Review of the Super-Human Detritus of the Thirtieth Century, Part 9, By Johnathan

That's Alaktor, and that's his Marvel Belt, failing dismally. Alaktor later claimed to be a super-villain who was just using the Legion tryouts as a means to sneak into the Legion clubhouse and steal a time machine, but I think that that's just an excuse. He was totally just covering for his embarrassment over the tryouts - there's no way that he meant to press the button that made his belt go 'ROAR.' Dude screwed up and then improvised some evil to cover for it.
Sure, Alaktor. Sure. Master of worlds. Admit it - that camera was there for one reason: to take cheesecake pictures of the Legion ladies.

As evidence of Alaktor's inherent lameness I offer a quick rundown of his 'evil' plot:

He planned grab three of the most evil characters in history (Hitler, Nero, Dillinger) and transplant their minds into the most powerful of the Legionnaires. I have three problems with this plan:

1) Choice of allies. Hitler, Nero and Dillinger? Jeez, guy. These are the best you could come up with? Hitler, sure. He was straight-up evil, but really, did you expect him to be a staunch and loyal ally? Same goes for Nero - most of his evil consisted of doing horrible things to those closest to him. I can think of about a dozen Roman emperors who'd've been a better subject for cramming into Mon-el's brain, evil assistant-wise. Dillinger? Sure he robbed a lot of places and shot a lot of people, and sure he was reputed to be fantastically well-endowed (not inherently evil but I'm sure it could be turned to evil ends) but definitely not in the top three evil people of all time. Basically any other three people would have been better allies than these guys, who horribly betrayed him in about three seconds flat:

Dude, you totally should have known this would happen.

2) If you're putting someone's brain into Superboy... why not your own? Seriously, why do Hitler favours? Just take over the Kryptonian and leg it. You're set!

3) Dude, you have a machine that can switch peoples' minds. I'm pretty sure that that's worth something. There's really no need to give Nero superpowers. Just open an amusement park or a novelty bordello or sell it to an unscrupulous billionaire who wants to live forever - you'll be astonishingly rich! You'll be able to afford pants!

So saddened by Hitler's betrayal. So, so pathetic. Alaktor, you and your Marvel Belt are

NOT APPROVED.

Rating the Super Hunks #9: Animal Man

As I said yesterday, this week's super-hunk is the lovable

Buddy Baker, aka Animal Man

Soon to be appearing in the insanely-titled Countdown to Adventure series.

Costume/Appearance: Orange is a tough colour to pull off. Teaming it with royal blue is daring. Adding triangular goggles sounds like it would definitely be going too far. But somehow Animal Man makes all of this work. I think it's the black (blue?) jacket. It breaks up all the orange and makes the whole thing look tougher.

The dark gloves are also a nice touch.

It's a very tight costume, and the lack of shorts makes it rather revealing. Buddy said that he decided to add the jacket because he was embarrassed wearing such a tight costume, but he really covered up the wrong half.

Or, the right half.

We know that I always approve of a costume that doesn't cover a hero's hair. I'm glad Buddy went that route, utilizing the Booster Gold-style headpiece that protects his ears from windburn while flying, but still allows his golden locks to toss playfully in the breeze.

Sans costume, Buddy is a nice-looking guy with blonde floppy hair and blue eyes. Unfortunately, he's been the victim of some pretty bad art. Plus his glory years were the unattractive late 80s/early 90s. But if you ignore all this, he's a looker.

8/10

Personality: The thing about Buddy is that he's not the most awesome hero, or the coolest guy, but he's a nice guy without being a giant wiener. Actually, he is pretty cool. For him being a super hero is a job, and he does it to support his family because he happens to have super powers, and he may as well use them. I like that attitude. Unfortunately he gets a little preachy with the animal rights stuff and the vegetarianism, but I blame Grant Morrison.

Buddy is a pretty sane and stable guy, considering he's been through the ringer, mentally, a few times. It's not his fault he was chosen to be a Vertigo character, and as a result has had to see a lot of messed up shit. But he's handled it all very well and continues to have a great attitude, and a good sense of humour.

And do I love the name 'Buddy Baker'? Yes I do.

