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…

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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Geoff Johns to exit Teen Titans

Who is the new writer?

So now…who’s taking over?

That would be current Robin scribe Adam Beechen beginning with TEEN TITANS #47.

Some people have already seen his name solicited on upcoming issues of “Titans East” – that’s because Adam’s come on early to co-write “Titans East” with me to get a sense of the team and to set the stage for his run as I close out mine. There are going to be some shake-ups and, more importantly, you will see the beginnings of a second Titans team forming…though not necessarily what you’re expecting. Adam’s especially nailed the characters of Kid Devil and Miss Martian and he’s delved head first into the vast Titans history to soak it all up.

I’ve been a fan of Adam’s work for a long time, starting with HENCH and his stories on the JLU book, and I’m anxious to see what he does with the TEEN TITANS. I’ve already heard a few ideas on where he wants to take the team and I’m really looking forward to them.

:crossarms:

I love Beechen, and I’ve been wanting to write more about his Robin run lately. This is great news, particularly because I’ll start buying Teen Titans regularly again. The last year and half, maybe two (whenever Titans Tomorrow ended) really hasn’t been to my taste, so I let the book lapse. Titans East drew me back in due to Batgirl.

Well played, DC Comics. You trick me into talking about not buying a book and then you put a scribe I really enjoy on it. Well played, indeed.

This is going to sound weird coming on the heels of my “Ollie Queen is a jerk!” post, but hear me out.

I love character turns, be it heroes gone bad (Zoom, Batgirl, Eradicator) or villains gone good. It’s always interesting to see that breaking point that makes someone change. This post is about a villain who went good.

Paul Booker was a crap villain. He called himself Major Disaster, wore a disaster of a costume, and had a disaster of a career. To be quite honest, I haven’t read a lot of his early work just because it looked so awful. He’s got on pink gogo boots, a blue body suit, and a lighter blue hood. It’s a costume on par with some of Scarlet Witch and The Wasp’s worst excesses, but not quite as bad as Susan Richards’s negative-space 4 costume from the ’90s.

Booker joined the JLA at Batman’s request. Yes, the same Batman who gave Huntress the old heave-ho. The JLA were MIA and he had a Substitute League lined up in case of emergencies. Booker so liked the respect that he stuck around on the team and ended up proving his worth. He even made it onto the JLElite, before finally retiring.

Booker’s face turn for JLA was more of an “Okay I’m good now guys” rather than a gradual shift, but it feels right. Here is a guy that, in another world, could’ve been a true hero. He could theoretically prevent disasters, or come up with new ways to research them. The problem is, he’s selfish. He decided to look out for number one first and foremost, and ended up crap villain. He’s had tastes of the good life during his stints in the Suicide Squad and Justice League Antarctica, but he never hit the big times until the JLA accepted him.

He brings an interesting dynamic to the team for a couple reasons. One, he’s a reformed villain. As he says at the beginning of the Rules of Engagement arc, “Vote from the reformed criminal type! If more capes hunted down more bad guys, we’d have a lot less crime!” He doesn’t look at things like the other heroes do. He’s a very to-the-point, man-of-action type. If there is an easy solution that solves the problem well, do it! Why not?

Second, Booker is a big, dumb lug in the Bibbo Bibbowski/Lobo vein. He doesn’t say exactly what’s on his mind because he doesn’t really think. His brain isn’t just not connected to his mouth, it’s not connected, full stop.

Case in point. When the Elite gets together, they’re masterminded by Naif al-Sheikh, who can best be described as an Arab, male, and chainsmoking version of Amanda Waller. He’s got crazy black-ops and intelligence clout, so much so that the JLE gets approval based on his word alone. al-Sheikh sees these men and women as “demons playing in the robes of angels.” They terrify him, and that cannot be. He wants them to share a secret so that they can begin to build a trust. He wants them to explain why they fight for the light from the shadows. Booker’s response? “I, umm… this is really gay. Can’t we just go kick the @&#% out of some bad guys, “sir?”

This man is “Hurrrr!” incarnate! Another example. Booker’s been talking about Kasumi, an assassin on the team with something to hide. This scene follows:

Yes, Booker. You got zapped because it’s that time of the month. That is it exactly.
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It is Hal Jordan Appreciation week. In honor of HJAW…

Huh.

I got nothing. Moving right along–

I love 100 Bullets. You all know this already, right? I’m confident that I can prove that it is the finest piece of comic literature amongst a field filled with self-absorbed people whining about their life and tights’n’fights.

Here’s the long and short of 100 Bullets: The Trust are the scary behind the scenes people that are usually referred to as “they.” They are obscenely rich and outside of the law without being outlaws. The Minutemen were a group of men who protected The Trust from threats both foreign and internal. If a member of The Trust moved against another, the Minutemen would handle it decisively. A few years back, The Trust tired of this and had the Minutemen eliminated in Atlantic City… or so they thought. Agent Graves, leader of the Minutemen, faked their deaths and dropped them into new lives through hypnotism. Now, he’s reactivating his army and appears to be in the process of taking careful revenge on The Trust.

One of my favorite characters in 100 Bullets is Isabelle “Dizzy” Cordova. A reformed gang member whose husband and son were murdered while she was in prison, Dizzy is both one of the reader’s many POV characters and a moral center for the series.

Graves approached her with a briefcase and revealed that two policemen were responsibile for the death of her new family. The briefcase held a pistol and 100 bullets, both of which were completely untraceable. They were “magic bullets,” and any police investigation that involved them would be canceled and wiped away clean. It was a license to kill.

By the end of that arc, it was clear that Dizzy was destined for greater things. She’s appeared throughout the series and you can see a clear progression from broken-hearted girl to grown woman. She’s still young, though quite some time has passed since she first crossed paths with Graves, or rather, since Graves began grooming her for his purposes.

You see, Dizzy is “The Girl,” and she is slated to become one of the new, post-Atlantic City Minutemen. Even more so than the others, Dizzy is slated to be a check within the group itself, as she has been given both a reason (or two!) and the training to kill Agent Graves if and when the time comes.

Time will tell how she ends up, but as-is, she’s easily my favorite female comics character. She’s got heart, she’s got character, and she’s awesome. She’s had an interesting character arc, too. She’s gone from ex-con with a death wish to a person with a fierce wish to live.

Early in the series, she’s told that she had every right to kill a man. She would have gotten away with it. “Well,” she responds, “that don’ make it right, knowhumsayin’?”

That’s Dizzy.

I have trouble with Green Arrow. Ollie Queen has only had a handful of stories that ever really interested me, and even then only slightly. It doesn’t help that the past few years of his book have been not to my taste at all. Longbow Hunters was good, and I’ve been meaning to read Grell’s run on the character because of it. It might help me “get” Ollie.

I think it boils down to his character. He’s this super lefty, hero of and to the people type of guy. He’s that annoying, loudmouth, brash guy who I don’t think anyone likes. He’d be positively frustrating to hang out with. I dig Black Canary, but I have no idea what she sees/saw in him.

Plus, there’s this kind of thing.

So, in short, Ollie Queen is an annoying slimeball with a stupid mustache. I realize that this is a plot point in Justice League Elite, but I don’t see it being even remotely out of character for Ollie. Shoot, one of his character traits is “unfaithful.”

Also, Hawkeye has the same gimmick but is at least fifteen times as cool, Connor Hawke is more interesting, and Oliver Queen having a win against Prometheus is ridiculous. I actually like Mark Millar’s Ultimate Hawkeye more than I like Oliver Queen. Hate may be too strong a word, but I definitely am not an Ollie fan.