While I’m sad that Greg Rucka is leaving DC before it happens, they’re keeping artist and author J.H. Williams III around, and his work is phenomenal. It made their run on Detective Comics more art than comic. Which is as it should be.

DC put up the announcement on the DC Universe Blog.

Now. About The Question…

This strikes me as something my brother, Boone, and I would have done. I’m fairly sure at one point I did a silly comic like this about twins with magic powers from the sea and sun with Boone’s uncle, Ryan, when Ryan and I were 13 or so.

Start reading here.

Seriously, it’s sick and wrong and insane and possibly the silliest thing I’ve read in months.

Chapter Nine gets you the Vampire Wizard Ninja Moon Warriors (one of whom is a werewolf).

My hate started with this Vertigo comic from the 90s, about a guy with a bunch of tattoos. It was supposed to be a four part series called Skin Graft: The Adventures of a Tattooed Man. For some reason, the fourth part never showed up at my comic shop and I was never able to find it in any store, anywhere, in the San Diego area. Very upsetting to me at the time, and frustrating to no end, because I couldn’t see how they were going to wrap it all up in one last comic.

Eventually I gave up wondering, moved on, stopped reading quite so many comics, and grew a little in a different way. I still read comics, don’t get me wrong, I love ‘em, but I only buy two right now. Detective Comics (only so long as it stars Batwoman and the Question) and Echo (which I actually only pick up in trade form). It’s perhaps more accurate to say I read one comic (Echo) and follow two DC characters (Batwoman and the Question). Thankfully there’s comiXology, which lets me pick the issues I want, punt ‘em to a pull list, and my wonderful guys at Evil Squirrel hang on to them till I get back again.

But I still hate the unresolved. I hate the end of stories a great deal, because if I liked the book, then I know I’m not ready to say goodbye to the characters just yet. On the other hand, I don’t always like series. Like How Green Was My Valley is a great book, a fun read. Don’t read the sequels. They’re terrible, they retcon and screw up history, and they’re just not worth it. A story should have an ending that makes you feel like the important part of the story is over, the hero journey is complete.

The problem with comics is that there really is never an end and, really, there can’t be for most of them. Some comics, like Terry Moore’s inimitable Strangers In Paradise are epic sagas of heartache and redemption that, in the last minute, come back and end happily. By even SiP, which I love and own the special trade collective omnibus, suffers for the length. Moore, bless his heart, even calls himself on his own crap, and has a character deride the story for being too repetitive, a never ending cycle of love lost, found, and lost again. The wrap up for SiP is almost too neat, but I give Moore credit for coming to an end and not just vanishing.

Too many good comics that I’ve gotten emotionally invested in have done that. Walked off into the sunset without so much as a by your leave, or have an apple. In no particular order … except the ones I miss the most and liked the best are at the bottom, I give you my lost webcomics.

Ice Cream for Breakfast was a funky comic strip by Aimee Smith that followed five roommates and their shenanigans. There were the normal tropes: Gamer girl Xan, Art boy Gatsby, fruit and nut Miranda, virgin boy Simon and Luddite Celene (also a fruit and nut). Most of the plot I remember, outside of generic roommate woes, was Simon being in love with Xan, who had a weird ex-boyfriend. I can’t remember how I found the site but it was a regular read for a while.

One day ICfB went on hiatus. It never came back and now the site is gone.

Life of Riley was another gaming comic that I mostly remember for being about roommates, gaming, and a vampire named Gore, who was Al Gore’s son. It’s weird. I thought the comic vanished, but what it was, actually, was the website got jiggered. I remember a lot of funky things about that comic and I kind of miss it sometimes. Other times not a lot.

Real life, ironically, killed Life of Riley. It happens. You can see the mirror of all the comics at Pyrocam.com -> The Life of Riley Mirror.

Waiting for Bob by Doug Sheppard and Katrin Luessenheide Salyers, was about Sean and Jean (and their friends), two platonic roomies who had a fun life. I remember how I found this one. I was reading the, now defunct, Web Review site, to learn about ASP and ColdFusion web design in 1998 or so, and there this funny side comic called Broken By Design. That linked back to Waiting for Bob. Thankfully I was able to download and save most of Broken By Design, since the whole site is gone, and that was some funny, very topic computer humor that I loved.

Bob went on hiatus in 2002, but the fact that the domain, waitingforbob.com, is still up and running always gives me hope it’ll come back.

