its convoluted continuity by creating alternative lines for this sort of thing. Flashpoint, a story in which the character Flash inadvertently creates a dark parallel timeline, is the last story of the old canon, and the first leading to the new one, and inspired the last DC animated movie before the newest one Justice League: War, which, evidently is the first of what I sincerely hope is not a trend of new movies set exclusively in this new canon. Its not actually as nerdy as it sounds and has more to do with business than narrative, but regardless, this is where we are.

Of course, you don't necessarily need to understand any of this to understand the story of Justice League: War if your only other knowledge base for these characters is the movies and/or the cartoons, and if you do have this background, how you react to the shift in the movie depends on how you reacted to the shift in the comics. Personally, I found it unnecessary and the results, outside of Batman which saw the least change, mostly disappointing. Many will only tell the difference in the costumes, if that, owing to DC's new rule banning short pants which makes Superman and Batman look like they're wearing long underwear instead of speedos. The other differences are a bit more subtle, personality tweaks and an amorphous history in which one can never tell what did and didn't still happen in the past for these characters, and taken together, they're only damning if you actually care about this sort of thing.

But god dammit I do, and because I have so much history with these characters and grew up reading their post-Crisis, pre-New 52 adventures, I can't help but find this new attempt to reboot them all the more insulting. Justice League: War is the story of the Justice League forming for the first time, apparently designed for people who like this stuff enough to seek out this movie, but not enough to watch the Justice League cartoon on Netflix streaming, even though both have many of the same creative people behind them. If you haven't seen the Justice League series, do yourself a favor and do so, because its one of the best animated shows of the last fifty years, and when you're finished, you'll know how completely useless this movie is. The best phrase I can think of to describe it is Unnecessarily Pointless, and I know that's a redundancy, but I think its the only way to hammer home the waste of time I just experienced.

It's not just that its been done before, or even that its been done before and better. The formation of the Justice League in the two hour pilot of their eponymous series is quintessential, executed about as well as is possible, and this "new and improved" version isn't even good enough to be considered passably extraneous. In its attempt to make the same minor tweaks as the New 52 series, adding Cyborg and Shazam and making Superman an immature dick, it makes the same mistakes, but in such a way that seems completely avoidable considering that there's no connection between these movies and no reason for them to establish any of them in the new continuity over the previous one, which is the only purpose this movie serves. If they wanted more visibility for their properties in the new line, why not focus on the ones with characters who haven't previously been regularly featured, like Justice League Dark, Frankenstein Agent Of S.H.A.D.E., or Red Hood And The Outlaws (okay, maybe not that one)?

Naturally, I'm being somewhat rhetorical, because I'm pretty sure I know the reason why, and that it has absolutely nothing to do with the comics, current or otherwise, or which ones may or may not be worthwhile sources for adaptation. Justice League: War is all about setting up Warner Bros. upcoming slate of movies, even though it will likely have been forgotten by the time we actually see any of them. Batman and Superman are in it together, and guess what they do after the announcement of a Batman VS Superman movie? And in line with his shift in personality in the comics, Superman is coincidentally much more like his recent film counterpart, introduced literally as a destructive force crashing haphazardly through buildings, and later killing a villain in cold blood (because that worked out so well in Man Of Steel). Green Lantern has that same douchey Hal Jordan/Kyle Rayner hybrid Ryan Reynolds bullshit attitude from his movie (cause we all loved that, right?), and I don't know what the hell is up with Wonder Woman, except that if this is any sort of preview for her character in the movies, god help us all.

I almost don't want to describe the plot, because outside of a few tweaks, its so rote and predictable that it would be a waste of review space. The villain is Darkseid, because it totally makes sense that the team's greatest and seemingly unstoppable foe would be defeated on the first go round. And SPOILERS: They do it by combining their powers like the fucking Power Rangers, with Superman's Eye Beams and Battarangs pushing him back into his boom tube, because fuck it. Contrast that of course with the way they did it in the last episode of the Justice League series, which echoed Grant Morrison's Rock Of Ages and contains easily the best Superman monologue ever in or out of the comics. Oh, and a romantic relationship between Superman and Wonder Woman is hinted at, just for all those people who know nothing about either of these characters and thus think this makes any fucking sense beyond both of them being really strong. Lois, naturally, is just seen in the background and has no lines and no connection to Superman at all, which I suppose is technically better than her figuring out his identity before he does, but still not what fans actually want!

I know, I shouldn't speak for everyone as if comic book fans are some monolithic group, but honestly I don't know who this version of this story would actually appeal to, unless all you really want is people you vaguely recognize punching things really hard, in which case there are plenty of other, better examples of what you're looking for already out there. Any individual episode of the Justice League series, even down to its worst one, and I mean the fucking Wonder Woman turns into a pig episode, is better than this movie. As much as I complained about Superman: Unbound for retelling a story much more efficiently told in the Superman Animated Series, at least that was a show not as readily available, and it was done in a visually interesting way. Justice League: War isn't even fun to watch, let alone sit through, and even if you like the New 52 over the old stuff for some ungodly reason, there's not enough of it here outside of the little aesthetic details to make this meaningful to you. There is literally no reason whatsoever to watch this movie. Not one.

Why They Don't Let Me Write For Marvel Comics: eXcell

One of my biggest problems with the X-Men franchise, apart from the often far too heavy handed Civil Rights allegory, is that the world created by the premise seems like it should be a lot bigger than it is. There have been hundreds of mutants introduced into the Marvel Universe over the years and a few dozen "X Books" published to contain them, but if you think about the different books in the series, almost all of them branch off of the main story of one school expanding its operations. I always felt that when you are dealing with such a global phenomenon, limiting the scope of it to a single group, even if its a very large and multi-generational one, is a colossal waste of a great idea. I've always wanted to see X books about mutants who've never met and never will meet Professor X or any of the graduates of his school, mutants in another country, or with an entirely different frame of reference. I'm sure they've done it before, but not to the extent that I'd like. That was sort of the idea behind today's pitch for how I'd do a Marvel mutant story, and its called eXcel.

Dropping The Ball – Sick Day Thoughts On The Avengers

Since I started this blog back in October of last year, I've prided myself on updating everyday with current movie reviews and other bits of commentary and creative writing. Today, I am too sick to be verbose, so instead of my normal essay length post, a quick missive. See. I famously hated the crap out of The Avengers movie, a stance no doubt intensified by the universal praise heaped upon the film by comic book fans who wished to defend it so fervently, that my own fandom was called into question because I didn't like it. Anyway, since I was stuck in bed all day, I figured I'd give it another chance, since it was just sitting there on Netflix anyway. I still didn't like it, though admittedly in light of The Dark Knight Rises and Man Of Steel, my opinion has softened a bit. Here are some loose observations I had while re-watching, trying my best to avoid repeating myself from my earlier review:

Why this image? Because fuck you, that's why.

The Cinema File #88: "The Dark Knight Returns" Double Review

I think at this point its impossible to view the latest animated Batman double feature based on Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns without comparing it to the most recent Christopher Nolan film that wrapped up his take on the same character. Without the miniseries that this two part release was based on, it can be argued that the character of Batman would not have had the resurgence in popularity that eventually led to a successful career in movies, nor would any subsequent movies have been quite so committed to the darker, serious tone the latest Batman trilogy is so well known for. At the same time, the themes of The Dark Knight Returns, for the most part expertly realized in these two new films, demonstrate in no uncertain terms everything that is wrong with the Nolan interpretation and practically provides a blueprint for how that series should have played out.

From The Idea Hole: Crypto

Speaking of Bigfoot, I had this idea for a comic book, or possibly an animated series called Crypto a while back, but gave up on it mid-way through after I realized that it was too similar to a number of crytozoologically themed projects already available, including the cartoon The Secret Saturdays and the comics Proof and The Perhapanauts. Like these properties, the series would take as many examples of myths, urban legends, and conspiracy theories as possible and merge them together into a cohesive narrative.

