Gail Simone Got Fired from DC via E-Mail.

So Gail Simone got fired from writing Batgirl, via an email. DC Comics is just such a clusterfuck right now. All of the other writers - the Bat-writers especially - seem pretty pissed. I wonder when the entire company will just be Dan DiDio, Geoff Johns, and Jim Lee jerking eachother off.

I know I've groused about the silly costumes and whatnot in the Nü52, but shit like this is the REAL reason you're not gonna' see me talking about too many DC books on this blog. 

EDIT:

She totally got hired back as soon as her fans complained. So there was like one issue that didn't have Simone writing it. But seriously, fuck DC and their editorial staff anyhow. I know Ms. Simone was treated pretty poorly by Marvel, but I still think she needs to get the heck away from DC at this point too. The fact that they have no idea how to treat artists is a major part of DC Comics as an institution.

Why "Brand New Day" Was Great, Part One: Because FUCK YOU, That's Why!

So yesterday I got into even yet still another argument about this, and I figured I should simply put all of my opinions about this particular thing in their proper place, because what the fuck else did I lock down this URL for?

This argument, and literally dozens of previous arguments, was with somebody who claimed to have stopped reading Marvel Comics altogether because of the release of Spider-Man: Brand New Day in 2008, despite never having actually READ Spider-Man: Brand New Day and having many of the details wrong; whether that's by ignorance, misinformation, or stubbornness is hard to say.

Now, I'm a dude who's loved Spider-Man for as long as I can remember. I've suffered some moderately big losses in my life, and yet - and I know this is ridiculous but whatever - the time I lost my Secret Wars Spidey action figure ranks pretty high on the emotional list. Spider-Man holds a pretty important place in my nerdly little heart.

I'm also a dude that usually hates any kind of retcon most of the time, which leads me to constantly make the grumpface when my friends talk about anything related to DC's Nü52 experiment... and that has made for some awkward moments.

However, I think BND is the best thing that could have happened to Spider-Man comics. So I'm gonna' make my case here, and direct anybody else who ever wants to fight about this shit here.

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First of all, let's talk about what Peter Parker was up to BEFORE BND happened. I don't know the actual sales figures, but I suspect that many of the people who raged out about this "change to the status quo" hadn't actually read any comics with Spidey in them for at least a few years, because damned near every Spidey story up until BND has been about shaking up the character's status quo, sometimes in ways that were both ridiculous and downright stupid. I'll just throw down some bullet-points here to catch y'all up:

• In 2001, Spider-Man met an older dude named Ezekiel, who had the exact same set of powers yet had somehow never been seen before in the Marvel Universe. Ezekiel explained to Spidey that they were both mystically-powered animal totems, and that the spider that gave Peter Parker his powers didn't need to be radioactive at all; it simply WANTED to give him spider-powers.  
• It should be noted that Peter and Mary-Jane were separated at the time this all started.
• Ezekiel also explained to Spidey that the reason so many of his enemies were animal-themed was that they were jealous of him; somehow able to sense that he was a true animal totem and not a totally wack totem poseur.
• Spider-Man and Ezekiel then spent like a year (or at least it seemed that long) fighting a dude named Morlun, who was some sort of vague vampire-type-guy who fed on these animal totem people. When Spidey managed to get a DNA sample from Morlun, he found that Morlun had the DNA of every species of animal on Earth! Spider-Man ended up not so much defeating Morlun as letting Morlun attempt to drain his life-force, whereupon Morlun was killed by Spidey's radioactive blood ("Is he strong? Listen, bub...").
• During all of this bizarreness, Peter Parker also had the time to get a job as a public school science teacher, despite having no background in teaching, so he could get into some heavy-handed Columbine-inspired school shooting hijinks. FUN!
• Later, after Spidey's defeat of Morlun, some crazy lady went on Fox News (lol) and claimed that she was Spider-Man's lover. This drove an even deeper wedge between Peter and Mary-Jane, though it was all repaired when it turned out the woman was actually Shathra, a mystical wasp totem who wanted to feed Spider-Man to her babies, no doy. Spider-Man failed to defeat Shathra, but then she was eaten by a swarm of spiders, just because. So Peter and MJ were totes happy again, yay!
• Spider-Man joined The Avengers around this point, revealed his identity to all of them, and he, Mary Jane, and Aunt May all moved into Tony Stark's mansion. Aunt May started fucking Jarvis in weirdly public places so Peter could awkwardly stumble upon them doing old-people sex stuff. Because older people having sex is the height of comedy.
• So then a story called Spider-Man: The Other began. Spider-Man: The Other was SO MOTHERFUCKING STUPID OH MY GOD YOU GUYS. 