Lem … I actually know him. He may not remember it, but at Laura’s wedding, my partner was the wedding singer (a long time ago), and he was the Bride’s Man. I have some photos of us being dinks at Dave and Busters together. Lem would probably be the first to tell you he has the attention span of a gnat. On a good day. Lem had Lethal Doses, which ‘stars’ some mutual friends and, I admit, I wish I lived closer to him so I could finagle my way into his comics. He makes me want to write comics (I can’t draw), but all I’ve ever come up with is Dilbert stuff.

Lem switched horses to Blank It (that’s funnier if you knew the last comic on LD was about trying to get on a damn horse for a year before he put up an ‘end’ comic in 2006). There was a two year lag, between LD and BI, but BI fills that hole in my heart. I still miss LD now and then. And I do agree, the iBook looked like a toilet seat!

Red Sparrow is … Okay, I admit this freely: I adore Jett Atwood. I’ve loved her since she was JG Atwood doing a Xena Parody called Battle On! (which I downloaded in it’s entirety just in case XenaFan goes away!) and in the back of my head, I still call her Jeanette. She’s right to go by Jett, much cooler. She did a parody comic called Frakking Toasters (about Battlestar Galactica), and I understand why she dropped both that and Battle On. Fandom only carries a girl so far. Anyway, Red Sparrow is her superhero comic, and just watching her art improve is worth the price of admission. The story is sweet, funny and tragic all at once.

Red Sparrow went on hiatus in 2006 and came back last year only to stop again this past summer. The art in the ‘new’ stuff is stunning and reminds me why I adore her work. She’s working on ‘real’ stuff (har har) like animation and a graphic novel. You can follow her at T.G. Studios. Jett, pick up Red Sparrow again in your ‘free time’ please!

Originally designed as a promotional piece for DC Comics at the San Diego Comic-Con, this is an oversized poster featuring the Women of the DC Universe. Measuring an impressive 39′ wide x 24′ high, the poster shows Catwoman, Oracle (Barbara Gordon, the original Batgirl), Zatanna, Black Canary, Power Girl, Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Batwoman, Vixen, Poison Ivy, and Harley Quinn (collectively regarded as the REAL power of the DC Universe) in their bridal best, as depicted by acclaimed artist Adam Hughes.

Make your own conclusions. But yes, I snapped up a pick of Batwoman, Wonder Woman and Babs for my rotating header.

I’ll try to explain the background in a non-boring way to you non-comic nerds, but this is fake religious hokum combined with comic books. It’s weird, just go with it or come back next week.

There are three main topics that will help you understand what converged to make me suspect that Scandal could be DCU’s messiah. Her father, herself and the Crime Bible. I’m personally an aficionado of The Question (both Vic Sage and the current Renee Montoya), do my knowledge is skewed that way.

Vandal Savage
The first time we learn about Vandal’s history, we’re told that he was born 50,000 years ago as Vandar Adg, leader of the Bear Tribe. He got hit by radiation from a meteor and became immortal (and super smart). Being a sort of jerk, he decided to take over the world. 50,000 years and he hasn’t done it yet, which is another story. Vandal Savage has been around forever since then, and his past has always seemed a little contradictory. He tells stories about how he either was or killed Julius Caesar, for example. He’s claimed a thousand different aliases over time (Genghis Khan, Vlad the Impaler) and they all sort of tell you what kind of fellow Vandal Savage is. Evil. That’s okay, we’re DC Comics.

In Infinite Crisis, Vandal Savage teamed up with a bunch of other criminals under the aegis of Lex Luthor (who wasn’t actually Lex but Alexander Luthor from another Earth … yeah, anyway, they were Group of Evil Dudes). The Secret Society of Super-Villains attacked another ‘villian’ group called the Secret Six, of which Scandal was a member. Vandal demanded the attack be called off, we don’t know why, and at one point wanted his daughter to bear him an heir. More on that when we talk about Scandal.

Crime Bible
The Crime Bible is a tome that runs in a weird parallel to the Catholic Bible. Please don’t compare it to ‘The Bible’ because I can tell you this: the Crime Bible really doesn’t have a whole lot in common with the Hebrew Bible (aka the ‘Old Testament’) so I don’t feel comfortable implying otherwise. The best I can give you is this: While they never mention Jesus, the God they portray in the DCU is a pastiche of mostly Catholicism and Christianity, with a small dash of the Hebrew ‘Vengeful’ God. Not for good or bad, but there it is. The book centers on Cain (he who killed Abel) and Lillith (who in this world is sort of a lusty whore) and predicts a whole lot of things that end up happening.

