Flashpoint Ramblings

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So I've been reading Flashpoint, and I while I've been enjoying some of the alternate timeline ideas, I haven't really been able to get into it as being consequential. This might be due to the upcoming reboot, or my disdain for Reverse Flash as a boilerplate EEEEVIL TORTURE VILLAIN, but the fact remains that I just can't bring myself to care all that much about the outcome of the whole thing.
Ironically, this has led me to think about it a lot. Specifically, I've been trying to work out what the theme of this alternate world is - every good alternate timeline story has a compelling theme, after all, like Red Son being all "what if Superman was a Commie?" or Justice Riders posing the compelling question "what if everybody was cowboys?". 

I know that the impetus of the whole thing was Reverse Flash evil torturing Barry Allen by messing with the past, but that's no kind of theme. Based on the differences that I've been able to glean so far, I reckon that the theme of this world might just be "what if The Nail was about the entire JLA instead of just Superman?" Consider:

[BIG SPOILERS IF YOU CARE ABOUT THAT SORT OF THING]

Superman - Kal-El's baby-rocket impacted in Metropolis instead of Kansas, leading to him spending his entire life in government custody. Also, his DNA was used to create a Super Sayan.

Batman - Lil' Bruce Wayne was shot while his parents survived. Thomas Wayne became a meaner version of the Batman as a result, while Martha Wayne became the Joker.

Green Lantern - Abin Sur never travelled to Earth and consequently never died. Hal Jordan still a test pilot.

Martian Manhunter - Captured by super-villain the Outsider, tortured, experimented on and then sold to the Russians. Became evil as a result of these torments.

Aquaman - Taken away from his human father at a young age and thus never given a gentler moral upbringing. Sinks Western Europe as a part of his war with the Amazons.

Wonder Woman - We'll come back to Wonder Woman.

So: DCU big guns removed = the world becoming a hellhole. But wait, now something else is bothering me: Reverse Flash went to great trouble to either kill (Batman) depower (Green Lantern, Flash) or scramble the morality of (Superman, Martian Manhunter, Aquaman) all of the A-list super-heroes, but what about Wonder Woman? As far as I can tell, Evil Time-Travelling Apparently Space-Capable Possibly-Magic Reverse Flash didn't mess with her past at all.

Therefore, baseline Wonder Woman is capable of being manipulated into a devastating war, the invasion of a sovereign noncombatant nation and the subjugation of its people. She can be fooled into not noticing her people deploying death squads to other countries and starting concentration camps in her own. She's foolish enough to try negotiating with Aquaman while wearing the helmet that she took from his wife's severed head. Flashpoint Wonder Woman is, evidently, a moron.

Whether this means something big or cosmic or misogynistic or pants-phobic (Moron Wonder Woman does, after all, wear those very controversial garments) I cannot say. All that matters is that it is on the Internet and thus will no longer be rattling around in my head.

Review of Prose, By Johnathan

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I think that I may have alluded to the fact that I was an English major in University a couple of times (though with the amount of theory that I've forgotten since then I basically have a degree in Reading Stuff, Forming an Opinion on it and Writing That Opinion Down, at length. Hey! That makes me perfectly qualified to have a comics blog, doesn't it?) and so it shouldn't come as too great a shock to find out that I'm not just a comics nerd and an Internerd, I'm a a prose nerd, too! Okay, also a mythology nerd (Classics minor, word), drama nerd, etymology nerd, history nerd, plant nerd, animation nerd and listener to nerdy music. And ladies, I'm available.

Comics and prose are the biggies, though. I love me some good fiction, yes I do. To that end, I just purchased a book entitled Who Can Save Us Now? (Owen King and John McNally, eds) which is an anthology of short stories about some brand new super-heroes. I haven't opened it yet, so the only solid info I have is that there's a story about someone called The Rememberer, but buying it got me thinking about other text-based tales of the super-hero and whenever I get thinking about things like this I feel compelled to share my thoughts with you lovely folks.

