A Trout In The Milk

There is a Beast/Wonder Man one-shot Avengers issue.

There is Star Wars, where I believe he first begins to screw around with this.

There is the Detective Comics #500 Batman/Deadman team-up.

And I know there’s more I’m missing, but I really love Infantino’s “psychedelic” work.  Was it him colouring himself?  Was it him pairing himself, or being paired, with a particular colourist or colourists?  This, too, was a style that might have caught on, but somehow didn’t…explanations?  Examples?  Disputations?

Wouldn’t you just freak out to see him do that on, say, a Silver Surfer comic?

Now, I confess I don’t know much about how this works.  Most of the titles in comic books that I can think of off the top of my head are by writer/artists.  Like, Kirby’s Fourth World (and by the way, no disrespect to any artists involved, but for Christ’s sake throw away the dust-jackets for those Omnibus editions!):  there Jack goes absolutely over the top, by providing not one but two introductory splashes with narration and titles per issue…and wow, man.  He blows my mind, it’s a whole new style, it’s 100% gripping.  But look at those titles he draws, in the same style he would later use for Marvel’s Eternals and Captain America…you know the one, it’s that creepy quasi-horror thing.  Unfortunately he had less room for narration at Marvel, and of course there was no two-splash approach.  I guess it’s tempting to compare what Jack does in, say, The Forever People, to what TV shows do with their pre-credit teasers…but having looked at it carefully with an eye to just this comparison…no, he’s doing something just a bit different, and it’s really rather interesting…

But as I said:  writer/artist.

The other example that springs instantly to mind is John Byrne:  big, square, solid-coloured BLOCKS of titles, sometimes eating up as much as a third of a page all by themselves.  Very dramatic look, lots of “wow”.  Say what you will about Byrne (and I do, all the time), but you look at those titles and I believe you can see a thought-process.

And then there’s Eisner, but c’mon.  That’s too easy:  Eisner’s Eisner for heaven’s sake.  Why that’s like saying you can always know a Marshall Rogers book from its titles, it simply goes without saying.

No, what I really want to know from you, Bloggers…is who else designs super-distinctive and dramatic titles on the introductory splash, that I might be forgetting?

And, how’s it done?  Is it always the penciller, who does it?  Is it (or has it been in the past) sometimes the writer?

I just don’t know.

As Gil Gerard might say:  “enlighten me.”

It’s a certain season here, in Vancouver. Springtime, and the cherry trees all blossoming; clear blue skies.

Some rain.

To get right to it: they say these things come in threes, but here’s hoping that isn’t true. A short while ago, an old ersatz uncle of mine, a formative influence, a great iconoclast, an artist, a thinker…after a protracted battle with cancer finally died, going down at last below the molten tin roof of the sea. An inconceivable event, but it happened.

And then my friend Dave Watson died last Tuesday, and I missed his funeral service on Sunday due to logistical complications involving buses and ferries…which is an awful, awful shame, since I would’ve really liked to pay my respects.

I’ll pay them here, I guess.

Dave, like my faux-Uncle, was a pretty well-known guy around these parts, and although only in his mid-forties I’d say he was already pretty qualified to be known, just as my Uncle was, as a Builder Of This Province; which is the highest honour I think we have, though it’s strictly an unofficial one. One of our few local writers with a genuine voice and style of his own, he worked at the Georgia Straight newspaper for twenty-odd years before being diagnosed with cancer at the age of 44. I met him through his girlfriend, later his wife, a very close friend of mine…and over the years I found him to be, unfailingly, a welcome sight. I was by no means one of his close confidantes, but we shared many common interests, amusements, and perspectives…we were present together at marriages and memorials…and in short I liked him a lot, and always enjoyed talking with him.

It’s a terrible pity that he’s gone.

Cancer, of course.

I think there’s always a sense, when a contemporary dies, that the register of time has been powerfully shaken somehow. Older generations bequeath to us a bottomless fund of emotional value that, whether it was good or bad, can never be fully expended; they are part of the primeval landscape of our childhood, and as such their status as landmarks can never really disappear…even if, sadly, they themselves must do so. But since we inherit ourselves from them, their bequest can’t be out-spent: the world we (often blithely) walk about in is made on their bones, too, and so in a sense it’s as timeless as they were, and can’t be demolished even by the shuddering fact of their deaths…

…Though these are always tragic.

But, it’s not the same with contemporaries: there’s no bequest there. They’re not given to us. We have to invest our own money in them, bank our own precious attention in the bond of their lives, on purpose. They’re born into the landscape along with us, and they wander around in it as we do; they give us nothing. Rather, they share with us the experience of the world.

Until one day. inexplicably, they vanish right out of it.

And the bond reaches maturity.

Whereupon so much comes free, that was once caught up, that we hardly know what to make of it all — there is an instant where it seems a clock that has been stuck silent on a wall finally ticks, and a bell finally rings…and we are not prepared. We are not prepared for time to give such evidence of its passing; we are not prepared to become, so suddenly, so much older.

I heard of Dave’s death on Friday, I think…and I am just starting to feel that he is missing. Where did he go? I can’t find that guy anywhere. And believe me, I’ve looked.

Fucking cancer. I’ll tell you, it’s making a real enemy of me these days.

I have another friend who has it, a very close, very talented, very vivacious friend. New mother; big laugher; joy to be around. But right now she is in tough against it, in fact come to very fierce grips with it: she and cancer are eye to eye and tooth to tooth, and I don’t even know what round this fight of hers is in, though I clutch the betting stubs tightly in my fists. To be as old as I’ll be if she doesn’t make it is something I don’t want to think about at all…and so I don’t.

Well, because I refuse to.

Because this may indeed be the moon of the falling grass, I guess…but it can’t go on forever, can it?

No, no…surely it can’t.

I don’t usually do obituaries on this blog, as you may know. I felt oddly moved to mark the death of Kurt Vonnegut (perhaps because I always associated him with my sick friend!), and I couldn’t figure out how not to mark the death of Steve Gerber, because I almost felt that in some peculiar way I knew him. More accurately: that he, somehow, knew me. And whether this was true or not, it felt the same: after Gerber’s death, a certain fund somewhere reached maturity, and a certain bell somewhere rang, and I had a massive realization of a certain kind…which one day I’ll get to talking about, probably.

These more close-to-home deaths are different, though. I don’t really want to mark them in a blog; after all I am marking them in real life all the time, in phone conversations and coffee meetings and sometimes even eulogies. And, what if the deaths just keep on coming? I can’t afford to make a job out of this sort of thing, you know, if they do. I made an abortive attempt to post about the death of my Uncle John a little while ago, but it didn’t take…well, if all flesh is grass, all memorial posts on this blog are doubly so…and I’m glad it didn’t take, because this was a box I didn’t need to put that stuff into. Because it properly belongs in quite a different box, you see?

But damn it if this doesn’t appear to be the moon of the falling grass after all…so this, yes, I’ll mark. Late April and early May, as I believe Eliot pointed out, can be a real bitch of a time. Cherry blossoms, and all.