The Crime Bible has four ‘Lessons’: Deceit, Lust, Greed and Murder. It’s worshiped by (among others) The Crime Syndicate (13 chapters in Gotham, baby!), the Daughters of Lillith (who use sex) and the Order of the Stone (who are the muscle). As Cain committed the first murder, he’s worshiped as “The First.” Now, this doesn’t mean it’s a book about how to be more evil, it’s more a history and prediction of the end of days.

The Question (Vic Sage) was interested in it, and his protege (Renee Montoya, the current Question) got sucked in when her ex-girlfriend Kate Kane (the current Batwoman) was said to be the ‘Twice Named Daughter of Cain [sic]‘ and her death would herald a new age. Renee saved Kate, taking on the mantle of The Question, and the Order of Stone call her “Faceless” (due to the fact that the Question’s ‘mask’ makes her look like she has no facial features). Since then, there was sort of a schism. Some ‘True Believers’ feel that Kate’s survival means the prophecy was wrong and want to protect her. Others want to corrupt Renee and make her lead the Order of Stone (which involved them teaching her the Four Lessons rather brutally, poor Renee). Technically, Renee is the head of the Order of Stone, but she’s still a good guy so your mileage varies.

There’s more here that could be said, like about the Spectre (God’s Vengeance) and Radiance (God’s Mercy), but all you need to know is that the Crime Bible prophesied that the Faceless (Renee) would use the Spear of Destiny (aka Spear of Longinus) to return Cain to this Earth and bring Apokolips (STILL not a typo) to Earth.

Scandal Savage
Scandal Savage, born of the only mortal woman Vandal Savage ever loved, raised in Brazil without her father’s influence, and yet cognizant of her heritage, is a ‘bad guy.’ She’s not really, she’s more of a ‘grey guy’ in that she’s not exactly evil, but she’s sure not good either. Scandal is a member (and kind of leaderish with Catman) of the Secret Six. She’s also a lesbian, in love with a Fury from Apokolips by the name of Knockout. Scandal’s complicated and not really explained very well. She’s exceptionally gifted, but her only ‘super power’ appears to be the ability to heal very quickly.

There are other descendants of Vandal Savage out there. Roy Harper, the original Speedy (sidekick to the Green Arrow) who is currently using the name Red Arrow, is the great great blah blah blah grandson of Vandal Savage, and he too is freakishly gifted, but has no healing powers. While there’s a possibility that he’s just too far down the line in descendants to get any cool powers, there’s also the possibility that Scandal is special.

Final Crisis
Shortest version ever. Darkseid (who wants Wonder Woman to be his bride), is the ruler of the planet Apokolips (told you it wasn’t a typo). Darkseid used the Anti-Life Equation to control the world and bring about the Fifth World. It went badly and now Apokolips is no more, everything’s messed up and Batman is dead.

This is all tied into the Crime Bible in ways not yet explained. What we know, however, is that Wrack (the de facto leader of the Order of Stone) used the Spear of Destiny to ‘turn’ Vandal Savage into Cain. Since the prophecy was that the Faceless was to turn him into Cain, things didn’t go as planned. Renee became immune to the powers of the spear and used it to ‘fix’ the Specter and save the world from the return of Cain. Vandal Savage/Cain was now ‘unmasked’ and everyone could see the mark which told them not to kill him. He was, once again, an outcast.

Messiah?
That got me thinking. Vandal is Cain (either reborn or he always was, and I can accept either way). Scandal is the Daughter of Cain. In the normal DC Crossover way, clearly you can bring Scandal to Gotham (which is the epicenter of the Crime Bible for some reason) by having her be deemed the Crime Bible’s Messiah. Daughter of the First, and all that. She gets to decide if she wants to keep being kinda evil/mercenary for hire, or go whole hog and be evil evil. Make it even better, Knockout is dead currently. Since, in comics, death is a transitional state, and Scandal has a ‘Get out of Hell’ card which, presumably, can get Knockout out of an Apokolips Hell, the Order of Stone could try and lure Scandal in with the promise of helping her free Knockout. Instead, they actually want to return Apokolips to Earth. Evil ensues.

If you wanted to go all the way with it, you have them try to kill her to cast sin upon all humans (in a play on Jesus’ death removing sin, you see), which then lets Darksied (currently spending time on Earth-51, please don’t ask) bring his havoc back on Earth (which is actually Earth-0, I told you not to ask).

The downside to all this is, of course, the fact that you make a whole lot of religious people pissed off at the perceived mockery surrounding their religions. And to them I point out that these are comics. No insults are, generally, meant, and it’s all a giant game of ‘What if people put their underpants on the outside of their tights and fought evil.’