The basic idea was a superhero team of cryptids, including a Sasquatch, secretly working for the government and tasked with protecting creatures like them that are willing to co-exist with humans, and capturing the ones that aren't. The group would be led by The Jersey Devil, an immortal human possessed by an equine demon, an anthropologist who allows his body to become host to the primordial El Chupacabra, a Native American warrioress able to shapeshift into a gigantic weather controlling Thunderbird, and Biggie, a 10 foot tall, six breasted alien princess from a planet of Bigfoots exiled to Earth after a rebellion, similar to the legends surrounding Anastasia Romanov. They would be supervised by the elderly Agent King, who would later be revealed to be a still living Elvis Presley, and on the first mission seen in the series they would recruit their fifth and final member, a British Batman-esque night time crimefighter posing as the long dead cryptid Spring Heeled Jack.

Why They Don't Let Me Write For Marvel Comics: The Four

I had an idea for a comic book themed serial killer thriller a while back, but I never bothered to pursue it after I realized that I couldn't do it with invented superheroes, and would actually need to reference real comic book characters from the Marvel Universe in a very disturbing context in order to make it work. Not wanting to incur the wrath of a copyright infringement lawsuit from Disney, I forgot about it until now, but I figured I might as well throw it out here, as there doesn't seem to be a better place for it.

The Four

It starts out as a standard police procedural, with two seemingly unrelated murder cases brought together by random chance. It would involve characters from the Marvel Universe, but would not be set in the Marvel Universe, but rather in our world. The first victim, a pilot, was buried alive in liquid concrete until it hardened, then carved out into a vaguely humanoid shape. The second victim, a month later, was a drug addicted extreme sports star who was set on fire and thrown off a building. The first case was thought to be a mob hit, the second possibly a wild drug fueled night gone wrong, until one of the cops at the precinct casually refers to the second as "The Human Torch," sparking the first inkling of a connection.

From The Idea Hole: The Literati

Hey, remember that thing where I'm willing to spend an inordinate amount of time working on a project, regardless of whether or not its actually a good idea (and for a more recent example, here)?

So, I'm watching The Raven, the recent period crime thriller starring Edgar Allen Poe as a detective's consultant, and in my review of that film, I mentioned an idea I had during the credits about a way to make the movie better. At the time, I still thought the idea kind of sucked, even if it was still better than that movie, but the more I thought about it, the more awesome it became in my head. Its still probably not good enough to merit actually being produced, except perhaps as an insane mockbuster of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a movie from several years ago that bombed, but its at least good enough for a pitch from the old Idea Hole. So here it is:

The Literati

It's basically the same premise as the Alan Moore comic and subsequent shitty movie, only instead of literary characters, it is the authors who inspired them teaming up as a group of old timey superheroes against a common threat. The set up would either be that the authors involved were inspired to write their classic tales based on real life experiences that also resulted in them gaining superpowers (experiences which they naturally kept secret), or perhaps some were destined to develop superhuman abilities based on the stories they are most well known for. In either case, the plot would focus on H.G. Wells, flying around history in a time machine he stole from Martians piloted by a crew of good natured Beast Men rescued from the Island of Dr. Moreau (as well as an invisible stowaway, the inspiration for The Invisible Man, who seeks revenge on the good scientist for some past slight).

I will now give you a chance to change your underwear.

From The Idea Hole - Yet More Christmas Edition!: Saving Santa

Now that Thanksgiving is over and we're heading into the Christmas part of this never ending Holiday Season, I thought I'd use this opportunity to throw out one more idea for a Christmas themed property, in this case an ongoing comic book series about the tendency  for this particular holiday to come under siege. The following is just every idea that came to mind from the initial premise in the three hours or so I was thinking about it, in no real particular order.

It seems like every other movie about Christmas seems to be about someone needing to save it, whether its Ernest, The Heat Miser, or even Santa's own brother Fred. That, and of course the War on Christmas. You'd think someone would see this pattern and figure out some sort of system for dealing with this shit before it gets to the night of and we're relying on the Hey Vern guy. That's the premise of my series, and it's called -

Saving Santa

In a world where the fate of Christmas is constantly under threat, needing to be saved at the last minute so that Santa's annual sleigh-ride goes off without a hitch, an elite team of Holiday-themed misfit superheroes has been assembled to protect the season by any means necessary.

Suggested Taglines:

Meet The New Soldiers In The War On Christmas

or, alternatively,

Tis The Season, Motherfuckers

The Secret World Of Super Monkeys: Another Pointless Top List Of Pop Culture-y Things

Okay guys, this is going to be a long slog.

I tend to go overboard sometimes when I get an idea in my head. Here's an example. I have a weekly podcast called the Dirty Sons of Pitches, where my friends and I throw out often silly or crazy ideas for movies and tv shows. In episode 11 of the cast, I was trying to think of a way to revive the Star Trek television franchise. Long story short, what started out as a two sentence description for use on a podcast that is otherwise mostly about my penis quickly became a show bible, a seven season arc plan of Straczynskian proportions, and the first ten pages of a pilot script. Now keep in mind, this is a thing that will never, in a million years be produced, and probably won't be read by anyone other than me, and perhaps all of you if I decide to post it here at some point, if only out of a sadomasochistic impulse. Fuck, I've even cast the thing. Michael Ironside plays the captain, a Commadore Decker-esque ticking time bomb, Eliza Dushku plays his sexy archaeologist daughter, and cult actor Doug Jones plays the odd ball break out character ala Data and Odo. The point is, I will often expand completely unnecessary amounts of effort on creative endeavors, knowing full well that they will have no realistic pay off.

I bring all of this up because recently, while perusing Youtube for old TV theme songs from forgotten 70's and 80's shows, I was reminded of another similarly fruitless project I started a few years ago, and wasted far too much time on before ultimately abandoning it. It was my idea for a 90's style superhero show like Street Sharks, Sky Surfers, Mummies Alive, or the Extreme Dinosaurs, which, as if I even need to point this out, was planned despite my having absolutely no access to an animation studio or a network willing to distribute my genius. It was called Agents of C.H.I.M.P., and it followed a group of super hero monkeys (or apes, I've never understood the distinction) who protect the Earth from a group of evil monkeys bent on enslaving mankind. C.H.I.M.P. stood for the Crimefighting Highly Intelligent Monkey Project, though a running gag would have had one of their human allies constantly question whether P.C.H.I.M would be a better name. They are at first led by the Flinger, who uses his natural ability to fling small solid objects as an expert marksman with a backpack full of ceramic bombs, though he is soon captured in battle by their enemies and brainwashed into a villain, replaced as leader by Monkey See, a chimpanzee with the power of adaptive muscle memory, and his tiny transforming robot Capuchin sidekick Helper, who can turn into any weapon on the fly.

The Idiot Box: My Thoughts On Arrow

As I've pointed out before on this blog, I've never really been a huge DC comics fan. At the same time, I've always felt that the one thing DC had over Marvel was a greater degree of freedom in its capacity to adapt their comic properties into other mediums. That's not to say that I think the adaptations of DC properties are better (and obviously it would be hard to argue that with the Marvel Cinematic Universe, except possibly in one case), just that I think the general focus on iconic characters over memorable stories gives DC a wider range of options. While their movies of late outside of the Nolan Batman series have suffered for unrelated reasons owing mostly to the lack of a unifying vision, classic DC characters have flourished on television in a way that even Marvel has yet to be able to do (though we'll see how that changes with Joss Whedon's upcoming S.H.I.E.L.D. series)

When I say they have more options, what I mean is, they have the ability to maintain some sense of credibility with their characters whether they adapt the actual original stories associated with those characters or not. It's why you can do a show like Lois and Clark, re-casting Superman into a kitschy romantic comedy soap opera, and it can still essentially work, while something like the live action Spiderman show from the 70's where he's basically just Spider Cop, doesn't. You can't tell the Spiderman story without, well, telling the stories that we remember and love, but you can do Superman or Batman without ever doing Death of Superman or Knightfall, and as long as you get the characters right, it can be a good show. I think Smallville was sort of the apotheosis of this distinction, seeming to delight in reinventing and some might argue going against the canon of classic DC characters.

