1) Wonder Woman will continue to have pants (ok that was an easy one given this picture), and annoying people will complain in the mistaken belief that this is actually an important detail to the character (even easier prediction.)

2) Rather than forging a new continuity, the old continuity will be re-emerge in high speed bursts, as creators feel a need to cash in on the already invested creative capital of the past characters, without any of the organic processes that developed this capital over decades.

3) At least one supporting character will change gender for no explainable reason.

4) Someone will die a high profile death in the first year. Someone who was dead will be alive again. (I am hoping it is the Question — sorry Renee.)

5) There will be a new comic bubble for a few months. It will not be as long lived as the one in the 90s, but it will happen none the less, and this time the comics will be worth even less due to digital distribution. None the less, everyone you speak to 10 years from now will tell you, in a hushed whisper, about how they “have a copy of Jim Lee’s Justice League #1 alternate cover in a bag and board. I bet that is worth a lot now, huh?”

6) Any characters removed from continuity will reappear in time, as will old cosutmes. “Classics never age” we will be told by people who have no idea or sense of history.

7) The most drastic changes will happen with characters that are not heavily licensed properties such as Booster Gold and Blue Beetle. Character’s such as Superman will change the least.

8. At least one issue in one comic book will feature a psychic or a magician or a god who grants someone a view of “another universe — one in which Wonder Woman didn’t wear pants, and Batman’s servant Allison was really a man named Alfred.”

9) The rebooted Green Lantern will look a bit like Ryan Reynolds for about 12 issues until the creative team changes.

Don’t expect Green Lantern to be this good.

Comic books officially suck a little bit more now.

Seriously, Superman is a dangerous person to hang around with. He's practically as bad as that "Murder, She Wrote" woman.

“Death, be not Proud, though some have called thee.” No seriously, you have no reason to be proud. To be frank you suck at your job. More people escape your icy grasp than cheat on their taxes.

Its no surprise that we, the readers, have a very jaded outlook on the death of our favorite characters. Just in this last few months, we have seen the ressurection of Batman from an unexpected death, the ressurection of Captain America from an unexpected death, the ressurection of the Barry Allen Flash (because really, we all need more Flashes running around the DC Universe), and lets not forget Max Lord, Hawk, Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, Hawkman, HawkWoman, Osiris, Raven, Kid Eternity (briefly, ironically,) Magik, Jason Todd, Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Captain Boomerang of all people, Professor Zoom, Doug Ramsey, Mockingbird. In fact, it seems like the only person we can count on staying dead is poor dead Bucky….

crap. Ok, Death, if you werent the universe’s nephew you would be so fired by now.

Seriously though, its hard to place any emotional weight behind death in comic books. We know that death is just temporary. Even if the writer himself is planning on leaving the character dead, the next writer that comes along is going to decide that that character was the only character ever worth reading, and contrive a way to bring them back from the dead. Even if we were to receive an editorial mandate, for instance let’s say DC has an event that will supposedly close the revolving door into the dark realms forever, it will probably just end with more people coming back to life. And what happens when the next editor comes along? Death can never be anything more than a plot device in the modern comic book.

So is death an Event? The death and return of Steven Rogers was a spring board for a major shake up of the Marvel Universe (after the major shakeup that was Dark Reign, which only happened because of the Major Shakeup of Skrull Invasion, would would have been a simple three issue storyline in the Avengers if it wasnt for the fact that everyone was still shaken up by the Civil War.) Batman’s return is leading into Batman Incorporated (“Criminals are a cowardly and superstitious lot, fearing the power of franchising and branding.”) I wonder what major shakeups will occur when a member of the FF kicks the bucket. (Didn’t Reed die at least once during the Byrne era?) Undoubtedly, we will have a new person fill in for [insert dead FF-er here.] And we will have a years worth of angst about how [new person] can never really replace [dead person.] And there will be a big funeral issue (probably reminiscent of the one in Identity Crisis.) and a highly emotional scene as Franklin and his sister come to grips with [someone] beging dead.

