Gavok note: This guest article comes from longtime ThWiP contributor MK Stangeland Jr., otherwise known as Space Jawa.

I could open with a bit about how great IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series has been, but I’ll let you read Gavok’s summary on the series if you need a real introduction.

Ready to move on? Good.

Let’s talk about Shredder, shall we? Because for all the things he may be – leader of the Foot Clan, the turtles arch-nemesis, ruthless as can be – he also happens to have some significant flaws.

One of these is a talent for making enemies who want him dead, especially in IDW’s current series. Which is kind of a bad deal since so many of theses people arguably have the ability to pull it off, too. At least, if you ignore his potential immortality. Which is why I can’t help but get the feeling that in spite of how hard it is to kill him, it’s not a question of if someone will snuff him out soon, but who?

So why don’t we take a moment to look at the likely suspects (and a few unlikely ones as well) and see just who might have what it takes to actually pull it off?

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Guest article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett

When we last left off, our heroes were… oh, that’s right, it looked like the war had gone to hell and in the aftermath of the brawl in the desert, The Owl was injured and currently resides in a nearby hospital.

The two spies are to meet with a field officer for debriefing, Terry Sloane. I’ll bet some of you will be absolutely shocked to discover that he has a mocking nickname from his underlings, “Mister Terrific”. As Terry dines with a beautiful woman, the two spies go to check up on a local contact.

And thus we meet the antagonist of book two, a Nazi spy/torturer known as the Scarecrow. He’s already killed the Owl (who held out against his techniques before dying), but the dead contact has given him all the intel he needs. The Bat cautions that he’s dealt with the bastard before and they need to use guns. The Hour ignores this, pops his pill, and lets everything go to hell.

The Bat and the Hour chase after the Nazi, and Terry is left with Eva in his arms. The ring he had been palming to propose to her does him little good as she slips away.

Cut back to: 1939, somewhere inside Germany. Hitler attends a demonstration by one of his scientists, who believes he can open a wormhole to other times, places, or dimensions. Something unseen emerges from the portal – something bulletproof. As the few guards in the room are cut down by their own ricocheting ammunition, Hitler places a pistol to the back of the other survivor’s head and fires, walking forward to greet the being, and give him a name.

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Gavok note: Back in 2010, Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett decided to review just about every DC Elseworlds title he could get through. Due to personal scheduling issues, he had to take a break, but now he’s back in the saddle and ready to go. Glad to have him back.

I could go on about how awful I am with deadlines or make excuses, but nobody cares, you’re here for the alternate realities. So how about a string of some really good Batman-centric books, eh?

JSA: The Liberty File
Written by: Dan Jolley & Tony Harris
Art by: Tony Harris & Ray Snyder
Focuses on: Batman narrating, various JSA reimaginings
Self-contained/Multiple books: Multiple books (one sequel)
Published in: 2000
Central premise: Bruce Wayne, “The Bat”, is an Allied spy trying to follow the trail of a new weapon the Nazis have developed. Two partners are assigned to the lone maverick due to the case’s importance: Rex “The Clock” Tyler, and Charles “The Owl” McNider.
Martian Manhunter Out of Fucking Nowhere? Quite.

The Liberty File is easily in my favorite Elseworlds (thus far? probably of the entire run) because it manages to pull off well a concept that gets screwed up often: a harder Batman. But it makes sense. This is a man who’s wanted by every enemy that knows of him in a wartime era, while behind enemy lines. He has reason to be paranoid. Working alone is what keeps him safest.

There’s also the fact that this is a Bruce Wayne who knows the value of a gun. They’ve saved his life in the field, and, well… Bruce himself sums it up at one point:

Despite that, the book never dips into anything ill-advised in his narration (which we later discover is being written in an actual journal he burns the pages from after writing, from one of the army psych team’s recommendation). It has a bit of a pulp novel feel in places, honestly, and the tone is consistently solid. Anyhow, I should actually discuss the story itself here.

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Gavok note: For the past year or so in my This Week in Panels series, panels for Ultimate Spider-Man have been supplied every month by regular reader Michael Stangeland, otherwise known as Space Jawa. With Ultimate Peter Parker’s corpse still a bit fresh, Jawa wanted to touch on his perspective of the mini-event. Since we’re always open to reader guest articles, I was more than happy to oblige.