And yet, you can't really argue against it. Anytime the show did something that smacked the fans in the face and they wanted to scream betrayal, all you had to do was hold up any Silver Age Superman comic and point to things like Super Ventriloquism, or the issue where Superman becomes a hobo. And if they came back and said that none of that stuff is canon, than you could just remind them that since the new 52, neither is the post-Crisis shit they love. In short, DC's lack of consistency with its history and apparent lack of concern with canon can be an advantage when branching out and trying to target audiences that haven't necessarily read the comics. I thought the character of Doomsday for example was much more interesting in Smallville than he ever was in the comics, and my favorite DC character is The Question despite never reading a comic in which he is featured, solely on the strength of his appearances in Justice League Unlimited. And without the freedom of reinvention, we wouldn't have the Nolan Batman trilogy, or the tragically reimagined Mr. Freeze, or Harley Quinn, both products of the animated series.

And now we have Arrow, the latest live action DC TV show, and the closest thing we have to Smallville's successor. Obviously, given Smallville's epic ten season run, it's too early to say whether Arrow is an adequate replacement, and it would be unfair to try to hold it to that standard. But the question is, is there any reason to think this show has the potential to be what Smallville became - a platform to expand the universe of the central character and explore how other DC heroes and villains might be translated into a new context? We're now three episodes in as of this writing, and while I was initially optimistic based on the pilot, what I'm seeing so far is making me less and less inclined to stick with it.

For those who haven't seen the show and don't know much about the character, he's basically Batman crossed with Robin Hood, a trust fund kid returned to civilization after being lost on a deserted island for five years, where he was forced to learn how to be a bad ass crimefighter in order to survive. Now back home, he's been given a mission from his dead father to clean up the streets by shooting people with a bow and arrow. That's the show's take on it anyway, which is basically consistent with the depiction from season six on of Smallville, though I don't know enough about the character to know what does and doesn't match the comic version (other than the comicbook Green Arrow having a much manlier beard). I know the supporting cast is a lot different in this regard, with his sidekick now his baby sister, his superhero girlfriend now his non-superhero ex-girlfriend, and one of his minor enemies now his best friend, but its the kind of thing that you have to do when adapting something for television, expanding the cast so it's not just one guy brooding to himself in his secret lair.

Any Smallville fan will probably be hesitant to join in on this simply for the fact that its a new, original show, rather than a spin off of the same character from the established franchise, and I have to wonder why they didn't just do that. I can't imagine the actor turned them down, especially considering he's now on another, and I would guess far shittier CW show this season, and if they were going to continue the character anyway, it would seem to be a no-brainer. Maybe it was a budget thing, better to start fresh rather than carry over a ten year production, but ultimately it hurts the show, if only because you can't help but think of the potential of that already vast universe being explored through this character instead of starting from scratch and re-introducing him. And quite frankly, the new actor just isn't nearly as charismatic in the role. He's not terrible, but he's a little wooden, and seems to have trouble shifting back and forth between the fake playboy secret identity and the dark action hero as the show demands him to. He's good in the action scenes, and pulls off the look of a nighttime crimefighter, but the rest leaves much to be desired.

The set up is intriguing enough, with this Green Arrow working from a list of names of all the people who have wronged his city, while flashbacks reveal a more complex history of his time on the island beyond simple survival, and a growing conspiracy emerges concerning the circumstances surrounding the boat crash that put him there, and so far its just enough to keep me interested. The problem is, the week to week stories just aren't nearly as engrossing, and I'm skeptical about how far they can go with it. It seems to me that there are only so many ways you can tell this modern day Robin Hood tale of rich guys getting their comeuppance before you just start repeating yourself. It would be different if, like Smallville's Kryptonite infected supervillains, there was some common theme or source uniting all the villains he's going to be facing each week, but as it stands, I don't see where they're going to go with it.

Also, the Green Arrow's personal story is the only one that is even remotely interesting to me, and even then only slightly. The rest of the cast aren't bad, but they just feel like stock TV characters surrounding a central hero, only there to complicate his life rather than having any independent personality or characterization on their own. The rebellious, drug addicted teenage sister, the bitter but forgiving ex-girlfriend, the grizzled cop out for revenge, all seem like automatic placeholders whose lives I don't care about except to the extent that they relate to the main character. Thomas Merlin's comic relief best friend is at least somewhat charming and isn't as annoying as characters like him tend to be on shows like this, and the growing friendship between Oliver Queen and his bodyguard Dig is somewhat fun to watch, and by the end of episode three shows enough promise to at least bring me back next week, but overall, the ensemble kinda falls flat.

I think there's probably just enough good in this show to justify sticking with it at least until the end of the season, but it will need to establish a more defined path if it is going to retain my interest. I need more of a reason to keep watching than what I'm getting. Going back to the Smallville example one last time, I think this show would benefit greatly from mining the DC universe a bit more than it seems to want to. The death knell for this show will be if our hero is just busting up random rich guys or criminals every week that we have no reason to care about. From what I understand, the creators are establishing their own rule similar to the No Tights, No Flights rule, where they are going to try not to introduce any superpowers or supernatural elements to the show. I'm not sure if this is wise, but regardless, there are a lot of non-powered characters in the DC universe to work with, or characters whose powers can be tweaked to fit a more gritty, realistic tone. I brought up The Question before, and I think he'd be a perfect foil for the Green Arrow in a recurring capacity, for instance. Or if they do decide they want to make his sister his sidekick Speedy, or his girlfriend a non-powered version of Black Canary, fine, just do it sooner rather than later. Don't get bogged down in combating drug smugglers and hit men when you have a wealth of more interesting bad guys and potential allies all ready to choose from.

And stop with the narration already. Every episode starts with this voice over recap of his mission and his dedication to cleaning up the streets and his need to hide his identity and all this other crap that we already know, or will easily learn in the coming episode. Its unnecessary and really cheesy to listen to, setting a tone that distracts from any given episode.

Yeah, I looked for an image of narration in Google.

Anyway, personally, I'm gonna at least give it the rest of this season and decide from there. If you haven't seen it yet, I'm pretty sure the previous episodes are available on Hulu, and it's easy enough to jump in. Not much has happened so far that would get you lost. If you liked Smallville, thought you'd like Smallville, or just enjoy this kind of costumed vigilante story (all you fans of Night Man, I'm talking to you), then I'd suggest at least giving the pilot a chance to see if it meets your threshold for entertainment. Otherwise, probably no reason to bother. There's not much else for the more casual viewer.

This happened twice. Fucking twice!

The Big Blog Book Of The Bailyverse, Part Three: Character Sketches - Featuring Nicki Minaj

(Okay, that's a complete lie. This post has absolutely nothing to do with Nicki Minaj. It's just that my last post about her got twice as many hits as anything else I've ever done, so I thought I'd do a little experiment. Depending on the results, tomorrow you might come here to find that this is now the StupidBlueNickiMinaj blog. Cross your fingers.)

So anyway, it's time for another installment of more abject nonsense from my non-existent comicbook universe! Yay would be the appropriate reaction, in case you were wondering. No theme or context this time, just a few separate character sketches that haven't yet been integrated into the larger plot. Enjoy!

Exo: Basically the closest thing my universe has to an Iron Man-esque superhero, at least in the modern age. The idea is he's Tony Stark without the ingenuity or drive, an overgrown trust fund kid with no real world experience, living off the accomplishments of his leniege. Growing up with obsessivly overprotective parents, he is motivated as much by a pathological need to avoid physical harm as he is by his desire to fight evil. As such, when in battle, he wears not one, but multiple suits of battle armor, climbing into each successive one like a Russian nesting doll.