I am just not interested. I am done. I have nothing left to give. This upcoming story arc, no matter how well written it will be, no matter who dies, or what the implications of that death is, will just be another meaningless event, whose repercussions will last until the current creative team gets bored. I wont be interested until we get a major character’s death, and it happens without fanfare. It receives no mention in Previews, no embargoed cover images, no hints at convention panels, nothing. One minute Rogue is battling it out with Mr. Sinister, and the next she is gone, sacrificing her life heroically to save the world. No one will have pre-ordered multiple copies, because no one will know about it before hand. THere wont be a hundred tie in issues because no on knew about it. They can even hold off publishing for a few months, so nothing in upcoming issue solicitations will spoil it. It will be the antithesis of a marketing campaign, but I can garauntee, it will be the most exciting, most talked about event in comic books to happen in a decade because, just like death in the real world, we wont be expecting
it so soon.

Just please dont ask me how much I paid for it.

This week Fables #98 shipped. Besides being a fantastic story arc, this has the addded benefit for me of being an issue whose cover art I own. I purchased one of the three original pencil illustrations that the cover artist prepared for DC to choose from at San Diego Comic Con this year. It was my most extravagant purchase this year (seems like there is 1 doozy every year.) I love it though.

Anyway, nothing interesting to say about it, just thought I would bring it up in general. Maybe later I will do a post on the subject of comic book art in general as I have had a few thoughts bubbling around in my head, but not right now.

Sign the Petition for Hard Cover Deluxe Editions of the Lucifer Graphic Novels. Let's face it, he is Machiavellian enough to make you do it.

Ever wished that you could just let the Stuffed Shirts, Fat Cats, and Powers that Be know what they are doing wrong. Well, an online petition probably isnt the best way to do that. But we arent very smart, either. Click through to sign our online petition to get Hard Cover Deluxe Editions of the Lucifer Graphic Novels.

And, just to make the bitter despair of waiting go down a bit easier, all the current, floppy Lucifer Trade Paperbacks are on sale for 20% Off. Just thought I would mention that. These ones here were my favorites.

By Mitra, you dogs are staring at my comely thighs!!

One of my all time favorite characters is Red Sonja. I would like to say that I have been a fan since her creation back in the 70s, but in all honesty I didnt get into the character until the mid eighties. By then, she was wearing a blue off the shoulder tunic, thigh high boots, and a wide leather belt (so 80′s, like, fer shure.) So I missed out completely on the whole chainmail bikini thing. Its not that I didnt know it existed, its that it was an incarnation of a previous era foreign to me just like that “Keep on Trucking” picture. So I never really felt any nostalgia for its return.

Fast Forward to the 90s, and the fine folks at Dynamite Entertainment decide to bring her back from the obscurity of the back issues vaults at Marvel (you are doing God’s work gentlemen. Pure and Simple.) Now, the first thing I notice about the first issue, in all its black and white testing-the-waters glory was that the chainmail bikini was back. I immediately flipped to the back of the comic to see if there was an R. Crumb picture that said “Keep On Trucking” while I was at it. Seriously, someone wanted to bring that ludicrous garment back??

And of course, there was the rationale they used, which is the point of today’s tirade. By dressing in a bikini of chainmail she is alternately “distracting her opponents” with her awesome inner thighs, or she is causing her opponents to underestimate her because no one whose breasts clink and jiggle at the same exact time can handle a sword like a man does. This particular rationale has been used and reused over and over again in defense of the costumes that we have placed our heroines in. Just look at Power Girl, or Ghost, or even Wonder Woman.

I have two problems with this argument though. First, it doesnt make sense. If they are making a logical, tactical decision as to what to wear based on the nature of combat, wouldnt they come to the conclusion that any psychological benefit gained by cheesecake is inherantly less than the benefit gained by, I don’t know, protective garments such as actual armor? So what, women can wield a sword, but can’t reason through a problem to a logical conclusion for shit? And can they really think any less of their opponents — men are easily distracted in life or death situations, trailing behind the unthinking blood engorged madness of an erection? My God, how much more Fruedian can we get?!? Its insulting to everyone involved.  The people Sonja fights are stupid horny beasts, Sonja is a man hating bitch that thinks little of them, and you the reader are a moron for buying into that argument.

The second problem I have with the rationalization is that it is anti-thietical to the art form. Comic Books, for the most part, are derivative of pin-up art. Open any comic book drawn by Jim Lee or J. Scott Campbell or Ed Benes, and I can guarantee you that almost any panel where a female appears, you could probably remove them from the comic book setting and paint them on the side of a World War II Fighter Plane and it would still look natural. Does it have to be this way? No. Does Rock and Roll have to have a 4/4 beat? It just does. It’s part of what makes Rock different from Waltzes, and its part of what makes Comic Books different from book illustrations. There is nothing wrong with this. It is simply the nature of the art, and for the most part we all understand and accept that. We don’t need to rationalize it, any more than we need to come up with an explanation of how Superman flies. He’s an f’ing alien, he’s super saturated with Yellow Sunlight, and he can fly. Done. Next.

