Here’s a bit from Garth Ennis’s Hitman where Ennis is doing what he does best: letting his characters talk. I forget the issue and I’m actually leaving for work right after I press “Publish,” but it’s easy to locate online. It’s from the issue with Superman. Perhaps in the 20s or 30s?

It runs into the sidebar, but I’ll fix it when I get home. Tonight. Ugh.

Peace!

My infinitely patient buddy Mark Poa sent me an email all the way from the Philippines about a guest article on Civil War. He points out quite a few things that Marvel could have, and should have, done differently. Check it out below!

My friend asked me: “I remember you saying in an LJ post that you were on the side of Tony Stark in Civil War. Fair enough, I think that some sort of regulation is probably required in the case of superhumans, myself. But the burning question is, how do you think this should work? The way Tony’s been doing things is certainly not the best.

Ah, I do so love comic book type hypothesis.

Why is Superhero registration necessary?
1. People with superpowers are similar to special skills. CPAs, lawyers, doctors, and other professionals are registered so that their skills can be monitored and standards could be set for their use. I see superheroes as going through this route… registering as professional superheroes.
2. Registering would mean having standards. Training, education, special tests… all to ensure that activities would be regulated and that special provisions can be made for the use of special skills.
3. It’s a failsafe in case a superhuman goes rogue. Real names are registered

What did Iron Man and the pro-regs do wrong in Civil War?
1. Antagonize Captain America. Really, between Iron Man, Antman and Mr. Fantastic vs. Captain Freaking America… I know where the heavier symbol is.
2. Make it seem like registering would mean revealing your identity… and actually forcing Peter Parker to reveal his identity. Bad move in terms of getting other heroes to join.
3. Forcing heroes to register. Which inevitably turned it into an Us vs. Them thing.

How would I approach it better?
1. Convince Captain America to support the move from the start. Address his concerns. No forcing of registrants? Check. No drafting of heroes into S.H.I.E.L.D .? Check. Get him as a spokesman. Pronto!

2. I liked She-Hulk’s Dan Slott’s attempt to explain this by having She-Hulk say that no one is forced to reveal their identity to anyone except S.H.I.E.L.D. It sounds logical. No one but your fellow heroes would have to know your identity. Also, there should be measures to address fear that the database of S.H.I.E.L.D. would be hacked. I don’t know… keep all the information in Aaron “Machine Man” Stack or something? Just assure the registering heroes that their identities would be kept safe.

On a tangent… Not that secret identities mean much in Marvel anyway. The only hero I think that had a pretty intact and decent secret identity was Spider-man and look what happened. 😛

3. Highlight the benefits of registration rather than forcing people to register. Registering would mean special status in society? Okay! Special training? Okay! Clearance from police agencies and access to the S.H.I.E.L.D. resources and labs? Okay! Get them special tax privileges in exchange for registering and following the rules? Right on!

That’s how I see it anyway. Sadly, I think the Marvel U’s level of distrust would prevent formulating any kind of “win-win” situation.

What do you think, sirs?

Let me tell you a story.

This had to have been back when I was in the fifth grade, in Mrs Washington’s class. There’s this program called DARE, Drug Abuse Resistance Education. Basically, they explain to you that you should narc on your friends if you catch them with drugs and that if you try weed just one time you’ll immediately find yourself toothless, hooked on crack, in prison, insane, and stupid.

From Wikipedia:

The U.S. Department of Education concluded in 2003 that the DARE program is ineffective and now prohibits its funds from being used to support it.[5] The U.S. Surgeon General’s office, the National Academy of Sciences,[5] and the Government Accounting Office also concluded that the program is sometimes counterproductive in some populations, with those who graduate from DARE later having higher rates of drug use. Studies by Dr. Dennis Rosenbaum [6], and by the California Legislative Analyst’s office [7] found that DARE graduates were more likely than others to drink alcohol, smoke tobacco and use illegal drugs.

Sorry, the mean-spiritedness is just deafening sometimes. I’ll do better, I promise.

Anyway, our DARE officer was a cop we called Officer Wood. At some point during the class, I ended up asking him a question about the Black Panthers. I wasn’t quite as “conscious” back then as I am now, but I knew a little bit about a little something. I even used to have one of those leather Africa medallions. I know that some of you folks know what I’m talking about. I was curious as to what Wood would say.

“The Black Panthers were worse than the Klan,” he told me.

That’s stuck with me in the years since then. He’s practically taken on bogeyman status in my head. I realized that if you don’t know what you’re talking about, you should keep your mouth shut. Arguing from a position of ignorance makes you an idiot, and no one likes idiots. If you want to speak, you’d better know first.

