Waiting for the Trade

That's what they call declining to buy monthly comics, often referred to as "floppies" these days, in favor of purchasing trade paperback compilations, usually of about six issues. Indeed, there is also a phenomena of "writing for the trade", in which comic book stories are written to fit neatly into those trades. Many have commented on the fact that this distorts the pace of the superhero comic and removes one of the sequential story elements, that of planting little subplots during ongoing stories that lead into later issues. Subplots don't fit neatly into the trade, which naturally works best as a single story.

I've mentioned that my life-long love of mainstream comic book narrative in Marvel and DC comics has lately been on the wane. There are many reasons for it; distress at the lack of stories I want to read; the frustrating knowledge that a lot of my old favorite artists and writers are still out there but can't get work; the irritating worship of movie and television-style storytelling and disdain for the art of the sequential graphic novel (if you will). I also have some personal issues, such as the great difficulty of storing and organizing what is now a very large collection of individual issues. Trades of the better material that will sit neatly on a bookshelf seem increasingly appealing, and if I'm going to buy them anyway, why buy the individual issues? The trades are cheaper and more convenient.

I speak, of course, as a reader, not a collector. There are some comics I want to keep because I deliberately collect them, naturally.

Tonight, I found, at a Barnes & Noble that has a large used section, two older trades: Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D and Spider-Girl.

Nick Fury started life as Sgt. Fury of Sgt. Fury and the Howlin' Commandos, a fun 60s World War II strip sometimes drawn by Jack Kirby but usually by Dick Ayers. The strip lasted 121 issues but with many reprints in the later years. In the late 60s, during the great spy fiction craze that the James Bond movies started, Marvel had Sgt. Fury promoted to colonel and taking over a super-secret agency called the Supreme Headquarters International Espionage Law-Enforcement Division: SHIELD. Fury took over the half-sized strip in Strange Tales from the Human Torch, sharing space with Doctor Strange until the strip ended in 1967 and split into two separate books, Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD and Doctor Strange.

Neither strip lasted long, but in the later Strange Tales issues, something wonderful happened to the lively and entertaining Agent of SHIELD strip. A young man named Jim Steranko was hired, first to finish Jack Kirby's layouts, then to draw it himself. Eleven pages a month was about Steranko's pace; he began to stutter on output when the strip expanded, and never produced more than four complete issues out of the 18 before cancellation.

Steranko was quite a character. Movie star handsome and a good self-promoter, he was the one of the first great prima donnas of the comic book artists, along with Neal Adams. The pair of them revolutionized what comics looked like with unmistakably individualized and stylized pencils. Much imitated, you can tell the authentic Steranko or Adams just as much as you can sort out Jack Kirby from his many imitators. (Not that some of the imitators aren't good; Ron Frenz does a Kirby so passable that he's been used to finish missing pencils for one Kirby story that got mangled by a strange edit job back in the early 70s; Paul Gulacy started out as a Steranko imitator and developed his own similar but distinct style; no one has ever done a really decent Adams, though.)

Unfortunately, Jim Steranko and Neal Adams had something else in common - not only did they not produce as fast as the other greats, Kirby, John Buscema, John Romita, Steve Ditko - they also stopped producing work at the height of their powers and went into semi-retirement... as comic pencillers, anyway. Steranko produced a movie magazine; Adams became active as a promoter of creator's rights. Immaterial, I guess. They're legends.

The SHIELD strip went at a breakneck pace, one wild idea and exciting adventure after another. Not great writing; Steranko took over as writer almost right away, but the stories border on incoherence. I'm sure no one cared: this stuff is gorgeous.

The compilation I just got only has the Strange Tales material. The four full issues that followed have been reprinted elsewhere. I actually have the originals of all this stuff, but I haven't read them in years.

Spider-Girl is another story. This post is too long, so I'll come back to that another time.

More on Benedict

National Review considers Dirk Benedict of Battlestar Galactica fame in this article.

Captain's Blood

This is a rum drink from p. 137 of The Essential Bartender by Robert Hess. It calls for:

2 ounces dark rum [Myers]
1/2 ounce lime juice
1/2 ounce simple syrup
2 dashes Angostura bitters

Shake with ice, strain into a chilled cocktail glass. Lemon twist.

Nope, despite the "Captain" in the title, no Captain Morgan. This is a good, tightly-constructed and well-balanced drink. Lime juice and rum go together well, of course. However, it reminded me of a much better drink, the Both Indies from Killer Cocktails by David Wondrich. It's at p. 30.

Killer Cocktails is a superior manual, marred and made irritating by some genius at Harper Collins having decided to make it spiral-bound at the top, which makes it very hard to use. It's filled with good recipes, old and new, however. Wondrich urges the use of 115 proof Inner Circle Rum from Australia, which perhaps needless to say the evil apparatchiks at the nanny state agency which permits us to have only certain liquors in this state do not stock.

An aside: how proud they must be, those state employees, to spend their days deciding what we can all drink and what we can't. Wow, what a productive use of taxpayer's money that is! We couldn't possibly find a better use for that money in Michigan, oh no sir. Must be a great feeling to come home every day and regale the kids with how you are the bulwark keeping Michigan's residents from enjoying Australian rum, or anything else that your whim has not permitted in yet. So very socially useful. Like they couldn't just let businesses make those decisions and then charge whatever tax rate they wish. Like I wouldn't be happy to pay the damn tax if I could just buy what I freakin' liked instead of what they like.