•  In Spider-Man: The Other, Spidey got diagnosed with Spider-Cancer. He went all over the world visiting all his Super Friends but nobody could cure this cancer because it was Spider-Cancer. Spidey started having blackouts and getting all sickly-like, and also started trying to kill supervillains for no real reason. Eventually Morlun showed back up - with no explanation as to how he got un-deaded - and beat the holy hell out of Spidey for an entire issue, and then ate his eyeball for some reason? And then ran away from a group of police before properly killing and eating him for an even less clear reason? 
• Spidey ended up in the hospital, where Morlun showed up and knocked Mary Jane around a little. Feeling the slight twinge of WiR Syndrome, Peter Parker woke up and hulked out... Like, his eyes started glowing red, he got fangs, and he grew these big poison barbs out of his forearms; all things I always associate with spiders. He then bit Morlun, which... re-killed him, I guess. Then Spidey dropped dead. THE DEATH OF SPIDER-MAN, YOU GUYS.
• Spidey's dead body was then taken to Avengers Mansion and sealed in some kind of tube for some reason, and while Wolverine started hitting on MJ, there was a crash, and they all ran in to find a broken window and Spider-Man's shed skin. Yup.
• Spider-Man then formed a cocoon under the Brooklyn Bridge, where he chilled for a few days. Yup.
• I'm just gonna' quote this part from Wikipedia: 'Under the Brooklyn Bridge, Peter sleeps inside his cocoon and has a strange dream. A voice tells him he never understood what he was, accusing him of being too scared to truly be a "Spider-Man", only focusing on the human part and neglecting the spider part. Morlun managed to kill the human part of Peter, but the spider in him survived and killed Morlun, saving them both. The voice tells him that he will only be reborn if he accepts both parts, and warns him that Peter could be reborn very differently. Peter's soul agrees and is reborn, outwardly human. He goes to the Avengers Tower and swears to Mary Jane and Aunt May that he will never leave them again. Later in the night, Peter goes to the lab where his husk is and recalls the final warning of the voice: "Are you the man who dreamed of being a spider? Or the spider who dreamed of being a man? Are you the one...or are you the other?" Shaking off the warning, Peter removes the wedding ring from the husk and heads back to bed.'
• Then a bunch of spiders stole Spidey's old skin and started walking around in it, and he had to fight them, like you do.

• Basically, Spider-Man: The Other was an excuse to give Spidey some new super-powers. He could communicate with spiders and insects telepathically, he could see in the dark, he could shoot poison stingers from his wrists, his webs came out of his hands naturally - OMG, just like in the movies! - and he could occasionally hulk out into a spider-monster if he got really mad.
• The Civil War series started soon afterwards, Spidey got an ugly new "Iron Spider" costume, and he publicly came out of the secret identity closet at a press-conference in support of Superhuman Registration.
• The Kingpin almost immediately had Aunt May shot in the stomach, Peter decided that registering everyone's secret identities was maybe not so smart, and he and MJ went on the run from the government while Aunt May was being shunted from shitty hospital to shitty hospital under a falsified name.

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So... That's where Spider-Man was. He was a fugitive from Iron Man's weirdly fascist government regime, he was a mystically-powered totem animal who could talk to ants and shit, he had died, come back to life, and regrown an eyeball, and Aunt May was dying from a gunshot to the gut. THIS is the precious continuity that the people who hate BND with such vitriol were so attached to. Our stage is set.

Tune in next time for deals with the kind-of devil, relationships sort-of not working out, and Spider-Man's return to making jokes!