Other than that, though, I realized how perception informs things. I doubt that Officer Wood knew what he was saying. The Panthers, like Malcolm X, have been villainized in the years since they were active. They weren’t about killing white people, or even hating them. They were “The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense” and were an anti-police brutality group. They weren’t angels, granted, but they weren’t the frigging Klan, either. To Officer Wood, though, they were.

This brings me to Nighthawk, from J Michael Stracyzinski’s Supreme Power. Supreme Power sometimes feels like kind of a retread of JMS’s other series, Rising Stars, at times, but it remains one of his better works.

Nighthawk, though. Hm. Problematic.
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Dear DC Comics,

Red Arrow is a stupid name.

Change it back. :colbert:

My style is “War and Peace” – your shit is just the Cliff Notes
–El-P of Company Flow, “Definitive”

Thomas Wilde hit me with this term some years ago. “Nerd blind spots.”

Nerd blind spots are those things that you’re an inordinately big fan of, which leads to being more willing to try anything involving those things. An example is the guy who went to see each Star Wars prequel movie in the theater and had high hopes that “Maybe it’ll be good this time.” It leads to a furher loss of objectivity in an already completely subjective realm, i.e., opinions.

I’ve got a few nerd blind spots. The Jim Lee-era X-Men is one, to be certain. I’d love to own all of that in trades. Spider-Man is probably my biggest, as I’ll pretty much read something that guest-stars Spidey unless I know that it’ll 100% suck. In the same sense, though, I enjoy Spidey so much that I have this idea built up in my head of what Spider-Man should be, so I can be quite critical of Spider-books. I dropped Amazing Spidey when Mike Deodato came onto it, mostly because he was completely inappropriate for the book. Millar’s Spider-Man run sacrificed characterization for plot and turned out to be a fake Hush. That kind of thing.

A lot of people have these nerd blind spots, be it for characters, themes (noir, how I love thee), or creators. These aren’t bad things at all, I figure. If you enjoy a book, that is all that matters. Everyone needs, if not obsessions, at least pointed interests.

This ties in, at least a little bit, with something I’ve thought over before. What’re your definitive versions of characters? I don’t mean stories, necessarily, but the way they are drawn. Who’s Superman, for example, do you think of when someone says “Superman?” Who has put an indelible stamp on that character?

Definitive tends to imply that there is only one version, but that isn’t quite right. Spider-Man/Peter Parker takes a bunch of different forms for me. Jazzy John Romita’s cool version from back in the day is on the list, as well as Jumpin’ John Romita Jr’s recent look for the webslinger during his run on Amazing with JMS. Another notable is Humberto Ramos, who draws pretty much the perfect “big foot”-style Spidey, and Mark Bagley is another big gun. Those are the four people I think of when I think “Spidey.” Todd McFarlane used to be on the list, since he was really part of my first exposure to Spidey, but he’s been crazy out-paced. he still draws the best webs, though.

Daredevil, oddly, isn’t Frank Miller’s version. It’s Alex Maleev’s. Maleev made that book his own, and his noir stylings were pitch perfect. The X-Men are Jim Lee’s, through and through. More specifically, X-Men #1-era Jim Lee. His people looked like heroes. They were all strong, attractive, rugged, and powerful.

Superman is Ed McGuinness’s version, no question. Not even Frank Quitely could top it, despite the fact that All-Star Supes is a quality book. McGuinness brings a kind of pop comics exuberance to the character that I just love. He’s big, he’s burly, and he’s happy.

This ties right into my next point– Wonder Woman. This part of the post is due almost directly to Loren Javier’s post and the ensuing comments thread here.
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Annihilation had just ended and the universe is saved. Mostly. What’s important is that Nova beat up Annihilus and for now, the Annihilation Wave is in repair. One of the more interesting subplots – as seen in one of the above site header images – is the teaming up between Super-Skrull and Ronan the Accuser. These two are more or less the #1 heroes of their respective planets. Two races that have hated each other for years have their top dogs fight side-by-side against a threat so great, they have no choice but to co-operate. Obviously, this won’t do all that much to stop the constant hatred between the Kree and the Skrulls. Super-Skrull and Ronan still pretty much hate each other’s guts. They just have a bit more respect for each other.

But it got me thinking. Marvel is doing a lot to change the status quo these days, in ways that make sense and can be used to tell new and interesting stories. What I’m wondering is, could humanity get along with the Skrulls? Could we form some kind of loose alliance?