Poor Dave. I wish I could tell you that he didn’t suffer, but he did. However he found some accomodations for himself too, I believe…and this will probably have to do, as far as solace goes. He lived in the shadow of a green mountain with his wife, my old friend, and they got a puppy. He found a way to do some writing, towards the end. I already know it’s never easy for the sick person to think about having to leave the world…but Dave was a very smart man, and doubtless he discovered some things through the accomodations he found, that I am not privileged to know.

Not yet.

I suppose I will find them out eventually. In the meantime knowing him was my privilege, and as far as accomodations go, he will always find as many as he wants in my memory of him. Hardwood floors, Dave. Broadband. Marx Brothers movies. Edamame. Grass.

Please stay as long as you like.

When it’s overtime in the playoffs, and you’re talking about balancing out bullshit penalties…

The one at ninety minutes is a gut-punch.

But the one at a hundred and ten is a rifle bullet.

Sad thing is, this was the most exciting playoff game I’d seen so far this year.  And what an amazing story!

I blame Bettman for its anticlimactic ending.  Oh, well…at least it was a tie game to begin with.  So many times this year I saw good late third-period rallies squelched by marginal calls, I sometimes wondered why I was bothering to watch at all.

In a word:  bogus.

Just thought you’d like to know:  our friend Adam Star has created a spin-off from his fantastic Cosmic Cube, called Esoteric Star Wars.

I’ll be spending tomorrow reading it.  That is, if I can keep myself from wandering down to the LCS and spending what’s left of my dough snapping up the next three volumes of Moore and Williams’ Promethea.

Which is not certain.

Okay, enjoy!

We should actually be doing this all the time, Internet. And I don’t even know why we aren’t. But let’s start, because Superman is awesome! Why, he can fly, and everything!

Let’s all do four.

Number one for me, both categories, is Jerry and Joe. Rough, vibrant ideas punching you in the face! Nothing like it.

Okay, better do four outside that…because if there’s anybody out there who doesn’t put Jerry and Joe as tops in this book, you may be visiting the wrong blog.

Okay, four each, outside the masters. To quote Millar, “poofs first” (this means writers):

Apostle #1: The sainted Maggin, who dared to have Lois fall in love with Clark, and who himself loved Lex Luthor, maybe even a little too much.

Apostle #2: Cary Bates, of course.

Apostle #3: You’re not ready for this, but…it’s got to be John Byrne. Superman’s world through Clark’s eyes…that was a neat idea. …No YOU shut up!

Apostle #4: Kurt Busiek and Geoff Johns, for their wonderful “Clark Kent: Reporter!” series in OYL. I wouldn’t've complained if it had gone on for TYL.

And, artists, AKA the ruggedly masculine ones:

Apostle #1: Are you kidding? Curt Swan. So many pictures of Clark Kent getting into elevators….!

Apostle #2: Without a doubt, Jack Kirby. His Superman faces blow my mind. DC erred, egregiously.

Apostle #3: Neal Adams. World’s most mindblowingly dynamic Superman.

Apostle #4: Throwing you a curve ball, it’s the man who made me believe in Metropolis as a place again — Adam Kubert.

Jerry and Joe top all, of course…and I’m not just saying that, just take a look, or read a caption! But even if you don’t agree with this patently-obvious truth…

Let’s hear your views!

Grudgingly, I have to admit that if you don’t esteem Jerry and Joe…well, then, you get two more spots to screw around with. Fair enough. You’re crazy, in my estimation, and ought to be locked up. But tastes, unfortunately, differ.

So…

Well?

Let’s have it!

Hello, Bloggers. Today I’d like to briefly discuss the assassination of character in Marvel Comics.

Here’s something I found Omar Karindu saying about his favourite supervillains, as I dutifully follwed a Neilalien link:

“I like so many of them….

Hmm, I guess today I’ll say the Mad Thinker. Here’s a guy who’s so cripplingly good at understanding things that he can predict everything down to the last detail, but he can’t quite wrap his head around that last little bit, that non-mathematical datum that’d explain the world to him and let him do whatever he wanted. And it makes him bitter, vicious, warped, and, worst of all, uncreative. He’s the anti-imagination, the inability to generate concepts. And as such, a perfect foil to all of those smart, imaginative heroes who consistently beat him by thinking outside the box. He’s like a hack writer whose plots get away from him in search of better authors.”

A marvellously concise summation of the symbolic meaning that makes this classic Kirby villain tick, don’t you think?

And until Omar put it just that way, I hadn’t realized quite what had bothered me about Dwayne McDuffie’s first issue of post-Civil War Fantastic Four. It isn’t really McDuffie’s fault, of course — he was painted into a corner by Mark Millar’s (and to a lesser degree, JMS’) consistent portrayal of Reed Richards as a warning that there may be Soulless Intellectuals Among Us, so he had to paint himself out.

But there was something that grated on me in that, and now I know what it is.

To justify Reed’s hugely out-of-character behaviour in Civil War, McDuffie has him reveal that it was all for a necessary Greater Good — and Reed invites the Mad Thinker to his lab, to show him why.

Here comes the first thing I thought was a bit of a kludge. I mean, it was all right for Byrne to use Larry Niven’s stasis fields in his FF, in part because it was a throwaway bit that didn’t damage anything, and in part because he never actually said that’s what he was doing…but McDuffie has Reed explain in so many words that, inspired by Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, he’s invented psychohistory, and it was pure psychohistorical necessity that forced him into his out-of-character actions.

Okay, this is jarring. But, at least it paints Reed out of that corner. However, there’s something else going on here, too: why is it the Mad Thinker, that Reed invites to see his mathematical proof that he wasn’t really being a dick, not really? Well, because only the Mad Thinker will understand it. And, you know, he does: he even hails Reed as a genius, expressing awe at the way in which he’s so effortlessly accomplished the goal that the Mad Thinker has striven for his entire life.

Marvel Psychohistory. Or, as we might choose to call it…

The Anti-Life Equation.

Notably (if I remember right, that is), Reed doesn’t even stretch in this scene. You know what I mean? The number one proponent of the X factor of human imagination doesn’t even do the superpowered thing that usually makes him such a dandy symbol of it. He just stands there, like a grey-templed Dr. Manhattan, hailed as a respected colleague by the Anti-Imagination Man who has always, before this terrible moment, been his enemy.

And, I’m not even saying I didn’t enjoy this scene, because I did…still, it’s gotta make you think, doesn’t it?

About character, and symbolism, and how that can all get desperately messed-up. Reed Richards, Mr. Fantastic, was always a properly superheroic character who always stood for the same thing, no matter who was writing him that week.

But no more. Until the excesses of Civil War and Illuminati have been forgotten, he will always have this big black mark on him.

Except…

Except isn’t forgetting the very problem, here? Because what you can’t remember, you can’t deny, and as far as the character of Reed Richards goes, the Internet is full of people opining that the Millar/JMS/Bendis interpretation is an accurate and faithful one — Reed has always been a bit of a dick, they argue. He’s always been a little scary, working there in his lab without the regulation of normal human emotionality or sense of proportion. He’s always been an image of Amoral Science Gone Wrong.