Ahem. At any rate, Wondrich suggests subbing any "dark, heavy" rum for Inner Circle, so this gets the Myers.

2 ounces dark rum [Myers]
3/4 ounce lemon juice
1/2 ounce falernum [Fee Brothers]
1/4 ounce Grand Marnier
2 drops Angostura bitters

Shake, strain, etc. The bitters are tipped over the top when the drink is poured, not mixed in.

Falernum is a low proof mixer, a bit spicy and sweet, from the Caribbean. Hard to find in any case, and the Velvet Falernum brand Wondrich suggests is not available here - no, I won't start again - but Fee Brothers makes a non-alcoholic version which can be ordered from Amazon or Keg Works. This drink is really superior, even with all the substitutions. I can only imagine what it would be like with the recommended ingredients. Ah, some day, when our socialist masters fall and we are permitted to do as we like...

Dolores Again

Here is a photo of the brandy drink I mentioned for Valentine's Day. I made it again the other night. And below, a better view of the glasses. I love these glasses - look at that matte finish gold.

The Ditko Enigma

One of my favorite artists, Steve Ditko, is also one of the comic book industry's enduring enigmas. Remarks in Reason magazine on the co-creator of Spider-Man and Dr. Strange here.

Valentine's Day Cocktails

For those who like holiday-themed cocktails, Valentine's Day provides a problem. The obvious visual thing to go for is red; the obvious flavor is sweet. But how to avoid some sort of treacly mess, like the chocolate martini? Eric Felten discusses the chocolate martini very entertainingly in his weekend column in the Wall Street Journal. I often like to make whatever Felten describes if it sounds interesting, and it usually does, and if the ingredients are not impossible.

The column may be behind the subscription wall, so here's the Dolores, suggested by Felten and tweaked by him to make it less sweet:

2 oz. brandy (he recommends Spanish, I used Reynal)
1/2 oz. dark creme de cacao (Arrow, might be the first time I'd ever used the stuff!)
1/2 oz. Cherry Heering

Stir, strain, add a cherry.

I made a cocktail and a half, strained it into two small, gold-rimmed stemmed coupes I'm very proud of, and served them with dinner. The Cat Bastet likes Chocolate Martinis made with Godiva liqueur, but she approved of this one. I thought it was exceptional for a dessert-style drink, but of course I'm very fond of brandy cocktails. Should have taken a picture of the cocktails, the Cat Bastet thought they were pretty.

Comic Report for Mid February

Avengers/Invaders 8 of 12. This mini-series, scripted by the talented Alex Ross (more famous for his photo-realistic art), has become something of a train wreck. There never really appeared to be any reason to bring the Invaders (the WW II Marvel team retrofitted into history by Roy Thomas in the 1970s) to the present to join forces with and alternately fight the two versions of the Avengers. Once they brought in SHIELD, Dr. Strange, the Cosmic Cube... well. And now this 12 issue series is way out of current continuity, with some of the characters dead or revealed to be alien invaders more recently. And after all the fairly meaningless screwing around in the present, now a bunch of them seem to be getting sucked back to the past. This has really been a disappointment. Not recommended.

Batman 686. Did you know they killed Batman? Yeah, DC made a hash of it. Killing Superman back in the early 90s was a big deal, killing Captain America more recently over at Marvel was another national story. You would think offing Batman would be a big story. But no, instead it was just confusing. He appeared to die (exploding helicopter but no body, like anyone would believe that) in his own book. Then he appeared to die again in Final Crisis a few weeks ago, and there was even a body. But the editor in chief at DC, Dan Didio, had already let slip that of course Batman wasn't really dead. Just a stunt, and a stunt they didn't make much use of, and a story that doesn't make any sense at all, since the two occurrences didn't appear to fit together in any sort of coherent way. Well, now we're getting a two-part "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" story by Neil Gaiman, with beautiful art by Andy Kubert, and this issue is the first part.

For the uninitiated, back in 1986, when they rebooted the Silver Age Superman after the original Crisis on Infinite Earths story, they got Alan Moore to write and legendary Silver Age artist Curt Swan to draw a coda for the old Superman, and it was a wonderful, fondly remembered story. One of my favorite comic stories ever, in fact. So clearly, DC felt now would be a good time to recruit a very high profile writer to do something similar for Bats.

This starts with a nifty cover, depicting a line of Batman supporting characters filing into a bar with a splendid gothic backdrop and a looming, ghostly Batman figure hovering over all. The story is difficult to describe, and I don't want to spoil it for anyone who plans to read it. But obviously there is going to be a wake for Batman, and the supporting cast is arriving to be present. But this is not just any supporting cast; the Riddler is obviously the one from the old 60s TV series; the Joker is the memorable version from the 90s animated show. And the visual homages to various moments in the long, long history of Batman are nifty: Catwoman arrives in her car, her Catillac, of course (according to the Best Shots reviewer at Newsarama) but not only is this a cool scene, it is an effective echo of the legendary arrival of the Batmobile at the climax of The Killing Joke. There's much more, with characters drawn from every era of Batman stories, sometimes in multiple versions, although we don't see them at the same time.