First off, I think I'd list a lot of old pulp yarns as fantastic examples of what superhero text should be: action-packed, character-driven and fairly short. That's not to say that a long, introspective novel about international diplomacy as seen through the eyes of UN goodwill ambassador Courage Lad wouldn't potentially be great, just that I'd likely read a few novellas about the Mighty Turbine giving robotic aliens the business in between volumes. I haven't read nearly as much pulp fiction as I'd like, but for my money I'd have to recommend Doc Savage and the Spider - the Shadow is great and all, but I prefer the radio show. Of course, if we're travelling back through literary history here we could talk about Gladiator (Alas, I haven't read it), The Invisible Man and other such late Victorian proto-science fiction or my man Sherlock Holmes. Heck, we could pull in Arthurian legend, Greek and Norse mythology and the original Dynamic Duo of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, but then this would turn into a much longer and much less focused post. Because it's so incredibly focused right now.

Harry Newberry and the Raiders of the Red Drink, By Mel Gilden. Man, I loved this book when I was a lad. Come to think of it, I still love it. It's a young adult novel written in an absurd style reminiscent of the incomparable Daniel M. Pinkwater. The titular Harry Newberry is a comic-obsessed kid who ends up discovering that the seemingly boring world around him is actually jam-packed with complete weirdness. There are a lot of fantastic touches like people running around in completely thrown-together costumes and... man, I don't want to spoil this one at all. Most libraries seem to have this one on hand and I say: go read it! It's got the best idea for a pizza restaurant ever, I swear, and some of the best brotherly interactions in youth fiction.

Chance Fortune and the Outlaws, by Shane Berryhill. I picked this one a few months back. Judging by the study questions at the back it's also aimed at young adults, but it's a solid read. The title character, though he's been highly trained by an old-school superhero, has to lie about having luck-based super-powers to get into hero school. The Outlaws, his in-school supergroup, are a bunch of engaging characters - there's lots of good teen drama (as opposed to the all-too-frequent bad teen drama) and a rivalry with another, super-douchey team and a sinister plot to foil. Plus, the school's department heads are a pretty good JLA pastiche. Oh, and there's a highly entertaining training battle against a team composed of anime-style super-heroes!

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon. Not strictly a super-hero novel, but enough of the reality of comics creeps into the characters' regular lives to be good enough for me. I can't say too much about this one that hasn't been said before and better, but I'll put it in here anyway because I know a lot of comic fans who haven't read it. Read it! It's a good, good novel, with lots of delicious character development. Stan Lee makes a brief appearance, proving my theory that his super-power is an incredible ability to make cameos.

The Wild Cards Series, Gerorge R. R. Martin, ed. I've read maybe seven or eight of the eleven million or so volumes in this series, and while they were none of them terrible I definitely liked the shared-world collections of short stories more than the later "mosaic novels", partly because I liked some of the contributors more than others and the shifts in prose style got kind of jarring at times but also because the whole thing got so damned dark after a while. The basic story was great: aliens decide to test an experimental mutagen on Earth and it gets released over New York in the late Forties. Most people who are exposed to the stuff die and most of those who survive are radically mutated (these are called Jokers, thanks to a running card-based naming convention). A very small percentage ed up with very super-heroey powers (these ones are called Aces) and part of the series' mandate is exploring how the presence of all of these guys shapes subsequent human culture and history and such. There are a lot of neato characters, like Croyd Crensen, the Sleeper, who falls into years-long comas and wakes up each time with different powers and a new appearance and lives a cycle of sleep and increasingly desperate and stimulant-fueled wakefulness. Or there's Captain Trips, a super-duper hippie who has multiple powered identities accessed through hard drug usage, or Kid Dinosaur, who can turn into dinosaurs and is basically a fanboy who follows other Aces around and annoys them. The first couple of collections are highly recommended, ayup.

Of course, there are all of the books that are about characters that originated in comics, but frankly, I haven't read too many of those. I remember a book of Spider-Man short stories that I enjoyed (the Internet says that it was called The Ultimate Spider-Man), especially one called "Kraven the Hunter is Dead, Alas", though what it was about escapes me these many years later. Marvel books were always fun to read because they always had some nice original artwork inside - I especially remember liking What Savage Beast by Peter David, which had the Maestro and a neat picture of all kinds of possible alternate Hulks (Scaley Hulk! Hairy Hulk!).

Okay, that's it. There are a lot more books that I wish that I could read (say, Superfolk) and others that I have read and subsequently forgotten the contents of (Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask, for example). And I can't seem to even find the damn Hellboy novels. Do they actually exist? Perhaps in the future I will expand on this rambling, unfocused entry. Feel free to clue me in to things that I should check out.

It's all JOHN APPROVED!