Of course, as anyone who’s ever read an FF comic prior to JMS’ run knows, this assertion is utterly false. Utterly false, in the sense that superhero characters are crafted by their creators with a certain amount of built-in symbolism, carefully chosen and developed…and if there’s something that reading forty-odd years of FF comics (and I most definitely include FF: 1234, here) ought to inform the reader about, it’s that this character was never made to be that way.

Only if you just started reading, could you think that. But, what a thing to think even if you have just started reading! “Reed Richards has always symbolized this, this character has always been like this.” That’s not a thing a person thinks because they’ve just started reading. That’s a thing a person thinks because either a) they’ve been told it’s true by those they accept as knowledgeable about the matter, or b) they did read all the old stuff, but so inattentively or uncaringly that they can’t actually remember the sense of what they read.

Reed as the Mad Thinker’s idol. There’s something quite wrong about that.

But, it’s not just Reed.

Let’s take another favourite character of mine who suffers from the problem of mass fan-forgetting: Nighthawk.

“He’s always been a bit of a loser, a wannabe.”

This common judgement exposes the prevalence of a radical misreading of Nighthawk’s historical character arc, one that stops dead at about the same time Nighthawk acquires a character worth talking about — and then cherry-picks whatever it can from after that (and it’s not much) to support the misreading. Nighthawk’s “always” been a loser, a wannabe?

Nighthawk starts out as a villainous Marvel-ized Batman, a credible foe for Captain America. Not much character there at all, except “whoever this joker is, he moves like greased lightning!”

We next see him employed in Daredevil — where he gets a bit more character plastered on him: becoming a slightly more textured anti-Batman, a rich guy who becomes a villain just for kicks, and who decides to discredit Daredevil so he can commit crimes without having to worry about DD’s interference. Wannabe? Hmm, one could argue it fairly convincingly, I think…Nighthawk’s definitely presented as a coward, a phoney, and a dilettante in this story (anti-Batman!), and I can’t even say pretending to be a hero wasn’t part of his plan, because it clearly was. However, even leaving aside the fact that of course everybody remembers that classic story, don’t they? Remembers it like it was yesterday? Sure you do…but even bearing that so true! fact in mind, I think I’ll quibble with the idea that this appearance forms his essential character, and that everything that happens or is revealed subsequently is just a variation on that one brilliantly-composed theme. If you don’t mind.

Because the next time we see him, in Defenders, he makes the Noble Ultimate Sacrifice, doesn’t he? Ah, the classic and time-honoured Redemption storyline, you have to love it…

Especially in this case, because this is where it starts to get interesting. Because it isn’t the Swordsman. It isn’t the Hulk. It isn’t even Franklin Storm.

Nighthawk is saved at the last minute by Doctor Strange and the other Defenders, and promptly goes out and gets himself a new costume and a new raison d’etre. When next we see him, he’s a wisecracking acrobat, mostly effective and even occasionally inventive…a little bit like Bruce Wayne mixed half-and-half with Peter Parker. Generic Marvel Hero, you might call him. Anti-Batman No More!

And then Gerber gets his hands on him, and we’re into something else yet again. He goes through some stuff. He changes and grows, and in about half a year successfully attains the realization that the superhero thing is barely about the costume and the cape at all. By the end of Gerber’s run, he may still be a bit cranky on occasion…but a loser wannabe?

Hardly.

Then Kraft makes him perhaps a bit more petulant at times, but also — largely — even more inventive and effective. More of a day-saver, even in hysterical mode.

Then DeMatteis — unforgivably! — kills him off. In yet another Noble Ultimate Sacrifice. Well, we all saw that one coming, didn’t we?

Next up is the BuLars Defenders — by the end of which, no less an authority than Mother Earth has pronounced Nighthawk the heart and soul of the team. Which, he clearly is — by this iteration, he’s become indefatigably optimistic (you would be too, if you’d been through the revolving door of Death that many times), and above all he gets the job done. Vindication for Nighthawk, hooray! You see, the whole point of that story was that the “Big Four” thing is bullshit; again and again, it’s Kyle and Val and Patsy who save the day…

But I guess somebody missed that bit.

Maybe they were still reeling from the hilarious Ultimate Defenders, in which they all really are loser wannabes?

Well, whatever happened there…by the time Civil War comes around, Nighthawk folds like the cheapest of cheap tents. It’s uh…really great. Yeah.

A really great example of either — take your pick — fannish contempt, or an inability to read for deeper meaning. Something a tad over twenty-five years of character development, retconned into “always been a loser wannabe”. It’s a shame.

Why, he practically gets dragged around the walls of Troy.

Such are the perils of fan-forgetfulness.

But, it’s not just Nighthawk.

Let’s look at everybody’s favourite punching-bag of a character, Dr. Henry Pym. Once useful, now “always” a mentally-unstable wife-beater with an inferiority complex so yawning you could drop a helicarrier into it…all because of a brief storyline in Avengers written something like twenty years ago, and fixed up at least four times since then! But, nobody remembers the fixes, and for the simplest reason imaginable: because he was always this way, so putting the Shooter stuff behind us just isn’t an option. Shooter’s tenure on Avengers is now deemed to have provided, retroactively, the core of the character. And it can’t be departed from: taking him back-to-basics just naturally takes him there. Well, but where’s the surprise in that, exactly? Nighthawk’s redemption was somehow peeled off him, in the dead of night, with nobody looking…once a happy-go-lucky asshole forced by circumstances to become a mensch, he’s now always been a loser wannabe. Reed Richards has been given a need for redemption he never knew about before (by the way, just to point it out: he’s cured his friend Ben Grimm of being the Thing about a dozen times so far. No, seriously: read the comics), that unfortunately seems impossible to attain, by having always been about how imagination is dangerous, rather than liberating. So why should Hank Pym be any different? Once a square-jawed polymath with a mild temper, who struggled with his commitment issues only to have Fate ironically throw them back in his face as super-fights, he’s now always been about how psychological repression must always be maintained, not worked through.

But, it’s not just Hank Pym.