Part Two: Things Were Great For A Few Years...

Steve Ditko and THE HORNS

So apparently Steve Ditko is launching another campaign against Stan Lee, and this time he seems to be hinting that he wants to smear Jack Kirby a little bit too.

Now, I'm all for a little inter-creator kvetching, and I love getting insights into the history of superhero comics, but... C'mon, Steve. We all know you're a kooky, reclusive, bootstrappy Objectivist curmudgeon; and we all know Stan's a self-promoting glory-hound nutbag. YOU DON'T HAVE TO KEEP REMINDING US.

I mean, Steve Ditko is very obviously a genius of the comics industry, and has created and/or co-created some of the most intriguing characters in superhero comics. I could probably write an entire essay on The Question and his weird ties to Ayn Rand's philosophy (and Alan Moore's fairly excellent parody of that philosophy in Watchmen), and of course somebody like Spider-Man couldn't be ignored even if you wanted to.

But the real secret scoop I want on Ditko's days at Marvel in the 1960's is... What's up with the "ILY" hands and/or "Devil Horn" hands (he varied on the thumb-placement)??? The fucker has always remained really quiet about that question. The only answer I could find in my MINUTES of research was a quote saying “Because it looks more interesting that way,” and I think that's just BULLSHIT.

His two most recognizable characters at Marvel are both constantly either telling speakers of ASL that they love them, or hailing Lucifer, and I suspect some sort of hidden narrative.

Or, at least, I want to pretend that there's some sort of hidden narrative. In fact, since Ditko remains so staunchly silent about things in general, I'm going to just go ahead and create my own narrative.

I think that whenever Ditko and Lee were having slappy-fights around the office, he'd go and throw a bunch of Satanic imagery into a Spidey comic. Then, later, when he was working on Dr. Strange and feeling more relaxed, he'd have the good Doctor secretly spreading messages of love. And unless Steve Ditko writes to me personally to correct this, I am considering it historically-accurate. Also, fuck Objectvism and bootstraps and all that other stupid right-wing garbage. Fuck it all to hell!

(This blog-post brought to you by boredom and the Fuck Objectivism to Hell Foundation.)

A Surprising Lack of Opinions...

The title of this post is specific to this post, but also sort of reflects the fact that I created a blog and then never used it. See how I did that? I am one clever motherfucker, y'all had better get used to that.

So some decent, non-Quesada images of Cyclops in his Marvel NOW! costume have hit the interwebs, and the costume is causing people to feel feelings. Rage feelings. The kind of feelings that spawn Epic Nerd Hyperbole like "Marvel is destroying my childhood!" And, well... I'm kind of surprised that I'm just rolling with it. I actually think it's kind of a dope outfit for Cyclops to wear. I'm surprised by this because usually I am the first one to get ultra-grumpy when they put kneepads on Superman (WUT) or take the little wings off the sides of Captain America's head (NO). I'm a guy who gets slightly distracted when Spider-Man has his armpit-webs in one series but doesn't in another (for the record, I am pro-armpit-webs), so - and this may be sad but fuck you for judging me - I actually found myself lying in bed this morning wondering why I'm so okay with a superhero getting such a radical makeover. And I figured that means I'd better blog about it.

Now, I know a lot of my friends will just jump to the "because Cyclops is boring and stupid" conclusion, but I can't accept that one. The truth is, I've always actually liked the dude, despite years of movies, cartoons, comics, and basically nerd-culture-at-large telling me that I'm supposed to be rooting for Wolverine and viewing Cyclops as the stuffy jerk. And I mean, he IS a stuffy jerk... But he's also a dude with extraordinarily low self-esteem, who leads a team full of people with extraordinarily low self-esteem, and constantly has HIS boss - a dude who ALSO has extraordinarily low self-esteem - barking orders inside his brain while he's trying to lead on the ground... and that shit right there is interesting to me. During Matt Fraction's painfully short stint on Uncanny X-Men, there was a scene where Madelyne Pryor, Cyclops' thought-to-be-dead ex-wife, launches a major psychic assault against him; When his current-girlfriend Emma Frost rescues him from psychic torture, his only response is "Please. I have bigger nervous breakdowns for breakfast." And he makes you believe that, and I think it's GREAT. So no, it's not because I write Cyclops off as boring and stupid.