Super-Human Detritus of the Thirtieth Century: Review of Porcupine Pete, By Johnathan

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Ah, Porcupine Pete. Not the first Legion applicant to have a stupid name but probably the one with the stupid-est name. Also, and this might just be where I'm from talking, but he's asking for a face full of .22 if Old Man Strong catches him anywhere near his spruce trees.


Pete has a few too many appearances for me to get around to sampling pictures from before the very sun goes cold and dark, so we'll just be looking at his very first appearance. Here he is, discussing his soon-to-be-crushed hopes and dreams with the well-dressed Molecular Master and the simply dreamy Infectious Lass. Take a good look: Porcupine Pete is also the ugliest person ever to apply for the Legion, and it's not because he's a member of some weird alien race or something - according to the Legion edition of Who's Who, he's just some kid who grew spikes as he got older. That's right: that's down home human ugliness there, no cultural sensitivity required.


I think that they used this setup exclusively for the purpose of judging applicants, and no wonder the poor schmoes didn't do so well. Keeping in mind that these are teenagers, can you even imagine walking into that place, with a semicircle of hot dudes and cute girls looming over you, and Superboy, straight out of history, dead centre and judging, judging, judging. Frankly, I'm surprised that there aren't many of these tryout stories that end with someone in the foetal position.


I have to admit: this is a good panel. Pete's costume isn't too bad - it at least makes sense that it's skimpy - and the sheer enthusiasm that he's displaying as he hoses the room down with quills is very endearing. He's going all out, folks. They'll be picking these things out of the upholstery for months. Plus, the more I think about it the more I like the idea of a superhero with a blast radius. Ooo! Porcupine Pete, the Human Bomb and that one exploding guy from the Blasters should team up! All they'd need is a spare JLA teleporter and they could be the most effective super-team in existence:

Kobra Minion 1: "Okay, the death-ray's finished, hail Kobra."

Kobra Minion 2: "Nuclear generator online, hail Kobra."

Kobra Minion 3: "Targeting Atlanta, hail Kobra. Hey, after this do you guys want to go get some wings or something, hail Kobra?"

*Fwazap*

Kobra Minion 2: "Hey, where did those three guys come fro-"

BAROOM *sound of many quills puncturing frail snake-fetishists* KRAPPOW!

Porcupine Pete: "Case closed." *lights quill-shaped cigar using Kobra Minion 1's flaming femur*


Sadly, the Legion doesn't see the potential inherent in having a guy like Porcupine Pete around, and yet another fragile ego is crushed beneath Superboy's bellows of "Rejected!" To me, this seems like another time that the whole thing where Karate Kid got in by beating up Superboy should be brought up. I mean, Supes isn't flinching but making the entire rest of the Legion dive for cover has to be worth something, right?

Ah, well. There's a bit of a happy ending, in that Pete joined the Legion of Substitute Heroes and even ended up leading them on the Legion cartoon, so his legend lives on.

JOHN APPROVED, Pete, JOHN APPROVED

PS: check out the poll on the sidebar. Just as an experiment, I'm looking to get some input from you wunnerful folks. What do you like, hey? Let me know and by crackers I'll do it.

Review of Showcase Presents, By Johnathan

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Showcase Presents has lately been presenting some pretty awesome stuff, in the form of 500+ page reprints featuring comics of the 60s and 70s and I've been doing my part by buying a whole lot of them. It's time, I think, to pony up some reviews.

Showcase Presents: The Elongated Man

This was the first of these black-and-white beauties to cross my path and I was pretty glad that it had. It featured Ralph Dibny's start as a rival/partner to the Flash, followed by his marriage to Sue Dearborn and their subsequent travels around the world. Ralph's a very atypical 60s DC hero in that his identity is known to the world (and in that he's married instead of being in an extended engagement or flirtation). He and Sue encounter all manner of mysteries while being socialites, some of which are quite charming. Ralph also hits people with a disturbing array of pliable body parts. These early stories are a great illustration of the fact that even though the Elongated Man may have the same power as Mr. Fantastic or Plastic Man, the way that he uses it is all his own.

JOHN APPROVED

Showcase Presents: Superman Volumes 1 and 2

This is some pretty great Silver age ridiculousness right here. You've got Superman obsessing over his secret identity, kryptonite simply everywhere, more mermaids than you can shake a stick at, Lex Luthor, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Clark Kent looking like Steven Colbert and plenty of aliens. Plus Volume 1 was one of the first of these bad boys out and so only cost $9.99.