The Skrulls were created for no reason other than to be the generic galactic invaders. The “little green men”. At first, they were just a race made entirely of insidious world conquerors who wanted nothing more than to take over Earth. A couple years later, the character of Princess Anelle was introduced, showing that despite what we’ve been fed, there are compassionate members of the Skrull people.

Time has changed the Skrulls. The 2000’s have changed the Skrulls more than anything else. While Earth continues to evolve, the Skrull Empire is being broken apart. Their worlds have been destroyed by wars, Galactus, botched weddings, crappy government and lots of cosmic bugs. They could use a helping hand.

As races, man and Skrull seems like easy opposition. With individuals, though, there’s more to be told. Let’s look at some of the more notable Skrulls of recent history.

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Ah, it’s Valentine’s Day. A day that honestly means nothing to me. But I can pretend. I did have a huge, ten-page article written up, but before posting, I remembered hermanos’ warning that he would bludgeon me to death with a life-sized bust of Ultra-Humanite if I were to ever write up Galactus/Giganta erotic fanfiction. So that’s out.

I swear, the scene with the Seattle Space Needle was one of my finest works.

Instead, I think I’ll show a bit of appreciation to our fans. No, not our regulars. You, who come to 4th Letter every couple of days to check for updates. This isn’t about you.

No, not the people who stumble upon 4th Letter by clicking on links in forums and other comic blogs. We appreciate you guys too, but this isn’t about you. Not today.

(Note: Article not totally work safe. You’ve been warned)

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Yeah, it’s been a week. My bad. All I can say is that the day job and the writing job are conspiring to kill my free time. I can definitely say that I won’t leave the site alone for a week again, though. That’s just inexcusable.

Now that the mea culpas are out of the way, let me give you another reason to be angry. You get a re-run today. Yeah. Sorry.

Before I had 4l, I had a blog on Livejournal called Guerilla Grodd. I catalogued the comics news of the day and added in a little commentary and original content. I was high off Journalista! and The Beat, so I had to have my own linkblog, too, you know?

I started an examination of Grant Morrison and Cameron Stewart’s Seaguy. I got to issue 2 before I stopped, and I’ve been meaning to rewrite these completely. In the interest of not having this freaking site be bare any longer, I’m going to reproduce the first commentary, which covers Seaguy #1, here.

Read it. It’s old, but I think I make some pretty decent points, and I do hope that you’ll tell me if I’m wrong. The clickable links are almost all images, by the way.

Cripes, man. I hate to blog about what I’m going to blog about, but I feel like I owe it to you guys. I want to talk about Marvel Boy and Spider-Man: Reign and Kabuki and black heroes and The Other Side and everything else, I just have to make the time for it.

In the meantime, though, please enjoy this. We’ll be back asap, all right?

Welcome to the fifth installment. Took me longer than expected, but a lot of these guys are big names. If you reach the end of the article, Batman will reward you with his greatest quote ever.

CABLE

New Mutants #87 (1990)

Originally, Cable appears in Uncanny X-Men #201 (1986) as a baby, but I figure it would probably make more sense to show his real introduction. The story begins with a terrorist act by a team of Stryfe’s henchmen in some facility. The only one I actually recognize is Four-Arm. After they leave, a new figure enters through a hole in the wall.

Cable tracks Stryfe’s team on their next mission, where they plan to kidnap a couple kids out of a government facility. He takes the battle to the enemies, but their numbers eventually overwhelm him. He’s left to die and the mutants get away. The issue ends with Cable in military captivity, thinking about how he went at this the wrong way. He’s going to need help.

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Hey hey hey.

Apologies to anyone who tried to access 4l in the past hour or so. I was upgrading to WordPress 2.1 and things went awry, as they tend to do. I think Slimstat, my hits tracking thinger, may still be broken. Not entirely sure, there.

Anyway! We’re now on WP2.1 so things should be smoother on my end as well as yours. Hopefully, anyway.

A quick shoutout to the homey JLG, who just recently opened up a WordPress blog to contain his thoughts.

I’m going to be updating the old blog roll later tonight, methinks. If you’re a commenter and I haven’t linked you, give a Brothers a holler, okay? I’m easy.

Actual content to come, perhaps!

Fun linky stuff:
Website: right here
Feed: right chea
LJ Syndication: right heah
Email: 4thletterATgmailDOTcom

edit: Sorry for ruining any LJ friends pages!

edit 2: edit harder: Looks like any time we used a !–more– tag to create that snazzy “read more” bit, it also carries over to news readers and lj friends lists. Do you all prefer it like that or want it back the other way, with full articles listed? I’m not sure how to change it, though…