If you really want to bake your noodle, go read all about the New Gods and the Fourth World. I really have never been a huge fan of Jack Kirby, since he comes up with great epic, messes with everything, concepts than never come into fruition. His New Gods are actually aliens comprised of a mashup of the Greek/Roman Gods, the Norse Gods and the Christians. To me, the idea of the Crime Bible based religions was a little easier to wrap my head around. And any inconsistencies from then to now are easily explained by in-world misunderstandings. After all, if you were Vandal Savage, you’d lie to make yourself cooler. It’s noto like someone’s going to time travel back and question Alexander the Great to find out of you were him or not. If you did go back in time, Vandal would know in the ‘now’, after all.

So my little fanworld imagines a cross-over event called ‘Oh Savage World’, in which Scandal has to either start or stop the end of the world.

Unless of course … she has a sister.

However I will share how Foamy made me feel.

Read this Comic

I was kidnapped by Lesbian Pirates from Outer Space is a real comic.

Commence snickering.

Last year, DC comics ran a series called 52. One issue a week for 52 weeks. They never missed a deadline, though sometimes things were being changed up to the last minute, and the art wasn’t the best I’ve ever seen, but they got it done. 52 took place in it’s own world. While all the main titles skipped ahead a year, 52 covered a year without Batman, Superman or Wonder Woman. There was a World War (which sucked in its execution but was a cool concept), there were characters I’d hated whom I now accepted, though sadly Martian Manhunter fell to ‘most annoying character.’ Still the crux was ‘What do these people do without their idols?’

And it worked. There were rough patched connections, edits that made things confusing, and characterizations that felt wrong until the end. 52 mostly pulled itself off, though making Mister Mind the Big Bag was iffy. I liked it, however, and I re-read it already.

Countdown is this years weekly drama, only it’s different. 52 had its own world, it didn’t exist in any of the main comics and it was secluded. Countdown has it’s finger in every pie and touches every comic. Someone at Wikipedia wanted to make a list of tie-in issues, and I pointed out, they touch about 4-6 other comics in each issue. 52 * 5 = 260. That’s a huge fucking list!

And worse, the intent behind Countdown is that it’s the ‘spine’ of the DC Universe. Sure that sounds cool until you find out you’re reading a damn recap issue of the rest of the DCU! And the fantastically limited linearity of 52, where each issue was 7 days, was tossed in favor of each month of issues being a month of subject time, and not all the cross-over comics do that! Time is broken!

That’s a joke anyone who read 52 will get.

Countdown is a great idea with sucky execution. 52 was a good idea with good execution. Countdown already got dropped from my pull sheet. Sorry, DC, I’ll be picking up Renee Montoya as the Question, and Batwoman when you bring HER back, and Black Adam and the Marvels, who are now cool again and not cheesy, but … You’re already screwing with me over Wonder Woman, and you’re not catching me here!

The first comics I re-read were the ElfQuest, and while the ‘Original Quest’ held up to my memory, the later stuff had me rolling my eyes and gagging on the self-masturbatory workings of the mid 90s.

Sorry, was that too much?

Okay, let me sort it this way. I adored ElfQuest. I really did. I have issue one of their Marvel printings (in crap condition – for sale if you want it) and I have the graphic novel collections up through Kings of the Broken Wheel. The initial story was cool. Elves, actually aliens, crash on Abode (aka the World of Two Moons) and get their ass kicked by the native cavemen. War ensues. Thousands of years pass, and the humans do a stupid thing and burn the forest. Everyone runs, lives change, it’s a whole mess.

It was 1985. You didn’t do stuff like this in main-stream comics back then. Well, you did, but rarely. And here was ElfQuest, with the latent hippie omni-sexuality/free-love mentality that was pretty risque, and holy crap, people died. And they stayed dead. And when you start out with 12 or so ‘heroes’, any death is a kick in the balls.

I loved it. I played ElfQuest with my friends. We had the RPG (I still have it, again, for sale if you want it), hell, I even have the little die-cast metal guys! I went as an elf for Haloween, sword and all. It was a my Thundercats sword, but gimme a break. I was a kid. I met Wendy and Richard and was fan-spanked with adoration for geeks who did it and did it well.

Then I went to high school, and there was this weird thing. Around the time I was in school, ElfQuest changed. It stoped being about this Quest, and this journey, and turned into wankery. If you re-read the ‘original’ quest (from ‘Fire and Flight’ up through the end of them finding the Palace and starting a new home), it holds up really well. You can re-read it and not feel like your missing anything. The story is all inclusive, there’s no big ‘gaps’ that you fill in with flashbacks. They were consise and they told a story well.