JOHN APPROVED

Showcase Presents: Superman Family

This reads pretty similarly to just plain Superman, only with more Jimmy Olsen. Jimmy: a) has lots of different jobs. b) foils lots of gangsters. c) occasionally betrays/ is betrayed by Superman for dramatic effect. d) frequently develops superpowers - in one of the coolest stories he uses some of Superman's trophies to put together a super-powered crime fighting suit, then develops a 'best-buddies' relationship with a paper boy (who collects souvenirs of his exploits and summons him via a signal-pen).

JOHN APPROVED

Showcase Presents: Green Lantern

Another $9.99 wonder. With this one I got an interesting look at just how different comic book series used to be from one another. The Elongated Man dealt with really intimate little mysteries, while Superman lived in a world that hovered between soft sci-fi and fantasy, genre-wise. Green Lantern was by no means hard sci-fi but it drew from some of its conventions (and of those of the classic space opera) to create a comic that took itself a bit more seriously. Some good, solid, fun comic yarns here.

Showcase Presents: The Brave and the Bold

Bob Haney writes Batman and guest. This was a terrific read, with lots of Haney lunacy. The guests included Metamorpho (good), Plastic Man (dismal), The Metal Men (terrific - everyone goes to a robot convention) and Deadman (two times!). The best issue involved Batman having Wonder Woman and Batgirl pretend to fall in love with him as part of a plat to catch Copperhead, then when the time came to nab him they really had, such is the power of the Bat-charisma. Copperhead escaped in the kerfuffle, but was nabbed later on. Duh.

JOHN APPROVED

Showcase Presents: Justice League of America, Volumes 1 and 2

Good solid Silver Age fun. The JLA whomp some aliens, Starro the Conquerer, more aliens, Dr. Light, and some aliens. Snapper Carr is surprisingly endearing, J'onn J'onzz is surprisingly pudgy. He also tends to use his "Martian Breath" almost to the exclusion of all of his many other powers, possibly to distinguish him from Superman.

JOHN APPROVED

Showcase Presents: Teen Titans

Another Bob Haney masterwork, featuring the sidekicks of various Justice League members. The Titans answer calls for help from teenagers across the world and so end up dealing with giant monsters, inter-dimensional invasions and submarine pirates. Also notable is Haney's mastery of contemporary slang (assuming that sixties-teens used 'fab', 'ginchy' and 'gear' in every other sentence) and creative use of nicknames (Kid Flash = 'Twinkletoes', Aqualad = 'Gill Head', Wonder Girl = 'Wonder Chick'). All this and the Mad Mod!

JOHN APPROVED

Showcase Presents: Legion of Super-Heroes

My thoughts on this topic are already known.

JOHN APPROVED

Showcase Presents: Metamorpho the Element Man

Bob Haney strikes again! This time out he's penning the adventures of Rex Mason, whose brush with an ancient meteor/artifact gives him a hideous appearance and the ability to change into any element found in the human body. This one's got great art, as well as my favourite Silver Age supporting cast: Simon Stagg, Rex's boss, famous scientist and so close to being a super-villain that his private security forces dress like Cobra Commander; his daughter Sapphire Stagg, Rex's fiance; Java, a formerly-frozen Neanderthal given a modern brain by Stagg - Java's in love with Sapphire and occasionally tries to bump Metamorpho off but is a colossal coward and so never succeeds; and Urania Blackwell, the Element Girl, Metamorpho's female counterpart. One sad thing: Metamorpho, like Aztek, had his comic canceled before its time and so you'll never learn just who it was that was plotting against the Element Man toward the end of his series.

JOHN APPROVED

Showcase Presents: The Phantom Stranger

I'm still reading this one, but so far it's great. The basic format involves a supernatural setup, followed by the appearance of both the Phantom Stranger and Dr. Thirteen, the Ghost-Breaker to lend a hand. The two squabble over the existence of the supernatural, then tell stories to illustrate their points. Then they solve the mystery. At the end of the story the Phantom Stranger disappears, which really ticks off Dr. Thirteen, and it seems to be cumulative, because in the last story I read he pretty much just punched the Phantom Stranger in the face as soon as he showed up. Also notable: four teenagers keep showing up and their names are Spartacus, Attila, Wild Rose and Mister Square.

JOHN APPROVED

Well, that's it for now. I'll almost certainly be getting more of these things and when I do I'll write about it on the Internet. I'm so cool.