I probably shouldn't review this until the second issue and conclusion, but so far I'm impressed. Gaiman is also referencing himself, from The Wake near the end of his Sandman run. I guess when you're as good as he is, you get to do that. Highly recommended.

Captain Britain and MI 13 10. The British heroes are enjoying downtime while we see an axis of the damned developing between Dr. Doom and Dracula. (Yes, the famous vampire has a background as the star of a long-running Marvel series back in the 70s. Not my cup of tea, but it was good - he was unabashedly depicted as a bad guy, not glamorized.) They mean to take over England. This quirky little series continues to be a lot of fun. Can't imagine it'll be published for long, but I'm enjoying while I can. Highly recommended.

Final Crisis: Legion of 3 Worlds 3 of 5. This off-shoot of the Final Crisis event has nothing to do with the main storyline. Instead, it appears they're using FC as an opportunity to clean up the messy Legion situation going forward. (Readers will recall that I discussed the tangled history of the three versions of the Legion of Super-Heroes in an earlier post.) With gorgeous art by George Perez, this is too much fun to be bad. But it's also pretty confusing. It looks to me like they're going to politely wipe away the two surplus "reboot" Legions and leave us with the original set, which is ok with me. Unnecessary, of course. Why not just publish the adventures of the old LSH and ignore the other two as superfluous and now unwanted versions? The continuity of this story is impossible, even with Geoff Johns cleaning up and explaining as best he can. What point in time is the "Threeboot" Legion drawn from? Can't tell. Some writers are calling this the "retroboot" Legion, and I think that's about right, because they don't resemble the original Legion as we last saw them - instead, these guys are from an earlier point before all the continuity trouble began after the 1986 Crisis. It doesn't bother me, but I wish they'd explain that. There are some nice scenes, as with all three Phantom Girls (one of them "Apparition", of course) admiring the relatively-grown up but still youthful original Ultra Boy, and an explanation that will clearly lead to the reboot XS character, one of the more interesting new Legionnaires from the 90s, sticking around after her colleagues are no longer cluttering things up. Recommended, if only for the Perez art and the need to keep up.

Futurama 41. Bongo Comics does nice versions of the Simpsons in several ongoing series (I have never read them, but they look amusing) and this bimonthly relic of the late, lamented Futurama series presently enjoying a semi-comeback in direct to DVD animated movies. Futurama is clever, raucous fun, fairly like the cartoon in tone but tailored for the page in a professional way. It reminds me immensely of humor comics from my youth, but I can't quite put my finger on precisely what title I'm recalling; possibly Mad Magazine. This issue is typical; playing off characters and events in the cartoons in agreeable ways, with the amusing gimmick of Leela being suddenly fascinated with ex-lover and starship captain Zapp Brannigan because he refuses to pay attention to her for a change. The creators love to get Leela out of her clothes - it's a rare issue in which she doesn't get undressed to whatever degree they think they can get away with, and in this issue she runs around in her nightgown, then gets tied up, then has to seduce the egregious Zapp to snap him out of his strange trance, and loses even the nightgown. I'm not sure why they thought it was interesting to put her in a muu-muu for the climax, but there you go. Recommended, not least because the creators are so obviously enjoying themselves.

R.E.B.E.L.S. 1. You know, I won't even try to explain the background of this revival of an old minor 90s science fantasy series from DC (originally L.E.G.I.O.N.). Suffice to say that it is pretty decent, quite amusing in spots and features an appearance by the LSH (there was originally a tenuous connection between the two groups). I won't buy it again, I think, but I am not unhappy to have tried it. The really interesting thing about this issue is that it represents another demonstration of how utterly confused and incoherent the editorial coordination at DC is these days. The LSH appearance features Brainiac 5, but the Threeboot version. Now, why would you connect a new ongoing series with a superfluous version of the Legion from an alternate world, as we explicitly were reminded in Legion of 3 Worlds this month? You could excuse it in various contrived ways, but I'm pretty sure it's just that writer Tony Bedard was not clued in on what Geoff Johns was doing over in Lo3W. Very mildly recommended.

Thor 600. I mentioned earlier that my original favorite character from Marvel was Thor. Eventually, the lack of consistent quality on that title during the 70s, 80s and 90s wore me down and I tranferred my interest to Dr. Strange. But I still have a soft spot for Thor and would read it given half a chance. The recent revival of the title by writer Joe Straczynski (of Babylon 5 fame) and Olivier Coipel did not hold my attention for long. It was grim, incredibly slow-paced and just not what I'm interested in reading. But I'd like to give it a chance - JMS is a good writer much of the time, and I do like Thor. So when they returned the title to its original numbering for its 600th issue (it was originally Journey Into Mystery for 82 issues and then was Journey Into Mystery with the Mighty Thor from 83 on; he eventually took over the entire title as The Mighty Thor, monthly until it became JIM again for a while in the 90s, got cancelled and rebooted from issue 1 in the current decade, cancelled and rebooted again a couple of years ago), I figured I should give it a try. This issue was much better. Things actually happened - there is in fact a complete story that does not make the ongoing plot mysterious or unclear.