Over here we have Iron Man, the damaged idealist (look for out-of-left-field Iron Man movie review shortly!) who because he can’t repair his heart, tries to repair the world’s injustice instead. This is a guy who started with Redemption! But, when the wounded heart got thrown out, they passed him a bottle instead…and the upshot is, all these years later, that his story no longer starts with Redemption, but with Recovery. Well, fair enough…and it might have worked in much the same way…except that, perhaps inevitably, someone came along and turned continuous Recovery into continuous Recidivism, because they didn’t read closely enough to be able to tell the difference between those things. Thus, Tony Stark has now always been the man in trouble with the bottle and the ego, and the compromises of the power and the vision. The damaged idealist? That idea’s been flipped around, and now he only damages himself: sneaking, with an addict’s cunning, little stray bits of power and independence from his companions, like so many fifths of scotch from out of toilet tanks…closing the circle of responsibility on himself, and only himself, with an addict’s deadly focus. Protected in his iron suit, and his influential post as head of an ultra-powerful government quango, and his reputation for genius. And there are no Twelve Steps being followed here! Because it isn’t that the heart was damaged by misplaced ideals, and so the ideals must be corrected even though — or in fact because — the heart can’t be…! No, it’s now that the ideals are eating away at the heart, and vice versa, and one will eventually kill the other. You want a conflicted character? Oh, we’ve got your conflict for you: but it’s the conflict of the man who hasn’t hit his own bottom yet. Tony Stark, Addict! I’m surprised he hasn’t tried MGH…

Oh, wait, he has. Just in the Dom Perignon form of Extremis. Well, but the rich are different from you and I…

This, too, is a radical misreading: Tony Stark, futurist. Well, that’s just an excuse, isn’t it? As Reed Richards has come to signify the need to subordinate imagination to control, as Kyle Richmond has come to signify the desire to escape responsibility by role-playing, as Hank Pym has come to signify the inability to overcome weakness and start a new life (”Don’t bother going to the ants, thou sluggard!”), so too has Iron Man come to signify the dark commitment to an ideal, which is really just ideology wearing a false face…

As all ideals are, perhaps we’re meant to think?

Good Lord, even Ultimate Tony doesn’t have it this bad.

But, it’s not just Iron Man.

Enter the Scarlet Witch, and the chthonic terror of the feminine!

The Human Torch, stubborn upper-echelon Peter Pan, whose trust fund is a superpower!

The Sentry, ultimate asocial high-school loner sitting in the library at lunchtime!

Dr. Strange, bumbling know-nothing, mystic Polonius!

Every one of these readings is comically reversed. Or, “comically”, that might be putting it a bit strongly…

Professor X, incestuous para-daddy who fucks with his children’s minds…!

Nick Fury, absent deity!

Spider-Man! With great power comes the ducking of great responsibility!

I’m angry!

Actually, I’m not that angry. Really, not angry at all. But it’s interesting, don’t you think? I mean, I liked Watchmen a lot, but I never expected it to go on for this long…

Daredevil, gifted by radioactive accident with the powers of Job!

I take it back: it is comical. Because if these characters were really all always like this, the fledgling Marvel would’ve imploded much like Nighthawk’s convictions in Civil War — don’t blink, you’ll miss it! – sometime around, oh, let’s say 1975.

And who knows? Maybe, in this new reality, it kind of did.

Because they’re going back in time, you know. It’s all up for grabs, now. And all the symbols are set free, tumbling into empty air…there to find new and precisely-wrong meanings…

Such is the peril of forgetting.

…

Gee, I gotta admit: I had fun ranting that out.

Just a little late about it, of course.

But oh well.

Anybody catch that “Bend Sinister” thing?  Deb Whitman in line at CBGB’s;  I loved that.  That’s how I’ll always remember her.

Matthew is going to love the categorizing-gobbledegook in this one, I predict.

Let me compare it all to music, just briefly, in a bit of a rhyme:

“I remember when “Pop” was on one side of the record store, and “Rock” on the other. And I remember — how I remember! — the First Pop War. Its flags, its body-count, its head-wounds in basements. Its tattered eyeliner. Its pointy-toed feet.

And I remember the days of “Alternative”’s birth. The sea of failed punks, the shirts with false chains. When Fresca was cool. When bands were named “Silhouette”. The days before Nutrasweet.

What was it worth?”

Science fiction, Bloggers. The fight keeps changing.

In the days of my youth, so long ago now, there was a persistent and fierce debate about how much, and to what degree, science fiction should be kept separate from fantasy. For some reason, this was important at the time.

Such pointless arguments.

In related news, just recently I had occasion to remark on the old Buck Rogers show from the Glen A. Larson idea-abbatoir of the late Seventies, and how I felt some affection for it now…even though I hated it at the time.

Well, but maybe I’m just looking on that effort now, in the same way that I looked on the old Buck Rogers strips then?

Whatever, let’s talk Dr. Who. When the series was rebooted with Christopher Eccleston as The Doctor, I was thrilled. Everything that I had loved about old “real” Who was there…the melodrama, the quotable lines, the “silly” villains, the good writing and better acting…why they even had the occasional cardboard set. And in this lousy world of recycled genre we live in, where even the best attempt at revivification turns out to be no more than pastiche of pastiche…”upstream” pastiche, might we not call it?…I finally thought, wow, finally! We’ve finally pierced the membrane of the New Traditionalism, finally! We’ve finally managed, finally, after all these dreary nostalgia-experiments, to resume the past.

I am not so sure I think that now, though. Although I still hope it.

The thing is, there are three ways to make science fiction entertainments outside of the plain old printed word. Tom Bondurant would call these ways Does, Could, and Would…but I would call them slightly differently from a historical context, as Originating, Expressive, and Cynical. Where Expressive represents what is usually a second generation of creators who’ve found a way to talk about how they admire the psychological magnetism unconsciously employed by their predecessors, and Cynical (a loaded word, I’ll admit) stands for a later generation’s emulation of the Expressive attempt…but one fatally flawed by their failure to realize their own urge to dismantle the past, to engage in that Destruction which is also a form of Art…but not, I freely admit, always a type of Art which is my favourite.

Hmm. Actually, that doesn’t seem like quite enough fields, does it? Not to really cover everything that’s going on. So let’s have a couple more!

Patronizing, Non-Patronizing, and Deliberately Dissonant, where the third term denotes a sometimes-uneasy cooperation between the first two elements.

And yet a couple more:

Topical, Non-Topical, and Metatextual.

Further!

Idealistic, Exploitive, and Nostalgic.

And one more:

Classical, Modern, and Postmodern.

And okay, one after that:

Contemporaneous, Historical, Conscious

Now that last one may seem to have a lot in common with the one before it, but I warn you, I’m being pretty jargonistic here at times. Well, you’ll see how it shakes out. Anyway by my count that makes six fields of three values each, which would combine for a great number of faces on this crazy culture-cube I seem to want to make. But let’s set some Principia-type rules for that combination, let’s set some axioms for this system, and aside from the thing where terms in a set aren’t permitted to combine I mean, like:

The Expressive approach always includes a Non-Patronizing element.

Originating is never Nostalgic.

Cynical is often also Metatextual and/or Postmodern.

Nostalgic can never be Contemporaneous.

Patronizing can never be Postmodern.

Exploitive is not Classical.