No, I realized as I was lying around dorkily pondering shit that clearly has no practical impact on my life, the actual reason is a little deeper. I'm sure this has been pointed out and pondered by many of the fine folks who draw superheroes for a living, but it's genuinely a thought that's never occurred to me before: The X-Men don't actually have any sort of consistent costumes. I don't know why I never realized this in the past. The reason I will get so pissy about changes to Superman or Captain America or Spider-Man is that I always feel like they're messing around with something iconic... whereas The X-Men are arguably more popular than any of those guys and they aren't iconic at all. They change their super-suits at least every couple of years. In fact, if you count the Phoenixed-Out costume he was sporting for a few months, Cyclops has had three different costumes in 2012 alone! There's usually - but not always - some sort of vague blue and yellow motif going on, but for the most part The X-Men all just change outfits all the time while their friends and peers in the Marvel Universe are wearing the same things they did 50 years ago. I mean sure, Cyclops has had his little visor thinger, but even that changes shape depending on who's drawing it... and now even that has changed to a big old X on his face, yet he remains recognizable.

So now I'm left wondering: What is it that makes these characters recognizable when their looks are constantly changing? I mean, there are certain visual cues, like Wolverine's perpetual hat-hair, or the fact that Beast is covered in blue fur... But why is it enough for me that Storm is just the lady with the prematurely white hair who wears whatever she damned well pleases, while I find myself pitching a fit about Green Lantern having his costume become a mock-turtleneck? I mean, I'm probably being unreasonably hard on the Nü52 for erasing the entire history of events that made me care about DC Comics in the first place (where probably = absolutely), but still. The idea that these characters have achieved a place in my heart even when they're wearing exceedingly silly or dated costumes doesn't bother me, and I have no idea WHY. Like, I think Cyclops is kind of intriguing on a conceptual level, but Captain America has been one of my favorite superheroes for as long as I can remember, and I'm still a little salty about that goofy armor he wore in the 1990s, so it's not that I'm more forgiving of Cyclops and his fellow X-Men by virtue of their being somehow more compelling, or more emotionally resonant on a personal level, as characters. They're just superheroes to me.

Could it be because they've just always been inconsistent? Is it really that simple? Am I really that simple? Could the reason I get so bent out of shape over Superman's kneepads be that I'm just comfortable with Superman dressing a certain way, while The X-Men have never given me that sense of steadiness? It's a weird thing to process, because it means that I'm internalizing this shit even more than I thought (and I was already pretty sure I was internalizing it too much). I am a grown adult who makes the gas-face at the idea of a superhero wearing a slightly different costume in a comic book; and while I'm okay with that part of myself, it's apparently taken The X-Men to point out the why and how of the matter so starkly... and I've just now decided that that's part of what makes the X-Men fucking rad.

So yeah. Cyclops has a new costume, and I feel vaguely positive about it... and that has me questioning the very core of my being. Welcome to my blog, lol.

Um...

I promise I'll start posting things soon.

Giant-Size Blog-Thing

Okay. Alright. I'm doin' this.

After the urging of my wife and a handful of close friends, I've decided to finally take and go and make a blog where I can store all of my long-form nerd-rants and whatnot. I have a lot to say about a lot of things, and I suspect that sometimes people get sick of me expressing those things verbally.

However, I also fear that as soon as I go to write my first few actual blog posts, I will seize up and not know what to write about. So I may be taking some requests and/or answering some questions early on.

All I know is that I haven't been writing nearly as often as I ought to. Hopefully this will help to change that. Don't expect poetry, though: I only post that shit on the internet under assumed names (unless you dig back a decade or so, lol).

I also am going to keep fucking around with the layout, because I OMGHATE using templates for things. I shoved in some Kirby crackles, and found a font that didn't make me want to murder babies, but I'm still iffy on the whole concept.

So yeah. Blog'd.

Test Post

I just made a blog. About my opinions. About things. This is just a test post. So yeah.

Butts.