I should be finishing up my next installment of the WCW debacle, but it’s taking longer than I thought. Admittedly, it’s the least exciting of the three articles and it covers the most issues. Expect it up within the next few days. Honest.

In the meantime, how’s about we pass the time with more of these? For instance, in Annihilation, it was pretty badass when the Silver Surfer returned to Galactus’ thrall as herald. But I know the real reason Galactus was smiling.

Cassandra Cain Batgirl has been out of it for the past few months, acting like a villain and murdering people. I think I have an explanation.

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Comics Should Be Good! » Was it WiR?

Interesting post on the Women in Refrigerators dealie over at Comics Should Be Good!

It’s one of the best posts I’ve seen over there in ages (not that the others have been bad, necessarily), and it kind of highlights how personal perception colors this sort of thing.

In other news– if you aren’t enjoying Iron Fist, get your funometer recalibrated. It’s great.

Oh, this is gonna be epic! Getting right into it…

Ghostface “Yo, man, you’re gonna come up outta that shiny armor, dog! This is Theodore Unit and you’re outta pocket, knahmean?!” Killah
versus
Tony “The ends justify the means and I’ve got enough ends that I can get away with being mean!” Stark

“Wait, this isn’t a comics matchup!”

It is, because this is my site and I say so.

The Rundown:
Ghostface Killah is probably unfamiliar to more than a few of you. If I had to describe him in one sentence, that sentence would be “GFK is what James Joyce would be if he rapped.” He’s self-referential, clever, punny, and willing to go on complete stream-of-consciousness tangents during a rhyme, even going so far as to detail what a group of people he’s about to rob are eating and finishing with “My stomach’s growlin’, yo, I want some.”

GFK first rose to fame on Wu-Tang Clan’s first album, “Enter the Wu-Tang.” The first track, “Bring Da Ruckus,” opened with GFK spitting “Ghostface, catch the blast of a hype verse” and capturing the minds of the youth. Years later, his second solo record, “Supreme Clientele,” was credited with both saving the Wu-Tang Clan and his own career. “Supreme Clientele” was an instant classic and gave Ghost a chance to shine and show off his storytelling and abstract skills. You could make a case for Ghost being an abstract rapper, but a better term would probably be “free-association.” His rhymes shift in and out of the topic of the song, but are always related somehow. Think of him in the same way that you think of decompressed storytelling in comics– he adds color commentary and that helps fill in the blanks between what he’s saying.

GFK has in common with Tony Stark is a love of alcohol. He’s even done a St Ide’s commercial. Something else he has is a collection of aliases. Tony Stark (also rendered Tony/Toney Starks), Ironman, Ghostdeini, and plenty of others serve as clever pseudonyms. He’s got as many names as Iron Man has spare armors in his garage.

Tony Stark, Iron Man, on the other hand, is the much maligned victor of the War Between the Heroes. His victory has resulted, directly or indirectly, the death of one of his best friends, the imprisionment of dozens, if not hundreds of his compatriots, and the worst press since Richard Nixon kicked a baby on live television.

He’s a recovering alcoholic, super-rich, and the owner of a gang of armors that have enough firepower to level a third of the free world and all of the rest of it.

Too easy? No contest?

Iron Man is a hardened warrior and the type of guy to shaft his friends in the name of the greater good. GFK is a beloved rapper, smart, and has dropped at least four classic albums and had a hand in two others as part of a larger group. Nobody likes Tony Stark, not even the people who work with him. Everyone likes GFK, even Freddie Foxxx, who hates everybody.

The trick is, Ghostface named himself after Tony Stark. His first album was called “Ironman” for a reason. He grew up on Marvel Comics. He’s a student of Tony Stark, and please believe that he knows all his tricks. This is simply a case of the student going up against the teacher. Ghostface has seen “Demon In a Bottle” and all that.

Tony Stark doesn’t have that advantage. Sitting up in his ivory tower Stark Tower like he does tends to skew your perspective of the little guy. Ghostface is beneath his notice, literally, which is a mistake.

Tony would try to hot dog this one and take him out solo, leaving SHIELD at home. Show some flash, do a few tricks, and teach the kid a lesson, get him off the streets. Problem is, Tony would catch the blast of a hype verse and get taken by surprise. The pen is, after all, mightier than the sword.

After that, Tony Stark would catch a Kennedy, and that would leave one Iron Man standing in the end.

I’m Iron Man, no die-cast metal, I’m steel alloy
–GFK, “Daytona 500”

I went through a phase in middle school or so where I burned through the local library’s fiction section. My comics reading was down to whatever I could borrow or trade from a friend, so there was always a limit on the new comics I had. Wikipedia (going by publication dates) puts this at around 1994-1995 at the earliest, but it was more likely 1996. You can carry more books if you go for them in mass-market paperback.

