(WE CARE A LOT!) About the gamblers and the pushers and the geeks
(WE CARE A LOT!) About the smack and crack and whack that hits the streets
(WE CARE A LOT!) About the welfare of all you boys and girls
(WE CARE A LOT!) About you people ‘cause we’re out to save the world! Yeah!
Well, it’s a dirty job but someone’s gotta do it

— Faith No More, “We Care a Lot”

I’m going to do a little history lesson here. While yes, it is about Venom, for this first part, it’s more about me, my interest in comics and this very site.

We all have our stories about how we got into comics. Whether it be because someone lent you a copy of Killing Joke or your father read you issues of Rom: Spaceknight when you just a kid, we all have something to say about it. For me, it was sometime in early 1994. In our neighborhood, we had this place called The Great American Party Store which had party supplies and was THE place to go every October for Halloween costumes and decorations.

They also sold comics and as I looked through the area out of boredom, I came across Venom: The Madness #3.

I may not have been into comics, but thanks to television and videogames, I knew who Venom and Juggernaut were. Juggernaut was that awesome domed dude from that X-Men cartoon that I watched all the time and Venom was that bastard who would randomly jump out and attack me in the Genesis Spider-Man game. I never was able to beat him on the Daily Bugle level. Still, I found his evil Spider-Man design magnetic. When I saw this cover, it blew my mind.

Venom’s a good guy now? And he’s fighting the Juggernaut?! This rules!

What, I was 13 at the time. What do you expect?

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Most of the novelizations of Batman that I’ve seen have been written by writers who primarily worked in comics. Although some of them are very good, I’ve wondered what it would be like if regular novelists wrote Batman books. I think the person I’d most like to see write one is Stephen King. He has a knack for making bizarre situations blend into the real world.

Of course, there are all kinds of genres. King would be good for horror, or dystopian sci-fi. Can anyone think of any other authors who could do a great spin on Batman, or the DCU?

I have this thing where I have to see why I do things. Why did I have that reaction, what does that mean about me, and so on. I got completely pissed off at blogging about race last week and decided to quit doing it. Of course, this week, a couple interesting books from a race perspective were released, but whatever.

I started thinking about why I had such an adverse reaction, what brought it on, and why I got so sick of it all of a sudden. I’m crazy busy at work and not sleeping at home, so I’m sure that that doesn’t help. I was thinking about it while I was walking to get lunch and actually had Lupe Fiasco’s “Gold Watch” off Lupe Fiasco’s The Cool [amazon link] snap it into focus for me. It’s the title of this post, and there really isn’t that much context to go with it. It’s just a hot line.

I think the straw that broke the camel’s back (“Why did one straw break the camel’s back? Here’s the secret: the million other straws underneath it”) was this post by Angry Black Woman. It’s about a top 25 list of black superheroes that I saw and ignored back in June. It’s a crap list that, to be honest, is only worth talking about as something terrible.

Exactly ten of the characters deserve to be on the list, thogh in different positions, and doggone Meteor Man is on the list ahead of Black Panther. It’s a joke. It’s a sub-Maxim Top XX list, which is there pretty much for hits. The list sucks. The choices suck. The justifications for the choices suck.
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So there’s this comic character I liked from a couple years back who I knew wasn’t long for the world. True to my prediction, he didn’t do anything outside of ten issues worth of appearances, outside of appearing in the background. I knew that the guy was completely gone from everyone’s mind and would MAYBE appear in an issue of Avengers: The Initiative, if that.

When Rifftrax released their sample for their take on The Happening, I found myself taken aback.

It’s about 18 seconds in.

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me, but I find that reference so surreal.

I understand this post may have completely wasted your time, so enjoy this as well.

You have no idea how many times I’ve watched this thing.

So far in Batman RIP: Everyone is evil. Unless they’re dead. Unless they were already dead, in which case they’re probably alive again. And evil.

Provided, of course, that all of this isn’t going on inside of Bruce Wayne’s newly re-crazied head.

