Marvel Thoughts for the Day

As I've already shared, I am on a quest to discover why I have been unable to embrace Marvel, despite a crazy love for little colourful pictures of people in costumes emitting bubbles of text. I feel that documenting my thoughts as I explore the Marvel universe is a good way to get to the root of the problem.

So here's my Marvel thoughts for the day:

How many Marvel heroes are unfortunate vicitims? And what I mean, is, how many of them are more cursed than gifted, and would much prefer being normal? By my count, it's quite a few. The Hulk would be the most obvious. Also, The Thing, Ghost Rider and a whole lot of mutants. I know that the whole point of Marvel is to offer superhero stories that are gritty and real and full of inner conflict...but jeez! Marvel makes it hard for comic readers to do what we like best: fantasize about being superheroes. Every damn character is miserable.

I think I have a crush on Captain America. I look forward to meeting him on the Mythical Marvel Island at Universal Studios on Sunday. I will be getting my nails done first.
Oddly, I might also have a crush on Iron Man. So it makes it hard to "choose sides," as it were. (Actually, Iron Man is clearly the douche in Civil War. It's like choosing between ice cream and cancer).
It's also clear that Captain America and Iron Man have crushes on each other, but that kinda goes without saying. I mean, are we supposed to not think they are in love?

Namor is kinda awesome.

Nicolas Cage seemed to be having a lot of fun playing Ghost Rider. I seriously kinda liked that movie. I mean to me, Ghost Rider looks cool, and that's all he really means to me. So as long as he looked cool in the movie (he did) that's all I care about. Also, I always think that I hate Nicolas Cage, but every time I watch one of his movies I kinda love him. He's so crazy. Was all the stuff in the movie about jelly beans and the Carpenters made up, or was that canon? Delightful!

Have you seen the ads for that singing, dancing Spider-Man doll for toddlers? It's creepy.

My MARVEL-ous Journey

One of my resolutions for 2007 was to gain an appreciation for Marvel. I am trying to discover why I hold undying love for the DC universe, yet am pretty much apathetic toward the Marvel cast of characters.

I am trying to take note of specific things about Marvel that bother me. Here are three I have decided on so far:

1. Marvel takes place in real cities in real America. Really there's nothing wrong with that, but it still bores me for some reason. Maybe I don't want my superheroes referring to 9/11. It's also too restrictive. Fictional cities means endless possibilities, and imaginative architectural artwork. It's also impressive the way that DC has done such a good job creating fictional American cities, that fans can actually be offended if a cityscape doesn't "look like Gotham."

2. Marvel is unbearable quippy and cute. It's not like I mind witty banter between my superheroes. I am a big Keith Giffen fan, for example. But what Marvel is often lacking are clever jokes. A lot of the recent comics that I have read have sounded like bad sitcoms.

3. I think I might hate Spider-Man. He. Won't. Shut. Up. I get that he's supposed to be full of bad jokes and kind of lovably annoying, but I seriously could not be in the same room as that guy for more than a minute. And I, of course, am talking about current Spider-Man. He used to be much cooler.

My journey to discover Marvel has involved the following so far this year:

- Reading Civil War (and all related tie-ins)
- Reading New Avengers in order
- Watching the Fantastic Four movie
- Watching Ghost Rider (seriously...not as bad as I thought it would be)
- Reading the rest of the Grant Morrison run on X-Men (I'd only read the first 10-12 issues or so)
- Reading the Frank Miller run on Daredevil
- Reading any Marvel that anyone lends to me or recommends

And so my quest has lead me here to Florida, where I will head to Marvel Island at Universal Studios in a few short days. I will interact with Marvel characters in their natural habitat and, apparantly, "ride them." I look forward to it, and will be documenting with pictures.

America, by the way, is amazing. They have fake diners instead of real ones.

Review of Some Web Site, By Johnathan

So two of my friends just became roommates, and upon examining their collective possessions they discovered that they had over twenty different types of tea. Two facts occur: 1) these guys like to drink tea and 2) there will be a lot of peeing in this house. My friends, being who they are, hit upon a third fact: If 20 teas are good and will generate a lot of urine, they said, then over one hundred teas would be awesome - and the collective fluid waste would reach staggering levels. Plumbers might be needed. Being who they are, my friends set out to gather a diverse selection of teas.

Further, it was determined that this tea collection would be even more wondrous if they could somehow share their impressions of the various teas (bagged and loose [like John Peter]) that they ingested. Standards were quickly set: they would report upon the tea's flavour, they would judge its overall quality by stating what they would trade for one kilo of said tea and they would answer the all-important ever-present question: sure it's a good (or a bad) tea, but would you dip your balls in it? The debate still rages on the issue of female reviewers and how they will address this important question.

So it's a blog, there's talk of tea, there's talk of testicles, it's

JOHN APPROVED

Review of Heroic Codes, by Johnathan

Here's a fun and widely-known fact: Superman and Batman don't kill, because Batman saw his parents horribly murdered in front of his eyes and Superman's a good guy about stuff like that. That's why the Joker and Lex Luthor are still running around: Superman and Batman just do not kill.