I think my library had a five book limit. My mom got me a library card and we’d go up every weekend or so and I’d get five books for myself and then try to use her limit up, too. I’d read the books over the course of that week and then want to go back to the library the next weekend. It got to the point where I was finally left to bicycle to the library, probably a good three miles or so, with a backpack on my back.

I read most of Stephen King’s books, skipping only the Dark Tower stuff really. I eased through Tom Clancy, Orson Scott Card, Douglas Adams, and Piers Anthony. Clancy peaked partway through the Jack Ryan series, Ender’s Game has two divergent sequel paths and the path with the talking portuguese tree pigs or whatever is awful, Douglas Adams is okay, and Piers Anthony is good at terrible puns. I also made it through most of those Star Wars and Forgotten Realms novels, not to mention the different Sherlock Holmes books and horror titles. Oh, and David Eddings. My taste, as ever, leans more toward the pulps than the canon.

(Just as a note, I can barely stand fantasy, high or non, nowadays. I hate elves and fairies and dwarves and stupid talking magic things and dragons and pointy ears and argh. I still haven’t watched Return of the King.)

I found one series at the library, though, that I’d been wanting to read for ages. One of my uncle’s had a box of old novels that met an unfortunate end one wet summer. There was a novel or two in there by a guy named Fred Saberhagen. One of them dealt with super-science death machines called Berserkers. They were out to eradicate all life. The other novel dealt with gods going to war and the people who followed them. Saberhagen was working the sci-fi in one hand and the fantasy in another, and I was hooked completely. Moreso on the fantasy than the scifi, but the scifi was also dope.

Little did I know that the book about the gods was part of a trilogy, which was in turn part of a larger series of books, twelve in all, or maybe seventeen, but only twelve of them interested me. This was The Book of Swords. Luckily, the Hampton, VA public library had the whole shebang.

I probably tore through the series in a month, probably less. The whole thing was just wall to wall awesome. It told the tale of twelve magic swords and the effect they have on certain people as they move in and out of their lives. Sure, it had the usual lost destiny, magic, blah, blah, blah of fantasy novels, but these magic swords were the bomb. The swords were explained and named in “The Song of Swords,” reprinted here for your pleasure:

Who holds Coinspinner knows good odds
Whichever move he make
But the Sword of Chance, to please the gods
Slips from him like a snake.

The Sword of Justice balances the pans
Of right and wrong, and foul and fair.
Eye for an eye, Doomgiver scans
The fate of all folk everywhere.

Dragonslicer, Dragonslicer, how d’you slay?
Reaching for the heart in behind the scales.
Dragonslicer, Dragonslicer, where do you stay?
In the belly of the giant that my blade impales.

Farslayer howls across the world
For thy heart, for thy heart, who hast wronged me!
Vengeance is his who casts the blade
Yet he will in the end no triumph see.

Whose flesh the Sword of Mercy hurts has drawn no breath;
Whose soul it heals has wandered in the night,
Has paid the summing of all debts in death
Has turned to see returning light.

The Mindsword spun in the dawn’s gray light
And men and demons knelt down before.
The Mindsword flashed in the midday bright
Gods joined the dance, and the march to war.
It spun in the twilight dim as well
And gods and men marched off to hell.

I shatter Swords and splinter spears;
None stands to Shieldbreaker.
My point’s the fount of orphans’ tears
My edge the widowmaker.

The Sword of Stealth is given to
One lonely and despised.
Sightblinder’s gifts: his eyes are keen
His nature is disguised.

The Tyrant’s Blade no blood hath spilled
But doth the spirit carve
Soulcutter hath no body killed
But many left to starve.

The Sword of Siege struck a hammer’s blow
With a crash, and a smash, and a tumbled wall.
Stonecutter laid a castle low
With a groan, and a roar, and a tower’s fall.

Long roads the Sword of Fury makes
Hard walls it builds around the soft
The fighter who Townsaver takes
Can bid farewell to home and croft.

Who holds Wayfinder finds good roads
Its master’s step is brisk.
The Sword of Wisdom lightens loads
But adds unto their risk.

I can’t help but think of Dragonslicer’s verse as being an off-kilter version of “Baa Baa Black Sheep.” The Song was what really sold me on the series, I think. It’s one of those that gives you just enough information and clues as to what could happen, but leaves it open for wonderings. Sightblinder alone I could see getting some dude into some Tactical Espionage Action, and Stonecutter in the hands of a Joan of Arc-alike would be awesome!