Survivor Type: Named after my favorite Stephen King short story, I imagine something like the kind of bitter, cynical, sarcastic chain smoking British crank that might headline a Warren Ellis book. His power is a Hyper Adaptive Immune System. Basically he heals fast, though not Wolverine fast, about three times the rate of a normal human, and he can survive most injuries and illnesses that would kill or seriously debilitate the average person. Also, once he survives a specific illness or injury, he becomes completely immune to it. When we first meet him, he will have already broken most of the bones in his body, rendering them now unbreakable, and his skin will be fireproof owing to the first traumatic event that led him to discover his powers, when he was burned severely as a child.

Gun Shy: Inspired by a minor character in one of the later Hitchhiker books, she would be completely immune to gunfire. Whenever a bullet or similar small projectile comes near her, it either swerves, halts, or fails to leave the gun it was in. She would eventually learn that this mystical protection is the result of her being a modern day goddess of ammunition. Bullets literally love her so much that they don't wish to harm her. Originally, when they first realized that their deity was being incarnated into human form, they would want to be closer to her, but they went through three goddesses before they figured out the flaw there. As a result, the one downside to her gift is that she can never fire a gun, as when a bullet gets close to her safely, it refuses to leave her presence.

Penny Black and May Day: A tag team of young adult superheroines, the first named for the first adhesive postage stamp (thank you Wikipedia random article button). She has the power to teleport anywhere in the world, but only by using locations in the minds of other people. Basically, she needs to be sent to her destination by someone else picturing it in their mind. Her best friend and crime fighting partner is May Day, who receives psychic distress signals from people in danger, which she uses in conjunction with Penny's ability to fight crime.

Bellyflop/Paunch: A superhero highlighting my obsession with super fatness. As a larger gentleman myself, I've always thought the idea of fatness as a superpower (as in The Blob and Bouncing Boy) to be an interesting well for storytelling potential. The idea that something that in everyday life could have such a profoundly negative effect on your self esteem could become not only the thing you are most known for, but the thing that places you above the rest of humanity seems frought with dramatic potential. Beginning as Bellyflop, this character would have a sort of semi-hard elastic fat body that he uses to deflect attacks and bounce enemies away (as opposed to The Blob's semi-gelatenous enveloping fat or Bouncing Boy's hyper kinetic fat). Self conscious about his superhero image being associated with his weight, he disappears for a year and gets in shape, but finds himself unable to get rid of the last few pounds of superhuman fat. Now mostly fit, he has one patch of elastic fat that he can redistribute around his body under his skin, now calling himself simply Paunch.

That's it for now. Stay tuned next time for a special Dynamic Duo edition fo this thing you don't care about. Happy Nicki Minaj everyone.

I Am Not A Pod Person!: Joss Whedon's The Avengers and Fan Boy Denial

I love comics. I am a comic book fan.

Oh, and also, I fucking hated The Avengers.

I state these points in this particular order, knowing full well that there will be many people out there who believe the two propositions to be mutually exclusive. How could I love comics and hate this movie? It was the perfect comic book movie, wasn't it? No, it wasn't, and this isn't a difference of opinion. You are wrong for thinking this.

Okay, sorry, I know, that's probably a little harsh. I tend to be sort of militant about movies, which is strange sometimes because on average it doesn't actually take a lot for me to like a movie. So why do I have such ire for The Avengers, a movie that has received almost universal acclaim and that pretty much everyone on the planet has seen and loved to varying degrees? It actually took me a while to figure it out myself, and if you'll indulge me True Believers, I'd like to talk a little bit about that journey, if only to provide some solace to those on a similar path, who like those unfortunate minorities during the reign of the Third Reich, may be unable to speak out in the face of what is rapidly becoming a tyrannical majority.

And yes, what I'm saying is, if you like this movie, you are a Nazi, or at the very least, worse than Hitler. Deal with it people, I didn't make the rules.

First, a few disclaimers. I want to dispel a few things right now, just so we're clear. I'm not just doing this to be contrary or to gain some amorphous feeling of superiority (hipster points!), like I think I'm better than all the people who liked this movie, because I'm right and they're wrong. While in fact I am right, and they are wrong, I do not see this as elevating me above anyone else, and my reasons for believing myself superior to most other people are entirely separate from our relative opinions of this film. Also, I just want to establish that I am not one of those cranky, cynical comic book fans who hates every comic book movie either by nitpicking them to death or demanding absolute faithfulness to the source material. To that point, with the exception of Thor which I felt sort of dragged, I've actually quite enjoyed every Marvel movie that has directly led up to this one. Hell, I even liked Daredevil. Anyway, just wanted to get that out of the way, so that when I get the kneejerk accusations meant to counter my argument without actually addressing it, I can just point to this.

Okay, back on point. In the recent documentary The People Vs. George Lucus, fans of the Star Wars franchise discussed, among other things, their immediate reactions to the original release of Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. Many of them talked about the incredibly high expectations for the film and posited that even if the final product had been good, that there was no way it could have possibly been as good as the ideal movie they had in their heads. Still, others reported having the almost opposite reaction; going in thinking that there was no way this movie could possibly not be great. The idea that it would fail to meet expectations just never occurred to them, to the point that when they saw the movie, they had to assume that there was something they were missing. They would see it again and again, trying to figure out what was wrong, why they weren't feeling the rapturous enthusiasm that they thought they should be feeling. And some even faked it for while, doing everything they could to ignore that little twinge of doubt in the back of their minds pointing out all the various ways that their new best movie could have been, and should have been, so much better.

I bring this up in the context of The Avengers not to cast doubt on the sincerity of those who say they genuinely like the film, but only to point out that, for about a week after seeing it, I found myself in a similar position. Admittedly, my expectations for Avengers were not nearly to the level of what I imagine Star Wars fans felt leading up to Episode 1, if only because my favorite comic book superheroes growing up were the Fantastic Four, so I had already had my childhood dreams crushed many years previously. Still, the build up for this movie was huge, and I can't say that I was immune to the wave of excitement generated by the series up to this point. This movie promised to be the thing we'd all been hoping for since we were kids, and every other movie making up this franchise pulled it off, ending up being at least good if not great, so there was no reason to think that this one, especially being helmed by one of the best writers working today in Joss Whedon, wouldn't be at least as good as everything we've seen before, if not five times better.

And then I saw it, and for a few minutes, I tried to process exactly what I had seen. It felt like I liked it, or at least I wanted to feel like I liked it, but as I heard the cheers of the audience and the gushing praise they were giving it upon leaving the theater, I immediately knew that something was wrong, and I just couldn't quite place it. For the next few days, I looked back on it and tried to figure out what was nagging at me. I thought back to all the things I told myself I liked about it, and then I realized something. I didn't have anything. Sure I had a general feeling of satisfaction, but the more I examined that feeling, the more I realized that there was nothing specific I could point to to justify it, and whenever I tried, a piece of that positive estimation was chipped away. Every scene that I originally used to defend the movie to myself or share in my friends’ enthusiasm suddenly felt hollow, as the obvious flaws finally presented themselves to me, the fog of fan boy enchantment gradually wearing off. Maybe you liked this movie. Given the odds, most likely you do, or at least say you do, and I don't know what your expectations were or what your standards are, but  I can't figure out what you are all seeing that I’m not. This isn't a question of taste or different strokes for different folks. I have tried to find a defense for this movie, and nothing I've heard or come up with so far makes any sense by any objective measure. Every review I read of it sounds like they're talking about a different movie, specifically, the kind of movie they wanted to see, or maybe even expected to see. They are the reviews I gave the movie upon walking out, before my overriding desire to like it crumbled under the weight of its obvious shittiness.