Oops. Except vampires, apparently. And intelligent machine entities. And monsters, space-dwelling sentient clouds and the occasional alien. Superman and Batman don't kill humans. Which is bullshit. It's the same sort of logic that shows up in fantasy novels all the time, where the hero spends most of the narrative carving up hopelessly outclassed members of supposedly 'evil' races like goblins only to get all moral and hesitant when his (or her, but usually his) opponent is another human, no matter how demonstrably evil. To me it smacks of crypto-racism - I'm sure that if I were still in university I'd be gearing up for an essay that mentions the Other a lot (with maybe a hint of the ol' Male Gaze, just for variety). I mean, *why* do we not kill other people, when you get right down to it? Because they're self-aware entities, just like we are, and if that's enough to save the Joker from your Bat-Wrath then you shouldn't be so damn casual about ripping off those vampire heads, Bruce. And Clark.

NOT APPROVED

Review of Comic Book Weirdness Toward Women, By Johnathan

As some of you might have heard, the traditional comic book is not the most enlightened place when it comes to the 50% plus of our species that has breasts... but not the ones that have man-breasts - those are dudes. Female superheros are thin on the ground, they have lousy costumes, they get murdered and raped and so on and so on (see Living Between Wednesdays for some excellent writing on the subject as it applies to today's comics, by an actual girl who reads comics and is funny). Me, I'm still stuck in the past, so you get to hear about how women got the short end of the stick in the comics of the Sixties and Seventies.

There's a lot to cover here, so let's break it down:

1. Female Characters' Costumes.

Heading into the Seventies, the costumes that the ladies of the comics world were wearing got pretty ridiculous (the guys also had stupid outfits, but that's a tale for another time). A good example comes to us from the Legion of Superheroes, as is so often the case. Let's look at Saturn Girl, who was a tough customer from the get-go, a founding member of the Legion, two times Legion leader and had a decent costume:

As I said: nice. Kind of like the Canadian flag, if Canada was in outer space. Which I assume is the case, a thousand years hence. And look at her unmask that fraudulent Legion applicant! Smart as a whip, I tells ya.

Then, all of a sudden, this happens:

Eep and jeepers. She's got no nose, she's wearing a bathing suit and posing like a porn star. It happened to basically every female member of the Legion (except Phantom Girl - she just got some bellbottoms, bless her). Look, here's Night Girl before:

She's seven feet tall and kicks ass. Even though her powers only work in the darkness she was pretty consistently awesome. After:

Pointlessly skimpy costume, loss of distinctive hair, considerably shorter, etc. The story that this is taken from mostly consists of her getting beaten up by the bad guys over and over until her boyfriend comes to bail her out. Blarg.

2. Career Heroines Not Wanted

This is possibly the worst bit of cheering-up that I've ever seen. "Don't worry your pretty little head. You've lost your duplicate self and you no longer have super powers, but now you can be a devoted wife! Awesome, right?" Getting married was always the cue for super-heroines to retire, though this specific case might have just been a way for the writers to get Duo Damsel out of the way so they could relax and stop trying to find ways to make her power seem useful.

3. This One Panel, Like, Creeps Me Out.

This one's not really a trend, but here seems as good a place as any to bring it up. The panel is from a story where Colossal Boy is dealing with his feelings for Shrinking Violet, who he can't woo because she's in love with Duplicate Boy, who could totally kick his ass. Colossal Boy's doing okay with the urge-controlling, too - right up until this panel, where he gets incredibly creepy. She's your "flower girl", huh? I'm guessing that she put in a request not to be sent on any more missions with him for a while pretty soon after this little uncomfortable moment. Additional creepy element: this is during the period where Colossal Boy's costume didn't really include pants.

4. General Background Misogyny.

Here are a few of my favourite bits of casual contempt:

Mordru kicked Mon-el and Superboy all to hell for a couple of issues, while these three tricked him with about five minutes work. That's not ironic, Mon-el. That's you being a fucking idiot.

I just like this one because Superboy thinks that someone having an ape-man as a counterpart in an alternate reality is *way* more likely than them being a woman.

Female androids are also pretty unlikely. Also: can you really not hit a lady, Superboy, or are you just copping a feel?

Last up, here's Timber Wolf acting like a tool. His teammate just crashed her spaceship and he takes the opportunity to make a joke about women drivers. Ass.

Unsurprisingly, this is all NOT APPROVED. However, there is one upside to all of this: every once in a while it gets turned around. Every time the girls get a leg up the guys are just totally emasculated. Look:

They're very sad, poor things. They've been outclassed by the ladies and have to pout and it's hilarious and

JOHN APPROVED

Batman #663: It's hard to say if it's sad or if it's funny...

I finally got around to reading this thing last night:

It's four things:

1. Weird
2. Ugly
3. Gross
4. Confusing

The writing was...fine...but this was...not...what I like to read. It was lacking...a comic book.

I don't know how you felt about Arkham Asylum, but I did not like it. I guess I only like my Batman stories to be marginally disturbing and dream-like.

The real shame is that this "comic" seems to be chronicling an important event, but we don't get to see any of it. Instead we see this:

Which kind of looks like it's missing something. Like, say, this:

Grant Morrison is a great writer, and there are some good lines and interesting parts of this novella. I'm also impressed that he had time to pump out this much text considering how many books he's writing right now. I'm not against experimentation, but I am against...this. I think it's at least 80% artwork that makes me dislike this. But not entirely because I did find myself repeatedly flipping to see how many pages I had left to read.

Overall...didn't this whole thing just smack of the 90s? Anyone?