-Continuity Off!
-Esther on Teen Titans!
-David on New Warriors!
-Of course, New Warriors: Reality Check is out of print. It was a good story if you can find it.
-True story: next week is the Fourcast’s one year anniversary and you won’t believe what we have planned.
-I mean, you won’t believe that we don’t have anything planned.
-(Plan something for us please.)
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-See you, space cowboy!

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Over at Rich Johnston’s blog, some b-team scrub named Ryan Mullenix wrote up a post in response to Chris Sims’s piece on the racial politics of DC’s current style. Sims’s piece was good, and I liked seeing frank discussion of racial issues on a big-name site. Mullenix’s piece… well.

I did it better a year and a half ago.

I’ve got a gang of problems with the piece. There’s no citations, no context, nothing that explains what was going on in the books, no creative teams, no historical context, and nothing worthy of examination. It’s a loose collection of anecdotes piggybacking on a pretty good piece in an attempt to troll for hits. It’s lowest common denominator work at best, and cynical hit-whoring at worst. If you can’t even spell somebody’s name right… well, the craft shows.

These lists do no one any favors. All they do is arm people for crappy, hysterical battles where both sides are too busy shouting to do any listening or learning. “Well CASSANDRA CAIN is ASIATIC!” You couldn’t get any more specific than that, man? What’s more, you couldn’t find something better than some outdated way to say “asian?” Is Cass Cain a member of the Nation of Gods and Earths? You couldn’t take the time to figure out which type of Latino Kyle Rayner is? You couldn’t spell Teth-Adam correctly?

Johnston says that Mullenix “seems to find a striking overall theme.” I think he found the exact sort of thing that makes talking race online such a pain in the neck. I think he found a surefire, cynical, and effective way to log some fat hits for advertisers. I think that he didn’t say anything worth reading. Maybe that’s just me. Maybe I’m wrong.

But people who don’t know anything should speak when spoken to.

Cinder! No, not this Cinder, I mean the one created (I assume) by Eric Wallace and Fabrizio Fiorentino for their upcoming run on Titans. This excerpt is from Titans: Villains for Hire Special, which introduces the team to the DC Universe and readers by interspersing their motivation stories with shots of Ryan “The Atom” Choi getting murked. Here’s Cinder’s origin, featuring art by Sergio Ariño (I think–the title card is unclear on who did what, but it definitely isn’t Mike Mayhew or Fiorentino). She has the power to… well, if you’ve ever played Killer Instinct, she’s basically Cinder from that, but with boobs and a mad-on for child molesters. Read on:

Possible punchlines:
-Never trust a big butt and a smile.
-If you think she’s bad, her sister Glacius is ten times worse!
-Doctor, I’ve got this burning sensation…
-She’s cute, but I heard she burns through her boyfriends like nobody’s business.

I liked Wallace and Fiorentino’s Ink. Thought it was pretty clever, and a good read overall. But Titans… might have to give that one a miss.

I pretty much had the same reaction as Deathstroke to this scene, too. “…huh.” Volcano Vagina, man. What’re you gonna do?

* finally, I’m not sure I understand either Sean Collins’ piece on superhero regression or the piece that inspired it, but it seems to me kind of dopey to pin racial diversification on swapping people out of costumes. The worlds that the superheroes live on have such a hopelessly retrograde and inadequate sense of anything other than their white people that I don’t hold out for them ever getting better.

-Tom Spurgeon, Random Comics News Story Round-Up 05/12/10

He’s right, of course.

Most cape books barely have a handle on decent characterization, and expecting the Big Two to catch up with reality is dumb. Sorry, Charlie, but that just ain’t gonna happen.

I’m not saying that they don’t manage to do nice things with colored folks sometimes. I quite liked Jason Rusch as Firestorm, and Jaime Reyes as Blue Beetle gave DC a nice Spider-Man character. Cassandra Cain had a fantastic hook, and John Henry Irons was a nice twist on the super-scientist character. Even boring old John Stewart is not without his charms.

But, when you get down to brass tacks–all of these are third stringers and supporting characters now. And guess who gets the axe when the time comes to up the ante? Guess who can fade into obscurity with minimal impact on the status quo? If you expect the Big Two to push a more diverse or realistic cast rather than pandering to the idea of legacy or iconic characters… well.

How’s that working out for you?

I wrote about Brandon Graham’s King City for Comics Alliance.

It’s dumb, but I’ve been trying to write about King City for ages. The last time I tried was around issue 4. I think the final text on CA is a mixture of ideas and sentences from three different drafts from several months worth of starts and stops. I finally got focused and put some elbow grease into it, using issue four as the lynchpin, and I think it turned out pretty okay.