My main objection is simple. Think about the plot of this movie and tell me one part of it that surprised you, even a little bit. Name one twist that you weren't expecting, one plot point that turned out in any way other than the most obvious way it could. Name one turn of events that wasn't completely clichéd and entirely predictable in its conclusion. What did we learn about any of these characters? How did they change or grow throughout the narrative? Don't tell me that I shouldn't expect that from a superhero movie, because we've already seen it. Peter Parker has a recognizable character arc in each Raimi movie, even the shitty third one. These aren't unusual demands for a movie, and they aren't things that we should expect to be ignored because the story happens to be based on a comic book. This is basic, bare minimum stuff here, and this movie has none of it. I keep hearing that this movie was made for fans, by fans, but as a fan, I actually wanted the characters I grew up loving to actually do things that interest me and move the story forward, not just stand there and look cool. Yes, there was a lot of fan service in this movie, but it was of the shallowest kind. The characters fight, team up, smash bad guys, etc, but so what? What does it all amount to? What happens in this movie that should make you interested in seeing another one, except as an excuse to see more fighting and smashing with no amount of depth? Those who have seen the movie are probably immediately thinking of the mid-credit sequence, but as much as it is a legitimately fun few seconds for Marvel fans (again, only in a fan-wanking sense), it leads into my next problem.

The central conflict of this movie follows the adopted Asgardian Loki in his attempt to use the Cosmic Cube (sorry, the Tessaract) to summon an army of aliens to take over the Earth. I think I stayed well within the content revealed in trailers for that, but I apologize if I spoiled anything for anyone. That being said, it would be almost impossible to do that, because if you’ve seen the trailer, you’ve basically seen the movie. Anyway, if you deconstruct that, you have three elements, Loki, the Cube, and the aliens, specifically a race called the Chitauri, and in each case, these factors are basically Macguffins, objects sought after by one character or another that are completely irrelevant except as superficial plot devices. Loki, rather than being a full-fledged villain with a rich history and unique personality, is reduced to a stock maniacal bad guy whose plan is right out of a 50’s sci fi serial: using the great and powerful Whatzits to summon the Monsters from Dimension X. He might as well have been Lex Luther for all it matters to the story. All three of these elements are taken directly from the comics (The Chitauri being an odd example, but I’ll get to it), but the way they are used makes them interchangeable with any other element from the comics. Why not Red Skull (Captain America) using the Infinity Gauntlet to summon the Kree, or M.O.D.O.K. using the Ultimate Nullifier to open the Negative Zone and release the Brood? I know none of those statements make sense if you actually know what any of those things are, but that’s the point. If your fan boy standards are so low that all they need to do is name drop these things with no regard for what they actually are or why they are important, essentially playing Mad Libs with the Marvel Universe, than I would submit that I’m not the lesser comic book fan for calling bullshit on this. And going back to that end credit scene, what about this movie gives you any faith that they will be able to tackle something as complicated and interesting as that character considering the treatment they gave the bad guys in this movie?

When I said before that I’m not the kind of fan who demands absolute faithfulness to the source material, I genuinely mean that. The thing about comic books is, most of the time you’re talking about characters that have been around for years and have far too many incarnations to ever pin down one essential version to be true to. Still, there’s something to be said for staying true to the spirit of what you’re adapting. Sure, Batman has been a cheesy 60’s farce, a gritty Dark Knight, and everything in between, but that doesn’t mean you can change his mission from hunting criminals to fucking stray dogs in dark alleys. There’s a line, one that’s sometimes hard to define, but like obscenity, you know it when you see it. On this score, the Avengers themselves are at least as true to the characters as they were in their respective films (though I still have a problem with Bill Bixby’s Hulk being treated as the starting point for every new interpretation). But again, the villain fails miserably here. I’m not just talking about Loki, who while one-note at least somewhat pays lip service to the comics. My problem is the Chitauri. I mentioned the Fantastic Four movies before, and I don’t know any Marvel fan who can talk about those movies without mentioning one element of the second film that, for many, ruined any goodness the franchise had left. Specifically, it’s the treatment of Galactus, now a shadowy blotch of man-shaped puffy smoke that can be defeated by one of his own Heralds just flying into him really fast. The recent Green Lantern movie did something very similar with Parallax, turning a character crucial to Hal Jordan’s story into a random flying poop monster. Again, I don’t know anyone who loves these books and doesn’t hate these needless changes that are almost always for the worse, made by people who clearly don’t care about the source material they are working from. That being said, I don’t know why more people aren’t more upset about how the Skrulls were treated in The Avengers.

What, you didn’t realize that the Skrulls were even in The Avengers? You’re not alone, almost everyone I mention this to just looks at me like I’m some sort of crazy person. The Chitauri are the Skrulls. No, I don’t just mean that they are like the Skrulls, and that’s actually part of the problem because in the movie they are nothing like them. If you look up Chitauri on Wikipedia, check what page you get redirected to. To be fair, the name is only given to the Skrulls in the Ultimate Universe, but that only makes it worse, because everybody who loves the classic Marvel Universe shits on the Ultimate Universe with a vengeance, and yet they treat this movie like it’s the greatest and most faithful adaptation ever, despite the plot essentially being a much less interesting amalgamation of Ultimates volumes one and two. The Skrulls are one of my favorite bad guys, and to treat their history with such disdain is unforgivable, and to have so many people who claim to be fans of the comics just give the producers a pass on this is inexplicable. How is this any different from Puffy Smoke Galactus, or Poop Monster Parallax, or any of the shit in Spiderman 3? Like Loki, this classic Marvel race is treated as a stock, forgettable enemy that once again might as well have been the Kree or the Brood for all they added to the story. And what of the months of speculation as to who these creatures were, and the consistent denials on the part of the producers that they were using the Skrulls in the movie? Bullshit, apparently. One wonders if they deliberately used the unfamiliar name to shroud the fact that they knew they were pissing all over such a beloved element of the Marvel Universe.

Maybe it was a joke. Maybe it’s one of the many examples of classic Whedon-esque wit and humor that everybody keeps telling me is infused into every moment of this movie. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that there weren’t any funny moments, but it was nothing close to what we know this writer is capable of. Some people are even complaining that the movie was too quippy. Too quippy? Really? Sure, Robert Downey Jr’s Tony Stark was funny as usual, but the rest of the cast maybe had one good line a piece (the one other exception being Bruce Banner and the Hulk). Still, this is the guy who brought us Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and the recent Cabin in the Woods, which, while I didn’t think it quite worked as a horror film, is probably the best comedy in the last decade. His ability to write fast, clever dialogue is second to none, but at every step of the way he holds back, letting whole scenes die by way of clunky exposition. I’ve heard complaints about Whedon’s style before, that he has a cadence that can be annoying and his characters all tend to sound the same, and I’ve even heard people say how much they love this movie for not sounding like a Joss Whedon script. They’re right that it doesn’t, but wrong to suggest that that’s a good thing. It would certainly have been better than what we got. It’s not terrible, and a lot of it is saved by the actors, most of whom do a commendable job with such boring ass material, but given the source, it could have been so much better.

I think that that may be the ultimate sin of this movie. It’s not the worst thing in the world. It’s not even close to the worst Marvel movie, but it could have been so much better. With all the talent involved and money that went into this, to see this as the end result is just incredibly disappointing. Some have argued that the movie just didn’t have time to be as good as it could have been, needing to set up so many characters, but this is crap. There is at least an hour of this movie that is completely superfluous. The final battle scene alone, which is commended by many for simply exceeding the standard set by Michael Bay’s Transformers in that you can tell the characters apart, is just filler after a while. And say what you will about Transformers, I probably enjoyed the good parts of Avengers more and Transformers pissed me off something fierce, but at least I wasn’t nearly as bored with that as I was with this movie. Yes, the giant flying snake monster is cool the first time, but by the fourth one, I can’t find a reason to care anymore. And don’t give me that crap about popcorn movies: that you just have to shut your brain off to enjoy them. Plenty of movies work like that and I don’t fault them for it, but this should not have been that kind of movie. The people making it are too talented and the fans have invested too much time, money, and passion to be expected to settle for it..