Dr. Doom appear here, too, at the end, so time out for my Marvel continuity rant. Over in Fantastic Four, Doom is deposed as ruler of Latveria and in prison in the Hague. In Captain Britain, he's back in power and conspiring with Dracula. In Thor, he's back in power and conspiring with Loki. (Oh, and he's conspiring with the "Illuminaughty" in the Dark Reign event, too, but not back in power yet, and not in prison.) How did he get out of prison and back in power? Well, we have to allow for the possibility that I missed the story, but I think it's actually going to happen in the pages of yet another book, Dark Avengers, which I don't read. Sheesh. Not only do all these guys not make much of an effort on continuity, I don't think they even care about it. Yeah, yeah, I know if it's a good story, who cares, but in serial fiction in a shared universe, couldn't they try, just a little? It does add to the sense of verisimilitude.

I'm not completely sold on Thor, but this was more lively and interesting that what I'd seen recently. The backups are downright good - a neat little tale written by Stan Lee himself, a humorous strip satirizing events in Thor and the Marvel Universe by humorist Chris Giarrusso and finally some stunning reprints from the old Tales of Asgard backup strip by Lee and Kirby. Man, those guys were good. (I have some of those in the original.) And finally there is a cover gallery of all 600 issues, including the original JIM stuff. Very cool. Recommended.

Dandy

One of my favorite cocktails is the Dandy, as reported in Eric Felten's How's Your Drink? at p. 67. Here are the ingredients:

1.5 oz. rye or bourbon
1.5 oz. Dubonnet rouge
.5 oz. Cointreau
1 dash Angostura bitters
lemon and orange peels

Shake with ice, strain into chilled cocktail glass.

Felten assigns this as a forgotten classic, and I must agree. It's every bit as good as a Manhattan in my opinion; the orange and lemon peels in the shaker really add an exciting taste.

I've made it the last two nights, once with bourbon (Evan Williams) and once with rye (Jim Beam). Cointreau is not present in my cabinet at the moment, so triple sec had to sub for it. When I tried it with the bourbon, it was the first time; I think I had used rye every other time. I wasn't sure it would be as good with the triple sec. There's an amazing amount of difference between Cointreau and ordinary triple sec, considering they're functionally the same thing. But no, the bourbon version was not just good, but excellent. The rye version definitely suffers from the lack of Cointreau. It's pleasant, but uninspired.

Admittedly, Jim Beam rye is not all that one could wish; it's ok, and certainly better than their bourbon, but Michigan's socialistic and arbitrary liquor control commission does not provide many ryes. One can obtain Jim Beam at a reasonable price; Wild Turkey at a higher proof is a bit more (I find the higher proof in that particular whiskey off-putting, although the Wild Turkey tastes good); Sazerac is the next grade up. My experience with the Sazerac is that it wasn't so much better than the cheaper ryes as to justify the cost. Michigan also has Rittenhouse - but not the regular stuff, which I gather from reviews is very highly regarded and highly affordable, only a super-premium aged variety that is from my perspective absurdly expensive. And that's it as far as I know.

So my advice would be to use the bourbon for this one unless you have Cointreau handy. Also, perhaps I should mention that while in my opinion Lillet rouge is often a better choice than Dubonnet (I am a heretic on this point, I believe), only Dubonnet will do for the Dandy. Lillet just doesn't work in this case.

NY Comic Con

The New York Comic Convention took place over the weekend. These occasions, and there are several throughout the year, are where the publishers announce their plans: new titles, new creators on old titles, signings of new talent, announcements about editorial direction, etc. As a fan, one does not necessarily attend these things (I'm not fond of fan-oriented conventions based on my limited experience to date) but one does follow them online to see what is new and exciting.

So what's new? Not much. What's exciting? Very little. Dullest convention so far for news that interests me, I'm afraid.

The one thing that caught my attention at all was the new creators on Fantastic Four after Mark Millar and Bryan Hitchens are done. Writer Jonathan Hickman and artist Dale Eaglesham will take over. I don't know anything at all about Hickman; I like Eaglesham, who's been doing handsome work for Justice Society of America, but I wouldn't have pictured him doing the sleek, futuristic FF. But I will certainly give this a chance.

UPDATE: Missed one. This article describing a panel discussion on the Venture Brothers animated program was also interesting. No new information, unfortunately. This is the only one of the gross-out cartoon shows that I like - can't watch South Park, unimpressed with the lifeless, illogical and derivative Family Guy, don't have much use for any of the others (although Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law was often fun). But Venture Brothers is a delight. For the uninitiated, an extremely strange satire on Jonny Quest, the Hardy Boys, Scooby-Doo and superheroes all at the same time. Much better than it sounds.

Remember the Maine! (Dry)

It was actually a bit later than the next day, but I did make the dry version of the Remember the Maine! I prefer it, I think. Here's the link to the recipe. (Both recipes, actually.) The aromatic version is a pretty jazzy Manhattan variation, but the dry version is quite distinctive. Of course, I like anything with kirschwasser in it.

Trouble in Legion-Land

The cover of Legion of Super-Heroes #50.

One of DC's most beloved and long-running Silver Age series was the Legion of Super-Heroes. They began as occasional supporting characters in Superboy, Supergirl, Adventure Comics, Action Comics and occasionally Superman and Jimmy Olsen stories back in 1958, so they just passed the 50 year mark. Long time for a bunch of teenage superheroes from a thousand years in the future.