By the way, the Sword of Mercy, Woundhealer? You heal people by stabbing them with the sword.

This series also featured what was probably the first real swerve I ever really read in a book. Click below to see what I mean, but ending spoilers await.
The books take place roughly 50,000 years after the current day. A nuclear holocaust nearly annihilated the planet, but reality was rewritten by two supercomputers. These computers created the gods and demons that haunt the populace. The demons, in fact, are anthropomorphized radioactive clouds that sicken and poison anyone who gets near them.

Cold war paranoia with a fantasy twist!

Anyway, all of this added up to what is probably my favorite fantasy series. I’d love to go back and buy the novels, though much of the series is out of print, but what I’d really like is for it to get the Stephen King/Dark Tower treatment– a comic adaptation. The story had a lot of tricks and scenes in it that would work wonderfully in a comic. Just use the Book of Swords trilogy as a backdrop and get right into the Book of Lost Swords stories. There’s plenty of fodder for new stories there, too.

When’s the last time we got a good sword & sorcery book that wasn’t Conan-related, anyway?

I think that this could be an awesome thing and I’d love to see it happen. Not very likely at all, to be quite honest, but hey– them’s the breaks.

You’ll have to pardon the lack of a post today. It’s just that JLA #07 was such a thoroughly inept comic on every single level (except I guess the lettering) that it booted me off the internet.

It was just dumb after dumb after dumb. Roy’s eyes, the HALL OF JUSTICE NO WAIT SPACE SATELLITE, keeping Dr Light’s helmet up there along with Red Tornado’s head, having Red Tornado in the comic at all… blah.

I do have something cool cooking, though. It’s time for another Who Would Win In A Fight. This time? It’s Tony Stark vs Tony Starks. Soon.

Fanboy Radio‘s got a live show on right now with Grant Morrison. Your humble correspondent, a true Morrison Whorrison, called in to ask a question and fanboy a bit at Grant Morrison.

News:
Seaguy 2 is on the way and he actually wrote a bit of it today.
Flex Mentallo is Grant Morrison’s Watchmen, in his own words. (In my own words, it is better.)
Wildcats and Authority were victims of 52, that’s why they’re so late. The second issue is written, though.

Give it a listen when the podcast goes up!

I could listen to him talk all day :glomp:

Chances are, you already know what World Championship Wrestling was. If not, you at least remember the days when World Wrestling Entertainment was referred to as the World Wrestling Federation. WCW was the WWF’s competition and for quite a long while, relegated itself to being a distant second.

Though the company leaked money for many years, it stayed afloat because it was billionaire Ted Turner’s pet project. He kept the fed around because it amused him. Sure, it had its talented wrestlers and a couple personalities like Big Van Vader and Cactus Jack that I admired, but I could never really get into it at that age. I was strictly WWF. Maybe it was just a sense of being loyal. Maybe it was the feeling of blandness that clouded a show that didn’t have the Undertaker and Ted Dibiase. Maybe I was turned off by the rules that dropped the entertainment potential like a rock (like being disqualified for throwing someone over the top rope, being on the top rope or even backdropping your opponent).

That’s in the past. The product would finally get the shot in the arm it needed in the mid-to-late-90’s and would, for a while, dominate the WWF. This lasted for only a few years before the WWF got its act together and fought back, using wrestlers that WCW discarded. Two of which appear heavily in this series I’m about to review. WCW lost its momentum thanks to a lot of amusingly bad decisions, many of which came from hiring the wrestling equivalent of Chuck Austen to write the shows. It eventually drowned on its own suck and was bought by Vince McMahon, who incorporated WCW and fellow beaten wrestling fed ECW into his own company, like some kind of Crisis in Infinite Arenas.

I’m getting ahead of myself. This 12-issue comic, released by Marvel, took place during 1992-93, years before the New World Order would turn the tide. At the time, WCW had its share of problems. Their golden boy Ric Flair was off in the WWF. Another mainstay, Sid Vicious, was also playing for the winners. WCW had talent, but it didn’t have much in terms of big names.

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I took part in a brief (16 minutes or so) podcast over at Funnybook Babylon last week, and they posted it on Sunday. From the site:

Here is the FBB Minicast, a new feature on the site. Every Thursday, Gabe Marini and a rotating cast of panelists will take a quick look at important and topical news issues in the funnybook world.

This week, I’m joined by David Uzumeri, columnist at FBB and David Brothers (a guest from The 4th Letter) This week we focus on DC’s various troubles.

A link: Funnybook Babylon » Episode 4.5 – DC Funnybook Drama

You’ll have to pardon the somewhat spotty quality in a few places. We’re still working out a few kinks. Any tips on group podcasting from readers?

More coming this week.