God help me, I think I’ve nailed it. Now where’s that Wittgenstein, I thought I told him and Godel to go do the dishes…

Oh, right. Thanks for reminding me. Term-defining:

I hope everything’s fairly clear, except for Classical, Modern, Postmodern, and Contemporaneous, Historical, Conscious. Well, for the purposes of this discussion I define the Classical, Modern, Postmodern distinction as storytelling styles in science fiction and fantasy that depend on a) enlisting the attachment of belief, b) vindicating the attachment of belief, or c) challenging the attachment of belief. Like the Originating, Expressive, and Cynical axis, these are much more the concerns of nuts-and-bolts art than of business, or even high-level authorial tone-setting…and Contemporaneous, Historical, Conscious, that just means whether you feel like you can make up your own stuff, or if you have to make up stuff in an environment where what’s gone before you forms a constraint on you (useful or otherwise), or finally if you’re living in a world where influences are simply undeniable, like the air that you breathe, and what you make will necessarily reference what has gone before, because it’s part of it, and you accept that: in fact that’s what drew you to this business in the first place, the richness of influence.

Okay?

So…how many does that make?

Hopefully the point of it all will not remain obscure for much longer…as you might recall, we were discussing Dr. Who, specifically the “New Who” of the Ninth and Tenth Doctors, which I delightedly took at first glance to be primarily Expressive, Deliberately Dissonant with a large component of Non-Patronizing (let’s just call that sort of thing DD/NP, shall we?), Topical, Idealistic, Classical, and Historical.

But now which I’m beginning to suspect is merely Expressive, Deliberately Dissonant (DD/NP), Metatextual, Nostalgic, Modern, and Conscious.

Not that the things in the first list of attributes are automatically the best things to have, in all situations; and not that the things in the second list are automatically the worst. In fact, in my assessment, even things which are Cynical, Patronizing, or Exploitive can be good, in their proper places…

Well, maybe not “Exploitive”…hello, Disco Buck Rogers with Wilfred Hyde-White…!

For elaboration, let’s take the case of the Doctor’s infamous Sonic Screwdriver.

To SF fans of an earlier time, the Patronizing approach was a particularly abhorrent one, as it demeaned the aspirations of a literature that was still trying to pull itself out of the ghetto of perceived subliteracy. Science fiction must not allow itself to be confused with “fantasy”, it was thought at that time: there must be no magic wands, no straight-up wish-fulfillment, no unscientific concepts. Where possible, academic journals ought to be cited, and math should be used. That’s what would keep the distinction nice and sharp, and so that was the only way to avoid the Patronizing approach to SF becoming further cemented in the popular consciousness by Exploitive efforts. Rise above Lost In Space, rise above Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea…don’t give ‘em the chance to co-opt us.

Of course it was a bad strategy, full of oversimplifications. The faith in “hard” science fiction’s plausibility that persists today, as a sort of dry, unproductive cough left over from that ideological illness, is after all this time still no easier to support with facts — what is truly “hard” science fiction? Very, very little of it has ever been written: the substratum of fantastic supposition is normally quite visible, in your average SF tale. Yes, even when you use math…

But at the time, because of reasons specific to the time (some of which, it must be said, were good reasons), this ineliminable aspect of SF was de-emphasized as much as possible. You see there was all too much of Glen Larson in the bad science fiction of the day: “more astro-sugar for your space tea, Captain? Do try the “phillmok” — what you Earthers call peanut-butter cookies…” Oh, it got pretty bad sometimes, folks. Pretty bad. “What’s the matter, June?” “Oh, it’s this darn electro-comb, can’t you get the handyman-robot to do something about its transistors?” Yeesh. Not just subliterate, but often scientifically and culturally subliterate, too. A real mess, actually.

Hence the early hate for the Doctor’s “sonic screwdriver”, although really…that makes half-decent sense even today, doesn’t it? A sonic screwdriver. My God, when will they make one. But at the time, it sounded like someone saying “love the new space-tie, Bob, what colour do you call that?” “Oh, this? I guess it’s astro-green with a little ultra-yellow in it…it’s the latest thing! Let me tell you, these Plutonian haberdashers really know their stuff! Now let me freshen your grav-Scotch, Tom…”

…Sorry, it’s just really hard to stop with that stuff, once you get going…

But the point is…you know, it just may have been a little Patronizing, at that. Well, I don’t really think of it that way — I’ll give the all-time award for Patronizing to Star Trek: TNG for its near-continuous trekno-wank — “modulate the shield harmonics” my ass — give me a sonic screwdriver any day — but the point is (hey, wasn’t I just talking about the point?), that sometimes a little Patronizing can be good. You don’t want to use too much of it! But in what’s been my business for the last little while (writing alt-country songs), cliche is definitely a kind of resource too, you see? In most kinds of writing, cliche is absolute total instantaneous death every time you touch it, but in some kinds of writing, just a pinch of it qualifies as spice. In the alt-country game it’s even a little more than that: you really have to learn how to ride up pretty hard alongside it, sometimes. Flirting with cliche is pretty important, although you must still never actually make the mistake of leading it on…because you have to be original and Non-Patronizing, too, obviously. But on the other hand, let’s face it, a genre’s a genre, right?

Right?

The Brits are past masters at the judicious use of Patronizing elements in their juvenile fiction (although I guess, now that I think about it, that they’ve also produced the most sickeningly egregious overuses of it, too), as they’re also past masters at crafting the Non-Patronizing children’s story. Hey, they’re pretty good at Deliberate Dissonance, too — Harry Potter may be ham-fisted, but it’s dissonant at least, and that’s definitely an artistic accomplishment of some stripe or other. I mean, Harry Potter’s no Hobbit, but then what is?

Back to the sonic screwdriver. What’s wrong with it? Nothing, except at one time it sounded faintly like “astro-sugar”. It sounded like kid stuff. Of course it was kid stuff, and even with that it might not really have sounded like kid stuff, anyway…but at the time, as I’ve been saying, this was an issue people tended to get caught up in.

In fact, it remains an issue, sometimes, even today. Odd as that may seem.

And so now, through the avenue of the sonic screwdriver, we’re back to my ongoing assessment of New Who. The sainted First Doctor was clearly Originating, Deliberately Dissonant with about an equal mix of Patronizing and Non-Patronizing (as most SF efforts in the Originating class happened to be, in those dim dark times before Star Trek), largely Non-Topical, Idealistic, Classical, and Contemporaneous. Later, it got a lot more Expressive, a bit more Non-Patronizing, and less Non-Topical to varying degrees in various episodes.

Now here’s my ideal New Who: E, DD/NP, largely N-T, I, Cl, and H.

And here, to recap, is what I saw when it started up again with Eccleston: E, DD/NP, T, largely I, Cl, and H.

Then that Cl changed to an M.

But I forgave the M, because I thought, yes, they kind of do need to vindicate the enlistment of belief at first — I mean we deserve a little vindication, don’t we? And I actively wanted it to be H — because with so much history, it could hardly function without paying attention to it as a constraint, could it?

But then a little while later I started to see it as E, DD/NP, still mostly T but increasingly Mt, increasingly N, M, and at times rather C. Which wasn’t quite so good.

And now I’m beginning to fear it’s becoming E, DD/P, largely Mt, N, M, and C. Which is fine, but you can run out of freshness pretty quick, that way. And frankly that M is tasting a bit sour on my tongue, now. But, okay: it’s still Who.

However E could change to Cy soooooo easily, you see, given the right conditions. And if that ever happens it won’t be proper Who at all, will it?