Buddy is also a family man, which is a pretty important aspect of his character. Not only does he have a wife and two kids, he also doesn't have a secret identity. He's an interesting case, that Animal Man.

I really like that he listens to music while he flies. He's basically an aged hipster, and I think that's fun.

8/10

Day Job: Full-Time hero. (Actually, more like part-time).

8/10

Sexiness of Powers: Buddy can take on the abilities of any animal in his vicinity. More often then not, the results are more gross than sexy. But it does mean that, in most circumstances, he's pretty damn powerful.
He can fly, he has super strength and speed, he can breathe underwater, and he can stink like a skunk. His powers really aren't very sexy, but still sexier than no powers.

7/10

Cons: He's a vegetarian. And he's married. With kids.

- 2

Final Score: 31/40

Woah, does that tie him up with Hal Jordan? It does! Good work, Buddy. You'd be a better boyfriend than Hal any day. And your hair would be fun to rumple.

Marvel Check-In

As I have mentioned before in this blog, one of my resolutions for 2007 was to gain an appreciation for Marvel comics. I thought that, since we're now at the half-way point of the year (yikes!), I should check in and post how that journey is going.

Here are the stats:

Marvel I was reading before, and am still enjoying:

Runaways
Astonishing X-Men
Spider-Man Loves Mary-Jane

Marvel titles added to pull list:

Captain America
Daredevil
Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four
Iron Fist

Marvel Titles I've been reading and enjoying somewhat, but not committing to:

The New Avengers
The Incredible Hulk
Interesting-looking Spider-Man annuals
Avengers: The Initiative
Marvel Adventures: Iron Man

Other Marvel stuff I read that was good:

- Young Avengers
- Daredevil: Born Again
- Captain America: War & Remembrance
- Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle
- Morrison run on New X-Men

Things I've read or have been reading that aren't so hot:

- Civil War
- Fallen Son
- The Amazing Spider-Man
- Wolverine

Marvel things that I will never care about:

- Anything involving zombies
- Anything 'Ultimate'
- Fairy Tales
- Most X-Men things (except those First Class books! Those are great!)
- Dark Tower
- Anita Blake
- Anything that takes place in 1602.
- Ms Marvel
- Venom
- Most Spider-Man things

Things that make it hard for me to like Marvel:

- expensive "collectible" variant covers (particularly ones that are blank)
- again, the zombies

New words in my vocabulary:

- Illuminati
- Skrull
- Winter Soldier
- Galactus
- MODOK
- Power Pack
- New Warriors
- Great Lakes Avengers
- Kree
- Moon Knight
- Quicksilver

Things that I still don't know anything about:

- Thunderbolts
- Nextwave
- Black Panther
- The Kree/Skrull War
- The Silent War
- The Secret Wars
- Any and All Spider-Girls
- Omega Flight
- The House of M
- Nova

New Marvel Crushes:

- Winter Soldier
- Daredevil
- Iron Fist
- Luke Cage
- Captain America
- Namor

Characters I would like to get to know better:

- Thor
- She-Hulk
- Hawkeye
- Moon Knight
- Black Bolt
- Silver Surfer
- Doctor Strange
- Punisher
- Hercules

So, overall, I would say that a lot of progress has been made. I have gotten into a few of the most highly acclaimed Marvel titles, and I am hoping to start adding more. I am looking forward to World War Hulk and all related tie-ins. I think it will be fun. My next step is to focus more on older Marvel comics, which I mostly acquire by raiding the quarter bin, and by borrowing trades and checking out Essentials. The fact that there are Marvel products that I want to spend my money on at all shows enormous progress. The item that I want most in the shop right now is the Daredevil Omnibus and that doesn't even have Batman in it.

So, any thoughts or recommendations to help me out?

A Good Day

ITEM!: I got into grad school today. I will be starting the MBA program in September, meaning I am two years away from being The Man.

I celebrated by buying all the Power Man and Iron Fist comics I could get my hands on.
ITEM!: My Big Monkey Comics t-shirt arrived in the mail today. And you can own one too! You'll look this nerdy good:

ITEM!: I got paid in Animal Man trades for some work I am going to be doing tomorrow. Expect to see Buddy rated as a super-hunk tomorrow!