Although I enjoy Grant Morrison’s mind leaving orbit and cruising the galaxy as much as the next person, with one issue to go it’s beginning to look like a center-cannot-hold type situation. For a long time, I couldn’t think of any ending that would satisfy me. Yesterday, however, I remembered a scene way back in Batman #656.

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Thanks to my PCS cohort Jon Haehnle for the link.

I’m pretty much done talking about race in comics forever for the foreseeable future, and I’m kind of mad at comics. I made the mistake of catching up on a lot of books I don’t usually read (Secret Six, JSA, Action Comics, Superman) and I realized that I’d tricked myself into thinking that quality as a whole was on the rise. Untrue. DC publishes an astonishing amount of mediocre books. Marvel has a slightly better track record, even though Uncanny X-Men is ugly and Astonishing X-Men is annoying.

I don’t like reading mediocre books, and I’m starting to think that Saul Williams was right when he said, “Your current frequencies of understanding outweigh that which as been given for you to understand. The current standard is the equivalent of an adolescent restricted to the diet of an infant.”

I don’t like the idea of reading the literary equivalent of applesauce and crushed pears just to find something to blog about. I’d rather be quiet and keep listening to this Anthony Hamilton album (Comin’ Where I’m From) and Nas’s latest album over and over again. I’d rather spend another couple hours on Nike iD designing some sneakers. I’d rather read Charlie Huston’s new novel, or download a free PDF of Caught Stealing, the first novel in the Hank Thompson series. Maybe I could buy these for my birthday instead.

If I had to choose between blogging about Nightwing/Dini’s ‘Tec/Batgirl’s latest issue/that new issue of Mighty Avengers where Captain Marvel cries for a million pages/Superman screaming about how his dog is a good dog worship him WORSHIP HIM HU-MANS or making a flow chart/liveblog about yet another 100 Bullets read through, I’d choose the flow chart. It’d be interesting and about something good, rather than something not worth reading.

I’ll take anything but mediocre comics. In a way, they’re worse than bad comics. Mediocre books at least have some kind of potential or pedigree or talent that hints at a better result than what we got. They’re the very definition of wasted potential. No one expected anything great from Ultimates 3. Geoff Johns on Action Comics, though? I thought I was going to get more than the millionth Superman vs Brainiac fight, with the added bonus of the third death of Jon Kent in the past fifteen years.

Anyway, I need new things to talk about. All that other stuff is old and busted. If I have to keep talking about crap, I’m going to burn out.

1.Significant Others Of Superheroes Society. It would be a great cross between an emergency response team (considering how often they get attacked), a support group (dealing with the Flash Force, Kleenex/Steel, and how a ‘charged relationship’ is only romantic as a metaphor), and Army Wives. They could have a SOSS message board, and use the teleporters for a Sig Others Night Out when the heroes were forced to rush off at the last minute to save the day. It would be a gossipy, action packed, salacious geek dream.

2. Lois Lane: Investigative Reporter. This series would be kind of like Gotham Central (Yeah. That did so very well.) only Lois would go out looking for trouble instead of letting it come to her. It would let us see the day-to-day Metropolis, as well as letting us get to know Lois as more than just someone who loves Superman and has moxie. Plus it could take a variety of tones. The first arc could be a dark look at the kinds of Metropolis crime that Superman can’t deal with. The second might be a day-to-day look at the city and how it adapts to the presence of a nearly all-powerful hero. The third could be a fun homage to the old Superman’s Girlfriend days, with Lois getting bonked on the head so that she forgets that she’s Superman’s wife, and trying to win Superman over, ward off Clark Kent, and insisting, upon hearing that she’s wife to both of them, “I’m a polygamist? Never. It must be an imaginary tale!”

3. Jason Todd and Cassandra Cain: On Their Own. I’m talking about pre-Infinite Crisis batkids. Imagine them roaming around the country with superheroes on their tails and the mobs scattering in front of them. They could bond over stories of how Batman might be the crappiest father-figure that ever there was. Cass could bring the muscle and Jason, in what must be a refreshing change for him, would provide the know-how. Think about Jason trying to teach Cass how to go undercover. Think about her doing it by imitating him – a five-foot-not-very-much slender girl acting like a six-foot-something muscle-bound man. Think of him having to teach her how to go undercover by trying to imitate the body language of a small girl. Also, they would kill people and feel good about it, which would be a change in the Superhero world. . . . I sense you’re not convinced. They’d never set foot in Gotham again. Deal? Deal.