And yet they do. For reasons that are beyond me, fans are heaping praise on this movie like the well-meaning parents of a retarded child heralded as a genius for tying his shoes. Yes, it’s not terrible, or even close to the worst Marvel movie. Yes, it’s better than Ghost Rider, but then again so is that YouTube video of the monkey peeing into his own mouth. Yes, it respects the canon enough not to turn Captain America into a Communist and the Hulk into a Teenage Alien Ninja Turtle. But that doesn’t mean it’s good; being slightly better than Michael Bay is not an accomplishment! My friend and editor Nate Zoebl often criticizes me for being too beholden to the opinions of others when forming my own, but most of the time, he mistakes a rhetorical position of using other opinions to frame my own as a causal relationship. Still, in this case, I can’t divorce the fan reaction to this movie from my own. The universal acclaim this movie has received as not just okay or good but great suggests that the world at large, including a huge majority of comic book fans, know something that I don’t. Maybe some of you are like me, just waiting for the haze of hype to fade from your mind before you can accept the blatantly obvious. Maybe some of you actually do genuinely love this movie as much as you say you do, or maybe you’re just not that big into comic books, so the need to capture the spirit of the material isn’t important to you. At the end of the day, I am a comic book fan, but more than that, I am a fan of quality cinema and storytelling. And at the end of the day, The Avengers was not made for fans like me.

Incidentally, if I ever learn how to play an instrument and form a band, it will be named Poop Monster Parallax, and we will win all the gold records.

Excelsior!

Why They Don't Let Me Write For DC Comics: C.A.P.E.S

I'm not a big fan of DC comics. Come to think of it, that probably answers the title of this post, but let's just ignore that for now.

I mentioned in a previous post that I was always more of a Marvel guy because the world that those characters inhabit seems to be more conducive to stories that are more true to life and easier to relate to. For me, DC's heroes were always more archetypal. By the time I got to them, Superman had already become Superman-esque, Batman just another dark brooding gadgeteer. The fact that these characters originated these archetypes, at least in terms of them being the most popular examples, didn't matter to tiny child me. I wanted interesting stories, not just interesting characters, and with DC, the stories always seemed to take a backseat to the glorification of the character and reinforcement of the themes they represented. By contrast, Marvel characters were always inexorably tied to their storylines. Spiderman without the death of Gwen Stacy or the origin of Venom, or even the Clone Saga, would not be as interesting a character.   

I think this is best illustrated in the distinction between Marvel's What If stories and DC's Elseworlds. Whenever DC tells an alternative story, it places the characters into strange new contexts, "Batman as a Vampire or a Mad Scientist, Superman as a Nazi or a Communist," all ways to show the character in a new light to examine what makes them tick. Marvel's What If series takes the approach of re-examining past stories, "What if Gwen Stacy never died, What if Thor turned evil, etc," seeing how their characters would react to shifts in their narrative. One places what the character is about thematically at the forefront, while the other shakes up the connection between the character and their history. In short, it doesn't matter what stories you tell with Superman or Batman as long as you stay true to what they are and what they represent, while a character like Spiderman changes and grows with the story more like a real person.

Or, sometimes he doesn't, or he does, then makes a deal with the fucking devil to reverse all those changes, because fuck it.

While I don't enjoy the comics as much, I do happen to be a fan of the animated adaptations of DC properties. Between the Timm/Dini/McDuffie DC Animated Universe and the ensuing straight to DVD series, DC seems to take the same pride in constructing a cohesive universe for their characters as Marvel has with their cinematic one. One of the movies I wanted to focus on today is Justice League: DOOM. Evidently (i.e. according to Wikipedia) it's based on a storyline called Tower of Babel that centers around the notion that Batman keeps a file on all of his Justice League teammates describing how to take them out in case they go rogue or fall under mind control. When the team's greatest villains get hold of the information, they proceed to use it against them. It's a great idea and allows for a wide range of character exploration for the entire team, especially in terms of showing how much of Batman's psychological and strategic prowess is based on paranoia. The only thing I would do differently is expand on it. Just having one group of bad guys learn about a few heroes is a good start, but what if it went global? Here's my pitch - Batman dies, publicly, and sets off a chain of event that changes the DC universe forever, for everyone.

It starts on a typical night of patrolling for Batman that leads him to a heist in some well publicized place like a society dinner or the opera (somewhere where Bruce Wayne would be instantly recognized). It's not a supervillain, just some punk who gets a lucky shot in, and Batman is killed. The killer runs off and one of the guests immediately rips off Batman's mask, revealing his identity to the world. The police raid the Batcave, arresting Alfred before he has a chance to erase the computer files, and the forensic team finds a file not just on every Justice League member, but on every superhero in the DC universe, including their secret identity if applicable, and a means to take them down. Forces in the government step in. People in positions of power who have always been inclined to want to wield greater control over the superhero community form a special committee to do just that, but unlike Marvel's recent Civil War arc, they don't need the heroes to come out of the closet, and they know all the weaknesses of the ones who refuse to cooperate.

I was toying with a version of this story for my own comicbook universe, but wasn't sure if I wanted to take things that far with it, even though, as I've mentioned before several times, it doesn't actually exist. The organization formed would have a backronym related to superheroes for it's title. I was thinking C.A.P.E.S., something like Crimefighter Alternate Persona Enforcement Strategies (something like that, but less clunky and awful sounding). The massive crossover event would eventually lead to an ongoing story following the agents who monitor superheroes and work to expand on the database as new heroes emerge everyday. Still, I think it could work with DC, especially with the recent storyline upheaval coinciding with the re-launch. Maybe tack this on as a coda to the previous universe, or even continue the previous universe in a new form post identity revelation.

And if it doesn't work out, one of them can just make a deal with the devil and reverse it all, because fuck it.

The Big Blog Book of the Baileyverse, Part Two: Dinosaur Edition!

Like any red-blooded American boy grown up into a red-blooded American man child, I loves me some dinosaurs. I probably grew up in the best possible generation for kick ass dinosaur action. Jurassic Park, Xenozoic Tales, Primal Rage, Super Mario Bros. The Movie, Dinosaurs both suburban and Extreme! Hell, we had such a vast selection of Dinosaur related media, we even had the luxury of hating some of it. Anybody remember Theodore Rex? No? Then congratulations, your ability to block out painful memories is more advanced than mine. So, in honor of the self evident awesomeness of our Prehistoric ancient ones, I've decided to dedicate the second installment of my comicbook universe mosaic to all things giant reptile.

Dinosaurs are probably most relevant to the canon of my universe through The Improbables, a team of teenage superheroes active in the 80's and reformed in the modern era after years of exile to another dimension. The team in its original form was widely considered to be on the lower tier of super groups, often battling goofy oddball villains mostly to provide fodder for the animated kids show based on their exploits. The team included -

Thing Man: A shape shifting Team Leader with the ability to transform into any inanimate object.

Springer: A cyborg with hydraulic spring loaded arms and legs allowing him to leap great distances and attack with immense physical force.

Ellie Mental: Springer's magically powered girlfriend, able to transform into elemental forms resembling the classic four elements (Fire, Water, Earth, and Air)

Mighty Mite: An eight inch tall amazon warrior princess whose super strength is inversely proportional to her size.

Air Bag: A synthetic humanoid with a hollow elastic body that he can manipulate by altering the flow of air through himself.

And most important to this topic - Thesaurus Rex: a Tyrannosaurus from a parallel reality dominated by dinosaurs, with average human level intelligence but an above average vocabulary.

The team would face their greatest challenge when the orphaned Thesaurus Rex would learn that his presence in this dimension resulted in a portal being kept open to his home world, allowing the despotic ruler of DinoEarth, Tyrantasaurus, to mount an invasion. In order to stop him and send him back, the team banded together to close the portal, but instead found themselves trapped on the other side, leaving Thing Man and Air Bag behind, the former trapped unconscious in object form as a cymbal clanging monkey, and the latter lost and alone without his teammates.