I’ll admit right off the bat that when I first heard about Bendis’ The Death of Spider-Man story arc, I was concerned. Initially, it was worry about the titular character actually biting it, in spite of how he’s been around since the launch of Marvel’s Ultimate line-up. So it’s entirely possible that my reaction to how the story actually went there and did what’s previously only been done in a few dozen different issues of What-If?.

However, I’d also like to be able to think that I’m not that close-minded. After all, I was willing to see the entirety of the story arc through before passing final judgment, and I recognize that sometimes, character death is for the best, and a lot of great things can come out of it. After all, look at what Brubaker did with killing off Steve Rogers (before he brought him back, of course).

And for a world to truly move forwards, sometimes the characters we know and love have to move on so the next generation of great characters can take their turn in the spotlight and provide new story opportunities. When I first read Lord of the Rings back when I was in grade school, my gut reaction was to be disappointed that Bilbo wouldn’t be the main character again. Fortunately, I moved past that quickly enough and was able to get through the entirety of JRR Tolkien’s masterpiece.

So I’m hoping that I’m being honest with myself that the real reason for my distaste for the whole Death of Spider-Man arc is truly in reaction to how it was carried out rather than the end result. If it looks otherwise after I’ve said my piece, I encourage you to call me out on it.

I wish I could say that the use of “proudly” wasn’t meant to be serious.

The first major problem with Death of Spider-Man shows up in the very first three pages of the story. The major driving force behind Ultimate Pete’s death is that Norman Osborn is back from the dead. Of course, characters coming back from the dead isn’t anything that comics are unfamiliar with.

Problem is, this is Marvel’s Ultimate Comics universe. And if I’m not mistaken, one of the major points that has been made about the UC is that when characters die, they stay dead. Something that brings it even closer to being set in the “real world” than the classic 616 universe.

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Guest article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett.

Probably the biggest sin the Elseworlds line committed is that for every breakout hit or disaster the line produced, there were two or three bland piles of tripe released. Batman got the most Elseworlds, so he got the most dull stories- it’s simple probability. Today we’re going to start peering at those.

Batman: Two Faces
Written by: Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning
Art by: Anthony Williams & Tom Palmer
Focuses on: Batman
Self-contained/Multiple books: Self-contained
Published in: 1998
Central premise: Stretches the “duality of criminals/vigilantes” metaphor to its limit via the use of Two-Face, while Batman is also the Joker (oh like you couldn’t guess that from the cover)
Martian Manhunter Out of Fucking Nowhere? No

To be honest, I think the framing device for this story is a bit clever: inside the Iceberg Lounge, a gentleman’s club in late Victorian Era Gotham, Peregrine White and James Gordon swap tales of the bizarre and exciting from their lines of work, sworn to secrecy within the club’s walls. This evening, it’s Gordon’s turn to tell the tale, and he fills in the details on a case that was “the talk of every broadsheet in America” at the time.

There’s a recurring theme in a lot of Elseworlds of putting Batman a) in a Victorian-ish time period (fun note: this story takes place three years before the similarly-timed Gotham by Gaslight, the ur-Elseworld), and b) making him some sort of psychologist or similar skillset. Here he’s a criminologist “and amateur sleuth” of some renown. It doesn’t really have much to do with this story aside from his wanting to help cure the schizophrenia of Harvey Dent, but I just thought I’d point it out, being that this is the first we’re getting to that touches on those themes.

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Guest article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett.

Well looky here, already we’re having a change of plans. After reading Empowered vol. 6 this week the blurb at the end informed me Adam Warren had written an Elseworlds story. Given that I’d rank Empowered as my book of the week (if not for the solid month), pulling this out of the stack took precedence over the first of the Bland Bat-Batallion of stories.