A couple months back, I reviewed Infinite Crisis in “Graphic Audio” form. Graphic Audio is a company that takes books and turns them into jacked up radio plays. I didn’t know what to expect, but came out entertained. Luckily, there was more fuel for my ears in the form of Graphic Audio’s take on Greg Cox’s novel adaptation of 52.

Hm. Already, I could tell that this wasn’t going to be more of the same. Infinite Crisis and 52 are very different. Infinite Crisis was seven slightly-longer-than-usual issues, condensed. For the novelization, they had to add in bits from other comics from that time to pad out the story. The Graphic Audio experiment took an average story and transformed it into something pretty good. In fact, reader Illvillainy, who picked up the CD set based on my review, had this to say:

Granted my imagination had me envisioning Doug Mahnke doing, say 12 issues, of gorgeous art while listening to the CDs but going back to read IC afterwards and seeing 7 rushed and badly paced issues of Phil Jimenez trying to be George Perez with scrunched up layout and one page splashes was severely disappointing. The audiobook wasn’t perfect but it made me like the idea of IC a hell of a lot more.

52 is another beast entirely. The quality was far superior on all fronts and due to lasting 52 issues, the story was more decompressed. Well, maybe “decompressed” isn’t the best word for 52. It’s just that there were so many subplots going on that if you were reading it for one of them specifically, you could go at least a month without an update. I cared about all of them to at least some extent, so I was cool with it. Though, really, I was mostly in it for Booster’s storyline.

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I just started to like Cable. The first arc was way too slow (which is why I picked it back up with the newest issue), and I’m still not 100% convinced on the Bishop turn, but I’m interested enough to keep reading. I want to say something, though.

Now, I like Richard Corben. I’m coming around on Cable. But, and don’t read this the wrong way, I hate dead babies. I can’t think of a good usage of them in comics and I honestly think it’s kind of dumb and needlessly shocking. Ohh, look how bad that guy is, he’s gonna kill a baby.

This is actually the second dead baby I’ve seen in comics this week, with Rogue’s Revenge featuring a baby getting disintegrated or time travelled or zapped out of existence or whatever– it was still dumb.

I can’t stand Cassandra Cain.

This is especially painful for me, because I adore Batgirl in general, and enjoyed Cass in particular for quite some time. I loved her incredible skills, her competence, her strong morality and her unquestioning look at life. In a world full of characters who dissect every part of their lives her devotion, body and soul, to the mission of saving lives was refreshing and touching. I also liked her for her weaknesses. Unable to read, hardly able to speak, Cass was constantly trying to make others understand her situation, but was unable to communicate it. Because of this, it was surprisingly easy to identify with her. Don’t we all get tongue-tied at the most inappropriate times? Don’t we all find ourselves frustrated when we try to convey the entirety of an experience to someone who doesn’t understand our enthusiasm?

The current Cassandra Cain speaks fluent English, as well as at least one other language. She can read, she can write. Unfortunately, her ability to read body language has been lost, as well as a great deal of competence. Her morality has completely changed. This was a girl who walked away from everything she knew the night she understood that she was being trained to kill. Now she wants to kill her own father, as well as a few ex-accomplices. It feels, to me, as if this is an entirely new character, who happens to have the same name.

This kind of change is not rare for comic book characters. Different story arcs, different creators and, in the case of long-running stories, different eras, all change a character’s personality. I understand this. Still, nothing quite soothes the sting of having one of your favorite characters turn unrecognizable. Ah, how fans suffer.

My question is – when do you give up? At what point do you accept that the character you loved is no more, will never return, and it’s time to curl up with a stack of your favorite back issues and never glance at continuity again? Share your stories of the characters you loved and lost, and when you knew it was time to throw in the towel.

I’ll be in the corner, waiting for the end of the Crisis and hoping for a retcon.