Many years later, the team would find their way back, hardened by their experiences on DinoEarth and molded into bad ass adult superheroes, rejoining a bitter and cynical Air Bag and a half insane re-humanized Thing Man. That would be the plan for the ongoing series anyway, starting in the present with their return, then telling the rest of the story in flashback.

Apart from the main storyline of the Improbables, the other dinosaurs are generally either solo characters or part of other teams. A brief overview in no particular order:

Prof. E. Saurus:  A super scientist who spliced his own DNA with multiple dinosaur breeds. A founding member of the Conquerors' Club, a sort of Algonquin Round Table for sophisticate supervillains, resembling a Velociraptor with a human head.

Technosaurus and Dinoboy: A tag team comprised of a human teenage prodigy and a mad scientist refugee from DinoEarth, their minds switched into each others' bodies. Now an excitable human kid inside a cybernetic T-Rex body, and a callous reptilian genius inside the body of a boy, his teeth now filed to points, together they fight crime awesomely.

Dr. Dactyl and his Pteromen: A super intelligent supervillain and rival of Prof. E. Saurus who attempted to replicate his gene splicing process on his own body, giving him the head of a Pterodactyl, but without the wings that make that creature relevant or interesting. He now toils secretly to build a race of Pteromen, mindless mutant servants with Pterodactyl bodies and human heads

Dino-mite and Dyna-mite: A tag team duo comprised of a heroic Velociraptor munitions expert with a suit stacked with explosives, and his best friend Dyna-mite, Mighty Mite's magic wielding sister able to fly and turn her body into a living grenade.

Killasaurus: A genetic hybrid of the most violent prehistoric creatures who ever existed, a fictional character in a comicbook universe within the comicbook universe brought to life along with the rest of his team,  S.P.I.K.E (The Syndicate of Psychotically Insane Killer Elites).

Tyrannosaurus Hex: A resurrected T-Rex skeleton with dark magical powers, currently enrolled in the Arcane Underground, a secret school set up to train the next generation of magic wielding superheroes.

And finally, Abrasaurus Lincoln: Ancillary member of the Lincoln League, a group of super heroic Abraham Lincolns collected from various parallel Earths, all either surviving or being rescued from their assassinations, in this case, the bearded brontosaurus 16th president of DinoEarth.

I also have this note for some character named Dr. Super Dinosaur, but I don't have any other descriptions or character connections associating the name with anything. I imagine I probably just liked the name, but decided I already had too many dinosaur mad scientists in my universe to add another one. That fact in itself is kind of illustrative of how insane this whole project is.

Anyway, see you next time.

Why They Don't Let Me Write For Marvel Comics: My Pitch For Smoke Screen - The Series.

So, I have this comicbook universe I've been toying with. It's original as far as it goes, but in many ways its inspired by and similar to the big two DC and Marvel notions of what a world with superheroes would be like, with many characters serving as fairly obvious pastiches of established ones. For instance, the cosmically powered villain Universalon is a pretty straight forward parody of Galactus, who rather than consuming the energy from habitable worlds to sustain his life, fucks them to death to satiate his endless, godlike sex drive. Basically the same thing. My point is, the weird pseudo-autistic obsession that has led me to spend hours and hours building an entirely fake canon of comics lore did not come about in a vacuum

I started reading comicbooks basically through inheritance, picking up my dad's collection that he'd been slowly amassing since he was a kid. I credit his focus on early Marvel with establishing the brand loyalty I now have for the company, avoiding DC mostly because my initial introduction to them was the Silver Age nonsense of multicolor kryptonite and the sort of wacky bat adventures that would eventually inspire the campy sixties Adam West series. To me, Marvel was always the more serious, harder edged material, existing somewhere that seemed much closer to the real world I could relate to. And out of all the Marvel superheroes, the one I invested the most into personally was always Spiderman.

It's probably a cliche, a nerdy introverted kid having a preference for the prototypical nerdy introverted superhero, but fuck you, it's my childhood. And it's not just my childhood either. A lot of kids like me grew up identifying with the character for a lot of the same reasons I did, apparently including the actor currently playing him in the most recent reboot. And it seems like every like minded Spiderman fan close to my age that I run into always seems to remember one specific (non-canon) issue, designed to exploit our collective desire to emulate our hero, which is the topic of today's entry, a PSA comic called: Spiderman, Storm, and Power Man Battle Smokescreen.

I have to think we got this in school at some point, but my memories from that far back are muddled, ironically enough to save space so I can remember all the shit from the comics I read. It's basically an anti-smoking comic, even though the main villain Smoke Screen turns out to be more interested in gambling than smoking, and the simple story follows Spiderman teaming up with two heroes I didn't care about then and still don't care about to take on this new bad guy and his devious power to emit second hand smoke, which I guess can kind of stink up the place, and eventually cause adverse health effects after years of exposure, and also can pretty much be done by anyone just by, you know, smoking. So watch out I guess? I'm not going to do any sort of in-depth review of the comic itself, which would only be snarky and self indulgent. Instead, I thought I would do something even more snarky and self-indulgent and pitch my own idea for how to bring this weirdly classic story into Marvel canon, and start a new series in the process.

It would just be called Smoke Screen, and it would start in Hollywood, where it's revealed that the PSA story we know exists in the Marvel universe as a work of fiction, specifically as a classically bad After School Special starring actors portraying Spiderman, Storm, and Luke Cage spouting corny lines like a GI Joe postscript, which has since garnered a cult following among irony obsessed hipsters a la The Star Wars Christmas Special. We open in a laboratory of a man building a mysterious device that he claims will open a portal into another dimension, completely ignoring the rerun of the Smokescreen movie on TV. His experiment seems to fail, but he does not notice the signal from the TV causing the portal to react strangely.

Cut to a few years later, and we focus on the cast of the Smokescreen special, now having moved on in their careers, though with little success. The actors who played Storm and Luke Cage met on the production and eventually married, and now do mostly commercial work, while the actor who played Spiderman now makes his living as a professional Spiderman impersonator. The actor who played Smoke Screen has passed on, dying from lung cancer due to an actual lifetime of smoking, but we see that he has left behind a twenty something adult daughter who is trying to make her way in the movie business, now working as a PA on film sets.

Gradually, we begin to feel the effects of an alien presence as four strange spectral entities stalk the streets, invisible to the human eye, looking for specific people, while a dark hooded figure sees them off. They find the Spiderman impersonator first, and one of the creatures enters his body, causing him to double over in pain in his dressing room. Two more of the creatures enter the bodies of the married Storm and Cage while they sleep, and the last goes to a grave site, leaving in frustration. The next morning. Cage wakes up and goes to the bathroom to find his skin is melting off as he shaves, revealing a hard dark shell underneath. Frightened, he runs out to find his wife encased in a block of ice. He pounds on the ice, causing more skin to slush off of his arms, and suddenly the body in the ice burns hot and it begins to melt. Before he can react, a blast of flame pushes him back, burning off the rest of his skin to reveal a rocky creature, as his wife stands before him, scared and bursting with uncontrollable elemental energy from within her body. We end with Spiderman in the dressing room, climbing out the window, a six armed, half human, half arachnid monster crawling up the outside wall.

Cut to the original Smokescreen's daughter on a film set. She goes to the bathroom and is instantly attacked by the creature. She feels sick, and begins to cough up large amounts of thick smoke, ultimately setting off the smoke detectors. The film crew flees as the sprinklers go off, and as she tries to calm them down, the dark hooded man grabs her and she is instantly ported to another dimension. She awakes to find herself standing on a pedestal, the three other mutants standing next to her, as a group of hooded figures bow reverently to them. Their leader reveals that this world received the broadcast of their movie, and Galaxy Quest style believes it to be a historical account. Seeing that their heroes had evidently lost their powers, they did their best to approximate them using their own genetic science, and brought the closest DNA match to the dead Smokescreen as well in the hopes that they would all set aside their differences and help the aliens fight an invasion of extra dimensional monsters plaguing their world. With no other way to get home or find a cure, the group agrees to fight for them.