Well, the 50 year celebration was noted somewhat by DC, which had quite a few appearances and references to the characters in last year's books, has been republishing some of the better uncollected stuff from the 1980s, when the title was very hot, and produced a special 50th anniversary collection. There has also been a retrospective volume of essays titled Teenagers From the Future, which I recommend and will perhaps review here when I've finished it. But all is not well in published Legion-land, so to speak.

The Legion is notable in a lot of ways. It has one of the earliest and most numerous organized fan bases in the comics field - they started publishing a fanzine back in the early 1970s, long before the Internet made such efforts easy. The place to go for news and discussion now, by the way, is Legion World. It has a long and convoluted publishing history, and several major changes in emphasis that eventually resulted in actual rewrites of continuity, so-called reboots.

After their stint as guest stars, the Legion took over Adventure Comics in the 1960s for a long and acclaimed run. Pushed out by Supergirl strips, they moved to a backup strip in Action Comics, and then limped into backup strips in Superboy, an almost moribund title partly relying on reprints in the early 70s. But then they took over Superboy, which became Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, and then simply Legion of Super-Heroes by the late 1970s.

In the 1980s, the strip became hot, one of DC's most popular properties, while written by Paul Levitz and drawn by Keith Giffen. A new Legion of Super-Heroes title was begun with much fanfare and a new issue 1. This was actually volume three; there had been a brief reprint title in the early 1970s with the name. Volume three lasted until the end of the decade and the departure of Levitz when he became a full-time editor at DC.

And that's when things began to go wrong, many fans felt, for the Legion. The title was handed over to Giffen, who was also a writer, together with long-time fans Tom and Mary Bierbaum. They were permitted to restart the series with a volume four, but they began by explaining that five years had passed since the old series. The United Planets were in disarray, the Legion had dissolved, and the old utopia had become a dystopia. The story had a much more adult tone, and is still admired for its refusal to pander to the reader - you had to read carefully to keep up, and the story was sophisticated and elaborately based in the long continuity of the Legion. It was, to put it mildly, not a welcoming experience for new readers. The Legion's huge cast and long continuity had been pushing people away for years, of course.

There were other problems. The editorial decision that Superman had never been Superboy after the Crisis on Infinite Earths reboot of the entire DC universe had crippled the Legion, as the writers struggled to keep straight a continuity in which they could no longer refer to the most prominent character in the Legion for most of its history. After some very strange and unpopular decisions in v4 (blowing up the moon and then Earth, introducing young clones of the old Silver Age Legion, having a small group of Legionnaires adopt new identities and go rogue), DC gave up and decided to reboot the Legion franchise.

They kept the old numbering in the two ongoing series, which didn't help, but the fresh start was promising. At first it appeared that the writers were simply retelling the old history of the Legion with an updated sensibility and without Superboy; that was what I preferred. But over time it became clear that this was actually a different Legion and a new continuity. It bothered many readers that we would apparently never see the old original Legion again, but the new one was good for a while. However, many old fans didn't appreciate this new, bright and shiny Legion. They missed the complex characters and relationships and didn't enjoy callow teenagers in another utopia. Most fans called this version simply the Reboot Legion, but critics often called it the Archie Legion, or the Kiddie Legion. It probably didn't help that primary artist Jeffrey Moy had a relatively cartoony style compared to Keith Giffen or Steve Lightle's art.

Now Legion fandom began to separate into camps. There were the old grognards for whom the Adventure Legion of the 60s was best; a larger group preferred the recent Levitz Legion from the 70s and 80s; a smaller but vocal crowd preached the virtues of the Giffen dystopia, which most referred to simply as Volume Four or v4, despite the fact that v4 was actually still continuing; a new group preferred the new Reboot Legion. Some, like myself, appreciated each for its individual qualities, but it was all rather hard to take.

The Reboot Legion last for about ten years with declining circulation and many changes of direction and emphasis. They nearly lost me when they brought aboard writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning who went back in the dystopia direction; I really didn't appreciate artist Olivier Coipel. But of course there was yet another group of fans who liked the "DnA" Legion.

When it came to an end, to everyone's surprise, they rebooted again. The v5 Legion of Super-Heroes title (there had been some other intermediate titles, but none with the full LSH name) came to be known as the Threeboot, or the WaK Legion for the creators, writer Mark Waid and Barry Kitson. Waid started over without fuss or apologies, and leaped into mid story with Legionnaires who were about in the 18-20 range that had been popular for most of the run. Waid had effectively "reimagined" the Legion, carefully sorting out their identities and characteristics, changing some origins and appearances, and adding the notion that the young Legion were in a rebellious cold war with the stuffy adults.

I loved it; Legion fandom was not nearly so impressed. Many wondered what happened to the Reboot Legion, or wearily stumped for the return of the now long-lost original Legion, or simply didn't like the youthful rebellious bit (I thought that was hilarious - no one seemed to appreciate the fact that they didn't like it because they're old farts themselves!) And Waid and Kitson began to run out of steam after about a year. Supergirl was brought in and the book retitled Supergirl and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Finally Waid and Kitson left the book in the hands of Tony Bedard.