The thing is, King City may well be my favorite ongoing comic right now. It’s a book I save to read until several days after new comics day, in part because I know it is going to be fantastic and in part because it makes everyone else making comics look lazy. It’s that serious. Graham is filling each page with amazing ideas and the briefest of thoughts and it all works. It hangs together. Reading King City is like playing Jenga with ideas and concepts, but it never tips over. It stays upright. The oversized floppy format, the black and white art, the page count, the backups, the back cover, the whole book works. It’s cluttered and messy and it all works.

(I haven’t been able to get “Sometimes her cigarette smoke smells like flowers” out of my head since I read it.)

I didn’t want to screw it up when I wrote about it. This is the book that everyone should be reading. It’s your stepping stone to a world of great comics. And like, writing it up and doing a halfway job on it? That’d just be sloppy. I wouldn’t do it justice. I think the CA piece comes as close as I can right now. I may write about it more later on, as the series lumbers toward its conclusion.

One more thing.

I love this comic, man. Y’all should be reading it.

Newsarama has an interview with Fred Van Lente about Shadowland: Power Man. A new Power Man is spinning out of Shadowland, the big crossover where Daredevil turns into Donald Rumsfeld and waterboards and then kills Bullseye, or something. I’m kinda ehhh on Daredevil at the moment (hey how much worse can his life get oh is that so), so I was gonna skip Shadowland. But, Fred Van Lente has a good track record, and I liked the Scorpion he introduced in addition to several dozen of his comics, so I read the interview to see what was up.

And I mean, I’m still sorta skeptical. Daredevil is a Debbie Downer, Shadowland sounds kinda silly, and do we really need a new Power Man? But FVL has done stories with Scorpion and the Savage She-Hulk that I dug a lot, he wrote the best story to come out of Marvel last year, and he included Rocket Racer in Modok’s 11. I’m not too fond of Incredible Herc, but FVL’s overall track record seems to be “Writes comics specifically for David Brothers.”

So it sounds interesting, but I’m kinda like “Maybe I’ll catch the trade.” Except:
Van Lente: One of the things I love about this series is, to me it proves that you can have “street characters” where it’s not dark and foreboding. It can be fun. And “urban setting” doesn’t mean it has to be a grim, noir sort of setting.

Yes, it does have a very youthful feel to it. You have a kid acquiring superpowers and donning a costume and going out there and kicking ass, and making some good money for it. It certainly beats delivering pizzas as an after-school job. His powers, like all classic Marvel characters, are rooted in tragedy. And what that tragedy is, and how it’s affected his family, and how it connects to Bullseye will be explicated as the series goes along.
and
If you were looking for the return of Comanche and Shades, you need go no further than Shadowland: Power Man. And Cottonmouth, another one of my Luke Cage faves, is coming back. I have an inexplicable fondness for Discus and Stiletto, and let us not forget the greatest Luke Cage villain of all time, Cockroach Hamilton, with his six barrel shotgun.

Shades & Comanche in comics again after all these years?

Good villains deserve what they get. We look forward to it and revel in it when it finally happens. That’s why they commit crimes, make us afraid, or do terrible things. Sometimes this leads to situations where the accumulated crimes of the villain are too heinous to be settled by a punch in the face. When done properly, however, the fistfight on top of a burning building is just what’s needed to salve the wounds caused by a villain’s actions in a story. The villain catches a bad one, the hero gives with a quick one-liner, and fade to black.

It’s a tried and true formula. Someone does something bad, someone else punches that first person in the face, and we all feel better. In One Piece 16, subtitled “Carrying On His Will,” Eiichiro Oda switches up the formula a little. Wapol, the villain of the volume, was introduced in a scene that was more funny than threatening. He chewed up a bit of the Merry Go and was punched over the horizon for his folly.

Later, the Straw Hats show up on Drum Island looking for a doctor. Wapol shows up once again and attempts to reassert his control over the kingdom. He does some more buffoon-type things, in addition to beating up a former subordinate, and then moves along. He causes some more minor mayhem, but nothing overly serious, on the way to reclaiming his throne at Drum Kingdom’s castle. He eventually scales the sheer cliff face that sits below the castle, only to find Luffy, Nami, Sanji, and their two new allies, Dr. Kureha and Tony Tony Chopper, occupying it. He flips out.