Tell you how it breaks down:

We can easily envision other possible regenerations of Who in which the genetic recipe gets fatally garbled. A Cynical Who, an Exploitive Who, a Who which is purely Patronizing. Of course that’s not the real recipe, not really: the real recipe includes a detailed list of ingredients like humour, intelligence, simplicity, character, novelty, excitement, fun. What I’ve attempted to describe in my fields is just how all that stuff gets inflected, how the ingredients are prepared or cooked. You can have a bad plate of moussaka; it’s still moussaka, just not very good. That is, it’s still moussaka unless you do something really radically non-suitable with the cooking.

What’s happening here, in New Who, is that there are several objectives that are being worked towards at the same time. There is, of course, an unavoidable nostalgic objective, cleverly addressed and defused (very effectively at first, I thought) by the conceit of the Time War, and the almost-imperceptible, yet thrilling, creep of the Companion over to the box labelled romantic-interest status. This is a little bit of a postmodern approach, a little bit of an influence-conscious approach, a bit of topicality, and a bit of the stuff I’ve called dissonance, that mixes patronizing elements and non-patronizing ones — and, naturally so, because to be more than pastiche, the modern-day Doctor must be, well, modern-day: Rose can’t be Jo or Sarah Jane, of course! She can’t behave as they did! Modern audiences wouldn’t stand for it. Just as they wouldn’t stand for the early twenty-first century being portrayed as a futurescape, since it’s where they live. And how are we to make the next generation of Whovians, if we don’t put the stuff in that we liked as kids, ourselves? The creepy stuff, the stupid stuff, the jokey stuff, the English stuff. And this concern leads seamlessly to a second objective: to make the thing live again, not just as a nostalgic copy of Who, but as Who itself, the real deal. Dissonance is absolutely indispensible, here, because if it’s all going to work, it can’t wish to be “Dr. Who, except good this time”…this is where the cardboard sets come in, the Cybermen design, the sonic screwdriver. The Doctor’s nonsense about reversing the polarity of the neutron flow. K-9. All of it. It must all be embraced, good, bad, and where necessary Patronizing…

And yet, the problem here is that “real” Who, ancestral Who, didn’t exactly love the cheese it had to put up with…it just put up with it, that’s all. Which meant, it got very creative because of it, but it still would’ve rather escaped it than deal with it.

Hmm…so if you want to do it right…if you truly want to resume the past…

Now all of a sudden we are deep into the postmodern, here (no, not my “Postmodern”, the real postmodern), because the question becomes, well…how do you resume the past? How is that done? You must have the creativity, clearly. You must be willing to break new ground. But, do you go with the restrictive cheese, when you don’t have to? Or do you not go with the cheese? Or do you mix it up…but then how do you mix it up?

I mean how do you even manage the theme song, for God’s sake, without deciding some things about spareness vs. richness?

In the end, it comes down to aesthetic, pure and simple. The aesthetic must be genius, because it’s the only thing that’s like a compass in this place. Some things must be pumped up. Some things must be pared down. But nobody knows which, except the man with the instincts.

And here we are again at the sonic screwdriver. What to do about it?

I was very pleased to see they kept it.

But I was even more pleased to see that the inevitable lantern-hanging regarding it had a light touch: some undercurrent of acknowledgement that the sonic screwdriver is not a dumb idea, without it openly degenerating into a declaration of the love of kitsch and “my childhood crap, which was brilliant, as opposed to yours which was stupid”. Always a danger, and SF entertainments that succumb to it aren’t exactly tough to find *cough*STAR WARS*cough*…

I mean, I’m still not really sure Billy Dee Williams even knew he was supposed to be in space, you know?

But maybe that’s a topic for another time…

Pickin’ up the space-ladies…hey, you space-ladies are looking absolutely beautiful tonight…

But the point is, you can even do astro-sugar right, if you can only figure out how to.

It’s still not the whole job, though. Well, in fact I am saying (though I certainly seem to be taking my time about it) that it is not even the job, anymore…!

Because what’s perhaps most interesting about New Who, and most central to the entire effort it represents, is the way it handles the Expressive stuff, to avoid the temptations of the Cynical approach. We’ve got some new directions here, the most obvious of which comes out in the sequence with the “Heart Of The TARDIS” — and this is the delicate bit, because this is where it gets goopy: romance symbolically blended with imagination, the two Holiest of the Holies in this new incarnation. Was it too much? Certainly it rode quite hard right up alongside “too much”, and exchanged some sweet nothings with it across the fenceposts. Of course, I liked it, you know…

But that’s when I started to worry about it, too. Because these recipes are delicate things. I don’t know if there’s anyone who can claim to be more delighted than I am, that it has indeed proved possible to resurrect real Dr. Who — resurrecting real anything was starting to look quite impossible for a time, wasn’t it? But now it seems as though there just might be life on Mars after all. Which is great: and we should all be studying the hell out of this experiment with the unexpected and longed-for result…so we can learn how it’s done…

However, this is not to say that we can’t still drown in the sea of Cynical, Modern, and Conscious, just because the menace of the Exploitive seems to have receded…or just because the old familiar sort of Patronizing seems to have disappeared. The naively Exploitive days following the insane success of Star Wars produced many bone-chillingly stupid movies and TV shows…but, they did know how to Originate, sometimes, and we are not so good at that anymore. Sure, they didn’t have a compass — well, Lucas did, and after a while it became apparent that Spielberg did (they’ve both lost it since), but nobody else did, for heaven’s sake even Gene Roddenberry couldn’t get the recipe quite right in the first Star Trek movie — and so it was all pretty lousy moussaka…but their very ham-fisted exploitive brainlessness represented a kind of productivity, and it’s a kind in short supply today. Not that new and even great things aren’t being created today, because they are! But my point is, these can be rough seas too.

Because the fight’s changed.

The old SF vs. fantasy war is over, and I guess somebody won, but I can’t tell who…and probably it doesn’t matter. The old Patronizing is gone — these days, even when somebody exclaims “felgercarb” it doesn’t make us cringe like it used to. Mostly. But there’s a new kind of Patronizing element evolving right under our noses, that’s got nothing to do with the sonic screwdriver or the astro-sugar, and that’s what we should be worried about.

Because, doesn’t vindication become patronizing too, after a while? And doesn’t a casual facility with Nostalgic and Conscious elements become patronizing, eventually? Even Postmodern storytelling or Cynical Destruction-As-Art, when they lose their novelty don’t these, too, start to pat us on the head a little too much for perfect comfort? Just how much legitimate mileage can be got out of these things, anyway? Now that the Pop Wars are over, everything’s finally become Alternative — both “hard” science fiction and “soft” science fiction have learned to either hold hands recombinatively, or suck. But that doesn’t mean the ship’s out of danger, and it doesn’t mean the good guys won. Even as we speak, the Empire of Suck is striking back. And, it is us. Was there ever a show more essentially Patronizing than the rebooted Bionic Woman, for example? And yet that was all for our benefit, the old pointy-shoed crowd…because it wasn’t the sort of patronizing that’s based on astro-sugar at all, that is to say it wasn’t intentionally, exploitively childish…

It just wasn’t grown-up, that’s all.

