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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Hal Jordan watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That’s his dream. That’s his nightmare.

Hey, now. Looks like it’s time for another installment of Ruining the Moment! Let’s roll.

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You may have noticed that I haven’t posted jack shit in the past week or so. Yes, that’s my bad. Truth is, while I’m a big comic fan, I’m also a rather big wrestling mark. The Royal Rumble was this past Sunday and no matter how bad the overall WWE product gets (and believe me, right now it’s possibly the worst it’s ever been since I started watching 16 years ago), the event is like a second Christmas to me. In other words, I’ve been a bit pre-occupied with other interests.

So what do I have in store? I do have one little article that I’ll probably toss in tomorrow or so. Nothing special.

The next installment of Deadshot’s Tophat should be coming in sometime this weekend. It’s a bit more exhaustive this time, since most of the characters are full-fledged stars of the issues rather than cameos and silhouettes.

There’s a chance you might still be wondering about that finale I promised for the Top 100 What If Countdown. Truth is, I was waiting quite a while to get some art in from a volunteer who shall remain nameless. He flaked out on me hard and all I have to show for it is an early sketch of the Hulk tearing Ultron in half. That being said, I will make that article my priority after that above mentioned Deadshot’s Tophat installment. Ten bucks says I get it posted before the next Ultimate Hulk vs. Wolverine.

Valentine’s Day is coming up and I have a special gift towards our readers.

Which reminds me, if anyone out there has an itch to type up their long-winded opinion on why they think Slapstick is better than the Creeper or how Lou Ferrigno changed your way of life, feel free to contact hermanos or yours truly. We’re always open to guest articles.

Now onto the Hal crap.

Word on the street is that it is/was Hal Jordan Appreciation Week. Sure, I’m a Guy guy myself, but in terms of marquee, I’ve always been about Hal. Actually, before I go into explanation, let me share a little anecdote. At work, I wear a Green Lantern pin over my nametag. A couple times I met this girl who pointed it out and would start talking about how much she loves Kyle Rayner. During a discussion with her, she said something about Luke Skywalker.

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Elseworlds can be a mixed bag. Scratch that. Elseworlds can be a mixed bag that’s half eaten. You know when somebody’s picked out most of the good candy from the jar and there’s only three Jolly Ranchers left among a pile of 20-year-old pieces of candy corn? That’s more like what Elseworlds are like.

There are some good ones to be sure. The epics like Kingdom Come, Dark Knight Returns and Red Son count without question. Other good Elseworlds that come to mind include the Justice Riders, where Sheriff Diana Prince goes after railroad baron Maxwell Lord while accompanied by madcap inventor Beetle, godly-quick gunslinger Kid Flash, maverick card player Booster Gold and others. The Secret Society of Superheroes is another obscure story with a great spin, where the Justice League act in the shadows while FBI Agent Bruce Wayne works to exploit them. That story has possibly my favorite incarnation of Batman ever. Then there’s JLA: Destiny, which is only half good. The core of the story is about Jor-El being the sole survivor of Krypton with Thomas Wayne being the one who watched his wife and son being shot down in front of him. Sadly, while everything relating to Jor-El and Mongul (who fills in a Luthor role) is seriously good, the comic is absolutely bogged down by unnecessary characters and subplots.

Most of the rest I can care less about. In the end, you’re just seeing another retelling of Batman’s origin, only he has a mustache or his father was Abraham Lincoln.

The subject of this article is part of a 5th week event known as Legends of the Dead Earth. Information on it is pretty hard to come by, but to the best of my understanding, something screwy happened to Earth, causing its heroes to scatter into alternate realities. So on one hand, it’s a series of Elseworlds while on the other hand, the issues are canon in a sense.

This issue, Justice League America Annual #10, is part of the series. There are really two reasons I find it worth talking about. For one, it’s based on Extreme Justice, which I had just gone over. For two, it’s really out there and moves so fast that you can only scratch your head. Christopher Priest wrote this issue, by the way. So that’s something.

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Wacky thing happened to me today. As some readers may know, I work at Barnes and Noble. I’ve worked there for a while and it’s indeed a nice job. I get a decent enough employee discount, which I use for comics, issues of Hardcore Gamer Magazine and more Dr. Phil books than I can handle. Some of our comics come out before regular comic stores get them, such as Marvel Adventures Avengers. I also have a habit of running into notable characters like people from Wizard, director Malcolm Lee (who was jonesing for some Cage and Iron Fist comics) and artist extraordinaire Mark Texeira. This part pisses off Georgia-based hermanos, who I think once gave directions to a guy who did the lettering for a couple old issues of Fantastic Force and that’s it.

These past couple months have been a pain. The holidays are a nightmare to all who work retail. Now that it’s over, our manpower has been cut and we have half the people working shifts. They decided to start that on the Sunday before MLK Day, which turned out to be a major mistake. The place now looks like a tornado hit it. Things got worse when a local pipe burst and we lost our source of clean water. To cap it all off, our cafe’s freezer busted last night.

In tragedy, I found just enough comedy to get by…

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BLADE

Tomb of Dracula #10 (1973)

“They call me… Blade! Blade the Black Agent X!”