The problem is that despite his antics thus far, he hasn’t quite managed to become a worthy villain. He’s an obstacle. He is, at best, on the level of a mid-boss, someone you beat up on your way to tackling the real bad guy. Wapol’s arrival is just a stepping stone to the point. He’s been completely undersold. There’s no “Oh no, Wapol!” or “Grrr, this guy!” at work. He’s just a funny fat guy with an eating disorder-based superpower.

Oda seems to recognize this, too. There’s no build-up or no big speech from Luffy. He just says “I’ve got a score to settle with you guys!” and whips his arm back for a Gum Gum Bullet. Quick, easy, to the point. Pop him once and we’re on to the next one.

Freeze frame, director. Wapol’s eyes are bugged out in surprise. Luffy’s fist is six inches away from impact. His muscles have gone tight from the strain. He got as far as “Bul-,” with the “-let” sitting somewhere in the future. The record scratches and we pick up six years in the past.

We see the story of how Tony Tony Chopper came to be. We meet Dr. Hiriluk, a quack doctor who does about the same amount of harm as he does good, in the service of a kingdom that is lacking in doctors. We see Dr. Hiriluk rescue and befriend Chopper, who is drawn considerably more round and fuzzy than he is later in the series, and we watch their relationship blossom over the course of the year. We meet Dr. Kureha back when she was a spry 133 years old.

And then there is Wapol, the spoiled prince who became king and immediately began squandering his father’s legacy. We get a proper introduction to Dalton, a warrior who doesn’t like where Drum Kingdom is headed. We see how Wapol ignores the politics and civility that are required of his station. In a remarkable coincidence, we see Wapol literally bump into a young Nefeltari Vivi, bruising her forehead, and watch her react with poise and sincerity. And then we see Wapol cause the death of Dr. Hiriluk and motivate Chopper to become the greatest doctor the world has ever seen.

The film skips and fades out on Wapol’s laughter. The camera fades back in eighty-eight pages and six years later. We’re looking from Wapol’s perspective and see Luffy’s fist swung back and a hard grimace on his face. The camera turns 180 degrees and focuses on Wapol’s face contorted in surprise. Wapol says, “Wha–!!?” Luffy says, “-let!!!!”

Impact. To be continued in volume 17.

Hey, Wapol of Tin, leader of the Tin Tyrant Pirates… you earned that.

Eiichiro Oda’s skill at pacing, building tension, and and creating believable characters puts many other creators to shame.

-Hey, guess what movie we saw this weekend!
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-See you, space cowboy!

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From Justice League: The Rise of Arsenal 2, with words by JT Krul and art by Geraldo Borges:

What do the judges say?

Swing and a miss, b.

Grant Morrison, Andy Clarke, Scott Hanna, and Dustin Nguyen’s Batman & Robin 12 reveals the identity of Oberon Sexton and sets up the next arc of Grant Morrison’s Batman mega-story. That’s nice and all, but what I dug most about the issue was something else entirely.

A preface: I’m not 100% sold on Batman & Robin. The art has been shaky when done by people not named Cameron Stewart or Frank Quitely. The story hasn’t been hitting on all cylinders. I’ve talked about this with David Uzumeri, the #1 Batmannotations guy on the internet, because I was confused. I like Morrison. I like Batman. I like Damian. This should be clicking for me, but it wasn’t. This issue, though, came the closest to the knock-your-socks-off spectacular I was expecting. And it wasn’t because of Oberon Sexton. It was this scene:

Maybe I’m a sucker for parental issues, but this is it. This is Morrison fully bringing Damian into the Bat-family and setting him on his path to be a hero. Batman began fighting crime as revenge on crime itself. Dick Grayson brought a much-needed light to incredible darkness. Tim Drake did it because Batman and Robin can never die. Babs Gordon did it because it was fun and because helping people is in her blood. Cassandra Cain did it as penance.

Damian, ten years old, just slightly older than his father was when he made a vow to avenge the death of his parents, has finally found a cause. His father, bleeding to death, said, “Yes. Father. I shall become a bat” and chose to honor his parents through his life’s work. His mother raised him to be a killer and run roughshod over the world. His father, and his father’s family, treated him with love and kindness. They treated him like a person. His mother is cold, distant, and considers him a tool.

Batman wants to fight crime. His biological son has a more focused target, a specific representation of crime. The son of the world’s greatest detective and the heir to the world’s foremost criminal empire has chosen a side: his father’s side. Damian’s cause is to be a worthy enemy for the daughter of the greatest criminal mastermind on the planet.

I also enjoyed this:

“You’re nothing, old man. I can end you whenever I want to.”

This is how you do fall-out from an event.