And, is Torchwood so different from Bionic Woman, in this respect? Does it not, just a little, seem to be an example of how the folks in charge of New Who might be as good at getting the recipe wrong, as they are at getting it right? I merely float the idea…I haven’t seen quite enough of Torchwood to really develop an informed opinion about how well it manages my crazy-cube fields, to produce the Expressiveness that could so easily be seen as pure anachronism…so naturally decomposable into a more Cynical approach, given only enough time…

But then I also haven’t seen quite enough of New Who to be able to decide that about it, either. So here’s the crux of it all, here’s the Heart Of The TARDIS if you will: can New Who truly be Resumptive, instead of merely Retro? An old professor of mine used to say that he thought “postmodernism” was a misnomer, because it was really just modernism with a new hat and a fake beard, a sort of Reggie Perrin modernism…and I don’t know if today I would agree with him, but it does seem to me that postmodernism is just what we call a certain kind of denouement, of a certain kind of story…the story of the detonation of History, of course. And, what happens after.

The post-War landscape, rubble and ruin and reconstruction. Chaotic terrain, and choices.

It’s the environment in which I came to adulthood; of course I love it, and I’m fascinated by it. I see all kinds of possibilities in it.

But, maybe my old professor was right, and that landscape’s just a story too. I hope it is, actually: because that would mean there could be such a thing as Resumptive, that was not just Retro in heavy disguise. And that would mean my vague, nagging worries that New Who might not last for another twenty-six years are unfounded, so long as the genius aesthetic doesn’t choose to move away from Expression, or embrace the Patronizing, or engage in too much Nostalgic navel-gazing or Modern fist-pumping and back-slapping.

Because that is the astro-sugar of our times.

Oh well. But if that all fails, there’s always Hellboy, you know!

…

[SPOILER ALERT: I may not have exactly "finished" this post -- so it still may be a little half-baked. Uh...whoops? Damn.]

Well, I have something in the works…but in the meantime, Madeley has taken my suggestion, and made a meme out of one of his recent ruminations.

His instructions for said meme:

“What creators who are usually associated with a certain company (or, indeed, medium) would you like to see writing someone else’s title? For example, would you want to see JMS on Hellboy? Which DC character should Bendis have a crack at? Should George Pelecanos write Batman? (Answer: Yes)

Let’s get taggy, and remember to get taggy in turn and spread the love like rapidly mutating wildfire. Hell, don’t wait for a tag if you’re up for it, just drop me an email and I’ll pop a link in.”

So okay, I’m in. Here goes…

Mike Mignola’s Captain America.

This one’s for Adam Star. And, can’t you see it? Those big black shadows, ornamental emblems, and this wing-headed blue-chain-mailed walking Masonic symbol in the form of a man? But actually, here’s what grabs me: it isn’t that Captain America is a symbol, it’s that he’s a magnet for symbols — or perhaps more precisely, he’s a target for symbols. They just aim straight for that big white star on his chest. Man, I’m telling you, Cap is Hellboy: he’s fought Nazis, extra-dimensional space loons, dead men from the future, a secret society of Tories (read: dead men from the past), Richard Nixon, a version of himself corrupted by idealism, mad sinister Dr.-Seussian genetic scientists, blank slates, cultural stereotypes, and his own mythology. In fact about the only symbolism he hasn’t faced is the Monolith from 2001. Red Skulls. Cosmic Cubes. The guy is buried to the forehead-emblem in iconography. So what could be more perfect than to put him in Mignola’s hands, who works almost exclusively in that very same artistic mine-shaft that Cap was dug out of? By issue #3, we’d probably see the beginning of a year-long crossover with our favourite Sentinel Of Liberty and Dr. Strange, to rival (or is it combine? well, Jung does tell us that the principle of opposition eventually becomes the principle of harmony) the most freaked-out work of Englehart and Kirby on this title. And, to perhaps embroider Englehart’s unfinished Dr. Strange work on “The Occult History Of America” while we’re at it? Hey, just toss in a little Nick-Fury-as-Odin stuff and you have, once again, that quintessential Marvel demi-mondean superhero comic…all the odd little corners, the unexplored implications, that used to be so attractive but have lately been forgot. I’m fond of saying that Captain America has often been the most cosmic book that Marvel puts out — so let’s return to those days of raw symbolism running red on the floor.

Darwyn Cooke’s The Mighty Avengers.

And while we’re at it, let’s get someone to return us to Marvel’s historical roots, in the time of skinny ties and Beatlemania and the Cold War, and a superhero clubhouse full of half-baked monstrosities. Pick it up with Cap thawing out, a man out of time — straight from the mid-Forties to the mid-Sixties. And then reboot — let Cooke take it anywhere he pleases. Forget “retro”; this wouldn’t be retro. This would be a hard reboot of the Avengers title, in fact the hardest reboot of any title ever seen: like being in the Sixties, buying those crazy Marvel mags for the first time, still warm from the spinner rack. How far can we drag these properties and stories up the river of nostalgia, and what happens when we finally get to the headwaters? What happens to nostalgia then? Cooke himself has flirted with it in the up-to-date New Traditionalist fashion, but as impressive as New Frontier was, it couldn’t quite go far enough — it couldn’t quite break the rules completely, and so it stands as a phenomenally-impressive riff. A love-letter to a dead darling, a story set irretrievably in the past…even if it’s a past largely invented.

His Mighty Avengers, by contrast, would be set in an invented present. The present of 1964.

Or, am I crazy?

Okay, but could it be done?

If it could, Cooke’s the man to do it. Because, let’s get this nostalgia kick right out of our system. I mean let’s really get it out.

Peter Milligan and Mike Allred’s Phantom Stranger.

I’ll say nothing about this one, because to do so would give away a pet idea I’m nurturing — but do I really have to say anything about it? I wanted Mike Allred’s Solo to go on forever — this way it would. And this will no doubt prove to be the shortest little explanation in this whole list, but hey: it was either make it underweight, or leave it out altogether. And who would be so crazy to leave this out? Deadgirl, only with hats and more smack-talk. We’ll pick it up right after Zatanna leaves Cassandra Craft’s place. Oh, and speaking of Seven Soldiers…

Grant Morrison’s Marvel Team-Up.

Because there’s nothing wrong with Marvel that the judicious application of a little psylocybin couldn’t cure, and Marvel Team-Up has historically been the invisible stitching that holds the big softball of Marvel continuity together anyway, but inexplicably no one’s using it for that right now, so brew the tea up and let’s get started! Continuity from the bottom up, not the top down, how refreshing it’d be to see that again! One title, in a line of profoundly out-of-synch stories, that serves as the Clock of Marvel Time. Put all your Editor’s Notes in here, put your thought-balloons in here too. Forget explanations, tortured crossover inconsistencies, and just let someone write to that stuff, for a change — Marvel Team-Up, in Grant’s hands, could share a slogan with Java: the network is the system. Let him build a Virtual Machine of continuity, and decide what to feed into it. Let him play with editorial captioning even more aggressively than he did in All-New Atom, and get meta with it, and get WAY meta with it! Besides, I want to read his quippy, jerky Spider-Man dialogue. Just tell him it could be his rejoinder to Moore’s 1963. He’d mess the joint up. He’d bring this place back to life.