Times change, don’t they? The story that introduces Blade doesn’t so much go into his background, other than his hobby of offing vampires. He takes care of some of Dracula’s henchmen early on and then fights the big bad on a cruise ship. When Dracula has things won, one of his mind-controlled lady victims comes to jump his bones. This distracts Dracula enough that Blade can get back up. Dracula makes the decision to leave, though the boat will explode in moments. Blade tosses everyone off the boat and makes it to safety himself, knowing that he and Dracula will fight again one day.

BLINK

Uncanny X-Men #317 (1994)

Before Blink was well-known for her role in Age of Apocalypse and Exiles, she showed up in regular 616 continuity as part of the Phalanx Covenant. Along with members of Generation X, she finds herself captured by the Phalanx.

When attacked by a being named Harvest, Blink uses her power to teleport him away while tearing him apart. Other than that, she follows the others as they attempt to escape, knowing that the Phalanx was unable to find a way to dampen their powers.

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Before we delve back into the insanity of what passed as a story in Extreme Justice, let’s look at what the various characters were up to when they weren’t baring their teeth and looking in-your-face. Captain Atom and Blue Beetle finally came to an understanding and started to get along. Firestorm ended up getting suspended from the team after his drinking problem got out of control. As for Amazing Man and Maxima, the two of them started to grow towards each other. Though at first, Amazing Man was offended due to the fact that Maxima only seemed to be interested after he powered up from his fight with Monarch’s quantum beasts. Also, there was this…

Maxima admitted that she was still culture-shocked from being on Earth. Almerac was advanced to the point that there was only one race and culture, so she was interested in a world with diversity. Amazing Man decided to start teaching her Earth customs in the form of books, music and television. During their look at TV, Maxima stumbled onto the porn channel, which immediately piqued her interests. Being from a planet that only believed in sex for the process of fertilization, she wasn’t quite prepared for… well, something X-rated.

Ah, fun. I can talk about Maxima and pornography all day, but I got a job to do and that job is discussing the Wonder Twins. Because, you see, I hate myself.

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Before I continue, I should point out that I have read worse comics than Extreme Justice. In actuality, the series wasn’t all bad. For instance, while the situations were idiotic, the characters were fine for the most part. There were some decent relationships like Captain Atom/Blue Beetle, Amazing Man/Maxima and Blue Beetle/Firestorm. In fact, Blue Beetle came out looking all right throughout this whole mess. He got to be his regular jokey self without Martian Manhunter yelling at him for not being serious. Plus he was actually useful in fights and wasn’t relegated to just hang out in the Bug and pilot.

As we last left our heroes, Captain Atom found himself before an unmasked Monarch, who was apparently Nathanial Adam. How could this be? The explanation was that when Adam was blown into the quantum field all those years ago (his origin), a quantum clone was created out of some alloy that escaped back to Earth while the real Nathanial Adam just hung out in space for a millennia, never taking the time to get rid of what had to be the dirtiest, nastiest pair of underwear in the universe.

The original Monarch showed up one day and the two became great friends. Monarch taught Adam much over the years, including the life Captain Atom stole from him. Monarch found a way out of the quantum field eventually and upon his death, sent his armor to Adam. Adam became the new Monarch and escaped. He felt that the original Monarch had the right idea of how to bring world peace, but spoiled it with some bad decisions.

The important thing from that gibberish is this: Captain Atom isn’t the real Nathanial Adam. Oh boy. You know how popular these storylines are. Just ask the many fans of Ben Reilly and Deadpool’s arch-nemesis T-Ray.

Nothing important happened with Monarch for a while, other than a bit where he had some “quantum beasts” attack Extreme Justice before destroying the creatures to make himself look like more of a hero to the on-looking crowd. The only important part to come out of this was Amazing Man absorbing the power of one of the creatures and permanently bulking up from it. That will come into play later.

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(Note: This is another set of articles from the early days of 4th Letter. I always liked these articles, so I figure I’d update and repost them. Plus I have an extra article prepared that goes with it. Enjoy)

As you already know, I really like Booster Gold. Out of interest, I made it my mission to read nearly all of his major comic appearances. At the very least, read through any series that heavily included him. His solo series? Check. The Giffen era of Justice League and the one or two years following? Check. The Superbuddies stories? Check. Infinite Crisis and its bells and whistles? Check. His scattered appearances in Superman, Green Lantern and Flash? Check.

This left one major challenge: I had to read through Extreme Justice.

And I did it. It nearly killed me, but I finished the series. Oh, and what a series it was. The mid-90’s was a dark time for comics and Extreme Justice was no shining beacon among the crap. Before I go into the story, let’s look at the original roster for the team and what brought them here:

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Sorry for being a week late. The holidays drained me faster than a three-way with Rogue and Parasite. …Please pretend I didn’t just say that.

THE BEYONDER

Secret Wars II #1 (1985)

We start out with another iffy entry. The Beyonder was present during the first Secret Wars. That’s obvious. It’s just that at no point did he actually appear. That didn’t happen until the horrifying sequel. We know him for his silly disco outfit, but that wasn’t what he originally showed up in.

I like it. We see him talking with the Molecule Man, who tries to explain things to him in a way that is admirably calm and casual. Molecule Man and Volcana send Beyonder on his way as he takes a more subtle form on his quest for experience. This form is of Molecule Man himself. He proceeds to turn a desk into apples, turns a fat television writer into a super-villain and then turns invisible and follows Captain America around for the hell of it.

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