About a year and a half ago, there was much excitement when old writer Jim Shooter, who had written two acclaimed runs of the Legion in Adventure and Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes, returned to write the Threeboot for a 16 issue run, retitled simply LSH after Supergirl went back to the 20th century. This made a lot of old fans happy - Shooter is a good craftsman as a writer, and the stories became more dense with characterization and incident, and the personalities of the Legion closer to their original formats.

It recently, however, was announced that the Legion of Super-Heroes v5 would end with issue 50, and Shooter's 16 issue plot was going to lose four issues. While all this was happening, popular writer Geoff Johns had, to universal astonishment and some delight, revived what appeared for all the world to be the original Legion from before the "five year gap" that had started all the trouble. The old editorial edict that there was never a Superboy has now been lifted, and the old Legion began to appear as time travelers in Justice League of America and Justice Society of America, in a somewhat confusing tale called "The Lightning Saga."

Some fans are not certain that this isn't still another Legion in effect, since the later history of the original Legion apparently didn't happen as we saw it. Some call it the Lightning Saga Legion, or the Action Legion when they appeared in a well-received story with Superman in that title, or the Johns Legion. And the writing was pretty clearly on the wall for the now orphaned Threeboot.

Shooter got the shaft on his story. It has been obvious for some issues that the big climax was going to be a tight fit if all his story elements were going to be neatly tied up with a bow. That was what the solicitations promised, certainly.

But when the book arrived last Wednesday, shockwaves quickly rocked the fan community. Without warning, Shooter was off the book. The script was by "Justin Thyme". In other words, either Shooter quit or his script was rejected and replaced by an author who didn't care for his name to be attached. With justification: this is a dog's breakfast. Only the primary plot was addressed, hardly any loose ends were tied up, and both story and art were rushed and awful. I won't bother to discuss the actual events of the story, because I don't really want to think about it. I agree with a number of critics who now wish they'd simply stopped at 49 and left us hanging.

Rumors are flying, and I can't tell exactly what happened yet. Presumably Shooter will explain at some point. But there are a lot of angry fans, who were enjoying Shooter's take and feel cheated. That certainly describes me.

The only current Legion appearances are taking place in Final Crisis: Legion of Three Worlds, a beautifully drawn five-issue mini-series in which all three Legions appear in a big team up. There is vast unease about how it will all end up and what the future of the Legion holds. A new Adventure Comics is promised, but there is uncertainty about just how much Legion content there will be.

My prediction is that Geoff Johns and DC's editors have concluded that the Legion works best as an appendage to the Superman mythos, as it originally was. Or at least that this is the way to reintroduce a single, coherent LSH. So we will see them appearing as guest stars for a while, and then at some point, hopefully, they'll get their own title back. I'm not totally unhappy with the prospect, since I was pretty glad to see the old Legion again. But I do wish DC would make up their minds. And what they chose to do to finish the current title, the Threeboot, is not suggestive of the notion that they know what they are doing.

Footnotes?

The Cat Bastet, my so far mostly silent partner here, suggests that I may have to provide footnotes for my comic book reviews. Yeah, I was afraid of that. When I started writing these to an old friend in email, there was no need to explain references, because he is also a long-time comic book reader who largely shares my tastes: mostly old school superheroics. When I began to also send them to two more friends, I tended to go into more detail, because they didn't necessarily read the same things. Now, I may have to go into much more detail in order to be intelligible, it would appear.

CB particularly wanted to know why I found the Flash scene in Final Crisis touching. Briefly, DC has several generations of heroes, often with the same name. The great transition using Golden Age names and gimmicks in the Silver Age is the only major instance of success, but the three generations of the Flash, all existing in the same coherent continuity, would be the other major exception. That is to say, replacing the Silver Age Flash (Barry Allen) with the Bronze Age Flash (Wally West) was actually successful, and Wally sustained his own series for most of twenty years while Barry was dead. Now Barry is back, and no one is sure where it's all going.

I'm not the biggest Flash fan, but I did read the Wally Flash while Mark Waid wrote the series in the 90s, and enjoyed it. He focused on that generational aspect, and that was why I found the scene moving.

Probably I need to write a post on character deaths and successions. It's been done, and better, no doubt, by other writers, but perhaps it will be appreciated by our audience.

Remember the Maine!

The wonderful Oh Gosh! cocktail blog describes the aromatic version of this drink at this link. I made it last night. Note that there is also a dry version of the drink, which I'll make tonight after a late class. I've had both once before, and definitely remembered Remember the Maine. It's essentially a modified Manhattan, of which, as I noted in an earlier post, there are many excellent variations.

Watchmen in the NY Times

This article in the Times describes, with a few details I hadn't seen elsewhere, the long process of bringing famed graphic novel Watchmen to the silver screen. I'm breaking my general rule of thumb here - I don't like to link to link to the generally execrable New York Times, full of malicious and wrong-headed nonsense. But they do still employ skilful writers, and this is an interesting article.