James Robinson’s Son Of Satan.

Think it’s a stretch? But of course it’s just more Starman, isn’t it? Family issues, forgotten history — let’s face it, Marvel’s Seventies-born Hellscape is a mess. No one can figure out how to tell a story in it anymore, and is that so strange, really? What was originally intended to be one simple thing, and mean that same one simple thing, has now been turned into fifty million things that are anything else but. And the reason for it all is that even the most expert explainer can’t fix up multiversal structures if they’re just set up to fail anyway. So split it all off: make an Opal of it. Bring in Space Cabbie and Ultra The Multi-Alien, and some red-headed cops and a Shade. In this era of Buffy and Angel, a person should be able to do this without falling prey to needless badassification, or obsessive timeline-tinkering. Take Daimon Hellstrom away to…oh I don’t know…Rutland, Vermont or something, and just let him live there. Exorcist Detective. Big old house. Spooky goings-on where the all ley-lines cross. Magic trident. Think of him as a cross between Kent Nelson Dr. Fate, and Jack Knight Starman. And just let him run for a couple of years, see what happens.

Steve Englehart and John Romita, Jr.’s Hawkman.

This one’s really a no-brainer, isn’t it? Because who do you call, when the roof’s caving in, and the basement’s flooding, and you can’t understand how you could ever have lost the plot this bad? Englehart looks on this sort of thing as a professional challenge, I believe: he’s a one-man superhero restoration company. He’ll find inconsistencies you didn’t even know were there (because they were buried under the other, bigger inconsistencies), and he’ll use the little ones to mop up the big ones. And the man does not waste other people’s paper, either: give him two years, and he’ll satisfy everyone but the people who enjoyed having a messed-up Hawkman that doesn’t make any sense and can’t be reconciled with himself. No reboots required with Steve E., that would be a cop-out! Everybody’s story makes it out of the burning building alive, because he doesn’t believe in the no-win situation. I was thinking of putting him on The Eternals, actually…just because Gaiman left a good amount of room to move in it…but Hawkman’s got room to move too, if one can only learn to see it, and so I’ll content myself with slapping JRJR on there, because wow, what a Hawkman he’d draw.

Peter David and John Romita, Sr.’s Wonder Woman.

If there’s anyone who could draw a perfect Wonder Woman, it’s probably Jazzy Johnny — why it’s simply the stuff of commissioned sketches. As for PAD, well…he’s an interesting case, a guy with a proven professional track record who can handle drama, an anarchic fanboy with an occasional tendency to be the person who laughs hardest at his own jokes, a guy who sometimes lets plots get away from him, or gets too chummy with his characters for their own good, but then again a guy who’s occasionally been known to spin straw into gold. A little like the love-child of Keith Giffen and Mark Waid, really. So, which PAD would show up, to work with the penciller who’s a Living Legend, on the character that seems to have suffered from being a living legend too? In many ways I think it would be an ideal assignment for him. The “clubhouse” atmosphere he seems so fond of is something every Wonder Woman scripter in the last few years has made their bread and butter, so clearly there’s something there…and it seems everyone agrees that a Wonder Woman without a certain amount of breezy off-hand humour just isn’t worth writing about. But I think PAD’s occasional excesses would be either restrained, here, or put to good use: if WW needs anything, it’s a writer who’s not afraid to get a bit too chummy with her, and the character’s iconic status (only to be enhanced by Romita’s pencils, no doubt) leaves little opportunity for running off with her in an absurd direction, as it probably would set an upper limit on just how raunchy the humour could get, and still serve the story. Yes…yes, I think PAD could potentially be a great WW scripter, actually, because for all his faults he does have voice…and sometimes he has too much voice, but then again sometimes Diana Prince has too little.

Worth a shot, anyway. And then there’s always Jazzy Johnny to bring him back down to earth, if he flies off it.

Wil Pfeifer and Michael Avon Oeming’s Iron Man.

You wonder why, so I’ll tell you. Put simply, it’s because this character needs a shot in the arm, and he needs it bad. So much like the modern-era Captain Atom, whose recent Pfeifer-scripted miniseries actually made me like him possibly for the very first time ever…and yet Tony Stark’s got bigger problems than just being boring, because he’s become the most horrifyingly conflicted character Marvel’s ever had. So what to do about him? Well, as I’ve had occasion to mention recently, the problem with this iteration of Iron Man is precisely that it isn’t a screaming departure from the original symbolic foundation of the character — he concealed a damaged heart back in the Sixties, and he conceals a damaged heart now. He wrestled with the morality of his business back then, and he does the same now. And he’s every bit as over his head now as he was back then too…well, okay, a bit more these days, that’s true. But in any case, this is the through-line, sure enough: this is how you rehabilitate him, by using the stuff that’s already there. Iron Man has very nearly gone right over the edge (and why was he in the Illuminati room instead of Cap, anyway? Doesn’t make sense; I blame Shooter), and so he needs some dramatic pulling-back: he needs a massive crisis of conscience, verging on a full-on nervous breakdown. And it’s all there; and Pfeifer has shown he can not only identify this stuff, but pull it out and put it to use; therefore it’s got to be Pfeifer.

But, especially it’s got to be Pfeifer with Oeming. Just think of Oeming’s art, so different from the techno-porn Iron Man’s been saddled with as he’s become more and more the machine, and not the man. And he’ll still be that way in all of his other Marvel appearances, no doubt. But in the Iron Man book, he’ll be playing on pause, taking off the clunky, blocky helmet to give one of those amazing soulful Oeming looks of regret, as he finds himself running more and more out of the ol’ crypto-fascist techno-porn gas. This is like every issue of Powers ever, pure reflection; but then when he puts on the suit again, what could be more muscularly comic-booky than how Oeming would make that look? Imagine, Iron Man a comic book again! Why, I’d read that…

Hmm, that’s only eight. I should probably try for ten. But oh well, maybe in the comments! For now I’ve really got to pop this thing in the mail, and tag some folks. So how about just five, chosen randomly from the usual gang of idiots, like…

Jim Roeg, the Fortress Keeper, Tom Bondurant, Sean Kleefeld, and Prof. Fury.

But I really shouldn’t put Sean K. in there, since he’s off Marvel…however the next three names on the speed-dial (the WordPress dashboard makes selecting these things plenty easy, let me tell you) happen to be Evie, who’s already done one, Fake Stan Lee, who’s just going to say himself for everything, and Madeley who came up with the damn thing in the first place…and so I give up. Anyone else out there who wants to consider themselves tagged by me, jump right in!

Just check it out, True Believer!