Then we have ‘Return to Blue Mountain.’ The Anime Art nailed Wendy, and the ‘look’ of the elves made me recoil. Naked dancing aside, the story felt a little forced and a lot Plot Wagon. In the original quest, you [b]got[/b] that Cutter was a victim of circumstance and had to adapt with the flow or die. That was his ‘thing’ and you were okay with it. When you found out it was all crafted by Two-Edge in his insane machinations, well, it just got cooler. Half-elf and half-troll? Who or what would do that? And that it was the evil Winowill? Again, made sense. That all this evil was the result of a fractured mind.

In this ‘new’ quest, you just have Winowill trying to continue on with her machinations, but you never get a good feel for what it is. She wants Windkin, she wants to make him a pure-blood, and … things get screwed up. You get a hint of ongoing peace to come with the humans, but that’s not what happens. Instead you get the subplot of Strongbow. Now that, again, could have been cool. For the first time ever, an elf has killed an elf, and Strongbow is fucked up.

But that’s not what we had. The Strongbow story is trumped by Rayek (not my favorite character) and Winowill. Who has now become the de facto Elfus Ex Machina. Rayek’s problem was he was too simply constructed. He was a one-note Johnny and he never had depth. His goal was to be ‘first’. Well … okay. Go do that. Be awesome. Be the bomb. Can we ignore you? But no, he has to screw everything up, kidnap Cutter’s family, and then we go into the psychotic world of ‘Fast Forward.’

I hate the fast forward.

I hated the time it put the elves in. They no longer meshed with the world. It was like poor Timmain when she ‘awoke’ at the end of the Original Quest. She was lost. They were too. The only good thing was the art returned to form.

Then there was this thing with multiple artists and the palace breaking and splitting up the elves and … that’s where I stopped.

Oh, I tried to pick it up again. Hell, I even exchanged long emails with Richard Pini about the matter. I liked the new plots, but they didn’t hold up on a re-read. Richard, if you remember, I was kar120c@ucsc.edu, and I had the signature line quoting Joyce’s Ulysses.

I loved talking to the Pini’s and I still hold them in highest regard … but my love and memory is going to stay with the old-school story. This new stuff isn’t for me. It’s too ‘big’ and the scope isn’t what I liked. There are too many alterna-stories, too many ‘Oh and this happened while they were asleep!’ I don’t understand Forevergreen, and I don’t like Jink.

I love Cutter. I love Leetah. I love Redlance (I wanted to BE Redlance as a child). I’d love to see them grow old and die, and be wolfriders. But I don’t want to deal with Waveriders and the palace and extra weird foo magic and the middle ages. That’s not a place for the elves I loved. If we’d jumped ahead and go to ‘new elves in the middle ages!’ I could have handled it. But this wasn’t for me.

Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to re-read Fire and Flight. “It’s just a little [zwoot]!”

What would you suggest, gentle reader? A net?

Clearly I’m a freakin’ psychic!

Kate looks to be a 5’10″ buxom redhead, who is smart, sassy and has a nice ass. She’s a comic book heroine, though, so the ‘nice ass’ is par for the course. While a lot of people are all ‘fucking hell, they’re pandering by giving us a lesbian!’, and others are upset about the Times (NY) calling Kate a ‘lipstick lesbian,’ I’m excited.

First, we have an openly gay, without a doubt from the start, superhero. Yes, DC (and Marvel) have other fairies in the mix (Scandal is recently out), but there hasn’t been a public declaration of they’re here, they’re queer, and their undies are on the outside of their pants before. At least … not that I remember.

As I scanned the pictures of the new Batwoman at Newsarama, I noted a couple things. First, the Alex Ross sketches had her hair kinkier and I thought she’d be Hispanic. She may still be, but she looks like a white chick to me now.

Second, my girl Montoya looks piiiissed off. I think she totally recognizes Kate and is chapped. Heh. I can see the conversation. “Hey, it’s my ex! Renee, how are you? Oh, out of work and alcoholic cause you couldn’t solve the crime of who killed your cop partner, and Daria left ya so you’re having meaningless one night stands? Sucks doesn’t it. Me? I’m good. Wearing Spandex, solving crimes, dating a doctor. Why do you ask?”

And Montoya says punta gringa and there’s a fanboy lesbo smackdown. Or just a lot of glaring.

So yeah, DC may be getting pissed on for pandering, but damn it, I like the pander. Besides, the original Kathy Kane became Batwoman with a freakin’ purse, and Batman was always telling her to go home and have kids. For fucks sake, anything’s better!

Of course, I didn’t like the new Batgirl (Cassandra) so I’m just happy a bat-female is back.