For the record though, I do have to say that I am still not a fan of the Chainmail bikini.

I have this as a print. I would kill to own the original. Thats not a figure of speech by the way. I would really pop a cap in your ass if I saw you walking alone in an dark alley downtown carrying this. Just saying, is all.....

By the way does anyone else really, really want to cry when they read this?

Professor X is a Jerk

Like most readers of my age group, I grew up in the 80s with a mad crush on Kitty Pryde. At the time, spunky teen heroes like Kitty, the New Mutants, and the Teen Titans resonated with me, though I never really saw the connection. In my mind, there was never any question about whether these child superheroes were even children (specially since they frequently were drawn with better developed bodies than any of the teens I went to school with.)  The fact that they should have been in high school was about as relevant to me as the fact that Kid Flash had red hair.  They lived without parental supervision, they tackled adult bad guys, they never seemed to go to high school, and they never cussed or snuck a quick cigarette in the back yard when the adults werent looking – how much more adult could you get?

Now, 20 years later, its almost cliché that Teen Superheroes die. We readers voted to kill Jason Todd. We made a catch phrase of “Poor Dead Doug.” And the Teen Titans have a long hallway of statues commemorating all the Titans that have died – and oh boy are there a lot of them.  If fact, the current run of Teen Titans started off with a story where an possessed Deathstroke blows off Kid Flash’s knee cap with a shot gun to illustrate the point that kids shouldn’t be allowed to dress up in costume and try to be super heroes.

Today, the news cycle is dominated by Abby Sunderland and her failed attempt to solo pilot a boat around the world. A lot of speculation is being made about the quality of her parents for allowing their 16 year old daughter to undertake such an adventure. Some feel that it was ok because Abby is an accomplished sailor in her own right, and by certain accounts very mature for her age. Others feel her parents actions border on criminally endangering a minor.  I find myself instantly flashing back to those halcyon days of the 80s, and my relief that Kitty wouldn’t be forced to leave the Xmen.

But now I am an adult, and I tend to see the world a bit differently. Maturity is one of those qualities that is impossible to quantify, so we tend to use Age as a replacement since it is so easy to measure and –quantum theories aside – the passage of time is a universal constant. Its not a perfect system, I will admit, but it generally works. But should we forget about Maturity entirelly? As someone who was allowed to drop out of school and forge his own path by his parents, I place a heavy stock on maturity, and I don’t want to see any one else stiffled by the “parental yoke” needlessly. Perhaps we should take maturity into account and in many cases allow our children to follow their dreams, safe in the thought that they will do so in an appropriate manner.

Therefore we have a standard we can use to evaluate all the Abby Sunderland’s in our lives. It is simple and elegant and effective. If a teen aged child wishes to take advantage of their level of maturity to embrace a decision with lifelong, if not life ending consequences, measure that decision against other possible decisions with similar consequences. For instance, if your daughter wants to sail alone around the world, ask yourself if you would trust and respect your daughter’s decision if it conflicted with yours on any of these things we as adults make decisions on:

• Whether or not to have sex, and with whomever they want, possibly even with multiple persons simultaneously or serially, even if those people are of a radiacally different age or race, the same gender, or relatively unknown except in the most superficial way to your child.
• To see a “doctor” and be prescribed the use of medical marijuana.
• To have an abortion or to bear an unwanted child against your better judgement.
•  To move out of the house entirelly and live in a small studio apartment  in a less than favorable neighborhood with other friends whose names you probably don’t know.
• To discontinue school and not pursue any kind of further education, including trade schools and apprenticeships.
• To consume alcohol of any kind desired by the teenager in any quantity they so desire.
• To single handely raise a child.

These are all decisions that we, as adults, have made, though perhaps some of them we gave so little thought to that we never realized we were making the decision. And likewise, in most cases, these are certailny decisions that, though we may not support them, we do not feel that was have a choice but to respect another adult ‘s sovereign right to make these decisions.  And if you cant say that you completely trust your son or daughter to make any of these decisions, maybe you shouldn’t trust them completely on the other decisions either.

And maybe Professor X wasn’t really such a jerk after all.