The first story would follow the team's battle with the alien menace, which is revealed to be a parasitic race that takes over your mind, and that manages to transform everyone but Smokescreen into bad guys. Eventually she is able to figure out a way to use the bad guys' dimension vortex to get home, but she can't help but bring along the aliens and her former team mates turned monsters, who would become recurring villains in what would turn into her solo series. As she learns to use her powers, she would develop the ability to turn into living smoke, and addict people to her presence by making them inhale her in gaseous form.

That's all I got, but I think in the current market of superhero movies, it's enough for a three picture deal. If they're gonna give Guardians of the Galaxy a shot, then fuck, why not this?

The Big Blog Book of the Baileyverse, Part One: The Big League

So I have this thing. Okay, it's not so much a thing as it is a massive, complex, interweaving model for an original comic book universe encompassing multiple titles, characters. settings and events falling along a central timeline, broken up into several different ages roughly corresponding to the last eight decades of real world history. When I say this, what may initially sound like an impressive claim is somewhat hampered by the fact that none of the ideas making up this fictional universe have ever actually been put to paper, let alone published, and currently exist only inside my head, and a rather lengthy Wordpad document on my computer. The shorter version of all this is that I have nothing, which is to say that I have not accomplished anything in my life, leaving me a sad, bitter blogger of broken dreams.

But that's really depressing, so I'm saying I have a comic book universe.

Since my artistic abilities are limited and I have no other outlet available for expressing this aspect of myself to the rest of the world, I thought I would introduce a regular segment on my new blog to distilling some of the weirder ideas and presenting them here in simple text form, which is, you know, probably just as good. Rather than do the logical thing and start from the beginning, I've deciding to publish these articles at random, filling in the context as I go, so as to create the effect of an elaborate mosaic filling itself out over time, until finally, when complete, you can step back and see the vast final project, breathe in the glory of it all, and then wonder why you wasted any time on this bullshit in the first place. Of course by then I will have made my way to Mexico with the money.

First Up: A superhero team of giant monsters controlled by a cadre of superheroes and reformed supervillains, who are themselves controlled by the government. Collectively, they are called The Big League.

To talk about The Big League, I first have to talk about another, similar team of giant characters called The Next Big Thing that immediately preceded them, but in order to talk about that team, I need to talk about yet another team, The Mighty Men West Coast. Coincidentally, in order to talk about them, I do not really need to go into The New Mighty Men, their east coast based sister team, or the original Mighty Men, for which The New Mighty Men are a second incarnation, so assuming you haven't already wisely stopped reading at this point, you'll have to wait to hear about them some other time.

The relevant thing about The Mighty Men West Coast is that, based in Hollywood, they would become known more for celebrity gossip and tabloid scandal than any actual crimefighting. A few examples.

-The Fraction, a hero capable of splitting himself into increasingly smaller duplicate halves, would find himself caught in what the press would describe as a massive midget orgy of himself.

-The cybernetic super-scientist Extendoclops discovers that his daughter is developing a spontaneous supernatural ability to disrupt technology (later growing up to be the teenage superheroine known as Glitch). This forces the two apart, as her power uncontrolled could kill him, but it also reveals that she is not in fact his biological daughter, but rather the product of an illicit affair between his wife and his arch-nemisis, Major Malfunction, who bears a similar ability. Extendoclops would go on to very publicly beat Major Malfunction to within an inch of his life, then "save his life" by fitting him with cybernetic attachments that put his health at risk every time he uses his powers. 

-Battle Beard and War Chest, two time displaced Vikings who operate complex weapons platforms inside high-tech armored suits using thier manly beard and ample bosom respectively, would often be found proudly engaging in bizarre exhibitionist sex in public places, citing ancient tradition and a lack of understanding of modern Puritanical attitudes.

The important example is Vertical Man, a giant superhero, and his wife The Little Woman, a microscopic superheroine. Their marriage was seen as the lone positive moral example in the group, until The Little Woman was found to be cheating on her husband with Guynormus, a similarly giant hero who happened to be a few inches taller than Vertical Man in giant form. The very public reveal of their relationship would push Vertical Man over the edge. He would go on the bender to end all benders, drinking an entire Budweiser plant, and end his night of drunken stupidity by masturbating publicly to a sexy billboard ad in full view of a suburban neighborhood.

The resulting flood would cause, among other very unfortunate things, several unintended pregnancies. Nine months later, a new generation of giant heroes was born, recruited by the government years later as a teenage fighting force called The Next Big Thing. They would be tasked with protecting the Earth from giant monsters and other large scale threats, operating for several years before being summarily killed by a race of giant alien insects called The Hierarchy. 

The standard operating procedure of The Next Big Thing was to capture their targets rather than kill them, so that their physiology could be studied. This resulted in a backlog of giant monsters being kept sedated or otherwise trapped in a massive underground installation called The Pen. With the death of The Next Big Thing, the government would turn to their collection, beginning a project to try and control the beasts they had captured and use them as living weapons against continued monstrous incursions.

The project would eventually recruit a team of super beings, some current and former heroes, others relatively non-violent villains offered the chance at a reduced sentence for their crimes, all of whom possessing powers that would allow them to control one of the creatures, riding them into battle like living mechs.

The team would consist of six pairs, three heroes and three villains, all of whom would have appeared prior to this in different titles, being brought together as part of a crossover. The team roster includes:

Dragonface, a human with an ancient magical mask forcibly bonded to his face containing an infinitely long Chinese dragon that bursts out and is compelled to do his bidding. The dragon itself is a thinly veiled parody of the Marvel villain Fing Fang Foom, called Wam Bam Thankumam, who would much rather be destroying cities, but reluctantly protects them due to the curse trapping him inside the mask.

Psilopsycho, a mutant supervillainess able to secrete hallucinogenic vapor from her pours, rendering her akin to a walking magic mushroom, is able to use her pheromones to control the actions of an actual giant magic mushroom, the massive mycan Hufungus.

Hodgepodge, a spectral superhero who constructs a physical body using whatever inanimate objects are nearby wherever he chooses to manifest himself, uses the same ability to control The Wad, a massive inanimate object golem that grows by collecting things it walks through, like a giant bipedal version of the Katamari Damacy ball.

Biomaster, an arrogant though often ineffectual former supervillain able to control biological material with his mind. He uses this power to command Orga the Man Monster, a golem that grows in a manner similar to The Wad, except using living beings (in most cases, people) instead of inanimate objects.

Wildside, a superheroine able to merge her consciousness with animals, would control Enormouse! (always spelled with an exclamation point), a giant laboratory mouse, often considered the lamest giant monster ever to threaten the Earth.

And finally Grand Guignol, a sadistic supervillain who becomes more powerful through his exposure to blood, would find a sense of communion with Goremungus, a giant liquid lifeform composed entirely of sentient blood.

The team would be led by Haywire, a hero whose body contains a seemingly infinite mass of metal wiring that can be expelled and controlled like tendrils, who is his own giant monster, struggling with a Hulk-esque alter ego when his powers go out of control, turning him into the giant wireframe monster High Wire.

The team would fight mainly against The Hierarchy, and through them uncover a pattern in which giant monsters are being sent to Earth to attempt to conquer the planet as part of a contest between competing alien empires, a game in which the Hierarchy are the referees. 

That's all I've got so far. It's long, drawn out, incredibly esoteric, and considering none of it has actually happened, and will most likely never happen, very, very self indulgent. But there you go.

I feel like I've just been through a fake comics enema. Have fun with that image.

Anyway, enjoy, and stay tuned for more!