Comic Book Report - January

For some time now, I've been briefly reviewing weekly comic book purchases in email sent to friends, so I thought I'd transfer that to the blog. I have the difficulty, as mentioned in an earlier post, that the number of comics I am interested in reading is rapidly falling, and for some reason suddenly almost everything I buy is coming out at the end of the month. So these reports may become monthly and somewhat unwieldy. I think I will make very brief remarks and choose to review one or two books at more length each time I do this. Here we go:

Birds of Prey 126. This relatively long-running series about a variety of women adventurers loosely connected to the Batman storylines is about to be canceled - in fact, this is the penultimate issue. I've been buying it for some years, though not from the beginning, as long-time writer Gail Simone is a favorite. But her successors have not been quite as interesting, so if this weren't ending, I'd probably be dropping it. This issue is mostly about the travails of Oracle's opposite number, the Calculator, computer guy to the supervillains. It's not too bad, and sets up the final confrontation between the ladies and the bad guys. I can't really recommend it to anyone but long-time readers, under the circumstances.

Captain America 46. On the other hand, this was satisfying on every level. Art, script, cover, and the ongoing plot are all terrific. Indeed, it gets hard to say much about this series other than "buy it!" every month. This time around, the new Captain America, "Bucky" Barnes, is off to rescue an old ally, the android Human Torch from the clutches of an old enemy, while in company with another old ally, the Sub-Mariner. For this first blog review, I'll reiterate my principal observation about this book: I can't believe they killed Steve Rogers, the original Captain America (in issue 25) and yet this is a terrific story. Brubaker manages to do super-heroics and spy adventures with a noir feel all at once. Highly recommended.

Captain Britain and MI 13 9. This is another oddity: super-heroics merged with horror and fantasy; and like CA, successful. MI 13 is a British intelligence agency designed to cope with the supernatural, and our look at it has been delightful fun so far. This issue wraps up the current storyline, which included Captain Britain's nameless new team, with lots of interesting little twists, surprises and bits of characterization. I like the casual use of Dr. Strange story elements without having to bring the doctor himself into the action, and I'm looking forward to more of this. Highly recommended.

Dr. Doom and the Masters of Evil 1. This is one of the Marvel all-ages books, but they've dropped the Marvel Adventures branding usually present. Wise, no doubt - the regular issues don't sell, as most collectors seem to regard them as strictly for children. The reputation is unfair - some of this is not only pretty good but refreshingly free of the doom and gloom so prevalent in many current Marvel titles. These stories exist in a mostly continuity-free zone where classic versions of the standard Marvel characters have adventures, almost always in one-off issues instead of the usual multi-issue storyline. In other words, they're well written, fairly well drawn, accessible and entertaining - all the things that many more popular comics are not. I don't read them all, but I buy them off and on when they look particularly interesting. This issue focuses on the villains, recruited by Dr. Doom to steal something from Tony Stark (Iron Man) and who have trouble with Dr. Strange, presented here as a competent foe, not Brian Bendis' troubled bozo. Anyway, this is the first all-ages issue, other than X-Men: First Class, (which I buy in trade paperback collections) with an overall thrust. Doom is up to something, and clearly we'll find out what in future issues. Mildly recommended.

Fantastic Four 563. Marvel's venerable flagship title, "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine!", is presently being done for a lively spell by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitchens. I've been enjoying it much more than most of the Internet critics, it appears. The art is simply gorgeous, and I like Millar's willingness to go gonzo in this title and not simply give us "Dr. Doom tries to conquer the world" then "the Frightful Four attack the Baxter Building" then "Sue and Reed break up" and "Ben is angry and leaves the team", wash, rinse, repeat. I am troubled by the strange notion that Dr. Doom had mentors in evil; I would hardly think he would admit it. Doom famously has an out-sized ego, even for a comic book super-villain. But I'll go with it, as so far this run has been lavishly entertaining. Highly recommended.

Final Crisis 6 and 7 of 7. This the cap of DC's latest big crossover event. Written by Grant Morrison, this has been... well, confusing would be a good description. Morrison has written some of the best comics of the last ten years (All-Star Superman, New X-Men, JLA). But he has also written some wildly complex stories that seem to suffer from having too many ideas crammed in all at once. Final Crisis has been one of the latter. Now that it's done, it appears to be a giant reset button to enable DC editorial to clean up their increasingly murky continuity. I wouldn't venture to suggest that it worked, but if it was something of a train wreck, it was also worth watching. There have been some memorable scenes, and these last two issues include several:

* Superman arch-foe Lex Luthor and Captain Marvel arch-foe Dr. Sivana, forced to work for the big bad guy Darkseid, have not been at all enthused about it, and their interactions are surprisingly entertaining. Who would have thought Sivana would be so amusing? "Impress me, Sivana." Oh dear.

* All three of the Flashes, Golden Age Jay Garrick, Silver Age Barry Allen (long thought dead) and Bronze Age Wally West, gathered together with a problem. Solution? Outrun it, of course. Wally: "Barry, I think I met this guy before when he was called the Black Flash. I outran him." In the next panel, we see only Barry's slight smile and Jay's avuncular look of appreciation. Barry: "Heh. I bet you did." Little bit of a lump in the throat moment there.

* And then there's the confrontation between Batman and the big bad, Darkseid, who can naturally squash him like a bug. It doesn't exactly go that way. Wonderful scene.