Titans – Scissors, Paper, Stone
Written by: Adam Warren
Art by: Tom Simmons with Adam Warren
Focuses on: Teen Titans
Self-contained/Multiple books: Self-contained
Published in: 1997
Central premise: Far-future teens taking on the role of the Teen Titans to stop an immenent “gigaclysm”
Martian Manhunter Out of Fucking Nowhere? No

I’m going to be entirely honest: I’m terrible with the Teen Titans. I don’t know a fucking thing about them, I’ve only read Terror Titans and a couple of issues of the latest series, and that was all for Static, baby. (Consequently, I’m not reading another issue of the damn thing, because two mistakes were enough, and I don’t like being the jilted lover. Fuck you, DC.) I picked up Tiny Titans for a bit but dropped it when my kid sister stopped reading it as well and I needed to slash the budget.

This is very much not the usual Titans story. (Or maybe it is? I’m willing to bet not though.) Rather than run through some massively-plotted concept and try and cram it into 50-60 pages, Warren just gets us into the thick of things pretty quickly and alternates explanation (mostly origins for our motley crew) and action, with small bursts of character building beyond the hero template each mimics.

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If you’re not up to speed, read the first part of James Howard’s review here! Unless you want to experience it Star Wars style. That’s cool too!

So Wojytla heads back and joins the official Polish delegation to Rome for Pope John XXIII’s Ecumenical Council, where he makes a speech before the assembly and spends his time soaking up the scene.

Africa, you know I love you, but stop listening to the fucking Vatican already. And don’t think for a second that the pair are placed next to one another here to imply a sense of colourblind kinship and equality before the Lord; one being a white bishop and one being a black bishop, they’re actually positioned there to spend the evening completely ruining my knights’ mobility.

Wojtyla is officially promoted to Archbishop of Cracow and gains all the perks of the position: new business cards, free jello, and a much, much larger hat.

Most people would look at this picture and take most interest in the apparent radioactive properties of the new headwear, but I’m more intrigued by the stubby sausage-like hand sneaking in behind the new Archbishop to swipe his old hat before the new one comes down. What if he wanted to stack them, like Duplo? Is that not allowed?

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Article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett.

It actually took me seeing the variant for this one to understand what the hell was going on with the regular cover. Apparently our pinup girl is holding one of Wolverine’s claws for some reason, completely independent of his arm.

Anyhow. The recap page is skippable, at this point they’re so bare-bones from trying to sum up things and keep the illusion of a coherent plot that it’s not worth it. All it gives us that we didn’t know is, “Yes you are really about to read a comic where Wolverine evolved from an otter.”

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Article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett.

If you’re still foolish enough to trust the covers, you might think this issue is action-packed. You’d be very wrong, though. Let’s see what our recap-writing buddy has to say this time.

See that movie reference there at the end? Yeah, I don’t think Jemas knew there was a Jurassic Period, because over the next two pages they all keep referring to it as “How long until Jurassic Park?”, “150 million BC — Jurassic Park”, and it’s rather irritating. Also irritating: we know damn well from the first issues that the time machine can send things to a pinpoint time. It’s how all the stuff arrived right where Al was when it was sent back to him. For some reason, this has changed all of a sudden, because now instead of just punching in “150 million BC” as a destination, they have to count up through the years at “50 million years an hour” and so they need to stick a young organism inside the time machine with them inside a bag made from Al’s future-shirt.

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Article by Fletcher “Syrg” Arnett.

Every time I see that cover, I keep thinking it’s Lockjaw, the Inhuman dog. Anyway. This time we get a recap page full of straight-up lies.

Shot 1 is actually them sending back the time machine, from last issue, sort of ruining the “last son” thing they were aiming for. Why they didn’t mention, “Oh hey Al has a time machine now!” is anyone’s guess. The origin thing I can’t really debunk, the love story is mentioned here for a second and final time (and is still using panels from issue 1 because it does not exist), and I don’t know how the hell Al got credit for capturing Spike Lee when he, uh… just walked out of the room, and left a confused Frank Castle to talk with the irritated director.

Now, issue 3 of Marville is entirely different from the last two. For one, they didn’t bring in an inker on this one, and the change actually gives it a look I like. This will, of course, be tossed out in an instant when this issue ends. The second is that there are no word balloons, thought bubbles, or for that matter, anything beyond “what will make this shot look the best”, no real in-between panels for motion in here. Dialogue and actions are conveyed in the script laid on top of the images throughout the issue. It’s almost like a storyboard.

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