Batman Tells a Knock Knock Joke

Knock Knock

Who's there?

BATMAN, ASSHOLE!

Review of the Super-Human Detritus of the Thirtieth Century, Part 8, By Johnathan

I've had the pictures ready for this one for like a week now but just couldn't bring myself to write it. "Why?" you ask, in tiny, review-starved voices. I'll tell you why: it's because today I'm reviewing three of the most boring-ass characters in the occasionally spotty history of the Legion of Super-Heroes. I'll let Sun Boy introduce them:

You might notice a lack of thirtieth-Century zazz to their names. Not a Querl Dox or Reep Daggle in the lot. This is because they were created by fans of the Legion, whose names were warped into futurespeak. I'm sure that Bob Cohen was thrilled, but Bobb Kohan just doesn't do it for me, hero-name-wise.

One of my biggest problems with these characters is the way that they're drawn - they just bore the hell out of me. Look at Nightwind and Lamprey: identical comic book bimbos with different dye jobs. This was a pretty lousy period in terms of Legion art - nobody even bothered to think up a kicky little eel logo for Lamprey. They didn't even make Crystel Kid's hair look all faceted. Lame.

Is Nightwind hitting on Blok?

As you might have guessed, these three placemats applied for Legion membership at the same time as Blok and failed mightily. First, though, they listened to him tell his origin story. After a while, an emergency call comes in and the applicants are taken along due to the fact that not enough Legionnaires are on hand. Gah! I'm boring myself! I hate these three so much!

They fly to the emergency, sporting all of the colours of the rainbow.

And get squashed like bugs in about four seconds. Hey, weird - I've been looking at these three's lame costumes a lot more than I'd like (you know, so I can complain about them) and I just noticed that Lamprey's breasts change size in, like, every panel. It's kind of eerie - maybe it's one of her powers?

When I finished this comic I was under the impression that this was the last I'd seen of these lame-ass characters. They'd shown up and tried their best and been dismal failures. I wasn't even curious about their powers. Then, just eleven issues later (LSH No. 283, if you really want to subject yourself to it) they show up again. It was like Reverse Christmas.

This time, we get to see their fantastic powers:

Crystal Kid fires gooey-looking beams that turn things into crystal, yawn. I mean... yawn.

One second.

Took a little nap there. There is nothing exciting about turning things to crystal, especially in the Legion. Plus Element Lad can already do that, so this kid shouldn't have gotten within five hundred metres of the place. Plus:
He's super over-confident. And:
His power only works as long as he's concentrating on it, which seems like adding insult to injury. "Sure you've got a lousy power, kid, but at least it doesn't work very well, right?"

Wildfire takes a dip in the surprisingly deep Legion fountain, where he encounters Lamprey, who has all of the standard "underwater hero" powers (that's superstrength, plus the ability to swim) and electricity-shooting:

I'm not sure if she's ever seen a lamprey eel - my guess is no, as they're almost indescribably hideous. In any case, her powers are somewhat better than poor Bobb's. There is one drawback, though:

It's not just a case of artistic license - she really is firing rings of electricity. Moreover, those rings are big enough that Wildfire can step right through them (Though not very well. By my reckoning he's about to get ringed in the knee, thigh and crotch). Plus it's implied that she's not too good at maneuvers out of the water, which puts the kibosh on roughly 98 percent of Legion missions.

Nightwind flies and fires wind out of her feet. She gets some credit for not wearing clothing that is the same colour as her skin but that's about all I'm willing to grant her.

So anyway, Wildfire trashes the three of them. Then this happens:

The girls try to kiss Wildfire and he goes nuts! Personally, I think that it's because he saw that wink thing. Nightwind's wink is terrifying! That one staring white eye? Gives me the heebie jeebies. He says it's because of his Tragic Past, but I don't buy it.

Anyway, what with the terrible costumes, the lame powers, the stupid names and the fact that they mostly get their asses kicked and listen to exposition (Wildfire tells them a story too), these three jokers are:

NOT APPROVED

But finally getting them out of the way? That's JOHN APPROVED from here to Tuesday. So... for two days.