A lot of what happens in these last two issues is difficult to sort out. DC keeps arranging these big events and claiming that they've made a fresh continuity start, but then nothing much changes. Editorial confusion, I think. But the new status quo would appear to suggest that everyone thinks Batman is dead, Hawkman and Hawkwoman appear to be dead... yet again. They're reincarnators from Ancient Egypt, of course, so I assume this is just another reboot. Aside from that, Superman saves the day in an interesting fashion, but again Morrison seems to have had about three ideas for how the climax works and chosen to use them all. I wouldn't think it was necessary to have all the Green Lanterns come to the rescue; and an army of alternate dimensional Supermen get recruited to come to the rescue; and for Superman to do two apparently inconsistent things at once to beat Darkseid. Furthermore, another big bad guy shows up at the end behind it all. Doesn't that diminish the role of Darkseid? Too many big ideas, not enough editorial discipline, I says. But it makes for fun reading, on the whole. Mildly recommended.

Incredible Hercules 125. This might be the weirdest thing being published right now. It was the Incredible Hulk until about a year ago, then mythic hero Hercules, who's never sustained his own series, took over, complete with sidekick, the brilliant youth Amadeus Cho. No part of this should interest me at all - I don't much care for the Hulk, Hercules was always an entertaining guest star in my opinion, at best, and Amadeus Cho? Really? But no, this stuff is brilliant, probably one of the two or three best things being published at the moment. Greek mythology is cleverly blended into Marvel continuity for a pleasureable reading experience every month. The current storyline wraps this issue, mostly taken up with a momentary alternate reality in which the women of the Marvel universe have taken over the world because of a magical artifact that Herc and Amadeus and Herc's current girlfriend Namora almost kept out of the bad gal's hands but not quite. Very highly recommended, and probably the best issue this month.

Knights of the Dinner Table 147. This is, for the uninitiated, a crudely drawn but hilariously scripted long-running storyline about five friends and their Hackmaster game (read D&D, obviously). There really is a Hackmaster game, along with various other gaming products produced by the publisher, Kenzer and Company. This issue, as usual, is splendid, with the players momentarily enjoying a respite in their current adventure, and a secondary gaming group having a raucous time playtesting a "Cattlepunk" scenario. Highly recommended.

Legion of Super-Heroes 50. The last issue, and this is the one that's going to get the full treatment, so I'll save it for a later post. Not going to be a good review, though.

Marvels: Eye of the Camera 2 and 3 of 6. Almost a decade and a half ago, Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross produced an exciting retrospective of the modern Marvel super-heroic age through the eyes of Daily Bugle photographer Phil Sheldon, called simply Marvels. It was a huge hit at the time, and made the reputations of both creators. Here, Busiek teams with artist Jay Anacleto to show some more of Sheldon's life, interspersed with events happening in the background from Marvel comics of the 70s. Busiek has done this before, in his own Astro City series, showing how superheroics would look to ordinary people to great effect. This is much the same. Not as impactful as those gorgeous Marvels issues - that street level scene of Giant-Man striding over buildings during an early Avengers battle as seen by Sheldon is perhaps the most memorable image of superhero comics in the 90s. At any rate, mildly recommended.

Mighty Avengers 21. The Avengers was always a favorite at Marvel for me. With rare exceptions, it was one of the most satisfyingly consistent titles for many decades. When Geoff Johns and then Brian Bendis took over a few years ago, however, they lost me. Mighty Avengers was an attempt by Bendis to satisfy the old school readers like me who didn't care for his New Avengers, but it was at best a cosmetic improvement, and that only for the first few issues. However, Dan Slott, himself apparently a more old-school writer, has now taken over this version of the Avengers (in addition to New Avengers, Bendis now writes Dark Avengers, in which all the classic heroes are replaced by evil counterparts - it gets worse and worse). While impressed with Slott, who wrote vastly entertaining sequences of The Thing and She-Hulk (of all things) a few years ago, I have not been thrilled with his more recent, more mainstream Marvel stuff. Nor were the reviews of this new endeavor very good. But I gave it a try. I think I'll save more extensive remarks for when this story arc has concluded, assuming I stick with it, but this is interesting. Mildly recommended.

Uncanny X-Men Annual 2. I'm not a huge X-Men fan, and I would have skipped this if I'd seen it on the stands for the first time, with its tiresome porn star expression and pose of the character principally featured, Emma Frost, better known as the White Queen. But I'd seen reviews, and the writer, Matt Fraction, is not to be entirely ignored, so I gave it a try. Speaking of pornography, X-Men has resembled what one might term "continuity porn" since the days of its great renaissance in the 70s and early 80s when written by Chris Claremont and drawn by Dave Cockrum and John Byrne. This is no exception - it is mostly a flashback to a hitherto unsuspected affair between the White Queen, originally a villainess from the kinky Hellfire Club, and Namor, the Sub-Mariner. They recently featured in a meeting among some of Marvel's villains and anti-heroes, which some Internet wags are referring to as the "Illumi-naughty", and here we get the backstory. Well, I'm not much interested in the "Dark Reign" proposed in the other book, but this tale of Emma and Namor is really quite entertaining. Although I'm amused at the fact that Emma, who waltzes around in a white dominatrix outfit and Namor, who wears bathing trunks - if that - pass for fully rounded characters. Ah well.