You ever read the Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz run of Booster Gold? It was pretty good stuff. The majority of it dealt with Booster’s personal quest to use time travel to save the life of the 2nd Blue Beetle and Booster’s 1st best friend, Ted Kord. Rip Hunter kept insisting to Booster that this was an impossibility and that it would mess up time something fierce. Booster didn’t listen and with the help of Dan Garrett, Jaime Reyes and the mysterious Black Beetle, saved Ted’s life.

Wouldn’t you know it, everything went wrong. This was all some kind of scheme by Mr. Mind and the present was reduced to Max Lord and his OMACs laying waste to almost all the superheroes. Ted saw that his death had a role in the grand scheme of things and seemingly killed himself in some kind of time travel clusterfuck with the use of Black Beetle’s scarab. Booster was broken up about it, but got over his failings with the help of Batman’s compassion.

Despite Ted’s redeath, we were given a happy ending. But wait… what’s this?

Hey! Ted’s alive after all! Johns himself said so. Good for Ted.

Not all good. What’s he going to do now? Ted Kord is supposed to be dead. Blue Beetle is supposed to be dead. He can’t go back to the blue and lighter blue. Even if you ignore there already being a Blue Beetle around (in a sadly cancelled series), an arc in Manhunter shows that Ted being alive would ruin Wonder Woman’s defense for killing Max Lord. It would make her look even worse in the public eye.

It’s a shame. A young guy like himself given a second chance. He’s rich, he’s brilliant, he’s a gadget wiz, he’s got his own secret hideout and you know he’s just raring to go back to fighting crime. Blame it on the economy, but sometimes a talented guy just can’t find a job.

Wait a minute… Wasn’t there a job opening this week?

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Know what sucks about character death?

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I’m done. Horse is dead.

Here’s a question*. Do you think that people who are interested in reading Vixen: Return of the Lion, with words by G Willow Wilson and pictures by CAFU, care about this?

The correct answer is no.

Vixen is a series that is a repositioning of a recently reintroduced Justice League character who hasn’t appeared regularly for years. Batman appears on a few pages out of the issue as a guest star on a rescue mission. There’s no mention of his troubles in RIP– he’s just Guest Star Batman. Guest Star Superman, Guest Star Red Arrow (ugh), Guest Star Black Canary, and Guest Star Black Lightning round out the cast.

No one cares about Batman RIP because it doesn’t matter in the context of Vixen. How about we kill this continuity spider-web stuff and just stick to the shared universe approach? “Hey, it’s Batman! I like Batman, and even though he is currently Jean Paul Valley in his ongoing comic, I’m not enough of an anal-retentive OCD nerd to care!”

I’m not saying that you should never acknowledge things… but use some discretion. It’s worthless here.

On the flip side, this is kind of hilarious. One of my favorite things about Marvel is that they don’t throw anything at the wall to see what sticks– they throw everything.

For those of you who don’t know, Midnight Sons was Marvel’s ’90s supernatural line. Morbius, Blade, Hannibal King, Frank Drake, Ghost Rider, Johnny Blaze, Vengeance, and Marvel’s other supernatural characters were in a supergroup, or loose affiliation to this supergroup, called the Midnight Sons. They fought vampires, satanist mummy people, demons, Mephisto, and whatever other vaguely supernatural enemies decided to come calling. They were about as edgy as you’d expect, too. The satanist mummy chick had her pentagram on her right breast, for example.

Anyway, it’s the kind of idea that you’d never expect to make a comeback, but so far we’ve said that for Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Bucky, Hellcat, Captain Marvel, Moon Knight, and so on- you get the picture. Marvel has a habit of revitalizing their b, c, d, and z-list in a way that’s either genuinely entertaining or entertaining on a curiosity level, at least temporarily.

I can’t promise it’ll be good, but it’s almost sure to be more interesting than the latest Superman origin re-telling.

*This question takes place after Secret Six Discussion, but before Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Basically, this is a pretty good way to show that retcons are pretty much a lame storytelling device. Nine times out of ten, it’s just another way of saying, “Welp, we screwed up and we don’t want to have to deal with the consequences.” Sometimes it’s something like, “We need this character to be in this position for this story to work and don’t want to do the in-betweening.”

Retcons can be used well, but by and large, they are about sidestepping consequences. Hal Jordan murdered a whole bunch of people, and so far, it seems like his punishment is to get called a stupid earthman and sneered at once every eight months or so. Why? Because he’s Hal Jordan, Hero, and DC Comics needed him to be a Green Lantern for some reason. Sinestro? He ain’t dead! Why, he faked his death! Why? Because Hal Jordan needs Sinestro as a villain. Jean Grey isn’t dead, she’s just in the bottom of a bay. Why? Because we need a team featuring the original X-Men. Prometheus? He hasn’t been looking like a buffoon all over the DC Universe for years. He’s been all locked up, who is that other guy? He’s just some guy who acts just like him, has the same gimmick, costume, personality, and powers.

This is stupid. There’s dozens of other ways to get around Prometheus being an idiot. Faulty tech. A deep-seated fear of Batman (it worked for Deadshot). Slumming it and trying to stay off the radar. Anything but “it wasn’t him, nope.”

That’s just lazy.

The things you learn when you mess around with the subtitles on your Batman: The Animated Series DVDs.

Although in Spanish, Batman is still called Batman, Bruce Wayne’s name has changed to Bruno Díaz.

I’m guessing this is an across-the-board name change, and not just a blip for the animated series.  Does anyone know why it was necessary?  Does ‘Bruce Wayne’ mean ‘Your mother’s a whore,’ in Spanish?

Sometimes you’re on your computer, you’re not going anywhere, and you just want to yack about a comic with people.

Go below the cut to start flapping your fingers about Secret Six.  Don’t click if you don’t want to get, as the kids say, ‘spoiled.’

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I love Tim O’Neil’s reviews, and his wrap-up of the latest issue of JSA is pretty much spot on.

Remember a few months back when I said that the Gog storyline could be really interesting if it turned out that the all-powerful, benevolent Gog actually was as benevolent and kindly as he wanted everyone to believe he was? That such a twist would actually be far more interesting than the inevitable revelation that Gog was just an evil demigod after world domination after all? Well, this is the issue wherein the omnipotent evil demigod is dispatched with surprising alacrity considering how effectively he was built up as unbeatable. All the thorny ethical and ideological questions of the past six months are wrapped up in a dismissive “oh well, he really was evil after all” shrug.

Click through, check it out. He’s got some other gems in there, as well.

Something strikes me as a bit out-of-sync about All-Star Batman and Robin.  Now, now.  Settle down.  I’m not trying to start anything.

What jumps out at me is the juxtaposition of the outrageous, film-noir-on-acid dialog by Frank Miller, and the finely drawn art by Jim Lee.  Although Lee’s intricate art serves the story well in large-scale panels, like the fold-out wide shot of the Batcave, it seems like the characters need chunkier lines and more high-contrast colors to have the same impact as the words.

Still, I wonder if my reaction to this is based only on the fact that this is the first time I’ve seen this type of art work paired with Frank Miller’s writing.

Does anyone think that this type of art suits Miller’s style just as well as the art we’ve seen in DKR?  Or better?

Does anyone else have examples of when an artist seems perfectly paired with a writer, or when it’s a match made in hell?

Shaggyman echoes a sentiment shared by all humanity during the holiday season.

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